Michelle Bachmann let off the three day CPAC conference with a keynote address that laid out the case against the current administration and the rule of Nancy Pelosi. Most of the focus of her talk was on raising the alarm on our current financial situation and its urgency.

When the Nancy Pelosi took the Speaker’s gavel in January of 2007, the national debt stood a eight trillion dollars, not a meager sum by any means. To illustrate she pointed out that if a dollar was a second of time, a trillion seconds equates to thirty-two thousand years. It took two hundred and thirty years for the America to accumulate that much debt. In the four years that the Democrats controlled Congress and the two years that President Barack Obama occupied the White House, the debt increased by 75% to fourteen trillion dollars. That is truly astounding.

Much of that debt is being funded by foreign countries including China. She mentioned President Hu Jintao of China being perfectly happy with our borrowing binge, prompting her to ask, “Hu’s your daddy?” She asked who in the crowd was of college age and then addressed her next point to them. If we do not get our financial situation under control, she told them, you will be paying about one-third of your income to cover Social Security. If you add to that your federal income tax you may be rates up to 75% of your income in your peak earning years.

She then called on the assembled to complete the task they started with the major electoral victory this past November with a repeat performance in 2012, to take control of the Senate and the White House.

I still find myself in awe of our Founding Fathers who created our form of government.  The competing ideas that they sifted through to come up with our Constitution and the safeguards in it is wondrous.  The designs upon it by the progressives is by equal measure disturbing.

The progressives envision a national government that they can dominate and that, in turn, will dominate us.  There is no activity over which they do not feel they can or should control.  Private property is a panacea, to keep the masses from open revolt, but they really believe that all wealth that is generated belongs to the government except for the portion they permit us to keep.  If you think that statement is unimaginable consider this.  How often do you hear, concerning the current debate over the Bush tax cuts, that we cannot afford them for the rich?  Think about it.  They say our government cannot afford to allow certain citizens of this country to continue to pay the same level of taxes in 2011 that they pay today.  That the government somehow has to pay for a tax cut, that actually isn’t even a cut but rather a continuation of what has existed for the last ten years.  How is getting less than you want a cost? If you awake on Christmas morning and do not find the present you have been hoping for under the tree, do you say, “Man, that’s gonna cost me?” Of course you do not.

A Massive Federal Government

Think about the many federal departments and agencies that exist today for which you will find no authorization in the Constitution: Education; Agriculture; Housing and Urban Development; Energy; Health and Human Services; Transportation.  Did they not have education in the eighteenth century? Are we more agrarian today than we were in 1789?  If not, why do we need a Department of Agriculture today, but the Founders didn’t see a need for it then?

The progressives are fighting for the continual concentration of functions at the federal level where the voices of the people are faint, but the voices of the special interests are robust and clear.  The branch of the federal government that is closest to the people is the House of Representatives.  But ponder how small your voice is in that chamber.  You are one of some 700,000 in your congressional district; your congressman or woman is one of 435 in the House of Representatives.  How do you get your voice heard at the federal level?  And yet Congress will tell you what kind of light bulb to buy or what kind of toilet you must flush.  Is this what our founding fathers envisioned?

The Bloody Revolution

To establish our country they fought a brutal revolution; a revolution where 50% of the mortal wounds were caused by bayonets.  Now that’s up close and personal.  It is not something they entered into lightly and a reading of the Declaration of Independence will tell you that they pledged their lives when they signed that document and their death warrants as well.  If captured by the British they surely would have been tried and executed for treason.

In designing our form of government they were very suspicious of strong central power and authority, having just thrown off one.  They did not trust government.  As Jefferson said, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty.  When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”  Here is a simple test, do you fear the IRS or does the IRS fear you?

The Founders designed the Constitution to have strictly enumerated powers given to the federal government with all other powers retained by the states or the people.  They did not design a democracy, but a republic.  In that republic they built numerous checks and balances to prevent the accumulation of power. It has been the goal of the progressives to remove those checks and balances and put in place the tyranny that fears no people.

