Oklahomily the Blog

Truth in Advertising? Not With GM

2010-05-06T11:00:00.004-05:00

On a day when the news features an unrepentant FCC chairman declaring, in essence, that the internet will be turned into a "public utility" and subject to future regulation much as telephones and power systems have been, and when Drudge features a report of five students sent home for wearing American flag-intensive apparel on Cinco de Mayo, there's already a lot of red flags waving in the face of your typical Constitution-loving patriot.

But I choose instead to discuss truth in advertising, as in, the lack of truth in advertising from spots being aired by Government Motors and the AARP, which I think now stands for the American Association to Re-elect Progressives, for it certainly has little to do with its traditional senior citizen membership.

Let's tackle the GM ad spots. Ed Whitacre, chairman of Government Motors and a shill for the Regime, as Rush says, announced proudly (in radio and TV spots, as well as a Wall Street Journal article headlined, "The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full") that GM has paid off its $6.7 billion in loans from the taxpayers years ahead of schedule.

Well, hot damn, you may say! It's the "Soggy Bottom Boys!" Well, not so fast. There's more to this story, and I have it thanks to columnist Shikha Dalmia writing at Forbes.com.

The GM Bailout, let's remember, included the direct loan of $6.7 billion. It also included $42.8 billion as an equity purchase (stock) of the company by the U.S. government (60.8 percent!) and the Canadian government (11.7 percent!). Together the two governments control 72.5 percent of GM, which is why it is truly Government(s) Motors.

So the Bailout isn't paid back in full. It's not even close.

But the story gets worse. GM has yet to turn a profit under its new management, which is no big surprise. Since when has the U.S. government run anything efficiently? So where did the money come from?

From an escrow account of $13.4 billion of "working capital" that came from the federal bailout!

Now the question is why did this take place at this time. The Forbes article has the answer, which once would've been shocking but it's par-for-the-course in our Obama Nation:

Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, points out that the company has applied to the Department of Energy for $10 billion in low (5%) interest loan to retool its plants to meet the government's tougher new CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. However, giving GM more taxpayer money on top of the existing bailout would have been a political disaster for the Obama administration and a PR debacle for the company. Paying back the small bailout loan makes the new -- and bigge r-- DOE loan much more feasible.

In short, GM is using government money to pay back government money to get more government money. And at a 2% lower interest rate at that. This is a nifty scheme to refinance GM's government debt--not pay it back!

Sadly, it gets worse still. By incurring more debt, GM will be farther away from the day that it turns a profit and, according to the government's plan, it will not sell its equity (stock) in GM until it is profitable and becomes a publicly traded company again.

As Dalmia puts it:

Mr. Whitacre's bailout payback ploy is a desperate attempt to win back the car-buying public deeply disgusted by the spectacle of GM rattling its tin-cup before Uncle Sam. But the fact of the matter is that the company is still deep in the hole. It might claw its way back – or it might not. But surely it's premature for its media boosters to pop open the champagne bottle without getting their story straight?

When I think of GM I think of the lemon I bought for my son to drive, a 2005 Impala that must be "burped" regularly every couple of months in order not to serially overheat. The first GM product I've owned since a wonderful 1957 Chevy that I never should have sold. Now that was a car!

I also think of my poor mother-in-law who invested heavily in GM stock a few months before the government took it over. She used the time honored "buy low, hold and sell it high" rationale to justify her action. The stock is worth less than she paid for it, substantially less. (Yes, she had professional investment advice; those boys were caught flat-footed, just as we all were.)

I think of all the dealers who lost their GM and Chrysler affiliations across the country, of the lost jobs as weird decisions were made as to who won and who lost in the dealership shuffle.

Then I multiply all this sorrow and suffering by many thousands or millions, and it makes me sad.

Then when I hear Ed Whitacre crowing about GM's accomplishments and asking for us to trust the company again, I want to vomit. This is not America. It is not freedom.

Resolved: if and when conservative-minded, freedom loving people control Congress, they should require the administration to divest itself of 100 percent of its interest in Government Motors and any other private business. Businesses should succeed or fail on their own merits. The taxpayers should not be the lenders -- or owners -- of last resort.

As If the Oil Isn't Slick Enough

2010-04-30T13:33:00.004-05:00

Oil is drifting toward the shore in the Gulf states.

What is the proper federal response from President Obama?

Send in the lawyers from the Justice Department.

As if there was any question about it.

Not only did it take the president eight days to determine his response level, preoccupied as he was with slamming Wall Street and the Arizona legislature, when he does respond it is with SWAT teams -- no joke -- and attorneys.

If President Bush had done that during Katrina even the GOP would have had him up on impeachment charges.

At any rate, you know that this administration's rule of thumb is that when there is a crisis situation, make sure that everyone knows that the federal lawyers are watching carefully.

That always makes for innovative and rapid action.

Peggy Noonan Strikes Truth Again

2010-04-30T08:48:00.005-05:00

Peggy Noonan has a great column today in the Wall Street Journal. "The Big Alienation." It's one of the best summations of the immigration policy debate I've read in a long while.

There's some great stuff about dysfunctional Washington.

It is not that no one's in control. Washington is full of people who insist they're in control and who go to great lengths to display their power. It's that no one takes responsibility and authority. Washington daily delivers to the people two stark and utterly conflicting messages: "We control everything" and "You're on your own."

She doesn't mention this but it fits the situation in the Gulf right now where it took President Obama nine days to decide to engage the federal apparatus to help British Petroleum with its problem. Obama doesn't want responsibility, just control. And he famously declares that BP "will pay all the costs."

On why Arizona had to act:

Which brings us to Arizona and its much-criticized attempt to institute a law aimed at controlling its own border with Mexico. It is doing this because the federal government won't, and because Arizonans have a crisis on their hands, areas on the border where criminal behavior flourishes, where there have been kidnappings, murders and gang violence. ...

... the larger point is that Arizona is moving forward because the government in Washington has completely abdicated its responsibility. For 10 years—at least—through two administrations, Washington deliberately did nothing to ease the crisis on the borders because politicians calculated that an air of mounting crisis would spur mounting support for what Washington thought was appropriate reform—i.e., reform that would help the Democratic and Republican parties.

And why is that, Peggy?

The American president has the power to control America's borders if he wants to, but George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not and do not want to, and for the same reason, and we all know what it is. The fastest-growing demographic in America is the Hispanic vote, and if either party cracks down on illegal immigration, it risks losing that vote for generations.

But while the Democrats worry about the prospects of the Democrats and the Republicans about the well-being of the Republicans, who worries about America?

Ms. Noonan has a simple prescription for solving the problem. First, fix the border. After that is proven, then do some small things when people have calmed down. But she fears that no one in Washington will do this. Here's why:

Because so many within it are stupid and unimaginative and don't trust the American people. Which of course the American people have noticed.

Do yourself a favor and read the entire article.

Iran's Coppertone Cops

2010-04-29T09:01:00.004-05:00

Infrequently I will hear someone equate Christianity to Islam and will either declare that both are dangerous when they are in control of governments, or that Christianity is a much bigger threat that Islam ever thought of being. I know, I know. In print it sounds goofy, but this kind of history-deprived nonsense has caught on with many younger people today who suffer from Government Education.

The next time I hear this, I am going to have a print out in my wallet of this story:

Women With Suntans Will be Arrested, Iran Police Chief Warns

Women with suntans are violating Islamic law and will be arrested in Iran, the capital city's police chief was reported by The Daily Telegraph as saying Wednesday.

"The public expects us to act firmly and swiftly if we see any social misbehavior by women, and men, who defy our Islamic values," Brigadier Hossien Sajedinia said.

"In some areas of north Tehran we can see many suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins," he continued. "We are not going to tolerate this situation and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them."

The warning follows recent comments made by a hard-line Iranian cleric, who claimed women dressed in revealing clothing were disturbing young men and causing earthquakes.

Young men, I fear, will always be disturbed by young women with or without tans, but they might have something there on earthquake prevention.

Few would stand for arresting sun-tanned women in Washington, D.C., but the fact that it can happen in Iran's capital city draws a big yawn from our political and social elite, who continue to draw up their plans for eradicating Christianity's "poisonous" influence from our institutions.

The Future of the Tea Party Movement

2010-04-18T17:16:00.005-05:00

The latest Tea Party rallies have subsided yet the clamor of the Progressives embedded in the establishment goes on; the disapproving frowns and the clucking of tongues of those who “hear” “violence and hatred” whenever anyone suggests that the supreme law of the Land – the Constitution – be followed.

There is no doubt about it: the backlash to the Tea Party movement is official.

That means it’s working!

There is fear among the milquetoast middle grounders for they have discovered that the “middle ground,” once seemingly the safest turf in modern American politics, is buckling and provides no foundation for their equivocation. The Left, reveling in its congressional majorities and its presidential patron, has discovered that it can simply buy off or threaten the moderates, as it did on the ObamaCare passage. There is no more pretense of compromise, merely naked corruption. The middle grounders predictably respond as they always have. Instead of blaming their Progressive herdsmen, who are the masters of situational ethics, for their sellout, they direct their complaints at those who held fast to their principles. In effect, they are crying out, “How dare you judge me!” when in reality it is history – and God – that will judge.

There is also fear among country club, Republican establishment types who embrace a conservatism of convenience. In other words, they call themselves conservatives when it is convenient to do so, most notably at election time, but otherwise consider themselves pragmatists when it comes to legislating or wielding power. They are suspicious of principles wedded to passion, which is why they never worked up more than token enthusiasm for Ronald Reagan but could whole-heartedly support George H.W. Bush. After all, the latter was one of them. It is this mind-set that is responsible for someone like Michael Steele wondering how the GOP can infiltrate the Tea Party movement.

He was serious, but it was a laughable premise.

The beauty of the Tea Party movement is that it is essentially leaderless. No, that’s not quite right. There are leaders aplenty, but it is a “from the ground up” leadership that calls upon individuals within the movement to educate themselves and to determine their level of commitment to restore constitutional governance to the various and sundry United States.

A case could be made that the leadership of the Tea Party movement includes such heavy hitters as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Paine, among others. They are speaking to a new generation through their writings and the historical record. We are reading the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, Common Sense, and various biographies. We are discussing the ideas of the Founding Fathers and discovering that concepts are timeless. And sacred. We may restate their truths in modern English, but the ideas themselves cannot be improved upon.

In the Tea Party movement are disaffected Democrats, Independents and Republicans. Once they may have differed on policy but today they are united behind a desire to restore and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity (sound familiar?).

It is not necessary for the Tea Party movement to form a new political party. Several national polls show that anywhere from a quarter to a third of the American electorate consider themselves to be aligned with this movement. That is considerably more than the number of Progressives. It is also significant because the Tea Party movement is but a year old. It is growing, and it will not be stopped by innuendo campaigns whether they originate from the White House/MoveOnDotters/MSDNC or even the GOP. It is impossible to stop a movement based on Truth where the vast majority of its numbers are people of good will and peace. The Polish communist machine could not stop Solidarity, and the Obama machine isn’t nearly that effective.

Wishful thinking pundits, more comfortable with the bilateral politics of the past which favored progressivism, keep writing that the Tea Party movement will blow itself out before the November elections. Dream on! The Tea Party has already changed the political landscape of America and it’s only the beginning.

I suspect that the greatest impact will be on the Republican Party for it is the one most susceptible to restoration and change. It is the one national party where intramural debate and challenge is still acceptable, and this is where Tea Party people can make a difference … by weeding out Progressives in the primary process. That might not make Michael Steele happy, but he may be lucky to have a job come November.

Sadly the once diverse Democratic Party is very inhospitable to genuine patriots at the national level, and that renders local Democrat activism something of a long shot. What is the use of wasting time and effort on a party that won’t listen to its conservative voices? I’m sorry, Blue Dogs, but your granddad’s Democratic party is gone, replaced over time by imposters who don’t like America, or its foundational principles, much. Please spare me your campaign rhetoric of how much you love to hunt, as if that somehow excuses you on other constitutional issues. Tell me, instead, of how you will tell Nancy Pelosi to kiss your ass the next time she tries to get you to vote for something that strips Americans of their rights. And then, if you are elected, do it. In public.

No, it isn’t genteel behavior. But it is the time-tested behavior of a patriotic, freedom-loving American.

We live in perilous times when liberty is at stake. Thomas Jefferson said that when the people fear the government, there is tyranny, and when government fears the people, there is liberty. The government hasn’t had much to worry about for the last 70 or 80 years or so, and that’s not healthy for liberty. It’s time to rebalance the political equation.

That’s what the Tea Party Movement is doing. Peacefully. Loudly. With American pride.

Is Guam at a Tipping Point?

2010-04-03T10:46:00.005-05:00

When you put ignorant people in positions of power, you will create opportunities for inane moments like the one caught in THIS video.

Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson, he of the Democrat persuasion, naturally, worries that the addition of 8,000 U.S. Marines and their families on the island of Guam will cause it to "capsize."

Seriously.

Obviously disappointed to hear that this is unlikely, he then starts worrying about the coral reefs and global warming.

Rep. Johnson voted for the health care bill, and he will probably vote for a lot of other nice socialist stuff as long as the electorate permits him to follow Nancy Pelosi over Marxist Falls.

Mark Hemingway of The Washington Examiner's "Beltway Confidential" believes that Rep. Johnson's remarks are "too dumb to mock."

But calling to mind the words of Samuel Adams, Patriot of 1776 -- "If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will be in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." -- I believe our patriotic duty is to mock.

Mercilessly.

Why Mitt Isn't It!

2010-03-31T18:04:00.005-05:00

It's Holy Week and there is a lot to do around Oklahomily Ranch so posting has been and will continue to be very light.

But I could not resist pointing out something to those conservative voters of any persuasion who might be thinking about 2012:

Mitt Romney, Hypocrite.

It's okay to make a mistake and learn from it. Mr. Romney wants to spin his Massachusetts disaster into something that it is not. Surely the Republicans can find someone a wee bit more conservative -- and honest -- to run against the Obamination.

Stupak Caves; Get Ready for a Loss

2010-03-21T15:20:00.007-05:00

Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak just caved on the "executive order option" so it is now quite likely that the Senate version of the health care reform bill will be passed before we sleep tonight.

With all due respect to the congressman, do you trust this president to keep his promise on the executive order when he has violated so many other promises?

Do you trust the federal courts to respect an executive order even if it is issued, especially since the language of a good executive order on forbidding the public financing of abortions will conflict with the language of the health care reform legislation?

Are you willing to answer to God when a future president issues an executive order canceling this one, if indeed, it comes to pass?

Between "Catholic" lawmakers Stupak and Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who caved even without an empty promise from President Obama, I am just about ready to vomit. They may represent their districts -- then again, come election time, the voters may have other ideas -- but they do not represent traditional Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life.

For that matter, I have problems with many of the bishops who seem to have forgotten the difference between church and state on this and a few other "social justice" issues. There is no way you can justify support of this takeover of the health care system of the United States, this threat to force people to help their neighbor through the kindly ministrations of the Internal Revenue Service, the actual taking of property from people without their consent, through traditional Catholic teaching.

I realize that most readers aren't all that interested in this particular argument, and that's okay. What's important now will be the next great cause, at election time this year, to empty Congress of each and every House and Senate member who stood for this abomination. We can clean the House, every member of whom is up for election. We can go a long way toward purging the Senate, a third of whom are up for re-election.

Our elected leaders in Congress are violating the compact to heed our will. They are creating huge new taxes and entitlements by misrepresenting us. They deserve to be replaced.

We are losing today. We cannot afford to lose in the primaries and in November. May God strengthen us for the task.

'Collapse & Wreck'

2010-03-21T12:13:00.003-05:00

No, I'm not writing about Cloward and Piven's strategy to collapse the U.S. government. You can and should read all that HERE.

Instead, I write of a game being played by juveniles in Philadelphia -- and who knows where else -- in which a group of youngsters identifies a target, preferably some one they think is homeless, and beat the crap out of them. More details:

Two residents of Southwest Philadelphia were injured - one of them seriously - in separate, recent attacks by youth engaging in a violent game they have dubbed "Catch and Wreck," police said tonight.
Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives said tonight a 12-year-old girl has been charged with aggravated assault and related offenses in connection with an attack on a 42-year-old woman Friday night, and additional arrests are expected.

In the game, a group of children between the ages of nine and 15 congregating at the Finnegan Playground at 69th Street and Grovers Avenue beat, strike and stomp adults they believe may be homeless, Walker said. He said neither victim in the two attacks was homeless.

Vincent Poppa, 73, remains hospitalized at Methodist Hospital a full week after he was hit in the back of the head with a gun, knocked unconscious and stomped by a group of four or five male youths near the playground around 9 p.m. March 13.

Poppa, who suffered a heart attack either during or shortly after the beating, was on a ventilator until Friday afternoon, Walker said.

Charming.

According to Walker, Poppa, a resident of a nearby senior citizens apartment complex, was attacked when he was returning from buying soda.

When he arrived at Methodist, medical personnel found footprints on Poppa's head and sneaker marks on his body.

"They were stomping him pretty hard," Walker said.

The second assault occurred Friday at 8:30 p.m. when a large group of male and female youths surrounded Belinda Moore, 42, as she took a shortcut through the playground on her way home from a cleaning job.

She was struck with sticks, punched and hit, but Moore managed to break free and run to a nearby home where a resident called 911.

Walker said Moore had injured a knee and hurt her head. She delayed seeking medical attention to help police in their investigation.

Police Friday night arrested a 12-year-old girl who hit Moore with a stick and were expecting to arrest at least two other girls and boy in connection with the attack on Moore.

The police are continuing their investigation into the attack on Poppa. Authorities believe there may have been other attacks that have not been reported.

This next part will make your blood run cold.

Walker said police learned about the "catch and wreck" game when they brought a large group of neighborhood youths to Southwest Detectives for questioning Friday night after Moore was assaulted.

"They were all saying the same thing, laughing at us, like we didn't know what it meant," Walker said. "They said, 'It's something stupid we do for fun.'"

Police, he said, believe it's a new phenomenon.

"It's bizarre mindset these kids have developed," Walker said. "We're hoping we can nip it in the bud."

I hope so too, but I'm not encouraged when are government is promoting itself as the "one-stop solution" to all problems and thus will continue policies that fragment families and encourage dependency, which leads to young people having no good role models to emulate. We are dangerously close to "Clockwork Orange" territory here.

Prophetic Hit -- And It Didn't Take Long!

2010-03-21T11:46:00.003-05:00

In my last post I bemoaned (bitched) that our culture has sunk so low that it will hold Wal Mart responsible for a juvenile racist remark made by a customer over a store intercom in Washington Township, N.J.

Two things this morning:

1. The arrested suspect was identified as a 16-year-old, reportedly charged with "harrassment and bias intimidation" whatever the hell that is. Want to bet he gets off with a hand slap?

2. As I collected ingredients for a hearty beef stew at my local Wal Mart, I overheard an employee being paged ... by a guy who was yelling very loudly from one of those swinging double doors that hide the stock rooms from the general public. "Telephone, Terry!" he yelled. As the worker approached, the assistant manager told him, you'll have to take it inside. They've disabled all the phones on the floor!"

Called it!

We are a long way from New Jersey but the command has been given from on high. Make sure there are no copycat crimes in a Wal Mart store, even though man-hours will be lost by employees having to "manually" page other departments, or by employees called away from their duty stations for phone calls.

Why? Because with the Gang of Progressive Thugs running our country you cannot be too careful. Your CEO might be called to testify before Congress as to your internal security workings, the state of your Diversity Training for employees, and who knows what else.

In a few years time we'll be damned lucky to find groceries on our store shelves.

Worth noting: Philly dot com's reporter could not bring herself to actually say "black people" in her lead, which is the phrase the youth had used. She corrected it to "African American." Folks, that's not journalism, that's political correctness and in this instance serves no purpose except to confuse someone who doesn't read the rest of the story. Can you imagine someone announcing politely that "all African Americans need to leave the store"?

The Gloucester County chapter of the NAACP -- the same organization that gave ex-White House communist "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones a national award a couple of weeks ago -- has now jumped into the fray, declaring that "similar, previous incidents" have taken place at the same Wal Mart. Gee, what are they implying? That Wal Mart encourages this sort of thing?

Or would logic suggest that the 16-year-old has struck before?

Oops! Can't use logic. Forgot.

The Death of Our Culture & Common Sense

2010-03-20T13:34:00.004-05:00

Earlier this week there was a report that someone ordered "all the black people" out of a Wal Mart store in New Jersey.

