“Efficiency in Government…an Oxymoron."
by John Alexander Madison
November 30, 2009

It has become quite clear that the federal government cannot manage its vast bureaucracy. As a result there is widespread opposition to the proposed national health care program. That opposition is based, in large part, on three factors… (1) knowledge that the government has failed to effectively manage other major initiatives such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and primary education, to name a few; (2) fear of inevitable and huge costs; (3) general mistrust of government and our elected officials.

Social Security Administration...
When excessive payments were paid to millions of social security beneficiaries the SSA’s Chief of Staff Larry W. Dye said “Correcting a record more than four years in the past could cause an undue hardship to beneficiaries, as well as create extensive public relations issues for the agency.” Au contraire Monsieur Dye, mon fraire, continuing to make wrongful and unearned payments to social security recipients creates larger public relations issues for the agency and a larger federal deficit. How can we trust you? This is no way to run a business.

Primary Education...
An editorial on www.bethesite.com recently wrote about government efforts in primary education: In the last 25 years, the United States has doubled per-pupil spending (adjusted for inflation). The US spends far more money on primary education than most other industrialized countries. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2008 Education at a Glance, the United States ranks number one internationally in annual expenditure on educational institutions per student. However, national SAT scores are flat or have fallen since we started the huge influx of spending decades ago, and our international scholastic standing earns a failing grade. I believe the public school system is a harbinger of what would occur should the health care system be nationalized. We will spend too much, and we will end up with one of the worst systems in the industrialized world, with unions, lobbyists the ACLU and government bureaucrats working together to ensure that the system is as bad as it could possibly be, and that there's no way out of the debacle for generations.

Creating and Saving Jobs...
In 2009, we learned of a new and cleaver, but immeasurable, government jobs initiative…not only creating but ‘saving’ jobs. The problem is when the government creates government jobs there is no sustainable funding for them as government jobs do not create income, they just create a need for more taxes…and therefore increased government inefficiency and indebtedness. What government must do is eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. They can start by staying out of business, supporting the free market economy and eliminating all government czars. Government initiatives this year have not saved any jobs (that was just a talking point we were to believe) but they have lost millions of jobs in the private sector. With over 10% national unemployment job creation and saving is, quite clearly, yet another government myth, yet another government failure.

By the way, how do we measure “saved’ jobs? This is yet another example of more rhetoric and few results from our leadership in Washington. I am reminded of a scene in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” where the politician Polonius, who has declared that ‘brevity is the soul of wit,’ continues to expand upon Hamlet's supposed madness. The impatient Queen dryly demands ‘More matter with less art,’ that is, more substance and less rhetoric. It appears that whatever schooling our current President may have achieved it was short on English literature…or he doesn’t take advice from anyone, even the Queen!

Does anybody out there still believe the federal government is the answer?

What about Amtrak and the United States Postal Service (USPS)? They are both run by the government and they are both inefficient and bankrupt. I believe an infrastructure for a national railroad system must be built and maintained as a partial solution to our long-term private and commercial transportation needs. I also believe that the only role of the government should be helping to provide the right-of-way for such a system. That’s it, provide the right-of-way, and then get out of the way!

Regarding our beloved USPS, I received 30 pieces of mail in the two days following the Thanksgiving holiday. Of those 25 pieces were what I would characterize as “unsolicited, junk mail.” Mail I just did not want: catalogues, insurance offers, solicitations for contributions, and more; all labeled and shipped to me as “bulk mail” and all of which I threw away within minutes. While this junk mail represented 83% of my two-day mail and probably 98% of the weight of all the mail received I suspect that the postage required to mail those pieces was 10-20% of the entire mailings.

Write your Members of Congress today and demand that all postage be based on weight then, just maybe, the USPS might begin digging itself out of a huge government created financial hole.

Think about it. While you and I must pay $.44 for a one ounce piece of first-class mail, bulk mailings are clogging our system, our mail boxes, and our wastebaskets, and they are accounting for a great majority of the mail to be moved by USPS (both in pieces and weight), yet bulk mailers are paying pennies on the dollar while you and I must now pay 28 cents for a “penny post card.”

Let’s face it, beyond remarkable outcomes by our military establishment with ever decreasing resources, our federal government has proven to be incapable of anything more than building an unsustainable bureaucracy and a national deficit beyond our ability to re-pay it.


EPILOGUE
As in business, government must get smart; it must live within its means at all levels and not continue to believe more money (taxes and fees) is the answer. Less government is the answer.

I’ve said it often and I’ll say it again: “Efficiency in government doesn’t have to be an oxymoron…and that efficiency can be achieved through technology” and, I’ll add here, “and application of the most basic principles of business.”
I believe, as did our Founding Fathers, that the role of our federal government is a limited one.




"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing..." Edmund Burke

THE WASTE LAND

BY ROBERT HARKINS J.D.

Civilization, vibrant and in its prime, recognizes in poetry, myth, science and religion, the sacred and profane. The sacred is a reality blest, transcendent, and proof against the forces of time and space, birth and death. The profane is a force centered in chaos and annihilation, in entropy, and the death of civilizations. The profane is perfectly expressed in the Indian poem, Bhagavad-Gita, in Lord Krishna’s mordent admonition,

“I am become death, Destroyer of Worlds.”

When from the sacred, a cathedral is conceived and worked from rough stone, or an good poem told to a meter, or the likeness of David chiseled from dumb marble, it is the blunt force of the profane that would see the cathedral broken to dust, the poem parodied in obscene skits and Angelo’s David defaced with graffiti.

The sacred, cannot be explained empirically. Its logic is not of the mind but the heart. It is the fountainhead of creativity in art, science, politics, philosophy and religion. The profane is expressed in the language of materialism, in cultural relativism, in the darkened visions of nihilism, in the satiric profanation of the first principles of faith and natural law. The profane is manifest in the theory that the force man calls sacred is a fantasy conceived to allay his timid fear of death and extinction. Indeed to the profane, nothing is sacred or divine for, God and angels all, are the personification of the absurd.

The claim is made that the profane liberates this thing called man from sacred nonsense, enlightens him with the secular revelation that it is random mutation raised him from the gibbering ape, that set him upright on two feet, that made of this once pouting animal a rational man aware of the metes and bounds, the weight and measure, the paradoxical order and grandeur of a pointless, inert and lawless reality.

