Joel's Rant

Negative campaigns work.
People claim they want to hear a positive message, they want to hear
optimism, they want to hear genuine solutions, but isn’t that really a bunch of
bullcrap?  Once the negative ads hit the
airwaves, all they want to acknowledge is the bad stuff, or what’s being
purported to be bad stuff.

Too many people can’t reconcile “good stuff” versus “bad
stuff”, and so they just go with the bad stuff.
It’s easier to believe bad stuff.
It’s the same kind of thinking that makes it far easier to be a liberal
than a conservative.  Conservatives are thoughtful;
liberals are emotional.  In a contest
between thoughtful and emotional, emotional wins almost all the time.  Same with good stuff and bad stuff; bad stuff
goes down easier and doesn’t take much sorting and thinking.  It’s easier to trick people with bad
stuff.  That’s why going negative is more
successful than going positive.  Barack
Obama’s counting on that human nature for his reelection strategy.

Too many Iowans’ seem to be buying into the easier to
swallow bad stuff.  They should be
embarrassed because now we can officially dismiss Iowa as a place where genuine
thought takes place.  Apparently it
doesn’t.

Newt’s obviously been the focus of a negative campaign;
promulgated by people who have either no record of their own, or a lesser
record than Newt’s, to run on.  But a
smart and outspoken guy, like Newt, who’s been in political office or in the
public arena for over 30 years, makes an easy target.  A guy who’s voted on about 8,000
congressional bills, testified numerous times before Congress, written hundreds
of position papers, written 24 books and given thousands of speeches has got a
huge paper trail to glean “bad stuff” from.
No other candidate in the race comes even close to the record of
involvement and public life that Newt commands.
And so those, with no record of accomplishment of their own, are trying
to take Newt out by attacking his record.

So what are the “bad stuff” people are clearly responding to
and what’s the truth.

Newt’s First Wife

First of all, Newt’s first wife is still alive and
well.  According to the urban legend, she
should have been dead since 1980 when Newt supposedly demanded a divorce while
she was literally on her death bed.  The
truth is that it was she who had sought the divorce and that action was already
underway when she had a benign tumor removed.
Go figure!

Freddie Mac

Newt was paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac for, what his
opponents claim, was nefarious lobbying efforts.  But let’s put this into some
perspective.  That $1.6 million was paid
not to Newt, but rather to The Gingrich Group, a Washington consulting firm,
one of hundreds of others doing legitimate business in the nation’s
capital.  That seemingly huge fee was
paid out not in one lump sum, as his opponents would have you believe, but
rather in monthly “retainer” installments from 1999 through 2007, or about
$20,000 per month, which interestingly enough is about the “going rate” for
those kinds of services in Washington.
The Gingrich Group also is comprised of 3 separate offices, in
Washington, Atlanta and St. Louis and has a staff, and pays rent and utilities,
buys equipment and business products and services, pays for travel and does all
the other things normal to a business of that size and nature.  What this means is that the $1.6 million paid
by Freddie did not end up exclusively in Newt’s wallet.  It was business income, along with other
income, from other consulting work performed, and went in the coffers of The
Gingrich Group.

It should also be remembered that Newt was a private citizen
during this time, unlike Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and others driving Freddie
Mac.  He was allowed to make a living.  Did he lobby Congress?  I’m not sure myself, but Newt claims he
didn’t, his contract with Freddie said he wouldn’t, and I’m certain if he did,
those congress people who were lobbied would have come forward already if he
did, no?

House Ethics

The story goes that Newt was fined $300,000 by the House
ethics committee because he used a book deal to circumvent campaign-finance laws while he was
Speaker.  Compared to Charlie Rangel,
Maxine Waters, Diane Feinstein, and others, a book deal sounds almost quaint,
but even that is bullcrap.  There was
certainly a political effort among Democrats on the committee, as well as
Republicans not fond of Newt’s leadership style, who wanted him out.  Under pressure, Newt acquiesced and paid for
the cost of the “investigation”, not a $300,000 fine.  As it turns out, the ethics committee
initially investigated 83 so-called violations of which they dismissed all
except for one.  A year later, the IRS
dismissed even that one and claimed no conflict ever existed.

