You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves


– William J.H. Boetcker, 1916, often attributed to Abraham Lincoln


How do these simples truths apply to America today? How do they destroy every single argument of the Statist/Progressive/Moral Relativist/Big-government Enabler of today? Sometimes as it seems, simplicity is the best policy, the best weapon in an intellectual arsenal. Where is the American leader to spread these simple Thatcherisms?


First point – You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. Simple. Down with the progressive tax-code that punishes achievement on a sliding scale. Down with the system in that the more wealth one creates (and benefits oneself and society as a whole), the higher percentage one is taxed. Down with an inherant, massive disincentive to the best and the brightest, the goose that lay the golden egg. Liberal religiosity 101, the most sacrosanct of all – the Marxian progressive tax code. The achiever class, the bane of the altruist, the tool for the cause.


Second point – You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. Much the same here as the first point. As is the case in taxation, so is the case with all members of the best and the brightest. The gutter mentality amidst us deplores a strong figure, male or not. We worship at the throne of depravity, of feeble and weak minded loonies. We give up our freedoms while worshipping at the throne of silver-tongued slave masters.




Third point – You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. The Almighty holy grail ethos of the Leftwing. The evil 1%. The business man. The entrepenuer. The one that dares to work the most, the hardest, and be the brightest. The cigar-smoking boardrooms, packed with fat, sweaty, yellow toothed white guys plotting to take from the poor that which he has earned. The ethos of Robin Hood, to take from the rich that they have always unfairly gotten, to give to the downtrodden. And utopia is here!


Fourth point – You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. Once again the simple concept of class-warfare, of breaking the simple commandment – “neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” We lay waste to our moral-compass by disregarding simple truths, religious commandments. America was once a God-fearing nation, we jettison notions and values at our peril. Care to draw a figure for me of the impoverished employed by the poor? Envy creates misery. Our own politics in the US prove this, there is an absolute moral component to every ill we face.


Fifth point – You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. The Federal government cannot encourage home ownership by arm-twisting bankers into loans without merit, by skewing the simple laws of economics at ever front. Our economy proves this. Our government cannot pull us out of our malaise by adding debt to future generations, by noosing their collective necks. Liabilities today from our beloved government, all entitlements included, are 100 trillion dollars. A mind-numbing figure that defies all sanity. The solution to this debt of morality and finance? The creation of more entitlement programs, thus nearly ensuring our doom. Our society cannot escape simple math, the Founders would believe us to be doomed by such idiocy and folly. Is it all a bad dream?


Sixth point – You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds. Refer to points, 1-5.


Seventh point – You cannot establish security on borrowed money. The entire foundation of our government today comes crashing down on this truth. The ‘Stimulus’ bill, Socialized Medicine, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Insecurity, every dollar spent to bankrupt and rob future generations….empty promises from a broken government nearing the stage of insolvency from an addiction to debt. Echoes and whispers from American families at the dinner table all across the nation, “We can’t run our household like that, why can Washington…..?” They can’t and they put the most vibrant experiment in freedom in peril on a daily basis.


Eighth point – You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence. “The power to tax is the power to destroy” – John Marshall 1819. You take an individual soul when you take his ability to earn a living for himself. You take an earnest reason to awake early with a purpose. You take his dignity. You take his struggle for a good life, for the American Dream. You take everything.


Ninth point – You cannot help men permanently by doing for them by doing what they could do and should do for themselves. The essence of Liberty and our Founding. The essence of our God-given abilities and unique character. The essence of the fight to save our nation from the cancer of the State. The essence of the Pursuit of Happiness. The essence of the freedom to succeed of fail. The essence of our fight today. The essence of We the People.

Ron Paul in a speech given on the House floor a month ago. This sums up our fears of the current situation in America – A grand absurdity, a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions. Everything seems to have moved at such a lightning speed, a lockstep march to insanity. As a people, without time to merely debate the changes in our country, the restrictions on our freedoms. And today they move at such alarming speed and brevity as to ensure that it’s too late. The waking of the Moral Majority, busy going about our business, providing for our families, putting in our time each day, energies not left to realize that which we are amidst. Or is it just a bad dream? Dr. Paul simply says it like no other can, tens of millions that have not a voice surely agree. Can we, as he says, escape this madness through intellectual and peaceful means? Or is it just a bad dream…..

Update I : Ramblings of a Young American from I’m Always Right.blogspot.com wrote in regard to this post –

*Wakes Up*

“Some people will go through their whole lives in a dream, hoping that a Free Lunch is not just free, but a precursor to a lunch that you are paid to eat. As for me? For the people who read this blog, who support Ron Paul and who carry their worn Constitutions in their back pockets? They are awake and even if they are not on ABC or NBC, even if they are not out there everyday intoning the magic words of “hope.” The spiritually cleansing words of “change.” They are out there, your blog shows as much and I am proud that we are providing more then “hope” and more then “change,” we’re providing a choice not an echo.”

“Goldwater would be proud.”

And to that I would say that Goldwater would be proud as I am proud, for I know that there is much hope for the fight for liberty in America with young people of such intellect and strength of mind as Young American.

Guest post by smartcaligirl

Everything is better when it’s French! French toast, French fries, French bathing suits (well, maybe not.) That’s what many people think, anyway, especially since Obama has said that it’s embarrassing that Americans travel to Europe but can’t speak European Languages. Personally, I’d love to get all Rosetta Stoned. I think the ability to communicate with others in their native language is a wonderful gift. And sure, it’s very impressive to meet someone like my old roomate, who escaped communist Czechoslovakia with her family at the age of 5. She can break into at least 4 different languages at the tip of a hat. But I certainly wouldn’t say that Americans are uncooth for only speaking English. It is the language of commerce, after all.

Speaking of commerce, let’s talk “ecouter” (ay-ku-tay). That’s French for turkey. Watching this brilliant video from Reason TV inspired me to point out a few things… Watch for yourself and catch me down below.

After watching this, I think you’ll be surprised at some of the comments made by viewers. The irony is that the comments that adhere to American principles are not from Americans!

Comment 1:

“Let’s say if your neighbor’s child was the future Einstein and unfortunately his parents didn’t have enough money to send him to college, it would be a bit your fault to deprive the world of the new Einstein, just because you didn’t want to share a part of your money…”

Comment 2:

“Comparing disposable income in France and the US is utterly meaningless since Americans have to pay so many things from their pockets Frenchmen get for free in return for paying higher taxes. Subtract college tuition fees for your children and healthcare from your American income and you’ll be close to the French one.”

Do these comments boil your blood? Why do we hate our country so much? What is the chance that your neighbor’s kid is the next Einstein? And if he is, don’t you think that given freedom he would succeed despite economic hardship? What truly successful person didn’t face hardship?

Have we sold our soul for freebies? “Doctors take care of you even if you have no money.” Well, that’s dandy. Do you get to choose the doctor? Do you get to change the doctor if you think the one you first saw was a quack? Are you somehow guaranteed wellness? There must be a magical wand that French doctors have that fix everything the first time. Personally, I’d rather have the freedom to choose.

Speaking of freedom, when your taxes are at 50%+, is anything really free? College tuition and healthcare for free. Sounds peachy, but considering one’s personal cost for college (4 years) and general healthcare plus some major ailments at an older age vs. what you would pay to the government over a lifetime of 50% income tax seems hardly free.

Now, some wise Frenchmen:

4. I want a leader. Are you out there?? Please, we need someone who is not afraid to really keep this wonderful country alive. We need someone who believes in the constitution, in liberty. Someone who doesn’t think Americans are embarrassing, but rather top-notch, hard-working people who make this country the place where every human being wants to live.

Whoever, wherever you are. Even if you’re in France.

Margaret Thatcher in her last speech to the House of Commons, 1990. Text of her exchange here if you wish to print this out. Hat-tip to super-blogger MAinfo.com for finding this video. Nearly twenty years ago, this outspoken woman, a champion of free markets and liberty, pinpointed precisely the disease that afflicts our America. Today’s Obamanation and Congress, their fanatic obsession with attempting to level the playing field, a disaster in the making, an end-goal of equalizing misery –

“The hon. Gentleman is saying that he would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That way one will never create the wealth for better social services, as we have. What a policy. Yes, he would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal policy.”

Coming from a woman whose physical stature does not allude to such a strength of character and ideas. My mind hearkens to another of modest stature and a true hero of freedom – Milton Friedman. Such simple beauty in calling a spade a spade; a socialist a socialist –

“I think that the hon. Gentleman knows that I have the same contempt for his socialist policies as the people of east Europe, who have experienced them, have for theirs. I think that I must have hit the right nail on the head when I pointed out that the logic of those policies is that they would rather the poor were poorer. Once they start to talk about the gap, they would rather that the gap were that—[indicating[—down here, not this—[indicating[—but—[indicating.] So long as the gap is smaller, they would rather have the poor poorer. One does not create wealth and opportunity that way. One does not create a property-owning democracy that way.”

