Barack Obama is unhappy. His Trillion Dollar spending package is being held up by the mean old Republicans in the Senate and he doesn’t like it. Yesterday in an editorial in the Washington Post and in a speech at the energy department he said that the time for talking is over, it is time for action. Actually I think what he meant was “I won, I won, you have to do what I say when I say!”

Mr. President, we are talking about nearly a TRILLION dollars here. That is over and above the $700 BILLION first bailout, and the TWO TRILLION dollar federal budget. If (more likely when) this monstrosity passes, the government will be taking a larger percentage of GDP than at any time since WWII.

The President wants to be seen as “doing something” about the problem. He doesn’t appear to be concerned about whether it is the right thing to do or not. He also doesn’t seem to care if a few extra hundred billion dollars get wasted as long as the bill gets passed.

Had he actually spent time in the Senate rather than on the campaign trail during his brief stint as Illinois’ junior senator, he would recognize that while the House can ram things through quickly, the Senate is more deliberative. When the bill passed the House despite heavy bi-partisan opposition, it was immediately clear that the bill would have to change drastically to get through the Senate and to get past the people who are growing more and more disenchanted with the bill the more they hear about it.

A more experienced leader would have recognized this immediately and taken action to lead the debate to get the best bill possible through. Instead, he has basically stamped his feet and had a temper tantrum.  This, combined with his missteps on his cabinet nominations and the firm rejection of his “open hands” policy by Iran, is not an auspicious start for the young Presidency. While I am not a big fan of Vice President Biden, I think it is time for him to take the President aside and teach him some of the facts of life of Washington before this gets even uglier than it already is. Barack Obama is our president and will be for nearly four more years. He has a lot to learn.

God Bless America

Former Rep. Dick Armey was scolded after losing his cool during an appearance on Hardball last night, where he told Salon editor in chief Joan Walsh he’s "so damn glad” she isn’t his wife.

Walsh and Armey were in a heated debate about the relevance of Rush Limbaugh in the GOP.

“I am so damn glad that you could never be my wife, ‘cause I surely wouldn't have to listen to that prattle from you every day,” Armey said.

"Well, that makes two of us," Walsh shot back.

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, waiting off camera for an appearance, said: "Dick Armey was so far out of line in the last segment with his sexist comments, and he owes Joan Walsh and your viewers and apology."

Matthews later apologized on behalf of the former House Majority Leader, and said the comments were "overboard."

In the first week of the Obama regime, he and his minions in Congress have done more to damage this country than I could have imagined in my worst nightmares. I am not sure George Orwell could have written such a horrifying script.

Congress is putting together a “Truth Commission” (no kidding, that is what they are calling it) to investigate “war crimes” by the Bush administration. Squeaker of the House Nancy “rights of the minority” Pelosi has issued rules prohibiting the Republican minority from offering substitute bills on the house floor. Meanwhile Obama has ordered that the terrorists being held safely in Cuba be brought here and given all the rights of citizens, even as our own rights as real citizens are being trampled.

The President has demonstrated that all he cares about is power. His so-called stimulus plan is designed to make sure that the majority of the voters pay no income taxes so that there will be no opposition to any future taxes on the “rich” and that the country will become more addicted to the drug of government spending and will not see the domination and control until too late.

He has issued executive orders that will lead to the deaths of not only our auto industry, but thousands of Americans on the highways who are forced to buy cars made of recycled tissue paper. He will then use those deaths to force greater regulations on us, such as sharply reduced speed limits, mandatory public transportation, no conversations in automobiles, penalties for not carpooling, and God only knows what else.

He has proven his hypocrisy on the subject of economic stimulation by surrendering federal control of interstate commerce to the states in clear violation of the Constitution (an impeachable offense by the way) with the unavoidable result of the final destruction of the domestic automobile industry.

He has, through executive order, provided our money for the purposes of expanding the genocide that has taken over 50,000,000 (that’s FIFTY MILLION) lives in the past 36 years in this country alone (makes Hitler and Stalin look like pikers doesn’t it?). This demonstrates that race is not a motivation for him, just power, since the vast majority of the victims of this genocide are black.