On a
Bench With Nancy Pelosi

The 31 second commercial Newt participated in with Nancy
Pelosi, in April 2008, rates as the worst time spent in his life.  But all Newt says in that commercial is that
he’s concerned about the future and that solutions need to be found.  All the details are left to the
imagination.  Newt claims what he was trying
to do was make sure that whatever action Congress decided, and at the time
you’ll recall the super majority Democrat House and Senate was hell-bent on cap
& trade action, that conservatives had a voice crafting that action.

If that sounds stupid and self-serving, compare that 31
second fluff piece with the over 1 hour of direct and detailed testimony Newt
gave, by himself, before the Waxman-Markey Environment Committee, in April 2009,
and how combative that was and where precisely Newt was coming from, and where
Waxman and Markey were coming from.  Even
if you hate Newt’s guts, after viewing that testimony you know he was talking
about small, measured steps, all done without government intrusion or taxpayer
funding.  You’ll note the extreme respect
Newt has for private industry and the free market and how leaving this issue to
the capitalists will solve this climate problem, if there even is a climate
problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzDutBRMsXw

Characterizing Newt as some sort of climate complicit cap
& trader is dishonest in the extreme.
By the way, what are Mitt Romney’s thoughts on this exact issue?  What are Ron Paul’s?

Mandatory Health Care

Newt has been a deep thinker about health care in America
for over 20 years.  He formed the Center
for Health Transformation and has written books about the present and future of
health care and the insurance industry.
His involvement in this issue is not just sound bite slogan driven
baloney, like those of the other candidates.
Newt has spoken at the Heritage Foundation and given speeches about this
stuff long before he was even considering being a candidate in 2008, let alone
2012.  This is a guy who thought about
and struggled with the need of health care, and the ability to pay for it, for
a very long time.

He claims he flirted with the issue of mandating health care
as a way to sidetrack HillaryCare in the early 1990’s and more recently by
thinking it might be better to have people post “health care bonds”.  The important point to take from here is that
lots of ideas were being bandied about; lots of possibilities were being
considered.  Don’t forget, Newt’s been
involved with health care issues for a very long time, not just since he
announced in 2011, like the others, or like in Mitt Romney’s case, actually
signing into law the forerunner and template for ObamaCare, the single greatest
destroyer of American government in history, and the plan which has already put
Massachusetts in $4 billion in debt and cost over 28,000 jobs.

And listen more carefully to what Newt was saying about Paul
Ryan’s Medicare proposal. His point was that the government, or more
specifically the Republican Party, should not impose a change in Medicare
without first explaining the details to the public and getting their acceptance
before ramming it through.  Newt’s
thinking is that a really big change requires first a really big
discussion.  And that actually makes
sense, no?

This is only a sampling of the most audacious “bad stuff”
being used in an effort to knock Newt out of contention.  But you get the idea.  Most of it is bullcrap.  Some of it is purposely misconstrued stuff
taken from a huge body of work stretching 20 years or more ago when the
thinking on a particular issue was in its infancy but might be different now
after the passage of time.  This is the
price one pays when they’re in the forefront of public life for over 30 years
and during times of great change and danger.

And that’s all there is to it.

With all the coverage of the budget deficit and the debt ceiling it was easy to miss the report that came this week from the Commerce Department that indicated the nation’s growth in the last quarter was 1.3%. To put that into some perspective, it takes quarterly growth of at least 3% just to keep up with the population of new workers coming of age and seeking employment. Essentially, 3% growth means being just even, treading water, just keeping up. It’s, for all practical purposes, no actual growth at all. It’s what an economy does when it’s standing in place, not moving forward or back. You get the idea.

If only our nation had 3% growth, what a lovely thing that would be. Instead we had 1.3% growth in the last quarter. But that’s not the worst news that was reported, news that no one really saw or cared about given the debt ceiling crisis and all that. No, the worst news was that the reported 1.9% growth of the previous quarter was actually incorrect. It turns out the actual real growth figure was 0.4% growth.

Now here’s the deal. The nation’s economy is dead in the water. We’re actually listing to the left. All this Obama and liberal and Democrat talk about an economic recovery, a recovery that’s underway but just not fast enough, and any other talk from Geithner or Schumer or Reid and the others about recovery is utter bullcrap. Not only is it a complete lie to say we’re in a recovery, but the ease with which these people lie reveals something very dark and sinister and troubling. It’s serial, it’s psychopathic. It just is.