This video taken in 1975, Thatcher does some ‘spring cleaning’, sweeping away the ills of socialism in this early rallying speech. Brilliantly simple, why don’t we have leaders today that champion the simple notions of individual liberty; that economic freedom and a free-market notion are as simple and necessary to a society as any other right? That to squander such freedom is no different than silencing free speech or other basic rights in a free society?

Thatcher – “Some socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a State computer, we believe they should be individuals, we’re all unequal, no one thank heavens is quite like anyone else however much the socialist may pretend otherwise…..a man’s right to works as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the State as servant and not as master, they are the essence of a free economy and on that freedom, all our other freedoms depend.”

Thoughts to ponder this weekend….

Reader William, inspired by the simple Thatcherisms writes –

“Truly inspiring! Margaret Thatcher stood up to the British socialist machine, known as the Labour party, with ferocity, and conviction in values that hadn’t been seen on the world stage, since a band of “right-wing extremists,” denounced the suppression of liberty from one King George the third, of England.”

“Margaret Thatcher dragged Britain out of the dark ages of soft tyranny, and into a bright and shining future filled with prosperity, natural rights and hope for generations to come. What Margaret Thatcher knows, is human nature. She understands that you can not make everyone equal in outcomes of life. Margaret Thatcher knows that through social engineering, you can not make everyone the same. Margaret Thatcher knows that by doing so, the end result is nothing more than a society of drones, as demonstrated in George Orwell’s “1984.” This is the folly of the left, and their lack of understanding of the infinitely complicated world of needs, aspirations, and ideas of the human experience. This the recklessness of the left’s lack of compassion for its fellow man.”


“And what did Britain do to reward its citizens down the road after Thatcher’s tenure? They sold out their own people, as they once did by honoring the great Winston Churchill and his defeat of evil, by voting socialists in to govern themselves. Churchill warned Britain of the persistent, yet fatal poison of collectivism, as did Lady Thatcher. And as history always does, by the sheer ignorance of those who have been victimized by propaganda and the educational system , repeats itself.”

“We’ve seen this as evidenced by Tony Blair’s so-called “third way” of looking at things, and the subsequent, malignant disaster of Gordon Brown’s “progressive,” statist policies. “

“Fortunately for Britain, and much of Europe, a shift to the right is taking place. Great orators like Daniel Hannan, armed with an abundance of strong conservative ideas, values, and the will to once again live a life of liberty, will lead the great people of Britain who have been famished by oppressive servitude, into a flourishing world of honest hope and change, for their children, and the children of their children . “

“The great people of Britain will once again turn their cloudy island of soft despotism, into the sunny greatness of liberty”

Well said William, any other thoughts dear reader?

It seems that our Red Sucker Salesman for socialized medicine in ‘now or never’ collectivist modus operandi is careening off the road, smashing through spike-strips, dodging the authorities in pursuit. Vivid pictures dancing in my mind – a venerable Highway to Socialized Hell Hippie Car with the Obamanation at the wheel……. screeching tires, onlookers running for their lives. The final Culmination is a mangled, smoldering socialized health-care car pileup. Could our liberty and free-choice with health care not be in the dire danger that I fear? Here’s to ‘hope’ (the real kind), of that.

Exhibit A. – Our Leader’s Own doctor votes Nay

Scheiner goes on to extol the virtues of a ‘Medicare for all’ system, it is apparent that he isn’t a brazen free-marketeer but it is interesting nonetheless that he thinks that current plans stink. His last point, in that the Obamanation takes the lawyers’ side on malpractice reform is a huge one too folks. It rings mind-blowingly hollow when the Obamanation incessantly calls for ‘cost cutting’ , but then won’t step up to the plate and disavow the powerful trial-attorney Democrat lobby, (click here for this connection). Federal overhaul has nothing to do with cost-cutting, it’s all about increasing federal power and fulfilling notable politician’s life-long dreams to enslave us in a miserable government-health system. Will ABC mention Dr. Scheiner during their 24/7 Obamacare Telethon? I have a bridge to sell you if you think they will.

Exhibit B. – Cost – Parallels to recent polling data

In addition, another reason to be ashamed of being a Californian. The mere fact that this woman is re-elected at every end of term tells you everything that you need to know about the state.

The context of her little diatribe?

Well, the Senate has been holding hearings before Boxer’s Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, at questioning was Brig. General Michael Walsh of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He was speaking to the Commitee on behalf of the Louisianna coastal restoration process in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Supposedly there have been delays on such.

Anyway, as you see, Boxer objected to the General’s use of the word ma’am in reference to her. Click here for military protocol and proper use of the word. Obviously Boxer doesn’t know her history, military protocol and respect to military officers that no-doubt earned their stars the hard way. Certainly fleecing millions of American taxpayers, tearing down the institutions that make us great, doesn’t earn her any respect and ”working so hard to get her title,” shows nothing more than the sheer mockery of our republic that politics has become.

Update I : Mockery is the greatest form of non-flattery, this one coming to you courtesy of Austin Powers, hat tip to Dr. Melissa Clouthier.com

Today I’m reading polling data at the NYT, ( an unlikely source here), that shows that the Obamanation’s polling numbers on specific economic points significantly trail his overall approval. This is something that I personally have been made more aware of in the recent past weeks. Note the chart to the left, the most striking points to me are in the middle, the budget deficit questions. Points I have on this –

• a). The Obamanation has lost credibility on spending, ie. the public thinks that he is throwing money at every problem.




• b). The deficit is worrisome and dangerous. Main street senses this, “It’s not how I run my household…” being heard at kitchen tables every night.

c). He trails even on Health Care, only 44% approve with health care. Apprehension towards the red sucker of socialized medicine?

These two themes haven’t collided with the Democrats and the Obamanation quite yet but they will, eventually the numbers on overall favorability will represent the anxiety at the main street level towards the unacceptable level of government debt and increase in entitlement spending. The ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ theme taking hold .

Also in this New York Times article is a little snippet on the Obamanations’s quote recently that the budget deficit is ”something that keeps him awake at night.” Horse-hockey. Since when has our Manchurian Candidate been restrained by the deficit, or for that matter, the power brokers behind the scenes that hold the true power today? They just want power and federal entanglement, pure and simple – even to the point of bankrupting our future prosperity. They know precisely what they are doing to our country, that the future debt levels will risk everyone in our society with a tax-burden that will smother economic activity. It is the height of naivete for the Obamanation to put up a front of ‘sleepless in D.C.‘ whilst piling piling new spending on top of gigantic deficits, hawking new budget-busting entitlement programs, (furthering the nightmare), and crushing business.

The chart to the right drives this point home, this time from a CCN Money article here. The video above parallels the article as well. The CNN/Fortune Mag articles is one of the best I have seen – it takes point of the trajectory that the Obamanation has put us on with federal spending and balances viewpoints and analysis between Paul Ryan (the budget committee chair and GOP free-marketeer), and Paul Krugman, (the NYT liberal columnist/Keynesian brainchild).

Points from this article, again here –

“The bill is far too big for only the rich to pick up. There aren’t enough of them. America will have to lean on citizens far below the $250,000 income threshold: nurses, electricians, secretaries, and factory workers. Within a decade the average household that pays income tax will owe the equivalent of $155,000 in federal debt, about $90,000 more than last year. What the Obama administration isn’t telling Americans is that the only practical solution is a giant tax increase aimed squarely at the middle class.”

Exactly. This folks, is the biggest lie told in campaign history and/or Washington – that 95% of Americans will either have their taxes cut or not face an increase under the Obamanation. The numbers simply do not add up. Everyone is going to have to suffer from the largess. On this largess, the nation of the Obamanation the article continues –

“It can’t go on forever, and it won’t. What will shock America into action is the prospect of fiscal collapse, which will grow more vivid each year…. Under Obama the Bush trend keeps going, but this time on steroids…Making the challenge far greater: Obama’s budget is packed with a wish list of expensive new programs, led by a giant health-care-reform plan. He promises to pay for them mainly with higher taxes. But if extra revenues don’t materialize – and most that he’s proposed now look unlikely – will he abandon many of his cherished priorities or push them through without full funding, substantially deepening the debt crisis? The answer could determine how fast America reaches the hour of reckoning that could usher in a VAT. “

Not if we stop it first.

