Obama's State of Anti-Americanism

President Barack Obama strutted in front of Congress and the nation last night to give his State of the Union address. This time his undeniable oratorical skills simply could not save him from the facts that have become clear in his first full year in office, facts that now have his speeches sounding more and more like skips on a broken record.

Let's start by taking a look at what his programs have actually done over the past year, and see what he said last night. Directly because of the programs and initiatives launched by the Obama administration, our unemployment rate has soared past the 10% mark for the first time in decades and our national debt has been set on course to triple over the next decade.

But what is Obama suggesting that we do as we move into his vision of the future? Spend more, go further into debt, reward cronyism and failed industries. Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress wish to throw massive amounts of good money after excessive and irresponsible amounts of bad.

The President proposed in his speech last night to "take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use it to help community banks give small businesses the credit they need to stay afloat." So we taxpayers, who did not want to do it in the first place, loaned money to banks. It was repaid, but now we lend that same money back out to banks? So what exactly is going to have been "repaid"?

Why again did I lend money to banks in the first place? Do you know why? To save the financial system from collapse? Really? And why do we taxpayers need to prop up any business that cannot succeed on the strength of it's own hard work, value, worth, and entrepreneurial skills? Businesses large and small have gone under for centuries. Why do we have to save some now with taxpayer dollars?

Next the President said "We can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow...There's no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products." Really? Why not? What does having the fastest trains in the world have to do with anything at all? If China has a train that goes 200 miles per hour, why do we need one that goes 250?

Has the President even bothered to look at every single study of mass transit in this country? All the studies show that the vast majority of these mass transit systems: buses, trains, trolleys, etc go without ridership for the majority of the day. It is only during certain peak hours that ridership is full. But the trains and buses run all day and night long, running up massive fuel, maintenance, and labor costs. And the vast majority of the public doesn't use these systems on any regular basis at all. Those are the facts.

Why do we need to build new manufacturing plants for business? If a business wants a new plant, and will benefit economically from it's construction, then why doesn't it just build one itself?

Obama then finally spoke a truth, but he spoke it in typically veiled fashion: "The only way to move to full employment is to lay a new foundation for long-term economic growth, and finally address the problems that America's families have confronted for years." Well, first of all, that is not exactly truth. There will never be "full employment", whatever that means. But we get the idea and the goal of creating as many decent jobs for as many people who actually want to and are able to work.

The only proven way to create long-term sustainable jobs that will make a real difference in the lives of the greatest amount of people is to get government out of the way and allow private industry to flourish with minimal restraints. Keep taxes as low as possible across the board, and keep regulation to reasonable levels that are not a result of partisan political studies or a knee-jerk overreaction to occasional errors.

But what Obama and the Democrats want to do is what is known as 'picking the winners', making the decisions as to which businesses and industries are worthwhile and valuable and worth investing in and then forcing Americans to live with their decisions. Rather than leaving the business community alone to develop products and services and allow the American dollar-paying public to decide based on their own desires.

Obama played the scare tactic by mentioning that Germany and China and India were not waiting to pour money into 'clean energy' because "they want those jobs." Which jobs is he talking about? You mean the jobs that they are creating by the pouring in of all that money? Why would Obama possibly compare what the U.S. should do to what these nations are doing? Because they are socialist (Germany), communist (China), or corrupt quasi-socialist economic (India) nations, that's why.

Obama also continues to be shameless in his attempts to embarrass Republicans into 'going over to the Dark Side' and joining with the Democrats in making these changes. He once again mentioned that "saying no" and disagreeing continuously is not a policy idea. The fact is that individual Republican lawmakers and the Republican Party leadership have put forth numerous ideas, only to be ignored or slapped down every time by the Democratic Party-controlled congress.

Republican Party politicans in Congress and the Senate have, in fact, no obligation to blindly follow the President and fall in lock-step with the Democrats to pass laws and bills and enact policies that they know will only hurt America in the long run. They are absolutely supposed to attempt to "say no" to the President and disagree with him when he is wrong, which is on almost every issue.

Republican politicians need to not only continue to stand up to the Obama policies strongly and vocally when warranted, but in fact need to more fully and substantively embrace traditional American ideals and programs which support these ideas themselves, or many will find themselves tossed out of their own offices in the coming primary elections.

Barack Obama's vision for America is nothing short of full-blown socialism. The complete destruction of the capitalist system that elevated the United States to the greatest economic levels in the history of the world and kept us there for more than a century. The reason is simple: the power and control that comes with running a state-controlled economy and a central government.

He will play all of the usual race-baiting and class-warfare games to make this happen, implying or directly saying that those who don't go along are racist or want babies to starve or the elderly to go without medical care. He will use a mass media that has become slowly and surely and almost completely infected by individuals with the same political and social beliefs as his over the last few decades.

He further called for an "investment in the skills and education of our people." What exactly does that mean? There was a time when the American educational system was the envy of the world. What changed all that? What changed it was these very liberal ideals invading the classroom and shifting our students attention away from important learning skills to forced cultural sensitivity.