If you believe those guys, or their media sycophants, you’re living on another planet. There’s no recovery at all. In fact, there may actually be a real live depression going on. Job growth is dead. Home buying is dead. Consumer spending is dead. With fully 25 million people either unemployed, or under-employed, what we have here is your classic stagnation, with stagflation not far behind.

This brings us to the debt ceiling and the farce that’s playing out for the entire world to see. It would be funny to watch if it weren’t so serious and the stakes so high. We have the Republicans on one side, furiously trying to put plan after plan, proposal after proposal on the record, hoping to get the Democrats to allow a vote up or down and then use that debate to formulate a policy every side can live with. My own opinion is that the Republicans should stop negotiating and let the August 2nd deadline come and see what happens, but that’s beside the point.

Since April, the House Republicans have actually passed, and made official and transparent, the Ryan budget, the Cut, Cap & Balance proposal, and the Boehner plan. The Democrats have not even offered a budget, let alone passed one, as required by law, in almost 3 years!

On the other side we have the freaks of the left. You can’t describe them in any other way because to do so would lend them a sense of seriousness of which they do not deserve. They are not serious people, they are destroyers. For the past 7 months they have offered exactly nothing. They have not offered a plan or a policy. There is nothing specific on paper, there’s nothing written down for others to examine, they have provided no documentation. They just talk……and talk and talk.

Obama’s the best talker, a talker in the mold of Castro or Chavez, droning on and on, blaming everyone else, using his now almost daily national audience to stoke, the way a third-world dictator would, hate and loathing of the Republicans. Or if not Republicans one day, it’s hating the rich, the oil companies, insurance companies, or jet owners the next day. It’s about hating the “millionaires & billionaires” (who are actually more likely to be a teacher and fireman married to each other and earning about $250,000 a year). It’s about hating the people on Wall Street. It’s about hating business or corporations. It’s about hating CEO’s or drug companies. But it’s always about hate.

Obama and his minions are very hateful people.

And so they offer nothing. Even after all the discussions and negotiations about spending cuts Jack Lew, Obama’s director of the budget, admitted that the Democrats had actually agreed to only $2 billion in discretionary spending cuts. That’s $2 billion; or 1/20th of 1% of the expected budget deficit for 1 year.
But even that wasn’t written down anywhere.

And the Senate Democrats then refused to even debate the bills the House sent over for a vote. Not only did they not vote, 51 of them agreed not to even hear the specifics of the bill, to not even listen to what was proposed. The Democrats essentially put their hands over their mouths, eyes and ears and would not even admit that there was something physical sitting directly in front of them. They’re the ones proclaiming a calamity in the American economy if something isn’t done to raise the debt ceiling and they refuse to vote on or even discuss the Republican’s offer of a resolution. And literally no sooner do they refuse the Republican’s outright, but have the unmitigated chutzpah to appear before a national audience just moments later to say the Republicans are negotiating in bad faith. You can’t make this stuff up.

So what does all this mean? I don’t believe the Republicans are necessarily noble people. They clearly are politicians and have their own stuff. But they’re not anti-American. They don’t hate America. They don’t hate the people they are supposed to represent.

The Democrats, on the other hand, want to create an additional $10 trillion in budget deficits over the next 10 years to add to the $14 trillion in public debt already on the books. They have no problem raising taxes on those still lucky enough to be employed and will increase those taxes by 5% or 50%, they really don’t care. They don’t care that the nation’s accrued debt, by 2020, will be over $25 trillion. They don’t care that debt levels of that magnitude cannot be sustained. They don’t care that the civil society might collapse, that civil unrest could break out the way it has in Greece. They really don’t care.
They don’t care that the economy is dead. They lie about it to convince you otherwise, but the facts tell the truth. And ObamaCare has not even hit the streets yet.

The Democrats are the party of Fast & Furious. Like the reprehensible scandal that bemoans that name, people like Obama and Pelosi and Wasserman-Schultz and others don’t think things through; they have no interest in the consequences; they’re not concerned about how they impact on people’s lives. They refuse to take any blame, they refuse to be reflective of their actions, they refuse to be transparent, they refuse to take any responsibility.