Yesterday, as by regimen, I headed to my local gym. Swimming is my heart-tonic these days, typically I push for a mile or so of free-style. I’ve been doing this for 6 months now and it’s been a long, hard push to get to the plateau I find myself at. I’m no pro but I have excelled in my own little sphere of experience.



My little chlorinated ocean-body has taught me lessons. The car-accident victims, using the pool as a recovery vehicle, pushed my daily nuisance to not even nuance. Things seem trivial in my own little corner after a converse with an elderly man – a World War II veteran. He uses the pool to stay in shape he tells me. Trouble is, he can’t be as active as he wishes – being that he only has one leg. I gather that he lost his limb many years ago……nuisances, nuances, fade with perspective of such.

And I chat with another fellow from time to time. We’ll call him ‘Bob’ for anonymity’s sake. We talk of many topics – the weather, running, investing, life in general. For the first time the topic of politics comes the corner. I tread lightly, but make my displeasure with our current regime obvious – ‘I’m young enough to know better and old enough to want better,’ I say. Or is it the other way around? Either way will do it seems.


Bob perks up a bit. “I’m no Republican, mind you”, he says. “But I am deathly afraid of what I see happening in our country, the socialism.” I remind him that there was no such mandate given by the electorate to change the very nature of our society. He agrees and turns to a conversation that he had with an older friend. His friend was also a member of the Greatest Generation conflict, as was the man in the pool with such great spirit. Politically astute, tempered with history of the conflict from the 40’s, this man had a different take on the nature of our government-change in the last six months. Watching our current events reminded him of many leaders of past that used a nation’s crisis and mania for great power.


His story strikes a point with me. Today’s push for power is just that – a push for power. Nothing today stands to the basic Eisenhower test ‘Is is good for America?’


The velocity and ferocity of the State ascension in the United State to crush the individual aspirative struggle is not without hope. People are waking up, albeit slowly. It is up to those with a strong voice to do the heavy lifting. Connecting to the blogosphere has given me the ability to do just that – to discourse with a wide-range of colorful personalities that are furthering the same goal. Halting the march of the State in the States.


Case in point, this email to the Left Coast Rebel from KOOK at KOOK’s Manifesto –


” The goal here is to spread the word. We all know the truth of things, we all are in 90% agreement with what is wrong and what needs done. Small issues are small issues. The big picture is what is important. LIFE, LIBERTY, PROPERTY. That is the big picture. They are able to take our Property, They are planning ways to finish being able to take our lives (literally) and that will lead to the loss of all Liberty. My goal as stated in the first post I posted was to get people to wake up and THINK. To quit emoting, to think more than one level deep. It has been my motto and I don’t say it enough. Read. Learn. Question. THINK. Our society has lost the ability by and large for critical thinking. If you have read the writings of our forefathers, most of whom were self educated, writing with a quill, reading by candlelight; they sound about 200% more intelligent than anything anyone says today.”


Or these comments from Ramblings of a Young American at I am Always Right, I visited his site, this young man is only 17! At 17 I barely had a political identity…he starts off with a quote….

“The man who builds himself a factory, builds a temple: the man who works there worships there.”

“There’s many people who feel the way as you do, and not just in the Mid-West. In California as well. That frustration, it’s here – it’s there – hell, it’s everywhere.”


“Where’s my Uncle Sam? My Uncle Sam, I rush to say, is not the Uncle Sam I recognize today. Instead of vibrant, steady, confident and assured; telling the American people that they are not free from responsibility but for more responsibility – he is now a baby-sitter. A weak, castrated and emancipated figure handing out increasingly worthless pacifiers to the electorate as they trundle off to dully elect another round of the same old song and dance.”

(On people speaking out)
“Such thinking is heresy; the Christian spiritualism of God and heaven has been replaced by the secular spiritualism of “hope” and “change-” the omniscient and omnipotence of the state to come together with imperfect minds to make perfect plans. To say for one second that you, one man, has the right to apply justice to the law – is not, and has not, been a possibility for some time.”


Flickers of hope…

As Dr. Paul notes, the cause of cost inflation is precisely due to aggressive government involvement. Paul – “The more the government is involved in an industry or service, the higher the prices go….you can’t solve the problem of medical care by ignoring this. Obama says that what we are going to do is tremendously increase the services but we are going to cut all of the payments to the doctors and the hospitals….that can’t possibly work.”

It will work though. How? Rationing.



Beck is spot-on on every single point. This really shows that the ‘public option’ is simply a scheme to takeover 17% of the economy. Unbelievable at 2:20, Rep Jan Schakowsky stating the obvious, that, “A public option will put the private industry out of business and lead to single payer, my single payer friends, he was right!” Nice to hear the cat out of the bag like that, I wonder if she received a call from the White House?

How about this headline from Drudge here today as well –

ABC Turns Programming Over to Obama; News to be Anchored from Inside White House


Apparently Drudge got his hands on news that ABC will host a prime time special on June 24 called ‘Prescription for America.’ The prime-time slot will cater to the Obamanation and White House officials and give them a platform for their socialized medicine plans. Part of the ‘deal’ is that all opposing viewpoints are to be excluded. I wonder how the White House got such a sweetheart deal? What’s that? Where is this special broadcasted from you say? The East Room of the White House. Yes, dear reader, we truly do have a slobbering state-run press in this country now.


In addition to the ABC program above, the network will devote Good Morning America, World News, Nightline and ABC’s web news to ‘the president’s health-care agenda.’ From Drudge’s story too, Ken McCay of the RNC says that requests from the Republican National Committee to offer debate have been rejected. I’m sure that part of the Obamanation/ABC sweetheart deal comes into play. I don’t know about you but this is one of the most preposterous and disgusting stories that I have seen under the Obamanation so far. What do any of my liberal readers think?

Update I : Not necessarily related to the ABC flap but important nonetheless, Obamanation blocks list of visitors here to the White House, angering many on the Left that are now accusing the administration of the same tactics that the Bush White House used. Check out Liberaland – What Happened to Transparecy? here

McCain is calling on the administration to scrap the entire health plan that they are touting, citing costs. He is proposing a 5,000 credit for taxpayers as a compromise here.

I find it nauseating to have to keep discussing this topic, I need a red sucker laced with Pepto–Bismol. But I am not a sucker and they are not going to get away with a power grab of 17% of our economy, putting power brokers in control of the essence of life itself. Like I opined in recent posts, I truly believe the topic to be the single most dangerous power grab that the Left is instituting at this moment. Have you taken part in the poll in my site? I voted for socialized medicine, (universal healthcare). Case in point, I literally have 6 separate stories on the desk here that are needed in discussion.


First up, the Obamanation gave a speech, (text here), today to the American Medical Association in Chicago. As I have said, the group is lukewarm on current proposals and a potential opponent.

I’m putting up a few of his points with my counterpoints –











Obamanation today – “Today, we are spending over $2 trillion a year on health care – almost 50 percent more per person than the next most costly nation. And yet, for all this spending, more of our citizens are uninsured; the quality of our care is often lower; and we aren’t any healthier.”

This is simply not true folks. We have the best health-care system in the world. Why do folks from Canada come here to receive treatments and tests? Their socialized system mandates waiting lines and lack of availability for many procedures. It puts lives at risk and bureaucrats in charge of life and death initiatives for individuals, anathema to America’s founding. How can we even have a debate when honesty is thrown out the window?


Obamanation again -“Make no mistake: the cost of our health care is a threat to our economy. It is an escalating burden on our families and businesses. It is a ticking time-bomb for the federal budget”


Really? And the runaway cost gives Him the license to socialize as much as possible of the system? Instead of reform, we are opting for federal entanglement and control that will exacerbate the problems of today? The true ticking time-bombs for the federal budget are our two giant entitlement programs already on the books – Social Security and Medicare. Those two alone will bankrupt our nation, is not suicide to create yet another entitlement program? Do you see what the collectivist Left is trying to do here? We are facing the abolition of our freedoms and future fiscal viability in this country and I will tell you that it has nothing to do with the health-care system, it has everything to do with power-brokers in Washington.



Obamanation – “Five of the costliest illnesses and conditions – cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, lung disease, and strokes – can be prevented. And yet only a fraction of every health care dollar goes to prevention or public health.”



And remember folks that I outlined in my previous post here that the Kennedy-Dodd plan implicitly makes no assumptions on disease prevention and health maintenance? Remember that you will implicitly be ‘bailing out’ the health of your fellow citizen? He is telling bald-faced lies here in that the feds will change this, this should be done as reform to our current system in the Safeway model here.


Obamanation in reference to citizen journalists that have a clear mind and voice such as the LCR -“They’ll give dire warnings about socialized medicine and government takeovers; long lines and rationed care; decisions made by bureaucrats and not doctors. We’ve heard it all before — and because these fear tactics have worked, things have kept getting worse.”