For generations, American students have been historically and socially indoctrinated in the classroom far more than they have been educated. Because some couldn't or wouldn't keep up, everyone was forced to drag back to their level. And the teaching and enforcing of morality and discipline? Forget about it. If Obama wants to improve the American educational system, he needs to get the government out of the classrooms.

Finally, Obama continued to pour it on for his outrageously enormous takeover of what is already the greatest health-care system that the world has ever known, despite the fact that the large majority of the American public doesn't want any part of a government-run system. Health-care needs responsible reform, not a comprehensive government takeover and the accompanying massive cost to the tax-paying public, as Obama and the Dems are trying to force down our throats.

Right now what Obama and the Democrats have been doing for a year and continue to plan towards the future is the insinuation of the government into effective or direct control of every major facet of our lives. The only way to stop this suicidal power-grab is to reverse the political fortunes of the country as soon as possible, before things get too bad to ever reverse.

As the brilliant economist Thomas Sowell has so perfectly put it "human beings have their own individual preferences, values, plans, and wills all of which can conflict with and even thwart the goals of social experiments." What Obama and the Democrats are advocating is what Sowell calls an "open-ended demand", one that calls for "ever-expanding government bureaucracies with ever-expanding budgets and powers."

We Americans have certainly been getting exactly what Barack Obama promised in his campaign: Change. While I personally did not vote for him, I have a hard time believing that most of those who did so were thinking about fundamentally changing the United States of America from a nation built upon the God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness into a socialist nation that stifles liberty and replaces the pursuit of happiness with your acceptance of whatever the government deems oughta be what you think happiness should entail.

One of today's great scholars, Dinesh D'Souza, a legal immigrant who became a White House policy advocate, stated "America represents a new way of being human and thus presents a radical challenge to the world." In describing "American exceptionalism", D'Souza called it the idea that "Americans have throughout their history held that they are special: that their country has been blessed by God, that the American system is unique, that Americans are not like people everywhere else."

If all of the polls taken in recent months are telling the truth, then the American public is starting to wake up to the fact that Obama and the Democrats are steering us away, far away, from our founding and established ideals and that very "American exceptionalism" that we have always cherished. With the continuing of God's blessings on our special experiment in democracy we can begin to remove them from office as has been happening already all across the country, reverse the damaging course upon which they have set us, and begin to reclaim our national greatness and prosperity.

Videos: Hidden Bank Practices Regarding Deceptive Fees

From Denny: This will get your blood boiling fast for sure! Educate yourself how to handle your banking relationship as American and European banks work overtime to make the consumer pay for the bank's bad investment choices.

Note: Royal Bank of Scotland took bailout money from two countries - America and the United Kingdom and then had the nerve to tell everyone they were refusing to loan any money to the same taxpayers, preferring to apply the bailout money to its profit line.

There are several videos on this subject to give you an overview of how the banking trend has been developing for some time and appears to not to be going away any time in this generation unless the public gets serious about pushback.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Why are banks raising their fees? This was reported 17 July 2009 and explains the banking position which Americans are so angry about getting caught in like a vice grip:


Watch CBS Videos Online

This was reported at the beginning of American ire against the banks right after the taxpayer bailouts infuriated everyone:


Watch CBS Videos Online

This video goes all the way back to 10 June 2005, discussing bank fees. Note that this is about 10 months after Hurricane Katrina hit, causing economic devastation that reveberated throughout the economy. Banks have been getting to the consumer for five years now!


Watch CBS Videos Online

Note: The reason I use NBC News and CNN videos the most is that they do a better job than CBS News by taking care of their links and keep the stories up longer. Apologies to anyone who finds sometimes these two older CBS videos might not work.

Video: Pushing Back Against Big Business Banks Outrageous Practices

From Denny: I've been wondering how long it was going to take someone to start a Pushback Revolution against Big Business Banks. Let's not forget that Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland took money from TWO governments and has joined in with the USA banks to jack up good credit customers' rates. The new strategy after Congress passed anemic credit card legislation this past year is to fee everyone to death while taking government bailout monies to pad their profit bottom line.

This lady is frustrated with Bank of America. Too many of America's banks got in mindset lockstep to gouge the American consumer. They think they will actually retain these customers and have plenty of business for the future! I doubt it. Why? Because just recently the Obama economic guys came out to say they expected American debt to go down by about $4 billion. Guess what, it went down by about $20 billion. What a shock.

It's obvious America is getting off credit cards as fast as they can pay off debt. You won't see a return to business as usual for probably generations, as long as someone is alive to remember how the middle class is getting royally screwed in the wallet by big business and banks.

The Bogeyman Enters Health-Care Debate

I know things have been getting really bad for the ultra-liberal Obama crowd lately, what with real Americans turning out in force and voicing their opinions loudly denouncing the President's policies at so-called 'town hall' meetings, particularly in regards to health care.

The policies instituted by the far-left, elitist Obama administration over the past six months have been staggeringly irrational and irresponsible, heaping tremendous debt on to the shoulders of our children and grandchildren, many of whom actually went out and voted for Obama with delusions of some non-specific "Hope" for some specious "Change".