While in ancient Greece, the philosophers Plato and Aristotle celebrated Logos (Reason), in fact, Greek civilization was centered in the practice of Arête, sacred as well as rational excellence. The Stoics, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, warned that the exercise of reason alone would set man upon a profane path. Reason as the measure of all knowledge would curse him with hubris, an overweening arrogance, an incendiary pride by which man in his exaltation of reason and in his abandonment of the gods, would fall easy pray to the delusion that he is the god-like fount of perfect wisdom. In hubris man would find his nemesis— for whom the gods would destroy they first drive mad.

Our modern alienation from myth is unprecedented. In the pre-modern world, mythology was indispensable. It not only helped people to make sense of their lives but also revealed the regions of his mind that would otherwise have remained inaccessible. …. Today we separate the religious from the secular. This would have been incomprehensible to the Paleolithic hunters, for whom nothing was profane. Everything they saw or experienced was transparent to its counterpart in the divine world. Anything, however lowly, could embody the sacred. Everything they did was a sacrament that put them in touch with the gods.[1]

Six centuries before Christ, Shakyamuni, son of a Shakya king, was tormented by this question: Why is everyone subject finally to suffering and death? In search of an answer he gave up his wealth and kingdom and took up the life of a penniless mendicant. In an instant sacred to Buddhists, Shakyamuni, following long years of meditation, sat beneath a ficus tree and vowed not to rise until he had attained enlightenment. At dawn of the third day his mind opened to a sacred reality. The Buddha, (one who is awakened), moved by the exquisite beauty of the morning star, smiled and informed posterity that “All sentient beings are imbued with Buddha nature,” sacred and imperishable. Later when cross-examined by religious experts of questionable moral reputation who tried to wring from him in words the essential nature of this sacred thing, the Buddha, in a gesture since named “The Lion’s Roar,” “maintained a noble silence.”

In the 20^th and 21^st centuries, an intellectual movement, characterized variously as post modernism, cultural relativism, and nihilism, engaged the instruments of satire, sophistry and ridicule to reject the idea of a sacred reality. For example, in the Chinese belief that there exists a sacred bond between the dead, the living and the unborn, the new intellectual saw superstitious ancestor worship and impenetrable ignorance.

The sanctity of marriage as a sacred union of man and woman, and the sympathetic study of the disciplines of Western Civilization, are now derided by the new intellectual as inexcusable manifestations of cultural chauvinism. Since the sixties, the pursuit of moral and rational excellence has been outlawed at American universities by a tenured, academic elite who intend to see realized, in the imposition of dogmatic political correctness and the suppression of rational inquiry, yet another lethal, secular utopia. The communist Lenin captured perfectly the aesthetics of the profane when he described the act of sexual love of a man for his wife no more significant than the taking of a drink of water.

The materialist intellectual in his preemption of all but the profane calls upon the ghosts of the French philosophes who in their exaltation of reason gave the world Robespierre who in the name of Egalite condemned to the guillotine tens of thousands of innocent men and women. He gave us Napoleon, destroyer of democracies. He gave us the Soviet Union and its gulags, Stalin, show trials, mass executions and the calculated starvation of six million Kulaks. He gave us German concentration camps and Cambodian killing fields. He gave us the holocaust of six million Jews. He gave us Cuba’s island prison, a Chinese Cultural Revolution and death by starvation in the millions. He gave us the immolation and banishment from their country of the Tibetan people. He gave to more than a hundred million human beings imprisonment, starvation, despair, and finally, profane death and an anonymous grave.

But Logos had never been able to provide human beings with the sense of significance that they seemed to require. It had been myth that had given structure and meaning to life, but as modernism progressed and logos achieved such spectacular results, mythology was increasingly discredited. As early as the sixteenth century, we see more evidence of a numbing despair, a creeping mental paralysis, and a sense of impotence and rage as the old mythical way of thought crumbled and nothing new appeared to take its place. We are seeing a similar anomie today in developing countries that are still in the earlier stages of modernization… By treating myth as though it were rational, modern scientists, critics and philosophers had made it incredible…. By making God a wholly notional truth, reached by the critical intellect alone, modern men and women had killed it for themselves.

What then is the American legacy of the profane? It is carnage in the millions of federally funded abortions, the ruination of American education, the debasement of the politician and his betrayal of the American people; it is the abandonment, in all but name, of the American Constitution. It is in a legacy of unwed, pregnant mothers and in teenaged boys who consider their impregnation of random numbers of dependant women a badge of macho pride, young men, ignorant of their American heritage, who would be shocked should anyone explain to them the sacred nature and responsibilities of fatherhood.

We see the legacy of the profane in narcissist politicians possessed with the temerity to tell us that the assumption of unquenchable debt will set us free, that the wonton confiscation of private wealth will usher in an economic Valhalla. We see the legacy of the profane in a burgeoning crime rate and in the Federal Government’s abandonment of its Constitutional obligation to the American people, the protection of American borders and the intelligent control of immigration. We see the legacy of the profane in the President’s most solemn promises, promises made in return for our vote, sacred promises broken, every one of them, and therefore by expedience and betrayal made profane. Americans have reaped the whirlwind of the profane; so also has the rest of the world.

The twentieth century presented us with one nihilistic icon after another, and many of the extravagant hopes of modernity and the Enlightenment were shown to be false; the First World War revealed that science… could also be applied with lethal effect to weaponry; Auschwitz, the Gulag and Bosnia spelled out what could happen when all sense of sacredness is lost. We learned that a rational education did not redeem humanity from barbarism, and that a concentration camp could exist in the same vicinity as a great university. The explosion of the first atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki laid bare the germ of nihilistic self-destruction at the heart of modern culture; and the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 showed that the benefits of modernity—technology, ease of travel and global communications—could be made instruments of terror.

What then is to be done? Should Americans recognize at last that we are betrayed by a philosophy of materialism centered on the propagation of the profane, that in the name of egalitarianism would compel equality only in misery, and in the name of diversity would make of tribalism a secular sacrament?

Is it time that Americans again embrace the sacred: in woman, not only as intelligent and capable in the disciplines of art, business, science, education, and all else, but in the recognition of her sacredness, in her capacity as mother, creator and teacher of children, she who graces her husband with peace, love and dignity; and finally in the practice of deep respect, of our parents and grand parents; and in the acknowledgement of our duty to accept from the dead, the legacy of our Western Civilization, to finally and at last pass it on, intact and sacred, to Americans yet unborn.