Naturally everyone was up in arms about it. Boycotts have ensued. Lawsuits have been threatened.

But it turns out that it was a customer who was responsible for "borrowing" one of the intercom phones and making the announcement. An arrest reportedly has been made.

Of course, now Wal Mart is taking heat for having its intercom phones "too accessible."

For crying out loud, is common sense completely dead? Under the social compact which has governed our society for, oh, the last hundred years or so, it was understood that non-employees keep their grubby little hands off store equipment. It was assumed that people were civilized enough to obey this little rule, and if anyone did violate it, the general assumption is that the individual would pay the consequences, not the store!

Anyone attempting the argument that Wal Mart should hide its intercom phones, or put security codes on them so that they cannot be used by any passing nitwit, is admitting that we now live in a culture so debased, so wantonly criminal and stupid, that everything must be child-proofed for ages one through 99.

That may be true, but a little tough love would cure it.

House Committee in Chaos; Emperor is Naked

2010-03-20T13:16:00.007-05:00

The House Rules Committee "descended into chaos" today -- as described by Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York -- after committee member Henry Waxman, D-California, said:

"We're not going to 'deem' the bill passed. We're going to pass the Senate bill…I would be against the idea of 'deeming' something -- we either pass it or we don't."

It seems the emperor indeed is stark naked. Whether or not it uses the "Demon Pass" procedure, which is awkward and unconstitutional (a bad combination), the House is approving the Senate version of the health care bill "as is" and it will likely go to President Obama in that fashion.

Maybe, or maybe not, to be amended later. A leap of faith, in other words, for anyone who votes "yes" thinking that the bill will be improved on the Senate side.

The attempt to provide themselves some sort of electoral "deniability" is presenting all sorts of parliamentary problems, and the American people are not fooled.

Not this time.

The Progressives may succeed in passing health care "reform" against the will of the American people, but they will pay a heavy price in November. And undoubtedly there will be so many constitutional challenges that even the socialist minions of the Obama administration may find it difficult to put the new regime into place.

The emperor has not yet swept away the last vestiges of the Republic, despite his "naked" power grab.

ObamaCare Would Kick Middle Class Where it Hurts

2010-03-18T17:25:00.004-05:00

Who will suffer the most under ObamaCare?

Once rationing begins to kick in, everyone. But in the short run it looks like those who will be hit the hardest will be those in the middle class. In other words, the people President Obama promised to protect from his tax increases.

Scott Gottlieb, writing at the American Enterprise Institute today, explains:

Health reform will leave many of them newly priced out of a transformed market for health insurance.

The hardest hit won't be those earning more than $250,000 a year--the group that he says needs to "pay their fair share." Rather, it's families whose combined annual income is around $100,000 who could be crushed under this plan.
These folks will be too "rich" to qualify for ObamaCare's subsidies, but probably too poor to easily afford the pricey insurance that the president's plan forces them to buy.
Many of these $100K families will be obliged to buy a policy costing an average of $14,700 for the mid-level, "silver" health plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office's estimates. After income taxes, they'll be spending almost a quarter of their net income for health insurance.

That's what we used to say people would spend for their home. Of course, with the federal government planning its assault on home ownership by encouraging defaults and then "renting" from Uncle Sam, maybe this is where they expect your dollars to go.

Again, let me remind you that the U.S. Constitution does not give the federal government the power to force individual citizens to purchase a product, not even health care!

Why will this health insurance be so expensive? Gottlieb is happy to explain:

First, it limits most consumers to choosing only one of three basic health plans. (These will offer the same basic package of health benefits--the main difference is that the higher-premium plan has lower co-pays, while the lower-premium one has higher co-payments.) And even the cheapest option--the "bronze" plan--will start at about $12,500 for a family, says the CBO.

People buying insurance outside the workplace won't be able to shop around to find cheaper options: ObamaCare effectively outlaws that, because the president wants everyone to have the same package of generous benefits. It's a noble ideal--but it forces people to buy coverage that may be pricier than what they need, want or can afford.

I wonder: if I go to prison for not buying their health care, will I get free medical care there?

Look Who's Promoting Fake Letters to the Editor!

2010-03-18T17:16:00.005-05:00

The Obama gets caught promoting Astroturf in the nation's newspapers, with plagiarism not exactly discouraged.

The Tulsa World was one of the newspapers fooled into printing an Astroturf "letter to the editor."

Or does it just not care?

Meanwhile, Off the Coast of Florida,

2010-03-18T17:07:00.004-05:00

There's more than just health care going to hell in a hand basket.

In its lead editorial today, the Washington Times notes that the Russians are drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba.

The Obama administration is poised to ban offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf until 2012 or beyond. Meanwhile, Russia is making a bold strategic leap to begin drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. While the United States attempts to shift gears to alternative fuels to battle the purported evils of carbon emissions, Russia will erect oil derricks off the Cuban coast.

What are we doing about it?

Nothing. No, that's not exactly right. The Obama Administration is also poised to use the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions since Congress won't pass Obama's beloved Cap'n Tax bill. This is the program, you remember, under which "energy prices will necessarily skyrocket." (Obama's own words, not mine.)

There are also national security consequences to all this, as the editorial points out:

Russia more sensibly views energy primarily as a strategic resource. Energy is critical to Russia's economy, as fuel and as a source of profit through export. Russia also has used energy as a coercive diplomatic tool, shutting off natural gas piped to Eastern Europe in the middle of winter to make a point about how dependent the countries are that do business with the Russians.
Now Russia is using oil exploration to establish a new presence in the Western Hemisphere. It recently concluded four contracts securing oil-exploration rights in Cuba's economic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. A Russian-Cuban joint partnership will exploit oil found in the deep waters of the Gulf.
Cuba has rights to the area in which drilling will be conducted under an agreement the Carter administration recognized. From Russia's perspective, this is another way to gain leverage inside what traditionally has been America's sphere of influence. It may not be as dramatic as the Soviet Union attempting to use Cuba as a missile platform, but in the energy wars, the message is the same. Russia is projecting power into the Western Hemisphere while the United States retreats. The world will not tolerate a superpower that acts like a sidekick much longer.

Jimmy Carter set the stage, and now Obama is allowing the Russians to play on it. JFK must be spinning in his grave.

Have You Had Your Say Yet?

2010-03-18T16:59:00.002-05:00

Will the Republic survive long enough to get us to the 2010 vote?

You have to worry when so many House Democrats are throwing their political lives away in a suicidal pact to give President Obama a victory on his signature issue, despite the fact

... that the American people overwhelmingly oppose the bill;

... that the American people loathe the corruption of bribery and shakedown threats used to coerce "yes" votes;

... that the American people are awake to the parliamentary chicanery of "Demonpass" ("deem and pass") that apparently will be used to give a quick okay to the abominable Senate health care bill.

This weekend could be the difference. If you haven't contacted your local member of congress yet, you can do so by going through the House switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Cardinal George Fears the Health Care Pig

2010-03-17T12:38:00.005-05:00

It's probably too little, too late, but at least Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has publicly scolded the so-called Catholic Health Association for its support of the health care reform bill that is on the verge of becoming the law of the land.

The CHA head, Sister Carol Keehan, issued a letter to lawmakers this week urging them to "quickly" pass the Senate health care reform bill that includes no prohibitions on the direct public funding of abortions.

So much for expecting a nun to uphold Catholic teaching.

Cardinal George says the bishops are puzzled that lawmakers have settled on the onerous Senate bill as the focus of their efforts.

We tried to warn you! You thought you could trust the Congress and the president when you can't even trust the people to whom you entrusted the operation of the nation's Catholic hospitals?

Here's what Cardinal George said on Monday, according to LifeSiteNews:

George pointed out the slew of flaws that the U.S. bishops find "deeply disturbing" in the Senate health bill, including its lack of conscience protections, Hyde-amendment protections against federal abortion funding, and the millions in new funds for Community Health Centers which will be available to fund abortions.
"It expands federal funding and the role of the federal government in the provision of abortion procedures," he explained. "In so doing, it forces all of us to become involved in an act that profoundly violates the conscience of many, the deliberate destruction of unwanted members of the human family still waiting to be born."
The cardinal directly disagreed with the Catholic Health Association's favorable assessment of the bill.
"This analysis of the flaws in the legislation is not completely shared by the leaders of the Catholic Health Association," stated George. "They believe, moreover, that the defects that they do recognize can be corrected after the passage of the final bill. The bishops, however, judge that the flaws are so fundamental that they vitiate the good that the bill intends to promote.
"Assurances that the moral objections to the legislation can be met only after the bill is passed seem a little like asking us, in Midwestern parlance, to buy a pig in a poke."

I know that we are, for the moment at least, one the same side, but I would like for Cardinal George and the other Catholic bishops to consider some other questionable moral aspects of this or any other federal health care legislation.

1. We cannot abrogate our responsibility as individuals or as the Church to provide for the needs of the sick by passing it off to the government. This goes against the clear teaching of Christ.

2. It is immoral to force one's neighbor to pay for one's charitable impulses. The mandates in this legislation, and in the abomination of a government program that will follow, does just that. We use the power of the government, through threats of fines and jail sentences, to force others to do what we think is a good thing. The end does not justify the means, and you'd think the bishops would know this.

3. Socialized medicine has never been successful in any country where it has been attempted. Indeed, government health care's history is that of unmitigated disaster. Knowing this, is it moral to force Americans to follow the same path?

4. The U.S. Constitution does not permit the federal government the authority to force individuals to buy a product, even if it is in their best interest. Health care is a product. Is it moral to support legislation that violates the fundamental legal framework of a country, without amending that framework?

5. Is it moral to give away the authority of the Church to supervise and regulate its own health care ministries to bureaucrats who will not and never will be answerable to religious authority; indeed, will be duty bound to ignore and repudiate any attempts by religious authority to influence the delivery of medical care from those once-noble Catholic medical institutions?

By focusing on the narrow issues of conscience and abortion, the Catholic bishops indicated that they believed health care reform to be a "done deal" and so they merely tried to steer it into a less objectionable path.

If, instead, they had relied on First Principles and opposed federalizing health care as a matter of the greater morality of maintaining the Christian ownership of performing spiritual and corporate works of mercy, then we might not have come to this point.

The Progressives (and closet Marxists) are using "good intentions" to pave the road to a socialist Hell in which our nation will be, as Barack Hussein Obama predicted shortly before his election, "fundamentally transformed."

It has happened in other countries and it has without exception been a very bad thing for Christianity.

A Short Life for a Short Man

2010-03-16T11:41:00.003-05:00

Twenty-one-year-old PingPing is dead, of suspected heart problems.

Hailing from Mongolia, he was the world's shortest man. He hit the big time last year.

You can read all about him HERE. Pay no attention to the photo of the topless model in the newspaper he is reading.

May he rest in peace.

Climate Scientists Turn to Hollywood?

2010-03-16T11:29:00.005-05:00

Word is out that frustrated climate scientists -- who have seen public support for their alarmist cries fall after various scandals and various researchers admit that the world has cooled in the last 15 years -- are now turning to Hollywood for help in, uh, "educating" the public.

So what was "The Day After Tomorrow"?

But the story seems to indicate that it isn't just "scientists" who are looking to Hollywood, but "government scientists."

One effort, announced at the meeting, will recruit Hollywood to help scientists tell their stories. NAS and the University of Southern California will team up to draw on USC’s expertise in film, TV, websites, and video games. The partnership will be the first between a federal agency and a film school.
“Entertainment media has been pretty much untapped as far as science literacy goes,” Dr. Fink says. A huge portion of the public doesn’t go to science museums or watch science programming on TV, she says. “Those are the eyeballs we’re trying to capture.”

Did you catch the "partnership between a federal agency and a film school"?

The U.S. government teemed up with Hollywood during World War II to produce films. But that was a time of war and it wasn't hard to persuade most Americans that the fight was a just cause. Producing propaganda to convince a skeptical public that we need to let the government, perhaps even a world government, control our thermostats and tax us through higher energy prices, seems like the wrong thing to do in a free society.

Unless, of course, you have no intention of keeping your society free.

D.C. -- Does it Stand for District of Corruption?

2010-03-16T11:15:00.004-05:00

Headline: "D.C. home to most cyber-criminals!"

WASHINGTON - Here's a factoid you might not know -- D.C. has the most cyber-criminals per capita: 116 for every 100,000 people.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center's 2009 Internet Crime Report ranks Maryland 19th (29.72 perpetrators per 100,000) and Virginia 28th (24.12 perpetrators per 100,000).
IC3, a joint effort of the National White Collar Crime Center and FBI, says Nevada and Washington hold the No. 2 and No. 3 spots.

Why should anyone be surprised? The District of Columbia has become the home of some of the most innovative and heartless of criminal minds, a good number of them in government.

Need proof? Another headline: "House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it!"

After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.

Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed.

The tactic -- known as a "self-executing rule" or a "deem and pass" -- has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.

"It's more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know," the speaker said in a round table discussion with bloggers Monday. "But I like it," she said, "because people don't have to vote on the Senate bill."

So much for the rule of law and the Constitution. So much for having respect for the people of the United States. If there is "transparency" in this, it is only that it is transparently fraudulent and evil.

No wonder Queen Nancy likes it.

Yeah, D.C. certainly is home to a lot of criminal minds.

The IRS Raids a Car Wash

2010-03-13T14:14:00.006-06:00

The Sacramento Bee reports on an IRS raid on a local car wash in an attempt to recover the massive sum of ... four cents.

Actually, that's four cents, plus interest and penalties since 2006 totaling $202.35.

The owner claims he didn't even know he owed the four cents.

Just wait 'til the IRS gets to police the new health insurance mandate. Then we'll see some real fun!

Or had you forgotten about that little detail of ObamaCare?

More Government Over-Reach: Broadband Plans!

2010-03-13T14:00:00.005-06:00

Do we really need the FCC to develop a national broadband policy?

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to release a national broadband plan next week that will lay out an ambitious set of goals for broadband deployment and adoption.
The official version of the plan will be released at a commission meeting Tuesday, but FCC followers have seen the agency unveil several major thrusts of the plan in a series of speeches and briefings in recent weeks. In a mid-February speech, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski kicked off the announcements by saying it was the agency's goal to bring 100M bps (bits per second) broadband service to 100 million U.S. homes by about 2020.

Many members of the U.S. tech community have called for a national broadband policy for years, and Congress, in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in early 2009, required the FCC to develop the plan.

That last bit was the Porkulus Bill, in case you've forgotten.

Do we really need the federal government to handle broadband as if it were a trip to the Moon? Hasn't private enterprise done a pretty good job of developing and spreading internet access over the last 15 years? Can Uncle Sugar do it any faster?

Not bloody damn likely, and the only real justification for turning the Hounds of FCC Hell loose on it is to eventually regulate and/or eliminate private enterprise so that the Progressives can control our information flow as well as our health care and energy supplies. If you hated dial-up (which was a necessary step on the way to better systems) just wait until the government must decide whether you qualify for ObamaConnect!

Don't believe the spin from the pseudo-industry groups that are really fronts for socialist and progressive philanthropy. They talk a good game about America being "competitive in the global marketplace" but the first thing they want to do is kill off one of the big success stories of the last quarter century, our private internet technology companies.

Bart Stupak Holding Firm Against ObamaCare

2010-03-13T13:54:00.003-06:00

What you won't see in your daily newspaper: Quotes from Congressman Bart Stupak, pro-life Democrat from Michigan, detailing how low the Left is aiming in order to pass a health care bill that most Americans do not want.

Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no’ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.”

(snip)

“This has really reached an unhealthy stage,” Stupak says. “People are threatening ethics complaints on me. On the left, they’re really stepping it up. Every day, from Rachel Maddow to the Daily Kos, it keeps coming. Does it bother me? Sure. Does it change my position? No.”

Interviewed by National Review Online, Stupak says he can't see switching parties, but it's becoming very difficult to remain a Democrat. He says something very telling:

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”

That will happen pretty quickly ObamaCare is rammed through, but it might be 2013 before it could be repealed, once President Obama is ousted.

Congressman Stupak said one of the arguments used to justify the abortion money in the Senate bill is that abortion will help control population. Seriously!

“If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

May God have mercy on the United States of America!

Movies & Meat Thermometers

2010-03-11T17:51:00.005-06:00

It's the kind of report that makes you wonder what's happened to our country.

The theater was packed for a 9 p.m. Saturday screening of the Martin Scorsese horror movie, "Shutter Island" when the victim complained about a woman near him who was using a cell phone during the show.

She and two men with her left the movie theater.

Two men returned a few minutes later and stabbed the victim, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore. The victim was hospitalized but is expected to survive.

Two other people who attempted to help the victim were also injured in the altercation.

Sheriff's officials describe the suspects as black males. One man was wearing an orange hat with an orange jacket or jersey.

The first thought that comes to mind is "What kind of weird (or wired) nut-job brings a meat thermometer to the movie theater?" Or carries it with him in his car?

My second thought was a validation of sorts as to why I don't go see movies much anymore. The social compact has broken down, even here in God's country. Rude behavior that, had it occurred, would not have been tolerated in years' past is now customary. Men and women of all ages talk on their cellphones or, almost as annoying, text one another, the ghostly blue light of their tiny little screens flickering on their faces and those of all others who are near. Or the guy behind you routinely kicks your chair at least once every two minutes just to let you know he's still alive and, well, kickin'.

When I do go to movies more often than not they are matinees when the crowds are thinner, although the inconsideration of some moviegoers often makes up for the lack of numbers. The other strategy is to pick a movie to which I am certain the lemmings are not lurching, or whatever it is that lemmings do. That's why I saw "Men Who Stare at Goats." (I thought it was pretty good, but then there were only five people in the theater, so I could give it my undivided attention.)

I used to see a lot of movies. I made up for a deprived childhood on the farm once I managed to find a career in the big city. Love movies, and still do. I've fallen out of love with movie audiences, however. So I do my movie watching at home. DVD and home theater systems and Orville Redenbacher give you everything you need to recreate the Big Screen experience, except Butterfinger candy and I'm not supposed to be eating those anyway. Plus having a remote control means the ability to visit a CLEAN restroom without missing any of the action!

Sure, you have to wait a few months for the movies to be released, but that gives me time to do my research and waste fewer entertainment dollars on cinematic garbage.

My only sadness this year was having the Oscars roll around and, even though the field was doubled from five to ten, I had not seen a single Best Picture nominee. My children, who have movie theater work experience, think I've lost it.

They could be right. But at least I don't have a meat thermometer sticking in my neck.

Jobless Benefits Nearly 2 Years Now!

2010-03-09T10:00:00.004-06:00

When unemployment compensation extends to 99 weeks, is it time to declare it a "permanent entitlement"?

Millions of Americans have been forced to rely on unemployment payments for extended periods as the nation struggles through its longest period of high joblessness in a generation, and critics are taking aim, saying that the Depression-era program created as a temporary bridge for laid-off workers is turning into an expensive entitlement.

About 11.4 million out-of-work people now collect unemployment compensation, at a cost of $10 billion a month. Half of them have been receiving payments for more than six months, the usual insurance limit. But under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates -- the longest period since the program's inception.

Six months is 26 weeks. That was the old measure of what was considered the usual length of time that it would take to find a new job. A modern measurement of how difficult the "Job Creation" situation has become is that we now pay jobless benefits nearly four times as long -- almost a full two years.

And yet we know that there are thousands of unemployed being dropped from the lists of those considered actively looking for work -- a handy statistical tool that allows the administration to claim that the unemployment rate is better than it actually is. How bad is our economy? Look on the labels of practically everything you purchase. If you can find anything "Made in the U.S.A." count yourself lucky.

You can pass all the "Jobs Bills" you want that merely extend unemployment benefits and that will not alter the fact that America produces less and less stuff. It will take a hell of a lot more "Avatars" earning billions to make up for the financial drain, the stuff coming in versus the money flowing out.

How much of this situation is the Progressive drive to kill off the free enterprise system through a combination of weakening the dollar, preventing the use of American resources (especially energy), and the aggressive push for "globalization" is fodder for thought and I will let you do your own pondering.

But until Washington realizes that it cannot create real "stuff producing" jobs, and that it can only impede the real economy unless it decides to get out of the way, there is no reason for optimism.

Worse, turning over one-sixth of our economy (health care) for federal bureaucrats is not going to help one little bit. It will be the straw that breaks the back of the economic camel.

America: Too 'Exceptional' to Fail, or Not?

2010-03-08T18:25:00.005-06:00

There's an interesting thread over at The Corner on National Review Online, which I will distill down to this:

America is so "exceptional" that it can weather even the Perfect Socialist Storm: Yes or No?

