Poverty of Reason

Barack Obama is offering nothing novel with his proposals on public works, health care, or education. FDR thought the government could invigorate employment and poured massive amounts into the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and other New Deal programs that most economists now believe extended the depression. FDR (and Herbert Hoover before him) raised taxes and erected barriers to free trade just as Obama is doing. Taxes and tariffs will not renew prosperity but delay if not preclude recovery all together. Universal care schemes exist throughout the developed world. They lead to delayed care, care rationing, and the denial of vital but expensive procedures or medications that extend life but do not stand up to cost/benefit analysis by government bureaucrats. Money is being poured into public k-12 education with public school teachers consistently making more than their parochial or private school counterparts. Bringing discipline and accountability back to elementary and secondary public education could work and wouldn't cost a penny. This President really has little interest in growing minds though, if it conflicts with his ambition of growing unions. Educators' unions will thrive under Obama, students will suffer. Autoworkers from the American labels may well end up owning the car companies with the government in a public-private partnership. These employee owner with government's socialist intrusion situations may extend to other businesses as well. Obama is re-instituting the LBJ welfare state, but with his higher income tax proposal for high earners, it should be renamed "the war on prosperity" instead of "the war on poverty". Obama is determined to force Americans to rely on government-he is even reducing the deduction for charitable giving at a time when Americans need charity more than ever. Obama's mean-spirited action here is meant to induce an even greater dependency on government. While none of Obama's ideas are revolutionary, the speed with which he is initiating them is shocking. It is reminiscent of the meth-addict who is convinced he has less chance of being stopped by the police if he stands on the accelerator driving through rush hour traffic. The end of this story is always grim.

Sons of Stalin

No, this article will not address the capture during World War II of the literal son of Stalin and his murder by Hitler's bloody-handed henchmen. Today, I will concern myself with the laudatory nature of the PBS Independent Lens broadcast about the Chicago Eight(8) and their defense attorneys and their antics. They were portrayed as heroes accompanied by Rage Against the Machine songs. They were shown as high-minded, cool, and engaged in a great purpose. In fact, wary or not, they were tools of the most murderous ideology that has ever existed. The Independent Lens feature showed the demonstrators with frequent calls of "fascist", "sieg heil", and even "Nazi" against the authorities who mostly comprised police and National Guardsmen who showed tremendous restraint. In the Eastern block and Asian Communist countries, the powers broached no dissent and routinely slaughtered those who were often completely innocent who the commissars thought might oppose them. If the Jewish agitators had had their families remain in Europe, in all likelihood, they would have ended up in concentration camps or gulags. The SS or cossacks would have almost certainly killed them. LBJ was a failed leader, but he was magnitudes better than any leader Red Russia or other Communist nations ever had. These wayward tantrum children saw none of the virtue and all of the vice of the nation that was their sanctuary. These willful poseurs felt all of the grievance and none of the good of this nation of liberty that has freed more people than all other countries combined. So many of these protesters came to grief, falling victim to their own excesses, notably Allen Ginsberg succumbing to his overburdened liver scarred by hepatitis from his profligate lifestyle, Abbie Hoffman to his own hand. For thorough scholarship about the depredations of the left of the Chicago Eight era and since, allow me to commend David Horowitz who was there at the time but has come to his senses and chronicled in great detail the dangers of the Left, then and now. Sadly, those in sympathy with the radicals may now sit in the Oval Office.

The Shrinking President

Our current President (we only have one at a time regardless of how it now appears) has had opportunity after opportunity to do the right thing throughout his career but has failed to act. He is not driven by principle nor moved by pragmatism, but base cronyism seems to be his guiding ethos. Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination is proof of this. Did Bush stand on conservative belief in free speech and veto campaign finance reform? Did he allow the largest entitlement expansion since LBJ with the prescription drug benefit? Did he pardon ICE agents Ramos and Compean who wounded an armed fleeing drug trafficker in the buttocks or David Olofson who had a technical failure on a borrowed gun at a firing range? When he was governor, did he spare Karla Tucker who had become the cover girl for reform and who had served twice the time of the average murderer? Did Bush stand for free markets or did he endorse the unprecedented bailout with inherent risk of abuse or even outright fraud with the massive amounts of money involved and the power once again given to friends of friends that accompanies it? The President and his successor now have the chance to avert the potential unconventional attack that a report says will strike the US in the next five(5) years. If Bush announces that national policy will be to obliterate two major cities in any nation that can be tied to a biological or nuclear attack, the terrorists may have second thoughts. A proposal after the 9/11 assault to blow up Mecca if any subsequent mass casualty attack takes place also holds water particularly since a Saudi cleric endorsed unconventional attacks on America killing up to ten(10) million in a fatwa. The Saudi authorities did not take him into custody or force him to retract the mass murder decree. Should an event happen perpetrated by Islamic extremists against the heartland, Bush and Obama must let it be known that the US will unleash the whirlwind.

A Fool's Counsel

Greg Craig has joined the Obama coven. He will be the White House lawyer, no Harriet Miers he. Craig does not want to protect the rights of the yet born. In fact, he cares not the least for life or liberty. Craig was chiefly responsible for whisking Alian Gonzales back into tyranny. The shyster of the Marxist left-a William Kunstler with a better haircut will now be roaming the corridors of highest power. Yesterday, Obama stooped to meet with the vanquished McCain. At the conclusion, a reporter asked the President-elect what had transpired at the talks. He said he and his former rival had spoken of new ways to "f...(expletive expurgated) up the country". Perhaps this coarseness was meant to demonstrate Obama's masculinity, channel the oft profane LBJ, start a George Carlin seven words lounge act, or mimic Richard Pryor or today's rappers, but to borrow from Dana Carvey's Church Lady-we don't need a potty mouth President.