Is this what they voted for, really? They actually want to be burdened for the rest of their lives by the tax bills, higher prices, and fewer jobs that are coming from these Obama policies?

Polls are beginning to show the truth. A new poll from Time magazine showed that 62% of Americans believe that health-care reform will raise costs in the long term, 65% believe reforms will make things more complicated for regular folks, and 56% believe it will result in less freedom in choosing doctors or health plans.

At the same time, research by Pollster.com, which compiles the numbers of various high-profile polls to get a more significant number, shows that overall support for President Obama, his "approval rating", is plummeting, down now to 52% from a high of 64% just six months ago. These are significant developments, and the Obama administration and the Democratic Party-controlled congress are feeling the heat.

In almost every mid-term election, the party in power loses seats, and in next year's 2010 congressional elections the Democrats are poised to continue this tradition. If the negativity surrounding the health-care reform issue, and the issues involving bailouts/stimulus plans continues with no significant turnaround in the overall economy, the Dems will pay a heft price in the voting booths next November.

Today on my way to work, I was doing what many Philadelphians do on our driving commutes. I was listening to KYW News Radio 1060am, Philly's only all-news station. One of the stories that came on sometime around 7:20am was regarding an alleged growing "problem" involving militias.

Now don't get me wrong, some militia groups across the country are extremist in nature, that much is for sure. But the tone and tenor of this broadcast piece involved how militia groups are not only growing, and that some may be militant, but the groups are also opposing President Obama's proposals on universal health care and other of his policies.

The piece went on to also state that much of this opposition is taking on a 'racial tone', though they failed to elaborate on what that meant.

This is where things are heading. The Left has a big time loser on it's hand in the health-care reform issue. Obama's effort to send his congressional minions out amongst the people and sell us on it's merits has failed miserably. So now it's come down to the usual tactics of fear and negativity association. Time to break out the bogeyman.

Universal health care is opposed by those crazy, gun-totin', anti-government, conspiratorial militias. They are all against the President because he is black and they are all racist whites. These are the people that are against President Obama and the rest of us forward-thinkers. Are you on our side? On the President's side? On the side of 'progress' over 'failed policies of Bush' and the past?

If your plan is going down in flames, all you need to do is mention 'Bush' or equate it with some other perceived bogeyman such as evil 'militia groups', and you can turn things around?

The liberal Left and their political puppets that make up the vast majority of today's Democratic Party need to wake up and realize that their President has gone too far with his socialist-inspired policies and programs. They need to stop blindly supporting him just because he has a 'D' before his name politically.

There are many good, strong Democratic politicians whose overall policies I may not agree with very often, but who would not be turning America into a shadow of its former greatness. Democrats need to recognize the direction that their "Change" vote is taking the country, and recognize the scare tactics their pols and political supporters in the media are trying to foist on them.

America is very much in danger, but that danger is not from militias, multinational corporations, Republicans, or angry Nazi mobs at town hall meetings. We are in danger of sinking under the weight of the tremendous debt load, individual taxation increases, government controls on private industry, and increased burdens on businesses that the Obama administration has wrought.

Take a good, long, hard look in the mirror, Democrats. The real bogeyman is right there looking back at you, and only you can stop him.

Capitalism: A Love Story

Michael Moore is a maker of documentary films for liberal values and anti-American causes, and his latest titled "Capitalism: A Love Story" is going to be no exception. In this film, slated to be released in early Fall, Moore will attempt to portray capitalism as the root cause of the American and global financial meltdowns over the past couple of years, calling it "the biggest swindle in American history."

Let's give credit where it is due, Moore is good at his craft. He knows how to push all the right buttons, slice all the right video clips, edit all the right sound bytes, and basically tell a story in the way that his political views and values want that story told. You need a propaganda documentary made? Michael Moore is your man.

This is all well and good as long as you understand going into the theatre that this is what you will be paying your money to see: propaganda. One side of a story, told from a slanted view, through a tinted lens. The fact is that greedy corporate tycoons and misguided politicians, flawed human beings, have been the problem, not our capitalist economic system.

Now if what you really want is the truth of the matter, explained in depth, with examples and in complete historical and political context, then what you want to do is pick up a copy of a book called "How Capitalism Saved America" by Thomas J. DiLorenzo and find out why he says "Free-market capitalism, based on private property and peaceful exchange, is the source of civilization and human progress."

In his book, DiLorenzo fully explains the overwhelming evidence which indicates that exactly what Barack Obama and his Democratic Party cohorts are doing right now: more regulations, taxes, government-run industries, controls, protectionism, and other forms of intervention, the poorer a country will be. These interventions will cause higher unemployment, higher prices, shortages of goods and services, and many other problems.

In his great work on capitalism titled "The Wealth of Nations", Adam Smith explained it's most important elements: the division of labor, social cooperation, and free exchange. The idea of serving one's fellow man is central to capitalism. As DiLorenzo puts it "In a capitalist economy the primary means of improving one's standard of living is giving others that which they want."

