The Rarified Air of Principles

     It took just about six weeks for the long knives wielded by the delusional absolutists in the conservative movement to slice to ribbons the new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. The source of their manufactured angst is the recently passed Omnibus spending bill, which for everyone's information was already in progress when Mr. Ryan became Speaker. But forget that, and the fact that these delusional absolutist "conservatives" have completely ignored the concessions the new Speaker extracted in the compromise. These transmogrified conservatives breathe the rarified air of their own regurgitated principles as they stand on the summit of their values which precludes them from engaging in the hard work of participating in the battle in the valley of reality below them.
     The omnibus bill just passed is not a great bill, but neither is it the proclamation of treason that many so-called conservatives have characterized it as being. The kind of spending bill these delusional absolutists want is one which does not exist outside the land of Oz. With a radical Leftist in the White House, and nowhere near a veto-proof majority in the Senate for Republicans, I am not sure what these deluded folks expect.
     Speaker Ryan was able to secure more military spending, a reduction on the burdens placed on business over the last 7 1/2 years, and a revocation of the president's very harmful ban on foreign oil sales. This last item was the century's pariah to free society in the opinion of the same conservatives who now do not dare applaud its passing. It is odd how their values are based on what political agenda they are pushing. When the president instituted his ban, these phony conservatives saw it as a political crowbar to use against him to illustrate how he was ruining the country. Now that Speaker Ryan has had the ban lifted, these same people ignore it because they are so filled with hate for anyone they label as "establishment."
     Is Paul Ryan going to be a good Speaker of the House? I do not know. But neither do I think anyone can judge that from only six weeks in office and the completion of his first legislative duty presented to him already in progress. The point is that if and when the Republicans win the White House, and if they retain control of the Senate and House, and a spending bill like this one is passed, then I will concede that the Speaker has not done a good job.
     I am chagrined that so many on my side have lost their reason and think somehow that it is possible for Republicans to just ram through the bills they want without regard to the Democrats in congress or the president who has veto authority. It borders on hypocrisy for some conservatives to bemoan the Left having their way with public policy through the courts because they can not do so legislatively, and then demonize congressional Republicans for not taking liberties with the constitution to implement what they want.  

Federal Injunction Gives Cover To Weak-Kneed Republicans

     So a federal court in Texas has issued a temporary injunction against President Obama's constitutionally-challenged amnesty executive order. And once again some on the Right have been placated by legalese that means very little. My theory is that the Texas court issued the injunction, not to stop President Obama, but to give cover to weak-kneed Republicans who are afraid of standing up for what is right if it involves "shutting down" part of the federal behemoth, namely the Department of Homeland Security.
     For at least the last four years that they have been able to, the Republicans have refused to employ one of the most effective tools available to them, the power of the purse. And before all those moderates out there begin to sing the same old sad song about how government shutdowns only hurt Republicans, the refusal to leave government shutdown on the table as a bargaining chip neuters any attempt to mitigate the destructive policies of this president.
     Besides the Republicans receiving cover from the Texas court, there really is no benefit to the injunction issued. President Obama has a history of disobeying orders by federal judges. Remember the two injunctions against his moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP spill? In that case the administration was even caught red-handed cutting and pasting scientists names to a completely different report than the one they wrote in protest of the president's moratorium.
     And then there was the time when a federal judge issued an injunction to prevent implementation of ObamaCare, which the president also ignored. The injunction was before Chief Justice Roberts twisted himself, and the law, into a pretzel in order to pass constitutional muster, but it is illustrative of Barack Obama's disdain for any Rule of Law that negatively affects his agenda for a "New America."
     So now we have arrived at yet another showdown between President Obama and the Rule of Law. Some on the Right have been strangely mollified by the federal injunction issued yesterday, even though it will be used for toilet paper by the administration currently occupying the White House. But Republicans in congress can use the federal order as a reason to once again do nothing and ensure the continuity of the Leftist domination of the "People's Government."

Are We In A Constitutional Crisis? And Is That A Bad Thing?

     So now President Obama has taken unprecedented executive action to essentially grant legal status to millions of illegal aliens, in other words amnesty. And while those on the Left make a desperate attempt to justify the president's unconstitutional bestowment of authority upon himself that he does not have legitimately, those on the Right have vowed to stop him by using the Republican control of congress. Well, we shall see about that. My guess is that Republicans will pass a "comprehensive" immigration bill that the president will sign into law, essentially giving congressional enablement to the president's unconstitutional temper tantrum.
     I have previously written that the Republicans have already lost the immigration debate by accepting the Democrats position that the system is "broken" and a "comprehensive" solution is needed. My supposition is primarily supported by the fact that anytime one suggests a comprehensive government solution to anything, the resulting outcome is bigger government and smaller solutions. The executive action taken by President Obama last night was long on Leftist rhetoric but short on actual details about implementation.
     Some on the Right have decided to oppose the president's unconstitutional behavior by trying to convince the populace that it is the end of self rule under the guidelines of a representative republic that the Founders created. And while this president has taken extreme liberties with his authority granted under the constitution, it is not the first, and will surely not be the last time that a president stretches his authority to its breaking point. The nature of executive orders is as a constitutional power granted the president with few guidelines past the granting of a president being able to make such proclamations.
     Abraham Lincoln penned The Emancipation Proclamation without consent of congress, which freed all slaves residing in states that were in rebellion against the Union. I am by no means comparing President Lincoln's executive order to free slaves, to President Obama's to grant legal status to those residing in this country illegally. But to white slave owners in the South, President Lincoln's executive order, with its corollary outcome to free slaves being the destruction of an economic system based on the labor of those slaves, must have seemed as audacious and constitutionally unhinged as President Obama's executive order to issue amnesty to millions of illegal aliens appears to us today.
     Make no mistake, President Obama's executive action is unconstitutional because it usurps the constitutional power given to congress to make immigration law. It also does not follow the traditional purpose of executive orders, which is to support existing laws legitimately passed by congress. Be that it as it may, I do not believe that this executive order is the "End of our constitutional republic," as some on the Right have been lamenting. Since our inception as a nation we have been in constitutional crisis.
     Before those sanctified words were emblazoned on parchment which gave birth, not only to a new nation, but to a never-before-seen system of government, no one could have imagined the governed having the audacity to question the methods by which they were governed. As a nation we have been in a constant state of questioning the constitutionality of government actions. From John Adams signing into law the Alien and Sedition Act which jailed journalists for speaking out against the government, to Franklin Roosevelt interring Japanese-Americans during World War II, constitutional crisis has been the constant companion to Liberty and freedom. And that is not a bad thing, unconstitutional actions by any president are just guardrails on the road of self-governance that draw our attention back to the safety of the solid pavement of the constitution. 