In The Wasteland, T.S. Elliot, “…laid bare the sterility of contemporary life: its alienation, ennui, nihilism, superstition, egotism and despair. As he confronts the imminent demise of Western civilization, his narrator concludes: ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins.’

The broken insights of the past that he has gathered together in this poem can save us. When we have pieced them together and recognized their common core, we can reclaim the wasteland in which we live.

What do you think?

---

[1]Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, (Cannongate, 2005). All references are to her book.

Giving Thanks

by The Lone Front Ranger

What I am grateful for:

I am grateful for my spouse, family, bosses, co-workers, and friends. Their support and guidance sustains me and reminds me of what we fight for.

I am grateful for the men and women in our Armed Forces, who put their lives on the line so that I can live in this amazing country. Their dedication to our country inspires me to serve where I can.

I am grateful for our elected officials, who dedicate themselves to increasing liberty and decreasing the impact of government. Their tireless work in the face of high scrutiny and low pay moves me to levels of appreciation I never imagined.

I am grateful for our national symbols – the Statue of Liberty, the American Flag, the National Anthem. They still give me chills, tears, and a sense of pride and patriotism after all these years. I wish never to lose the reverence for what these symbols mean.

I am grateful for our system of government. Even though I disagree with everything our President and Congress are doing today, I know that our system gives us the ability to take it back. It gives me optimism for the future that our way of life is still in our grasp.

I am grateful for living in a secure country, where I can go to a polling place to exercise my right to vote, without fear of violence. I can speak out against my government without fear of being shot. That is not possible in much of the world. This freedom compels me to appreciate it in every moment.

I am grateful for the Bill of Rights, and especially the 2^nd Amendment. The right to protect my family and myself gives me the confidence to live the life I want.

I am grateful for being born in a country where anything is possible. Her ideals stir a deep desire to give my best. Because I have the freedom to do anything I can imagine, not to take advantage of that freedom would be unconscionable.

Happy Thanksgiving. Please remember what we are fighting for.

"We Give Thanks"
by John Alexander Madison
November 23, 2009

“The First Thanksgiving”
(from History.com)

In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast which is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. This harvest meal has become a symbol of cooperation and interaction between English colonists and Native Americans. Although this feast is considered by many to the very first Thanksgiving celebration, it was actually in keeping with a long tradition of celebrating the harvest and giving thanks for a successful bounty of crops. Native American groups throughout the Americas, including the Pueblo, Cherokee, Creek and many others organized harvest festivals, ceremonial dances, and other celebrations of thanks for centuries before the arrival of Europeans in North America.

Historians have also recorded other ceremonies of thanks among European settlers in North America, including British colonists in Berkeley Plantation, Virginia. At this site near the Charles River in December of 1619, a group of British settlers led by Captain John Woodlief knelt in prayer and pledged "Thanksgiving" to God for their healthy arrival after a long voyage across the Atlantic. This event has been acknowledged by some scholars and writers as the official first Thanksgiving among European settlers on record. Whether at Plymouth, Berkeley Plantation, or throughout the Americas, celebrations of thanks have held great meaning and importance over time. The legacy of thanks, and particularly of the feast, have survived the centuries as people throughout the United States gather family, friends, and enormous amounts of food for their yearly Thanksgiving meal.

Recent writings in this column have included explaining basic economics to the Governor of Colorado in “It’s Quite Simple, Governor, Really,” Nov. 16, 2009; “The Difference Between Right and Wrong, Good and Evil,” November 9, 2009; “Who Do You Trust, (Congress or God)” October 26, 2009; exposing the White House for its shameless and historically unprecedented attacks on the only remaining objective television news outlet in the nation (“Inexcusable,” October 19, 2009); and a tribute to a truly deserving Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Norman Borlaug (sorry, Kool-Aid drinkers not the 2009 winner Barrack Hussein Obama) in “The Real Thing,” October 12, 2009.

However, in the spirit of continuing cooperation and interaction, it seems more appropriate this week to put all political commentary aside and focus on what really matters and what really matters is everything we should be grateful for on Thanksgiving Day.

Those who are blessed with good health, a loving, caring family (including grandchildren,) shelter, food, clothing, an ongoing source of revenue, many friends and our faith certainly have much to be thankful for. And aren’t we all thankful the laws of nature, for the freedoms we enjoy and the opportunities we have as Americans (while we still have them). Most non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, residing in America are undoubtedly thankful as well for the many benefits and privileges bestowed upon them by an increasingly tolerant, sympathetic and generous government.

While we give thanks for all the blessings in our lives as we enjoy our holiday turkey with all the trimmings (stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetables, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, or raison pie, and more) we will also remember those who are less fortunate. And most of all, we can be thankful for God’s love for us all.

“Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.” Edward Sandford Martin

"Some people complain because God put thorns on roses, while others praise Him for putting roses among thorns."
Anonymous


EPILOGUE
Earlier, I pledged to put politics aside this week. Therefore, it is important to also be thankful for our nation’s leadership, including President Barrack Hussein Obama (D), Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), U.S. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D, NV), Senators Charles Schumer (D, NY) and Christopher Dodd (D, CT) and former Congressman and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.

Why? Because these folks and their disciples have, in ten short months, reminded us that socialism has never worked and never will. They have reminded us that no nation has ever spent its way to economic recovery. They have reminded us that arrogance is not a quality we admire in our elected leaders. They have reminded us that even if there is some improvement in our economy or improvement in unemployment numbers during the next twelve months, the national debt they have accumulated will take generations to resolve, and for those reminders we are truly thankful.

They have also reminded us that we should be thankful that the next Congressional elections are less than one year away and that Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, Dodd and the like will be ending their political careers when the 112th session of Congress begins in January 2011. For that, too, we should all give thanks.

Politics aside, we should be thankful for all of God’s graces and all that is good in this world.


"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing..." Edmund Burke

No Explanation Needed

By Range Rider

• The Attorney General of the United States decides to extend Constitutional rights to non-citizen terrorists for acts of war against the United States. These rights include a trial in which national security information could well be compromised. The trial itself may constitute a terrorist target, will certainly be a venue for spewing hatred of the United States and will impose millions of dollars of burden on taxpayers.

When questioned by Congress, the AG was unable to provide a coherent explanation, suggesting simply that the United States will be demonstrating confidence in our own system. By the way, this Rider has confidence in the military justice system, designed to handle just this type of judicial proceeding without the expense or risk.

