There was a time when people came to our shores to find a better life.  To escape persecution and poverty and to build a better life for their children was their goal.  They found Lady Liberty lifting her lamp beside the golden door.

What happened next was that people assimilated.  Their children went to school with other children and learned to read and speak English.  Their names may have sounded different but before long their voices didn’t.  Sure, New Englanders sounded different than those from Mississippi, but they sounded very much like their neighbors.  They became Americans.

I just finished reading Newt Gingrich and William Forstchen’s historical novel, To Try Men’s Souls, which is the story of the George Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, and attacking Trenton.  Trenton was guarded by Hessian mercenaries, who were some of the most elite soldiers in Europe.  It was a mismatch beyond belief, but in a last ditch effort, their password that night was “Victory or Death,” and with the element of surprise, they prevailed.  In one passage it mentioned American soldiers of Dutch and German extraction shouting to the Hessians to surrender, in German.  They were probably closer to the Hessians in culture and blood than to their fellow Americans from Boston, but they considered themselves Americans and were willing to die for their country.

The Balkanization of America

Today, we are mired in multiculturalism.  I remember the story of an Hispanic man loudly protesting to his local school board regarding bilingual education to which he was opposed.  “You’re teaching my son to be a janitor!” he said, “I want him to learn in English, so that he can get a job with a future!” 

We should not lose track of our roots.  It is right to celebrate where we came from.  One of the great things about New York is the different neighborhoods and parades that teach and celebrate about where we came from, which is good.  But if carried to the point where we no longer assimilate; where we remain pockets of groups with their own identity and politics, we are in grave danger of ceasing to be America.

During World War II, what if people of German heritage refused to fight against Hitler or for that matter felt a greater allegiance to him than to America?  Some did.  They were tried for treason. What if they were protected instead?  What if their differences were looked at with admiration rather than suspicion?

Fort Hood

Commentators in the news are twisting themselves in knots trying to disassociate Major Nidal Hasan’s slaughter of 13 Americans from his jihadist proclivities, despite evidence of outright hostility toward America and contact with a radical imam.  It is politically incorrect, to speak of his religion.  The Army Chief of Staff raises concern about negatively impacting the military’s record of diversity, if we focus on anything but a lone gunman who snapped.

But what if there is a larger plot?  What if there is an effort on the behalf of some Muslims to purposely not assimilate, to infiltrate the military and become a fifth column within?  Multiculturalism makes it far easier for this to occur because if everyone looks different, no one stands out.  On the other hand, if everyone assimilates, those who speak, act, or plot against America become more obvious.  Again, imagine multiculturalism in the United States in 1943.  You might have whole communities that were German to the core, did not like non-Germans among them and quickly spread the alarm when a stranger approached.  How much easier would it have been for Hitler to build a network of saboteurs?

Kill Multiculturalism Before it Kills Us

We must reinvigorate the idea of assimilation.  Speak any language you want at home; dress any way you want; practice your faith as you please, but where government is involved, we should be treated equally. We should speak one common language for all official business.  If not, where do we draw the line?

In Minnesota in 2007 a public university coffee cart was banned from playing Christmas Carols, but public money was being used to install foot baths to accommodate Muslims before prayer.  After the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and now another terrorist attack at Fort Hood, we have to be able to tell the good Muslims from those out to kill us.  We must have true peace loving Muslims, become true Americans.  We have to engender that we are Americans first, like those early Americans of Dutch and German decent, and not have divided loyalties particularly where the “other loyalty” insists on killing us infidels.

Wobbly Republicans

The drumbeat is starting.  The Democrats are gleefully opening their playbook to the right page and holding it open for the weak kneed Republicans to see.  “If you vote against Judge Sotomayor, the Hispanic vote will go against you and make you pay.”

Ah, the politics of class warfare.  Republicans fall for it almost every time.  That’s why we got John McCain as our nominee.  The news analysis will point out how fewer Hispanics voted for McCain than for Bush, with Bush getting 40% and McCain only 31%.  Maybe it was because McCain was a weak candidate?  Bush put forward Miguel Estrada for the Supreme Court, he appointed Alberto Gonzales as the first Hispanic Attorney General, McCain and Bush were both for open borders.  Boy, did that pay off!

Bush appoints Colin Powell as the first black Secretary of State, followed by Condoleezza Rice as the first black woman Secretary of State.  So how did the black vote turn out for Bush?