Glenn Beck's Convenient Letter

     I never liked people like Glenn Beck, you know the type, the smartass kid in the school yard who insists on possessing knowledge no one else has, even if it is not true, just so he can assert the subterfuge of his superiority. Or the disgruntled teenager who thinks his parents are purposely plotting against his happiness. And as adults we have all worked with folks, who like Mr. Beck, are always spreading rumors about the company's impending demise. No one knows for sure why persons suffering such affliction behave in such a manner, but they have kept research psychologists flush with material for at least a century.
     I am not saying I necessarily disagree with Glenn Beck's assertions about how President Obama and other Progressives have slowly eroded the soil from around the edifice of freedom. But where others take a reasoned approached to this encroachment, Mr. Beck works hard to lead his legions of lemmings to leap off the cliffs of common sense into the chasm of irrationality. The mechanisms he uses are his radio show and books, all aimed to give substance and authority to his delusional theories in order to increase his audience for the former and unit sales for the latter.
     The latest drivel I heard rolling off the tongue of this modern day P.T. Barnum is that all of history as we previously knew it is a lie created by the Progressives for the last hundred years. His "evidence" for such a claim is a letter found in a box belonging to Upton Sinclair which was purchased at auction by one of Mr. Beck's votarients. This one letter, which Glenn Beck never even questioned the authenticity of because it supported his agenda to serve up more conspiracy slop to his masses, proves that Progressives have engineered the manufacturing of history with the willing participation of the press (which is what the media was called in the days when there was only the print medium).
     The Progressive movement was not that formulated back in the early 1900s to engage in such an elaborate scheme as Mr. Beck and his "letter" suggest." The movement began in the Republican Party with Theodore Roosevelt, and Calvin Coolidge even considered himself a devotee of the ideology for a time. The movement flowed between parties and ideologies, sometimes firmly planted in the garden of the Right, and sometimes drifting into the garden of Leftism. It was not really until the Franklin Roosevelt administration that the Progressive movement became the Leftist ideology we know today.
     Of course the real trajectory of history does not suit the purposes of Glenn Beck, it is much to gray to fit into his black and white world. So he must twist and mangle the limbs of history to fit into his conspiratorial casket. The reason is simple; he wants to sell more books, increase his radio and cable audience, and keep his empire based on doom and gloom propped up with the stilts of deception. The persons who buy into Mr. Beck's special brand of self-aggrandizing delusion will find themselves poorer for the experience, both financially, as those who bought gold on Mr. Beck's recommendation and have lost up to a third of their investment, and in piece of mind that never comes as a result of believing conspiracies.

Rand Paul The Pander Bear

     Recently, in a Newsweek article Rand Paul, senator from Kentucky, stated that he thought the police department in Furguson Missouri, as well as police departments across the country, are too well-armed. Senator Paul also opined that the American justice system was used against blacks in disproportionate numbers, and that that fact proved that we still have a serious racial problem in this country. With this one article Mr. Paul has made himself the king of the Pander Bears, those politicians who will support what they think are populous positions in order to benefit themselves politically.
     While Senator Paul is fatuously calling for the demilitarization of the nation's police departments, I am calling for the de-congressionalization of Rand Paul. I have heard the Paulies suggest that Mr. Paul's foreign policy is aligned with that of Thomas Jefferson, but nothing is further from the truth. Mr. Jefferson brought to bear the force of the United States military against the Muslim pirates on the Barbary coast of Africa, and he also spent years overseas entangling the U.S. in foreign relations. Something that the Paulies seem to forget when quoting Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address when he spoke against "foreign entanglements."
     Thomas Jefferson's pragmatism would also lead one to believe that he would not be allied with Rand Paul if the former were alive today. Mr. Jefferson never would have suggested that his statement condemning foreign entanglements applied to an age after his own when missiles, nuclear weapons, airplanes, and a whole host of dangers existed that precluded American foreign policy from being limited by our borders. The view of Rand Paul and his devotees that all we need to do to ensure our security is to protect our borders is both childish and naive.
      The naiveté that instructs many followers of Rand Paul informs them that the United States has no enemies, save those that are created by our foreign policy. And we would just be safe and could ignore the rest of the world if we just would stay in our cocoon and not "interfere" with other countries. But this world view is not only dangerously naïve, but is not fair to the rest of the world. Freedom and prosperity has come to the rest of the world in quantities never before seen in history, precisely because the United States has taken responsibility for influencing world events.
     Mr. Paul sees a growing Libertarian movement in this country and is trying to capitalize on it politically by pandering to its misdirected tenets. But I think the Pander Bear is miscalculating the strength of this movement and will be politically disappointed with his results. I shudder to think of the dark and oppressive world that would exist today had the United States followed a foreign policy over the last hundred years like the one suggested by Rand Paul. And apparently from his recent statements, not only does he not believe in a muscular foreign policy, but he does not believe in a muscular domestic one either in order to protect citizen from rioters and looters.
    