It is precisely because of capitalism that "the average American working person today lives better in many ways than kings did serveral hundred years ago." Capitalism is pure democracy. People decide how they wish to spend their hard-earned money, in effect voting with their dollars, and everyone's dollar vote counts the same.

Key to capitalism, and indeed the key to overall freedom and economic prosperity, is private property rights. The absence of such rights has been the major cause of poverty around the world. Since the 15th century creation of commercial property law and commercial law courts designed to enforce and protect property rights, capitalism has grown and flourished, along with every nation that has adhered closely to it's principles.

You see it already with attacks on the tobacco industry, the health industry, and many more to come. The Obama administration is clearly anti-capitalist, couching the control of money and power in public interest rhetoric. They will destroy jobs and economic freedom, all in an effort at socialist control. And now Moore will actually attack the very idea of capitalism itself.

Have there been those who have abused the capitalist system? Absolutely. As long as there are living, breathing human beings behind any form or system of government or economic power there will be greed, misuse, and corruption. That is what our justice and legal system is supposed to be for, to weed out criminals and make them pay for their crimes.

What America needed was a change to closer scrutiny in business practices and harsher public punishments for those who abused and manipulated the financial and economic system. It also needed a far more realistic home ownership policy. It needed to tweak capitalism, not trash it in favor of corporate bailouts, tax-payer funded stimulus plans, and socialism.

DiLorenzo states at the end of his book, that "capitalism has been America's great blessing." I might rather put it that our relationship with God since our very inception has been our actual great blessing. The intellectual ability to formulate and put into practice our system of capitalism has been one of His great gifts to us. The question before us now is, will Americans allow 2 1/2 centuries of greateness to be destroyed by one radical presidential term?

Capped, Traded, and Changed Out of Existence

You may not have heard of the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, sometimes also known as the Waxman-Markey bill after it's Democratic sponsor congressmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey. You more likely have heard of the term "cap and trade" being thrown around by the news media.

It's all the same stuff, it was passed by Congress last week and is now being considered by the U.S. Senate, and what it all means is a bigger tax bill and higher prices for every single American citizen during these already tough economic times.

No matter what anyone on either side of the issue will tell you, they will never be able to adequately describe for you in just a short article the full scope and impact of Waxman-Markey, or 'cap and trade', but it will absolutely result in more money being taken from the pockets of every single person who is reading this article.

The main announced intent of the increasingly socialist Obama administration with this bill is to forcibly move the United States into 'green' solutions for what it believes to be a man-made global warming problem, and to move American industry towards 'cleaner' and more environmentally friendly processes, particularly where energy-usage is concerned.

The problem is that by forcing both companies and private citizens into compliance, the government is raising the cost on all in order to make the changes to meet new standards. These higher costs when pointed towards businesses will result in reduced wages and layoffs, or higher prices for consumers, or both, as business passes along these increased costs to the public through higher prices, or reduces work forces to cut expenses, or both.

All of this forced 'change' from the Obama administration and its Democratic congressional cohorts, resulting in fewer jobs, high prices, or more likely both, comes while the country is already mired in a deep economic crisis that shows no end. And now he wants a massive taxpayer-funded, government-controlled healthcare plan as well, a measure that will further increase expenses and cripple the economy.

But why? Why would the President and Democrats in congress want to push legislation on the citizens of the country that will hurt them in the pocketbook during already tough times? There must be incredible societal and environmental benefits to these programs, right? Not really.

Most reasonable experts on both sides believe these already massive public programs are only a small percentage of what would be needed to realistically do any good. The odds are that, like every single large-scale government program ever run, they will grow out-of-control over the years without ever supplying the hoped-for benefits.

So why is the government passing these programs? Why are they buying up interests in banks, insurance companies, automobile companies? Why are they taking over control of the tobacco industry? Why are they forcing businesses and homes to convert to 'green' technologies that will provide negligible benefits to the environment? Why are they trying to create a new public healthcare program that is universally agreed will be massive and back-breakingly expensive for our economy?

It has nothing to do with improving peaple's lives, or saving the planet, or stopping global warming, or providing cheaper energy. It is all about one simple word: control. The Obama adminstration and the majority of the Democratic party leadership has become socialist in thinking and acting, albeit unwilling to embrace the truth of that term as an identity.

What this means to you is that, directly because of 'cap and trade', because of government-run and influenced industries, because of universal healthcare, you will take home less and less money in your paychecks, if you are among the fortunate to even continue to have a paycheck to bring home.

People need to wake up and realize that they did not vote for a President and party leadership that would hug trees and save whales with them. They did not vote for a President who will protect them from outside agressors who continue to threaten our way of life. They did not vote for people who care about them as Americans.

They voted for a group that thinks it knows better than you what is best for you and your family, and that is actively moving to take away, not protect, the freedoms that were previously guaranteed to us as individual free citizens.

Waxman-Markey, 'cap and trade', or better yet 'tax and raid' is one more in a series of inappropriate and even dangerous moves by the Democratic power structure as it takes over the country and turns it from the greatest economic machine and military power that the world had ever seen into a Euro-trash nation on the brink of extinction.