Exceptional means that the Creator has set aside certain historical realities for the United States because it was founded on godly principles.

I'm a big believer in American exceptionalism, but I also believe that "thou shall not put the Lord thy God to the rest" and that's pretty much what we've spent the last fifty years trying to do. But not every conservative agrees, and thus we have the interesting argument.

(Whether we have time for this argument as the Progressives gear up for the final push toward Government Medicine is another question altogether!)

Anyhoo, I would encourage you to wander over and catch some of it. Since I happen to agree with him, I especially recommend THIS POST by Mark Steyn, the Canadian who seems to value the traditional United States virtues much more than most of our citizens do.

His money quote: "I think U.S. conservatives are too complacent about — the impact of Big Government on free peoples." He goes on to explain why.

Which is Worse: Lying to the Press, or Spying on Law Abiding Citizens?

2010-03-06T11:12:00.007-06:00

A strange and disturbing report from the City by the Bay:

Park Officer Posed as Another, Lied to Press

A U.S. Park Police officer is facing disciplinary action after lying to The Chronicle and the New York Times by identifying himself as a former officer and in an unseemly manner, according to the San Francisco field office commander for the U.S. Park Police.
The officer, Ken Rawles, was assigned to work undercover to take photographs and video of officers and their interactions with gun activists during a Baker Beach event at which activists sought to carry visible, unloaded handguns on the beach, said Major Jason Wu.

But, dressed in plain clothes, Rawles told reporters covering the event that he was Brad Lawrence. Lawrence is the name of a former U.S. Park Police officer who now works for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in Georgia. Rawles told reporters he was at the beach to video people sunbathing in the nude, but finding none began to photograph and video the gun activists.
His statements appeared in a Chronicle story Sunday and in a New York Times blog about the event. Colleagues of Lawrence contacted the Chronicle upset at the portrayal.
"What Officer Rawles did is not something that we would do," said Wu. "Certainly, I am not too pleased about that myself."
Wu said Rawles' video and photographs were intended to be used later for training purposes, as people are now allowed to bring licensed and unloaded handguns into national parks, such as the Presidio, where Baker Beach is located.
"What we're looking to make sure is that the interaction between the officer and the citizens are appropriate - which can work both ways, as you know," Wu said. "We do respect people's constitutional rights, but we do have to make sure for public safety to make sure the weapons are not violating state laws."
Wu said that Rawles would face internal discipline, but declined to state what that would be.
"He was there with pretty clear instruction and that was to capture on video and camera the interactions, and nothing more," Wu said.

Disturbing, because he is going "undercover," which didn't seem very clear as he was to take video and photographs of "officers interacting" with gun activists? Sounds like a flimsy thread for building a visual file of future "suspects" though no one was doing anything illegally.

"We do respect people's constitutional rights, but we do have to make sure for public safety to make sure the weapons are not violating state laws." I believe that a U.S. Park officer who is more concerned for enforcing "state laws" on federal land than he is defending the Constitutional rights of individuals is deserving of termination from his post.

He doesn't get it, and the "superiors" who assigned him this task also don't get it. Lying about your identity to reporters isn't a crime but it is certainly not the brightest move a man could make.

I think the public deserves to know the extent of the "internal discipline" that is taken.

It's driving these anti-gun Liberals and Progressives crazy that affection for the Second Amendment seems to be growing stronger in the 21st Century. It drives the press crazy that someone would actually lie about their identity. From the tone of this story you get the impression that the writer thought the deception was the only real offense.

Identity theft -- even if it's only temporary and not for profit -- is certainly not something to be taken lightly, but it hardly holds a candle to violating the constitutional rights of individual citizens.

A New $10 Tax on Foreign Tourists

2010-03-05T09:16:00.004-06:00

How do you get more people to vacation in the United States?

Charge 'em a new fee!

The president has signed into law another one of his Progressive brain trusts' gems: The reason tourism has dropped off over the past decade (a statistic that might need some investigation to see how the numbers have been twisted) is because we don't have a Federal Advertising Program.

You know, like the one they have in France.

So each foreign guest will be charged $10 so that we can have a new bureaucracy, and just so no one will feel left out, the law will require "matching contributions" from the private sector, as yet unspecified in how this will work. Given the way the Obama administration handles the private sector, expect the program to go into mandatory gear soon.

While I seriously doubt an extra $10 will keep too many would-be tourists from visiting America, I don't think it's a good idea. If the new "corporation" comes up with commercials as brilliant as the current campaign for the census, tourism will probably nose dive. Bureaucrats are tone deaf to true salesmanship. But maybe they are right; perhaps there are people in the world who have not heard of the United States of America.

The bigger question is whether there is any aspect of American life too great or too small to be left unexamined and unmolested by our Progressive leaders.

The question for the reasoning American citizen is this: Is this new law going to lead to greater freedom and less government regulation?

A second question: Do we really want the federal camel's nose under the tourism tent?

Finally, what do you think the Founding Fathers would have thought of this?

National Catholic Youth Conference...and Obama???

2009-11-30T21:19:00.003-06:00

I had the privilege of attending the National Catholic Youth Conference last weekend. Overall, it was outstanding. Great speakers, great events. This is surely due to the host bishop, Bishop Robert Finn; reason being that the NFCYM - National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry - is a rather liberal (heterodox) organization. They do some great work though.

What I did not understand at the Conference, though, is why 20,000 Catholic Youth needed to hear from the United States amabassador to the Holy See.

Miguel Diaz, a theologian influenced by Liberation Theology (not at all truly Catholic, or even Christian, actually-it basically believes God does not care about personal sin but only injustice against large groups of people, and that God suffers when they suffer...a changing God...a non-eternal omnipresence...) had his faced blasted all over the big screen and he started his message with something along the lines of "I was honored that President Barack Obama appointed me the first Hispanic-American ambassador to the Holy See."

I chuckled. This is not race baiting, but that is not a big deal. It would be like a Scotch Irishman getting excited that he was appointed first British ambassador to the Holy See. The way he said it, though, makes it seem like more of a milestone than it really was.

He then went on about how he is working with the President and the Pope to build bridges and help others. There was much more Obama talk than Pope Benedict talk.

The big question I have though, is why? The NCYC conference NEVER heard from Bush's ambassador to the Holy See (who is a Catholic in good standing, by the way). It has never heard from one before. Why this guy, all of a sudden? Given the absolute praise-fest that Dr. Bob McCarty, president of the NFCYM gave Obama in the wake of his election, it should not have been as big a surprise as it was.

Health Care Reform? Amend the Constitution

2009-11-20T11:30:00.001-06:00

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is the federal government authorized to offer "health insurance." The same goes for the federal government's ability to "manage" health care, health care costs, etc.

It's not a question of whether universal health care is a good idea.

It is merely impermissible under the U.S. Constitution. There is only one way to properly remedy that if you believe in universal health care programs: amend the Constitution.

The Progressives -- who should call themselves "socialists" and/or Marxists to reflect their true beliefs -- know that the American people would never go for a constitutional amendment.

So they intend to do an "end run" around the Constitution and the will of the American people.

They might succeed if you do not raise your voice.

And if they do succeed there is no limit to how much damage they will do to the basic freedoms we enjoy in America. Under the guise of "health care reform" Progressive bureaucrats will tell you how to eat, live, play, work and care for your family. There are criminal penalties built into the pending legislation that will threaten the finances (property) and freedom (going to prison means losing one's right to assembly, gun ownership, even curtailed speech) of anyone who dares challenge their unconstitutional actions!

This is closer to the old Soviet-style gulag tactics than anything the people of the United States have ever experienced.

Once it goes into effect, who will challenge health care reform in federal court to test its constitutionality? Only those who dare to risk massive fines and imprisonment.

It would be far better for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to lose his floor debate vote on Saturday night than for us to take the risk that either House or Senate versions of health care "reform" become law.

Please take a few minutes to call your senators. If they support "reform," let them know that you will make it your life's work to see that they are defeated for re-election. If they oppose "reform," tell them you are thankful and ask them to work on their colleagues who are on the fence.

Few events in our lifetimes are as critical as this issue. We could well be the generation that stood by while freedom disappeared, not from enemies abroad but from those enemies of freedom among us.

Do not kid yourself that you can live with health care "reform." As described in the 2,074 page Senate bill, jobs will be killed and taxes will be raised.

Despite what the bill's supporters claim, the federal deficit will increase as a result of this legislation. You cannot get something for nothing. You cannot say that a program will cost nearly $900 billion over the next 10 years and then claim that it is deficit neutral. The money has to come from somewhere. It will either come from more government borrowing and spending, or they will make it up in higher taxes and fees, or cuts from Medicare which the states will have to supplant from their budgets.

All this during a time of economic crisis unsurpassed since the Great Depression.

Worse, the "scoring" of the bill conveniently only covers the first 10 years, the first three of which there is no actual money being spent, only taxes being collected. The real costs hit home in year 11 when it is estimated that it will create a $2.5 trillion drain on the federal budget for the second ten years.

The Senate bill encodes into law the payment of monies for elective abortions. Without a doubt this will be the version that becomes law, if either does.

Killing unborn children is not health care. No American should not be forced to pay into an abortion fund to pay for something that they believe is murder.

I could go on and on, but the simple fact is that the Constitution does not authorize this or any other federal health care planning regime. If I knew nothing else, it would be all I would need to know.

Let's stop this thing. Now.

An Open Letter to the Catholic Bishops of the U.S.

2009-11-19T12:42:00.003-06:00

I've spent most of a week agonizing over this.

I've prayed about it. I've pondered the variables. I've played "devil's advocate" with myself.

But I believe, finally, God has inspired me to raise my voice, on behalf of my family and all other Americans, whether they are Catholic, Protestant, or of any other persuasion, or none at all.

My message is this:

With or without an amendment protecting the unborn, the health care reform packages that are working through Congress are evil.

They should not be supported by anyone or any organization that values our unalienable, God-bestowed rights of life, liberty or conscience. I would add that I believe this list should include pursuit of happiness and property, but I know that some of you bishops have a hard time going there.

In the U.S.C.C.B. bulletin that went out to Catholics nationwide this month, you said that all the bills before Congress thus far are "seriously deficient on the issues of abortion and conscience, and do not provide adequate access to health care for immigrants and the poor. The bills will have to change or the bishops have pledged to oppose them."

You have asked for us to pressure our representatives and senators to "fix" these bills with pro-life amendments.

You do not go far enough. You are not looking at the Big Picture. You are painting yourselves into a corner, politically, and us with you.

With all due respect to your position as bishops of the Church, I must raise these questions:

Since when is it moral for a government to mandate (force) its citizens to purchase a product (health insurance) or face massive fines and prison sentences?

Show me where, in Catholic social teaching, this is an acceptable means of achieving a desirable end? Where is your precious "freedom of conscience" in this?

Where in Scripture does Jesus tell us that it is our individual responsibility to surrender our free will to the State in order for good deeds to be performed?

And not only our free will to decide for ourselves how charitable we wish to be, but our free will to decide how we will take care of the health needs of our own families, and of ourselves.

Where does Jesus admonish us to accomplish the work of the Church through the coercive dictates of government action, and surrender our future choices forever to a system that will crash our economy?

With all due respect to your teaching offices as bishops, when you are teaching on matters of faith and morals -- salvation and righteous living -- I am bound by faith to accept these teachings. And I do.

But corporately, as you "guide us" through the U.S.C.C.B. you have strayed from the parameters of your teaching office. You are pledging to throw your strong support behind the creation of an unprecedented federal bureaucracy in which the individual choice (free will) of individuals and health professions will be subordinated to the collective "wisdom" of government bureaucrats. You are playing politics.

"The poor you will always have with you ..." Jesus reminds us. But you have potentially traded our God-given freedom away in exchange for a socialist answer to a perennial problem based on a big "if": "If" the government promises not to force taxpayers to pay for abortions.

"If" you trust the Mao-loving denizens of Congress and the executive branch to keep their promise more than a year or so, you are naive.

If the United States has enjoyed one of the highest levels of health care in history, instead of supporting a centralized system that will lead to rationing and income leveling, you should be asking why the system worked in the first place, and then ask how that success could be translated to more people. Instead, you accept the Marxist premise that unequal distribution of income and health care resources is an indictment of the system that can only be remedied by a Marxist solution.

How about instead a Christian solution? Or have you given up on that?

America developed the greatest economy and health care system known to humanity because of its guarantees of individual liberties. People were free to take risks and find new, innovative ways of doing things. America is not perfect, but then no nation can meet that standard.

Under government control, risk-taking is frustrated and regulated. Innovation will go elsewhere. Regulations will bloom like a million flowers in a People's Cultural Revolution, and Christian healers will be shunted to the dark alleys where abortions (allegedly) once were performed.

If you think supporting this kind of system will gain you favor with God, you might want to rethink that. Jesus had little use for government in His ministry, and government hasn't changed much in 2,000 years.

If you think supporting this kind of system will gain you favor with the elites in Washington, D.C., you are seeking the approbation of "the world," and are thus deluding yourselves. The world will never love you if you stand with Christ, and the only way to curry its favor is to stand apart from Him.

That is the path that leads to destruction. You should know this.

There is no compromise with evil, and no compromise with those who have evil motives behind their gleaming smiles.

One of the architects of the current health care reform push is SEIU president Andy Stern, who wants to "equalize" the disparity of wages globally, and he sees health care reform as the tool to begin this process.

Do you really want to throw the weight of the Catholic Church behind this effort?

Please reconsider your position and quickly. Do not consign this and future generations of Americans to state control of their lives out of a well-meant but flawed belief that government can provide to the have nots more efficiently than the Church.

First Shed Your Freedom; Fat Will Follow

2009-11-14T11:47:00.004-06:00

Hugo Chavez is urging Venezuelans to lose weight.

President Hugo Chavez said in a televised speech Friday that "there are lots of fat people" in Venezuela and advised his supporters to exercise and eat healthy to trim their waistlines.
"I'm not saying fat women, because they never get fat," he added. "Women sometimes fill out."

Chavez, whose oil rich nation is now experiencing power outages and shortages of various kinds, is pushing his socialist "Bolivarian Revolution" hard.

Don't worry, Hugo. Under socialism, lots of people lose weight. And rights. And lives.

It's Polite But Is it Presidential?

2009-11-14T11:42:00.003-06:00

Barack Hussein Obama bows again.

This time to the Japanese emperor.

Some will "tsk, tsk" and remind us that Obama is the President of the United States.

And I will reply, "Don't tell me. Tell him."

The End Run on Gun Rights Via the U.N.

2009-11-12T08:54:00.002-06:00

A few important points on a Thursday morning.

The Obama Administration has given the "green light" to the United Nations to negotiate a treaty that will "regulate the marketing, transfer and brokering in firearms."

If you think the Second Amendment will magically protect you from the effects of this proposed treaty, think again. The Supreme Court has generally held that international treaties trump domestic legislation AND basic protections of the Constitution.

Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr has blogged about this development. I don't care what you think of Bob Barr; he's been very good on gun issues.

This is what you need to know:

1) When any Obama official -- and many Democrats in Congress -- reassures us that they have no intention of messing with the Second Amendment, what they mean is that they won't need to. They are planning an "end run" around the Constitution.

2) We cannot afford to maintain the Pelosi-Reid machine in Congress by sending Blue Dogs to Congress. Sure, they may be "hunting rights" supporters (but are they "gun rights" supporters?), and their hearts may be in the right place, but their very existence as registered Democrats mean that they keep Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in the drivers' seats. For the sake of individual liberties and traditional American freedoms, we must "clean House" and Senate in 2010 and replace them with people who will defend the Constitution.

Notice that I said people, not Republicans. The Republicans need to clean their house of Progressive elements. I believe this can be done, and a whole hell of a lot easier than the Democratic party, but we have to demonstrate the will, as the electorate, to force the issue. Each candidate needs to be vetted by We, the People, to make sure that individual liberties will be safe on their watch and they will not suddenly start supporting big government (socialist or socialist light) solutions to perceived problems.

If the American people lose their individual right to "keep and bear arms" we will take a huge step toward tyranny. Our Founders knew this and it was generally accepted as a truism throughout most of our nation's history. The Progressives have worked hard to dumb down our schools and demonize gun ownership in the last century. To the extent that people are asleep on this issue, they have succeeded.

Awaken your neighbors; teach your children. Write your congressman and don't let him get away with making a distinction between "hunting guns" and "guns for personal protection."

The Second Amendment says nothing about hunting.

10.2% Unemployment? An Historical Perspective

2009-11-06T10:08:00.004-06:00

Would someone please inform the Associated Press that a working knowledge of American history is essential for reporters attempting to cover the nation today!

Today's report on the (shocking!) jobless rate of 10.2 percent contains numerous egregious examples of historical cluelessness. And that's the most positive spin. A more negative assessment is that the AP writer and his editors know fully well that they are disseminating partial truths and mendacious inaccuracies.

The first problem occurs in the lead sentence: "The unemployment rate has surpassed 10 percent for the first time since 1983 -- and is likely to go higher."

This is not quite true. During the Clinton years the unemployment data were tweaked to separate those who recently lost their jobs from those who have given up looking for work. Before 1994 all were lumped together. So to be accurate, it must be said that the 1983 unemployment number was about 7.5 percent BETTER than today's report! The AP hides this contraction in plain sight a little later in its report:

Counting those who have settled for part-time jobs or stopped looking for work, the unemployment rate would be 17.5 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.

It should also be noted that a percent of the work force today represents a lot more people than in 1983. And vastly more than 1933, which is the time-line you would have to travel to see unemployment data comparable to what we are seeing now.

Reporter Christopher Rugaber wastes no time in committing his second error: the second sentence. He echoes White House spin as fact.

Nearly 16 million people can't find jobs even though the worst recession since the Great Depression has apparently ended.

Yes, the Obama faithful are claiming the recession is over by massaging the numbers for the 3rd Quarter by ignoring the fact that Cash for Clunkers and the first-time home-buyers credit, both fully subsidized by the taxpayer, created enough of a bump to make it appear that the economy is on the mend. Government cannot spend us into prosperity when the private sector cannot obtain financing from banks wary of government meddling. The reporter's willingness to accept the Geithner/Obama spin with no qualification -- "apparently" is not a qualification, it's acceptance -- is poor journalism.

The reporter does not adequately explain to us why the economy shed 190,000 "net" jobs yet some 600,000 more Americans are out of work:

The Labor Department said Friday that jobless rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983, from 9.8 percent in September. The economy shed a net total of 190,000 jobs in October, less than the downwardly revised 219,000 lost in September, but more than economists expected.

The jump in the jobless rate reflects a sharp increase in the tally of unemployed Americans, which rose to 15.7 million from 15.1 million. The net loss of jobs occurred across most industries, from manufacturing and construction to retail and financial. That tally is based on a separate survey of businesses.

It isn't so much of an explanation but acceptance of the government's use of the lesser figure.

But Rugaber does gives us some humor as he quotes Dan Greenhaus.

"It's not a good report," said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for New York-based investment firm Miller Tabak & Co. "What we're seeing is a validation of the idea that a jobless recovery is perfectly on track."

Jobless Recovery. Another innovation from our current administration.

The fourth egregious lack of historical context occurs as Rugaber does not do a followup on this next quote:

"You need explosive growth to take the unemployment rate down," Greenhaus said in an interview Thursday.

The economy soared by nearly 8 percent in 1983 after a steep recession, Greenhaus said, lowering the jobless rate by 2.5 percentage points that year. But the economy is unlikely to improve that fast this time, as consumers remain cautious and tight credit hinders businesses.

In 1983 President Ronald Reagan twisted the arms of a Congress controlled by Democrats to lower tax rates and open up domestic energy production. An economic boom began that, even though tempered in 1986 by higher tax rates when the Progressives in Congress struck back, continued largely through the '90s.

Instead, we see the Bush tax cuts about to disappear next year, and new rounds of tax hikes in the pipeline as Obama and the Progressives push for expensive new programs on health care and energy.

But the AP's economics writer leaves these facts undisturbed and his younger readers in the dark.

So you have to ask: Is the AP treatment by accident or design?

Either way, it's disgraceful and unworthy of a once great news-gathering operation.

The truth of our national economic crisis is buried near the end of the article:

October was the 22nd straight month the U.S. economy has shed jobs, the longest on records dating back 70 years.

There are records that go back beyond 1939, but apparently the reporter does not want to use them. He doesn't even use "1939" as a benchmark. My guess is that he doesn't want to remind anyone that we are in "Great Depression" territory.