Next he plans to begin negotiations with Iran! On what topic I wonder? Which city they will nuke first? How much money we will give them to keep them nuking Israel during Barack’s first term? How soon we will turn over the keys to Baghdad to them? How soon we will replace the Constitution with Sharia Law? How does one negotiate with a country whose stated purpose is our destruction and that of our closest ally in the Mideast?

Wasn’t it just last week that he told us that it was time to end partisan bickering and to work together, that we should reach out open hands because that would unclench fists? But what was his response to Representative Cantor when he questioned part of the stimulus bill? “I won.” 

Never in our country’s great history has any president done so much damage and gathered so much power in so short a time. The media lap dogs are so eager to have him smile at them (so they can feel a chill run up their collective legs) that they are more than complicit in his actions.

God Save America

She and a friend had been to Times Square, Central Park and ground zero, where nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. She said she was struck by the contrast between one disaster in which so many people died and another in which everyone survived.

"It's a miracle," she said. "I guess New Yorkers can't take any more tragedy."

I have to agree with her that the safe landing of Flt 1549 was nearly miraculous. But the comparison of the two incidents is, to me at least, very jarring.

The US Air flight resulted in no loss of life by a combination of luck, God’s will, and the incredible training, skill, courage and dedication of a flight crew fully committed to the responsibility of caring for those who entrusted with them with their lives for the flight from New York to Charlotte. The flight crew had only moments to decide what to do not only to protect the lives of their charges but also life on the ground.

On the other hand, vicious cowards with no regard for human life deliberately and callously carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was not a “disaster”, “tragedy”, or bad luck. It was an act of war by cowards who refused to obey even the simplest rules of warfare. In violation of every rule ever created, they deliberately and cowardly targeted innocent civilians.

A point that is ignored (or not understood) by the liberal apologists around the world (including President Obama) is that the United States was under no obligation to treat the individuals we have captured in Afghanistan and Iraq or elsewhere as Prisoners of War. In fact, under the Geneva Conventions we had and have every legal right to hold them without trial or hearing throughout the time of conflict. We also have the right to execute them as War Criminals for violating both our laws and international laws, including the Geneva Conventions, that prohibit deliberate targeting of civilians and engaging in combat or terror activities while disguised as a civilian.

Now President Obama wishes to either release these pathetic cowards or transport them to our own shores and give them the rights of citizens of the United States. The very people that they are determined to exterminate.

These cowards, from Osama bin Laden cowering in his cave somewhere, to his state sponsors in the Taliban, Iran and formerly in Iraq, to the Hamas cowards in Palestine are not willing to even stand up and fight for their cause like men. They launch (or fund) random attacks against innocents using suicide bombers and random missile fire to target civilian not military targets. Then when free countries fight back, carefully targeting only military targets and even warning of planned attacks, these same cowards and their apologists whine and cry to the United Nations about the bullies in Israel and Washington.

President Bush’s greatest success has had the unfortunate effect of allowing people to forget that there are sub-human cowards out there who are determined to kill us all, wherever we are. That threat has not changed since 9/11. We have done an outstanding job fighting it to prevent another attack on U.S. soil. Was there anyone in the world on 9/12/2001 or even 2004 who would have been willing to bet that there would not be another attack before the end of 2008?

We have now elected one of those apologists as President and his first act as President was to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and to commit that no terrorist has anything to fear from us if they get captured and no reason to give us any information. They will only be questioned gently and politely and if we offend them or hurt their feelings in any way, they can probably sue us in our courts.

I am ready right now to stand up and predict that we will be attacked again on our soil, sometime in the next four years. It is also quite easy to predict that the liberals in our media, Congress and White House will say that the fault is George W. Bush’s because he made the world hate us. Never mind that the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the attack on the USS Cole took place under Bill Clinton’s watch and 9/11 attack was less than nine months after Bush took office. I would love to hear how President Bush 43 made Osama bin Laden hate us in 1993!