That is not an exaggeration. If the current pace is allowed to continue much longer, the United States of America as most of us has known and loved it for the vast majority of our lives will no longer exist. Obama and the Dems have even more interference planned for your lives coming soon.

But don't believe me. If you are smart, stop accepting that Barack Obama is somehow brighter than you, and do the research on the actual details of these issues and how the outcomes will directly affect you and your family. Don't blow me and others off as simple political scare-tactics using opponents with a wave of your dismissive hands. Research the actual issues in full, then decide.

Those of us who love the real America have to hope that the blinders come off, and that the 2010 congressional elections will begin to turn our country back around, before it becomes too late for our grandchildren to know the greatness of the once God-fearing and God-blessed nation known as the United States of America.

Have We Got a Deal For You

"I," said the president, who is inordinately fond of the first-person singular pronoun, "want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy meddling in the private sector." He said that in March, when the government already owned 80 percent of AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. "When a difficult decision has to be made on matters like where to open a new plant or what type of new car to make, the new GM, not the United States government, will make that decision."

But the government is GM's largest shareholder, customer, tax collector, regulator, partner in determining employees' compensation, protector of dealers and pension guarantor. GM's other large owner, the United Auto Workers, is increasingly a government dependant.

Yet Steve Rattner and Ron Bloom, two of the president's fixers of Detroit, recently wrote in USA Today that government "will play no role" in running GM. They were not under oath.

"What we are not doing -- what I have no interest in doing -- is running GM," says the president who, when not firing GM's CEO, purging its board of directors and picking new members, is designing new products (imposing fuel economy requirements that will control size, weight, passenger capacity and safety). The president, overcoming his professed reluctance to run GM, resembles the journalist Don Marquis when, after a month on the wagon, he ordered a double martini and exclaimed: "I've conquered my goddam willpower."

Washington mandates that Detroit must build cars for which there is much less demand than Washington demands that there be. Then Washington tries to manufacture demand with a $7,500 tax credit for purchasers of the electric Chevrolet Volt, supposedly GM's salvation. So, GM is to be saved by a product people will not buy without a cash incentive larger than the income tax paid by 83.4 percent of America's families.

It is reasonable to assume that GM will become profitable -- if you make unreasonable assumptions about annual vehicle sales and GM's share of the market. Besides, the government that runs Amtrak (which has lost $23 billion, in today's dollars, just since 1990) vows to make GM efficient.

But one reason Amtrak runs on red ink is that legislators treat it as their toy train set, preventing it from cutting egregiously unprofitable routes. Will Congress passively accept auto plant-closing decisions? Rattner says Washington's demure vow is: "No plant decisions, no dealer decisions, no color-of-the-car decisions." He is one-third right. Last week, under the headline "Senators Blast Automakers Over Dealer Closings," The Washington Post reported, "Because the federal government is slated to own most of General Motors and 8 percent of Chrysler, some of the senators said they have a responsibility, as major shareholders do, to review company decisions."

The pressure to politicize the economy is spreading. John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO, and Gerald McEntee, head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees -- which is government organized as an interest group to lobby itself -- have demanded the resignation of two directors of Citigroup. Their premise is that businesses receiving direct government subventions should conform to the wishes of the president's allies.

GM is adopting new ways to lose money: Responsive to its UAW masters, GM is moving from China to America the production of some components of one Chevrolet model. Says UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, "It should be built here if it's going to be sold here." That principle, now successfully asserted, means economic autarky -- the end of international trade, and of prosperity.

The government's $50 billion -- so far -- acquisition of the shadow of GM will injure, with unfair financial advantages, the surprisingly healthy U.S. auto company, Ford. Of course, the government does not intend that injury, any more than it intended to cause protests in Mexico over the high price of corn tortillas, a result of Washington's mandate that Americans burn corn (ethanol) in their cars.

Washington's "rescue" of GM began because GM is "too big to fail," and bankruptcy is (well, was) "unthinkable." Big? GM's market capitalization, $375.8 million on Wednesday, is about the size of California Pizza Kitchen's ($340 million) -- is it too big to fail? -- and one-eleventh that of Harley-Davidson ($4.3 billion). Fail? If GM has not already failed, New Coke was a success.

The administration is determined to prop up GM as a jobs program for the UAW and Midwestern states rich in electoral votes. This frenzy will intensify as the administration's decisions deepen the debacle.