• The Administration’s “Making Home Affordable” program, governed loosely by Treasury and ineptly managed by bailed-out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is creating havoc in the industry while helping only a small percentage of borrowers. In addition to a continual barrage of complex and unclear program changes, differences in implementation procedures among Treasury and the two Agencies, the program design will never reach those borrowers with the greatest need and punishes those who have worked hard to stay current on their mortgages.

Just one of the latest head-scratchers: If a homeowner is currently making timely mortgage payments, but is in danger of “imminent default” and meets a few other requirements, the mortgage payment can be reduced to 31% of income. Once three consecutive payments are made, the payment is officially modified. The catch is that the homeowner is reported as delinquent as soon the first reduced payment is made and this adversely affects the homeowner’s credit rating. Thus, users of the program are unfairly penalized for following the guidelines set forth in this hastily-written program.


• The United States Senate is considering a health care bill that , despite widespread opposition in many constituencies, will provide for a public option that is likely to significantly increase the cost of insurance for most Americans. In all probability, it will eventually drive private companies out of business. To meet the President’s criteria of being budget neutral, we pay higher taxes for four years before seeing any benefits. The $200 billion to maintain doctor’s income is excluded, as are the hundreds of millions of dollars of Medicaid costs that are being passed to the states. The financial consequences of passing this bill would be serious in normal times, but are magnified by the current dismal economy, with over 10% unemployment and an enormous (and growing) national debt.

What needs no explanation? The urgency of exercising your vote in 2010.

NEW YORKERS FOREVER!

By

Robert Harkins J.D.

The great Winston Churchill, in his book Their Finest Hour, describes with pithy British understatement The Blitz, Hitler’s carpet-bombing of the London population during World War II.

For fifty-seven nights the bombing of London was unceasing. This constituted an ordeal for the world’s largest city, the results of which no one could measure beforehand. Never before was so wide an expanse of houses subjected to such bombardment or so many families required to face its problems and its terrors.

When very young it was my privilege to share with an English lady, survivor of the Blitz, her personal experience of the horrors of human carnage as Hitler’s war machine sought to grind England into the dust. This English lady told of the bombs that fell from the night sky to incinerate men, women and children. The English, she explained, were as much shocked at the bestiality of Hitler’s mass murder of Londoners as they were by the sudden and stunning obliteration of family and friends. While Londoners were witness to death, prolonged, terrible and too awful to describe, they showed the world, as if it were a virtue quite ordinary, and “ nothing much really to speak of” their heroism, nobility, courage and strength. “THESE WERE THE TIMES, wrote Winston Churchill, in capital letters,

When the English, and particularly the Londoners, who had the place of honor, were seen at their best, Grim and gay, dogged and serviceable, with the confidence of an unconquered people into their bones, they adapted themselves to this strange new life, with all its terrors, with all its jolts and jars. [1]

Winston Churchill, when inspecting London, after a night of merciless bombing, saw the shattered remains of English homes, and yet, already waving over the rubble here and there were little Union Jacks. As his car moved in funeral silence through the street, English men, women and children rose from their cellars, or appeared out of clouds of dusty mortar, and in one bold voice cheered their old English bulldog. For a while, perhaps, it was all that Winston could do just to bow his head and keep his silence.

One would have thought I had brought them some fine substantial benefit, which would improve their lot in life. I was completely undermined and wept. Ismay, who was with me, records that he hears an old woman say, “you see, he really cares. He’s crying.’ They were tears not of sorrow but admiration.

It is impossible to gage the weight and measure of the debt the world owes to the English people who, alone— pathetically out numbered by crack German legions, and desperately unprepared for war as a consequence of a nearly fatal liberal policy of appeasement— nevertheless, as one people, stepped into the breach. The English people manned that breach as they bled out and died, as the Germans mercilessly destroyed their army at Dunkirk; and yet they fought on, until at last America, victim of a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, entered the war.

I cannot now think of the English people without also thinking of American New Yorkers who experienced the crash of jetliners into the twin towers, the spectacle of fiery death and falling bodies, the heart break of loss, and the anger at being the victim of a poisonous ignorance, hatred and cowardice, this from predators who prayed on the innocent and killed in the name of their God, Allah.

I asked the English lady something like, “Well, how do you stop feeling sad?” And she explained after a long moment: “Well, Robert, we who were still whole and able, well, we took onto ourselves a bit of our neighbors’ grief, and we manage its weight in our heart, so that those who suffered so badly will feel a bit more lighthearted you see.”

In a spectacle of blunt vainglory, and in utter disregard of the sensibilities of already traumatized New Yorkers, the President and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, have decided to try in New York City five terrorists all with ties to the 9/11 massacre of New Yorkers. They are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.

Now, an enormous financial investment will be necessary to protect New Yorkers against a distinctly new, gratuitous and potentially lethal risk of terrorist murder, a risk created out of thin air, not by predatory terrorists whose malice toward New Yorkers is more than clear, but by our own American president. New Yorkers will also experience over the years of trial and appeal a profound intensification of the anxiety they have experienced since 911. There will be no catharsis. New Yorkers will experience a chronic misery not because terrorism exists but because the President by fiat will import the risk of a terrorist attack to the New Yorkers’ front door.

The five terrorists who were ready to enter pleas of guilty to a military commission will now be tried, as an American would be tried, in a criminal court. Terrorists who, wearing civilian clothes killed and maimed from the cover of civilian crowds, and who carefully planned the murder of New Yorkers on 9/11 will be accorded by Presidential grace the protections of our American Constitution. The President’s gift of the American Constitution to terrorist killers of Americans is itself as great an infamy as is his decision to impose on New Yorkers a new and potentially devastating terrorist risk.

The President’s theory is that the trial of terrorists will show the world that we are a nation of laws not men, that we are a nation that cleaves to the principles of the Geneva Convention and to the principles of an American Constitution. In fact the President’s theory is as frivolous and unprecedented as it is unnecessary and dangerous. The articles of the Geneva Convention apply to soldiers who don their nation’s uniform thereby making themselves recognizable targets to the enemy. Terrorists, unassociated with any country, who disguise themselves and hide among women and children, who store munitions in mosques, who murder or annihilate themselves with explosives in the presence of children or American soldiers are not covered by the protections accorded to soldiers who wear their uniform in battle. Terrorists, therefore, may be, and must be killed wherever they are unearthed. Where there is a question as to their identity as terrorists, trial by military commission is the just forum and is, in any event, far better than they deserve.