And these are the precise things that occur under any such socialized system. Cause and Effect. 1 + 1 = 2. Absolute nonsense here, I have health insurance – it’s expensive but I choose by my own volition to have it. My neighbor has no right to expect me to pay for his. Things have not kept getting worse Sir, you have made our country worse for bringing us down the road of collectivism using unprecedented fear tactics to tear down the free market. Health care needs reform and less government intervention. The precise opposite of that being proposed.

This gloomy Saturday morning I am reading a story here on the recent passage of tobacco law in both houses of Congress. Apparently the Obamanation admittedly still suffers from ‘nicotine addiction’ here. How fitting in this alternate-reality twilight zone of anti-individualism, entitlement mentality bonanza. Pathetic.

From House.gov here I read the descriptive title of the bill – “To protect the public health by providing the Food and Drug Administration with certain authority to regulate tobacco products.”

Horse hockey, bald faced lies, as is true with everything out of Washington right now, freedom of choice is destroyed with ridiculous sounding descriptive titles. If tobacco is so evil and disgusting, then criminalize it. It all comes down to power and money. Seemingly benign legislation like this, (from the public perspective), sets dangerous precedents for future curtailing of freedom. Where do they stop? Which industry or behaviour is the next scapegoat or regulatory target? I see a plethora of Republicans here that voted in the House for passage, including my rep. I see that Michelle Bachman, Ron Paul, Paul Ryan, Dana Rohrabacher, Tom McClintock, and 7 Democrats voted Nay. A vote like this speaks volumes – those that believe in liberty will do so in consistency, even when it resolves to making a stand against something that the public is for – the bigger picture of freedom. Eric Dondero has a tally up and some other details at Libertarian Republican. He points out that generally pro-liberty republican names voted Nay.

Ron Paul yesterday from the floor –

Only congressman Paul can call a spade a spade, that a nanny-state solution to every societal ill is antithesis to what our country once stood for.


RIP Milton Friedman, the most staunch defender of free markets and free minds of my lifetime.

Update 1 : Reader Madmath at The Wright Mind opined brilliantly in the comment section – “Now the government can use it to experiment in Communism by increasing the heat of tyranny. This is just another power grab, and since 80% of voters don’t smoke and 52% don’t have a brain, they’ll completely support this. Like the frog that doesn’t realize the heat is increasing to the point of being cooked, they’re oblivious to their danger this represents.”

“God help us because we’re dying fast as a free country.”
Support his blog, he has some great things to say and great content.

This afternoon I watched Sarah Palin on the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. I have been noticeably absent on the Letterman flap and the other media coronations – I usually try to steer clear of pop-culture type headlines and stories. That’s just not why I am here at the Left Coast Rebel. That’s not to say however that I think the media’s treatment of Palin is fair. Would the media give someone like Letterman a pass on insinuating that the Obamanation’s daughters were ‘knocked-up’ during a baseball game? I think not. Letterman is pathetic along with the rest of the media establishment. I’ve seen some truly disgusting things about Palin in the blogosphere as well, Conservative Generation has a great piece here on this theme here. It is fascinating for me to see the National Organization of Women castigating Letterman here. I commend NOW, for once, of consistency.

So anyway on CNN today Palin looked bright, confident and postitive. She was asked about the Obamanation. Sarah Palin – “I think that he’s growing government way too quickly and he’s digging us a hole of debt for our country that we are going to pass on to our children and grandchildren. Expecting them to pay off our debt for us, it’s a selfish thing that we are doing right now.”

This is good folks, just basic common sense, economics 101, like I would say – “Would you run your household like this?”

She goes on, “Trillions of dollars of more spending, a trillion dollar stimulus package, we don’t have that money, were borrowing it from China.”

Common sense again – the GOP doesn’t get it, it’s not rocket science to combat everything that Washington is doing right now. Remember Jeb Bush’s “Hey, at least they have something?” That’s just not good enough, nothing is better than the something that the Obamanation has. As Palin is doing here, you just have to point it out – go right over the talking bobble-heads, as Reagan did.



As she says in the video above, “This insinuation that it is ok for the media to not provide the American public the full context of what the joke was about, it is a sad commentary on what Americans are fed in terms of full news.”

She is so right about this folks. This shows me that she has some of the nerve needed for leadership. Most conservatives shy away from pointing out the obvious absurdity that is the double standard in the press towards them. Like I said, would they treat Michelle Obama or her daughters like this, simply glide over the context of what Letterman said and make it seem that it wasn’t a big deal? I think not.

Palin also talked about the Alaskan pipline that she is pushing hard for, it would essentially transport natural gas from Alaska through Canada and down to the lower 48. I commend her on this as well as tax dollars aren’t being used, she insisted that they weren’t.

New Conservative Generation sent me an email on this topic –
“It’s really a long story from what I understand. Although the State of Alaska does receive a lot of money in rents from the oil companies, the citizens of Alaska perceive that they have been taken advantage of. As I understand it, this is true. One of the longstanding disputes between the Alaskan’s and the oil companies has been over the development of natural gas infrastructure. The oil companies have been promising natural gas excavation for over 30 years and has been sitting on their leases. When Palin came on the seen she rescinded those leases and began instituting plans that would actually bring a pipeline to fruition. Now as I’ve said before, Alaskan’s have had concerns regarding past dealings with the oil companies and she set out to ensure that the new pipeline would be more favorable to the citizen’s than the oil companies. For example, she sought to have one of the companies to front their own money to help develop the pipeline and be willing to make the line big enough to share with the other two large oil companies. The three companies balked at first so Palin went with a Canadian company for construction. It turns out that Mobile has finally cracked and is going to be the company doing the construction.”

Some points:

A lot of the legislation Palin is getting passed is bipartisan

Palin has been succeeding in all aspects of her plan and not laying down for big business

She’s getting a pipeline built that has stalled for 30 years

She’s doing something that Obama fails to do, which is create new wealth by taking advantage of our natural reasources. Obama’s doing the opposite.

Despite previoiusly working as a mayor from Wasilla, she can handle herself in the realm of politics

She’s successfully brokering deals that are very difficult and complex. Afterall, natural gas development was stalled for 30 years.


As I said last week, after daily Obamanations Sarah Palin is a breath of fresh air. A shocking contrast to the Leftist pols that I try to uncover every day. Is she perfect? Of course not. But today’s events at least to me, show that she is willing to stand up and fight, willing to spell out what our country is facing in simple terms that the public will surely respond to. Will she be the crowned leader of the resistance?

• The bill forces every individual citizen to buy a “qualified” health plan. The Feds set the rules on what qualifies. If you don’t buy one, you are forced to pay a tax set by Health and Human Services. Listen to this – to avoid the tax, you would have to report your health insurance info to HHS each month, along with an ambiguous requirement to provide ”any such other information as the Secretary may prescribe”. This sounds like a USSR scheme. Report your health insurance info? Are you kidding me?


• Plan would mandate that employers offer insurance to their employees. Employers would also have to pay a tax representing a portion of the insurance. Again, the amount and structure of the tax is left to the discretion of the Secretaries of Treasury and HHS. USSR again here, a little Cuba thrown in for good measure. New bureaucracy powers, reporting to higher duty – preposterous and scary.


• The government defined “qualified” plan would have to among many things – have a modified community rating (not even sure what that means), no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, no lifetime limit on benefits, children would defined as such up to the age 26. Also, plans would be required, (now listen to this), to cover a Fed-approved list of preventive services. Yikes, in other words, the Feds will mandate all sorts of things that will drive for-profit enterprises out of business, thus monopolizing and taking over 100%.


• “Qualified” plans would also have to cover “essential health benefits” as defined by a Medical Advisor Council, or MAC (read bureaucrats), MAC would require things covered as they see fit. Shocking, once again, number crunchers in charge of life and death decisions.


• And the worse thing that I see here – Health insurance plans could not charge higher premiums for risky behaviors: “Such rate shall not vary by health status-related factors, … or any other factor not described in paragraph (1).” Smokers, drinkers, drug users, and those in terrible physical shape would all have their premiums subsidized by the healthy. This is literally in this bill. You dear reader would be subsidizing bad behaviour of your fellow citizen, just as you are paying his mortgage and bailing him out right now as well. The naked face of socialism.



• 
  
  I retract the above, the worst thing that I see here – People from 150% of poverty up to 500% (!!) would get their health insurance subsidized (on a sliding scale). If this were in effect in 2009, a family of four with income of $110,000 would get a small subsidy. The bill does not indicate the source of funds to finance these subsidies. Showing their cards here, this scheme is not meant to ‘fix’ health care, it’s meant to socialize it, to put the State in charge of life and death decisions.

