America, We Have A Problem

In a New York Times interview last week, President Obama acknowledged that there’s “no such thing as shovel-ready projects”.

This was one of his main selling points for the $862 billion stimulus package. He now admits they don’t exist, and the stimulus is clearly not working.

The public was told that unemployment would not go above 8 percent if the stimulus package passed. They passed it and unemployment went to over 9.6 percent and stayed there. So now the president and his economic advisors say we might have to just get used to high unemployment. And they want to spend even more money.

Another New York Times article titled “Obama on Defensive at Forum” was buried in the lower left corner of Page 17 of the October 15, 2010 edition. It reported that a recent black college graduate “complained that despite the government’s costly actions, our unemployment rate still rises, and businesses uncertain about taxes are not hiring college graduates like me.”

“Mr. Obama said that most of the unemployed had lost their jobs before he took office,” the Times reported. He’s right. But he failed to mention that the number of unemployed has increased by over 40 percent since he has been in office. Those that are unemployed don’t care when they lost their job. They want a job.

Four of the five top advisors who developed this flawed economic advice have now moved on to other endeavors, while nearly 15 million people are still unemployed. People expected things to get better, not worse.

The public was told that the health care deform bill would lower health care costs, increase access to health care and lower the national debt long term. Early implementation has resulted in increased costs, not quite everybody getting health insurance and a mass of confusion about the bill as we gradually discover what’s really in the bill. The majority of Americans want the legislation repealed.

The public was told repeatedly by the president that if you like the insurance you have then you can keep it. It turns out that you can keep your insurance only if the company you work for gets a special waiver from the administration. At last count, more than 30 major corporations have been granted special waivers.

We were promised transparency in government. Oh well! I guess it depends on your definition of transparency. But we now know that the administration’s definition is not the same as us regular folks.

Broken campaign promises disappoint us. Bad legislation and policies hurt us, the economy and the nation. Most presidents keep some of their promises and get some decisions right. Unfortunately, this president is having trouble getting even some decisions right. I stopped counting the broken promises.

A caller to my radio show last week said she was going to back President Obama no matter what. And when I pointed out these disturbing results, she said it did not matter to her.

That’s part of the problem. In spite of President Obama’s failed policies and lack of leadership, some people will still follow him right off the proverbial cliff.

But it gets worse! He actually thinks he’s doing a good job. Here’s what he said in an interview with the NewYork Times:

“I think they (people) could say, on a bunch of fronts he (the president) still has an incomplete. But I keep a checklist of what we committed to doing, and we’ve probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we talked about during the campaign. And I hope as long as I’m president, I’ve got a chance to work on the other 30 percent.”

Accomplishing 70 percent of the wrong things is not an incomplete grade. It’s failure.

America, we have a problem. This problem cannot be solved for another two years. But it can begin in November of 2010.

Cain is correct! We do have a problem, but perhaps it took this great over-reach by Obama-Reid-Pelosi and their rubber stamps in the Congress and Senate to awaken the American citizenry to the "progressive" threat which had been working to impose its views for decades now.

The Democrats interpret this "awakening" as simple "anger." It is much, much more.

American citizens must not allow Obama and his so-called "progressives" to attribute the motive of "anger" to the great passion for liberty which is being felt and expressed today.

These so-called "progressives" are trying to plunge America back into a similar situation to the Old World ideas which existed in 1776 in Europe.

Only in America did an entire people come to understand liberty and life are inherently inalienable gifts from the Creator, that they are not grants from another human being, or any group of human beings.

Now, in 2010, because of the flagrant disregard of this founding principle exhibited by Obama-Reid-Pelosi and their fellow "progressives," American citizens have been awakened. They have been aroused. And they are exhibiting that spirit that the Creator planted deep within their hearts.