WRITTEN by George Will at TownHall.com on June 7th, 2009

100 Devastating Days Down

The good news about the 'First 100 Days' of the Barack Obama administration is that there are 100 days behind us, and so we are 100 days closer to the end of this disastrous administration. The bad news is that there remain 1,362 more days in which the President, his policy wonks, and his political allies can do even further damage to the very fabric of the United States of America. Those of us who are Republicans, and particularly those of a more conservative bent, are expected to say things like that. We didn't vote for Obama, will not vote for Obama the next time around, and in fact can see no reason to support any Democrat at this moment, so entrenched is the control and power of the ultra-liberal wing of their party. So for one of us to make such dark, gloomy, negative statements about the Obama administration can easily be written off by his supporters. But there is just one problem for those supporters. They themselves are finding it more and more difficult to actually express the reasons that they support him and his party. It was all so easy just six months ago, when they all had George W. Bush to hate. Bush-bashing was all the vogue and had been raised to an art form thanks to the constant, repetitive, relentless negative coverage given the Bush Presidency by the liberal mass media. Americans, especially Democrats, and even more particularly liberals, wanted 'Change' from Bush and from what they perceived as the negativity of the previous eight years. Had they only stood back and let their brains do the thinking instead of allowing the liberal media, as well as Hollywood and music industry celebrities, they would have been hard pressed to find a real reason to vote for Obama. They would find that presumptuous of me, and would ask what right I had to say that they didn't use their brains in the first place. To that my reply would be that they were simply being disingenuous. I talked to liberals around the time of the election. I never once heard anyone speak of any particular policy or plan of Obama's that they liked, just that it was time for a change, or they would ask me in return about the Bush administration and what had been so great about it. Never mind that the point was moot, that Bush wasn't running. The one thing that they did know was that Obama was going to stop the war in Iraq. So here we are, three months into the Obama administration, and our troops are still solidly in Iraq. Oh, there is a future plan to remove some troops down the road, of course dependant upon the Iraqis being able to fend for their own security. But the fact remains that Obama could bring home every troop tomorrow from the Middle East, and that would not end the war. What the liberals fail to realize is that it takes two sides stopping to end a war, and the radical Islamists have no intention of ever stopping. All our liberal friends need to do is to actually do any amount of serious study in relation to radical Islam, and they would understand this, but they simply refuse to look past their pie-in-the-sky idealism at the sober reality of the situation. In his 'First 100 Days', Barack Obama, the man that they elected for 'Change', has begun to change America at its very core, and not for the better. Obama has seriously handcuffed American intelligence gathering and worsened morale in the military and intelligence infra-structures, thus seriously jeopardizing our very safety. Because he refuses to keep America's military presence active and strong in the Middle East, despite some tough talk on Afghanistan, it is only a matter of time before either Iran actually has a nuclear weapon, or Israel attacks it in what would be a necessary but devastating pre-emptory self-defense bid to avoid annihilation. It is also only a matter of time before the Taliban or some other radical Islamist group takes over Pakistan, already a nuclear power, and thus places the nightmare scenario of an Islamist regime in control of full-blown weapons of mass destruction. Closer to home, he announced the imminent closing of the terrorist holding facility in Guantanamo Bay, yet made no provision for where the dangerous individuals being held there would be released. He knows full well that the vast majority will not be accepted back into their home countries, and that no reasonable nation on earth will take most of them because, well, they are dangerous terrorists. In other words, there is every likelihood that many of these individuals will be released right here into the American population next year. Nice. He went on a Euro-tour and bad-mouthed and blasted our country, much to the delight of the America-despising Europeans, then went to the Middle East and bowed down in deference to the Saudi king, and finally on to South America where he exchanged good will and gifts with one of the most virulent anti-Americans on earth in Hugo Chavez. He is dragging our nation by the hair away from freedom and capitalism and into full-blown Socialism, with the Federal government extending and deepening its reach and effect on every facet of our lives. His handling of financial matters has perhaps amazingly been even worse and potentially as or more destructive. He is pushing a 'cap and trade' plan to limit carbon emissions that would cost every single American household over $3,100 per year, thus destroying his promise of no taxes to the middle-class. He is doing this to prop-up the ultra-liberal 'green' movement that is all feel-good and no substance. The real science says that the earth has had many periods of warming and cooling in its history, and thus will have them again, but also that we are now in a period of cooling, not warming. So what is all this fuss about going 'green', and why do we need billions of dollars of new taxes and fees on Americans to support it? The simple answer is that we don't, and that while natural conservation is an excellent idea to foster for general environmental cleanliness sake it is nowhere near the apocalyptic need that has blown up under the tutelage of Al Gore and his super-liberal supporters. President Bush set a horrible precedent towards the end of his administration by bailing out some financial industry entities with federal dollars rather than letting the market work and letting them fail. Rather than start his administration with a reversal of this Bush error, the Obama administration has taken the idea and run with it, pushing the nation into a series of massive 'stimulus' bailout schemes that will now leave my grandchildren trillions of dollars in debt after Obama himself is long gone. By forcing industries from banking to automobiles to take federal money in exchange for federal control and oversight, the Socialist agenda pushes deeper. All this, and he names an acknowledged tax cheat in Timothy Geitner to be his Treasury Secretary. In his own house, Obama has had a horrible time in trying to fill many other important positions, including the embarrassment now of having a full-blown pandemic hit the world while he has not yet filled the position of Health & Human Services Secretary in his cabinet. No single President in the history of the United States has done more to harm the very heart and fabric of America than this President has done in his first hundred days. It is disheartening to realize that he still has over 1,300 more in which he can do far more substantial damage to our nation. There is some hope that if the country can get a Republican congressional majority elected next year that we can put a brake on some of this, and limit the damage. If not, the dangers both within and without that the Obama administration has opened us up to are frightening to anyone who cares to look past the liberal and administration rhetoric that such talk is simple political demonizing and negativity and at the reality of these Obama administration actions. Still, such political change may become more difficult as Obama has moved control over next year's U.S. Census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House in an overt attempt to control the results by political means. Since Census results determine congressional allotments, this is a huge attempt at making a long term power grab by the Democrats. President Obama will take to the airwaves tonight to address the nation, field questions from a majority of reporters representing liberal media organizations, and feed the feel-good lines to his Kool Aid-drinking supporters. But the truth will be that it is 100 devastating days down, and 1,362 truly disheartening and possibly frightening days to go under a Barack Obama administration that it's messianic leader will find more and more difficult to sell with any credibility.