I’m going to stop here for the moment. As is patently obvious to anyone that is paying attention, this push for federal control, either in totality or partiality is a massive abridgement of our freedoms. Just read the details above, this is scary stuff. I didn’t even list half of the points here on KeithHennesy.com. It is no wonder that the Obamanation is pushing so hard for this, the ‘now or never’ attitude explained by just a few details that I have here. This is insanity and we must stop any chance of this becoming law. These people are not to be trusted in any way, shape or form. And they certainly are not to be trusted when it comes to our health and the treatment of such. After all, we are talking life and death issues for Americans, would you want the DMV in charge of such? The more details I read, the angrier I get over this obamanation. It typifies the things that I have always despised the most about Leftists – that they hate individual initiative; every solution to every problem is always a freedom-smashing government-enabling monstrosity. I’d rather take a cheese grader to the hind side than see this thing go through.

Bullet points again from my previous post on why any liberty-minded American must oppose –

• Sky-rocketing medical costs in our current system are largely explained by the fact that insurance coverage insulates recipients from the cost of health care and does not limit care provided. Socialized systems of medicine correct this equation by limiting supply – rationing. It’s a simple fact in any socialized medicine system. Click here for a list of stories of rationed care in Great Britain.

Read here a list of GOP senators that are urging the Obamanation to say ‘no’ to socialized medicine. Please support them.

Read here a detailed discussion on the downside of state-run health, from Time Magazine no less.

Read here a great article in the Wall Street Journal on the illusion of reform that the Obamanation is pushing for, the dangers of such.

Read here, an op-ed in Investor’s Business Daily by Phyllis Scaffly, she nails several themes and uncovers things that I haven’t listed yet.

A loyal reader of this blog knows that I think that the Democrats and the Obamanation are going all for broke, now or never. Progressives in power want it all – yesterday. The transformation is upon us; nationalization of key industries, bureaucratic number crunchers drooling over the US medical system, unforeseen debt levels, future curtailing of basic American freedoms, even tolls on the air that we breathe. A free society, hoodwinked into mass acceptance of all things antithesis to our values. A president at head of this transformation, moving to collectivization at a breakneck pace. Every new day, a provision of extra-constitutional activity; culminating abridgements of our way of life.


Looking at a photo album today I found a familiar quote, pondering if this quote holds relevance to today.



“The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”


Half as long? Hmm. Mind you, I credit current day power brokers in quickly supplanting our Constitutional republic. But I credit one man the most. The Silver Tongue himself, the Obamanation. He has moved in such earnest fashion in the prior 6 months that if it were not so perilous, it would seem impressive. Using his gift of oration and talent of salesmanship, a malleable and eager public has allowed.


“The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”


Could the tides be changing, is America rising from a slumber? I fear that she may not be, but a new Rasmussen poll shows an amazing shift in the populace here. Even after month to month media coronations and messianic state-run circus events, independents trust the GOP on the economy by a two-to-one margin. A broad swath of the public feels the same – 45% to 39%. On all economic issues, voters now trust Republicans by vast Rasmussen margins. Could it be that Atlas is Shrugging? Once again, story is here. Could it be that our President’s candle is fading?


Perhaps it’s a sense that Americans didn’t even have a debate on our course, much less a chance to stop it. Perhaps Americans know instinctively the basic laws of economics, of cause and effect here . That silver tongues and empty promises only go so far – that today’s budgets, deficits, and expansion in government mean an annihilation of our fiscal future. That throwing nearly a trillion deficit-financed dollars at special interest groups was indefensible. That such a bill had to be done immediately ”or the country would face irreversible damage”, here was fearmongering at it’s worst. And the Bright Candle was elected to curtail such things. Perhaps folks are drearily waking to the horror of a centrally planned medical system. That such a system here is the precise opposite of what America used to stand for here.


And if so, then the urgency here at the Left Coast Rebel is to engage future leaders of the GOP, true thinkers of individualism, freedom, limited governance, Austrian economics. Mainstream libertarians, Ron and Rand Paul acolytes – voices that echo such beliefs and sentiments. To live and rule by the words of Newt Gingrich on Sunday night, but not by his actions in the past. To rise up and find the voices that can carry the torch of liberty and basic Constitutional governance and to dispel the charlatans that would use an opposition party for an end to their means. To find our Reagan, our Goldwater. And to succeed.

This story makes me grumpy. It’s not that I am a day late and a buck short on this one folks, it’s just that I am privy to an angle on the pathetic news yesterday that the “cash for clunkers” bill passed the House of Representatives. Doubtless an obamanation, a total waste of tax dollars printed out of thin air, a program sure to be wrought with corruption, mishandling, waste, fraud and abuse. These things are known. The worse thing though and cause for my upset? 119 votes of dissent on this clunker, meaning that 59 GOP members voted for it. More unadulterated fiscal child abuse and the GOP can’t even muster up the courage to stand against it, how can they be expected to beat the Obamanation?





Remember my piece here about this bill? Chuck Schumer (pictured, right), Democrat Senator of New York, on the program that gives out $4500 vouchers, April 15 – “This is an even better trade-in offer than they could get from any car dealership.” Well said. Fiscal taxpayer abuse.

It’s always surprising and worth noting when a person in Hollywood stands up for any semblence of common sense or conservative ideals. Voight starred in Mission Impossible, Rainmaker, (my favorite), National Treasure along with many other films since the 1970’s and is the father of Angelina Jolie. The unlikely champion of Republicanism was in his youth, a vehement liberal and an anti-war activist. These things he now attributes to Marxist propaganda here.

So Voight was at the Congressional fundraiser as well yesterday and offered up a great speech above.

Highlights –
“Obama’s path to the presidency has been thoroughly documented, we may want to look ath those strategies as we come to the 2010 election, never mind that it was as clear as the nose on your face who Obama was attached to, it was amazing to me how young people and the media were taken in by Obama’s false ‘haloistic’ presence….Obama portrayed himself as a moderate but turned out to be wildly radical…”

More – “Obama’s so-called stimulus package and budget will leave our grandchildren with great burdens and great debts, the government is now owning car companies and banks…. the government wants to run health care and tell people which doctors they can see, how much they can make, what cars to drive and they are killing off the entrepenuers that are the backbone of our economy….let’s bring an end to this false prophet Obama……”

The above video taken from the 2009 Congressional Dinner, keynote speaker Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich to lead the GOP? Much has been said in the media about the GOP reaching for a voice, a central figure to carry their message forward. Accordingly the press paints the picture as a bleak, messy affair with party leaders and grass roots faithful at each other’s throats – in-fighting without a cohesive message. So it seems natural for folks from main street, all the way to top echelons of power to look to party figures of the past to carry the country away from the destructive path we are on and put forth a cohesive conservative alternative.

Newt Gingrich, House speaker from 1995-1999, instrumental conservative voice for what I believe was to be the twilight of conservatism. Gingrich and the conservative surge of 1994 came into power on the heels of Bill Clinton’s radical push for socialized medicine (Hillarycare), and a public perception of not living up to his political-center, ‘New Democrat’ mantra. Gingrich and the 1994 class were successful because they had a precise voice and agenda – a ‘Contract with America’ here, based on some fairly simple conservative ideals, it was something that the public could relate to…..

So over recent years Gingrich has been a speaker, media pontificater, supposed purveyor of conservatism and the GOP. I am suspicious and suspect, to say the least. It’s not that I think that he is a 100% RINO, it’s just that I don’t trust him. While I admired the man in my youth, something happened to his persona, his credo. I think that he became so entrenched in ‘the Party’ that he lost sight of his conservative philosophical underpinnings. He simply over the years lost touch, became a pol, became one of them. And this happens in politics.

Of course I beg to differ. I’m sure you would too. Do Democrats ‘shrug off’ their liberal constituents? Of course not. Such Washington elitist nonsense. Republicans are always the first to eat their young and statements like this prove that. But I digress, did you watch the video of Gingrich’s commencement speech?

Highlights –

• “Obama received 60% of the votes in CA, clearly a blue state, but in May, stopping taxing and spending in Sacramento got 64% of the vote, what are the challenges to the Republican Party, are we prepared to be inclusive and not exclusive?”

• “I am happy that Dick Cheney is a Republican, I am also happy that Colin Powell is a Republican.”

My counter – I see the trend here, it is not that the party stands for individualism, freedom, low taxes and regulation, it is party loyalty and identification. Powell voted for the Obamanation. What does this even mean? Identity over ideas? Very muted applause on this one.