So let’s get over copying the Democratic practice of appealing to groups and get back to our conservative principles of appealing to individuals.  Don’t worry about the black vote, the Hispanic vote, the gay vote, the union vote, the Catholic vote.  Worry about doing the right thing for all Americans.  The Democrats want us to worry about all these blocs so that they can get us to meekly wave through their nominees.  But when the tables are turned (e.g., Clarence Thomas, Michael Steele, Miguel Estrada, et. al.) they will be vicious, slanderous, mean and ugly.  They don’t give a damn about offending the black or Hispanic vote because they think they own them.  And when we put up candidates that are a weak imitation of the Democratic candidate, they do.

We need to stand for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness and not back down from that.  The votes will follow.

Goodbye Liberty

The cat is finally out of the bag.  President Obama, after passing a huge spending increase, proposed cutting the budget deficit in half by the end of his current term primarily by raising taxes and cutting defense spending.  This is the same old tired liberal policies that brought us the economic morass of Jimmy Carter, the unpreparedness to deal with al Qaeda under Clinton, and now in the midst of a deep recession, President Obama wants to spend more and tax more.

Just when we need to move more money into the private economy, President Obama wants to take out his Hoover vacuum cleaner and suck up whatever cash he can find and hoard it in Washington.

The real problem is government has gotten too big, too wasteful, too profligate, and too out of touch with the American people.  Instead of the original vision of the founding fathers of limited federal government, pretty soon your lives will be directed by four people:  your Congressman/Congresswoman, your two US Senators, and the President.  All local government will become irrelevant.  You can see the beginnings of it now.  We have the federal government paying for local roads, local schools, local police, local unemployment.  And you can also see the power plays:  you do the will of the federal government or you get no money.  The federal government takes your money in the form of taxes and will refuse to give it back unless you follow their liberal agenda.

Goodbye Liberty.

I just started reading a book that was recommended to me on the need for a Green Revolution.  I won’t disclose the name of the book until I have finished it and will provide a review, but there are some interesting points to be made.

The author approaches the subject from a liberal perspective.  Now, I know that many conservative pundits will read Green and see red.  They believe that the effort to go green is to subjugate us all to living back in the stone age.  I approach the subject with a different view.  I personally believe we will stop using oil long before we run out of it.  I also believe that people who carelessly pollute the environment should be stopped and punished.  This is particularly true when I am stopped at a traffic light behind a car bearing an Obama bumper sticker and they roll down the window and toss their cigarette butt on the street.  Serious hunters and fishermen tend to be conservationists as well since carelessness on that front is only going to come back and prevent them from doing what they love.  So if we start with the premise that we all want a planet we can inhabit and enjoy for a long time, both liberals and conservatives, we’ll probably come up with some pretty good solutions.

I also believe that if we can produce energy cleanly, why not?  The more we do that and learn how to do it more efficiently then the sooner we can fulfill my previous prophesy of not needing oil it long before we run out of it.  My main beef with the book so far is its belief that the solution lies in government “leadership” which I consider an oxymoron of the highest order.

I believe that many of the problems that we are now addressing are the direct result of government programs.  And as government continues to grow and take away our liberties and impose more “solutions” on us that don’t work, the deeper our problems will become.  Let me cite some examples:

• The Financial Crisis — the current financial crisis was triggered by the collapse of the housing bubble.  At the core of that collapse was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The former was created during the Great Depression, but like many government programs that might be a good idea when they start out, they are never shut down when their intended goals are achieved.  The bureaucrats, in a scramble to keep their jobs, go find another mission which eventually leads to trouble.  In the Johnson administration Fannie Mae was “privatized”, however, government backing was always assumed.  Johnson didn’t want Fannie’s debt on the federal balance sheet when he rolled out another massive government “solution” the Great Society.  Along comes the Carter Administration and the Community Reinvestment Act which compelled lenders to make riskier mortgage loans.  In the Clinton Administration, Attorney General Janet Reno got a lot more aggressive in threatening banks that didn’t step up lending of more and riskier mortgage loans.  President Bush may have called for more oversight of Fannie and Freddie, but at the same time he wanted to increase the level of home ownership.   All of this increase in demand drove home prices to unsustainable levels and once those who should have never gotten a loan in the first place couldn’t pay them back, the whole house of cards collapsed.
• Social Security — Now here’s a ponzi scheme that would make Bernard Madoff look like a piker.  It was a government program that started out with good intentions, that no one has had the political courage to fix so the government keeps kicking the can down the road for the next generation to deal with.
• Education — In the Carter Administration there was concern that we were falling behind in education.  The government’s solution?  Split off education from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, into a stand alone Department of Education.  Since it’s inception in 1980 Congress has appropriated $1.06 trillion to the Department of Education. So how did that work out?  Now we graduate high school seniors that many colleges have to teach them high school skills so that they can succeed in college.  What about the free market?  If you mention school vouchers the liberals will scream.  School vouchers will ruin the public school system.  But almost everywhere it is tried, it is successful.  Where is Barack Obama going to send his children to school?  Not to public school.  At least Jimmy Carter sent his daughter to public school, so let’s give him points for not being so much of a hypocrite.
• Energy — After the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, when nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter took office, the Department of Energy was created adding another huge bureaucracy to the already massive government.  Some of the arguments you hear today is that Brazil is energy independent and one reason for that is that they make ethanol out of sugar cane.  If the Brazilians can do it, why can’t we?  During the Carter Administration they used the argument that during World War II the Germans made petroleum out of coal.  If they could do it, why can’t we?  That brought about the Synfuels project.  Congress appropriated $100 billion for this boondoggle and every project under this program failed.  A proven energy technology is nuclear.  However in this country, since 1979, environmentalists and liberals killed the industry.  On Long Island a $5 billion nuclear power plant was built and all but ready to throw the switch and provide clean nuclear power to replace or cap the oil fired power that had until that point supplied Long Island’s needs.  The plant was ready, but protests that evacuation was impossible, shuttered the plant.  The cost of the plant was dumped on the taxpayers and now the hue and cry is that we are producing too much CO2.  The book mentioned the ignominy of President Bush going to Saudi Arabia to ask for a price break when oil prices were skyrocketing.  I think the true ignominy was that we were begging foreign governments to give us a break when our own government said we couldn’t expand oil exploration here.  Cuba and China could drill off of our coast but we couldn’t.  If the issue is a lack of oil refining capacity, put yourself in the position of an oil company CEO. You know that you can build a new refinery at a profit, but when you look across the bargaining table you see your government putting all kinds of obstacles in the way and at the same time pumping subsidies into ethanol providers who are your competition.  Are you going to place that bet on a refinery, or make do with what you have?  And while we’re at it, how efficient is it to stop the refinery to re-formulate a dozen or more different gasolines for different parts of the country?  That’s our government’s energy policy.  But, we’re supposed to believe that government can really tackle and solve our energy problems going forward.
• Food — While government subsidizes the ethanol producers to make a product that no one would buy if not for the heavy hand of government, they are at the same time paying farmers not to produce so that prices will remain high.  So corn is diverted from feeding cattle, producing corn syrup as a sweetener substitute for sugar (which is subsidized at twice the world price), and being used as a food by itself, driving up the price of all foods that have corn anywhere in the chain, our government is also telling farmers not to produce and pays them for it.  So call me skeptical if I don’t think that in the absence of government interference, we couldn’t feed the world.
• Automobile Bailout — We are now faced with bailing out the Big Three Auto Companies.  Why?  Well there are many reasons and I think chief among them is the government mandated CAFE standards.  When the first Arab Oil Embargo hit in 1973 people who wanted better mileage cars could buy from the Japanese and they did.  For years, you could get a high mileage car if you wanted to by buying a Volkswagen Beetle.  So why did Congress feel it was necessary to get involved?  The market provided the full gamut of choice that people had the liberty to make.  But government felt they had to intervene.  Was the motive to provide high mileage cars to help the environment or was it to appease the United Auto Workers (UAW) by limiting Japanese cars?  If you look at the history further the motive may become a little clearer.  When that didn’t work, because people still wanted to buy Japanese, the UAW figured it must be because wages are so low in Japan they couldn’t compete, so let’s make them build the cars here in the U.S.  The idea behind that was that the UAW would organize those plants and make them just as expensive as the Big Three.  With CAFE, and UAW organizing the foreign owned plants, the problem would be solved.  It turned out that the workers at the foreign owned plants didn’t want to be organized by the UAW.  So GM, Ford, and Chrysler were saddled with the costs that the union and management agreed to, and the CAFE standards were forcing them to build cars they couldn’t sell at a profit.  The Big Three could still sell cars at a profit, such as trucks, Cadillacs, Lincolns, but having to average the mileage of those vehicles with higher mileage cars, they might have to sell seven subcompacts for every Cadillac to meet the CAFE requirement.  Since Americans can buy a Toyota, Honda, Nissan or many other brands if they want a well priced, high quality, high mileage car, the Big Three have to price theirs at a loss to compete, because if they don’t sell the small ones they’re not allowed to sell the big ones.  What would happen if the market were left alone?  The foreign makers would supply the high mileage end of the market, the Big Three could make money selling trucks, SUVs, and high priced cars.  They could plow those profits back into the next generation of vehicles and as the price of gasoline climbs they would either continue to shrink to become smaller companies or they would develop a competitive product.  The problem is our government, through the CAFE standard has bled them of any profits.  They have nothing to plow back in to R&D to make a new generation of fuel efficient cars, all they can do is demand a bailout or cost the economy 3 million jobs.
• The New New Deal – This is the one that scares me most of all.  To address the current economic calamity we here that the Obama administration, nostalgic for the days of FDR, is going to create a new New Deal, only bigger and bolder.  The problem is that many people believe that FDR and the New Deal actually got us out of the Great Depression.  Folks, the Great Depression was ended by World War II, not FDR.  It dragged on for twelve years, and many of the steps intended to “fix it” made it worse and prolonged it.  From the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that killed international trade, to contracting the money supply instead of expanding it, to raising taxes instead of cutting them, to having government entities like the TVA competing with private utility companies, I shudder to think of the fixes this new administration is going to attempt.

