Tag Archives: George Washington

Alarms About Brennan

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A few days ago on this website, troubling information about John Brennan being a convert to Islam was laid out by a former FBI counterterrorism agent. Doubt it if you like, but isn’t it strange than in his swearing in ceremony to become head of the CIA Brennan did not use the Bible?

Instead, he made a big show of obtaining an original draft of the Constitution from the National Archives that had George Washington’s personal notes on it. Perhaps he thought this would show Americans that he is committed to the rule of law. However, when you swear on something in a courtroom you use the Bible, not the Constitution.

Brennan also spurned the Bill of Rights. Missing from the Constitution of 1789 were the Bill of Rights that went into effect in 1791 after ratification by states. In other words, Brennan swore on something that did not include freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to bear arms, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures plus the right to a jury trial.

You can’t pretend that this was all a mistake on Brennan’s part. It was a statement.

Too bad our Republican Senators, Corker and Alexander, voted to confirm this man. They joined other Republicans in doing so. The RINOs you’d expect are Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Dan Coats of Indiana.

The yeahs that are surprising came from Marco Rubio of Florida, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Richard Burr of North Carolina.

Two Democrats who voted no were Pat Leahy of Vermont and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon who joined Senator Rand Paul in his filibuster gave Brennan the OK.

You have to wonder what the Obama administration has on some of these people or, in the case of McCain and Flake, what they threatened regarding Arizona.

I fear we will greatly regret having John Brennan as our CIA chief.

Likable? Least of My Concerns

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There is much talk about President Obama’s “likability.” Supposedly 60% of Americans think Obama is the more likable of the two candidates, with 30% saying Mitt Romney. The other 10%, as in most polls, barely know what state they live in.

Who cares? I don’t have to like or be in love with my president. In fact, it’s better if I am not. I think the framers would have felt that way, too. They realized that the cult of personality could get countries in a lot of trouble. George Washington could easily have used his popularity to remain president until he died. He rejected that. He was right.

Think back to the 19th century or even early 20th century. Most Americans probably rarely gave a thought to their president. They had too much to do: build a country, provide for their family, stay alive. Most never even heard the voice of their president. He could have been fat (some of them were), had an irritating voice, delivered a speech poorly and it wouldn’t have mattered. Results mattered.

Now we are forced to see presidents evaluated every day by a ravenous media. They filter everything we know about him. With Clinton he was thrust in our face every time we turned on the television. It was almost to a stalker level.

With Bush, he was put under the microscope for every malaprop or stumble. Nevermind he kept us safe after 9/11. He didn’t pronounce nuclear properly and that’s what really showed who he was.

Now we get Obama filtered through the media’s lens. He is always debonair, smiling, glad handing, dancing, singing, talking sports – whatever might appeal to you. Meanwhile the country is doing a nosedive. Still, according to the media polls, we like him.

Obama even takes his act on the road so more of us have to see him. We’re the protagonist in “A Clockwork Orange.” Our eyelids are metaphorically taped open so we don’t miss a minute of seeing his “greatness.”

Wouldn’t it be nice to live days without once thinking about whether the president was going to spoil your life with more regulations or get in your face with his? It’s a fantasy of mine. I want Calvin Coolidge back. “Silent Cal” didn’t thrust himself upon the American people at every opportunity. The more I learn about him, the more I like him. He got to the business of America – business – and let the American people be Americans.

Thanks to the media, that day will probably never recur. What a shame.

Obama’s View of Success

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In Obama’s and the liberal world (well, they are one and the same), if you fail it’s because someone, something or society failed you.

If you’re in a lower income bracket, have kids out of wedlock, are a drug addict, on and on, the individual is a victim of others. So the government must come to your rescue.

After Friday’s Roanoke speech, we now learn from the president that if you succeed, that’s because of others, too. You had not thing to do with it, really; you’re just profiting from others’ labors. “If you’re successful, you didn’t do it on your own,” Obama said.

It’s an outrageous thing to say in America. Yet, he said it and many just shrug and agree. The rest of us are still trying to cope with it. It’s like a piece of radioactive waste, emitting harm throughout the country. He nuked us – verbally. Our ancestors are turning over in their graves.