The discovery rules applicable to criminal trials, since Miranda v. Arizona have become complex. A criminal defense attorney discovers quickly that many of his clients are in fact guilty of the crime charged against them. Even so the State is required to prove defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It is the defense attorneys’ ethical obligation to hold the prosecution of its case to the letter of the law. Accordingly, the defendant’s escape from a jury verdict of guilty, may result not from a trial on the merits, but from by an appellate reversal of a verdict of guilty for the prosecutor’s failure to comply perfectly with the rules of evidence, discovery or both. Where an appellate court finds that evidence seized or confessions taken violate Constitutional safeguards, a guilty verdict will be reversed.

Furthermore, the U.S. Supreme Court in Brady v. Maryland, and in a number of cases since Brady, has ruled that the prosecution must voluntarily provide defense with any and all evidence that might be “exculpatory” that is, that might incline a jury to conclude that the defendant is innocent of the charge against him. The doctrine of exculpatory evidence, however, is potentially treacherous to the prosecutor; for where he fails to produce to the defendant evidence that an appellate court later determines to be exculpatory, a verdict of guilty will be reversed.

Finally, were the water boarding of an American citizen to produce evidence of guilt there is no doubt whatever that a verdict reached on the admission of such evidence would result in reversal. As a practical matter the trial judge would not permit the jury’s consideration of the evidence on Constitutional grounds. For example, the terrorist confession that he joyfully beheaded an American citizen, Daniel Pearl, if acquired as a result of water boarding, would not be allowed into evidence to prove a conviction for murder. As all five terrorists have been granted precisely the same Constitutional rights as those enjoyed by Americans, the trial court may not, as a matter of law, admit such evidence, however otherwise clear, convincing and undisputed it might be.

We can well understand the anguish of New Yorkers as they learned of the President’s decision. They are after all Americans who like the English were among the very first to step into the breach there to bleed, and die and to show the world again, the courage and dignity that has raised an ocean of tears— not tears alone of our common American grief, but tears of admiration.

Churchill himself wrote in plain, purple ink the words that best fit New Yorkers who when put to the test, had the place of honor and were seen at their best, grim and gay, dogged and serviceable, with the confidence of an unconquered people into their bones.

What then can we as Americans do? First, on behalf of New Yorkers, we can shout our outrage to the Congress, Senate, to the President and Eric Holder. And perhaps then we may say to New Yorkers that we have always sought to take up something of the weight of your grief, and hold it as our own, in the hope that your heart may be a bit lighter.

What do you think?

I would most appreciate your comments: Robert Harkins

---

[1] Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour, THE FRANKLIN LIBRARY, 1978), The Blitz, p.303.

A Man For All Seasons

by

The Lone Front Ranger

Following is an excerpt from a play I read in college, A Man For All Seasons. It was one of my favorites and this scene has always stuck with me for some reason, and I recall it now. The scene is between two of the main characters, Rich and More, talking about every man having his price. I have edited it for brevity:

RICH: But every man has his price!

MORE: No-no-no-

RICH: But yes! In money too.

MORE: No no no.

RICH: Or pleasure. Titles, women, bricks-and-mortar, there's always something.

MORE: Childish.

RICH: Well, in suffering, certainly.

MORE: Buy a man with suffering?

RICH: Impose suffering, and offer him escape.

MORE: Oh. For a moment I thought you were being profound.

RICH: No, not a bit profound; it then becomes a purely practical question of how to make him suffer sufficiently.

I have reflected on this scene as we have endured the months since the Obama Administration began inflicting suffering on the citizens of the United States. Could he be trying to impose suffering and offer escape as an incentive? Could he be trying to make life so difficult that we will believe that the only option is to let Obama take over larger and larger portions of our life and our freedom, so that he will deliver us from the misery and suffering? But how would he cause us to suffer sufficiently?

At this risk of sounding conspiratorial, every step taken by this administration to “fix” something - the banking system, the health care industry, the tax code, the “stimulus” package, the environment, etc. – appears designed to send our economy into a downward spiral. There is no evidence that any of these steps taken or about to be taken, will help the economy. None.

Can we really believe that the Obama Administration has that much better judgment and experience than all past administrations, and can actually make a government program that is not a colossal waste of money and a thief of liberty? Of course not.

And they know that. They know they cannot produce a government program that works, one that makes the situation any better for the taxpayers, one that provides better service than the private sector, or one that actually fixes any problems. Government programs always make problems worse, and the Obama Administration knows that.

So the only possible conclusion is that they are building a government so oppressive, that only THEY can save us from THEM. To impose suffering and offer escape. Then the last line of the scene, “it then becomes a purely practical question of how to make him suffer sufficiently.” How far are we willing to go?

"It's Quite Simple, Governor, Really!"

by John Alexander Madison

November 16, 2009

Is your income less this year than it was last year? Or worse, are you currently unemployed, living on unemployment compensation, and suffering flow cash flow issues? If "yes," then I know your answers to the next questions..."yes, yes, yes, yes and yes."

The next questions are "Have you cut back on your overall expenses? Are you eating out less often? Are you ironing shirts rather than taking them to the dry cleaner? Have you or are you trying to refinance your home mortgage? Are you putting off the purchase of a new car, you know, the one you want to have but don't really need?

Have you put vacation plans on hold and decided to stay home to clean out the garage or basement rather than travel to Amsterdam next spring to see the tulips in bloom? Perhaps, you are planning to use that vacation money to pay down some of those high interest, annoying, and growing credit card balances.

After all, it is common sense, isn't it? When income is down responsible people cut their spending. How difficult is that to figure out? We are all doing it, learning to live with less until we can take back our state government, send home the tax and spenders and return the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, TO THE PEOPLE. That means we must elect representatives who believe in the limited role of government, those who will govern on the principles which will bring most of them into office. How often have we seen "politicians" flip flop faster than a flounder on the dry docks adjacent to Joe Patti's fleet? Answer: all too often.

While Governor Ritter laments declining revenues flowing into the coffers of his favorite state agency, The Department of Revenue, all he seems capable of doing is proposing new sources of revenue...including a tax on formerly exempt consumer products like candy and soft drinks. Hey, if you want to eat those tasty treats in excess and let your teeth rot that is your business, isn't it? But don't, thereafter, come running to the government for free dental care. You have been forewarned...sugar, especially in excess, is bad for your teeth and bad teeth could lead to other major health issues. We all know that and if we choose to ignore these warnings we must take personal responsibility for our actions or suffer the consequences. Pretty simple concept, isn't it. Speaking of teeth, if the Governor has his way, eating sweets will also take a bite out of your wallet.