• “Some of our social planners refer to them as ‘the masses’,….they are not ‘the masses’ or ‘common man’, individuals each with his or her own hopes and dreams, plans and problems and the kind of quiet courage that makes this whole country run better…..that’s why rationing is wrong, that’s why quotas are wrong, because the eliminate the very power of the individual.”

Counter – Ah-ha! Now that is the meat and potatoes of what conservatives/libertarians believe. I would go the long distance here – rationing is wrong, quotas, excessive taxes, regulation, entitlements, group identity, poverty mentality, entitlement mentality and others are wrong simply because they eliminate the very power of the individual.

• “It is why America entrepreneurial free market capitalism will work and that European socialism will not work in terms of productivity and prosperity….”

Counter – Basic, but not heard enough from current Republicans – who in the GOP is out there extolling the evils of even a European socialism lite? Not many.

• “We do not need stimulus, we need growth….the answer is the opposite of the left, we don’t need stimulus, the idea that you can pour 787 billion dollars into Washington and have it somehow create jobs is a fantasy of the first order, their goal was power and paying off their allies….politicians dominating the economy does not work, Barney Frank is not a substitute for a sound market economy….replacing the rule of law with special interests in bankruptcy does not work….you can’t have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down….”

So he goes on to basically offer up a direct/stark contrast to the big-government largess of the Obamanation with a vision of an entrepreneurial/vibrant market economy. Do I think that Gingrich is the best man to hold the mantle of the GOP? No. Was the speech great? Actually I think so, especially the last half or so. Do I trust his intentions and credentials? 50/50 on this one. We need new blood in the party and a new vision, although I do hear some of this from him in the speech, I think that a vibrant, young and fresh face could really carry this message better in this day and age. What do you think?

I may sound like I’m beating a dead horse here at the Left Coast Rebel. As is for the course of our country under the Obamanation, day in and day out I am confronted with sabotages thrust forth from Washington that I believe threaten our very well being. Be that this is the case, I’m going to keep beating this poor creature. An op-ed still fresh on my mind here from Investor’s Business Daily, whip in hand, flogging begins….





The duo of Ernest S. Christian and Gary A. Robbins put together the piece, Christian is the executive director CSTR.org, Robbins is the chief economist. Browsing their site here, I find the group to be a stalwart defender of freedom from excessive taxation, guided by the ethos of President Eisenhower – “I have one yardstick by which I measure everything…Is it good for America?” Note the organization’s symbol at left.


A simple, noble concept….Is is good for America?

So many citizens today have simply forgotten this, jettisoned to keep their own little corner. Take political parties for instance. The Bush administration and both houses of Congress held the keys to power for six consecutive years since the 2000 election. Did America experience a massive curtailing of entitlement spending, increased liberties, a back to the basics constitutional Renaissance ? Not quite. Eager to please and hungry for power and Party, Bush and Republican members of Congress slowly morphed into everything that conservatives in the grass-roots hate so much about the system. They built power for The Party, not for the ideals that got them elected. Spending boomed to levels not seen since LBJ. In the middle of this electoral stint, Reagan was buried, and forgotten. My own GOP congressman was indicted, then sentenced to life in prison on corruption and money laundering. They failed the concept….Is it good for America?


Noble concepts forgotten by the GOP, a new administration has taken the helm. Flanked by powerful majorities at either side, just as the GOP in 2000 to 2006, the American public, corralled and fear-stricken clung to bromides of ‘hope, change.’ So the emboldened administration and a uniform House and Senate have set forth an agenda, some of which is completed. I have italicized points that are directly related to the Obamanation. From the article

• American families over the last year lost 8% of their net worth, buried under a mountain of mortgages, and debts. If the president has his way, they will face a 100% increase in public debt, from 8 trillion to 17.3 trillion in 2019.




• Even without the Obama surge in debt — and taxes to pay it off — taxpayers face the prospect of 60% to 70% income-tax rates in the future to pay for $48 trillion in unfunded liabilities under existing entitlement programs. Now the president plans to burden the economy’s limited taxpaying capacity with a universal health care entitlement.




• (Reader, this is government efficiency, highlighted) – Paying off Obama’s 10-year string of deficits that add up to $9.3 trillion with income tax increases of $9.3 trillion over 10 years would cost the private sector $23 trillion to $37 trillion, it costs the private-sector economy $4 ($1 of tax and nearly $3 of economic damage) to provide the government with $1 to spend.

And the net result of the Obamanation’s policies? From the close of the article -(Congress and Obamanation)…. “a borrowing spree that puts America in the same unsustainable position as an overstretched boomer with too much debt and too little income and whose only option is to refinance at higher costs just to pay the interest.”

Has anyone else seen the above web ad? Well I have, on several sites. The ad campaign has Ford hawking the plight of the industry of general aviation, sponsored by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. It’s confusing, as it seems that the term ‘general aviation’ sounds like a union or industry group. It’s not. Basically general aviation is in the most basic sense, civil aviation – all flights other than military and scheduled airline flights. For more, click here.

Apparently the industry of general aviation is in the cross hairs of Congress and the Obamanation. The power-hungry, money-grabbing looters, (read Democrats), are proposing new schemes and taxes on the industry. As Ford says in the video above, new taxes and fees could threaten the entire industry, click here for more.

Which is all fine and dandy coming from Han Solo, except for one little factoid – he contributed over $30,000 to the Obamanation’s Victory Fund before the election and has been a huge supporter of redistributionist democrats for years click here. Say it isn’t so! A liberal that only disagrees with big-government and redistribution when it’s in his own backyard. Again, say it isn’t so!

Thus bringing my thoughts to elitism and the liberal mentality. This Han Solo story hearkens me back to the flap regarding Ted Kennedy’s blockage of a proposed construction of a Cape Cod windmill project, ostensibly using his Senate powers to do so. The mere fact that Teddy petitioned against the construction of clean-energy windmills barely within sight from his property is infinitely hypocritical and amazingly preposterous. This insidious story is still alive and well as of 2006 here.

As both of these stories point out, there are two sets of values and rules for society. One set for the peasants and folks on Main Street. The other set for liberals, hollywood, elitists, Indiana Jones, the Kennedy family, progressives, democrats, socialists, and self aggrandizing ninnies. And just as long as it’s not in their backyard.

Update 1 : Reader Nick from It’s just my opinion.blogspot put forth some salient points in the comments, Nick – “It’s a common theme with socialism proponents (and, as a side note, I use that term instead of “liberal” because liberal literally means favoring personal freedoms and government reform, which is the exact opposite of what socialism proponents advocate; the hijacking of the term “liberal” should be an affront to everyone not in favor of more government control). They are in favor of more government control, but implicitly only as long as the government is enforcing their agenda, and they are upset if the government isn’t doing so (or is actually promoting something which is detrimental to them).

Maybe in an ideal world, there could be an option on the ballot to vote for the candidate based on their promises to do things which help you, and regardless of the type of government they advocate or represent. That way we, the people who care about the big-picture well-being of the country as a whole, can possibly spread the message to those people that they are not helping themselves, their country, their children, of their fellow citizens by participating in the election process, and the best thing they could actually do for themselves and the country is to ignore the calls to “get out and vote”, and leave the decision making to the people who think, and can thus make good, informed, beneficial decisions.”

Democrat-statist leaders and activists, liberal lustings of the past 30 years, coming to daily affronts. “Never let a serious crisis go to waste,” – Rahm Emmanuel whispering into the ear of the Obamanation.


The whisper of such a theme, today’s affront to the free market is brought to you by the Wall Street Journal here. The story being the White House appointment of a ‘Czar’ to oversee executive compensation at firms that received TARP funds. A certain Kenneth Feinberg is now duly anointed “Special Master of Compensation”. His job duties? To ensure that companies receiving bailout funds are abiding by executive-pay guidelines. Atlas Shrugging – Check.



More from the story – “The government is also pursuing a separate revamping of financial-sector rules that could change industry compensation practices more broadly. For instance, the Federal Reserve is considering rules that would curb banks’ ability to pay employees in a way that would threaten the “safety and soundness” of the bank.”


Can you read between the lines here? The Federal Reserve curbing banks’ ability to pay employees? Reading more into this story here as well, I find that the ‘Pay Czar’ will report to the Treasury Secretary but that he will also have ‘wide discretion on how the rules should be interpreted.’ Firms won’t be able to appeal decisions made by the Czar as well. Atlas Shrugging – Check.



Companies that took TARP funds, as I predicted made a deal with the devil. This particular devil has a Russian moniker and tradition of history dating to inception in Bulgaria – 913 AD. The term here was meant to designate a ‘supreme ruler’, or often times a monarch. Fitting to today with the new extra-constitutional activity of the Obamanation and the statists, I wonder when a Czar will be appointed for the industry that you are in? When the lines of governmental power are blurred, thus begins a slippery-slope of such behaviour.