But we are.

The Coming Doctor Shortage

2009-10-14T12:20:00.001-05:00

There are polls showing that perhaps as many as 45 percent of physicians in practice today would make plans to retire, or to go into another line of work, should Congress force a government-run health care system upon us.

That would translate into more crowded waiting rooms even before you add millions of new patients into the system.

Think that news is bad?

Consider another fact of life: the Baby Boomer doctors themselves are nearing retirement age. And since medical schools "capped" enrolments for years in the mistaken belief that we were going to have too many doctors, there are not enough new doctors coming into the system to avoid future shortages, with or without government-run health care.

Government-run health care -- Socialized Medicine -- will make a bad situation into a nightmare.

And yet Congress marches on toward enacting top-down centralized medical planning that the American people do not want, and that the U.S. Constitution does not permit.

Mass insanity.

Manure Meter Alert!

2009-10-04T08:51:00.006-05:00

The Manure Meter went off scale this morning before church as I made the mistake of reading this report from the Chicago Sun-Times:

Some Chicago officials say anti-American resentment likely played a role in Chicago's Olympic bid dying in the first round Friday.

President Obama could not undo in one year the resentment against America that President Bush and others built up for years, they said.
There must be" resentment against America, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, near the stage where he had hoped to give a victory speech in Daley Center Plaza. "The way we [refused to sign] the Kyoto Treaty, we misled the world into Iraq. The world had a very bad taste in its mouth about us. But there was such a turnaround after last November. The world now feels better about America and about Americans. That's why I thought the president's going was the deal-maker."
State Rep. Susana Mendoza (D-Chicago) said she saw firsthand the resentment against America five years ago when she was in Rio de Janeiro. "I feel in my gut that this vote today was political and mean-spirited," she said.

See what I mean?

It couldn't be that Olympic committee voters were troubled by the sweeping changes in the U.S.O.C. leadership, putting non-Olympic corporate people in charge. (Kind of like our government installing a new president for GM who had never built cars, but I digress ...)

It couldn't be that maybe Rio just had a better presentation, a more appealing venue, and that the Southern hemisphere is somewhat overdue.

It couldn't be that President Obama and the Chicago entourage were seen as political grandstanding, in a ham-handed, "this is our biographical destiny," sort of way.

Naw! It's the fault of George W. Bush and all those evil (white) presidents who came before him. The world hates us. Now it's the world that is "mean spirited." Poor Barack may need three or four presidential terms to heal this wound!

Power seems to be hastening the Left's slide into complete lunacy.

Lindsey Graham, Clueless Politician

2009-10-02T13:15:00.005-05:00

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is a case study in what it means to be a clueless politician who does not understand that the world he once thought he knew has irrevocably changed.

Graham, interviewed by CBS News, denigrates Glenn Beck and other conservative talk show hosts, as well as most of those he would need to merit re-election next time around. He says that Beck is "aligned with cynicism" and that "cynicism sells." He paints with a single brush all those who attended town hall events as "crazies" because a handful are pushing for President Obama to reveal his actual Hawaiian birth certificate. Obama has fought in court to avoid doing so.

I leave it up to you to decide what is crazy about this issue. If there is nothing to hide, why fight? And the U.S. Constitution does require a president to be born on U.S. soil. My personal stance is that this horse is long out of the barn, and even if Obama has no birth certificate, are you ready to face the upheaval of a constitutional crisis as the Supreme Court orders him out of the Oval Office? Perhaps worse, are you ready for a President Joe Biden?

But I digress. Graham is lauding Obama for his achievements, declaring that The One had passed the "ready to be commander in chief test" during the presidential debates. For a guy who supposedly backed John McCain, that's a big "Say what?" admission -- and inexplicably weird. Graham goes on to defend his own radical views on allowing unrestricted immigration.

Worse, however, is that Graham licks his chops at the thought of what disgruntled voters will do to Democrats in 2010 without displaying any contrition or humility for the fact that Republican progressivism set the stage for the nonsense we are going through. He has learned nothing. You can tell when he says this:

"... we became a great nation not because we are a nation of cynics. We became a great nation because we are a nation of believers."

So what do you believe in, Sen. Grahamnesty?

Winning political elections. Adopting policies that will guarantee the allegiance of voting groups. This is the old "party first" formula that has led America to the thresh hold of disaster, a sellout on both sides of Constitutional principles for the expediencies of the moment. The short game, not the long game.

Glenn Beck is popular because he, and others, are voices that reflect a growing sentiment among Americans that both parties, in different ways, have ignored the Constitution and are selling our individual liberties down a progressive, socialist river. Beck believes in the Constitution, in freedom and liberty, in limited government, in an educated and informed electorate.

Lindsey Graham believes in playing the political game in Washington, where you compromise principle to achieve consensus and then wait for a policy to fail so that you can bash the other party.

That's cynical.

That he would invoke Benjamin Franklin to attack Glenn Beck is damn near blasphemy. Franklin may have been a master of political compromise, but it was never at the expense of the principles of liberty.

Americans are waking up to the political opportunists in both main parties and are realizing that just because you have a D or an R after your name doesn't necessarily mean anything good. We are entering a new era where politicians are going to be judged on their actions, not just on their rhetoric at election time.

And no one gets a pass.

Obama Surrenders the Internet

2009-10-02T12:47:00.002-05:00

Don't look now but the "world community" is about to take control of the Internet.

The Obama administration has relinquished U.S. control of a system invented and developed by this nation, and up until now run under the concept that freedom of expression and capitalist development reigned.

... the fresh focus will give other countries a more prominent role in determining what takes place online, and even the way in which it happens – opening the door for a virtual United Nations, where many officials gather to discuss potential changes to the internet.

Icann chief Rod Beckstrom, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Washington insider who took over running the organisation in July, said there had been legitimate concerns that some countries were developing alternative internets as a way of routing around American control.

[SNIP]

Beckstrom suggested that bringing more countries to the table was the best way of ensuring the long term future of the internet.

"We're more global, period. The chances of the internet holding together just went up, the cohesion just went up," he said. "We expect more active involvement from governments, a higher level of participation from many governments and we're already hearing about more governments joining the team… This was, ironically, a power move from the US."

Power move?

That remains to be seen. From here it smells more like surrender.

To a "virtual" United Nations, no less.

Without a shot.

Unemployment Number Gets Even Worse

2009-10-02T12:43:00.002-05:00

The news is grim: Another 263,000 non-farm workers without jobs, and nation's official unemployment rate at 9.8 percent, the worst since June 1983.

Unless, of course, you view the "real" unemployment rate that includes the long-term laid off workers who have taken bits and pieces of part time work or have given up looking.

That's 17 percent.

That's 1930s, Depression-era, FDR meddling type unemployment.

Just so that we're clear on this.

By the way, they began excluding this category of worker back in 1994 to make the numbers look better. It worked for the Clinton administration, so the Bush team followed suit, and most assuredly the Obama numbers-massagers are probably wondering who else can be tossed out.

It's obvious they haven't a clue as to what creates jobs or encourages productivity in a free society.

No Gold Medal for U.S. Olympic Bid

2009-10-02T12:40:00.002-05:00

The Olympics and the attendant corruption planned for Chicago will not take place unless President Obama declares war on the International Olympic Committee. The United States bid was rejected in the first round today.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that the billions of dollars that were to be "skimmed" by the Chicago political insiders, Friends of The Obama, are now off the table. Thus there are some very pissed off slum lords who will be looking for alternative sources of filthy lucre.

Watch your taxes.

When Pigs Flu ...

2009-10-02T12:36:00.003-05:00

It's been an interesting, if uncomfortable week, suffering from what I first thought were ragweed allergies but quickly evolved into muscle aches, fevers and chills. But not a cold. I am reasonably sure, based on how many others around me who have had it, that I am a recovering swine flu victim.

It wasn't fun but it wasn't that bad, as flu goes, and the better news is that I am pre-disastered. Don't need no damn vaccination. I still remember what happened in 1976 and then there are various other warnings and rumors of warnings out there, for your discernment.

My view? Take your vitamins C and D, build your immune system and take your chances while H1N1 is relatively benign. Unless you have a serious secondary infection or other underlying health risk, you may well be better off with the flu than with the shot.

But that's just a non-doctor's opinion. You may wish to consult your congressman for a more informed medical judgment.

Squeezed in a Hellish Vise

2009-09-30T13:32:00.001-05:00

Between terrorist cultists and militant Islamists, the Christians of Africa are having a tough time of it.

A story that broke Tuesday gives details of an attack in Sudan by the crazed followers of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in which parishioners at prayer at Our Lady of the Angels Church were abducted and then crucified in various macabre ways.

Marauding bands of guerrillas have crucified seven Christians during a series of raids on villages in Sudan.

One of the men was tied to a tree and mutilated while six other victims were nailed to pieces of wood fastened to the ground and killed.

Villagers who found their bodies near the town of Nzara said it was like a "grotesque crucifixion scene".

Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio has now appealed for international help to stop the attacks by members of the Lord's Resistance Army.

He said his government appeared powerless to prevent attacks by members of the guerrilla force based in northern Uganda. He spoke out after a spate of killings and abductions in two towns near the borders of the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In one instance guerrillas stormed into Our Lady Queen of Peace church in Ezo during a novena prayer and desecrated the Host, the altar and the building before abducting 17 people mostly in their teens and 20s. One of the captives was later tied to a tree and killed while 13 others in the group are still missing, according to Aid to the Church in Need, a charity helping persecuted Christians.

The terrorists are based in neighboring Uganda. Sudanese Christians have asked their government, controlled by Muslims, for help in repelling the attacks. The help has not been forthcoming.

Which ought to tell you something.

We may not be able to do much, but we can pray for them.

Are You Ready for International Blasphemy Day?

2009-09-26T11:25:00.005-05:00

On the subject of prayer, I'm planning to set aside Wednesday for special prayers for the conversion of the hearts of those responsible for (are you ready for this?) International Blasphemy Day.

No kidding. The first ever coordinated day to blaspheme God, Jesus and any other religious targets that come into range of an assorted group of mostly artistic "free thinkers," skeptics and free-speech advocates.

The events in Washington, D.C. will feature art such as "Jesus Painting His Nails" with blood by "artist" Dana Ellyn who calls herself an "agnostic atheist." Which means that she doesn't believe God exists but she can't prove it.

You can find more about the event HERE. A few of the relevant facts should be stated:

Atheists, skeptics, freethinkers and free-speech advocates around the world will mark Blasphemy Day by mounting their soapboxes—figuratively and literally—and uttering words and displaying images that may cause offense.

And they’re making no apologies.

“We’re not seeking to offend, but if in the course of dialogue and debate, people become offended, that’s not an issue for us,” said Justin Trottier, a Toronto coordinator of Blasphemy Day and executive director of the Ontario chapter of the Center for Inquiry. “There is no human right not to be offended.”

He's right. There is no human right not to be offended. Upon that we can agree. However, it is hard enough not to offend people even when you try to be nice. Deliberately provoking people seems a bit stupid, sort of the opposite of "How to Win Friends and Influence People." I guess Mr. Trottier could write a book entitled, "How to Turn People into Enemies and Piss Off Others."

But if he is wrong about God -- and he is -- there is one friend that he might want to think twice about tweaking.

St. Thomas Aquinas described blasphemy—deliberately showing contempt or irreverence for something considered sacred—as a sin “committed directly against God ... more grave than murder.” In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus said, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”

If it were me, I'd err on the side of caution, just in case God is paying attention.

A Day of Fasting & Prayer on Monday

2009-09-26T11:11:00.005-05:00

Many of us are going to fast and pray on Monday, September 28, as a personal Day of Atonement. It also happens to be the traditional Jewish Day of Atonement.

This takes nothing away from the Jewish celebration. Remember, even the Ninevites, led by their king, heard the words of the prophet Jonah and repented in sackcloth and ashes. They were not Jewish, but they heard the Word of God and responded in a positive manner.

Contrition and conversion are always good things, even for those who consider themselves in pretty good shape, spiritually speaking. I think it is safe to say that in modern-day America there are a considerable number of us who could use quite a bit of contrition for our pride and arrogance, our personal neglect of the poor and suffering, our callousness to offenses against public decency and morals.

These are not the same sins for which our president seeks absolution from the world community. I could not care less about the opinion of the world community, but I do care about the opinion of the Almighty, and I do not mean the Obama.

Understand that I am not a big "fasting" guy. I believe in it because I believe that denial of the physical appetites can sharpen the spiritual senses, but I am so fond of eating -- and it shows -- that I have great difficulty in rousing my will to cover my pledge. So I typically fast only to the minimum required.

That must change, and starting Monday it will. I'm going to do bread and water.

The State is No Substitute for You

2009-09-26T10:54:00.003-05:00

This is for those who insist that Pope Benedict XVI does not understand the dangers of the welfare state. Writing in his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est," which to the Latin-challenged means "God is Love," the Pope writes:

“The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person — every person — needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need . . . . In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live ‘by bread alone’ (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3) — a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human”

The emphasis is mine, because that is the crux of many arguments between conservatives and progressives over the relationship between men and government. Progressives believe that rights devolve out of social arrangements -- the State -- and are constantly in flux with the needs of the whole. Classic conservatives -- perhaps I should refer to them as libertarian -- believe that all rights come from God, are given to each of us as individuals as a birthright, and that each of us has the responsibility -- call it free will -- to exercise those rights.

And while we may lend or even cede some of these precious rights voluntarily through freely chosen decisions, none of our individual rights and responsibilities can be taken from us by force without violating the arrangement we have with God.

But, you may counter, a majority of people on this planet do not have this understanding, and certainly they do not enjoy the individual freedoms of Americans. How can you reconcile your beliefs with this reality?

And I will answer, just because the history of mankind is awash with the abrogation of God-given rights does not justify any of it. Evil allowed to flourish, even for the most benign or beneficial of reasons, is still evil and perhaps is even a greater evil because it presumes to call itself "good." God will deal with all of this in His own good time.

We, on the other hand, have been given a set of tremendous blessings and responsibilities by an enlightened and inspired group of founding fathers who recognized God's hand in the creation of these United States. We must relearn the wisdom of the founding and meet the challenge of defending individual liberties for all Americans from those who would strip them from us and our posterity.

For if freedom dies in America, it may be a long time before it blooms again anywhere else.

The Oklahomilist Has Returned

2009-09-26T10:25:00.005-05:00

To all three of my loyal readers/viewers, I sincerely apologize for having been AWOL these last couple of weeks. I could do a Joliet Jake litany to explain, but it wouldn't change the time line, would it?

So I will let this photo explain for me:

Yup, vacation!

Sometimes you need to recharge your spiritual energies, and I find that I can do that best in the Rocky Mountains. The sad by-product, in middle age, is that I deplete my physical energies in the process, so it takes a few days of bodily re-acclimation before I feel like doing much more than what is barely necessary.

It didn't help that I had a ton of things to handle before we left, and since our return I've acquired a couple of new responsibilities that require my time and mental focus.

I appreciate Anthony stepping up to the plate a couple of times in my absence. Thanks! Don't stop now!

I do not, however, intend to depart from the field of the Battle of Ideas, as I believe we are in one of the more important, and interesting, times of our nation's existence, if not the world's. I will "endeavor to persevere" to post daily henceforth.

To the other Dave, whose comment was stuck in "approval limbo" for a couple of weeks, my sincere apology. I don't know if it will make you feel any better to know that I was living the "high life" exploring the ghost town of Animas Forks, oblivious to today's world, but I'll try not to let that happen again! My daughter tells me to get an I-phone and stay connected to reality. Hmmm ...

Okay. That's it for my "apology tour." I -- not you -- am to blame, and I promise to change. Wouldn't that be refreshing if someone will all know would adopt this course instead of blaming US?

First Oklahoman to work for the Holy See!

2009-09-08T16:38:00.004-05:00

For those that missed this six-week-old news.

We have our first Oklahoman serving in the Holy See in Rome...aka he is one of the big wigs at the Vatican, working as the Assessore of General Affairs for the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

This is very exciting for Oklahoma Catholics and something for us to be very proud of. Anyone else with any aspirations of working in the Vatican, though ... might want to think about donning a Roman Collar and learning as many languages as possible.

Congratulations and Blessings, Msgr. Peter Wells!

Oklahoma Catholic News

2009-09-08T16:24:00.004-05:00

Hello readers! Since Dave welcomed me awhile back, I was excited to start blogging with Dave and Benedictus, and have until this point only a handful of posts. I chose the title "Oklapologist" because apologetics, the defense of the faith, is very important to Catholics and all Christians. On this blog, we write from a Catholic-Christian perspective, and there are plenty of great blogs out there that do likewise. Until now, the posts I have been able to contribute have been Catholic commentary on a national stage. Dave's past contributions, especially those dealing with Transubstantiation, have also been from a national perspective.

The thing is, there are plenty of other blogs out there that are doing a fantastic job giving this commentary, and they can all be linked on our blogroll. From time-to-time, (speaking for the Oklapologist and not the entire cast of the famed writers at Oklahomily) I may still need to throw my two cents into some of these national or worldwide Catholic issues.

It seems to me, though, that there are plenty of reportable Catholic things: some wonderful, some great, some not-so-great, and some a little ... off-putting (for Catholics that believe in the truth of Scriptures, Tradition, and the authority of the Pope and the Bishops), that are happening in the Oklahoma Catholic world ... meaning the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa. It is my goal to bring these to light, and hopefully to attract a few more minions to the great readership we have already come to enjoy here at Oklahomily in the last several years.

Happy reading.

Real Unemployment Rate 16.8%

2009-09-04T17:07:00.003-05:00

The nation's "official" jobless rate hit 9.7 percent at the end of August.

Inside the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is another number: total jobless. It includes all those who are out of work and who have been removed from the labor force by government statistical rules. Adding those in you get an even grimmer number, and one that compares quite closely to the numbers of the Great Depression.

That number is 16.8 percent.

Ol' George in east Texas does a pretty good job of number crunching these government reports. He points out if it were not for the creativity of the good people in Washington, D.C., the numbers would look even worse.

No, he's not talking about the Stimulus Projects jobs that Joe Biden hallucinates.

He's talking about the fact that since January 1 the government has "invented" one million new jobs simply by "estimating" them into existence.

This is the 'statistically made up because we think so" department. Hmmm, lemme see here: 15,000 new jobs in construction...sure, whatever... 26,000 in professional services, and 24,000 leisure and hospitality. Uh huh. In all, 673,000 new jobs have been 'estimated into existence' since January and if you back out January, it's more than a million jobs that have been 'estimated into existence' so far this year.

No fair reaching for a swig of Jack Daniels - too early for that. It's only a 26-year high for unemployment.

No one knows for sure if these new jobs exist because there is no paperwork to prove they are there. On the other hand, no one can prove they aren't, so I guess it's your gut logic against their pipe dream.

This paragraph from today's report tells you all you need to know about the phoney-baloney unemployment numbers:

About 2.3 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in August, reflecting an increase of 630,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Did you get all that? "Marginally attached" means jobless, but officially not unemployed because they hadn't tried to look for work in the past four weeks.

You gotta keep knocking on doors and telling Uncle Sam about it or he'll just assume you're as happy as a clam, and no one need worry about you.

The Creepy 'Superintendent in Chief' Maneuver

2009-09-04T12:37:00.004-05:00

Barack Hussein Obama is not Superintendent in Chief of America's public schools.

No president is, ever was, or should ever be.

The U.S. Constitution gives to the federal government no authority to establish, regulate, finance or control any public school for students Pre-K through 12. Zilch, zero, nada. It ain't in there. Look for yourself.

Congress has no such authority. The president has no such authority. The courts have no such authority.

I do not mind if a president of the United States, from time to time, wants to visit a classroom and read a story to the kids. Whatever. It's a public relations thing, and I recognize its value, but I would hope that most presidents have better things to do. (Yes, I know that George W. Bush was reading to school children on the morning of 9-11. I'm sure he felt it was very inconvenient.)

But for a president to schedule an address to all the public school children of America, as Mr. Obama has done, is entering dangerous constitutional and social waters.

It doesn't even matter what he will say. He could declare that "you kids need to pay attention, do your homework and bring your teacher an apple at least once a month" and I will still maintain that it is the wrong thing to do.

Why?

Because it sets a precedent. Presidential precedents can be persistent things.

William Howard Taft rose from his seat for a stretch in the middle of the 7th inning of a game between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Washington Senators on April 14, 1910. The crowd stood immediately, thinking he was leaving. His aching legs rested, he sat again, and the crowd followed suit. A legend, and a tradition was born. I can live with that one, although I wish Mr. Taft had chosen the middle of the 5th inning instead.