One of the shocking omissions in this mindset, which shouldn’t be surprising, is the complete lack of reliance on God. No one has brought up the role of God in our nation’s success. We’ve credited him in the past for guiding the country. Now, according to this president, it is the work of the government alone that brings about all good. How far we’ve come from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln!

The government doesn’t bring about bad, though, according to the Commander in Chief. Yesterday Glenn Beck and his cohorts on his radio show brought this quote to our attention: “The buck stops with you,” Obama said.

Hard to tell if his quote of Harry Truman was purposefully altered or if Obama is just that stupid. Whereas Truman said “the buck stops here” meaning the president’s desk, Obama is willing to fling it back at you.

Obama’s logic and thought processes are bewildering to say the least as they demonstrate in this clip:

Delusional

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News junkies know that it’s not always what is reported that is noteworthy. Sometimes what isn’t shown is more important.

Case in point, Obama’s 60 Minutes interview last Sunday. What they didn’t include in their segment was what Obama said about himself. That was left on the cutting room floor.

Steve Kroft asked him what he would “consider your major accomplishments? What have you accomplished?”

Obama replied, “I’ve got five more years of stuff to do. But not only saving this country from a great depression. Not only saving the auto industry. But putting in place a system in which we’re gonna start lowering health care costs and you’re never gonna go bankrupt because you get sick or somebody in your family gets sick. Making sure that we have reformed the financial system, so we never again have taxpayer funded bailouts, and the system is more stable and secure. Making sure that we’ve got millions of kids out here who are able to go to college because we’ve expanded student loans and made college more affordable. Ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Decimating al Qaeda, including Bin Laden being taken off the field. Restoring America’s respect around the world.

“The issue is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R. and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.”

Yes, the current resident of the White House considers himself on the level of F.D.R. and Lincoln. I guess what George Washington did in his first years doesn’t measure up to Barry’s level of competence. Reagan? I guess his years of prosperity and curbing the power of the Soviet Union was slackard, too.

Johnson? Really? How’s that War on Poverty done? I believe we are in the same state or worse than when he began pouring money down that rat hole.

Evidently CBS News still has a few vestiges of decency left them to ax this part of the interview. Even they couldn’t swallow this pant load.

Christmas Food for Thought

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If you have to spend Christmas with liberal relatives and they bring up the topic of the economy (because you as a conservative would not be so rude as to bring up political skirmishes at the dinner table), Economic Collapse Blog has put together a list of 50 facts that might elucidate them. Here goes:

1. A staggering 48% of all Americans are either considered to be low income or are living in poverty.
2. Approximately 57% of all children in the U.s. are living in homes that are considered to be low income or impoverished.
3. If the number of Americans that wanted jobs was the same today as it was back in 2007, the official unemployment rate put out by the U.S. government would be up to 11%.
4. The average amount of time that a worker stays unemployed in the U.s. is now more than 40 weeks.
5. One recent survey found that 77% of all U.S. small businesses do not plan to hire any more workers.
6. There are fewer payroll jobs in the U.S. today than there were in 2000 even though we have added 30 million extra people to the population since then.
7. Since December 2007, median household income in the U.S. has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.
8. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16.6 million Americans were self employed back in December 2006. Today that number has shrunk to 14.5 million.
9. A Gallup poll from earlier this year found that approximately one out of every five Americans that do have a job consider themselves to be underemployed.
10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20% of all U.s. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty level wages.
11. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the U.S. were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the U.S. are low income jobs.
12. Back in 1969, 95% of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2% of men in that age group had a job.
13. One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.
14. The Federal Reserve recently announced that the total net worth of U.S. households declined by 4.1% in the 3rd quarter of 2011.
15. According to a recent study conducted by the Black Rock Investment Institute, the ratio of household debt to personal income in the U.S. is now 154%.
16. As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51% of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72% of all U.S. adults were married.
17. The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than 5 billion dollars over the past year.
18. In Stockton, Calif., home prices have declined 64% from where they were when the housing market peaked.
19. Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 59 months in a row.
20. If you can believe it, the median price of a home in Detroit is now just $6,000.
21. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18% of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63% larger than it was just 10 years ago.
22. New home construction in the U.S. is on pace to set a brand new all time record low in 2011.
23. 19% of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are now living with their parents.
24. Electricity bills in the U.S. have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

And it keeps on. The author lists 50, ending with this:

50. During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

If you’d like to read them all, they are at http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/50-economic-numbers-from-2011-that-are-almost-too-crazy-to-believe.

