He is a politically-savvy commentator who is often Seen and heard on local radio and TV in the Chicago area and so is a known quantity.
Give me a break!
I think the count is eleven (11) and rising daily or weekly depending on the depth of your conservatism.
Well that is one convenient memory....the farm bill and the education bills are anything but conservative and as egregious as the steel quotas.
Except for 9/11 and related matters, Bush has at best been a mediocre President thus far....but mediocre is not all that bad, as there has been one outstanding President, two horrible, and the remaining mediocre since 1968.
It may be a pathology of being happiest when being the most discontented.
If a president cannot do something so FUNDAMENTAL and BASIC to the primary responsibilities of the office of presidency--meaning the protection of America’s sovereignty as a nation, then he will never get my vote again. I can overlook a hell of a lot of his social spending and his trampling of the constitution but failing to protect America’s borders and, worse, openly encouraging more illegal immigration with amnesties, immigrant welfare and a steadfast refusal to enforce our immigration laws is just TOO MUCH.
Laz, IMHO you're in the first category. Put on your pants, get over here and say something.
Does that include voting???
Furthermore, a reason that things are "in the balance," is because instead of George Bush showing firmness and resolve by pointing out before the public eye, that conservatives --- his contemporaries --- are not "mean" ... he bugged out (cite: beginning of his 2000 campaign in CA), stepping out of the line of fire directed at us all, the fellow conservatives and Republicans about whom Bush apologists are always reminding us that we ought not be so publicly critical with one another.
He could have properly demonstrated with illustration and example, such as Reagan did.
During the 1980 Presidential Debates, Reagan would tell Carter, "Well ... there you go again ... " followed by the details on how Reagan understood the problem, and that Reagan's solution being different than Carter's did not mean that Reagan neither acknowledged nor understood the problem.
(It is a habit of "the Left," that it will tell the public eye, when a conservative or Republican disapproves of a feature of a bill, than that conservative or Republican is against the title of the bill, that is, against the idea of kids having lunch at school, or school rooms having roofs, etc. When in fact, the conservative or Republican recognizes that the matter of lunch for kids at school and fixing leaky roofs is within the authority of the sovereign states and not the federal government --- the message being from Reagan, that one must be firm with the resolve to defend our liberty from federal intrusion, such as in this example.)
A lesson which President Bush would do well to gather up.
Returning to the matter of the borders.
The borders of the United States are a militarized zone, which is the case for all nations who are about the business of protecting lives and personal property.
We do not live nor do we own property because we have a right to these, granted us by the federal government. Our rights such as these, are examples of the multitude which are not enumerated anywhere in the U.S. Constitution; other than being the natural rights of man, these rights, as most, save the Bill of Rights (the first Ten Amendments), are undeniably ours and beyond the reach of the federal government --- see the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The Principle of Enumeration is whereby the Constitution limits the federal government to only what is on a list.
We, the people, are not so limited in our rights. In addition, the Bill of Rights --- which is indeed a modest listing --- was included for one overall purpose in form: To protect individuals and the states from the federal government; affirming the most sensitive, or threatened rights which were traditionally challenged by the government class which historically does not like us having such rights as well as feels threatened by our having such rights.
Etc.; the stuff which George Bush has not had the resolve to defend --- our Liberty's foundations.
What has changed since Reagan was President, is the body of the people who have not benefitted from conservatives and Republicans' standing up the errors prolific in the liberal media, which produces histrionics that are lost in extra-Constitutional space, misleading people into thinking in virtual, instead of freedom's, realities.
Witness the Al-Qaeda-Jugen, born and raised in front of TV's "boob tube;" becoming boobs for nationalizing socialistic fascism that operates shamelessly and fraudulently in the name of Islam.
Where the liberal media and the whole flotsam of leftist propaganda mislead our people, is something up with which we should not put, but especially our President Bush.
He may have some personal integrity on some issues, but he compromises your's and my freedoms, giving away, negotiating away ... what is not his, nor has the authority to do so.
And for the record, though I am cautioned to not spell things out, here, I can cite chapter and verse on how much the President has the capacity to know, but has failed to act, as well as how much authority he has to act, but has failed to do so.
He has not yet discovered the resolve, nor will he yet be firm about enforcing the laws which would severely diminish the flow of illegal aliens.
Some of whom, are our enemies, about which we are reminded by the news, every week; but there seems to be a death wish, a fascination with seeing it all again.
Sometimes, resolve just plain has to be pounded into you.
Reagan's generation understood/understands the energy which is required to be brutally frank with enemies.
Bush's has not yet got a handle on it; mostly because he has not yet resolved to lead the Executive Branch, though he be the person in charge, the head of the branch, the chief executive.
A serious man would not entertain the wastefullness of our federal government's obsession with social engineering(s) and other purposes of government thought up by federally-funded thought-niks in think tanks, at our [formerly] states' universities, and among the multitude of political movements, coalitions, and other organizations on the goverment dole, thanks to the endless "riders" / amendments to bills about feeding kids lunch.
While we "save the children," we "slave away" to pay for the funding to this or that said ["forward"] "movement" which "earns" income by publishing about and dissemination information on the whatever which, in turn, the Congress included in the bill.
That kind of spending amounts to billions in the pockets of People for the American Way, The Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Education Association, and others of the lesser performing arts.
So that we can be sure that Jack and John went up the hill together; and then further up the old dirt road; and other such social "pleasantries" or "realities."
While serious defenders of our Liberty lay down in the mud of a foreign land, never to return.
Bush may be better than the Democrat Presidential candidate, but that is only a portion of the requirements for defending our Liberty.
Without our Liberty, we do not have America.
Bush and others may be satisfied with less.
I remain resolved.
And that is an understatement.
The writer's analysis is hopelessly flawed, when he writes a sentence like that. The vast majority of Americans do not have a clear political philosophy. True they have some generalized points on which they more or less agree. True at any given moment, the minority who pay much attention to political matters, will describe themselves one way or another--based upon the way the issues have been presented to them, most recently--but that is about it. The essence of leadership is to determine how those issues are presented to them; hence to determine how they line up.
Leadership does not accept the existing line up, and then react to it by offering to compromise with those on the other side of that lineup. That is mind-boggling simplistic, and an obvious error. I believe that President Bush has some leadership abilities. But he has not been demonstrating them on the Domestic front. Rather he is embracing idea after idea that undermines what he will be able to do in the future. He needs a wakeup call for his own sake, not an effort to instill a false confidence, that could set us all back, while it destroys him.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