The Self-Marginalized Right

     It is fairly common knowledge, or at least it should be 6 years into Barack Obama's term as president, that he has for most of his adult life been a disciple of the gangster/community organizer Saul Alinsky. Furthermore, it should not be a surprise to anyone that has had their ear to the rail of politics in this country for at least part of the last few years, to understand that marginalizing your political opposition is the cornerstone of the modern day edifice of community organizing built upon the unholy foundation of Alinsky's Rules For Radicals.
    Barack Obama has been very successful implementing the marginalization tactic that Mr. Alinsky learned at the knee of Al Capone, and has added to it a racial component that has increased its abilities with a population that has been weaned on white guilt and black victim hood for the better part of the last 40 years. But Mr. Obama has had the added benefit over Mr. Alinsky in so much as he has had a portion of his opposition engage in self-marginalization.
    You may have run across these persons on social media and elsewhere, the ones that swear the practice of local police departments buying armored vehicles is not a function of facing more well-equipped criminals, but a prelude to the Obama administration imposing marshal law on the citizens. Additionally, there are the bullet paranoids, who have marginalized themselves by turning an industry shortage of bullets in some parts of the country into a conspiracy on the part of the Obama administration to keep citizens with guns unable to purchase ammo for those guns.
     This has existed practically ever since there has been people upon the earth. I call it the Delusion of the Irrelevant. Those who feel they have no control over the aspects of their lives they do not like, must then impute blame for those aspects to some sinister force, usually government or rich people. It is the process of transforming themselves from irrelevant to relevant, which takes the form of superiority over those ignorant masses that do not know or do not agree with their paranoid, conspiratorial conclusions.
     Another form of self-marginalization that has recently become popular is the insistent impeachment syndrome. These are persons on the Right, like Sarah Palin, who have as much chance of impeaching this president as the proverbial snowball rolling through hell has of remaining intact, and yet they continue to marginalize themselves and harm their political cause. Mr. Obama is indeed fortunate to have such foolhardy political opponents.
     If the political Right in this country is ever going to have a prayer of wrestling the reigns of power away from the destructive Left, we must stop marginalizing ourselves with our support for conspiracy theories and bad political strategies that are bound to fail. We have better ideas, ideas that have a proven track record of being successful. We must concentrate our political energies on articulating those ideas and winning over converts to the cause of liberty, free markets, and common sense.

Barack Obama's Southern Strategy

     During the 1960s, Democrats were playing the same race card that dominates their political strategy today. They accused Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater of having some secret "Southern Strategy" that appealed to racists in the South. As per usual, Democrats never presented any evidence for their charge, and none was required by minority voters who were more than willing to accept the word of a political party that had a long history of displaying racism. It was a ridiculous charge on its face considering that Richard Nixon was the father of Affirmative Action through his Philadelphia Project, and was the first major white politician of either party to meet with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
     Unlike the Democrats charge of a Southern Strategy attached to Richard Nixon, Barack Obama's Southern Strategy is blatant, palpable, and real. Only the South President Obama is courting is South America, and the many Democrat-Voters-In-Waiting that live there. The numbers are worrisome; one in six Hondurans and one in five El Salvadorians that existed in those countries twenty years ago are now residing in the United States, some legally, but many illegally.
     Some, even on the Right, still refuse to believe that the current invasion of the children's crusade on the Southern U.S. border is part and parcel to President Obama's agenda. Even with the evidence staring them in the face like a rabid dog ready to attack. The very impetus for the current invasion was the Executive Order Mr. Obama signed in 2012 allowing for illegal alien minors to stay in the United States.
     Additional evidence of a planned "crisis" was the hiring by the administration of transport and logistic personnel as far back as the beginning of this year, months before the supposed "crisis" began. The issuing of debit cards to the over 300 thousand illegals that have crossed the border since April, most of them adults, many of them gang members, is further proof of a deliberate erasing of the border by the Obama administration. And finally, the multi-year lease the Obama administration signed with a resort to house current and future border crashers is evidentiary of an administration that does not intend on stemming the flow of illegal aliens any time soon.
     The importation of Democrat voters from South America is ancillary to the tenets of Liberation Theology that Barack Obama studied for twenty years in Reverend Wright's "church." The real goal of President Obama's Southern Strategy is to return what he sees as America's ill-gotten wealth to the peoples he sees as the victims of an imperialistic America. And that is the real sin of Barack Obama; he is unable to understand that America has added to the world, not subtracted. And that the enormous advancement in the human condition driven by the United States of America has come as a result of our founding being an exception to anything that came before or since.      

The Arms Of Her Courage

     The impassioned testimony last Tuesday presented by Wetumpka, Alabama Tea Party President, Becky Gerritson, should shame and humiliate more high profile and influential people who spoke against the Obama administration in its infancy, but were intimidated into silence by the Alinsky tactics of this President. Men (and I use that term loosely) like billionaire investor, Warren Buffet and CNBC host Jim Kramer.
     Jim Kramer saw the Obama policies for what they were, "The greatest destruction of wealth I have ever seen." Mr. Kramer said those exact words on the air in the early stages of the Obama train wreck. Just days later, Mr. Kramer reversed himself and was on board with the wealth destruction and everything else his masters in the White House spewed out on a daily basis. For his transformation from man into lapdog, Jim Kramer was given a promotion at CNBC and was made a host of one their morning shows. Billionaire investor, Warren Buffet, had a similar transformation from administration critic to sycophant. Mr. Buffet was rewarded with the insider information that General Electric was to receive billions in taxpayer money in bailouts. He used this information to buy GE preferred shares of stock when they were $6 and guaranteed himself a 15% return under the terms of the preferred agreement.
     Mr. Buffet, Mr. Kramer and others should be shamed by the Congressional testimony of a private citizen from Wetumpka, Alabama, whose only recourse to seeing her government careen out of control was to organize her neighbors, much in the same way the Sons of Liberty did some 240 years ago. And while Mrs. Gerritson and others were standing up to the behemoth tyranny that is the Obama administration and shaking their fists demanding limited and responsible government, those like Jim Kramer and Warren Buffet were cowering in the corner sucking their thumbs and clutching their binky blankys.
     Jim Kramer and Warren Buffet were not the only ones cowed into submission by the Obama thug tactics. Democrats like Dennis Kuchinich were likewise turned from critic of the Obama administration into slobbering devotee for far less than five pieces of silver. Former Congressman (you can not realize how good it makes me feel to say that) Kuchinich called the Obama administration the most corrupt he had ever seen, but became a supporter after only one ride in Air Force One with the President. There were others, both Democrat and Republicants, who were intimidated or bribed into silence and even vocal support of policies and tactics by a President and his gang of thugs they knew were wrong and opposed to everything upon which this great nation was founded. Congressional Republicants who supported the financial reform bill, known as Dodd/Frank, made it impossible for individual Americans to keep their financial life private and away from the prying eyes of over-reaching government.
     The men and women, whether in positions of power inside the government or influential ones in the private sector, who saw the crushing oppression of the Obama administration, and were intimidated or bribed into silence, should feel shame after seeing how brave Americans respond to this type of soft tyranny. Brave Americans like Becky Gerritson, a wife, mother and patriot, who, when her country was attacked from within, took up the arms of her courage, and with only her words as weapons, shined a bright light into the beds of her oppressors.     
    