Obama’s Campaign – er – Economic Speech

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What a fallacious, irritating crock Obama’s speech this morning was! When he got to the part where he compared himself to George Washington, it was blood pressure skyrocketing time.

Not that mine stayed low for the earlier part of the speech. It didn’t. He started off asking everyone to do their “fair share” again. Fair share? Some don’t even do any share? What is it, 49 or 51% pay no taxes? What fair share things are they doing to compensate? So where is the fair here?

Obama spoke of reforming agriculture subsidies (good-bye, Iowa?). He harped on Warren Buffett’s secretary again, saying she pays more than he does. Isn’t there one journalist out there who could track her down and look into this?

“We will make modest adjustments to federal retirement programs,” he continued. Why is it, then, that when Paul Ryan talked of pushing retirement age back in the near future, you bludgeoned him on this? It was used in every little election by Democrats since. Note to Axelrod: it hasn’t worked.

Obama said he would save money by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. OK, but isn’t the president’s number one duty to secure the defense of the nation? Did you notice he left out that little “skirmish” in Libya that is not coming to the quick conclusion he promised?

Next he took aim at Medicare and Medicaid. Obama said he would meet with the governors on this. Let me translate: I’m going to hand this over to the states and let you do the dirty work, particularly Republican governors so I can peg you as heartless. Then he also tried to wriggle out of it by saying it would be done over time. Time or not, it’s still a kick in the teeth to the sick elderly.

Obama promised to scour the budget for waste and eliminate it. Why aren’t yo doing it now? Wasn’t that Solyndra money a waste? An enormous waste?

Then he revved up his attack on the opposition. He started by recommending a “balanced approach.” The president said we could not live beyond our means. I’ll believe he means it when Michelle stops taking her $10 million tax payer funded vacations.

He then turned the fire on those who don’t want to increase taxes to the wealthy and had signed off against all tax hikes, i.e. Republicans. Obama basically said that he and we should get in their faces. It’s the same advice he gave during his campaign and which union thugs have gladly been doing for him. How else can we get Bloomberg’s promised riots next summer?

John Boehner then came into the crosshairs. He attacked the Speaker’s talk on the economy last week in which he rejected tax hikes and pushed for cuts in programs only. Obama said it would cripple our research and competitiveness, sacrifice seniors and the poor and result in more bad highways and roads. He criticized Boehner as a my way or the highway kind of guy. That is hardly a conciliatory move on his part. Besides, isn’t Boehner’s highway broken anyhow?

Obama said poor families can’t afford the lobbyists the rich have, but I beg to differ. They have no choice except to belong to unions such as the AFL-CIO, SEIU, teachers and others. Those are the richest – and most powerful lobbyists around.

At this point in the speech if you had been swigging every time he mentioned millionaires and billionaires you’d have passed out.

Obama went on to say that it shouldn’t be a choice between seniors and millionaires. Who says it does? That is a straw man argument. Besides, even if you took all the salaries of his billionaires, it wouldn’t cover our deficit. Neither would a higher tax on millionaires. The deficit is much too big for that.

This is where we got to George Washington. Obama said GW had grappled with this problem. He said Washington demanded taxes to balance the budget. He smiled and gave a little giggle delivering his lines. I guess he thinks a good portion of us will swallow that bilge and it makes him laugh at our stupidity. Unfortunately for him, most of us remembere Washington’s role in stopping taxation by fighting that little war of independence.

Obama cries out “pass this bill!” Let me counter: Pass on this bill!

Cohen Explains It All For You

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The Knoxville News Sentinel had a C-Span gem from our favorite represenative, Steve Cohen.

Standing at the microphone in the House, Cohen says, “The first priority I have always believed of government is to keep people alive – it’s health care. The second is to get them educated and the thrid is to get them a job.”

Somehow I don’t see George Washington, John Adams and the gang in agreement.

Dusting off the Old Democrat Playbook

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Now that Congress is back in session and the Health Care repeal is at center stage, the same old Democrat playbook gets trotted out.

If you are relatively new to politics or young, you might be taken in by the strategy the Democrats and the media have planned and have started enacting. To those of us old enough to remember the last century, their desperation is obvious.