When you take a moment and look at our country and the political class that is navigating our ship of state you realize something really scary. This present debate isn’t at all about America’s economy, or our debt or debt ceiling or any of that. This is about America and the kind of country we are and the kind of country we will become. This is about the future of America for us and our children.

This is an existential battle between two different and opposite ideologies. One ideology is good, even brilliant, if otherwise managed clumsily and often weakly. The other is evil and will bring down our once great society and culture, bringing menace and misery to everyone but the political class that adores it.
I hate to say it, but the Democrats hate America and they hate Americans. They hate all of us. Their actions prove it.

And that’s all there is to it.

Some weeks ago Barack Obama visited the border in Texas and gave a speech about how his administration has done everything possible, everything the Republicans demanded, to close the border and reduce the number of illegal’s streaming into our country.  In fact, he said the border is safer now than ever before.  Of course, everything Obama said was a factual and documented lie.  But a long time friend of mine of almost 50 years, a liberal from NYC, told me the reports of Barack Obama lying were just “crack pot politics”.

I mean, everything BHO said was a lie.  He said the wall was virtually completed; instead there are over 1900 miles of border and only 350 miles of fence has been built, and only about half of that was built to the correct standards.  Not even close.  BHO claimed 31% more drugs and 64% more guns were seized then before, yet the number of people crossing the border is down 40%.  Hmmm, very interesting; seizures of drugs and guns go up, yet seizures of people go down. Up or down, it matters not. Whatever the numbers, Obama vindicates himself.

He tells us that the country is creating more jobs, when it’s not. He tells us he has either “saved or created” 2 million jobs since he’s been president, but will not provide the data or formula by which those numbers were derived.  He tells us that the country is bouncing back economically or that ObamaCare is good for the citizens, when it’s not.  Everything he says is an actual lie.  But to the liberal, drawing attention to those lies is just crack pot politics.

Obama and his record should be the basis for what the 2012 presidential election is about, and the Democrats will do everything they can to not talk about the present, to not talk about the Obama record.  The truth is that the GOP nominee, no matter who that is, should have a field day beating the person who is essentially the dumbest and least capable of all the candidates running in 2012, Barack Hussein Obama.

So before we forget about the present, let’s review where we presently stand after just 2 ½ years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

• The number of people on Food Stamps has increased by 40% to the highest number of beneficiaries in the nation’s history. 
• The price of gasoline has increased by 75% to the highest in the nation’s history.
• The 33% of average home equity loss in the last 2 years is higher than that of the 31% suffered during the Great Depression.  Home prices are now at 2002 levels, wiping out 10 years of increased equity and personal wealth.  In fact, home foreclosures, recently at record levels, continue at very high and unacceptable rates.
• Two nationally recognized credit agencies are about to downgrade America’s bond rating to below triple-A  because of a $14 trillion debt that the Obama administration has done everything it can to avoid dealing with in an honest and responsible fashion and has taken absolutely no action to address other than to require higher taxes on the so-called rich.  By the way, even if taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” (who are really people grossing just $250,000 and are not millionaires or billionaires at all) are eventually taxed at the “Clinton tax levels” the additional revenue generated would amount to only $80 billion.  With a budget deficit this coming year alone of an expected $1.65 trillion, you can see the issue of taxing the “rich” to get out of our budget disaster is a complete red-herring, a canard, a lie, bullcrap.  You get the idea.
• Manufacturing in America has slacked off to its lowest level since September 2009, no matter what Obama recently said about the 2 government auto companies, which could only be showing progress due to GM and Chrysler both being relieved of their tax burdens to the tune of $47 billion and $7 billion respectively.  Only a government and union owned company could possibly get a deal like that.
• By a 3 to 2 vote (the 3 being Obama appointed union lawyers and hacks) the National Labor Relations Board is attempting to stop the Boeing Corporation from opening a manufacturing plant in South Carolina because that state is a “right to work” state.  Boeing’s only other alternative would be to take those 1,000 jobs overseas.
• The official unemployment rate is presently 9.1% and the GAO now reports that, using present government economic policies, it is likely to remain at that “European level” until at least the year 2020.  And that doesn’t even factor in the “under-employment” rate, including folks either working only part-time but want to work more or who have simply dropped out of the labor market altogether, which is closer to 20%, a number last seen during the Great Depression.
• Over 51% of the working age population pays no federal personal income tax, depending rather on the largesse provided by the remaining 49%, of which the top 1% pays 40% of the taxes and the top 10% pay over 70% of all federal personal income taxes.
• Because of the instability in the American economy, China no longer wants to buy our debt.  They figure holding $1 trillion is clearly as high as they want to go.  In fact, they’re trying to off-load some of the debt they hold.  Instead, the biggest buyer of American debt, which is required to fuel the operation of our government to the tune of 40 cents for every dollar spent, is the Federal Reserve.  Through their “quantitative easing” policies they have bought over 70% of all US debt, which effectively means they are simply printing fiat money, backed by nothing, to flood the economy.  The approximate $1 trillion recently printed through QE1 and QE2 is apparently not even enough since talk of a QE3, to print additional hundreds of billions, is already underway in the halls of the Treasury and Federal Reserve.  What are the repercussions of a government printing paper money to borrow from itself?  Remember Weimar Germany?  How about present day Zimbabwe?
• The Obama EPA has imposed such strong anti-coal policy that 5 coal-fired power plants in the Midwest have decided to shut down rather than make needless modifications that would cost literally billions to effectuate.  Interesting that the lifeblood of a technological society is cheap and abundant energy, which America has much of, yet the Obama administration is doing everything it can to halt production, force prices higher and make stockpiles scarce, even to the point of lending money we borrowed from China to Brazil and Columbia for them to develop their own energy resources instead of us developing ours.  Using exactly what kind of demented calculus do you use to believe that policy is good for America?

