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I am Sick of Politicians Taking Credit for Your Hard Work

It's happening already - politicians such as Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are taking the credit for your hard work. The past two years have been a very hard time for many. We are now seeing some economic growth and growth of perhaps 4-5% is projected for next year (let's hope it's true). And guess who is taking credit for it? Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Yet the government cannot create wealth. If the government taxes you to spend money to build a bridge and employ some people, it does so at the expense of the job creation that would have resulted had you been free to spend your own money. The difference is whether you get to act in freedom, or whether the central planner's in Washington's Politburo acts on your behalf - in a distinct lack of freedom. Barry and Nancy are saying "Look at this bridge we built!" while encouraging you not to look at the hundreds of thousands of homes that were NOT built because of radically increased taxes and debt. For eac

Doing What Terrorists Want Us To

From FoxNews : The Obama administration is pushing back against calls to halt or delay closing the Guantanamo Bay prison in light of the failed Christmas Day terror attack, suggesting that shutting down the prison will undermine terrorist recruitment in the very network that claimed responsibility for last week's plot. Obama is absolutely right about this. If we do exactly what the terrorists want us to do , they will all go home and we will be safe!

Complete and Total Insanity

In a year when the Federal Government has already spent $1.4T more than it has - adding $20,000 in federal debt obligations to each American family -- Obama and his insane Congress want to double-down on the spending. Except it's not doubling, it's increasing far more than that. Hillary Clinton promised to pay $100B to "developing countries to offset the costs of adapting to climate change": http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2351880 This is nothing less than a transfer payment to the 3rd-world, at a time when we can least afford it. When Federal deficits of $1T per year or more are projected through the next ten years , Obama and his cronies are throwing more and more fuel on the fire. So the Democrats have now taken their philosophy of nakedly buying votes with taxpayer money, and are exporting it overseas. $100B is $1,500 per family. Since this wasn't included in any of Obama's budgets, this is on top of the $300,000 national debt per family we

It's about American Ideas, Stupid

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/03/obamas-olympic-failure-highlights-limits-international-appeal/ Aside from the question of why the President of the most powerful nation on earth, who should be focusing on winning two wars, removing obstacles to renewed economic growth, and a myriad of foreign policy problems spent time to go to Copenhagen to give a sales pitch for the Olympics, the result -- which has surprised leftist cheerleaders of Obama -- was that he failed. The Fox article above says "perhaps his international star power has limits", but misses the point. Well of course his star power has limits. And the limit is that many in the world hate America because of her ideas, because of what she represents. Hatred for America preceded George Bush and as Obama is perhaps now starting to realize, it exists after George Bush too. The rest of the world cheers Obama when he denigrates and insults America, when he supplicates himself to the likes of Abbas, Ghadafi, Chavez

Where's the post-racial presidency?

Many Democrats, and now Jimmy Carter, have claimed that opposition to Obama's government takeover of the US health care system are "racist" or "motivated by racism": http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/16/carter-racism-claim-draws-widespread-criticism/ This is complete and utter nonsense, Carter, and you know it. Yes there are some racists out there. Who cares? When hundreds of thousands of people descend on Washington DC to protest Obama's socialized medicine proposals, it's about socialism, stupid! The real story here should be, why does anyone still pay attention to anything Jimmy Carter says, when he is widely held as the worst modern president? Why does the media continue to feature Carter prominently? Why do they seek his input and advice on economic issues when under Carter we had double-digit inflation, double-digit interest rates, and shrinkage of real income across the nation? Because he's a socialist and the media is biased, maybe? The

The Great Health-Care Debate Straw Man

The socialist left has set up a massive straw man in the health care debate. It is, in short: "Opponents of Obama's health-care (wait, no, health-insurance) plan want to maintain the status-quo." This of course is a straw man and a great lie. There are clearly problems with the health care system, or more precisely, with the way that costs are growing out of whack. Nobody says the current setup is ideal. There is legitimate disagreement, however, about whether Yet Another Government Welfare Program is the way to go. Obama says "we need a government insurance plan to keep the private insurers honest". Even assuming that insurance companies were being dishonest (which is clearly the intention of Obama's phrasing), why not open the insurance field to MORE competition by allowing insurers to operate across state lines? That is one solution to the issue of limited competition in insurance and one which does not require a massive new federal bureaucracy and entit

Paul Krugman: Cheerleader for Socialism or just plain ignorant?