Something similar happened with the State of the Union report. The Constitution requires a report from the president to the Congress. It doesn't say it has to be in the form of a speech. After presidents Washington and Adams left office, President Jefferson dropped the speech before Congress as "too monarchical." And that's the way it stayed until the Progressive Woodrow Wilson took office and reinstituted the "speech" before the joint sessions.

At least there's a constitutional underpinning for it.

Even if President Obama says nothing controversial or propagandistic next Tuesday, it sets a precedent that he and others will surely follow. There is something deeply creepy about the chief executive talking directly to the young people of the country. It is too reminiscent of the efforts made by Mussolini and Hitler to shore up their credentials with the young people of Italy and Germany on their campaigns to institute national socialist regimes, otherwise known as fascistic.

We do not need an Obama Youth movement in America. Sorry.

When the Department of Education (explain where the Constitution allows for that?) sends out materials suggesting that teachers direct their students to write how they will be of service to President Obama, it only reinforces the creepiness factor. It leaves a skeptic with the inescapable feeling that Mr. Obama truly wants to transform our country.

If you are a parent, keep your kids home. An extra day of vacation won't hurt them.

If you are a school administration, just say "no" to this creepy encroachment. Isn't the federal government already involved enough in the classroom?

If you plan to vote in 2010, remember this.

Back in the Saddle Again

2009-09-04T12:36:00.001-05:00

Life is surely interesting.

If you had told me nine days ago that I would not be posting until the end of the next week, I would have said, "No way!"

But that's before my computer's power supply frizzled out, a cousin died, and I spent three days "on the road" taking care of family matters.

There's no way that I can honestly say that everything "happily" is back to normal with the exception of the computer which, when I finally had time to attend to it, cost me the princely sum of $43.65 to repair. (I have discovered the most fantastic group of tech-savvy guys in America, I believe. They may never be wealthy because of the low rates they charge, but they will surely enter the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven for the way they treat their neighbors.)

Despite my absence I have paid careful attention to what is happening. In fact, I believe that most bloggers should take periodic sabbaticals -- planned would be better than impromptu -- because I believe it sharpens one's outlook. Too often I find myself ready to dash a response to events in the now when I'd be better served if I took more time. But maybe that's just me.

Anyway, I have several observations to share today and tomorrow, then my productivity will be somewhat hit or miss for the next week or so.

Part Three: The Constitutional Powers of Congress

2009-08-25T10:51:00.004-05:00

"Let the [federal] government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves; and our [federal] government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants."

-- Thomas Jefferson

Under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress has the specific power to

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

This is the famous, or infamous, "Commerce Clause" of the Constitution, known in the last century as the pry bar with which Congress has inserted itself into various areas of American life where it has no business. Thanks to a "progressive" interpretation of what is and is not "commerce," our government has strayed far beyond the intent of the Founding Fathers.

A key word is "regulate," which in the original sense meant "to keep regular." Simply put, to make sure that commerce continues to operate in a regular manner. The assumption of the Founders was that economic activity was governed by the unfettered choices of free individuals, working in a "for profit" environment. Capitalism, if you will.

A key principle of the Founders is that government may only exercise those powers granted to it by the people, and the people can only grant to a government powers they actually have as individuals. Regulating commerce is something individuals could do for themselves, but it made sense to "loan" this responsibility to the government for the sake of efficiency, because foreign governments and large individual states would more likely comply with a federal government enforcing the sovereign will of the individuals as a whole.

Simply: The federal government was charged with protecting an individual's right to buy and sell, without undue coercion or interference from anyone, including any government!

Why is a distinction made between Foreign Nations and "among the several States"?

While the federal government itself did not "trade" goods with foreign nations, its citizens did, and one of the responsibilities of the new national government was to make sure that American citizens were not poorly treated by foreign laws. The government thus monitored the conditions of trade and tried to create a level playing field if a particular government began imposing high import taxes (tariffs, duties or levies) on American goods.

Yes, we've been arguing the distinctions between fair trade and free trade for a long time.

Additionally, the new federal government realized that the imposition of tariffs at American harbors was a significant source of tax revenue. The Founders assumed that Congress would be smart enough to keep import tariff rates balanced so as not to make foreign trade irregular or unproductive. This hasn't always worked so well in practice. [See "Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1929".]

Yet Congress was given the power to regulate foreign commerce because that's what national governments did. So far, so good.

Keeping commerce "regular" among the several states principally meant that the federal government forbade the imposition of tariffs and import or export duties between the states. It was government's job to make sure that the citizens of Oklahoma could trade with citizens in Kansas or Texas without penalty. You also did not want a group of states ganging up on another state by erecting trade barriers.

This was no small concern. In the early days of our Republic, there were many who thought each State should "go it alone," be totally sovereign. It was too much of this "go it alone" attitude that doomed the Articles of Confederation, the first constitutional government of the fledgling United States. The central government was weak to the point of anemia, and conflicts among regions were common.

The new Constitution took care of that by carefully creating a government of limited overall powers, separated the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government and made absolutely sure that each branch could throw a wrench into any power grabs by any other. Yet, if the branches of government "played nice," then they would perform their constitutionally mandated roles smoothly and the people would be well served.

The Progressive movement has (successfully) expanded the scope of federal government by promoting a liberal interpretation of the commerce clause, claiming that any human activity that might in some remote way have an impact on interstate commerce is thus covered under potential federal regulation. A couple of unfortunate Supreme Court cases have upheld this view, even though it runs counter to the Founders vision of America and defies logic.

This is why Congress sees fit to authorize "Cash for Clunkers," which transfers money, via taxes, from one set of Americans to another based on their "need" to get rid of gas-guzzling automobiles. There is nothing in the Constitution that empowers this, save a ludicrous misinterpretation of the "commerce clause." The Founders would be aghast, as so should we.

An even worse example, however, is the Executive branch takeover of General Motors and its heavy-handed negotiated takeover of Chrysler in which majority ownership was stolen, through a strong-armed bankruptcy proceeding in which the government acted as the 600-pound gorilla in the courtroom, from those who owned stock and given to the United Auto Workers union (and the government).

Even if you agree that the "commerce clause" would allow Congress to legislate such an outcome, Congress was not involved. This was a naked and unconstitutional usurpation of power by the Executive branch.

I'm still waiting for someone to take a strong case to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is vital that this be overturned.

Finally, the Constitution gave the federal government the power to regulate commerce with "the Indian tribes." Sadly this became the vehicle by which the indigenous Americans were pushed out of their traditional lands, stripped of their pride and possessions, robbed of their individual liberties, confined to reservations or removed to Indian territory (now part of Oklahoma). By and large it is a tale of treachery and deceit largely white-washed by both liberal and conservative educators. It is a wonder the American Indians survived, but they have.

Today the federal government allows Indian tribes, as sovereign nations within the United States, exercise of a degree of autonomy unthinkable just a few years ago, although too often it is for the purposes of encouraging gambling and smoking, vices not necessarily conducive to a responsible citizenry. Since most of those participating are not Indians, I suppose you could rationalize that there is a certain amount of revenge taking place.

ooooooo

"Let vigorous measures be adopted; not to limit the price of articles, for this I believe is inconsistent with the very nature of things, and impracticable in itself, but to punish speculators, forestallers, and extortioners, and above all to sink the money by heavy taxes. To promote public and private economy; encourage manufacturers, etc."

-- George Washington, on the limited role of the federal government

Can't See the Forests for the Bureaucrats

2009-08-21T17:23:00.006-05:00

The Chinese better keep up their tilapia ponds and rice paddies so they can help feed us.

Lord knows, we may be reduced to knawing on tree bark.

WASHINGTON — New forests would spread across the American landscape, replacing both pasture and farm fields, under a congressional plan to confront climate change, an Environmental Protection Agency analysis shows.

About 18 million acres of new trees — roughly the size of West Virginia — would be planted by 2020, according to an EPA analysis of a climate bill passed by the House of Representatives in June.

That's because the House bill gives financial incentives to farmers and ranchers to plant trees, which suck in large amounts of the key global-warming gas: carbon dioxide.

The forestation effort would be even larger than one carried out by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, says the U.S. Forest Service's Ralph Alig. The CCC, which lasted from 1933 to 1942, planted 3 billion trees, says the Civilian Conservation Corps Legacy, an alumni group for workers and family members.

[SNIP]

The plan would, however, be hard on ranchers and farmers and potentially food prices, says American Farm Bureau chief economist Bob Young.

I have nothing against tree planting.

But I fail to see where the Constitution gives the federal government oversight over private lands, or tree planting. If it's in there somewhere, I can't find it. A tree breathing in carbon dioxide has no truck with interstate commerce.

Most people are unaware that there are many more trees in America today than there were 150 years ago. Really! Certainly a good number were planted in response to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, but the American love affair with trees started earlier. As pioneers moved into the grasslands and deserts, they brought their favorite trees and flowering plants with them to "beautify" things. That's the biggest reason why Arizona, which used to be the place they sent you when you had allergy problems or tuberculosis, now has places where the pollen counts are very high.

Another reason is because America moved into the cities and off the farm lands that were once cleared but have returned to forests and brush. There is a great deal of farm land that isn't farmed. Take a drive sometime and it will surprise you.

What I fear is a program of tree planting that will encourage productive farms to go out of production. Worse, I fear a coercive program where productive farms will be forced to plant trees in order to meet the CO2 reduction goals of some dumb-ass global treaty that the Obamatrons will negotiate and Harry Reid's feckless Democrats might just ratify.

Missing in this story about the rise in 2007 food prices was one of the chief culprits: the reallocation of corn crops to produce ethanol for gasoline blends.

When you read more of the story, it tends to reinforce the idea that this will be a "top down" mandate from the "experts" in Washington, D.C.

The latest EPA analysis does not say where the farmland would be lost. However, an EPA study done in 2005 that analyzed climate-change policies similar to the House bill found that trees would overgrow farms primarily in three areas:

• Great Lake states: Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

• The Southeast: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

• The Corn Belt: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Ohio.

Forests once grew there, says study author Brian Murray of Duke University, so trees would sprout quickly in those areas if farmers got financial incentives. The House climate bill would allow landowners who reduce carbon dioxide to sell carbon permits to polluters, such as power plants.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week hailed the possibility that climate-change action could help forests. "We have our own deforestation problem right here in the U.S. of A," he said. "Just keeping forest as forest is a significant challenge."

Deforestation? Vilsack is so full of you-know-what that you can smell it from here. And tree farmers selling carbon permits to polluters? That'll feed a whole lot of hungry people, won't it!

Idiots!

Part Two: The Constitutional Powers of Congress

2009-08-21T11:00:00.003-05:00

We continue today with our series on the U.S. Constitution and the powers granted to the legislative branch of government, otherwise known as "The Congress," in Article 1, Section 8:

The second provision:

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

If the Founding Fathers could speak to us today, they might tell us they are sorry they inserted this clause into the Constitution. From the writings they left us there is no doubt that they had mixed feelings about granting the new government the power to borrow money. They realized that there would be times when it would be necessary, as it had during the Revolutionary War when men like John Adams and Ben Franklin, neither a fan of debt, were sent to Europe to obtain loans to finance the rebellion against Great Britain.

Franklin said, "Think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty."

Thomas Jefferson once wrote: "The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pockets to pay for it would make our country one of the happiest on earth." True, it was Jefferson who in his first term as president arranged for the $15 million Louisiana Purchase (as much for national defense reasons as any other). But he was also an advocate of quick repayment of debt, public or private.

Passing debts from one one generation to the next, the majority of the Founders believed, was immoral. It was, in a very literal sense, "taxation without representation." The despised the government of England for the practice of perpetual debt, and they had no intentions of repeating same.

It was this climate of frugality that allowed the framers to believe that the Americans would never allow their government to get too far behind in their repayment. It was unthinkable, at the time.

It took awhile before the worst of human nature reasserted itself. For the first 125 years of our nation's history, the national debt was kept in check. Wartime borrowing was quickly paid off. After 1915, however, the national debt began to rise rapidly, grew during two world wars, and then exploded in the 1960s, '70s and beyond.

Today's growth in the national debt is truly staggering, even by modern comparisons.

So what happened?

A change in philosophy and a new source of revenues encouraged the American government to spend. The significance of 1916 should be obvious. It was the year of the passage of the 16th Amendment authorizing an income tax on individuals. Although Americans were told that only the very wealthy would pay a very small percentage of this tax, it quickly expanded until it covered all income levels at much higher rates.

This came during the Woodrow Wilson administration. Wilson was the poster child for the Progressive movement which believes that humanity is evolving and needs evolving political and social structures to help shape this growth. The Constitution, as written and traditionally understood, was and is an impediment to Progressive achievement.

To a great extent Progressives have won the modern argument on debt, which is to say that they do not see it as a threat to individual liberty because, for them, individual liberty is less important than collective action to "improve" society.

Given our nation's headlong rush to crushing debt levels, one wonders whether we could ever return to the frugality of the Founders, and what it would take to get us there. Pain, undoubtedly, but will it be any greater than the pain that is in store for us if we continue, unchecked, on our present course?

We are not only spending our children's inheritance as a nation, we are now obligating our grandchildren and theirs to paying debt service and principle on debts so massive as to be unfathomable. And if the Founders were correct about the link between freedom and frugality, I very much fear for our posterity.

What is the fix?

Returning to other parts of the Constitution which limit the size and scope of the federal government. This will mean trimming back or eliminating programs, balancing operating budgets without economy-killing taxes, and basically saying "no" to any new expansions of government activity until we begin reversing the size of our public debt.

It means saying "no" to the Progressives among us who will not stop until they have government overseeing every aspect of our lives.

Can we fix the problem?

I doubt it. We are like a heroin addict who wants to blame the drug pusher for his problem, and who sees Methadone as his solution. He doesn't want to even think about withdrawal, which is the only way way he will break free of his curse.

A deep and frightening Depression -- as ugly as it would be -- is probably our only way out of the current mess. Yet that is the one unacceptable path on which our government leaders, of both parties, will not consider. Everything they are doing right now is exactly opposite of the cure. If debt is the problem, they are telling us that debt is the solution. If over-management of the economy is the problem, they are telling us that more management of the economy is the solution.

It is madness, but the borrowing is constitutionally permitted.

***

"Whenever vanity and gaiety, a love of pomp and dress, furniture, equipage, buildings, great company, expensive diversions, and elegant entertainments get the better of the principles and judgments of men and women, there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us."

-- John Adams, on foolish spending.

And the End Game in Afghanistan Is ...?

2009-08-21T08:39:00.004-05:00

If you are, like me, increasingly disturbed by the aimlessness of our commitment to Afghanistan, I would direct you to read Mona Charen's article, "Can We Succeed in Afghanistan," posted at National Review Online.

The always thoughtful Charen evaluates new information from the ground inside that war-torn, poverty-stricken country, and asks whether we have reached a "brainlessly partisan" point in our history where "your nation building is a war crime. My nation building is a national-security necessity"?

She quotes Rory Stewart, a Scotsman who is a British Foreign Service Officer who wrote a book, The Places In Between about his journey, on foot no less, across Afghanistan after the initial fall of the Taliban. Stewart believes the new U.S. emphasis on Afghanistan is a mis-diagnosis of what is needed and is raising, as Charen describes it, "a yellow flag" of caution.

The rationale that President Obama has offered for our ramped-up engagement in Afghanistan, Stewart argues in a piece for the London Review of Books, runs as follows: We cannot permit the Taliban to return to power or they will revive the alliance with al-Qaeda and will plot more catastrophic attacks on the United States. In order to defeat the Taliban, we must create a functioning state in the country, and in order to create a functioning state, we must defeat the Taliban. Obama seems keen to increase our role in Afghanistan to highlight the contrast with his predecessor. Bush, Obama ceaselessly repeats, fought “a war of choice,” whereas Obama will fight only “a war of necessity.” [Emphasis DTO]

I'm not quite ready to pull the plug on our effort in Afghanistan, but I'm a lot closer today than six months ago. I fear that our nation's president is ramping up that war for unfathomable reasons, especially after his declaration that victory "wasn't necessarily" the goal of the conflict.

If victory is not the goal of military action, then pray tell what is? Our men and women in uniform deserve to know the broad outline of the end game.

More at some point.

Cash for Clunkers Exit Strategy

2009-08-20T16:08:00.003-05:00

Well, that was fast! Less than three hours ago I filed the following post.

Now the White House has announced that Cash for Clunkers ends Monday.

Hope the dealers -- other than GM and Chrysler -- get reimbursed quickly.

------

A "Cash for Clunkers" update ...

With millions -- perhaps billions -- of outstanding unpaid claims from car dealerships, the Obama administration is now concocting its exit strategy from the CARS program.

Says CBS:

(CBS/AP) U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Thursday that after a wildly successful run, the cash for clunkers program will come to a close on Monday, August 24th at 8 p.m. EDT.

"This program has been a lifeline to the automobile industry, jump starting a major sector of the economy and putting people back to work," Secretary LaHood said. "At the same time, we’ve been able to take old, polluting cars off the road and help consumers purchase fuel efficient vehicles."

LaHood reiterated his pledge that dealers would be reimbursed for the incentives.

"We don't want to run out of money. And I want to be able to substantiate what I'm saying here. If you do a deal with us, you submit the paperwork, you will be paid," LaHood said.

[SNIP]

"We want to make sure that dealers know when we're getting close" to running out of the money that was allocated for the program, LaHood told reporters Wednesday. LaHood said he recognized that "dealers are frustrated. They're going to get their money."

On Thursday, both Chrysler and General Motors said they would begin providing cash advances to dealers to help cover any cash shortfalls related to the program. The automakers said they would provide the advances for up to 30 days for dealers who have already completed a sale and they will be available as long as the program remains in effect.

Isn't it sweet to know that the two automotive giants owned by The People's Republic of Obama are coming up with dollars to help their dealers!

Wonder where that money is coming from?

The Prophet Obama Says We Have Sinned

2009-08-20T15:48:00.003-05:00

Those of you who have studied the health care reform bills and have spoken out against them have sinned.

So says the Right Rev. Barack Hussein Obama.

"There are some folks out there who are actually bearing false witness," he said Wednesday. He peppered his remarks with the "sins" of his political opponents: "lots of misinformation," "extraordinary lies," "all fabrications."

I'm not sure what President Obama was hoping for when he held a "telephone town hall" with members of mostly the squishy religious left, but he is increasingly sounding like a desperate man.

If "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel," then it is quite possible that "religion is the last refuge of the incompetent politician."

In agreement is Victor Davis Hanson, who reports that there is "something creepy about the sudden invocation of Christian morality by the president to galvanize support for his state-run health care plan, as if his opponents are suddenly to be seen as somehow selfish or even un-Christian. This is an unfortunate, counter-productive tactic ..."

Hanson cites four very level-headed reasons for saying this. I guess my reaction is a bit more visceral, or perhaps less level-headed. As a Christian I am deeply offended when a man who is heavily in the tank for abortion rights and the abortion industry tries to pass himself off as Mr. Morality, and at my expense!

I am deeply offended when the president continues to claim that he has never spoken out in favor of a single-payer (government) health care system when there is video of him, on at least two occasions, saying exactly that! This is called "telling a lie" and it is covered by the commandment against false witness, in case Mr. Obama doesn't know this.

I am deeply offended when the president continues to tell the American people that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan," when according to FactCheck.org (and others) this simply cannot be true.

In fact, there is so much the president said in his 40-minute program that there is no possible way I can express the depth of my revulsion at a president who is obviously co-opting Christian terminology and symbolism to cynically push his political agenda. It is an agenda that has little to do with compassion or health care but much to do with expanding government power into the private lives of every American.

Jesus did not once say, "Render unto Caesar so that he can provide health care for the unfortunate."

He did speak of an individual Christian's responsibilities: "For as often as you did this for one of the least of my brothers, you did it for me."

I will be judged by the Almighty for what I have done or failed to do in my individual choices, with my time, talent and treasure. I will get no brownie points for coercing my fellow citizens to do good works by raising their taxes or supporting new laws that would force them to bow down before an almighty government.

The Church may well insist on a preferential option for the poor as a policy for church activism. Our Republic has no such constitutional provision, and should it be given one it will no longer be a Republic.

That, in my view, is the essential creepiness of this latest Obama tactic.

Obama's Odd Phone Call

2009-08-20T14:46:00.002-05:00

President Obama held a conference call with Jewish rabbis today on health care reform, essentially asking for their help.