And there’s so much more.  And that doesn’t even include the destruction of liberty and subversion of the Constitution that we know of as ObamaCare.  And that doesn’t even include a foreign policy from Mars.

But isn’t there any good news?  BHO must have done something good, no?

Well, the limousine industry in America is doing well since the number of such government vehicles has effectively increased 100% since Obama has been president.  Now that says a lot, doesn’t it?

Oh, and if you’re a politically well connected crony-capitalist company or someone with friends high in the Democrat Party (for example, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid) or a public employee union, you could get a waiver from ObamaCare that will shield you from the costs and risks that the rest of the population may have to endure.  Of the over 1300 ObamaCare waivers already granted, over half the effected workers belong to public employee or other favored union even though less than 12% of the population are union members.  If that doesn’t show the corruption that will ensue if this law is either not repealed or defeated in the courts, nothing will.

This is what happens when you take the best society and culture in the world and attempt to replace it with something else, as Obama said, to “fundamentally change America.”  You know, “fundamentally change America” into something different, foreign and alien.  But why would you want to “fundamentally” change something that you love, anyway?  The answer is you don’t. 

You only “fundamentally” change something you hate.  That’s why you “fundamentally” want to change it.  That says a lot about Barack Obama, no?  And isn’t attempting to fundamentally change America into something else really the definition of “crack pot politics”?

And that’s all there is to it.

Did you know that in February, the deficit for that one month topped $220 billion?  That’s more than the entire budget deficit for 2007, which was “only” $172 billion.

So the federal budget for 2012, the one Barack Obama just proposed comes in at $3.73 trillion, of which about $1.65 trillion is borrowed.  That means over 40 cents of every dollar is borrowed.  How long would your family survive if you had to borrow that much just to make your ends meet?  The answer is not very long.

Or how about this?  The total budget debt of the United States is about $14.5 trillion.  It just so happens that the GDP of the United States, the worth of all the goods and services produced in our country, is also about $14.5 trillion.  That means that our “credit card debt” is the same as our “earnings.”  How long would your family be able to survive if you owed on your credit card the same amount of money you earned every year?  Again, the answer is not very long.  It’s just simple economics.

So in November we elect a Republican House to begin the process of scaling all of that back, by making meaningful cuts to spending and entitlement programs because we’re on the edge, and we don’t have much further we can go.  So what the Republicans in the House propose is to cut from the 2012 budget a total of $61 billion. (The fact that the Democrats and the President will agree to cut only $4.5 billion is merely a measure of their insanity and shows the deep hatred and disdain they have for the American system of government and for the American people directly.  But that’s another story.)