Tea Parties Signal New American Revolt

On the night of December 16th, 1773, American colonists who had grown weary of British taxes on all sorts of goods boarded three ships in Boston harbor and dumped crate loads of taxed tea into the harbor waters. This protest against 'taxation without representation' became known down through history as 'The Boston Tea Party', and is considered a defining moment as the colonists moved towards declaring their Independence just two and a half years later. Today is April 15th, and it is also the deadline for American citizens to file their income tax returns. All across the country, a new revolutionary movement has been building for months, and it will continue in over 500 locations across all 50 states with today's nationwide 'Tea Party' protest events. What has ignited this grass-roots, web-based fire storm is the unprecedented turn towards a more massive government structure with greatly increased tax burdens for all American individuals and businesses. It is a bipartisan effort battling the situation that began with President Bush's $168 billion dollar 'stimulus' that has been taken to even worse levels by new President Barack Obama. As was posted by The Heritage Foundation, "Americans have grown more and more wary of the ever expanding size and scope of the federal government." Obama's supporters continue to send up the smoke screen message that his plans will cut taxes for those making under $150,000 per year in income. What they fail to tell people is how the vast majority of those making just over that figure are small business owners: bar owners, dry cleaners, restaurateurs, gift shops, diners, hair cutteries, and many more. They will all see their taxes rise, which means that their customers will see their prices rise, or these businesses will reduce services and/or employee jobs, or all of these eventualities. Some will even have to close their doors for good, further worsening the jobs situation. What lies behind the Obama tax cuts for the lesser income individuals, which include myself and my family as well, are not any desires to help us out. What lies behind them is an effort to expand government control of a greater and greater portion of our everyday lives. They hope to do this by forcing us out of self-support, out of dependency on jobs in the private sector, and into a process where we look to the federal government for our support. Force some companies out of business with tough tax policy, then make those remaining take federal 'bailout' money to remain in business, with the condition of yielding power to the government to regulate those businesses as they see fit. The government, not private industry, becomes the vehicle that drives the nation. This is, despite what Obama and Democratic political administration officials whine, pure and simple Socialism. President Ronald Reagan himself said it best when he stated that the nine most frightening words in the English language are: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." Making individuals reliant on the government kills wide-spread and large-scale innovation. History has proven this time and again. Capitalism is the vehicle which drove the world to it's greatest technological, medical, and societal heights over the past two centuries. Freedom was the fuel for that capitalist vehicle. History has also proven that the way to overcome financial problems is to lower taxes, loosen regulation, and allow the market to readjust itself. When you try to control the markets, you only accomplish one thing - control. It is that political control and power that Obama seeks. Millions subordinate to the government, reliant on it for their very subsistence, and indebted to politically support it in order to sustain those new 'benefits'. All the while, the cost to all of us will be reduced quality in services, and reduced overall benefits to society due to a decrease of innovation. With all of the spending that the Obama administration has embarked upon with their reckless 'stimulus' and 'bailout' packages, not to mention the numerous and incredibly substantial programs that they intend to implement, it is only a matter of time before they will be forced to raise taxes on that middle class whom they now say will get a break. At some point, these bills will have to be paid, and at that point, as the website hotair.com says we in the middle class "will get hammered." Today's wide-ranging 'Tea Party' events will attempt to begin to spread that message more widely. The mass media has largely ignored this grass-roots movement to date, solely because it flies in the face of the Socialism that the newspaper industry needs in order to remain viable and alive financially. Newspapers all across the country are dying because their ultra-liberal editorial sections and news coverage have driven the masses to other sources. The same goes for television news rooms, most of whom have seen their ratings drop precipitously in recent decades for the very same reason. These industries blame the internet and cable television for their demise, failing to acknowledge that it is conservative and moderate websites and cable news programs that have flourished. The fact is that the 'silent majority' in America remains traditionalist, if not conservative, and it is these individuals who are growing the Tea Party concept and other movements. President Barack Obama has significantly overplayed his hand, and we can only hope that 'We the People' can stand up and attempt to minimize the damage until we can get him out of office for good. In the aftermath of the original Boston Tea Party, Samuel Adams wrote that the acts were not those of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights. The same momentum is building today, and the Tea Party is just one step in this new American revolution.