There were a couple of odd parts to the call.

First of all, at the end of the call, he wished the rabbis "shanah tovah," or happy new year.

The problem? The Jewish new year begins Sept. 18. It is, said Tevi Troy, a visiting senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, like wishing someone Merry Christmas on Thanksgiving.

But the oddest part of Obama's remarks came when he told the rabbis that "we are God's partners in life and death."

You'd think he'd want to avoid that kind of language after all the talk of "death panels" and "end of life counseling sessions" for senior citizens.

Your Bank Account Info & Uncle Sam

2009-08-20T14:16:00.003-05:00

If letting one of Uncle Sam's bureaucrats sit between you and your doctor doesn't bother you, there are other provisions of health care reform legislation that might not settle on your tummy.

Turning Uncle Sam Into Peeping Tom

Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or credit-card information of every American. Under section 163, which is entitled “Administrative Simplification,” the bill sets new “standards” for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers.

According to section 163, the standards will “enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service . . . ” In addition, they will “enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with related health care payment and remittance advice.”

What is envisioned is a “machine-readable health plan beneficiary card” that, in addition to information about a person’s medical history, will contain checking-account or credit-card information, so as to allow electronic payments and, if a person is lucky, occasional remittances. Since under the proposed legislation everyone would be required to have health insurance, all Americans would have to provide this information.

The required collection of such data is unprecedented. At no other time has the government sought to collect this type of financial information from everyone in America.

[SNIP]

The idea of wholesale collection of checking-account information by Uncle Sam raises many questions. Who would see it? How would people be protected from theft of their account numbers? Fundamentally, who would control this sensitive information?

The writer mentions how several federal employees have already pleaded guilty to spying on passport information, among other things.

My question, simply put, is where in the U.S. Constitution does it empower the federal government to require (mandate) and keep this kind of information on citizens?

You already know the answer. It doesn't.

Another damn good reason to stop the health care reform process.

Part One: The Constitutional Powers of Congress

2009-08-20T12:31:00.003-05:00

Because a mind is a terrible thing to waste by not filling it with good information, the Oklahomilist begins a series detailing what the United States Constitution actually says about the limited powers of the legislative branch, otherwise known as the Congress. These are found in Article 1, Section 8, under "Powers of Congress."

They begin with this:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Pay attention, class!

The Constitution was so strict on the ability to levy taxes that Congress eventually had to float the 16th Amendment in order to legally enact a personal income tax on American citizens. And that didn't happen until 1916, some one hundred and thirty years after the constitution was ratified. There are many solid citizens who believe the 16th Amendment should be repealed, as it has helped fuel the legislative ambitions of many a politician.

"Common Defence" is fairly well understood. Sadly, modern progressives attempt to define "general Welfare" beyond the original scope of the Founders. In short, "general Welfare" means that the government has enough tax money to carry out its basic duties as outlined by the constitution. That's it. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the Founders' definition many times over the years.

The Founders of this Republic feared a large, powerful national government. They were all too familiar with governments that ignored the individual rights of citizens, and they knew only too well that the road to governmental hell would be paved with the "good intentions" of those who crave power. So they specifically addressed what Congress could do, and then broadly asserted that anything left unmentioned was essentially "off the table."

The Bill of Rights, otherwise known as the first ten "amendments" to the Constitution, add more prohibitions to government conduct. These were added in 1791, three years after ratification.

"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many; ... Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward [town or city] direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics, from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself, by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best."

-- Thomas Jefferson

The Scandal That Could Dwarf Watergate

2009-08-19T13:05:00.004-05:00

Once upon a time a group of political operatives inside the White House decided to find out what the Democratic National Committee was up to in the run-up to the 1972 presidential election.

And so they recruited a group to break into DNC headquarters, in the Watergate Complex, to install eavesdropping devices. It didn't go well, and the five men were caught.

Thus began a months-long saga in which journalists uncovered a conspiracy among top level White House officials to cover up their knowledge and participation in this and a few other relative minor -- but significant -- trespasses against the constitutional rights of others.

Eventually suspicion went all the way into the Oval Office, and forced the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Watergate remains the gold standard of presidential scandals, chiefly because of how many people were involved in the coverup attempt of forbidden activities, including political dirty tricks.

But it may soon have a challenger.

There is a high presidential adviser to President Obama, by name of Van Jones, who is the "Green Jobs Czar." Yeah, weird name. But he's kind of a different sort of guy anyway. He started out as merely a black nationalist attorney, but became a committed Marxist since his imprisonment for participating in the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Later he "saw the light' of the environmental movement -- Green is the new Red, you know -- and hopped on that bandwagon.

Naturally, our new president saw great potential in Van Jones, and brought him into the fold.

Turns out Jones has many talents, not the least of which is to run a political operation against perceived enemies of the White House.

Jones was a founding member of a group called "Color of Change" that is pressuring advertisers to get off or stay off of Glenn Beck's TV show on "Fox." At this point several big advertisers have pulled their programs, including Geico and Progressive insurance companies, SC Johnson, and Wal Mart. There may be 20 in all, although that's somewhat hard to pin down.

You can get up to speed HERE, or HERE and HERE.

Now I don't have any problem with economic boycotts. It's still a free country -- barely.

But I do have a problem with a campaign against a political commentator, left or right, being directed from the White House. And that's exactly what looks to be happening. Van Jones has come under scrutiny -- thank God -- by Beck for his past behavior and associations. It is obvious that Jones is hitting back.

That the president hasn't seen fit to discipline his valuable "green jobs" czar is all you need to know.

If any other White House had behaved this way, there would be loud cries from the press and the Congress for investigations into "Jones-gate" or "Ad-gate."

So far the silence is deafening.

If the White House can orchestrate financial damage to a critic by employing affiliated outside groups, which are by the way funded with tax money and certain lefty philanthropists, or even better yet if it can force the cancellation of an opposing voice, you can bet that it will not stop there. At the least they apparently hope they can get Beck to back off his criticism of the White House. (They don't know Beck very well.)

This White House has signaled that it is only for free speech as long as you agree with it. President Obama has publicly declared that "those who created the mess" need to get out of the way "and stop talking." The mess defined as anything he doesn't like and intends to "clean up."

Apparently he and his commie buddy Van Jones believe that Glenn Beck needs to stop talking.

Not even Richard Nixon was this prickly, or tricky.

Nat Hentoff Declares Against Obamacare

2009-08-19T12:26:00.004-05:00

Nat Hentoff, often described as a libertarian liberal, has a column in the Jewish World Review entitled

I Am Finally Scared of a White House Administration

I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama's desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It's already in the stimulus bill signed into law.

Hentoff goes into detail on how Obamacare will call for "end of life" consultations under rules written by board members who will not actually be faced with looking at patients face-to-face.

No matter what Congress does when it returns from its recess, rationing is a basic part of Obama's eventual master health care plan. Here is what Obama said in an April 28 New York Times interview (quoted in Washington Times July 9 editorial) in which he describes a government end-of-life services guide for the citizenry as we get to a certain age, or are in a certain grave condition. Our government will undertake, he says, a "very difficult democratic conversation" about how "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care" costs.

While the Senate version has dropped the "end of life consultation" from its provisions, the three House bills all contain it. There is no guarantee that the final version, or later revisions, will not put it back in.

Hentoff quotes researcher Wesley Smith on the dangers of Obamacare:

As more Americans became increasingly troubled by this and other fearful elements of Dr. Obama's cost-efficient health care regimen, Smith adds this vital advice, no matter what legislation Obama finally signs into law:

"Remember that legislation itself is only half the problem with Obamacare. Whatever bill passes, hundreds of bureaucrats in the federal agencies will have years to promulgate scores of regulations to govern the details of the law.

"This is where the real mischief could be done because most regulatory actions are effectuated beneath the public radar. ..."

Hentoff concludes with this:

Condemning the furor at town-hall meetings around the country as "un-American," Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are blind to truly participatory democracy — as many individual Americans believe they are fighting, quite literally, for their lives.

Well said.

Spending Our Tax $$ on Brazil's Offshore Drilling

2009-08-19T12:16:00.003-05:00

We can't afford $3 billion to get our space program out of the existential ditch ...

... but we can afford $2 billion to Brazil so that it's government-run energy company, Petrobas, can do offshore drilling and create jobs using Brazil's natural resources.

According to Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, this further illustrates the absurdity of the energy policy that is the Obama administration:

For years, states rich with an abundance of oil and natural gas have been begging Washington, DC politicians for the right to develop their own natural resources on federal lands and off shore. Such development would mean good paying jobs here in the United States (with health benefits) and the resulting royalties and taxes would provide money for federal coffers that would potentially off-set the need for higher income taxes, reduce the federal debt and deficits, or even help fund a trillion dollar health care plan if one were so inclined to support such a plan.

So why is it that during these tough times, when we have great needs at home, the Obama White House is prepared to send more than two billion of your hard-earned tax dollars to Brazil so that the nation's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, can drill off shore and create jobs developing its own resources? That's all Americans want; but such rational energy development has been continually thwarted by rabid environmentalists, faceless bureaucrats and a seemingly endless parade of lawsuits aimed at shutting down new energy projects.

[SNIP]

We deserve the opportunity to develop our resources no less than the Brazilians.

Where, in the U.S. Constitution, is the federal government empowered (or even encouraged) to finance the energy needs of other nations?

Of course, I could ask the same thing of the space program. You might be able to make a national defense argument, but not the way we're heading.

The President's Great Post Office Prescription

2009-08-19T11:07:00.003-05:00

Caroline Baum has a great column today at Bloomberg.com, discussing President Obama's apparent inability to talk off teleprompter and still connect with logic.

There are a couple of sections that are priceless. We'll quote one:

The proliferation of Obama’s gaffes and non sequiturs on health care has exceeded the allowable limit. He has failed repeatedly to explain how the government will provide more (health care) for less (money). He has failed to explain why increased demand for medical services without a concomitant increase in supply won’t lead to rationing by government bureaucrats as opposed to the market. And he has failed to explain why a Medicare-like model is desirable when Medicare itself is going broke.

The public is left with one of two unsettling conclusions: Either the president doesn’t understand the health-insurance reform plans working their way through Congress, or he understands both the plans and the implications and is being untruthful about the impact.

Neither option is good; ignorance is clearly preferable to the alternative.

She also has a good take on Obama's citing of the U.S. Postal Service as an example of a "public option" co-existing with private enterprise. Strange tactic, she says:

The only way the post office can stay in business is its government subsidy. The USPS lost $2.4 billion in the quarter ended in June and projects a net loss of $7 billion in fiscal 2009, outstanding debt of more than $10 billion and a cash shortfall of $1 billion. It was moved to intensive care -- the Government Accountability Office’s list of “high risk” cases - - last month and told to shape up. (It must be the only entity that hasn’t cashed in on TARP!)

That didn’t stop President Barack Obama from holding up the post office as an example at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, last week.

When Obama compared the post office to UPS and FedEx, he was clearly hoping to assuage voter concerns about a public health-care option undercutting and eliminating private insurance.

What he did instead was conjure up visions of long lines and interminable waits. Why do we need or want a health-care system that works like the post office?

No.

Going Nowhere Fast

2009-08-19T10:54:00.004-05:00

You may find this exciting: Europe and Russia are going to Mars!

The United States, on the other hand, is going nowhere fast.

Actually, the agreement signed between the EU and Russia is a cooperative venture to land probes on Mars and Phobos, one of its two moons. Not as exciting as a manned expedition, but the significance is who isn't invited to the party.

Once our once vaunted space shuttle fleet -- what's left of it, anyway -- is retired next year, there will be no American missions anywhere unless we catch a ride with the Russians on their Soyuz, the workhorse Model T of the space age. Our replacement vehicle, the Orion, won't be through testing and development until 2015, if then.

The Orion, by the way, looks like a shinier, fatter version of the Apollo spacecraft, and is just as aerodynamic. Back to the Future. Sigh.

A presidential panel appointed by President Obama has begun to discuss its findings:

US ambitions for manned space exploration have hit a major hurdle in the wake of severe budget constraints, according to preliminary findings of a panel appointed by President Barack Obama.

Reaching Mars was deemed too risky while returning to the Moon by 2020 was ruled out barring an additional three billion dollars per year to replace the retiring space shuttle fleet and build bigger rockets, according to the group led by Norm Augustine, a former CEO of US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.

"Really, we've given the White House a dilemma. The space program we have today, the human space flight program, really isn't executable with the money we have," Augustine told PBS public television last week.

NASA has an $18 billion annual budget, about $10 billion allocated to human spaceflight. It would take an additional $3 billion a year to put us back in the space driver's seat, but that's apparently just not going to happen with Team Obama in the White House.

That happens to be the very amount devoted to "Cash for Clunkers." Cosmic irony.

You come in and spend $1.5 trillion in money we don't have, and are pushing to spend at least another $1 trillion during the next decade on health care, but you can't see the need to add a single dime to the space budget?

Okay, fine. Each to his own. It's not everyone's cup of tea. But don't then turn around and say this:

The White House could take months to decide its course of action, said John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

"We have inherited one of the many failed promises of the Bush administration -- to set out a very good program without providing the resources to fund it," he told AFP, urging a new direction.

"We have lived an illusion for five years."

The US space shuttle program and the ISS, he said, "were a mistake" when compared to the Apollo Project that landed man on the moon for the first time.

Logsdon seems under the impression that Bush was responsible for the space shuttle program and the International Space Station, when the shuttle dates back to the '70s and the ISS was designed in the '90s. Or does he just enjoy putting political spin on a subject of which he is supposed to be an expert?

It is a matter of faith, not science, for the Progressive Left, that all problems identified in 2009 are of necessity the fault of George W. Bush, the locus of evil in our American universe. I'm not saying that Mr. Logsdon is a crap-weasel; I'm only saying he sounds like one.

Apollo was a great project because it was a Big Dream that required ambition, courage and commitment. The shuttle was a great project because it was a Big Dream from an engineering point of view. It represented progress and it made the International Space Station possible. But the time for both Apollo and the Shuttle have come and gone.

The real deficit in this country, today, is a paucity of vision and courage, and a reluctance to "get the hell out of the way" and let the private sector take over if the government won't lead.

It's obvious Team Obama has no enthusiasm for space ventures. There's so much work to do here organizing our communities into little socialist collectives, engineering the government's takeover of auto companies, banks, investment firms, insurance companies and the health care industry. Everything, in fact, that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt did not accomplish; nearly a century's worth of unfulfilled socialist dreams.

Who needs Mars when you have Marx?

Will We Be Over the Hump When the Day is Done?

2009-08-19T10:18:00.003-05:00

It's "Hump Day" which means that if you make it through, you're "over the hump." But a look at the news this morning would seem to suggest otherwise for America.

Warren Buffett, once proclaimed as an economic adviser by our president, says that the massive debt piled up to "rescue" the economy now threatens to be a greater danger than the original crisis.

"... their threat may be as ominous as that posed by the financial crisis itself."

With all due respect, Mr. Buffett, "well, duh!" A lot of people saw this coming well before now. The trick is how to deal with it, and I don't care much for Mr. Buffett's prescription:

"Once recover is gained ... Congress must end the rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio and keep our growth in obligations in line with our growth in resources," Buffett said. "With government expenditures now running 185 percent of receipts, truly major changes in both taxes and outlays will be required. A revived economy can't come close to bridging that sort of gap."

Major changes in both taxes and outlays? Maybe Buffett, being very wealthy, can afford more taxes. The rest of us are Taxed Enough Already!

Be glad you are not a car dealer waiting on thousands or millions of dollars in federal reimbursement for "Cash for Clunkers." Although the program has run through $1.7 billion in your tax money (on paper, at least) most dealers have seen very little reimbursement for money for which they are on the hook. One estimate is about 2 percent.

How long will it take for full reimbursement? What if it were life-saving surgery that hung in the balance?

The space program is in shambles -- more on that later -- and the Obamatrons are pointing the finger of blame at (who else?) George W. Bush for insufficiently accomplishing a space program makeover that they are reluctant to fund.

President Obama is flipping and flopping over "the public option" which is political speak for "government-run" health insurance. He knows "public option" is dead in the water unless Pelosi lines up the Blue Dogs at gunpoint in a forced vote. He also knows that the die-hard Left wants nothing less than a single-payer system and their not even very happy about the stealth version included in current legislative proposals.

This may or may not be good news for the rest of us. The best thing that can happen is nothing. The U.S. Constitution does not give Congress the authority to operate a health care insurance or delivery system. That should be the end of the discussion, Period.

Meanwhile, the president's withdrawals of troops from the cities of Iraq has led to the perception that the gates are wide open for a revival of the bombing terrorism, and so we witness events like 75 people killed and hundreds wounded throughout Baghdad overnight. We should be having a national conversation about this and Obama's ramped up operatons in Afghanistan, and if Obama were a Republican, you know we would be.

But the media is quiet. The Middle East just isn't that important, unless we're telling the Jews not to build settlements.

Hump day, indeed!

What Was the FBI Up To?

2009-08-18T15:22:00.003-05:00

Why would the FBI be training -- and more importantly employing -- a man to write stuff as a blogger designed to get people riled up?

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A New Jersey blogger facing charges in two states for allegedly making threats against lawmakers and judges was trained by the FBI on how to be deliberately provocative, his attorney said Tuesday.

Hal Turner worked for the FBI from 2002 to 2007 as an "agent provocateur" and was taught by the agency "what he could say that wouldn't be crossing the line," defense attorney Michael Orozco said.

"His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest," Orozco said.

Prosecutors have acknowledged that Turner was an informant who spied on radical right-wing organizations, but the defense has said Turner was not working for the FBI when he allegedly made threats against Connecticut legislators and wrote that three federal judges in Illinois deserved to die.

"But if you compare anything that he did say when he was operating, there was no difference. No difference whatsoever," Orozco said.

Special Agent Ross Rice, a spokesman for the FBI in Chicago, said he would not comment on or even confirm Turner's relationship with the FBI.

If it is true that the FBI trained and used this man, then the wrong people are being brought up on charges. I can't think of too many things much worse than agents of the federal government conducting disinformation operations using the cover of the First Amendment to flush out "right wing extremists." Or "left wing extremists," for that matter.

How do you know the flushing operation didn't push them into extreme positions? It's sounds an awful lot like entrapment.

Increasingly it seems we have a federal government that no longer remembers the limitations placed upon it by the U.S. Constitution.

Maybe Not the Best Example, Mr. President

2009-08-13T16:33:00.005-05:00

You have to see the Youtube clip to have the appropriate appreciation for this major gaffe on the part of President Obama. Speaking at his very "managed" town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., the president answered a question thusly:

"I recognize," the president said, "that you have a legitimate concern. How can a private company compete against the government?"

"If you think about it," he continued, "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. Right?"

"It's the Post Office that's always having problems."

That doesn't exactly inspires one's confidence in government-run health care.

Asteroid Impacts As Seen From Space

2009-08-13T16:19:00.004-05:00

Earth gets hit by space rocks all the time, but in the distant past some of them were quite large. The one shown is a crater in Canada, now ringed by a big lake.

Wired Science has a photo feature of quite a few such craters, including the one in Arizona. What's surprising is how many such craters are in Australia and Canada.

Les Paul, R.I.P.

2009-08-13T16:11:00.003-05:00

Les Paul, musician, inventor and legend, has passed beyond the veil at age 94.

Rest in peace!

He was one of my personal heroes for his contributions to society, including the Les Paul guitar and, more importantly, the invention of multi-track recording which changed the way we hear canned music and gave an industry rocket engines!

His obit is HERE. Or you can learn more about him HERE.

Can You Hear the Thunder?

2009-08-13T15:54:00.004-05:00

From the Land Down Under?

Australian Senate Rejects Cap-and-Trade Plan

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Australia’s Senate rejected the government’s climate-change legislation, forcing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to amend the bill or call an early election.

Senators voted 42 to 30 against the law, which included plans for a carbon trading system similar to one used in Europe. Australia, the world’s biggest coal exporter, was proposing to reduce greenhouse gases by between 5 percent and 15 percent of 2000 levels in the next decade.

Rudd, who needs support from seven senators outside the government to pass laws through the upper house, can resubmit the bill after making amendments. A second rejection after a three-month span would give him a trigger to call an election.

“We may lose this fight, but this issue will not go away,” Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told the Senate in Canberra. “Australia cannot afford for climate change to be unfinished business.”

Yes, they can!

One lawmaker called it "a dog of a plan."

That dog won't hunt, I guess. You gotta love Australia.