My focus is here the Republicans.  They think cutting $61 billion is an answer.  See the February deficit I noted above.  $61 billion is only one week’s worth of borrowing from China.  That’s it.  Just one week’s worth.  $61 billion is literally a rounding error; it would turn the $1.65 trillion deficit into a $1.6 trillion deficit.  How meaningful is that?  The answer is it’s not meaningful at all. It means absolutely nothing.  This is all some sort of joke, some sort of annoying and grotesque “budget theater”  being played out by Republicans.

Why aren’t the Republicans looking to cut $610 billion?  Why not $1 trillion?  Just 10 years ago, federal spending was ½ of what it is today, and if I recall we survived as a society pretty well.  In fact, we were at our grandest economy in history, just before 9/11.   Only 4 years ago the deficit was 1/10^th what it is today, yet we now have near record unemployment, record number of people getting food stamps and living in poverty, on the Medicaid rolls, record number of foreclosures and on and on.

So where are the Republicans?  I don’t hear anything from them.  Well, I don’t hear anything from them except that they definitely and absolutely do not want to “shut down the government.”  That’s what I hear from John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, the entire House leadership, all the time.  They don’t want to shut down the government.  They are in near mortal fear of shutting down the government, and that’s very bad because now they’re terrified of doing anything meaningful and substantive.  They are rapidly becoming legislative losers, not unlike Democrats.

But wait, it gets better.  Now it turns out that the Democrats and Barack Obama purposely placed a Trojan horse in the 2700 page ObamaCare legislation that passed the Congress, with the assistance of fraud, blackmail and deceit, in March 2010.  It takes a long time to fully analyze 2700 pages in one bill but that task has finally been accomplished and it turns out Obama, Pelosi and Reid, had placed in the bill over $105 billion in appropriations to finance the efforts to make ObamaCare the law of the land. 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2011/mar/10/will-house-gop-rescind-obamacare-funding-appropria/

The idea that the Republican House can “defund” the bill is a pipe dream.  It can’t be done.  The money to fund ObamaCare has already been passed in the last Congress.  It’s a nightmare!

The Democrats already provided for ObamaCare funding last year but it was literally kept a secret.  This is the tyranny we now find ourselves in.  The people who actually wrote the bill didn’t tell the Republicans the appropriations were in there.  They didn’t tell the people of the United States the appropriations were in there.  I’m certain most Democrats didn’t know it was in there, but it is.  It took until now for that Trojan horse to be discovered.  ObamaCare is already funded to the tune of $105 billion…..and it can’t be stopped.

The only way now to stop ObamaCare is for the Congress to repeal the entire law.  Oh, but Boehner and his Republicans will tell you the House did that already just a month or so ago and the repeal was stamped out by the Senate…..and they would be right.

Here’s where the threat to close the government comes into play in a big way.  Now we have a new Continuing Resolution (CR) coming up for a vote on this Wednesday and Boehner has proposed having the CR go forward, so the government can stay open of another 3 weeks, by demanding $6 billion in cuts. 

How about instead Boehner promises the CR would go forward only if ObamaCare is repealed?  Or, how about instead promising the debt ceiling, looming large in April, will be raised only if ObamaCare is repealed?  How about instead stating the government will be shut down unless ObamaCare is repealed?

Why haven’t I heard this from the House Republicans?  Not only have I not heard this from Boehner and his incompetent and elitist lieutenants, I haven’t heard any of this from the Tea Party Republicans.  Where are they on this $105 billion ObamaCare funding debacle?

The most unfathomable law in United States history was passed last year, a law that will change forever the relationship every citizen has with the government, where the government will be able to force you to do virtually anything it wants, and yet the Republicans will not take the guerilla tactics necessary to get ObamaCare repealed.  The $105 billion was surreptitiously appropriated.  ObamaCare has the money to go forward.  The Republicans can’t stop it without drastic action.  But they do have leverage.  They have the CR.  They have the looming debt ceiling.  They can force the government to shut down.   