The Structure of the Federal Government

Among the balances they put in place was that the people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives.  That is the body of government closest to the people.  If you recall the wording of the Tenth Amendment it speaks of the federal government, the states and the people.  The Senate was to be appointed by the state legislatures to represent their interests.  The president was to be elected, not by the people, but by the Electoral College.  Lastly, judges were to be appointed for life by the president with the advice and consent of the senate.  Why did they do this?  One reason is that they believed that if a proposed law had the backing of the majority of the people (House of Representatives) and a majority of the states (Senate) then it was probably a good thing, otherwise slow it down.  The fewer the number of laws, the greater our liberty.

The Progressives Attack

The progressives began their designs on the Constitution with the introduction of the income tax through the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.  By allowing the government to tax incomes the government could now afford to greatly expand. However, to be able to expand it had to have the consent of the states, which was not likely to be granted.  So two months after the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified.  The Seventeenth Amendment called for the direct election of Senators, rather than having them appointed by the state legislatures.  The individual citizens picked up two more votes in the federal government, in most cases an even weaker voice than their Representative, and the states were shut out.

Do you think things such as unfunded mandates could pass in Congress if the states still chose the members of the Senate?  Social Security? Medicare? The Department of Education? The Department of Housing and Urban Development? And on and on?  Think of some of the more radical members of the Senate.  Do you think Al Franken would have been appointed by the Minnesota state legislature?  For many years in New York, the State Assembly was under the control of the Democrats but the State Senate was under the control of the Republicans.  The governorship passed back and forth between representatives of the two parties.   However, New York’s two Senators are Democrats and win reelection easily because of the concentration of Democrats mainly in New York City.  Could Hillary Clinton have moved into New York and immediately become its newest Senator with a Republican governor and Republican controlled State Senate? She was elected Senator from New York before she even moved out of the White House.  So instead of representing their state legislatures, Senate candidates focused on the population centers of their states to appeal directly to the people and to get elected and reelected.  The states were reduced from sovereign entities to subsidiaries of the federal government.

The Supreme Court

When Franklin Roosevelt was president he tried to pass his massive socialist programs but found that the Supreme Court was striking down many of his programs as being unconstitutional.  Roosevelt wanted to pack the court by increasing its membership from nine justices to fifteen.  He argued that the justices were old and over worked.  So he wanted to appoint a new justice for every existing justice that was seventy years or older.  His plan failed.  But when he broke with George Washington’s precedent and that of every president who followed him of serving no more than two terms, he was eventually able to appoint every justice to the Supreme Court.  So he got his way, it just took longer.

The Supreme Court can be considered the collateral damage of the Seventeenth Amendment.  The Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.  However once the Senators became directly elected by the people things changed.  Would a distinguished jurist like Robert Bork be treated as shamefully as he was by the lie filled speech of Ted Kennedy if Kennedy and Joe Biden weren’t doing the work of the pro-abortion lobby?  Would Clarence Thomas be subjected to the electronic lynching he faced if not for some Senators pandering to their special interest groups?  What we now have are potential Supreme Court justices who have learned that if you don’t want to get “Borked” keep your mouth shut during your confirmation hearings.  So we don’t know who we are going to get until a lifetime appointee is on the bench and then it is too late.

The 2000 Presidential Election

Who can forget the 2000 presidential election?  The Democrats still say Al Gore won, not because of Florida (he lost the election there, he lost the re-count, he lost the re-re-count) but because he won the popular vote.  The debates raged, why do we have an Electoral College?  The president should be elected by popular vote only. 

The argument follows the one made previously about the direct election of senators.  The Electoral College forces presidential candidates to campaign everywhere because everywhere counts.  There are at least three electoral votes to be had in every state.  The Founders were very concerned about balance.  They did not want the president just to be elected by the people of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, the large cities of that time.  Today, if the Electoral College was abolished the election would focus on the media  and population centers of New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago and the large cities because that’s where it is easiest to get the message out and that is where the majority of the people are.  The progressives would put up pretty much the same candidates as they do today, perhaps more to the left.  This is their home turf and power base.  Instead of traveling around the country they could concentrate their time and money in a few large cities.  The Republicans would probably field candidates of a far more moderate stripe to not get hooted off the stage in New York.  Let me illustrate.