Like a salesman knocking on the door until he finds the right tack to get you to open it, the Democrat Party  has several tactics.

The first surfaced with the AP poll. Step 1 is bogus polls. The naive will accept what the results are and then begin to doubt themselves. Newscasters and pundits shook their heads yesterday claiming that support for health care repeal has fallen.  Now 40% support repeal and 41% do not. The implication is that Republicans are now going against the current tide of public opinion so why not drop the whole thing now?

Rush Limbaugh and a few other level headed conservatives took a stark look at the poll. What they found was disengenuous. “It’s a full court press trying to negate the Republican victory in November,” Limbaugh said. “The sample was miscast and flawed. Before the election they polled 48% of voters leaning Republican and 42% leaning Democrat.  This time they polled 42% Democrats and 36% Republicans, a drop of 12% and so the survey dropped 11 points.” The survey also didn’t use likely or registered voters as they had before, but a sample of 1,001 random people.

In other words, if you control the metrics, you control the outcome.

Having “proved” that the American people don’t want repeal, the next step is to attack the price. “It’s going to cost a fortune to repeal it” cry the Democrats. Paul Krugman at the New York Times argues this insane argument. “Health Reform, says the Budget Officer, will increase Social Security revenues and reduce Medicare costs. But the GOP analysis says that these sums don’t count, because some people have said that these savings would also extend the life of these programs’ trust funds, so counting these savings as deficit reduction would be ‘double counting’ because well, actually it doesn’t make any sense, but it sounds impressive.”

Does Krugman really think Americans buy the argument that not spending is going to cost more than spending? I think I saw that comedy routine in the Marx Brothers. How much is it if you sing, Groucho asks? Chico tells him. How much if you don’t sing, Groucho asks? “You can’t afford it,” Chico replies.

We saw the other ploy, distraction, on view last week in Tucson. Wall to wall coverage forced the health care repeal vote off the monitor. This is a tricky maneuver for many; it can be effective enough to make you forget they’re using it. Tragic as the event was, only 6 people died and the Congresswoman lived. People get killed in larger numbers than that frequently in the news. It doesn’t require the president to address everyone. Indeed, it ends up having an ambulance chasing quality.

Cousin to distraction is the blow up technique. That’s where even the most mundane remark/action/comment gets built into mammoth proportions. Take Sarah Palin’s “blood libel” remark. Most Americans probably shrugged; the pundits acted as if she has repudiated Jesus (no, sorry, they’d probably like that); make that George Washington (oops, they might like that, too); well, you fill in the blank. Expect the race card to get thrown in as the Democrats get even more desperate.

The civility argument falls into the “Mommy, he hit me” category. That will accelerate, particularly with the State of the Union address which the media will use to garner a higher approval rating for Obama. The gullible who live in the Republic of Nice are particularly receptive to this technique.

All this means that 2012 is weighing heavily on Obama’s mind. Everything he does from now on will be with an eye to that November. If the Democrats can garner just a few people from these plans he might win reelection.

Don’t fall victim to this strategy, but recognize it for what it is: pathetic.

Of Me I Sing – Obama’s Real Letter to His Daughters

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Although the publishers have released President Barack Obama’s “Of Thee I Sing – a Letter to My Daughters,” a copy of the real book has fallen into the hands of Midtown Republican. The acknowledged book talks about the standard American heroes such as George Washington, Jackie Robinson and Georgia O’Keefe, but Sash and Malia already knew all that. They can’t get away from it, living in the White House as they do.

The real book Obama wanted to publish has his thoughts on other real American heroes. Let’s see what he wrote.
He starts with Benedict Arnold.

OK, so he switched sides. Isn’t that the same kind of thing as switching political parties? Kind of a bipartisanship?

So a bunch of backwater Yankees got fed up with taxation. Arnold understood that they should have embraced the big government move the British were making. Hey, eventually we would have had universal health care earlier than we do without all that bothersome blood shedding.

Arnold captured West Point so he could surrender it. Your welcome, America! At least in the end he got to retire to England and lived out his days happily with the Union Jack.

Next we’ve got J. Edgar Hoover.