Unless the Republicans take action, Obama won’t be the only one allowing this to go forward.  So will John Boehner.  So will the Republicans.  And the “Obama Boehner Health Care Act” will destroy America.

And that’s all there is to it.

Tomorrow the nation will be treated once again to the display of our president bringing his yearly “State of the Union” message to Congress and the American people, as required by the Constitution of the United States.  Yes, it’s actually mandatory that the president do this. 

This constitutional requirement might come as a surprise to some in our political class, like John Conyers, Democrat Congressman for 40 years, and until recently Chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, who when asked defended ObamaCare’s constitutionality by sighting the “good and welfare clause”.  Note to Congressman Conyers; there is no “good and welfare clause.”  Does Conyers even understand the Constitution?  Don’t ask long time veteran Democrat Congressman John L. Lewis, who apparently believes the Constitution justifies Obamacare’s mandate that people must buy health insurance because of the “pursuit of happiness clause”.  Note to Congressman Lewis; there is no “pursuit of happiness clause” and besides, the famous phrase “pursuit of happiness” appears in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.  This spectacle would be downright laughable if the men making complete fools of themselves weren’t so powerful and disdainful of the laws that make our country the only indispensable nation on Earth.

One may think these are merely minor misstatements, but are they?  These people are among those making decisions that affect the lives of you and your family and the security of our nation.  Do they know where their authority to govern us comes from?  Do they know that the Constitution protects individual liberty, not the public good, whatever that is?

It’s interesting that just a few weeks ago the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to begin their first session, as the majority, with a reading of the Constitution of the United States.  As you’ll recall Democrats of all stripes, liberals and progressive pundits and mainstream media sycophants called the action stupid and mindless and even implied that the most important political document ever written in the history of man had become irrelevant.   Did they forget that they took an oath to protect and defend the concepts written in this very document?  I find it pretty ironic that recently shot Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was one of those who agreed to read some of the Constitution, as the Republican caucus requested, and in fact read from the First Amendment, the one guaranteeing the right to free speech. 

No sooner had the smoke cleared than Democrats and their media minions began to promulgate a scurrilous lie, filled with wishful hate, a blood libel, that somehow rhetoric from the political right had spawned this tragic carnage.  No sooner had the smoke cleared than leftist pundits and reporters clamored for more “civility” (code word for “conservative political censorship”) from those on the right.

(You might want to click on http://michellemalkin.com/2011/01/10/the-progressive-climate-of-hate-an-illustrated-primer-2000-2010/ if you want an astonishing and detestable review of the rhetoric that came from the political left over the past 10 years.  It’s really quite contemptible.)

I for one believe the vitriolic rhetoric, in fact, is not high enough.  Our voices, the voices of the conservative right, need to be heard.  Those who occupy the highest political offices in our country repeatedly lie to us, yet the president will appear tomorrow to talk about his agenda, going forward, as if the past two years had never happened; as if he became president only yesterday.  Yes, the new branding of Barack Obama is in full swing by the vampires in the mainstream media.  Yes, Barack’s a centrist, he’s concerned about the nation’s debt, he’s concerned about America being competitive, he’s very concerned.

Well, it just so happens that the truth has no agenda.  As the president gives his speech, let’s remember what he has done to our country.

Let’s remember ObamaCare.  Just for a moment, leave the issue of this law’s constitutionality aside; leave the CBO’s scoring of this law using corrupt and purposely fraudulent figures aside; leave aside the fact that ObamaCare will change forever the relationship every citizen of this country has with the government.  Did you know that come 2013, that 3.8% of the profit you realize from selling your home will go to pay for ObamaCare?  Did you know illegal immigrants are covered?  Did you know the government will have electronic access to all of your bank accounts and can transfer funds out without you even being advised?  Did you know that doctors will not be allowed to build new hospitals, even if they’re ready, willing and able to, and that hospital expansion will be prohibited?  When ObamaCare goes into full swing in 2014 all doctors will be paid the same regardless of specialty and all fees will be set by the government?  Did you know doctors will be penalized for requiring more medical tests, even if they believe they’re necessary?

What do you suppose just that very small sampling of what’s contained in that 2700 page law means to the medical care you can expect for you and your family?  Imagine what else is contained in ObamaCare’s language that has not yet seen the light of day?  You can draw your own conclusions.