Where's The Hope?

     Clara Peller, the old woman in the 1980s Wendy's commercial, in reference to the competitors hamburgers, would indignantly spout, "Where's the beef?" For anyone who remembers that commercial, I am sure you can remember just over four years ago when Barack Obama promised the nation hope and change. Now the reality must be faced, by those with the courage to do so, that all we have is a change towards less hope. Now that Mr. Obama is solidly into ruining a second term with more of the same obstinate authoritarian policies, those of good faith must make an honest assessment of his promise to deliver on hope and change and what went wrong.
     One of the essential virtues that would have turned what has become the biggest failure in presidential history into one of the greatest presidencies, was recently illustrated by President Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush. At the launch of his library and research center, former President Bush gave an inspired speech and it was striking how many times he used the term 'We' as opposed to his successor who is constantly using the opposite pronoun, 'I'. It was also refreshing to hear someone so succinctly and unabashedly extol the great virtues of America.
     It may seem petty to pick apart President Obama's use of one pronoun over another, but that one word expresses volumes about the character of the man and why he has failed so miserably. Barack Obama is the self-contained president and he looks at the United States Congress as an impedance to the great work that only he can accomplish. I have mentioned before in this blog that President Reagan had a sign on his desk that read, "It is amazing what a man can accomplish when he doesn't care who gets the credit." It is President Obama's strict adherence to the antithesis of this sentiment that has caused more pain for the American people and a legacy of mediocrity and failure for his administration. To Witt: just today the first quarter Gross Domestic Product was announced, and it slumped in at 2.5 percent. This pathetic growth comes as we approach the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the so-called economic recovery. A recovery that has been more analogous to a patient being kept alive on life support. In this case, the life support is Ben Bernanke printing money at an alarming rate and using it to buy government bonds to drive money into the stock market.
     I do not have any problem with Barack Obama being a Democrat, if he had truly wanted to solve the nation's problems and set it on a path back to prosperity. He also could have taken the nation past racial division instead of using it for his and his party's political gain at every turn. Truly, history handed Barack Obama an opportunity to do great things and in the process secure himself a place beside some of our nation's greatest presidents. He instead chose the pronoun 'I' instead of 'We' and devolved the presidency into a fortress of derision aimed at his political opponents befitting the best community organizer but unworthy of the President of the United States.

The Three Ds Of The Obama Presidency

     Well President Obama was off to Minneapolis to campaign for stricter gun regulations and an end to the second amendment as we know it. Every time there is an issue to be debated or dealt with, the President avoids doing any actual work and jets around the country in a continuation of his never-ending campaign. It costs the people of Great Britain 57.8 million dollars a year to provide for their Royal Family. Our Royal Family of the Obamas costs U.S. taxpayers 1.4 billion a year to provide for their lavish lifestyle of endless vacations and rides all over the world on the $180,000/hour Air Force One jetliner. But the question of the U.S. taxpayer footing a bill for the Royal Obamas that is 30 times greater than what Great Britain pays for their Royal Family, is a topic for another discussion.
      If the last four years has proven anything about President Obama and the Democrat leadership in Congress, it is that they are unable to perform the primary function of their jobs, i. e. governing. Whenever there is a serious issue before the President, he jets off around the country and makes speeches. The President is under the delusion that his words are an adequate substitute for action and well thought out solutions. The useful idiots in the Democrat party like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and others have quickly learned the Obama tactic of avoiding debate on serious issues with diversion, derision and division.
     The first tactic of diversion was used to great success in getting Barack Obama re-elected and has been used to a lesser extent during his entire political career. His campaign diverted peoples attention away from his miserable economy and disastrous foreign policy to things like Mitt Romney being responsible for the death of a steel worker's wife or Mr. Romney traveling with his dog on the roof of the car. The Obama campaign also used the non-existent issue of Governor Romney's taxes to avert attention away from high unemployment, non-existent GDP growth and four dead Americans in a Benghazi terrorist attack. The President and the Democrats are engaged in diversionary tactics with the gun control issue. The issue of gun control is taking up alot of the country's political oxygen to solve a crisis which doesn't exist, i. e. an escalation in gun violence, by diverting attention from the real crisis of the fiscal collapse of this great nation.
     The second Obama tactic of derision has been used to great effect by the entire Democrat party to push an agenda that is unpopular with a majority of the American people. They know that the best way to make an unpopular position popular is by demonizing the alternative position. People will allow themselves to be like sheep being led to the slaughter to avoid being labeled a "racist", "sexist", "homophobe", "intolerant" or any of a myriad of descriptions that Democrats have heaped upon anyone who disagrees with their unpopular initiatives.
     Of course the classic Obama tactic of division has its origins almost as far back as the dawn of modern military man. Mr. Obama, like any devoted Alinskyite, knows that the path to political power is paved, not with winning converts with reasoned arguments, but with dividing groups against each other. So the President and his party pit poor against rich, young against old, black against white, gay against straight and any group against any other group that can possibly create discordance and chaos. And in that chaos they present themselves as the only solution.
     The three Ds of the Obama presidency are tactics that may bring him temporary political power, but history judges great leaders as those who have inspired and united. President Obama has done neither of these two things and has built his career and his presidency on making people feel worse about their lives. He then presents to them someone else who is responsible for their perceived injustice that he, through government edict, will compel to provide redress to the injured party. This, I believe, is not a winning strategy for creating a better and more just society because eventually the vale of glimmer and sham is pulled back to reveal the ugliness that the three Ds has created. And in that moment of national awakening we will choose a leader of substance which is commensurate with the values of this great nation's founding.
    