Isn’t it about time a great American transvestite got his due? Kind of a trailblazer there, aside from his remarkable record keeping and that in the days before computers. The first director of the FBI used his power to harass political dissenters and activists in ways that Chicago politicians only dream about. Maybe some of this was illegal, but, hey itwas all for the common good. I like him because he took a post and kept it. No limits of two terms for J. Edgar. He served from 1935-1972; I’d like to do the same.

The next hero is a two-fer. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

American Communists, they saw the world in a different way and isn’t that good! They passed on nuclear information to the Soviets to help them get an atomic bomb. That was way ahead of my similar effort in pushing for nuclear proliferation reduction (mostly just on our part). I would say that sharing knowledge is a good thing, don’t you think? The clever Rosenbergs also managed to cause discord. Grassrooots protest about their executions gave social justice a bump. What a legacy!

Now William Ayers.

You don’t always get the chance to lionize someone you know personally, but William Ayers certainly gets my attention. An elementary education theorist (that’s where the propaganda really begins), Bill even babysat you girls, with his better half, Bernadine Dohrn. He opposed the Vietnam War when it wasn’t popular. You see violence is OK only when it’s used against the American people, never by American soldiers abroad trying to defend freedom there. The Weather Underground and its public bombings here was just trying to express that anti war thought. Besides, Bill helped me write my “autobiography” so I owe him one.

Then Margaret Sanger.

Girls, remember during the campaign when I said I wouldn’t want you punished with a baby? You can thank my next person for that one. Margaret Sanger made birth control and abortion acceptable in polite society. Think of the industries she spawned: Planned Parenthood, abortion clinics, pharmaceuticals and other birth control item manufacturers! She also gave us Democrats a way to divert money to our friends through federal funds to abortionists, both here and around the world. In the process she made a lot of Bible thumping, Mass practicing Christians all hot under their religious collars. An avowed atheist and socialist (sigh! I can’t come out), Sanger believed in eugenics, too. If we’d followed her earlier we wouldn’t have the drag on Social Security and Medicare money we have from these bitter life clingers. Sanger didn’t like the handicapped, feebleminded, morons, insane or epilpetics, but who does?

Cloward and Piven …

Cloward and Piven aren’t as well known as some of these others, but that’s probably good – for us. But I’ll give them a shoutout anyhow. Without these two Columbia University professors we wouldn’t have a game plan. Or Fannie and Freddie the Community Reinvestment Act, TARP and a disintegrating economy. Brave souls, Richard Cloward and Frances Piven started overwhelming the system 40 years ago using a manufactured crisis and what do you know? Today I’m President. Thanks, guys!

Jane Fonda…

I’m throwing Jane Fonda in for your mother. Like Mom, she wants to decide what Americans eat and get you to feel the burn and get out and exercise. Fonda made a hot movie, “Barbarella,” and that gets her points with me. Then she went to North Vietnam to protest the war in the ’60s. Seated on an anti aircraft battery making signs with her hands in a kind of primitive fist pump, Fonda wanted to stop the war and accused the U.S. of torture. She made a lot of people mad, including John McCain, held prisoner during her shenanigans. Nuff said!

Walter Cronkite…

The era of the Vietnam War gave us a lot of heroes, as you might have noticed. What a time to be alive! I was, of course, if I could ever find that birth certificate for the year. But I didn’t live it. We’re trying to recreate it now. So a tip of the hat to another hero, Walter Cronkite. If you want to make someone acceptable as he spews outrageous, left wing things, just give him a nice sounding name, like “Uncle Walter” Cronkite and dub him “the most trusted man in America” and watch the propaganda go down smoother than my “Yes We Can.” Delivering the news on TV, he looked like your grandfather but undercut the nation with a young man’s vengeance. The good evidently don’t die young because Uncle Walter held on to age ’92.

Finally…

I saved the best for last. Saul Alinsky. Community organizer, he was the oak from which all the Acorns fell. Right in our own Chicago. He wrote “Rules for Radicals” which is our 10 Commandments, Bible, Koran. It told how ordinary citizens could subvert the system with a blueprint for revolution but called social justice. He dedicated it to Lucifer. Now that takes guts in 20th century America. The genius was that even seeing that dedication, Americans still wouldn’t believe it. Just like they don’t want to believe I’m doing what I’m really doing either.

Study these outstanding citizens, girls. Now that’s my America!