Governor Ritter's good friend, Barrack Hussein Obama seems intrigued with the idea of taxing candy and soft drinks and our first (and last) term Governor seems similarly inclined. So, knowing that candy and soft drinks are really bad for your health I can see it coming...the federal and state governments will spend millions to promote the sale of sugar-related products in order generate even more millions in new tax revenues. There is some logic in that, until you realize that as the teeth of Americans begin to rot, the incidence of diabetes will also skyrocket, and the general health and well-being of all Americans will deteriorate overnight. ("all Americans" being defined as citizens and non-citizens alike, to be politically correct.) And then, to our surprise, everyone will be demanding free government health care because the government allowed us, no encouraged us, to buy more candy, knowing full well it was bad for us.

If you think about it, that is the plan, isn't it? The government wants to control all aspects of our lives...to tell us what we can eat, what kind of car we can buy, what union we must join, how much we can earn, how much of our income we can keep, the degree of medical care we can get depending on our age (in other words how long we can live), and more. But you don't want that and I don't either.

Some calculations suggest the government might have to impose a $1 tax on a $1 can of soda or a candy bar in order to cover future medical costs for those with a sweet tooth, and a mouth full of rotten ones at that. Of course, the tax could be more if Governor Ritter follows Barrack Hussein Obama's federal tax on sweets with a state one as well.

Absurd, you say, that won't happen? Perhaps. But I'd put the current odds at 4-to-1 that the party in control (actually out of control) in Denver will impose such a tax.

And that is just the beginning. Did you know that the aforementioned Amsterdam (The Netherlands) is giving serious thought to charging car owners an annual mileage tax? If that sounds familiar, it should since the idea was recently floated in Denver.

The end is not in sight. Four hundred and fifty thousand Coloradans don't have to be reminded that their annual senior property tax exemption was stolen from them this year and for the foreseeable future. Assuming 50% of the population still worship at the altar of Bill Ritter that means 225,000 won't be voting for him next year. What do you call that? A good start!

Governor Ritter believes a good start was holding the door to state government wide open for labor unions, exorbitant vehicle registration fee increases, tripling marriage license fees in the last 6 months, and more. Governor Ritter does NOT believe in cutting spending. He does not know how to.

Revenues are down for everyone and your local and state governments are no exception. But while you and I cut expenses our government seems more inclined to impose new taxes and fees than cutting expenses. That must change.

EPILOGUE

If Governor Ritter will follow our lead, by reducing spending when revenues are down, he might salvage his governorship and quite possibly earn a second term in 2010. But it may take more than that, like retracting the higher vehicle registration fees, the marriage license fee hikes and not implementing the proposed tax on candy and soda. On the one hand I would welcome that...yes the fee retractions, no new taxes, no government mandated health care plans, a reduction in State spending and a second term for Governor Ritter.

(NOTE: That last sentence was written shortly after I returned to Colorado from sea level today while my brain was oxygen deprived.)

A much better scenario, of course, would be a reduction in state spending, retraction of recently imposed new fees and taxes, and a complete overhaul of state government, beginning with early retirement for Governor Ritter and his legislative cronies.

We must return a large degree of sanity and fiscal control to our state government by sending a resounding "no" message to Denver similar to the one the citizens of Colorado Springs delivered to City Council on November 3rd.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing..." Edmund Burke

INFAMY AT FORT HOOD

By Robert Harkins

In a coward’s act of homegrown terrorism, Jihadist Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, traitor to his country and comrades, a fanatic and terrorist, shot and killed thirteen American soldiers, and maimed another 31 at Ft. Hood, Texas. The killing commenced to Hasan’s vulgar scream of Alahu Ackbar. Hasan’s betrayal of country, his comrades in arms and as a soldier, his solemn, sworn oath to defend his country recalls to Americans other Muslim-American ideological killers: Sgt. Hasan Akbar, an American Muslim soldier who tossed a grenade into his commanding officer’s tent killing him, another soldier, and wounding 14 American soldiers; and, in Arkansas, Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, an African American convert to Islam, who gunned down two soldiers at a recruitment center, maiming one and killing the other.

The terrorists killed to a common theme: The killers were Muslim. Their targets for murder were American soldiers. Their murders were in harmony with Islamic fundamentalism. Their moral credo was Jihad, their tactic murder, their killings merciless and the lives of Americans of utter inconsequence. Of course all are traitors to their country, to their faith, and to Muslim-American soldiers who serve their country with courage, dignity and honor.

The FBI and the U.S. Military knew that Hasan was a fanatic, that he had sought contact with Al Quaida terrorists, that he corresponded copiously with Imams who loathe Americans, and that he embraced a tactical approach to war, harmonious with the tenets of his religious credo. Hasan believed, in a corruption of the tenets of his Muslim faith, that the slaughter of American soldiers is a morally imperative response to America’s military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. With this incendiary information in hand, neither the military nor the FBI did anything at all to prevent the carnage. Sound familiar? Remember 9/11? Requiescat in Pacem.

In words politically correct and misleading the American President, his polemical sails turned full into the wind, warned Americans not to “…jump to conclusions.” He then created out of the philosophical ether a new and lyrical moral reality, one peopled by killers who do not plan and carefully slaughter American soldiers, but on occasion merely “flip out,” killers perhaps, but killers misunderstood, victims really if one considers “root causes,” innocents in fact compelled against their moral will to the slaughter of Americans because the stress and inconvenience of war have inflicted post traumatic stress syndrome.

In their supercilious embracement of politically correct doublespeak, the President, at least one U.S. Senator and a half dozen or more media babbling heads, offered hair-brained theories that beggar speaking in tongues and alien kidnappings— all to prove that there is no evidence that Hasan’s immolation of American soldiers was yet another terrorist attack on American soil, on Americans and on the principles of our Republic and Constitution.

The President characterized the slaughter of soldiers, at a military base, the slaughter of soldiers preparing to embark for a war zone as "an act of violence that would have been heartbreaking had it occurred any place in America…. it's all the more heartbreaking and all the more despicable because of the place where it occurred and the patriots who were its victims." That the President chose to censor from his speech the words “terrorist” “soldier” or “military base” exposes the lethal ideology of political correctness that permeates the government, media and military, a view which contributed to the ease by which Hasan was able to plan and execute his slaughter of American soldiers.