Electoral College vote Bush-Gore 2000

The Democrats claim Gore won in 2000 because he won the popular vote.  He lost in the Electoral College by five votes.  If you look at the breakdown of the states Gore won versus Bush, Gore took the Northeast, the Great Lakes area and the West Coast.  With the exception of New Mexico, Bush took everything else.

Let’s dial it down a level and look at who won at the county level.

Bush-Gore 2000 Winners by County

If you look at it at the county level, you could drive from the east coast to the west coast without entering a single county that Gore won.  You could do the same driving from Canada to Mexico.  But if popular vote was the metric, the man who won 80%-90% of the land mass of the United States would have lost.  Why should you not have a say, if you don’t live in a major population center?  It is not like Bush won in an Electoral College landslide and it is not like Gore absolutely trounced Bush in the popular vote.  The purpose of the Electoral College is to act as another brake on the tyranny of the majority.  

Where Do We Go From Here  

We are presently at a crossroads.  We have an electorate that is more knowledgeable, more aware, and more engaged than at any time in my memory.  We can continue to go down the socialist path toward a massive central government that takes all of our liberties for a measure of sustenance, or we can turn the tide and demand our liberties back.  

Let us begin by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.

When President Obama and his team stood before their supporters and introduced ObamaCare you could almost hear them sing in unison the Carly Simon song, “Nobody does it better…”.  They were going to bring us the health care we had been waiting for.  Magically covering every soul in America whether they wanted it or not.  If they did not, the government would be just like granny used to be, “Open wide, this won’t hurt a bit.”  Come to think of it, was that granny or… never mind.

One of the miracles of ObamaCare was to be health care for those with pre-existing conditions.  That such people could live in our country without health care was a blight that had to be corrected.  Despite the fact that many parts of ObamaCare don’t kick in until 2014, after all we have to get a running start on the tax revenues to get this beast off the ground, this was an issue that could not wait.

So the Health and Human Services Department was blessed with the ability to create their own insurance and get it out to the masses desperately waiting with hope, for change.  The temporary program, which runs until 2014 when the rest of ObamaCare kicks in, is only projected to cost a mere $5 billion.  Imagine that, the word “billion” preceded by a single digit number.  How frugal! How thrifty!  In return it would rescue 375,000 poor souls the first year and 400,000 per year afterward.  And woe be to any insurance company that dropped someone so they would be forced to go with the government program, they would get the bill!

With all of the glorious pieces in place Team Obama was ready to prove what they had said all along.  As soon as the American public sees ObamaCare in action they will not believe how they lived without it all these years.

So they travelled to North Dakota and signed up one person.  Yes, folks, one.  That is not a typo and it is not followed by the word “billion”, “million”, “thousand”, or “hundred”.  A solitary, single person in all of North Dakota.

Well that must just be an anomaly, there aren’t that many people in North Dakota anyway.  So the team moved on to West Virginia where they did better by a factor of four.  Four people, that is, bringing the program’s total to five.

Undaunted, they pressed on to a more populous state;  Minnesota, a state with 5.2 million residents.  Surely, they would find plenty of people to sign up for this great new program, and they did, relatively speaking.  They found fifteen people in Minnesota, which meant after quadrupling the program in West Virginia, they tripled it again in Minnesota.  I can hear Robert Gibbs extolling these numbers now, the multiples that is, not the raw numbers. Indiana was the next fertile ground to till.  And, as amazing as this may sound they found three times as many more people, sixty-three, in Indiana as they had in the other three states combined;  an overwhelming success.  Now they were ready for the big time, Texas.