Government just grows and grows, takes more and more of our liberties away, and screws up the economy with program after program.  It’s time we went program by program and measure its performance against its original goals and shut down any program that isn’t working, cut taxes that were needed to fund these beasts, and return the money to the people.

As far as going Green, I believe it is something that is important and that we should do for our long term benefit.  However, I believe it should be market based, not driven by some bureaucrat in Washington, that decides that this technology is better than that one.  They are not smart enough.  No one is.  If we need the government to help to fund basic research because there is no commercial application on the horizon for a private company to fund such research, fine.  If some financing help is needed to reach a tipping point for some early adopters similar to SBA backed loans, I think that would be okay as well.  But the focus should be on letting the market decide.

The idea that today the world is too crowded also makes me wonder.  If you took the population density of Manhattan island, then 3 times the current world population would fit in the state of Texas.  That leaves a lot of space remaining.

Are there problems to overcome?  Yes. Do we have the ability to overcome them?  Yes.  Is it better we start working on them sooner rather than later? Yes.  But, is it a good idea to expect our government to lead us there?  No.  Not by a long shot.  Let’s dispense with the scare tactics.  Let’s get the government out of our way rather than looking to government to come up with a solution.

In an editorial yesterday in the New York Times they demonstrate once again how deep they are in the tank for the Democratic Party.  The title of the editorial is Harmful Lending Practices and it attempts to describe the current financial crisis.  It begins:

“One of the questions lurking beneath the surface of the national debate over the mortgage crisis, which has placed six million Americans at risk of losing their homes this year and next, is who is to blame.”

They proceed to round up the usual suspects

1. Major Share of Responsibility

• Reckless bankers
• Feckless regulators
• Greedy Traders

2. Some Measure of Personal Responsibility

• People who bought homes with mortgages they could not afford

The editorial goes on to advocate more government intervention, naturally, as the solution.

There has hardly been a more egregious example of government intervention causing a massive problem and hardly a more egregious example of it being uniquely owned by the Democratic Party, going back to FDR.  Here is the history:

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D) creates Fannie Mae to help people get mortgages to buy homes.  This is a classic example of It seemed like a good idea at the time. At its outset it seemed pretty benign, but like most government programs it lived on far beyond its original intent continuing to solve the problem long after the problem didn’t exist.
• Lyndon Baines Johnson (D) privatizes Fannie Mae.  With his ambitious Great Society programs getting cued up he didn’t want to have Fannie Mae’s debt on the national balance sheet.  It might make the national debt look bad, which it was
• James Earl Carter (D) created the Community Reinvestment Act – to encourage lenders to make more home loans to low and moderate income people.  The same people, because of their economic circumstances who were more likely to default on their loans.
• William Jefferson Clinton (D) through his HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Janet Reno put more teeth into the Community Reinvestment Act threatening banks with legal action if they didn’t increase lending to low and moderate income borrowers.  Not wanting to be tagged as racists the banks (reckless bankers) comply.
• Barney Frank (D) and Christopher Dodd (D) block efforts to increase regulation and oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saying as recently as mid-summer of 2008 that they were both fine and not only that, but good investments.  Christopher Dodd, meanwhile gets a sweetheart mortgage from Countrywide mortgage.