As far as I can gather,the following are the Czars in the Obamanation Administration. Bank Bailout Czar, Energy Czar, Drug Czar, Border Czar, Urban Czar, Regulatory Czar, Stimululs Czar, Iran Czar, Afghanistan Czar, Pakistan Czar, Net Czar, Car Czar, Health Care Czar, Cyperspace Czar, Technology Czar, Copyright Czar, Mortgage Czar, Climate Czar, WMD Czar, Education Czar, Economic Czar, Housing Czar.I might be missing a few……
Banana Republic – Check.



Now to a real-life Czar, Vladimir Putin of Russia. Reader Carl Wicklander, one of my smartest readers yesterday pointed me to a speech that the real-deal Czar gave in Davos Switzeraland. Visit and support Carl’s site – Uncouth Ruminations. blogspot.

Anyway, Putin in Davos January 28 2009, on the West’s response the the financial crisis –

“All of us must display a sense of proportion. Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence is another possible mistake… Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent.

The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation. In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly.

I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated. Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.”

There you have it – The Czar/Prime Minister of Russia sounds like a free-marketeer, and our own president, a socialist. We are living in the bizarro world. Atlas Shrugging – Check

Remember the idiom above?
Well it seems that our president, the Obamanation; the man and philosophy the he represents are the envy of a particular leader that I’ve written about before.Who is this man? I’ll give you a few hints.

• Useful idiot Jimmy Carter oversaw and validated his re-election.



• Much like many American intellectuals today, his collegial studies involved the works of Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Trotsky.



• Along with other Leftist dictators, praises ‘democracy’, often dons military fatigues and blends militant communism with militant militarism, loves the color red.



• Blames the world’s problems on the West and America.



• Elected on promises of redistributing wealth to the poor, free education, subsidized housing and free medical care.

Mystery speaker – “Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right.”

The above quote taken earlier this week, President Hugo Chavez, straight from the horse’s mouth, proving the ageless idiom, you really can judge a man by the company that he keeps.

Story from Reuters here.

Update : Reader William this evening had this great input to offer, motivated to speak out after reading this story –

“I’m not old enough to have taken part of the sixties “youth rebellion,” but I saw it every night on the news and read about it in the papers. One of the things we need (among many) to get back on track as a nation of liberty again, is for college age kids to act like their parents and grand parents did back “in the day.” Conservatives and libertarians have been far too polite in the battle of ideas. What we need is some good ol’ fashioned rebellion! After all, our founders were rebels.

Youngsters need to vilify their commie professors. The need to make leftist students look square, unhip… make them look like the mouth breathing dolts they are. Get potential converts to see what Chavez and Castro have done to oppress lives. Yes, by all means, throw eggs and balloons at left-wing speakers. Shout them down. Hell, most conservative kids are in better shape than the leftist student body that sits on their ass all day long, taking hits from bongs, so they needn’t be afraid of potential violence from them. Form demonstrations. Set up booths showing the evils of collectivism. Put out booklets with pictures of showing the tyranny of the left. Write articles for right-wing campus papers about the horrors of Mao’s revolution and how he starved seventy million people to death. Show pics of what hospitals really look like in Cuba. Nothing says more than a heap of bodies piled up, demonstrating the handiwork of Stalin. Use sound bytes from Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism,” to show that there isn’t much difference between fascism and communism; socialism being the common link. Carry posters at demonstrations with bite size chunks of basic economics.Time to get moving and at least attempt to restructure the damage the left has done, primarily through the education system.”

I completely agree William, I will do my best here to further these ideas and radicalize the fight for liberty!

Socialism makes main street queasy and nervous, even though it can be sold to them with messianic silver-tongue platitudes and ‘hope and change’. When the people sniff out that they are soon to lose control over their lives, they realize that the empty promises of the pols, messiahs, and statists of the day aren’t worth the cost. And therein is precisely why the Obamanation wants this thing now. We are thought of as a bunch of suckers being sold a bright red sucker. And this sucker is going to bankrupt a bankrupt government. Adding another socialized program on top of the soon-to-be insolvent Social Security and Medicare programs will annihilate the economic mobility of future generations. Uncle Sam will essentially be a dying patient on the bed in his own creation of socialized bureaucracies.

• Sky-rocketing medical costs in our current system are largely explained by the fact that insurance coverage insulates recipients from the cost of health care and does not limit care provided. Socialized systems of medicine correct this equation by limiting supply – rationing. It’s a simple fact in any socialized medicine system. Click here for a list of stories of rationed care in Great Britain.


• Having a federal medicine Leviathan in charge of even a large portion of the medical industry would skew the supply/demand curve. Government under-pricing of services would force for-profit corporations to exit the business, thus the government would fill the vacuum, creating excess, largess and eventual dominance. Ring the death-bell for the taxpayer and medical quality.


• Administrative Waste – remember that pennies on the dollar of each tax dollar that you you pay actually ends up at the prescribed destination. A government system would be massively wasteful based on history, common sense and the socialized model in place in other countries.


• Socialized systems of medicine inhibit widespread access to advanced medical technology. Click here for stories from Canada where Canadian citizens have fled their homeland in search of treatments, therapies, and surgeries either not allowed by their socialist system or in other cases long waiting lines for procedures that are allowed but difficult to get. Canadians come to the US to flee there system. Where is that story in our media and the Socialist Democrat party?


• Overarching loss of liberty and freedom with such an instrumental government takeover. Ostensibly the industry is suffering, cost are skyrocketting, precisely because of government intrusion and bureaucracy. In typical statist fashion the solution is more government control. Click here for stories on this topic.

So basically folks, I think that a federal government takeover, even in partiality of our health care system is a joke at best and a total disaster at worse. That doesn’t mean however that it won’t happen, unless we stop it. Remember –

Remember this photo from 1989? I’m reading here that this photo was taken from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel, a half mile away. Ironically this brave soul was facing the Chi-com tanks on a street named Chang’an Boulevard. Translation in english? Avenue of Eternal Peace, painfully ironic. The lone freedom fighter versus the grinding steel tank- gears both of machinery and the Iron-Fist State. The unknown Chinese man, daring to confront an enclave whose fate to this day is unkown. Is our fate set in stone?

The June 4 20th anniversary brings up the importance of the demonstration that led up to the government crackdown, ominous parallels to our current state of affairs. Most of my piece truly speaks for itself and the evils of socialism and centralized state-control. Click here for a timeline of the events.

A brief history to start with. First off the demonstrations were orchestrated and led by intellectuals and students. In today’s America we essentially have students and intellectuals that protest freedom and capitalism. Initially the protesters were mourning the death of a pro-democracy official Hu Yaobang. Over 100,000 people initially gathered and were mostly rallying around anti-authoritrian themes. Calling for economic freedom as well, the protest peaked at 1.2 million citizens.

The gathering lasted for 7 weeks until the communist government decided to quelch the citizen calls for freedom. Orders were put in to the military and a fleet of tanks. This government action was justified as a ”counterrevolutionary rebellion” as the iron-fist crushed the protests, openly firing on innocent people . To this day it is not known how many souls perished, the Chinese Red Cross estimated 2,600, American sources put the toll at 3000. At the end of this piece I have a reader that has a familial first-hand account of the massacre, he thinks the death toll and wounded totals far exceed any government account. Accordingly in a NYT article here, the data is conflicted and it seems that the toll was realistically closer to 1000 with 7000 wounded, I am suspect as this is from the NYT. Many bodies of murdered students were carried away by loved ones or friends, the military also did it’s best to dispose of bodies without a damning body count.

I am putting forth condensed points from the timeline linked above, things that stand out to me. I have italicized where taken directly from the timeline. For the timeline again click here –

April 18-20 – “Party leaders suspect the demonstrations to be led by ‘black-hands’ and ‘bourgeois liberal elements’, Premier Li argues that protests should be ‘nipped in the bud’.”

April 25 – “Party elder Deng Xiaoping, the de facto head of state, declares that the students aim to overthrow him and the Communist Party. Deng decides the Party has thus far been “tolerant and restrained,” but the time has come for action. “We must explain to the whole Party and nation that we are facing a most serious political struggle.”

April 26 – The State-run People’s Daily runs – “The Necessity for a Clear Stand Against Turmoil,” thereby stating that, “This is a well-planned plot … to confuse the people and throw the country into turmoil.”

April 28 – May 3 – “Party leaders are aware of the growing foreign press coverage of the demonstrations, but remain split over how to stop the protests and get the students to return to classes. Zhao Ziyang’s camp advocates negotiation and stresses the government should address legitimate complaints, such as the need for political reform.”