I don’t give a damn if the UN, the left, the European "elite", the dictators, and the terrorists hate us, as long as they respect and/or are scared of our power and our commitment to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

President Obama has set us on a course of appeasement that will lead only to disrespect and will create a perception of weakness. In clear and certain terms he has told the world that President Kennedy was just kidding. He has told them that we are ready to reach out our open hands and hope our enemies will open their fists and join us in a rousing chorus of Kumbaya and that we have the audacity to hope they will be nice to us now that nasty Mr. Bush is gone.

When we compare an act of heroism and life saving with the cowardly acts of wanton destruction against innocents, we empower the terrorists and encourage them to strike again.

God Bless America

Dear Mr. President:

Congratulations on becoming the 44^th President of the United States. I wish you the best of success in that most difficult office. As you familiarize yourself with the White House I hope that you will take the time to read (re-read I hope) the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to remind yourself of the full burden that you are about to undertake.

Mr. President, these documents, which you spoke of so highly in your inaugural address today, deserve and require more than lip service. Much of what you spoke of in your speech is diametrically opposed to the ideals set forth in those documents. Freedom is not provided by government. It is not the government’s responsibility to help people find jobs or homes or medical care. It is the job of the government to stay out of the way, and to make sure that others stay out of the way, of each individual’s God-given freedom to make their own way in the world, powered by their own innate skills and abilities.

Mr. President, God has given us conscience and the desire to help those who cannot help themselves. Government has taken that desire away and impersonalized it, removed it from the American psyche so that now we view a homeless person and see it as a government problem, not a problem for us to deal with as individuals.

Mr. President, when we look at the world and see countries where the citizens are trapped in poverty and opportunity is denied, we cannot help them by simply sending money to their captors or extending an open hand hoping that they will unclench their fists. We must help them by opening free trade and opportunity, showing the people and their governments that the strength of any nation comes from the individuals that make up its citizenry. Those individuals, each pursuing his or her own brand of success and satisfaction, are the people that truly benefit the “common good” for as each one achieves more, they also share more, either via their purchases, their gifts, or their good works.

Mr. President, when you penalize the most successful in our country, the pain will be felt most by the least among us; for they are the ones whose jobs will be lost; they are the ones who will no longer be building homes, yachts, cars, or anything else.

Mr. President, the Declaration and the Constitution lay out these values clearly and precisely. The Constitution places sharp restrictions on the authority of the government. Although these restrictions have been honored mostly in the breach over the past 76 years, they are critically important. If you follow those restrictions and move government out of the way by reducing spending and reducing ALL taxes you will be amazed at what this country can do.

Mr. President, I pray for your success in office, I pray for the future of our nation. Please bring your capabilities and strengths to bear to ensure that our nation is more free in 2012 than it is today, that my daughter will grow up in a country founded on and still based upon individual freedom and responsibility.

God Bless you and God Bless America,

James W. Hunt

Tomorrow, for the first time in our history, a President will take office who is not a white male. It has taken nearly 233 years since the phrase “all men are created equal” was penned. But we now have hopefully gotten past the belief that a person’s skin color is somehow relevant to his or her character, capabilities, or intelligence.

But have we really? Has the same set of criteria been used to judge Barack Obama as George W. Bush or any other previous president? If not, why?? President-elect Obama’s inauguration is shaping up more like a coronation. The media frenzy that has surrounded him for nearly a year of unquestioning adulation continues. Controversies that have destroyed previous president’s nominees are being ignored, as are many of Obama’s own questionable acts.

What would Dr. King think of Obama’s relationship with racists like Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan? What would he think of Obama’s relationship with un-repentant terrorist William Ayers or crime mogul Tony Rezko?

God Bless America

The first was the thought that when the first of those presidents took office 32 years ago and the President-elect was anticipating his 16^th birthday, one of the continuing news stories of the day was forced busing in Boston and the continued racial tensions there and elsewhere in the country. Now we have a black man about to become the most powerful man in the world. I might have preferred it be J.C. Watts, or Michael Steele or Condaleeza Rice but I cannot help to be proud that we as a people have come so far so fast after such an inexcusably long time.