So while the Times is calling for more regulation and oversight they never once mention any of the above.  They mention lawmakers in general bipartisan language:

“Lawmakers, for their part, missed important chances to curtail some of these problems last year as the scale of the crisis was becoming apparent.”

Missed? Gosh darn it, how did that one slip by?  They didn’t MISS anything, they actively BLOCKED IT!  There is quite a difference between missing something and actively stopping it dead.

It is no wonder that the circulation of newspapers like the New York Times is crashing.  There are other media outlets and the Internet that show just how fallacious these editorials are.  With bigger and bigger government our liberties are being whittled away and the Freedom of the Press, enshrined in the First Amendment was put there to protect us from tyrannical government not to aid and abet it in the process.

That being said, this should brighten your day.  Real Estate Downfall on YouTube

I got the phone call around 7:30AM.  It was my wife and her voice was shaking, choking back tears.  She said she was in an accident and that the truck was totaled. Totaled? I thought to myself, my God, what kind of accident could have totaled a 2 ½ ton, hulking Ford Excursion SUV?  Before I could ask the next question, the one I didn’t want to ask, she said, “The girls and I are alright, just some cuts and bruises.” I was able to start breathing again.  She began to apologize for the SUV and I gently cut her off.  “I don’t care about the truck, as long as you and the girls are okay.”  The girls were my two daughters.

I got the location of the accident, briefly told the lead guy in my shop the situation, light on the details which I didn’t have anyway, and jumped in my truck to find them.  As I approached the accident scene, I saw an ambulance, with siren blaring and lights flashing, going the opposite way.  I called my wife’s cell phone and when I got her I asked, “Did you just pass me in the ambulance?”  She said, “Yes, we’re headed to the hospital to be checked out.”  So I made a U-Turn to go meet them in the emergency room.

The Accident

What had happened was that my wife was crossing an intersection when another car blew through the red light.  According to one witness it looked like he was going 60 mph, according to another it looked like he was going 100 mph.  They said the nearly 19′ long, 2 ½ ton vehicle with a massive V-10 engine that my wife was driving was lifted up in the air, turned 180 degrees and landed on its side.  My wife had to kick out the windshield to crawl out and guide our daughters out behind her to safety.  Thankfully it didn’t catch fire.

Why the other driver was driving the way he was we never found out.  He was pronounced dead at the scene. He was driving a Kia, a small Korean import, and before impact, I’m sure he was getting great gas mileage.  He went from leaving a small carbon footprint to leaving no footprints at all.

My wife was exonerated from any responsibility for the accident.  She and my daughters were completely innocent.  Had Ford been required only to build highly fuel efficient econoboxes, half my family would have been killed that morning.  In fact, the driver who was behind my wife said that if she had not been there, he was sure he would be dead, as it would have been him that was hit by the speeding car in her place.

Freedom to Choose

They are alive because I have the liberty, so far, to buy any vehicle that I choose and can afford.  The choices are many and I have made many choices through my life.  That is primarily because the government has not yet taken away that liberty and demanded what types of vehicles can be built and by whom.

My first car was a Toyota Celica, which I purchased just after graduating from college.  It was well made, well equipped, and although a little expensive at $4,700 brand new, I thought it was worth it.  That car served me well for 105,000 miles. When it was time for a replacement I bought a Plymouth Sapporo and I really liked it. Unfortunately, someone liked it as much and it was stolen when it had just 9,000 miles on it. It was a Chrysler Corporation car, but under the hood it was Japanese.  Still living in the Bronx, I decided to buy something functional but not too attractive.  I remember my friend’s rationale for buying a Subaru while living in the city.  None of the parts fit in a gypsy cab. My next vehicle was a Toyota Corolla.