In Texas, they would be fishing in a pool of 24.7 million people and lo and behold, they caught 393 of them.  Hot diggity!  By November 1, across the country they had signed up 8,011 people.  Okay, okay, it’s not 375,000 but it is not zero either.  Sheesh!  What a bunch of complainers. 

Not to let any failed program die a natural death, the Obama administration is prepared to tweak the program to attract more people.  It is going to cut premiums 20% and expand benefits.  When you are broke and you can’t get more broke fast enough, just remember you can always provide more costly benefits for less offsetting revenue to pay for it, to encourage more people to help you break the bank.

On a more serious note, here is how the Wall Street Journal sums it up.

Pre-existing conditions sometimes do lead to genuine hardships, and polls show that voters are worried about the relatively rare horror stories. More modest fixes could bring more stability to the individual market, while Republicans support a boost in funding for the high-risk pools that 35 states offer as a safety net. The government didn’t need to annex a sixth of the economy and create a multitrillion-dollar entitlement to help 8,011 people.

Well, Nancy, now that we know what’s in it.  Can we repeal the damn thing?

The Dodd-Frank Act that in a mere 2,000 pages sought to put the control back in financial regulation skipped right over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the Government Sponsored Enterprises that were at the heart of the fiscal crisis and are bleeding red ink.  Focusing instead on those evil bankers on Wall Street the Dodd-Frank Act really put those guys in a box, until Goldman Sachs slipped its fetters faster than Houdini.  So who’s buried under the pile of rubble that is the latest masterpiece of our massive government, Betsy Jensen.  Who is Betsy Jensen?

Betsy Jensen is a farmer in southwest Minnesota.  She and her family grow wheat and soy beans.  She doesn’t have a mortgage, so she didn’t cause the housing bubble.  But she does use derivatives to control the risk in farm prices which can be rather volatile.  For example, a bushel of wheat went for $18.69 in February of 2008 whereas it was selling for $3.49 in July of 2010.  A farmer has to buy their seed and fertilizer at the beginning of the growing season and they don’t sell their product until the harvest.  If prices fluctuate wildly during that interval, it isn’t hard to imagine what that can do to your business, let alone your sleep patterns.

So where do derivatives come in?  Farmers like Betsy can negotiate a guaranteed price for their grain with their customers.  Betsy risks missing out on some profits if the prices go up as they have recently (45%) due to fires in the wheat producing region of Russia, but she also is protected against a price drop, for similar reasons beyond her control.  She recently negotiated a price of $7.15 per bushel and with that knowledge, she can manage her farm business and sleep a little more peacefully.  For her purchases she can also use derivatives to buy fuel and fertilizer, where the latter has seen price fluctuations of $435 to $685 per ton.  Then along come Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, a couple of career politicians who never worked in the private sector.

The Dodd-Frank Act says it is unlawful to enter into swaps (derivatives) “in excess of such amount as shall be fixed from time to time” by the Commodities Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC).  That doesn’t sound like a free market to me.  What if, in Betsy’s example, the CFTC didn’t get around to raising the amount on wheat above $5 per bushel?  Betsy couldn’t arrange to sell it for $7.15.  What if the grain elevator couldn’t turn around and sell Betsy’s wheat for the 45% increase in price due to the Russian fires?  Do you think with a cap on the upside they might not be willing to pay as much for Betsy’s wheat?

From Dodd-Frank to Bill O’Reilly we hear about the evils of speculators.  O’Reilly used to rail against the speculators when gas prices were rising toward $5 per gallon.  The evil, greedy speculators were driving up the price of gas!  But little mention was made of speculators when the price of gasoline fell back down?  Did the speculators retire?  Go on vacation?  The reality is that speculators don’t care if the price goes up or down, they only care it moves in the same direction on which they are betting.  They can drive the price down just as fast as they can drive it up.  But they are useful, not evil.

