A Moribund Mule

The Islamic State is on the march toward their caliphate. US markets have sold off. Ninety million able-bodied adult Americans are not employed. The mysterious enterovirus D68 has killed at least four, paralyzed nine children, and is present in almost every state. Ebola has entered the country. At least twelve million and more likely forty-five million illegal aliens have breached our border. Of late, unaccompanied minors, mainly central Americans, in the thousands have crossed into the United States by way of Mexico. Do these facts seem to be harbingers of electoral victory for Democrats in November?

The Hidden Elephant

The TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party emerged to help create a wave election victory for Republicans in 2010. Democrats and establishment Republicans feared and hated the authentic conservatism of the TEA Party. The Obama administration so loathed the TEA Party that they unleashed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) under the direction of Lois Lerner on the grassroots movement. This tactic pulled the rug out from America's conservatives just as they were gaining momentum. For all his failures at home and abroad, the Machiavellian move of turning loose tax enforcers on political enemies was a masterstroke. The conservative bedrock had its legs cut out from under it just as it had pulled itself back up. Nixon dreamed of using the IRS as a weapon against political foes but never had the gumption to do it. Obama has strangled the opposition and only a handful of reporters (most notably Sharyl Attkisson) are investigating this anti-Constitutional abuse of power. Even conservative commentators do not recognize how much election results may have been altered by the IRS interference. This manipulation is the elephant in the room that conservatives should be screaming about, but because of a lack of interest by the media and even right-wing commentators, IRS abuse of conservative groups remains a largely silent scandal.

Facing the Varsity

A few short months ago, Barack Hussein Obama dismissed the "Islamic State" (IS) as the junior varsity team. Since then, the Islamic State has taken over wide swathes of Iraq and Syria. The United States has now been forced to commit air power to containing the Islamic State. Obama, who so recently did not take IS all that seriously, now says it will be a long process and not easy, but that the US and our allies will eventually defeat IS. The President said in a Sixty Minutes interview broadcast Sunday that our intelligence community had underestimated the threat posed by the Islamic State. Will the President's publicly pronounced lack of faith in US intelligence not a.)cause the American public to lose faith in our spies, and b.)sap the morale of our intelligence operatives and further hurt the agencies they represent? Seldom before Obama did Americans see so-called leaders point the finger and say the buck stops somewhere else.

War Against Ebola

The United States has deployed the military to Africa to battle a disease. That illnesses is so virulent that it infected American medical missionaries who had trained for years to deal with and protect themselves from communicable illnesses. If well-trained medical professionals found themselves contracting the Ebola virus, is it not likely members of the US armed forces with considerably less medical training might catch the disease? Might they not bring that sickness back to the States to infect other Americans? While everyone wants to help, I believe it was ill-considered to expose our troops and the American public when those forces are brought home to such a risk. It would have been better to devote resources to the production in quantity of the vaccine that saved the medical missionaries and then ship that cure to the African medical workers who were already on "the front line" rather than to send troops who have no cure for Ebola into the danger zone.

Resolute Russia Reemerges

Unlike the United States, Russia has a strong leader. Vladimir Putin is the anti-Obama. Putin is everything Barack Hussein Obama is not. He exemplifies the values of traditional Russia. Obama tries to "change" America, taking us farther than ever from our founding virtues. Russians look to and respect assertive leaders, which is precisely what Putin is. Obama seeks to "lead from behind", expecting to find coalitions to defeat threats to US security, rather than vigorously defending American strategic interests. Putin is a Russian bear. George W. Bush was a cowboy. Barack Obama is a steer.

Recovery Plan America

The ultra wealthy are doing fine here in the United States. The poor do not suffer in the US as they sometimes do in other places as the US has a vast social safety net. I hereby propose to restore prosperity to the dwindling and assailed middle class in these steps: 1.)Cut domestic spending by the Federal government. 2.)End the Federal Income Tax. 3.)Replace that tax with a national sales tax. (That way, individuals could have some control over what they owe to government. By consuming less, they could pay less in taxes, giving citizens more choice in their economic destiny). 4.)Reduce burdensome government regulation that criminalizes far too much and stifles wealth creation. (Entrepreneurship built America's prosperity that our socialist masters have sapped, but free enterprise, if allowed to, can still save us). 5.)Abolish the Federal Reserve and return the US to a gold and/or silver standard so that our currency has real value and is not an overprinted fiat currency, the value of which is predicated on a false promise by government (Let "full faith and credit" have actual value). 6.) Restore America's defense to reinforce our capacity to deter foreign enemies (including terrorists abroad). This is the only part of my proposal that engenders additional expense on the part of the public but is a necessary effort for national security and our very survival as a nation and as individuals. 7.)Replace Obamacare with the eminently viable GOP health plan set forth by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal . These seven steps might not all be easy, but they could allow most to become more free and prosperous, which is why none of the steps will ever be implemented. Power in the United States is a virus that protects and perpetuates itself while killing its host, which is our fading liberty, that America's elite are killing.

The New Year

The holiday of Rosh Hashanah which marks the Jewish New Year has just been celebrated by Jews worldwide. Each year, Jews pray for peace but the Jewish people have rarely found that elusive peace. The coming year looks no different than the last year. Jews found themselves attacked everywhere from Israel to the Jewish museum in Belgium. Three Jewish boys in Israel were abducted and murdered, sparking a prolonged war with the terror group Hamas. The forces that slaughtered Jews in the Holy Land and abroad gained strength while the Jewish State was subjected to evermore criticism as an "apartheid" state with threats looming of boycotts, divestment, and sanction. We hope what we as Jews face does not grow worse, and pray our situation improves, but it seems certain it will deteriorate. We beseech the Lord to sustain us and grant our people and all the people of the world a peaceful year.