'Evil-mongers' Vs 'Crap-mongers'

2009-08-13T15:32:00.003-05:00

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada has a new word for those who attend town hall meetings to protest pending legislation:

Evil-Mongers!

Such "evil-mongers" are using "lies, innuendo and rumor," to drown out rational debate, Reid said.

Give me an example of "rational debate" and I might concede his point, but I've listened to a long list of congress-persons at their town hall events and I have seen very little actual debate. They want us to listen to them tell us that they know what they are doing, don't worry about the details, it's all in our best interest, the president and Congress are working very closely for the public good, blah, blah, blah.

Yet when asked the simplest question about a particular provision, they go into full defensive mode and claim that they are being hit with "lies, innuendo and rumor."

Enough of this horse manure! Under the Constitution of the United States, the people have a right to speak their minds and, horror of horrors, even ask tough questions of their elected representatives! If the elected reps don't want to answer, well, that's fine. Don't expect our support in the next election, Dingy Harry.

The same goes for Congressmen who won't even hold town halls, substituting instead "telephonic town halls" where they can control both who is in the "audience" and the questions. They can also disconnect you if you don't ask the right question. This technological cowardice is being employed by several elected officials, including 2nd Dist. Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma, who couldn't hold a real town hall meeting because he just had to join an "around the world" junket with a bunch of other congressmen.

Most people are a lot smarter than Washington gives them credit. We may not have all the facts at our disposal, and we may not have the gilded tongue of the politician to employ, but we know bull crap when we are confronted with it.

And we know a Crap-Monger when we hear him in action.

Health Choice Freedoms You Will Lose

2009-08-13T15:27:00.002-05:00

John Hood reports today from NRO's "Critical Condition" blog that Shawn Tully, editor at large of Fortune magazine, has identified five basic freedoms related to health care that Americans will lose if the prevailing versions of ObamaCare eventually become law.

1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The blunt conclusion, Tully reports, is that employer-provided health insurance will probably disappear much more rapidly than the five-year "grace period" being discussed because paying an 8 percent payroll tax and enroling your employees on the "public option" will be cheaper than continuing to subsidize premiums for private insurance. Especially when the government begins increasing the cost of private insurance through regulatory requirements!

... it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

So when the president tells you that "if you like your plan, you can keep it" or "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor," he knows full well that this will be true only in the very short run.

In the long run, if your employer likes your plan, you may get to keep it, but maybe not, and there won't be a damn thing you can do about it.

More Clunky Economic News

2009-08-13T15:17:00.002-05:00

What are we to make of today's economic news that foreclosures were up in July, retails sales on everything but cars were down in July, and jobless claims for the last week jumped over a half million?

The Associated Press would like us to think that we need more "Cash for Clunkers" type stimuli.

While autos, helped by the start of the Cash for Clunkers program, showed a 2.4 percent jump -- the biggest in six months -- there was widespread weakness elsewhere. Gasoline stations, department stores, electronics outlets and furniture stores all reported declines.

Some of Europe's largest economies also benefited from government programs to support the auto industry. Germany and France returned to economic growth in the second quarter, raising hopes the recession in the 16-country euro area may end sooner than thought. Europe's two biggest economies each grew 0.3 percent from the previous three-month period, surprising analysts and technically ending their worst recession in decades.

The Euro-version of "Cash for Clunkers" has grown into a permanent plan, which has to be much appreciated in France where militant jihadists are burning hundreds of cars every month. But anyone with half a brain, even a government economist, knows that you aren't actually producing anything when you take one set of taxes (or borrowed funds, in our case) and redistribute it to another group. You temporarily alter behavior, true, but you produce nothing. In fact, you destroy since you are taking vehicles off the road that have serviceable life in them. That is waste, pure and simple.

Even with clunker cash, retail sales overall fell .1 percent in July. Spin that, Pillsbury Spokes-Boy!

There is much official hand-wringing over consumers' stubborn behavior of paying off debt and increasing their savings, which are historically laudable activities. Naturally you can expect our government to despise this trend.

There was one quote of which I approve:

"Households are in no position to drive a decent economic recovery," Paul Dales, U.S. economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients.

Amen to that. And households are in no position to absorb new taxes (direct or hidden) on health care and energy. You want to watch an economy in free-fall? Just keep pushing the socialist transformation of America!

Another AP Economic Report That Misses the Point

2009-08-13T15:01:00.004-05:00

I've got a bit of a problem with today's report that July foreclosures rose by 7 percent.

No problem with the numbers themselves. Just this part:

WASHINGTON – The number of U.S. households on the verge of losing their homes rose 7 percent from June to July, as the escalating foreclosure crisis continued to outpace government efforts to limit the damage. [Emphasis mine.]

What government effort? We've been told that the TARP program, originally designed to combat the "toxic assets" in the housing market, has been redirected to save banks.

The loan adjustment program touted by President Obama turned out to be a scam. The government web site redirects you to several lenders who are cherry-picking people who have the least travails as homeowners.

The Treasury Department said last week that banks have extended only 400,000 offers to 2.7 million eligible borrowers who are more than two months behind on their payments.

Naturally, the AP "real estate" writer thinks that mortgage companies are to blame for not getting "up to speed" with the Obama plan, when the reality is the Obama plan stinks. Doesn't anyone in the mainstream press do their research anymore? Don't they read the back files?

For what it's worth: This economy is not recovering.

The Inconvenient Details of Obamacare

2009-08-11T14:39:00.003-05:00

Defenders of ObamaCare are quick to point out that the bill doesn't specifically call for taxpayer funding of abortions or euthanasia of the elderly and inform.

And that is true. Only an idiot would spell it out in legislation he wants to get passed.

They conveniently ignore the fact that there have been five or six, I lost count, attempts in committee to ban the use of taxpayer dollars for abortions in the health care reform package, and all were voted down.

They also want to avoid discussion of the concept of rationing which IS mentioned in the bill and is the inevitable consequence of government-run anything.

If you are the least bit interested in what is in the bill, I highly recommend this list of interesting and heart-warming provisions of the health care proposals being floated in Congress. Here's a small sample of several dozen fascinating bullet points:

* Sec. 113, Pg. 21-22 of the Health Care (HC) Bill MANDATES a government audit of the books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self-insure in order to “ensure that the law does not provide incentives for small and mid-size employers to self-insure”!

* Sec. 122, Pg. 29, Lines 4-16 - YOUR HEALTH CARE WILL BE RATIONED!

* Sec. 152, Pg. 50-51 - HC will be provided to ALL NON-US citizens.

(That last one a fabulous reward for dodging immigration authorities and not going through the proper channels!)

* Sec. 163, Pg. 58-59 beginning at line 5 - Government will have real-time access to individual’s finances & a National ID health care card will be issued!

* Sec. 163, Pg. 59, Lines 21-24 - Government will have direct access to your bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

* Sec. 431, Pg. 195, Lines 1-3 - Officers and employees of HC Administration (government) will have access to ALL Americans’ financial and personal records.

* Sec. 441, Pg. 203, Lines 14-15 - “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax.” Yes, it says that.

* Sec. 3121, Pg. 935, Lines 1-2 - The government will develop “Healthy People & National Public Health Performance Standards.” They will tell us what to eat?

There is so much more wonderful stuff in this, including an entire section dealing with "end of life" issues. Plus, people in SEIU and ACORN will have subsidized medical plans for their work promoting the new health care plan and signing people up. After all, they will "inform and educate" the rest of us as to our rights and responsibilities.

I can hardly wait.

The New Brownshirts

2009-08-11T14:23:00.003-05:00

No, they aren't your conservatives voicing their opposition to ObamaCare.

But they are at the rallies. They call themselves Health Care for America Now, or HCAN, and they are an umbrella group for ACORN, SEIU, Moveon.org, and others. They even have a website, which is highly instructive of how they view regular Americans. We are, in their eyes, illegitimate. You should read it to understand the extent that they will go to silence your Constitutionally-guaranteed voice.

As the BlackListed article notes:

HCAN will organize brownshirt thugs — called “marshals” — to patrol crowds with local police assistance to make sure no opposition can be voiced. “Make sure that you assign marshals to take care of moving the crowd, keeping people organized and orderly, and acting as security should any need arise to ask noisy or disruptive protesters to leave. If you have cause to think that you will need more back-up, notify the police ahead of time.”

The corporate media should also be tightly controlled, according to the organization. “It’s important that you take away right-wingers opportunities to talk with reporters by making sure that your staff or leaders are in constant contact with the media who attend. You should set up a special table or area for the press to sit during the event and that area should be close t the stage and away from any areas of the venue where protesters may gather. Also make sure you have materials ready for the reporters so that they know the purpose and message of the event,” the website explains.

They've got plans for taking signs away from ObamaCare dissenters, and for limiting questions to congresspersons by inserting themselves in the process as the question screeners.

We are seeing all this come to pass.

I'm sure that some hot place in hell, Adolf is aware of these goings on and is smiling.

When Government Becomes God

2009-08-11T14:18:00.002-05:00

North Carolina state law requires certain medical insurances to cover such things as contraception, sterilization and abortions. But it has an exemption for religious institutions.

However, the federal government wants to eliminate that exemption.

A Catholic college in Belmont, N.C., once more is afoul of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which has rules that Belmont Abbey College's decision to remove contraception from its faculty health care policy, in accordance with Catholic teaching, discriminated against women.

So do you obey your religious beliefs, or the federal government?

The capriciousness of putting politics into health care is at work in this case. The EEOC had already given the "all clear" to Belmont in March. Apparently someone at EEOC remembered that the new messiah lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., and the decision was reversed.

College president Dr. William Thierfelder writes:

“The teaching of the Catholic Church on this moral issue is clear. The responsibility of the College as a Catholic College sponsored by the monks of Belmont Abbey to follow Church teaching is equally clear. There was no other course of action possible if we were to operate in fidelity to our mission and to our identity as a Catholic College.”

Who knows how this one will shake out. But you can bet that if the government annexes health care into its bosom, there will be many more such stories and tough decisions to be made.

Deficit Numbers to Get Worse Than Forecast

2009-08-11T11:03:00.005-05:00

Don't look now but those deficit projections made earlier in the year are going to be wrong.

According to that bastion of conservative propaganda, USA Today, government officials are acknowledging that new budget deficit estimates for the current year will be worse than first forecast.

As the White House and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) prepare to release new deficit estimates this month, several economists say the news is likely to be as bad as or worse than forecasts.

"This is going to be a very depressing outlook," predicts former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, top adviser to Republican John McCain in last year's presidential election. "They have just a nightmare in terms of these health care bills, which do nothing but make things worse."

A fiscal year 2009 deficit of $1.8 trillion was anticipated by the White House, $1.7 trillion by Congress. Reaching that level would produce a deficit four times last year's $459 billion deficit, just as Congress is considering health care overhaul plans that could cost $1 trillion over 10 years.

[SNIP]

While revenue continues to decline, government spending is rising as a result of the $787 billion economic stimulus plan passed six months ago. Stimulus spending will increase in the next few months, says Treasury chief economist Alan Krueger.

Deficits of $1.8 trillion this year and $1.3 trillion in 2010, as predicted by the White House, would add to the federal debt. The current $11.7 trillion debt already equals about $38,500 for every U.S. resident. The recession, now in its postwar-record 21st month, has dealt a worse blow to the budget than the administration expected:

• The economy is set to shrink by 2.6% this year, more than twice what the White House predicted in February and May.

• As a result, tax revenue is down by $353 billion over 10 months, which is about what the White House thought it would lose for the entire year.

• Unemployment, projected at 8.1% this year by the White House, was 9.4% in July. Spending for jobless benefits, Medicaid and Medicare has soared as people have lost work and health insurance. Jobless benefits are costing more than twice what was spent last year.

So why are we rushing headlong into nationalizing health care? The story suggests a theory:

Former CBO director Robert Reischauer, president of the non-partisan Urban Institute, an economics and social policy think tank, says administrations tend to believe that "the harder and faster one falls, the more rapid and steep the recovery."

Only if you strap on a jet pack, people.

Senator Specter, Retirement Looms

2009-08-11T10:56:00.003-05:00

Just watched a very uncomfortable "town hall" meeting in Lebanon, Penn., with Sen. "Benedict" Arlen Specter, who despite all efforts to control the character of the people allowed inside, and the questions they asked, found it couldn't be done.

There was a handful of people who were there to support ObamaCare.

There was a super-majority of those there who despise it.

One woman challenged the senator to defend the U.S. Constitution, to return the country back to the vision of the Founding Fathers. She got a standing ovation.

Specter acknowledged the overwhelming applause, but then got booed when he told her, "That's what I've been doing." He cited a couple of instances in which he opposed President George W. Bush on "signing statements" and "warrantless wiretaps," obvious sops to the Democrat base he must please in order to win a primary next year.

And that's when it became obvious: Arlen Specter's career is nearly over. He cannot serve two masters -- and Arlen doesn't really acknowledge he has a master. He can play to the Democrats that are now his base, and he might narrowly win the primary next year, but will lose the general election. Or he can switch gears and support the people of Pennsylvania who are obviously disgusted with Washington politics and an out-of-control government, and Arlen will get trounced in the Democrat primary.

People are catching on. President Obama has already nearly equalled President Bush in the use of "signing statements" in which he declares his inpretations of bills passed by Congress. President Obama has surpassed President Bush in executive orders, already issuing more in just over six months than Bush did in eight years. If Arlen Specter were consistent, he would be on the floor of the Senate every day denouncing the trouncing of the Constitution.

But he isn't consistent, and people are catching on.

Retirement looms.

The Odds of Extremists Getting Pakistan's Nukes

2009-08-11T09:53:00.002-05:00

Not exactly your Tuesday morning "feel good" moment when you read that Pakistan's nuclear weapons facilities have been attacked three times by Islamic extremists.

WASHINGTON: Pakistan's nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in little reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety and security of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to western analysts.

The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly.

[SNIP]

Pakistan insists that its nuclear weapons are fully secured and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of the extremists or terrorists.

No chance, eh?

That statement alone ought to chill your coffee. There is no chance that roosters will lay eggs, or that aliens will land at the Dept. of Treasury with a saucer loaded with ten tons of gold bullion as a gift to the American people.

But those jihadis are pretty determined. Their odds might be long, but I don't think they're zero.

Maybe we should take out Pakistan's nuclear capability. It would serve as a signature warning for other rambunctious nations in that area.

Then we could reassess those chances to be at zero.

Who Teaches Us How to Parent?

2009-08-11T09:38:00.002-05:00

Who teaches young adults how to be parents?

The traditional answer: Their parents.

The modern answer: The government.

Chuck Norris -- yeah, that Chuck Norris, but don't dismiss him too quickly (you wouldn't be so quick to dismiss George Clooney, wouldja?) -- has a column at Townhall.com which details one of the many "dirty little secrets" of the health care reform package considered by Congress.

Norris said he did so after seeing how much anger is bubbling up over Congress' failure to discuss the details with the American people. "... I decided to research the reasons so many are opposed to Obamacare to separate the facts from the fantasy. What I discovered is that there are indeed dirty little secrets buried deep within the 1,000-plus page health care bill."

Dirty secret No. 1 in Obamacare is about the government's coming into homes and usurping parental rights over child care and development.

It's outlined in sections 440 and 1904 of the House bill (Page 838), under the heading "home visitation programs for families with young children and families expecting children." The programs (provided via grants to states) would educate parents on child behavior and parenting skills.

The bill says that the government agents, "well-trained and competent staff," would "provide parents with knowledge of age-appropriate child development in cognitive, language, social, emotional, and motor domains ... modeling, consulting, and coaching on parenting practices," and "skills to interact with their child to enhance age-appropriate development."

As Norris says, "Are you kidding me?"

I don't know about you, fellow citizens, but I don't remember ever voting on anything that says "government controls your life from here on out." Apparently Mr. Norris agrees with me because he goes into some detail:

... whose parental principles and values? Their own? Certain experts'? From what field and theory of childhood development? As if there are one-size-fits-all parenting techniques! Do we really believe they would contextualize and personalize every form of parenting in their education, or would they merely universally indoctrinate with their own?

Are we to assume the state's mediators would understand every parent's social or religious core values on parenting? Or would they teach some secular-progressive and religiously neutered version of parental values and wisdom? And if they were to consult and coach those who expect babies, would they ever decide circumstances to be not beneficial for the children and encourage abortions?

One government rebuttal is that this program would be "voluntary." Is that right? Does that imply that this agency would just sit back passively until some parent needing parenting skills said, "I don't think I'll call my parents, priest or friends or read a plethora of books, but I'll go down to the local government offices"? To the contrary, the bill points to specific targeted groups and problems, on Page 840: The state "shall identify and prioritize serving communities that are in high need of such services, especially communities with a high proportion of low-income families."

Are we further to conclude by those words that low-income families know less about parenting?

Good questions, all.

Children belong to their parents, not the government. And the parents ought to have the right -- and government support -- to parent them without the fed's mandates, education or intervention in our homes.

I'll go Chuck one better. I don't even want the federal government's "support" of parenting. According to the U.S. Constitution, the federal government has no role -- zero, zilch, nada -- when it comes to telling or advising anyone how to raise their brood.

We've gone so far down the road of interventionism that we have forgotten where the original boundary lines were drawn. It's time to peel back the pavement and the paint and find those boundaries again.

Some will say, "Tom, it's a small piece of a big picture, a voluntary program that isn't going to go anywhere." And I will reply, "Since when has the government ever backed away from exercising authority it has usurped? It will take a small hole and enlarge it. It is like an octopus, a spineless entity that can squeeze itself through very tiny openings to gorge itself on forbidden fish."

The tentacles are everywhere.

The Real Unemployment Rate?

2009-08-07T12:42:00.003-05:00

Today the administration is rejoicing, incredibly enough, at an unemployment report for July that shows that "only" 247,000 jobs were lost.

As one administration "economist" told Fox News, "it's the least worst day we've seen in a long time."

I guess that's one way to look at it. The official jobless number is 9.4 percent, one-tenth of a point better than June.

What the media is not reporting is that nearly 800,000 "workers" were take off the official roles to reduce the overall number of the workforce. These "discouraged" workers who have given up looking, the government continues to insist, should not count. As Reuters helpfully explains:

In the U.S., for the purpose of calculating the unemployment rate, the labor force is defined as those with a job plus those out of a job but actively looking for work.

If this statistical adjustment had not been made, the unemployment rate would be 9.9 percent. (It's nice to know that all those stimulus funded "shovel ready" jobs are out there providing encouragement to those long-term laid off workers, right?)

This isn't a new tactic. The Clinton and Bush administrations used the same fudge factors to make the economy look better. Only this administration is ramping it up to a new level.

If you add all the people who have been dropped from the list over the years back into the workforce, the unemployment percentage would be truly staggering.

So go if you are in a partying mood, go ahead and have your little soiree. Never mind that the total number of Americans with a job significantly declined, again, and that those seeking unemployment benefits have not decreased in number.

'Quote of the Day'

2009-08-07T12:32:00.005-05:00

Quote of the Day (thus far) goes to Jim Geraghty of The Campaign Spot blog:

"Bring in the AFL-CIO to pacify a tense situation is like bringing in the Hell's Angels to handle concert security."

If you are younger than 45, you may not understand what happened at the Altamont (CA) Speedway on December 6, 1969.

Historical refresher course HERE.

Cloud Ships? At Least It's Cheaper

2009-08-07T12:24:00.004-05:00

I'm not a believer in global warming, but if you have to spend money, $9 billion a year sounds better than "cap and trade."

Heck, it's only three times as expensive as "Cash for Clunkers."

Check out "Cloud Ships."

Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences. Scientists would probably plunge us into the next Ice Age, or create huge hurricanes.

This is a Time for Courage & Hope

2009-08-07T09:47:00.005-05:00

Two words we need to remember today, Friday, August 7, 2009:

Courage, and hope.

Courage in the face of headlines like these

"White House to Dems: Punch back twice as hard"

"Obama: 'I don't want the people who created this mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way ...'"

President Obama and his thugs allies are misreading the mood of the American people, and apparently they do not understand who Americans really are. They know that they have a losing hand, as far as the polls are concerned, with health care reform and cap and trade, but they intend to play it anyway.

It's like those hold Western films where the guy who's holding a crappy hand keeps raising the stakes, and finally someone calls his bluff. Knowing he's going to lose, he pulls out his pistol. "I won!" he declares.

That may work once or twice, but eventually the word gets around and no one will let you play anymore.