How about the unelected bureaucrats of the EPA setting carbon limits that raises the costs of everything manufactured in “smoke-stack industries like autos, steel, energy and the like?  The Congress already refused to raise these limits but the president’s political appointee is doing it anyway in an end-around move to force manufacturing into a central planning Politburo situation.

How about the Dodd-Frank financial industries law that raises the cost of capital, does nothing to halt the potential for bailing out institutions deemed too-big-too-fail, never mentions to words Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac even one single time, and in fact leaves all the details of this law to the completely subjective discretion of nameless and unelected bureaucrats.  How about the government taking over GM and Chrysler and effectively giving those companies over to the United Auto Workers union and refusing to uphold previous and lawful contracts with primary lenders?

How about official 10% unemployment, climbing to almost 20% unofficial unemployment when part-time workers and those who’ve dropped out of the labor market are counted?  How about record foreclosures continuing without end?  How about more people living in poverty than ever before?  How about 50 million people using Food Stamps?  How about America borrowing 40 cents of every dollar spent by the government, amounting to over $1 Trillion in additional debt each year for the next 10 years?  How can the economy be improving when more net jobs are lost each and every month than those that are gained?

This all happened over the past two years and is continuing.

How about Obama literally changing the mission of NASA from developing technology and creating miracles to teaching Muslim nations that they should be proud of inventing algebra (which, by the way, the Chinese did, not the Muslims)?  How about the Justice Department attacking Arizona?  How about the Justice Department dropping the voter intimidation prosecution of the New Black Panther party? 

How about Barack Obama’s FCC Chairman attempting to gain control over the internet with this new Net Neutrality regulation plan?  How about the government pulling the plug on all Gulf oil drilling, costing 20,000 gulf-area jobs, devastating local economies and driving the cost of gasoline to over $3.20 with no end in cost escalation in sight?

I can go on and on.  It’s unending what’s happened in just two years.  And none of that even includes anything beyond the shores of our country.  There’s Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia, missile defense, new START, cancelling the F-22 fighter, Venezuela, China, Hezbollah and more.  And how about the new policy to allow romance and sexual tension onto the battlefield over the objections of battlefield commanders?

Barack Obama and his minions truly believe the people of this country are idiots, and unfortunately many people are.  But not all of us, not you and me.  We know what’s been going on.  This guy has a two year record, for crying out loud.

And then, out of nowhere, last week the Democrat governor of Hawaii inexplicably raises the issue of Barack Obama’s birth and citizenship.  He comes out in public and purposely states that he’s going to release Barack Obama’s long sought after “long-form” birth certificate so that this “Birther” issue can finally be put to rest.  Had he consulted with the White House before making this statement?  Who knows?

Here’s what we do know.  There ain’t no “long-form” birth certificate.  He inexplicably can’t find it.  What a goof this guy Neil Abercrombie is.  What he does have are some notes, whatever that means.

So here’s the truth, as I see it, and I’m not embarrassed by saying this.  Barack Obama was born in Kenya, to a very unstable and troubled woman.  This woman’s parents, while practicing Communists themselves, and realizing their daughter might be a nut, were not themselves idiots, and quickly realized that their newly born grandson would have a better chance at life and survival if he were an American citizen rather than a Kenyan.  So they trotted down to the local Hawaii BVS and made a statement that their grandson had been born in Hawaii.  They even gave their address as Barack’s address.  According to the regulations at the time, no proof of that statement needed to be offered.  That’s why the document the White House long ago produced was a “Certificate of Live Birth” (COLB), not a birth certificate.  The Hawaii authorities presently state that the COLB is not proof of birth in Hawaii.  They say that now!

So the grandparents get their COLB, and for good measure, they place a notice of birth in the local newspaper.  Remember, they’re not idiots; in fact they’re only trying to protect their grandson. That notice probably cost them maybe $5 in 1961 money.  Maybe it even cost them less than that.

And that’s why there’s no “long-form” birth certificate.  And that’s why Barack Obama is not a citizen of the United States.  But it doesn’t matter because not enough people really care about this, or because they’re afraid of being called irrational, when in fact to think he’s not a citizen is extremely rational.

 And that’s all here is to it.