Paul Krugman always gets my blood boiling, because he is so self-righteous and yet so wrong. He writes in the pages of the New York Times, and talks about how he loves the proles and democracy - but unlike virtually every other media outlet, the New York Times has no reader comment feature. What Krugman really likes, is to pontificate to the masses from atop his ivory tower, and not have to listen to anyone tell him he's wrong. And how wrong he is. In a recent New York Times op-ed (1), Krugman writes: Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good. First off, Krugman like other Socialists just can't get over Ronald Reagan. They are still campaigning against him even though he's been dead for years. Earth to Krugman: Obama is the President now. Blaming Reagan for today's crises is even more daft than blaming Bush. " Let’s talk for a m

The Democrats' Health-Care Scapegoat -- and the truth

Barack Obama just launched a sleazy attack on many of the companies that make it possible for most Americans to have and pay for life-saving medical care - insurance companies. While this is the now well-defined scapegoat, they are still trotting out some tired straw man arguments too. 1. Health insurance companies are the problem! After talking about "health care" reform for years, Barack has found his scapegoat - insurance companies. Now the pitch is "health insurance reform". Never mind the thousands of pages of government regulation of insurance companies, the idea of insurance companies as 1800's-style robber barons oppressing the medical proletariat may be fashionable, but it's total bunk. Few industries are regulated as heavily as medicine and insurance. Barack's new solution, to make it illegal for insurance companies to cancel plans for any reason, will obviously cause a rise in premiums - just as the regulations forbidding companies from filter

Cover your ears, Diana

Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Colorado recently held an "online, interactive town hall". That's fancy talk for a "telephone conference call". While I of course applaud the idea of elected representatives putting themselves in the middle of the crowd to hear their ideas, this particular one was fishy. First, to participate, you had to fill out a form on DeGette's web site. Then, they would tell you five minutes before the event whether you were invited to the event. If invited, they would give you a call with the teleconference number. Then, they would offer certain participants the right to ask a question. Some "town hall". This is more like an infomercial. Clearly DeGette's crew was screening participants in order to avoid tough questions. They then further screened questions. Nothing would be asked of DeGette that wasn't doubly screened and allowed. This all amounts to Diana DeGette covering her ears and shouting "la la la la la la

Obama lied to us about a "new era in race relations"

One should not be surprised, that President Obama has been shown to be a liar. This is because Democrats cannot be elected President in this country without lying. Polls and surveys show that the country is consistently conservative, right-of-center, what have you. The majority of Americans do not want government run health care or any other form of liberal nanny-state. Bill Clinton campaigned as a "New Democrat", and was elected overwhelmingly by voters who wanted to punish George Bush Sr for his own lie - raising taxes after promising not to. But the key part is, he campaigned as a centrist. Of course, that was a lie. The moment he got into office, thinking he was secure with a Democrat-controlled Congress, Clinton began pushing a big-government liberal agenda, starting with the nationalization of health care. There was an immediate and violent rejection of this plan, ending in the election of the first Republican-controlled Congress in 50 years. Bbeing the kind of politici

Moveon.org Lies

I know what you're thinking. You're saying to yourself, "Of course Moveon.org lies, Publius, everyone knows tihs." Well, this is a particularly vicious lie. In a recent email sent out to Moveon.org members, Moveon.org elites including "Noah" had this to say about plans by the US Chamber of Commerce to oppose further acceleration of government intervention in the economy: The right-wing lobbyists at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will spend $100 million to defeat Obama's plans for health care and a clean energy economy. They call it their "most important project" in nearly 100 years. 1 Your local Chamber of Commerce represents small businesses, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is different—it represents the interests of mega-corporations, especially Big Oil and Coal. -- "Biggest corporate attack on Obama yet", Sat Jun 13 2009 So Moveon.org is trying to paint the US Chamber of Commerce as a "right-wing arm of Big Oil and Coal".