Cars for a Growing Family

When my wife and I married in 1986 she brought to the marriage her Ford Mustang.  My Corolla was starting to get tired and my wife was pregnant, so it was time to get a new vehicle.  I bought a Ford Probe, with front wheel drive and turbocharged.  It was hard to decide if it was American or Japanese.  It was sold by Ford, built in the United States by Mazda which is a Japanese company, but Ford owned 25% of Mazda at the time.  It made for interesting conversation, but not worth losing any sleep over.

After our second child, the Probe and the Mustang were getting a little cramped.  So we said goodbye to the Mustang and hello to a Volvo 740 Turbo Wagon.  This was my wife’s dream car, owing somewhat to her Swedish heritage.

Things were going well for us and it was time to replace the Probe.  I leased a BMW M Roadster and had more fun behind the wheel of a car than I can remember before or since.  We both thoroughly enjoyed tooling down the road with the top down, turning heads as we went.  Life was good.

My wife and I had two more children and as they grew, the jump seat in the back of the Volvo was less than optimal.  In the winter the heat never seemed to reach back there and in the summer the kids in the back felt like a couple of tomato plants in a hothouse.  So it was time for our next vehicle, which for the first time I bought completely on the Internet.  It was a Ford Expedition.  I had seating for eight and room for some cargo as well, and heat and air conditioning all the way to the back.  The kids could each sit comfortably without bumping into each other and to reach out and smack someone next to them took some effort.  That vehicle served us well for a couple of years and then as they grew, our needs grew and when it was time for the next move, we got the Excursion, bigger, they didn’t come.

Meanwhile things became a little more challenging for us.  When the BMW’s lease was up, back it went.  I took over the Volvo for a while until I started a new construction related business and then I took over my father-in-law’s Chevy pick-up truck which he left for my son when he passed away.  After a year when the business got more established I put the Chevy aside for my son and the company bought a Ford F-350 Super Duty, dual wheel pickup truck with a diesel engine, which I still drive.

The Nest Starts to Empty

Then came the accident.  As soon as we got the insurance money for our totaled vehicle we immediately went out and bought another Excursion, with safety the foremost reason.  Ford wasn’t making them anymore so we bought a used one.  I wanted my family protected.

When my son moved out freeing up a seat on the “bus” and my wife started selling real estate and gas prices started to climb, we reevaluated the Excursion.  The Volvo was gone, and at twelve mpg and my wife driving a lot more, it didn’t make sense.  With five of us at home, at worst we could all fit into the pickup truck with its crew cab.  So she bought a Volkswagon EOS.  The savings on gas would make up for any differences in payments on it.  She now had her own convertible and was very happy.

About six months later, my older daughter got her license and wanted a car.  She didn’t have much money for purchasing it or for gas so she needed something economical.  Her choice, a Volkswagon Jetta.

Individual Liberty or Government Diktat

What’s the point of this stroll down vehicular memory lane?  To demonstrate that with liberty we have a great many choices.  We also have different needs at different times in our lives.  Through a free market I was able to select from a number of vehicles from different manufacturers, from different countries, to find what fit our needs.  Those companies decided what to build to suit the market.  The cars that I eventually chose, though not done conscientiously at the time, were from each of those manufacturer’s strengths, not their weaknesses.  I did not choose an economical car, when I needed one, from one of the Big Three.  We did however, choose some of their sporty models (Mustang, Probe) and their trucks (Excursion, Expedition, F-350, Silverado).

The market should tell them what cars to build and build at a profit.  Government should not require them to build six or eight cars that they have to sell at a loss for each vehicle they can sell at a profit, to meet some government mandate such as CAFE standards. As the market causes fuel prices to rise, the market will react with increased demand for more fuel efficient cars.  We should be able to choose when that works best for us.  If we have a distance to commute, we will more inclined to factor fuel efficiency into the equation.  However, if we want to travel in luxury two miles to our favorite restaurant, who cares if the car that gets us there only gets 8 mpg?  Many families have more than one car for that very reason.  Who is some government bureaucrat to tell us what we can choose among?

This Thanksgiving I can sit down with my family, and be thankful that I had that choice, and I can hug each one of them and pray it stays that way.

Apologies to Yogi Berra, but it appears that Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States.  He displayed extraordinary political skill on par with Bill Clinton.  As commentator Juan Williams put it on Fox News, Obama was the stealth candidate.  He spoke in platitudes about hope and change, but he was flexible on the details.  In a period of just a few weeks his famous claim of a tax break for anyone making under $250,000, became $200,000 and through other allies it continued to decrease to $150,000 (Biden) and then $120,000 (New Mexico governor Bill Richardson).