The President, however, merely by deleting from his speech any word that remotely refers to American soldiers and the war, cannot alter the fact that the slaughter and maiming of over forty soldiers embarking from a military base for Afghanistan, soldiers trained for operations in that country, warriors, in fact, set upon war, is not just anywhere— is not just anyone— or any place— or any patriot. Hasan, an American traitor and homegrown Jihadist, severely damaged the American war effort, provided aid and comfort to the enemy, to the Taliban and to other terrorists. He has served up an morbid spectacle of betrayal that will be, precisely because it is a betrayal of Americans, a cause for delight and dancing in the streets wherever Islamic terrorists, their sponsors and fans, gather to plot or celebrate their indiscriminate slaughter of helpless and innocent human beings.

In fact, Hasan, in this the second terrorist attack on American soil, has bestowed upon an implacable American enemy another propaganda victory. Terrorists everywhere will unwind the old refrain of American hatred with a new and bloody grist. They will say that America is decadent and weak; that Americans cannot protect their soldiers against the might of Islam even in the sanctity of their well-fortified military bases; that American security knew Hasan was a formidable warrior, were afraid, timid, and so did nothing. Why the military even ordered their soldiers go about unarmed; and even the American President lacks the fortitude to describe what is plainly before his eyes. How then can we fail to prevail with heroes such as Hasan against the Great Satan America, we who love death more than Americans love life.

Why then did Hasan murder or maim American soldiers? The question provoked a journalistic descent into patent absurdities, anything, actually, other then to marshal the evidence and explore the probability that, in fact, Hasan is a terrorist with as much contempt for innocent human life as the 19 Saudi killers of thousands who flew jet planes into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers and immolated the lives of thousands of innocent men and women. From the Left not outrage, but sensitive, drug store psychoanalysis, anything but a discussion of the facts. The very word terrorist, as we all know, is politically forbidden by the mandate of a political correct heaven. Even to utter the word in today’s Orwellian labyrinth is to be instantly guilty of ambiguous moral crimes. Indeed, the President has defined terrorism out of existence by use of the pathetic expression “Overseas Contingency Operation.” From the Left an empirical evaluation of the evidence is neither necessary nor permitted. Instead, we are admonished to meditate deeply upon the root causes of violence, for there certainly, somewhere in the abyss of narcissist guilt, and self-hatred, Americans will divine a reason to blame themselves for Hasan’s “flipping out”.

Accordingly, talking heads wonder whether Hasan’s massacre of his unarmed comrades and friends, was the consequence of American racial insensitivity? Is there not a rumor somewhere that someone, unnamed and unidentified, called Hasan a name offensive to Muslims? Besides which, Hasan could have been suffering from posttraumatic syndrome. After all he probably was frustrated that his efforts to buy his way out of his obligations to country and the military came to nothing. Well, they do not know how, but journalists nevertheless have reached a consensus: Hasan simply “flipped out,” this a slang expression that conveys precisely the same quanta of evidence as the slang term, “Whatever!”

In an ingratiating peon to the ideology of political correctness Senator Lindsey Graham, peddling the propaganda that Hasan was theoretically the victim of posttraumatic stress syndrome, extricated Hasan from any connection whatever, to his nationality, religion, to the military, to the war, to similar murders of other home grown terrorist killers or to the fact of Islamic terrorism. If Hasan’s murder of Americans soldiers is as Senator Graham has described it, then it no more relevant to terrorist murders then a punk stickup at a convenience store in Peoria.

That Senator Graham and the media could suggest with a straight face that Hasan’s slaughter of American soldiers was caused by posttraumatic stress syndrome demonstrates willful deception or towering ignorance. The diagnosis, relatively new in Medical literature, requires that the victim be suffering from the A. An actual occurrence of B. A life threatening event and C. that actually happened in the past. In fact, the experience of real post-traumatic stress disorder so disrupts mental functioning, the victim is simply unable to meet his daily needs or perform the most basic tasks.[1]. Hasan, however, has never heard a shot fired in anger. The critical past life threatening event never happened. In fact, the evidence is undisputed that Hasan is a cheer leader for terrorists provided they are terrorists who kill Americans— or as in Israel, who strap massive explosives infused with ball bearings to their body, heroically seek the close presence of school children, preferably school busses or school yards and blow themselves apart.

While the victim of posttraumatic stress syndrome is unable to manage the most simple of daily tasks, Hasan carefully planned the slaughter of American soldiers. “Nidal Malik Hasan some time ago told his landlord he would not be renewing the lease on his apartment. He gave away his furniture along with copies of the Qur’an on the morning of the day he committed mass murder. This indicates that he thought he was going to die – in other words, that he was planning a suicide attack. As he began firing, he shouted ‘Allahu Akbar.’”[2]

The undisputed evidence is that Hasan planned the murder of his countrymen with intellectual precision and sound military planning. He perfected a strategy calculated to kill as many American soldiers as possible. He carried enough ammunition to kill or wound forty soldiers or more. He decided to carry two semi-automatic handguns, a part of the plan that suggests he took pains to insure that he would be able to kill or maim, as he did kill and maim savagely, the greatest possible number of American soldiers.

Hasan chose a place where he knew that Americans soldiers were prohibited from carrying weapons and would therefore be defenseless. He was an excellent and practiced marksman. He aimed carefully and murdered his unarmed victims with an easy precision. Victims at the scene recall that he fired his weapons steadily and with care. He did not panic; indeed, he remained remarkably cool under fire. On taking shots from Officer Kimberly Munley, he efficiently returned fire, severely wounding her in the legs. Finally Sergeant Mike Todd delivered the round that brought him down. Still, Hasan’s kill, carefully wrought and expertly executed probably exceeded his fondest expectations. And Hasan is doing well; he has already lawyered up.

An objective evaluation of the evidence suggests that Hasan, a Muslim killer of Americans, was motivated by a religiously inspired hatred and bigotry toward Americans that is precisely the same in its feral ugliness as the religious hatred and bigotry that motivated nineteen Muslims to hijack planes, fly them into the Pentagon, the Twin Towers and immolate the lives of more than three thousand innocent people.