AIG: Angina-Inducing Greed

For those of you who may have just read the headlines and listened to the featured story blurbs on the news with passing interest, I will try to give you a simplistic version of what all the ruckus has been about 'AIG' and explain why you should care. Let's start with the basics. Who or what exactly is the American International Group. Well, AIG is by their own information "a world leader in insurance and financial services" and "the leading international insurance organization with operations in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions." Heady stuff, right? I mean, we are talking about the worldwide leader in insurance services and one of the largest financial services organizations on earth as well. We are talking here about the real money. Not just big money, but 'real' money. The kind of money that moves governments and shakes nations. The folks at AIG are just one of many financial services companies that have undertaken huge losses and faced dire straights as the American economy has gone into reverse over the past year. They blame their particular problems largely on what are called 'credit default swaps" (CDS) in the industry. Now a CDS is basically a financial instrument representing the exchange of risk that some entity will default on their debt. For instance, you own company 'A' and it is at risk of defaulting on its debt payments because the economy is turning sour and your business is drying up. Now some other company 'B' owns a bond investment in your company, they see you are in bad shape, and they want to hedge their risk against you going belly-up. So they go to the operator of a 'hedge fund' and basically purchase insurance, the CDS, against you defaulting. A 'hedge fund' operator is someone who takes on the risk of a company defaulting in the hopes of making a profit, since most companies over time have historically not ended up actually defaulting. They get that profit as the managers of company 'B' will pay interest to the hedge fund operators. Should your company 'A' never actually default, then the hedge fund loses nothing and gains all of the interest it has been paid by that 'B' company. If you do actually default, then the hedge fund loses because they have to pay the full amount of the CDS to company 'B' covering the loss in their investment with you. The worse position that your business 'A' is actually in, the higher the interest rate that the hedge fund will demand from company 'B' for that CDS insurance. So with the AIG situation, they basically said that there were huge amounts of actual defaults, massive losses, and that they would collapse without government intervention. This would mean the loss of one of America's and the world's major suppliers of capital and insurance funding, and what some said would be a major blow to the national and world economy. Of course there are many others who dispute this, who believe in the free market system, and believe that if you run an operation poorly or with risk that is too high, then you pay the price when you lose just as you make great profits when things are going well. The theory is that even if you do collapse and disappear, someone will emerge to step into the breach and take over that business need. But those of us free market individuals are not in charge right now. The power in America has shifted to a more socialist viewpoint espoused by new President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. So rather than allowing AIG to collapse and pay the price for its riskiness, they decided to give it a 'bailout', or what was spun in positive terms as part of a 'stimulus' package. The government basically gave AIG the money to cover its losses and stay in business. But then AIG kept adjusting the amount that is said it had lost, and the government ended up bumping up the payments twice, until our government had given AIG a total of $180 billion dollars. Listen to that in the voice of Doctor Evil: "One hundred and eighty billion dollars!" From the government. That means from you and me, because the government gets its money from us in the form of taxes to begin with. So now you and I, 'We the People', literally own approximately 80% of the American International Group. So when AID got all that money to prop up their business and stay afloat, what did they do with it? Begin to invest it safely back into their operations and the markets, making them and the entire system stronger? Put it out into the world financial system and kick-start a recovery? Uh, no. Within days of receiving their first government funds, AIG sponsored a little company weekender bash at a swank California hotel with a price tag on the soiree' of nearly a half million dollars. Now this is a direct slap in the face to the American people, but it wasn't nearly the worst of AIG's greedy spending spree. The company then began to dole out hundreds of 'bonuses' to individual employees totaling approximately $165 million dollars. Bonuses! Most them going to employees in their financial products division, the exact same people with oversight of the very products that allegedly drove AIG into this mess in the first place. Now correct me if I am wrong, but people usually get a bonus for doing something good for the company? Something profitable? The theory being that any bonuses are coming out of that increased profit, right? Okay, just wanted to make sure that I did actually understand what a bonus was supposed to represent. So that is what has been happening in all the headlines that you have been seeing and hearing regarding AIG. On finding out about these bonuses, politicians and the media have shown righteous anger. You should care, and you should be angry as well. Because it is into your pockets that President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party cohorts are about to dig in order to get the money to pay for all of this 'Socialism', the government takeover of what should be private industry business. If you voted for Obama because you wanted 'Change', I hope that you knew exactly what that meant. It didn't just mean a change from Bush, who you hated. George W. Bush was leaving office anyway, his term was up, there was going to be change in any event. But the type of change you voted for was to change the very fabric of America, from a world-leader in a capitalist system to just another experiment in socialism, which has always failed everywhere it has been tried. The people at AIG are simply greedy and were looking to get nice chunks of your money out to their top executives as quickly and quietly as possible. They likely felt there was so much floating around that no one would really notice. We did notice, and now we should demand that at the very least the 'bonus' portion of the monies be returned to us. Of course this whole thing could have been avoided had we just not given them the money in the first place.