Obama campaigned furiously against George W. Bush, despite Bush not being in the race.  McCain was no match for him as far a political skill was concerned.  McCain refused to mention Reverend Jeremiah Wright in the campaign, he failed to explain how his involvement during the bailout debate got the Republicans back in the game when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid effectively shut them out of the discussions until McCain got involved.  Where else did he fall short?

• He failed to adequately explain his health care plan leaving him open to attacks from Obama which went largely unchallenged.
• He took a pounding from Obama and Biden who said he voted with Bush 94% of the time, but he failed to tie Obama to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi when Congress had an approval rating about half of what Bush had

The Next Four Years

As the loyal opposition we have to be on guard and speak out against the radical positions that Obama has espoused, but are out of sync with the American people, only 27% of whom call themselves liberal.  What to watch for:

1. The Fairness Doctrine — this is an effort to squelch our voice.  The Fairness Doctrine which was set aside by Ronald Reagan, required that a broadcaster provide equal time to present opposing viewpoints whenever a political position was expressed.  This would mean that if a radio station broadcast a popular show like Rush Limbaugh, they would have to broadcast three hours of an opposing viewpoint such as was heard on Air America, the liberal network that failed for lack of listeners.  Faced with this, many broadcasters would drop talk radio and go back to playing Top 40s.  Liberty under attack — The First Amendment guarantee of free speech
2. Card Check — Right now if a union wants to organize a workforce there are two methods that can be used:  a secret ballot, or by having the potential members fill out a card and give it to the union.  They choice of which method is to be used is up to the company, many of whom choose the secret ballot.  Unions want that choice to be theirs and they favor the card system.  This would allow the union to apply pressure to workers at home and other places off the job.  This is even opposed by none other than George McGovern, who has run commercials opposing the union’s position.  (McGovern Interview on YouTube) Liberty under attack — the secret ballot.
3. Redistribution of Wealth — Obama has spoken extensively, although not recently excepting the Joe the Plumber slip, about the redistribution of wealth.  Joe “Buck-a-Day” Biden, which represents how much this multimillionaire gives to charity, says that paying more taxes is our patriotic duty.  Obama scoffs at descriptions of him as a socialist, by saying that if he gave half his peanut butter sandwich to a schoolmate, he’d be called a socialist.  But sharing your peanut butter sandwich with a schoolmate is charity, having your teacher take away your peanut butter sandwich, your cell phone, and your Legos, and give them out to your schoolmates and maybe, maybe, give you half of your peanut butter sandwich back, that’s socialism.  Liberty under attack — The Fourth Amendment right to be secure in your person, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.
4. Bankrupting the Coal Industry — The United States generates 49% of its electricity through coal.  With more and more focus on electric cars and other alternatives to using foreign oil.  Obama has said that “If someone wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.  It’s just that it will bankrupt them.”  We are the “Saudi Arabia” of coal, with an estimated 200 year supply.  To take coal off the table, would be very dangerous and increase not decrease our dependence on foreign oil.  Liberty under attack — our economic freedom.
5. Crisis — According to Joe Biden, we have about 6-8 months before we will have a crisis to test Obama.  Many liberals point to the budget surpluses of the Clinton Administration as proof of the prudent fiscal leadership of the Democrats.  However, they accomplished those surpluses mainly by gutting the military.  This led to some of the disasters of 9/11/2001 and what followed.  At a time like this and with Obama’s plans for massive increases in government spending, what will happen to our military and as a result what will happen to our ability to deal with a crisis.  Liberty under attack — providing for the national defense

This is an historic moment in American history with the election of the first African American as President of the United States.  As the loyal opposition, it is our duty to make clear whenever he and his followers stray from the principles on which this country was founded, those of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. We must make sure we fight any challenges to the First Amendment and we must preserve our ability to raise our voices and speak our mind.

God Bless the United States of America

It has been reported that Barack Obama has kicked three newspapers off his campaign plane for the remainder of the campaign.  The newspapers whose reporters have been kicked off are:

• Dallas Morning News
• Washington Times
• New York Post

These are not small time newspapers.  It is also reported that these newspapers will possibly be replaced by Essence and Jet magazines.  What is the common thread among these three newspapers?  Their editorial boards have all recently endorsed John McCain.