The American people are demanding accountability from their elected representatives and for their trouble are being called "mobs" and "manufactured" and inauthentic because they are too well dressed. People are raising questions, and yes, their voices, wanting to know why Congress, in league with this president, wants to take away our freedom to choose our own health care? They are denounced for exercising their First Amendment rights under the Constitution. The White House even goes so far as to call for the creation of an "enemies list" of those who post "fishy" health care information on the internet or in e-mails. This would dwarf the effort of the Nixon White House.

Now there is word that unions are sending "representatives" to congressional town hall meetings, and already this is turning ugly.

This will not work because the American people are not serfs. We are not like the oppressed peoples of the Soviet Union in 1917 who knew only backbreaking toil under the rule of the Czars. Americans love freedom. That's why we love our automobiles so much (and is the real reason that "Cash for Clunkers" worked at all, if you call wealth transference from one set of taxpayers to another working). We love individual freedom of motion. We love individual freedom, period.

Americans will not be herded like cattle into "one size fits all" plans for our health care, our energy usage, or anything else. That might work for a certain mind-set of people who have grown used to dependency upon government handouts. It will not work for the majority of Americans.

Thus there will be pushback. We need to have Courage. The Courage to confront elected leaders who have forgotten that they are elected, not royalty. We have to have the Courage to do so calmly, with humility, and non-violently. This is incredibly important.

I would even add prayerfully. This nation, blessed so abundantly by Almighty God, needs to return to being a prayerful people. I think you can understand why.

That is why there is Hope!

Peggy Noonan explains it well in a column today entitled, "You are terrifying us".

We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate.
They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan.

[SNIP]
What has been most unsettling is not the congressmen’s surprise but a hard new tone that emerged this week. The leftosphere and the liberal commentariat charged that the town hall meetings weren’t authentic, the crowds were ginned up by insurance companies, lobbyists and the Republican National Committee. But you can’t get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting with a congressman (of all people) unless they are engaged to the point of passion. And what tends to agitate people most is the idea of loss—loss of money hard earned, loss of autonomy, loss of the few things that work in a great sweeping away of those that don’t.

People are not automatons. They show up only if they care.
[SNIP]
The Democrats should not be attacking, they should be attempting to persuade, to argue for their case. After all, they have the big mic. Which is what the presidency is, the big mic.

And frankly they ought to think about backing off. The president should call in his troops and his Congress and announce a rethinking. There are too many different bills, they’re all a thousand pages long, no one has time to read them, no one knows what’s going to be in the final one, the public is agitated, the nation’s in crisis, the timing is wrong, we’ll turn to it again—but not now. We’ll take a little longer, ponder every aspect, and make clear every complication.

Ms. Noonan concludes by assuming that President Obama is not going to back off his push, and she hopes that things do not get out of hand. "It's going to be a long August," she writes.

Because even the biased mainstream media cannot ignore brutality and oppression from the government. Public support for the president and his policies is falling rapidly. Eventually even the media people have to notice that things are not going so well. All this "hopey, changey" stuff doesn't seem to working out as the people in charge of the "hopey, changey" are not playing nice.

Maybe it's that they are not nice people.

And that is the ugly secret that America is waking up to. We elected a "community organizer" who managed to put a smiley face on his hatred for what America has traditionally stood for. We fell for the rhetoric and didn't bother to investigate his background. Worse, the mainstream media failed to do the vetting it normally does for presidential candidates. All the information was there; he even told us some of what he planned. People decided it didn't fit the story line, so it was ignored, discarded.

Even worse, we sent people to Congress who want to transform America into a socialist "democracy" in which experts decide things and the people pay the bills. These are the fellow travelers of Barack Obama.

As long as America wakes up, we can survive this. Even learn from it.

If America wakes up soon, we can stall off on health care reform, as well as cap and trade, and begin setting things right in the elections of next year.

If you supported President Obama, surely you cannot be pleased at the "Punch back twice as hard" rhetoric coming from this White House. Surely, if you believe in social justice, that justice should be even-handed. It should be social justice for everyone, right? Surely you cannot condone police state attitudes at the highest levels of the administration?

My hope is that we wake up soon.

------------

UPDATE -- Got a better link for the Obama soundbite in line five of today's post.

Health Care Bill Promises Us a Nightmare

2009-08-06T10:23:00.006-05:00

For the last several days I've been reviewing HR 3200, the House version of the health care bill that will likely become the framework for whatever emerges from Congress next month.

I know when you say the words "health care reform" people's eyes glaze over. With good reason. The details are eye-glazing stuff.

I was sent a lengthy list of some of its provisions by people who have actually read the whole thing. No small task. It requires you to thumb back and forth through the various sections and, if you are not a health care professional AND an attorney, it's difficult reading. I've had to do quite a bit of research just to understand some of the terms employed. It's an ugly read, but an important one.

After extensive reading, I have come to several conclusions, some of which I will share here. Others I will post shortly.

For anyone who believes that personal liberty trumps the needs of the collective, HR 3200 is a nightmare knocking at the door. It's Edgar Allen Poe answering the call of the "raven."

Or maybe that's not the right analogy. Maybe it's like Frankenstein's Monster, breaking his chains and rampaging out of the laboratory, ready to terrify the surrounding populace.

That's not quite right either. It has elements of Bram Stoker's Dracula, in that an ancient evil -- Marxism -- has invited itself over to a new country, the formerly freedom-loving United States, to suck the life-blood out of our economy and our people.

Health care reform as it is coming, unless we rise up and demand that our elected officials stop it, has elements of all of these things, and more.

It literally is a matter of life and death. HR 3200 hands over that power to the State.

When health care is run by the state, you have no other recourse than to rely on the state to determine who gets health care and who does not. In other words, who lives, and who dies. Who suffers and who is treated.

And there is no higher authority to whom you can appeal. The federal government cannot be sued for decisions made in the normal exercise of its authority.

You will still be able to sue your physician, or dentist, or the guy who administers your anesthesia. The trial lawyers, at least in the short term, have no need to fear HR 3200.

But, you will not be able to sue the "administrator" who determines that your prescribed medical treatment cannot be allowed because you are no longer a net benefit to society, and therefore not worth the cost to society of giving it to you. He is, after all, only helping you understand the regulations.

Whether you are allowed to stay on your private insurance plan or not, health care will be tightly regulated by the government. Unless you are remarkably healthy, there will be moments in your life in which your well being will be determined by "administrators" and "bureaucrats" who will be interpreting mounds of rules and regulations, which will change constantly as is the norm with all bureaucracies.

It is not clear to me whether you will have the right to spend your own money on health care not covered by "the system." I suspect that if a loophole does exist, it will be closed.

Whether or not you like horror movies, I guarantee you that you will not like Government Health Care and Government Health Insurance, which are one and the same thing.

You will mourn your loss of freedom. You will struggle under the increase in taxes and fees.

You will be angry as our economy collapses into a permanent state of depression, with the government emerging as the main player in regulating jobs and professions.

And there will be almost nothing, at that point, that you can do about it.

I challenge you to do your own research. Read the bill. Listen to what the defenders of health care reform are saying, but verify if they are telling the truth. Listen to the opponents of health care reform, but verify.

I think your eyes will be opened.

It is not yet too late.

The State Alternative to Life Saving Medical Care ,,,

2009-08-05T17:11:00.004-05:00

Barbara Wagner is covered under the state-run health care plan in Oregon, established 1994.

Last year her lung cancer returned. A treatment was available.

So was an alternative.

Looking at the difference between spending $300,000 on saving her life, or their alternative plan, the officials of Oregon's medical system told Barbara that only the alternative was available to her.

It would cost the state $100.

It is called "Assisted Suicide."

Physicians for Reform -- but who advocate patient-centered health care -- document her story on their web site.

Oregon state officials controlled the process of healthcare decision-making—not Barbara and her physician. Chemotherapy would cost the state $4,000 every month she remained alive; the drugs for physician-assisted suicide held a one-time expense of less than $100. Barbara’s treatment plan boiled down to accounting. To cover chemotherapy state policy demanded a five percent patient survival rate at five years. As a new drug, Tarceva did not meet this dispassionate criterion. To Oregon, Barbara was no longer a patient; she had become a "negative economic unit."

A negative economic unit. Worth too little to save.

That's the same kind of happy talk you hear around the edges of those who are pushing federal health care reform. People like Ezekial Emmanuel, Rahm's doctor brother, have talked and written openly of the need to quit saving people who are too damaged, too old, suffering from dementia, because they are a drain on society's resources.

This is not the America I grew up loving, and I hope it is not the America in which I die.

You may be young and healthy now, but what happens if you have that tragic car accident that leaves you in "negative economic" status?

Read, learn and contemplate your fate.

Too Busy for Town Hall Meetings? We Understand

2009-08-05T13:09:00.002-05:00

I noticed over at Muskogee Polico that there is at least one disgruntled citizen of the Second District who questions -- well, demands actually -- that Congressman Dan Boren meet with his constituents during the so-called "Summer District Work Period."

Apparently Mr. Boren has decided that he's too, too busy to actually hold town hall meetings and listen to his constituents.

Well, what did you expect?

The carpet-bagging congressman, son of former governor and senator David Boren, has spent most of his life in places other than the Second District. Sophisticated places like Seminole, Okla., Oklahoma City, and Washington, D.C. Think of the sacrifices he has made already, having to move to Muskogee, Okla., just to find a district where there was no apparent Republican quick enough to counter his "Sportsmen for Boren" B.S.

Not that I have anything against Muskogee, but how can you compare it to the likes of our nation's capital, where the Second Amendment flourishes. Oh, it doesn't. Nevermind.

Boren is one of the Rahm Emmanuel-recruited Blue Dogs who gave Nancy Pelosi the driver's seat in the House of Representatives. It's an important job, pretending to fight for constitutional, conservative values while voting 60 to 70 percent of the time with the Progressive agenda of the Democratic left. A job like that takes a lot of time and talent. You don't necessarily need to waste it actually meeting with the people who pay the bills and vote.

So Mr. Boren, we understand. Go ahead and do the work of the American people and don't worry about us little American people in your district.

We don't expect you to show up anytime soon.

Just don't expect us to show up to vote for you in November 2010.

Truth May Get You on a White House List

2009-08-05T11:04:00.005-05:00

The protests at Town Hall meetings are not authentic gauges of American opinion. They are manufactured, according to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, aka the Director of the Joseph Goebbels Institute of Information. He claims that polls show the American people are perfectly content to be led without question by The One.

Yeah, right. Show us those polls, Bobby.

The video clips you have seen showing our president advocating a "single payer" health care system -- a fancy way of saying Government Health Care -- but that it would take several years to phase it in: you didn't really see what you saw. You didn't really hear what you heard. White House "Ministry of Truth for Health Care Reform" director Linda Douglass, formerly of ABC, has told us, in a 3-minute video, that we have been fooled by people with computers who know how to clip and splice videos.

Yeah, right. (The videos in question were unedited and quite lengthy).

Then there is this, posted on the White House official blog site, from a Truth minister named Macon Phillips, who is asking that Americans rat out their fellow countrymen:

Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things."

Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.

[SNIP]

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Can you imagine the howls from the Left had the Bush White House posted something like this?

We complain that our congresspersons don't read the legislation, and won't talk about its specifics, and when we do read the health care bill and share our findings publicly, we are accused of being "disinformation peddlers" (liars) and now the White House wants to compile a database on us.

Good golly, Miss Molly!

Who are these people?

What is really scary is that the mainstream media takes its cue from the White House, more often than not accepting without question the spin from the various official spinmeisters.

All we have left is the truth, but will that be enough?

Gulfstreams for the Elite on Capitol Hill

2009-08-05T10:40:00.003-05:00

No more commercial flights home for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The reports of her badgering the Air Force for free rides on executive class jets are legendary since she became Speaker of the House. On the few occasions where she has been told that no Gulfstream jets were available, she reportedly flew into tirades.

The fix, however, may be in.

Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies.

But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.

The Air Force had asked for one Gulfstream 550 jet (price tag: about $65 million) as part of an ongoing upgrade of its passenger air service.

But the House Appropriations Committee, at its own initiative, added to the 2010 Defense appropriations bill another $132 million for two more airplanes and specified that they be assigned to the D.C.-area units that carry Members of Congress, military brass and top government officials.

Because the Appropriations Committee viewed the additional aircraft as an expansion of an existing Defense Department program, it did not treat the money for two more planes as an earmark, and the legislation does not disclose which Member had requested the additional money.

But we know, don't we!

The political class in Washington just doesn't get it. At a time when millions of Americans have lost their jobs, and many others take "under" employment just to get by, this Congress and the executive branch continue to spend like there's no tomorrow.

And if they keep going like this, there won't be.

Sure, another $200 million for three fancy jets is but a drop in the bucket of the national budget, but it makes a statement. We're important; you, not so much.

Remember the image of this elite jet. Remember how the auto chiefs were lambasted by lawmakers when they flew private jets to Washington, at Congress' demand, to testify.

Oh, the theatre! Oh, the drama!

Oh, the hypocrisy!

What Exactly Was Celebrated?

2009-08-05T10:25:00.002-05:00

The Question is this: Was this to celebrate the president's 48th birthday, or the fact that he is the 44th president?

Another slice of hubris, anyone?

'Disappointing' Tornado Season?

2009-08-05T09:01:00.005-05:00

Sad news for The Associated Press reporter who filed today's screed on "Tepid Tornado Season Disappoints Some."

She couldn't get anyone to ascribe this year's mild tornado season to anything horrific, like global warming.

Meteorologists are attributing the relative calm not to anything dire, like global warming, but to the shifts in the jet stream that happen from time to time.

Can you sense her disappointment? She notes that "only" 21 people have died this year. She begins her story acknowledging that fewer deadly twisters are

good news, of course, for the people who live here, but a little frustrating to scientists who planned to chase twisters as part of a $10 million research project.

Of course, being the enterprising reporter that she must be, she attempts no connection of a mild tornado season, including an unusual 17-day absence in late May and early June, to the lack of sunspot activity. If she asks the question of the meteorologists she interviews, she makes no mention of it.

Global warming, you see, is now sacred creed, and you can't question its impact. Even when it seems to have gone away.

The correlation of sunspot data with earth temperature or earth weather simply will not be allowed.

Eliminate the Home Run Derby

2009-08-04T17:55:00.006-05:00

Shifting gears here toward a subject near and dear to my heart.

Baseball.

But my heart is troubled as I have had it up to my armpits with the stupid Home Run Derby that precedes the annual All Star game.

It wouldn't bother me so much if the hitters on my favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals, would just say no to participating.

A few years ago it was Jim Edmonds who wore himself out with a HR Derby appearance. Shortly afterward he threw out his shoulder, and he never did return to the power numbers he had had.

This year Albert Pujols participated, in large part, I think, because St. Louis was hosting the All Star game and he felt an obligation. He hasn't been the same since. I'm sure he'll snap out of this uncharacteristic slump, but his numbers since the All Star game are way down.

If I were a team owner or manager, I would make sure the contracts with the players included prohibitions against competing in the derby. It's both bad business and bad baseball to perpetuate this thing.

If you have to hold a derby, do it at the end of the season, maybe the night before the opening of the World Series. Exempt any player that will be in the World Series, however.

But there is a also a good argument against ending the HR Derby. There are only so many home runs that a player will hit during his career. Each one hit during a derby is one less that he will slam during a game, when it counts. You don't see the NFL tossing the ball 10 times to running backs at the 15 yard line and telling them to score a touchdown against a wall of tacklers. Somebody might get hurt. In fact, in the Pro Bowl, at the end of the season, players do get hurt. But they have the off season to heal.

The HR Derby is not like batting practice and it's not like a real game.

It's less than either. It can introduce errors into a hitter's natural swing, which makes it a blight upon the game.

Recent Weird Presidential Art

2009-08-04T15:45:00.007-05:00

For all those think it is unseemly to depict President Obama as "The Joker," ala Heath Ledger, it was only last July that Vanity Fair used this as a cover, depicting our last president.

I don't think it raised much of a fuss even from die-hard Bush fans. (On the center and right you sort of get used to this kind of treatment by the media and the Left.) It was considered high art by all the left people.

Somewhat earlier the Village Voice in New York City had this sophisticated characterization to offer its readers:

Move along, folks. Nothing unseemingly here.

So where did the Obama art originate?

On Day Two of the media circus, no one is sure, but researchers have found a Flickr posting of a Chicago engineering student, doing a photoshopped takeoff on a Time magazine cover just two days before Obama's inauguration (four images down). His caption:

"Not necessary indicative of my political views. But I do think hes not all he said he is. You can already sense he's backing off his claims of change."

Quite a bit like the LA posters, isn't it?

Americans have never held their presidents in such high regard as to consider their images sacred, and I believe that's a good thing, all in all. We don't elect kings, archdukes, Gods or even messiahs (despite the campaign rhetoric)! We nominate and elect fallible human beings, some of whom surprise us with good behavior, courage and wisdom, while others disappoint us with hubris, paranoia, concupiscence and/or arrogance. Most presidents are somewhere in between.

The ability of the lowliest American to take his exalted leader down a few pegs, vicariously speaking, is one of the weird aspects of our culture that I think works to our advantage. It's political speech that helps us decide what we really think, pro or con. It allows people to mentally blow off steam while at the same time solidifying their values.

So for all those angry "experts" who are ready to imprison the Obama the Joker artist, I say this:

"Buy your own crayons."

Excellent Health Care TV Coverage

2009-08-04T15:39:00.003-05:00

John Stossel is doing excellent work on explaining the differences between private (for profit) and government-run health care.

If you have 6 minutes and 23 seconds to spare, check out his report HERE.

Those Pesky ObamaCare Details

2009-08-04T13:17:00.003-05:00

From HHS Director Kathleen Sebelius in today's Washington Post:

President Obama and I are working closely with Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate and health-care experts to make sure we get the details of health reform right. But we can't let the details distract us from the huge benefits that reform will bring.

No, those pesky details merely distract people from all the marvelous benefits. Like taxpayer funded abortions for all!

... the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the pro-abortion side narrowly won adoption of a "phony compromise" amendment offered by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.) (who has a zero percent career pro-life voting record) that would result in elective abortions being covered under the government-operated "public plan" the bill would create, and would allow federal subsidies to flow to private insurance plans that cover elective abortions. The pro-abortion members of the committee voted down an NRLC-backed amendment offered by Reps. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) to prohibit federal subsidies from going to plans that cover elective abortions.

The Senate version isn't any better, we are told.

How dare we question whether they've read the bill!

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2009-08-04T13:06:00.003-05:00

Okay, so the guy violates bank policy by thwarting a robbery ...

... but does he deserve losing his job?

Crime doesn't pay, and neither does stopping one.

A Seattle bank teller learned that lesson the hard way last week when he thwarted a would-be robbery — and got fired for bucking company policy.

Jim Nicholson was working at a Key Bank branch on Tuesday when a man wearing a beanie cap, dark clothing and sunglasses entered the bank and demanded money. That's when instinct overwhelmed him.

"They tell us that we're just supposed to comply, but my instincts kicked in and I did what's best to stop the guy," the 30-year-old Nicholson told The Seattle Times. "I thought if I let him go he would rob more banks and cause more problems."

Rather than comply with the robber's demands, Nicholson tossed his bag to the floor, lunged at the suspect and demanded to see a weapon.

"My intent was to grab his glasses off his face, or him," Nicholson told the paper.

The man ran, and Nicholson chased him for several blocks before knocking him down with help from a passerby. Nicholson then held the suspect, Aaron J. Sloan, 29, until police arrived.

Nicholson's reward? Two days after the failed heist, he was fired.

Of course, the police and the bank defend their policy, which is money can be replaced, but people can't.

But once upon a time in America Jim Nicholson would be hailed as a hero.

You don't have to give him a reward, but isn't firing him a bit over the top?

Clunkernomics II -- An Auto Price Hike for Poor People

2009-08-04T12:55:00.004-05:00

People are waking up.

John Stossel of ABC News, reports on his blog:

Another unintended consequence of the Cash for Clunkers program is that poor people who can’t afford new cars – or expensive used cars -- will be crushed along with all those clunkers. If you can only afford $500 - $1,000 for a car, you’ll find many of these vehicles are now unavailable. They have been sent to the junk yard thanks to this program.
The Blogger News Network points out that junk yards that demolish the clunkers aren’t allowed to pull engines and other parts before they’re crushed, making parts for older cars harder and more expensive to get.

The only disagreement I might have with Mr. Stossel is the word "unintended." It would not surprise me to learn that there is a motive behind this that poor people will not like.