A Secretary Clinton Post Mortem

     The Left has a predilection for rewarding people of little or no accomplishment and making heroes of the mediocre, our current President fits this mold perfectly. Hillary Clinton is another glaring example of the Left heaping praise on one of their own when they are not worthy of that praise. The Left, in the media and elsewhere, have praised the great job performance of Mrs. Clinton as Secretary of State, but conspicuously absent from their praise are any details of any accomplishments by Mrs. Clinton as head of the State Department.     
     Secretary Clinton had no Henry Kissinger accomplishment on par with manipulating the Chinese against the Soviets, which eventually helped Ronald Reagan win the Cold War. Missing from Hillary Clinton's resume as Secretary of State is a diplomatic success similar to Dr. Kissinger's Middle-East peace deal brokered between Israel and Egypt. Mrs. Clinton doesn't even have a Colin Powell at the United Nations moment that she can point to as a success.
     Secretary Clinton has been awash in failure, including but not limited to the security debacle on September 11 of last year which lead to four dead Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Mrs. Clinton's utter incompetence in allowing a consulate in a war zone to go virtually unprotected on the anniversary of 9-11, was compounded by her bald-faced lie to the American people that the attack was a protest in response to an anti-Muslim YouTube video. Secretary Clinton also provided defacto U. S. support to Syrian leader Basar Al Assad early on in his slaughter of 65,ooo of his own people, Mrs. Clinton  called the barbarian a "Reformer." And then there is her willing involvement in replacing U. S. ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Morsi. Someone ought to tell this brilliant Secretary of State that the Muslim Brotherhood is an enemy of freedom and decency of which the United States use to be a defender.
     There are many other failures of Mrs. Clinton, e.g. the complete lack of any attention paid to the 4.5 million people being slaughtered in the Congo and Libyan rebels transporting Obama administration-supplied arms to Mali, West Africa in an attempt to overthrow that democratic government and establish an Al Queda base of operations. But the real failure of Secretary Clinton is her inability to achieve any level of success with regards to the prime directive of any United States Secretary of State, i. e. the increase of U. S. influence in shaping important world events. Along with President Obama, Mrs. Clinton has allowed our enemies the comfort of knowing that their acts can continue unabated and our friends have been saddled with the unease of knowing they can't depend on the United States for support against our common enemies.

With Half His Race Tied Behind His Back

     Recently I was thinking how it was that Barack Obama has been able to win the Presidency twice and seemingly move the country further to the left than we have ever been. Beyond the soaring rhetoric and the promise of an ever-expanding list of goodies from the Federal government, there is but one explanation that has brought this country and Barack Obama to this very point in history.
     Barack Obama has built a successful political career with half his race tied behind his back. He stresses his black half to the exclusion of his white half. This is because his blackness allows him certain political advantages that his white half does not. He can, for instance, play on white quilt in order to convince whites not to challenge his positions for fear of being called racists. There is no such thing as black quilt, and therefore no political advantage to stressing his whiteness. Barack Obama's blackness is a huge advantage, especially after the Left has spent the last couple of decades softening the target with political correctness and revisionist history. Anyone who is intellectually honest realizes that with a white mother and a black father, Barack Obama is as much white as he is black. But listening to him since he burst onto the national political scene in 2004, one would think he had no white blood at all. Throughout his two biographies he laments the challenges and deficits of being a black man in America, but oddly enough never embraces his white half.
     Author, Sheldon Steele, made the observation that Barack Obama realized at a young age that the best way to enlist whites in his cause was not to appear radical or angry, but to be a bargainer. He convinces whites that supporting him will absolve them of sins committed against the black man by their ancestors. In exchange for this support, he presents a portrait of a moderate and reasonable man who is in no way radical or angry. He in essence becomes a salve that soothes the racially troubled soul of a guilty white nation. But he could never achieve this grand bargain if his white half were allowed to carry the same currency as his black half. This is why during the 2008 Presidential campaign he had to throw his white grandmother under the bus by calling her a "typical white person." This allowed him to distance himself from his white heritage and become fully black in the eyes of the electorate. He used this same strategy to distance himself from the radical black community when he threw Reverend Wright overboard.
     From that moment eight years ago when Barack Obama gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democrat convention, he has been cleansing himself of his whiteness until there are no traces remaining. It is partially the reason he makes statements like the one he made about Treyvon Martin, saying that if he had a son he'd look like Treyvon. Looking over the last four years, one can find many similar statements that are designed to reinforce Barack Obama's blackness while mitigating his whiteness until it disappears all together, at least in the minds of many. Much credit must be given to Barack Obama, he has been able to rise to the highest levels of power with no experience or accomplishments to speak of and with half his race tied behind his back.

Click here to watch my political song parodies.