Speculators bring liquidity, that is, money to the market.  Betsy Jensen estimates that about one-third of the purchasers of wheat contracts are traders who never take physical control of the product.  But by adding their view and their money to the market they keep prices from fluctuating wildly.  If these traders are banned then, as she put it, one-third of her customers would disappear.  With one-third fewer customers the price swings will increase rather than decrease.  Remember, a trader who does not take delivery of the wheat can make money on small swings in the price and is likely to get in or get out on smaller moves and thus change the market price accordingly.  If only those who take physical possession of the product are in the market, then other factors such as transport, storage, spoilage, must be factored into each transaction and the price swings will be wider and wilder.

But Betsy said it best, “I may not be able to manage Mother Nature, but I can manage my risk with derivatives.”  If only our government would get out of her way and let her do so.

If you live in New York, you will regularly hear the admonition, “If you see something, say something.”  The idea being that the more people who are on the lookout for solitary packages in a crowded railway station, people behaving erratically, and reporting it, the safer we will be.  Makes sense.  Just be careful not to malign any followers of Islam.  What?

In addition to that public service message you also hear other stories in the news.  A Muslim cab driver refuses to pick up a fare because they are carrying a recent purchase from a liquor store.  The cab driver’s religion is against drinking.  At a public university in Minnesota a coffee cart is prohibited from playing Christmas carols, but public funds are used to construct foot baths so that Muslims can properly prepare for prayer.  At an airport, security personnel cannot ask someone in line to step out for a closer search because they already pulled out two other Muslim young men and they didn’t want to be accused of racial profiling.

The Facts, Ma’am, Just the Facts

Joe Friday, where are you when we need you?  The fictional detective was obsessive in sticking to the facts.  Fact: not all Muslims are terrorists.  Fact:  almost all terrorists you see in the news are Muslims.  So if you are on the lookout for terrorists, who should you look at? eighty year old Italian grandmothers or Middle Eastern men between the ages of 20-40?

Fort Hood

People around Major Nidal Malik Hasan, saw something and said something and were basically told…SHUT UP! Apparently diversity is more precious than human life.  Taking extreme care not to offend, trumps taking steps to prevent a massacre.  There appears to have been abundant evidence that Hasan was ticking time bomb and some spoke out about it, but our sensitivities to giving offence have turned reason inside out.

We have a sub-group of a religion who actively advocate killing all non-members, that is, infidels, and we are scared to death of offending them.  Our liberal friends go out of their way to demand we all accommodate them.  We can criticize all religions but theirs; we can have dress codes, but must make allowances for their dress; if their religion allows a parent to kill a child for converting to Christianity, we must not interfere, but if a non-Muslim parent neglects to buckle a child into a car seat for a quarter mile journey to the grocery store, bring them up on charges of child neglect.

Jumping to Conclusions

Our Commander-in-Chief cautions us not to rush to judgment by calling this an act of terrorism.  Wasn’t this the same Commander-in-Chief who spoke from the White House calling a certain police department in Cambridge, Massachusetts stupid without a clue about what happened.

Political correctness, multiculturalism, an emasculated fourth estate, President Obama’s worldwide apology tour, strong arming a small Central American country, Honduras, because they followed their constitution and instead calling it a coup, all point to an embarrassing campaign by the left to drag down our country. 

Please don’t try to make us like the rest of the world.  We are greater than that.  If you prefer the way the rest of the world behaves, move there.  Don’t try to make the shining city on the hill, a city run amok. 

It’s simple really. If the world really believed that America is such a terrible place, why do we have an immigration problem?  Why do our universities teem with foreign students?  Why, whenever there is a flare-up in the world, do all eyes turn to the good old USA to see what we are going to do about it?  Where’s Ronald Reagan when you need him?

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.

A Rasmussen poll 68% Say 2nd Stimulus is Likely, makes stark just how committed the statist majority of Congress is to reshaping America in their image and derisively dismissing the will of the people.  68% of those polled say a second stimulus is likely while at the same time 60% of the American people are opposed to a second stimulus while only 27% are in favor.  Let that sink in for a moment before I play it again, 68% of the American people believe that Congress will ram down their throats what only 27% are in favor of.  Is this a government for the people?  By the people?  It sounds more like Iran and their recent presidential “elections”.