May 13 – In anticipation of a visit to Beijing by Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, students start a hunger strike and a manifesto is circulated saying – “The nation is in crisis — beset by rampant inflation, illegal dealing by profiteering officials, abuses of power, corrupt bureaucrats, the flight of good people to other countries and deterioration of law and order. Compatriots, fellow countrymen who cherish morality, please hear our voices!”

May 16 – Government officials are unable to greet Gorbachev in Tiananmen Square, thus enraging them, Li Peng stands against government capitulation.

May 17 – Martial Law planned. “This is the unshirkable duty of the Party and the government.”


May 19 – Martial Law declared. 1.2 million protesters stage a mass sit-in including police, military, and industrial workers. Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang is removed from office. New Party General Secretary Peng appears on state television – “We must adopt firm and resolute measures to end the turmoil swiftly, to maintain the leadership of the party as well as the socialist system.”

May 20 – People’s Liberation Army attempts to occupy Beijing. Protestors block their access to the streets. “You had these … touching moments of the people appealing to the army to join them, and feeding them, and giving them water, and saying, you know, ‘Could be your son. Could be your daughter,’ says Orville Schell, who was in Beijing at the time. “And [you have] these sort of doe-eyed, puzzled soldiers, who were mostly country people, weren’t experienced with big city life, just wondering what was going on here. And not wanting to hurt anybody.”

May 24 – The troops leave the area and government officials are humiliated in their view.

May 25-June 1 – Government officials devise a strategy to end the conflict. “Armed troops will be sent in from every military district in the country.”

June 3 – “As word spreads that hundreds of thousands of troops are approaching from all four corners of the city, Beijingers flood the streets to block them, as they had done two weeks earlier. People set up barricades at every major interstion….the citizens become aggressive as the army tries to break through their barricades. They yell at the soldiers and some throw rocks; someone sets a bus on fire. The soldiers start firing on the unarmed civilians with AK-47s loaded with battlefield ammunition.”

June 4 – The soldiers are told that “they must clear the square by 6:00 a.m. — with no exceptions or delays.” “About 4:00 a.m., student leaders put the matter to a vote: Leave the square, or stay and face the consequences.” The majority votes to leave. “The students vacate the square under the gaze of thousands of soldiers.” The most chilling aspect to this end? “Later that morning, some people — believed to be the parents of the student protestors — try to re-enter Tiananmen Square via Chang’an Boulevard. The soldiers order them to leave, and when they don’t, open fire, taking down dozens of people at a time.”

Socialism is evil, barbaric and in it’s purest, most naked form; utter human depravity. The philosophy of Marxism, Leninism, Moaism, destroy the human spirit and rule with an iron-fist. Not even a country as exceptional as the United States of America can escape the lessons of history. For if we are to ignore the lessons of history and of our Founders, our country will eventually become a victim of it.

The Tiananmen Manifesto again – “The nation is in crisis — beset by rampant inflation, illegal dealing by profiteering officials, abuses of power, corrupt bureaucrats, the flight of good people to other countries and deterioration of law and order. Compatriots, fellow countrymen who cherish morality, please hear our voices!”

Parallels to modern-day America….

Update 1 : Fellow CA blogger MAinfo has a story up detailing the fact that the Chinese government is blocking access to major internet sites and search engines around the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Chinese government has not changed folks, a communist is a communist. Click here for her story, replete with several links.

Update 2 : I have recieved some very moving statement from readers on this story –

Reader William said – “During my visit to the “windy city,” I met some folks who were actually from Poland, having lived there under a communist regime. They told me that the democrat party of today, especially under Obama’s policies and his thugish ways of achieving them, is exactly what they experienced growing up in Poland. They said if this guy isn’t restrained from his relentless plunge into the horrors of Marxism, soon, we will all be living the nightmare of collectivism. This is the very reason they left Poland in the first place, to start life anew in the last bastion of freedom known as America.”

Reader MadMath 1 said -“My first fiance’s parents were from China and were able to migrate in 1966 because they saw what was coming from Mao’s Cultrual Revolution. They were shocked that it took 33 years for the protesters and the people to rise up. They thought it would happen sooner. They weren’t surprised by the response. What surprised them was how the dems really backed the Communists and covered up the massacre. I would say about 10% were killed or wounded, but we’ll never really know because everything was too well covered up. I fear that it can, if we continue the course we’re taking, happen here as this administration is doing everything short of shooting to shut up all dissilents of BO. The media today would be all too willing to spin it as well.”

Kudos to Reason TV for the Warranty video. Sometimes the best tonic in troubling times is humour. Certainly Bailout Mania extending to government subsidized GM/Chrysler warranties is laughably pathetic and wrought with the potential for untold taxpayer liability, fraud and abuse.

Nick Gillespie from Reason, shining as always, this from April 13 but applicable to today’s news of the ‘bankruptcy’. My favorite point? The statement from Gillespie that, – “the government shouldn’t be involved in bailing out companies that are not good enough to compete….one of the problems with the bailout-mania that has hit the United States government, we are damaging the risk/reward incentive system that’s at the heart of the free-enterprise model.”

Gillespie just plainly makes too much sense, note the ejaculative reactions of the bobblehead Phil Lebau, his actions, appearance and demeanor speak volumes. This Lebau, ostensibly a media ‘expert’ on the automotive industry has been the bullhorn on CNBC for the automotive industry bailout mania. Note his scorn for Nick’s mere mention of the sanctity of free-enterprise. He can hardly contain himself. He truly reminds me of the useful-idiot characters in Atlas Shrugged that help usher in totalitarianism/socialism to a crumbling US economy. Chastising selfishness, egoism, self-interest, as inherently evil aspects to free-enterprise they fulfill their wish and destroy the free-market. The cronies; iron-fists of the day assume control. “This isn’t what we wanted,” the useful idiots proclaim as the nation crumbles and a new reality of oppression, malaise, and misery ensues under socialism/totalitarianism.

And on my theme of the last note above, I have the Obamanation, the President of the United States and General Motors. Transcribed from his speech if you can’t stand watching it –

“When my administration took office and began going over Chrysler’s books, the future of this great American car company was uncertain.” This one is easy – raise your hand if you think that an American administration and President should have the ability to go over a company’s books? Since when do politicians, career attorneys et al. have the business know-how to even grasp the minutia of an infinitely complex auto company? Atlas Shrugging – Check

“But GM can’t put this plan into effect on its own. Executing this plan will require a substantial amount of money that only a government can provide.” A total fabrication, a lie told often enough often times becomes the truth. By plan He means the federal government’s plan. Not a plan that would have been devised by a typical bankruptcy proceeding. Only a government under the Obamanation can provide printed and inflated dollars to fund a giant auto-industry social experiment in socialist policy. The US taxpayer surely cannot afford it, the taxpayer effectively skewered on a shis-kebab, side by side with the auto business. Atlas Shrugging – Check

“These steps have put our government in the unwelcome position of owning large stakes in private companies for the simple and compelling reason that their survival and the success of our overall economy depend on it.” Ah-ha moment, the classic definition of socialism? From Dictionary.com – “a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.” The Obamanation and the dictionary are in total agreement. Atlas Shrugging – Check

“What we are not doing — what I have no interest in doing — is running GM. GM will be run by a private board of directors and management team with a track record in American manufacturing that reflects a commitment to innovation and quality. They — and not the government — will call the shots and make the decisions about how to turn this company around. The federal government will refrain from exercising its rights as a shareholder in all but the most fundamental corporate decisions.” Perhaps the most ominous here, in my opinion. Simply stating something does not make it a truth – the government is running GM. What about the strong-arm greenie tactics, the increased Union role via Obamanation cronies, and government conducted dealer closings? Note that He tries to calm the public by saying the He has no interest in running GM, yet he has the caveat, in all but the most fundamental corporate decisions. Atlas Shrugging – Check

Update 1 :While pouring over sites today I found this here at the NYT. It is a story about a Mr. Brian Deese a Yale Law School student 31 years of age, he is a key player in the administration’s ‘automotive task force.’ I come away from this story awash in thoughts of a Law School student ostensibly in power over key companies in the US auto industry. Atlas Shrugging – Check.

Update 2 : Even Robert Reich is skeptical of the Obamanation’s plan for GM in today’s Financial Times here.

Update 3 : KeithHennesy.com has the best writeup I have seen, basic facts about the Obamanation GM bankruptcy. Click here for this.

Upate 4 : The Wall Street Journal has a great article pointing to the many things that eventually led to GM’s downfall. In particular, a strike in 1998 played dominance……read it here.