The Fact-Deprived Left

     When in the course of advancing their agenda, the Left in this country refuse to let facts get in the way of passing evermore restrictive legislation. It is confounding to Conservatives and is probably the reason we have had such a difficult time winning the PR war against the modern-day Liberal advance. And it goes to the very core of the difference between Conservatives and Liberals, i. e. Conservatives are guided by the founding principles of this nation along with experience and Liberals are guided almost entirely by the emotion of the moment. Allowing emotions to be the primary ingredient for decisions is a recipe for disaster, whether for an individual or a nation.
     Health care is a glaring example of my thesis. When the emotion of the issue is removed, any reasonable person would have looked at the U.S. health care industry and determined that it was the most advanced in the world. It is an industry which has driven medical advancements for the last 50 years, and brought life to those who would have formerly died. These advancements that have propelled the human condition to heights never before seen, were driven mostly by a thriving private sector operating under the auspices of the free market. The problems that existed in the health care industry were mostly confined not to its delivery and quality of care, but to insurance coverage. And these insurance problems were mostly the result of government involvement that increased exponentially over the last 40 years. In every poll taken on health care in the last 20 years, the results showed that over 85% of people were completely satisfied with their health care. I think any business with a satisfaction rate that high is healthy and not, as Liberals would have you believe, on the brink of coming apart at the seems. But Liberals trotted out isolated individuals who they say were abandon by an unfeeling, profit-motivated system in an effort to convince the public at large to allow them to run health care in a more compassionate way. Even using this blatantly emotional subterfuge, Liberals were not able to convince a majority of the public to agree with them. So they did what Liberals do when their policies govern against the will of the people, they ram them through Congress using bribes and kick backs and have a compliant court back them up.
     A further example of my thesis is the way in which Liberals used the Sandy Hook murder spree to advance their anti-second amendment agenda. They used slaughtered children as a prop to convince the people of this great nation to abandon their God-given right to defend themselves as they see fit. It is a purely emotional argument when one considers the actual facts. Two thirds of all gun deaths are suicides and when added to suicides committed using other methods, they account for five times the number of homicides committed with guns. There are also more crimes prevented by law-abiding citizens using fire arms than there are crimes committed by criminals using them. And while the number of guns per-capita has increased dramatically over the last 20 years, the number of violent crimes has actually decreased. All these facts don't enter into the Liberal sphere because they contradict their contention that stricter gun laws are needed to protect the public.
     It is a difficult challenge to argue against emotion, anyone who has tried to reason with an emotional child knows this to be true. But it is a challenge that Conservatives must become more apt at meeting if we wish save this great Republic that the founders bequeathed us. It is not only essential to the survival of our great nation, but to the survival of freedom and liberty everywhere, of which we are the last standard bearers.

Click here to watch my political song parodies.

The Crisis Whores

     "You never want to waste a crisis, it gives you the opportunity to do things you wouldn't normally be able to do." - Rohm Emanuel, President Obama's first Chief Of Staff, after the President won the 2008 presidential election. This statement by the ballerina thug could not have been a more accurate prediction of President Obama's first term. He and his administration have not missed an opportunity to use crisis to advance a leftist agenda and augment their power. Whether the crisis was real, like the financial meltdown that started his first term in office, or manufactured, as was the case of the BP Gulf oil spill. Every step of his first term was advanced by a sense of crisis that paved the road forward to a larger government and a smaller citizen.
     There have been quite a few coaches in the NFL that have lost their jobs recently due to a lack of adequate job performance. If Barack Obama was an NFL head coach, he would be one of those currently looking for work. He inherited a 5-11 team and turned it into a 1-15 team, all while losing fan support and plunging the club into an historic amount of debt. But he has been able to keep his job and gain more authority by keeping the country in a constant state of crisis. He uses crisis to increase his authority over a free people and expand an ever-powerful central government, just as a prostitute uses sex to get money. Every new crisis, whether real or manufactured, the President sees as an opportunity to expand the Federal government and redistribute earned wealth.
     The financial crisis he used to great effect to get a tax cheat confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury, pass a trillion dollar stimulus that only stimulated his union buddies and green industry campaign donors and impose thousands of new onerous Federal regulations on businesses, which has made a real economic recovery a quaint notion of a by-gone era. Not to mention confiscating an automobile manufacturer from its rightful owners and giving it to his union buddies. The President and his minions of street walkers constructed a phony health care crisis in order to pass a massive government take over of the health care industry. They used the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to cripple the drilling industry and force BP to pay billions of dollars into an Obama slush fund. And now the crisis whores seek to use the murderous rampage by one evil man to impose stricter regulations on law-abiding citizens in an effort to extinguish the flame of their God-given right to bear arms, which the Constitution reaffirms.
     If the activities of the crisis whores weren't bad enough, there are some misguided people on the right who actually are taken in by the crisis-mongering of the Obama administration. I've spent the last four years listening to so-called Conservatives like radio talk show host Michael Medved, be turned into chicken littles. Every time the crisis whores create a new hysteria like the debt ceiling or the fiscal cliff, the scared little rabbits on the right like Mr. Medved are ready to accept the crisis whores' premise that the world will end unless their "solutions" are enacted. And therein lies the real problem in the Republicant party, they accept the premises of the left and therefore they are allowed to stand. This gives the crisis whores fuel to create a virtually unlimited amount of crisis with which they can expand government and contract freedom.

Click here to watch my political song parodies.

Time Couldn't Find A More Deserving Person Of The Year ?

     I don't know the criteria used by Time for choosing their "Person Of The Year", but obviously it isn't the subject's positive contribution to mankind. It also doesn't seem to have anything to do with selfless acts which raise up others. And elevating the human spirit in its quest for freedom and justice doesn't seem to be a requirement for Time in selecting the person who appears on their annual cover to receive this great honor. I say all this because this year's "Person Of The Year" is none other than Barack Hussein Obama. I am aware that Time awards the honor to the person or entity that has had the most influence on the world over the previous year, for good or bad. Previous recipients have included Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden, but it has also included Ronald Reagan and Gandhi. I'll allow the reader to determine which group of previous recipients the current "Person Of The Year" is aligned.
     If the distinction of "The Person Of The Year" title was bestowed upon an individual for negative achievements, then our newly re-elected President would more than qualify. After all, it has been his policies which have lead to a record number of people living in poverty, a record number of people receiving food stamp assistance, a record amount of national debt, a record number of unemployed and under-employed, a historic downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, the longest sustained period of slow economic growth in 70 years and a country which is more divided than it ever has been. Quite a list of accomplishments and I haven't even gotten to the historic amount of corruption in the Obama administration and scandals like Solendra, Fast and Furious and Benghazi. If one were to take everything that Barack Obama has done and some how rotate them 180 degrees, he would be one of the greatest President in this nation's history, but instead he will be seen by history as one of the worst.
     A more deserving recipient would have been Benjamin Netanyahu, who has struggled to keep his island of democracy in a sea of tyranny secure, and not only functioning but thriving. Israel has one the best economies in the world while having to endure daily attacks from enemies who wish to destroy it and a world body, The United Nations, that seems to support the cause of her enemies more than that of Israel. They could have also awarded the honor of "Person Of The Year" to Steve Jobs, who died in 2011 but whose company, Apple Computer, became the largest company in the world by market cap in 2012. Very few companies have had the impact that Apple has had on how people interact with each other and live their dialy lives using technology. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin sparked a firestorm of controversy when he passed legislation in his state to reign in the power of the unions that were bankrupting Wisconsin. He survived a recall election and began an awakening in this country among ordinary people to the economically destructive force of out of control union contracts. Governor Walker would have also been a better and more deserving choice than Barack Obama.
     In the big picture of the daily lives of real people, the Time "Person Of The Year" really doesn't matter a hill of beans. But I guess to the media types who live and die by their own self-congratulatory, over-inflated ego stroking, the "Person Of The Year" is the highlight of their otherwise ever-increasingly irrelevant existence.