The other fact that struck me is how special this country is in the way we manage these transitions. During this time of economic crisis and ongoing war, our country is undergoing a radical shift in leadership. Control is changing from one “faction” to another. But there is no bloodshed; no former leaders jailed or executed. No matter how much the parties may disagree, the current president will step down in 12 days and return to private life, respected and honored for the service he has given his country, just as his predecessors have been.

On January 20, 2009 Barack Hussein Obama will become the 44^th President of the United States of America. Following a procedure designed over 200 years ago, a man who – had he lived at that time – might have been a slave, will take the oath of office and become the most powerful man in the world. Not be force of arms, but by the ballot box.

Whatever we may feel about President-elect Obama’s policies, he is about to become our president. He will become only the 44^th man ever to hold that office and forever more he will join the rarified company of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan, and all the others.

I am proud of a country that, despite our differences, despite our challenges, continues to move forward with peaceful transitions of power at the people’s will. I pray that it will always be thus. We should all pray for President-elect Obama and wish him a safe and successful term in office. We stand ready to oppose him when necessary using the tools our Founders gave us in the Constitution, but we also stand ready to support him just as firmly when it is appropriate to do so. Right, wrong or indifferent, he is about to become the President of United States. God Bless him and …

God Bless America

It is time for conservatives to suck it up and realize what when wrong and stop whining. It was conservatives who stuck their heads in the sand and stayed home on Election Day. Now we have soon to be President-elect Obama and Secretary of State Designee Clinton. There are people on the right still trying anything to prevent this from happening.

Article I Section 6 of the Constitution says “No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; …” President Bush signed an executive order increasing the salary of the Secretary of State in 2007. Therefore Senator Clinton is technically barred from that office. This situation has occurred before during the Taft, Nixon, Carter and Clinton administrations. There is a simple legal workaround known as the Saxbe fix, named after Senator William B. Saxbe who Nixon named as Attorney General. The fix is for Congress to reduce the salary back to the original level for the duration of the individual’s term of office. This was done for Secretary of State Philander Knox under William Taft, Attorney General Saxbe, Secretary of State Edmund Muskie under Carter, and Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen under Clinton. While legal scholars disagree over the legality of the fix, it has been considered a non-issue when it has been used.

The only exception was when President Reagan was considering naming Senator Orrin Hatch to the Supreme Court. The issue was raised and Hatch’s name was withdrawn from consideration. Of course the fact that the Supreme Court is a lifetime appointment may have also been a factor when it would lock his salary for life at the earlier level.

When the issue came up with Lloyd Bentsen the Saxbe fix was passed without objection and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush at the end of his term so Bentsen could take office immediately.

Today there are some Republicans trying to block Hillary Clinton’s nomination. Clearly the Saxbe fix addresses the concern of the founders expressed in Article I Section 6. This push to block her nomination is just bitter whining and should stop.

Similarly those on the right pushing the question of Obama’s birth certificate are now carrying things too far. It was certainly a legitimate question and it may not have been answered to everyone’s satisfaction (including mine). However, the Supreme Court has made its ruling and the question is now closed. It is time to move on (to coin a phrase).

Barack Obama will become the President and in all likelihood Hillary Clinton will be Secretary of State. It is now time for all Americans, and particularly principled conservatives, to accept the judgment of the voters and to be good citizens. That doesn’t mean we should support everything Obama does. But when he is right he deserves our support. When he is wrong we should stand up and say so, firmly and loudly. We need to get our own house in order, do everything we can to make sure the ship of state doesn’t become more damaged on the rocks than it already has, and focus on the present and future.

Our losses were self-inflicted. We pointed fingers and laughed at the whiners in 2000 and 2004. It is very unbecoming for us to be the whiners now. This is still the greatest country in the world, and we will survive the Obama administration and we will still be the Shining City on the Hill. It is up to us to maintain that shine, and we may have difficult years ahead, but freedom will prevail if we stand up and stop whining.