Democrat Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds at Guantanamo

Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, all of a sudden is concerned about what happens to the detainees currently housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=7633754&page=3 Virginia Sen. Jim Webb -- whose state would likely host detainees if they were to be tried in the American criminal justice system instead of on Cuba -- said Sunday on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" that he would not support bringing detainees stateside. "I think Guantanamo has become the great Rorschach test of how we feel about international terrorism. We should at the right time close Guantanamo, but I don't think that it should be closed in terms of transferring people here," he said. So, "we need to close Guantanamo but not if we, um, have to send these people anywhere else". Way to contradict yourself in the same sentence, Jim Webb. This is the single largest display of stupidity I've seen this year. Thus after years of united Demo

Who exactly are the "swine" in the swine flu?

Having just returned from a week-long trip to Mexico (Baja), it was instructive to note the devastation caused by the recent reckless fearmongering by the media, the Mexican government, and -- not to be left out of any opportunities to mislead the American public -- the US Government. Schools closed. Sporting events canceled. Restaurants and other public venues forced to shut down. Vacationers and business travelers by the hundreds of thousands cancel flights and hotels. You'd think it's the end of the world. By the way the media is still talking, it is the end of the world. But aside from the sparse tourist density, it was largely business-as-usual in Mexico, if you don't count the corpses piled waist-high in the streets. Oh, sorry, that's "Shawn of the Dead". No, seriously, it was business as usual, as much as it could be. Our flight, full with 140-150 people when we originally booked it, only had 40 souls aboard. The Mexican tourist industry, already hurtin

Obama Administration's head firmly in sand.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/30/clinton-administration-stopped-using-war-terror-term/ THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The phrase "global war on terror" is finished, at least as far as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is concerned. Obama and his cabinet now have their heads firmly in the sand and are ignoring the fact that we are at war across the globe with radical Islam. Pretending the war doesn't exist won't make it go away. A shift to political correctness by not using the term "war" doesn't mean bin Laden and his ilk want to kill us any less. There is a reason terrorist leaders around the world hoped for Obama's election - they now know the heat is off, and who knows what manner of appeasement is on the table. Obama and Clinton hope to buy peace by "being nice". This is now a consistent policy, with absolutely zero response to the planned launch of a North Korean ICBM that can reach Hawaii, with no

Pelosi should be excommunicated

Let me start by noting that I am neither a Catholic nor a Democrat. (A chuckle from my friends). I am a supporter of abortion rights. But this comes down to what you believe in. Pelosi claims to be a god-fearing Catholic but supports abortion rights. The pope says, "God does not support abortion rights and neither do Catholics". Interestingly, while the Pope could and should excommunicate Pelosi and others from the church, he does not. Also interestingly, Pelosi (and others) should voluntarily leave the church since her beliefs differ from the church's on such a core issue. Perhaps the Pope worries that kicking out Pelosi would cause others of his flock to leave. Perhaps Pelosi worries if she quits she will lose some of her flock who vote for her because she claims to be (however marginally) a "good Catholic". Either way, there is a lot of pragmatism going around and not enough attention to principles - which is of course the Democrat disease.

Democrats are Tax Hypocrites

So, the Democrats are always bandying about slogans such as "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer", "The rich ought to pay their fair share of taxes", and "We need to sacrifice (through higher taxes) in order to get our country on the right track." So, two prominent Democrats that Obama wants to put in charge of Federal agencies have been caught red-handed not paying their taxes. Tom Daschle owed $140,000 in back taxes and interest. "Daschle reportedly waited nearly a month after being nominated to be secretary of health and human services before informing President Obama that he had not paid years of back taxes." Timothy Geithner is now our treasury secretary, yet: Timothy Geithner's nomination for treasury secretary, held up after it was revealed that he had failed to pay more than $34,000 in taxes, eventually was confirmed by a 60-34 vote. Democrats love raising taxes on other people, then decide they themselves don't need to pay t

A most disgusting display of distraction

Governor of Illinois Rod Blagoyevich gave a press conference after his impeachment by the Illinois House. It was a spectacle, involving using a bunch of poor schmucks as his political tools, crassly parading Illinois citizens as his own political shield. He spoke about everything except the charges against him, basically attempting to distract attention away from his attempts to sell Obama's senate seat, by listing supposed accomplishments of his administration. That most of those accomplishments involved him doing an end-run around the law and against the intent of the legislature seems not to be a big deal to him. Blagoyevich is a clear example of the "imperial executive", that which people often claimed Bush was, but which Blagoyevich actually is. It is not surprising that it's a Democrat who acts the king, since Democrats believe that the power of government is supreme over the individual and that it is right and proper to use government power (coercion) to do wha