Click here to watch my political song parodies.
   
    

Diamond Barry Obama-The Gambler

     The Obama administration has officially recognized the Syrian rebel forces as the legitimate representatives of the people. This recognition is one more in a long line of actions by the Obama regime which is illustrative of its feckless incompetence. Not that lending moral support to the Syrian rebels against the brutal regime of Bashar Al Assad is the right course of action, it is. But there is a world of difference between lending moral support to people who are in rebellion against their oppressive and brutal government, and officially recognizing those people as the de facto government of their country. Not to mention that the Obama regime was praising Bashar Al Assad as a reformer just a short time ago. Talk about sending mixed signals.
     The President seems intent on throwing his support behind different groups of Middle-East rebels until he can claim competence. President Obama is analogous to a gambling addict who thinks his next bet at the black jack table or the next spin of the roulette wheel is going to make him a big winner. But this President has a history of being on the wrong side of history, just like most Liberals of the last 40 years. He chose not to lend his support to the Iranian Green Party in 2009 after that country's sham of an election lead to mass rioting and demonstrations. A word of moral support from the President of United States may have made the difference in the effort to topple the Iranian regime. But he was silent and the rebellion was squashed.
     The President's next foray into rolling the die of freedom and trying to avoid the snake eyes of oppression, was the Arab Spring. It is uncanny how Diamond Barry Obama backed the wrong groups in almost every uprising in the Middle-East. From his support of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi in Egypt, to his arming of rebels in Libya who later turned out to be Al Queda terrorists who killed our ambassador and three other Americans, President Obama has shown very poor judgement. This lack of competent judgement on the part of the President has not only made the Middle-East less stable and more dangerous, but it has caused a weakening of the national security of this country.     
     Prior to 1979, radical Islamists had no state support for their terrorists activities. Then President Jimmy Carter handed the Islamist terrorists Iran on a silver platter, which lead to the formation of every terrorist group in the last 33 years. Now, it seems, that President Obama has handed radical Islamists most of the rest of the Middle-East. I wonder what the next 30 years will bring the United States and the world, surely it will be more loss of innocent lives and a stronger world-wide terrorist community. And this will be the legacy of a President who is in over his head and has no right, by experience or understanding, to gamble away the future of this country and global peace for all the people of the world.

Click here to watch my political song parodies.

Tale Of Two Revolutions

     Late in the eighteenth century there were two revolutions of note, the French and of course the American. It is a testament to the factors which bind us together through the centuries, that the values that motivated each revolution are still what motivates people today, for better or for worse. Even in the United States, the embers of both revolutions still glow brightly and ignite the passions of people on both sides of the political spectrum.
    The french Revolution was a populace movement built on a hatred for the wealthy and it blamed them for everything bad in 18th century French society. It resulted in many of the aristocracy being permanently separated from their heads. By contrast, the American Revolution was fomented mostly by the wealthy, and they pledged that wealth, along with their very lives and sacred honor, to the cause of freedom and economic liberty. Most of the Founding Fathers lost their wealth to the revolution, many also lost their lives, but none lost their sacred honor.
     If one were to attach one of the two eighteenth century revolutions to the two movements in this country today, Liberals would be more closely associated with the French Revolution and Conservatives with the American. At the very core of the French Revolution was a demand for more government, the opposite was true of the American revolution. And where the French Revolution chose to eliminate their wealthy citizens, the American Revolution was centered around the kind of economic freedom which created more wealthy citizens. Today's Liberals are not suggesting that we engage in public guillotining of the rich, not yet anyway, but the policies they advocate will behead the very capitalist ideals that create wealth. Their campaign to demonize the rich has created a new  and growing class of people that demand a bigger and bigger government to redress their perceived grievances.
     The entitlists, as I like to call them, are descendants of the French Revolution and keep the embers of class warfare and hatred burning. They want to benefit from the work someone else has done in their own self-interest. The descendants of the American Revolution want only to reap the fruits of the work they have done. Both are working in self-interest, but the difference is that the entitlist wakes every morning scheming ways in which to reap fruit from his neighbor's tree. The sons and daughters of the American Revolution wake every morning trying to devise ways to expand their orchard. The human characteristic of working in one's self-interest is present in every system of government, the morality of Capitalism is that individual self-interest is able to expand to benefit others. Berkshire Hathoway and Microsoft were founded not to create thousands of millionaires but to benefit Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, respectively. The effect was to create wealth for millions of other Americans, thereby expanding the scope of opportunity without any government involvement. Another example of this is the package delivery service. Federal Express and United Parcel Service have not only provided a more efficient method of shipping, but have created wealth for their shareholders, many of whom are every day Americans who own the companies stocks in their retirement accounts. The United States Postal Service, on the other hand, hasn't created wealth for anyone and has in fact run deficits which cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars.
     In the final analysis, the French Revolution, as is the case with the modern Liberal, looked through a myopic lens to grab someone else's wealth in the short term, thereby destroying the very engine of that wealth for the future. The American Revolution, and by extension the modern Conservative movement, looked to create an environment of economic freedom which would propel the country into a future of prosperity based on individual liberty.