This is the man of proclaimed even temperament, who wants to reach out, to heal the divisions in Washington.

Silence the Opposition

One of the first steps typically taken by a dictatorship is to silence the media.  One of the fundamental liberties embedded in our constitution is freedom of the press.  However this and other instances indicate that such freedom is under attack. There have been other accounts were Obama lawyers has threatened radio stations for playing certain ads or having guests with a viewpoint critical of Obama.  There are instances of videos being yanked from YouTube because they cast Obama in a bad light.  This is a very troubling side of Obama that many Americans do not see or realize.

[the Warren Court] “didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it has been interpreted.” — Barack Obama interviewed on Chicago Public Radio WBEZ-FM September 6, 2001

On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama may be standing before Chief Justice John Roberts, place his hand on the Bible and take the oath of office of the President of the United States and pledge to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.”  Can he take such an oath with a clear conscience?

Obama’s View of the Constitution

Steven G. Calabresi writes in the October 28th, 2008 Wall Street Journal, describing how Obama’s philosophy is that justice should not be viewed by our courts in a legal sense, but rather in a social sense.  Social justice means just what he said to Joe the Plumber, spreading the wealth around is a good thing.  Not only is it a good thing, but it should be guaranteed by the constitution.

What this means is that he believes that if an individual goes to court and has a hard luck story to tell, the judge should rule in that individual’s favor, regardless of the legal merits of the case. As Mr. Calabresi writes, “Empathy, not justice, ought to be the mission of the federal courts, and the redistribution of wealth should be their mantra.”

The Threat to Liberty

How does this impact our individual liberty?  Well, liberty is defined as freedom from arbitrary or despotic control.  So if a homeless person, breaks into your house and eats your food, he should not go to jail or be punished.  Perhaps if he vandalizes your house, he may be punished, because that wasn’t necessary.  However, if you were his former boss and you laid him off or fired him, then maybe the vandalism is okay.  If you have food and can afford to buy more, then the homeless have a right, constitutionally protected, to take yours.  Now you may well say, that will never happen!  Maybe so, but then you will see the next best thing, the government will take the equivalent of your food in the form of your wealth and give it to the homeless person.  And just what is the difference between a criminal with a gun, and the government with the power to throw you in prison when the goal of both is to take your wealth.

What Did the Founders Think?

The reasons the founders incorporated what Obama calls “essential constraints” into the Constitution was their deep seated distrust of a powerful government.  They knew the power of a government that paid little heed to their liberty.  They threw off that government with the Declaration of Independence.  They were fearful of putting a similar one in its place.  They felt that individuals should be free to enjoy Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and that government is necessary, but should be minimal.

Listen for yourself:

Obama Redistribution of Wealth

Republican John Boehner is challenging Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico who is talking about bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.  Nancy Pelosi is on board as well as many other Democrats.  Like many laws that come out of Washington, the put a nice label on it (after all who’s against fairness?) to hide the toxic material within.

The Fairness Doctrine is really about the suppression of free speech with the fig leaf of a “Mom and Apple Pie” name.  What really would happen is that a radio station agrees to air, let’s say, Rush Limbaugh for two hours.  Ratings are great, the advertisement revenues are strong, and life is good for the radio station.  The Fairness Doctrine kicks in and the station is required to air two hours of an opposing viewpoint, say Air America.  Listeners bail left and right, ratings plunge, advertising revenue falls off a cliff, because just like the real Air America, no one tuned in.  Nobody really wants to hear two hours of dull, unimaginative, Bush bashing.

The next week the radio station says to Rush, thanks but no thanks.  You were great, but for every minute we put you on the air, we have to put the other guys on the air.  Our competitors switched to music and they are doing fine.  We will also change our format from talk radio to Top 40s.  Sorry, Rush.  Sorry, America.

So it’s not about fairness, it’s not about improving the exchange of ideas, it’s about suppressing one of the few media outlets that liberals don’t control.  Liberals have the main stream media, they have most of the newspapers, they have NPR, they have the broadcast stations, but they haven’t found a way to silence talk radio, which is the loudest voice that calls them to account on positions and challenges them.

It a way to consolidate their power.  Win the Presidency, control both Houses of Congress, with veto proof majorities, nominate liberal justices to the Supreme Court, tip the balance of the electorate so that the majority don’t pay taxes, and to make sure it is almost impossible to speak out, suppress talk radio.

What do you think?