It is not all Americans who are jumping to conclusions. It is the “politically correct.” The term sounds almost benign. However, it originated with the reign of Stalin, a beast who after Mao Se Tung was the most prolific murderer of the twentieth century. To be politically correct the Russian citizen was compelled to embrace an image of the world and a construction of the truth precisely as Stalin defined it. Failure to embrace Stalinesque reality, however evil and fantastic, meant death, the gulag, or both. Political correctness is an ideological disease calculated to compel people, on pain of ostracism, ridicule, defamation, libel, or worse, to the acceptance of falsehoods and propaganda. There is no honor or dignity in surrendering the human capacity to reason to the dictates of the politically correct, a species of fascism, and a destroyer of human freedoms: the right and obligation to think and to speak one’s mind.

Our soldiers died from an act of terrorism and betrayal. This act of terrorism happened on the President’s watch. And all the well-tailored words in the English language, and all the most finely metered prose mellifluously recited, will not alter or erase, now or ever, the truth of the infamy at Ft. Hood.

What do you think?

---

[1] Babette Rothchiled, MSW, LCSW, Member: International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS)National Association of Social Workers (NASW)

[2] James Glover Front Page Magazine, November 10, 2009.

“The Difference between Right and Wrong, Good and Evil”
by John Alexander Madison
November 9, 2009

At an early age, and from many sources, I learned what is right and what is wrong.

We all learned from the Ten Commandments (1) to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, and (2) to honor your father and your mother; that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. Those are good things. On the other hand, we learned that (1) taking the name of the Lord your God in vain, (2) murder, (3) adultery, (4) stealing, (5) bearing false witness against your neighbor, (6) coveting your neighbor’s house, your neighbor’s wife, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbors... are bad things.

The Colorado Springs based United States Air Force Academy Honor Code states "We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does." Nor will I. I will not lie, steal, cheat, NOR TOLERATE AMONG US ANYONE WHO DOES. Therefore, I am compelled to file a complaint against the President of the United States who has stolen our country and abandoned the very principles upon which this great nation was built. You, Mr. President, and your gang of thieves have stolen our democracy (thou shalt not steal) and your experiment in socialism must come to an end.

The dictionary defines “lemming” as any of various small, thickset rodents (rats), especially of the genus Lemmus, inhabiting northern regions (as in the nation’s capital) and known for periodic mass migrations that sometimes end in drowning. How appropriate.

While leading the “lemmings” over the cliff this past weekend (read Democrats in the House of Representatives who voted for the ill-advised, job killing, tax hiking, deficit exploding, trillion-dollar national health care bill) the President of the United States implored that they must “seize the moment, answer the call of history, and embrace the bill’s ambitious objectives...this is our moment to live up to the trust the American people, and millions of illegal immigrants, have placed in us.”

You jest. What “trust” Mr. President? You are attempting to drown us, but we are not lemmings and we will not follow your lead. You may still be maintaining some degree of popularity in the polls, but those polls also say we DO NOT TRUST YOU and we believe, overwhelmingly, that America is headed in the wrong direction, under your (lack of) leadership. We are not lemmings nor are we mindless sheep.

(Okay, he did not say “and millions of illegal immigrants” but it’s quite clear he is not working in the best interests of the great citizens of this great country. Did you know, in the upcoming 2010 census, this President and Congress want to not only count all people in this country, citizens and non-citizens alike, but he also wants reapportionment in Congress to be based on the total head count and not citizens only. That’s just what we don’t need, more representatives from California in Congress, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The U.S. Constitution states that representation in Congress should be based on the number of people in each state, however, do you believe representation in Congress should be based on citizens and non-citizens alike? Hardly. The problem is illegal immigrants were not an issue 220 years ago.)

The dictionary defines arrogance (right next to the president’s photo) as conceit, pride, swagger, pretension, bluster, hubris, pomposity, insolence, high-handedness, conceitedness, scornfulness and more. That about sums it up. The quality or condition of being humble, meek or modest in behavior, attitude, or spirit, not arrogant or prideful, will not soon be attributed to Barrack Hussein Obama.

Our country is in deep trouble…the values and principles of our Founding Fathers are crumbling faster than you can say “Obama is an inexperienced and weak president.” (and a “fraud according to Charles Krauthammer).

It is now official…America has been dumbed down and is on the path to destruction.

• Many of our children are no longer learning reading, writing and arithmetic.
• Criminals are now victims because they were abused as children. (Why don’t we punish their parents, rather than society by giving them lenient sentences?)
• What does “not guilty by reason of insanity” mean? We know they committed a crime, why can’t we say “guilty, but nuts”?
• Why do the labor unions, all of a sudden, own General Motors?
• What happened to the free market economy with little government intervention?
• Why are we bowing to terrorists and those nations who harbor them?
• Why is redistribution of wealth a good idea…taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Thou shalt not steal (remember that?) nor tolerate among us anyone who does?
• What happened to taking responsibility for your own actions?
• Why is the government telling us to stop talking on the telephone while driving? Will talking to passengers in the car be the next thing government prohibition? What about drinking a soda, turning on the radio, playing a CD, or putting on makeup while driving? (Well the last one may be a good idea…especially while drinking a cup of coffee, talking on the cell phone and driving at the same time.) How about closing all fast-food, drive-ins restaurants? After all, we don’t want you eating while driving, do we?
• Why don’t we all just stop working? Not a bad idea. The government will take care of us all. But wait, there’s the rub, where does the government get its ill-gotten gains?

The national healthcare legislation being pushed by President Obama is an act of desperation. He is trying to save his presidency, but ironically, it will be the straw that broke the camel’s back…the reason which causes his presidency to fail. That is unless we “kill the bill.” Those words are resonating daily at modern day tea parties throughout the country. Perhaps Mr. Obama has awoken a sleeping giant, the dreaded silent majority. We shall see.

Do not let your President “seize the moment.” Every American citizen should say “enough is enough.” Every citizen who cares about American should seize this moment and stop our out of control and irresponsible government and save our country.

EPILOGUE
Don’t miss the next historic opportunity which will occur next year when we can “throw the bums out.” (all those who voted for Obamacare, including Congressman Anh “Joseph” Cao, Republican from Louisiana, arguably the state with a history of having the most corrupt politicians in the nation. Chicagoans, including President Obama, may not want to cede that title, however.)

Seize the moment, now and in November 2010, in your national, state and local elections and stop our country from drowning in more debt. Let’s return leadership and common sense to every level of government, or give up. The choice is yours.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing…” Edmund Burke