God Bless America

You see it every day on our currency, our national motto: E Pluribus Unum. But how many Americans know what that Latin phrase means? The translation is “From Many, One.” There are many ways this phrase can be interpreted – one country from many colonies, one people from many backgrounds, etc. Unfortunately this latter interpretation seems to have fallen out of favor of late. Bill Murray’s character in the movie Stripes described the concept in this unique way:

“We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts! Here's proof: his nose is cold! But there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more loveable than the mutt.”

The concept of being simply Americans (with a capital ‘A’) has been subsumed by “multiculturalism” and hyphenated-Americanism. The great “Melting Pot” has been replaced by a segregated cooking surface where things are rapidly coming to a boil as people are separated into special groups for purposes of political victimization.

One of the greatest Americans* ever, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., told us that he dreamt of a day when his children would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. But today’s “Liberals” want just the opposite. In the name of “Diversity” everyone must be categorized and segmented by racial or national origin in order to be granted the correct special privileges. Therefore we must now have a plethora of hyphenated Americans who are to be judged by their membership in a particular category.

It is ironic that in this year, when we elected Barack Obama as the first Democrat president of the 21^st century, race was such a major issue in the election. Post election polls clearly show that a large plurality of Obama voters had no idea what policies he was proposing or views that he holds. His biggest points were that he is not George W. Bush and is non-Caucasian.

I believe that it is fair to examine whether Barack Obama was judged by the content of is character or by the color of his skin. Unfortunately I believe it was the latter. There is no doubt whatsoever that Obama is a dynamic, charismatic leader and speaker. However, he is arguably the least qualified person ever to be elected to the office (actually of course he hasn’t been elected yet, but that is for another day). He has served but a brief time in the U.S. Senate and previously a brief stint as a state senator. He has never run a business, never held any kind of executive position and has no foreign policy experience. His foreign policy pronouncements have been decried as naïve and dangerous by NATO leaders and his own nominee for Secretary of State. His proposed domestic policies can only be described as socialistic at best.

No presidential candidate in recent history has been given such as pass by the press. There is no questioning that President Bush proved the old adage that attempting to please everyone ends up pleasing no one. There is no question that John McCain was not a candidate that would energize the conservative base and he did a very poor job of getting his message out. However, I strongly doubt that a candidate with Senator (not yet President-elect) Obama’s experience and beliefs would ever be elected all other things being equal. The press wanted Obama to be elected and therefore they did not push issues that would have destroyed other candidates. His policies are not dissimilar to those proffered by Dennis Kucinich (anyone remember him?). Congressman Kucinich (Moonbat – Ohio) has run for president not once, but twice. He is hugely popular with the lunatic fringe (MoveOn.org, DailyKos, George Soros, etc.) but was never able to get beyond that base even though he is a reasonable (but not Obama-standard) orator. How likely is it that any other candidate (of either party) would have survived being so closely affiliated with an unrepentant terrorist (William Ayers), a viciously anti-American pastor (Reverend Wright), and a group whose name is synonymous with voter registration fraud and intimidation tactics (ACORN)? Bill Clinton was heavily criticized for his (laughable) statement that he never inhaled. George W. Bush’s alcoholism was a constant topic of punditry during the 2000 and 2004 elections. Barack Obama’s heavy drug use (as described in his books)? Never mentioned in the main stream media. Barack Obama’s vote to allow the killing of living survivors of botched abortions? Never mentioned in the main stream media.

Barack Obama is the poster child of the multiculturalist elite that believes that everyone (except the evil rich of course) is a victim. When I was growing up, immigrants were (and still are) the backbone of this nation. They came here legally and worked hard to improve themselves and the lives of their children. They struggled to learn the language and they were extremely proud to call themselves Americans. Now we are told that it is racist to expect people to learn English. We are told that (any target voting bloc here)-Americans need special rights, help with college, easier loans (oops), etc., etc.

It is ironic, that the people who claim to embrace tolerance and to want us all to get along are the very ones that have created the situation where E Pluribus Unum is no longer even a goal in this country.

God Bless America

*Note: I deliberately said American, not African-American. I feel that Dr. King would be highly offended to be segregated that way and by the way his dream has been perverted by Jesse Jackson, et. al.