The Democrats call it "anger," but "anger" doesn't adequately describe the emotion that is being expressed by the animated American citizens who are a part of the Taxed Enough Already movement in 2010. No, "anger" more aptly describes the President and his fellow Democrats who react to every criticism of the abusive and intrusive policies they have coercively imposed on citizens by "fighting" back with attempts to belittle and demean those who disagree with them.

"Anger" more aptly describes the folks in the streets of Paris this week who are truly "angry" that their government may no longer rob others in order to give them earlier retirement benefits. That is anger coupled with envy and greed.

The real emotion welling up in the hearts and minds of Americans today is a passion for liberty--the kind of liberty their ancestors enjoyed and sacrificed to obtain for themselves and their posterity.

America's Founders' passion for liberty produced a Declaration of Independence from the oppression of King George III and his Parliament and the Constitution of the United States of America. That passion valued liberty (sometimes called "freedom") as the highest good, and the Founders were willing to sacrifice everything in order to structure a limited government which would allow individual opportunity, initiative, prosperity and plenty to be achieved.

Those who call themselves Democrats today inherited the same "Blessings of Liberty" as the rest of us, but they have abandoned the ideas which are essential to liberty, and, under the banner of "progressivism" they have advocated policies which have rivaled or surpassed the oppressive burdens of King George in 1776.

Thus, what they mistake for "anger" among their fellow citizens is only the expression of a free people exercising their Creator-endowed right to liberty. And these so-called "progressives" don't know what to do about such a noble emotion expressing itself on behalf of future generations.

Let freedom ring! "Proclaim liberty throughout the land." A new generation is reading the history of civilization and the ideas of their nation's founding, and they are likiing what they read. They are awakening to clear call for a restoration of their liberty and an end to the political oppression which has found expression in the ideas of Mao, Marx, Lenin, and now their fellow citizens, Reid, Pelosi and Obama.

From the Liberty Fund Library is an essay entitled "The Impracticability of Socialism," which concludes with this statement by its writer. "Freedom is the most valuable of all human possessions, next after life itself. It is more valuable, in a manner, than even health. No human agency can secure health; but good laws, justly administered, can and do secure freedom. Freedom, indeed, is almost the only thing that law can secure. Law cannot secure equality, nor can it secure prosperity. In the direction of equality, all that law can do is to secure fair play, which is equality of rights but is not equality of conditions. In the direction of prosperity, all that law can do is to keep the road open. That is the Quintessence of Individualism, and it may fairly challenge comparison with that Quintessence of Socialism we have been discussing. Socialism, disguise it how we may, is the negation of Freedom. That it is so, and that it is also a scheme not capable of producing even material comfort in exchange for the abnegations of Freedom, I think the foregoing considerations amply prove." EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON

No, Mr. President, don't mislabel the citizens of this great Republic.

American citizens have seen what the counterfeit idea of "socialism" means, and they are rejecting it in favor of the authentic ideas of liberty incorporated in their Declaration and Constitution. That's not simply "anger." That is thoughtful analysis and decision making on the part of the "only Keepers" of the Constitution, "We, the People" (see Justice Story's "Commentaries").

It’s also not to late to take the House and the Senate over and make this President irrelevant. If the House and Senate are taken over in large enough numbers, his veto power will be irrelevant also.

You need 290 votes in the House and 67 in the Senate for the two thirds to override a veto. The number of senators up this year is about 38 or 39 because of Obama's appointments, but they are mostly pubbies. If the GOP won every senate seat this election, I think the most we could get is in the low or mid fifties. So the House is possible, but it would take results of 112 new pubbies, plus holding all House seats that we have now. The senate is impossible without getting rats to help. We can get a filibuster-proof Senate, 60 votes to end debate, in 2012 or 2014, but we'll need a lot of luck for 67 pubbies in the Senate.

Conservatives and Republican Victory

The Republican Party has a real chance, because of the unusually good composition of the 2012 and 2014 Senate elections, to acquire something that Republicans have never had before: a filibuster-proof Senate.

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