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Jim DeMint's Departure-A Sign Of A Rocky Road Ahead

     This week, South Carolina Republican Senator, Jim DeMint, announced that he was leaving the Senate next January, to the chagrin of Conservatives everywhere. Senator DeMint was one of the few stalwart Conservatives in the body in which he serves. He was elected to the Senate in the 2004 mid-term elections, and was two years into his second term, when he made this surprising announcement. Mr. DeMint said he was leaving the Senate to assume control of  The Heritage Foundation, the Conservative think tank which advised Ronald Reagan. He said he could affect more change running Heritage than he could executing his duties in the Senate. As good of an organization as The Heritage Foundation is, being one of only a hundred members of an exclusive body like the Senate of the United States, I think, is much more influential.
     As a member of the Senate, Jim DeMint has the ability to vote on legislation which affects the entire nation. He can also affect the votes of other Senators by persuading them to vote in a manner which upholds the principles set forth in the founding documents of this great country. Leading Heritage, he will be lobbying his former colleagues from the outside, and will not have access to what bills may be proposed as early in the process as he does presently. As fine of an organization as Heritage is, it is just one of many Conservative think tanks and advocacy groups. Senator DeMint, in his current position, has the ability to vote on Supreme Court justices as well as other Federal judgeships. As a Senator he is one of only a hundred people who vote on treaties which can affect the way in which Americans live in the future. On balance, I can't understand how someone can affect more change heading a think tank than being a member of the United States Senate. But then I'm just a guy with a blog.
     If the Republicans would have won the White House in the recent election and picked up a majority in the Senate, my guess is Mr. DeMint would not be making this move. Which tells me it's not about affecting change, but leaving an organization that is becoming more rigidly leftist and joining one filled with like-minded people. Whomever Governor Nikki Haley appoints to fill Jim DeMint's seat until the special election in 2014, the Senate is going to become decidedly less Conservative by one. And at a time when we have an out of control President and more members of both houses of Congress afraid to stop him, losing a Conservative voice like Senator DeMint is truly a sign of the rocky road that lies ahead.

Click here to watch my latest political song parody. Posted December 2, 2012.

The Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy President

     Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is a mental disorder which affects woman in 85% of the cases diagnosed. The disorder manifests itself with the caregiver of a child deliberately keeping the child ill, sometimes to the point of death, in order to fulfill an overwhelming desire on the part of the caregiver for attention and sympathy. As long as family and friends are focused on the sick child, that focus is also extended to the caregiver of that child.
     I only bring up this rare disease as a sequoia into discussing the motivation of President Obama for the obviously destructive policies he advocates. In a way, the President has a version of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, only it is an entire nation that he seeks to keep sick. One thing is clear about Barack Obama, he is a narcissist, and as such he needs constant stimulation of his ego. A healthy and thriving economy places the government and the President in a much less prominent role in the lives of the citizenry. Inversely, when things are in turmoil and people are unemployed, there is much more attention paid to the President, thereby giving him a sense of importance. Of course, the environment of constant crisis does allow, as Rohm Emanuel framed it shortly after President Obama's victory in 2008, for the government to do things that it ordinarily wouldn't be able to do. But forcing socialist policies on the country is only one outcome of crisis for President Obama, the other is to feed his ego.
     To understand why the President is a practitioner of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, one only needs to look at his childhood. He was abandoned by his father and his mother sent him to live with his grandparents to separate him from his step-father, Kolo, because she felt his free market ideas were poison to her young impressionable son. By a very young age, Barack Obama developed not only a hatred for capitalism, but a desire to be a better father than his biological father had been to him. These early lessons, along with the constant ego-stroking he received throughout his life, created a potent combination of a desire to be in control like a father and a distrust for anything that might claim that responsibility from him, such as free market capitalism.
     Barack Obama's need to keep the nation in a constant state of crisis and malaise is rooted then in his desire to father and to have constant attention focused on his every word. This is why he prefers speech-making to governing and confrontation to cooperation. The first step in the therapy process for treating Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is the separation of the victim from the person with the disorder. Unfortunately, Barack Obama has been given another four years to continue the economic sickness of the nation and thereby feed his need for attention. We, as his victims can only become sicker and hope we don't die before help arrives in four more years.

Click here to watch my latest political song parody. Posted November 26, 2012.

Why Do Union and Government Workers Escape Redistribution

     The left in the United States and around the world is fond of redistributing wealth from those who have it to those who don't. But this concept always raised at least two questions in my mind, who is wealthy and who is not? To the person making minimum wage, a bloke earning $25 an hour is wealthy. Just as to a person who is making 200 thousand dollars a year, someone making a million dollars is wealthy. In survey after survey, almost independent of what someone earns, they don't consider themselves rich.
     A third, and I think more important, question comes to mind in the redistributive model, i.e. what entity is the arbiter of determining who is the provider and who is the benefactor? Of course, in most cases it is big government that is given the power to confiscate wealth and redistribute it. This necessarily leads to corruption because as the saying goes, "When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul." It has become painfully obvious recently that the United States has reached a tipping point which finds us with more Pauls than Peters.
     Politicians who implement redistributive policies are not concerned with the financial status of those they call poor, but rather with the disposition of those persons votes. If they truly believed in redistribution as a path to fairness, then why do government and union workers escape the redistributionist's confiscatory policy. Government and union workers enjoy up to twice the salaries as their counterparts in the private sector, and contribute very little to benefits that far outstrip any received by their brethren in the real world. The redistribution model seems to work in reverse when it benefits union workers. Wealth is taken from taxpayers, who make less than the union workers, to pay for their higher salaries and gold-plated benefits.
     The reason that government and union workers escape the ire of community agitators and other redistributionists is simple, money. Taxpayer money is given to union workers in the form of higher contracts, which is then collected in the form of dues. Those dues are then "donated" to Democrats, who are the very same people who negotiate union contracts within the framework of collective bargaining agreements. As an added bonus, the Democrat party receives two-thirds of the union votes. It's a money-laundering scheme that would make Tony Soprano wet his pants with excitement.

Click here to watch my latest political song parody. Posted November 25, 2012.