In Iran, hundreds of thousands took to the street while their government responded by beating and shooting them.  In America, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in Tea Parties, and thankfully the government hasn’t responded by beating and shooting us, but ignoring the will of the people just the same.

Promises, Promises

President Obama promised open- ness and transparency in his administration.  During the campaign his website had the following statement:

“Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them,” the campaign website states. “As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”

Well, true to Obama’s form, there is always an escape clause, in this case, “non-emergency.”  So just declare every bill an emergency and the promise remains unbroken.  But what is an emergency?

The stimulus was pitched as an emergency and it was rushed through Congress getting passed on a Friday.  However despite all the urgency, President Obama did not sign it on Friday night, nor Saturday, nor Sunday, nor Monday as it was a holiday, but on Tuesday when a true media event surrounding the signing ceremony could be orchestrated.  So despite the conflict surrounding “hurry up and wait” why couldn’t the American people get a look at the bill during those five days?

So what’s the track record?  The Sunlight Foundation had this to say back in April:

“Of the eleven bills, only one (The DTV Delay Act) could be somewhat considered to have fulfilled the five day pledge. This could only be somewhat considered because it was posted just prior to being presented to the President, which is a slightly minor point.”

Did You Read It?

These massive spending bills (Stimulus, Cap and Trade, Health Care, TARP) are getting passed by Congress and if you ask Democrats or members of the administration if they actually read the bill they either laugh or bristle with indignation.  Carol Browner Thinks It’s Unfair to Say She Hasn’t Read the Energy Bill

So it seems like this Congress and this Administration is resolute in urgently slamming through every government enlarging and power consolidating program that they can in the least amount of time before the next election cycle.  What the American people want is immaterial if the political class can strengthen their grip on the government such that future Congresses and administrations will find it hard to undue.

Furthermore if they can get enough illegals, dead people, homeless, criminals who have lost the right to vote, registered or counted in the census so that they can enlarge their favorite Congressional districts, or fix elections then they can stay in office.  When they lose a close election they know how to immediately dispatch teams of lawyers to invalidate ballots of their opponents and count more of their own that were “missed”.  They perfected this technique in Washington state, and repeated it in Minnesota, where Republicans won both closely contested elections, but Democrats repeatedly demanded recounts until their candidate was ahead and then, with a straight face said, “enough recounts the people deserve to have this resolved.”

Pay Attention People

If more people don’t start paying attention, the greatest country in the history of the world, the United States of America, will become a nostalgic footnote.  Already Communist China is building a more capitalistic economy than we have, while we try to move toward the old, failed socialist model.  If we are not more careful, we will wake up some day and wonder how we became more like Venezuela, and feel a little bit………foolish?

Who could forget, if the left would ever let us, the Florida brouhaha about Bush stealing the election?  The fact is that Bush won the election, he won the recount, he won the re-recount, and he not only won according to a investigation by the Miami Herald and USA Today but according to that investigation if the rules that the Gore team wanted were applied, Bush’s margin of victory would have tripled.  But all you ever hear from the left is that Bush “stole” the election.  When it comes to stealing elections the Democrats are the pros.

In 2004, the race for the governorship of Washington state was very close with Republican Dino Rossi winning over Democrat Christine Gregoire by a mere 261 votes.  Under Washington law a vote that close requires a machine re-count.  The results of the hand recount was that Rossi won again, this time by 42 votes.  Rather than concede, the Democrats ponied up $800,000 for a hand re-count.  After that recount it showed Gregoire ahead by 129 votes.  Okay, shut it down, it’s over, we have a winner.  Due to the closeness of the race Rossi asked Gregoire to a runoff election.  Gregoire refused.  As she put it, “The bottom line is the election is over. Today we have a governor-elect. It’s time to move forward, and I am prepared to take on the people’s work.”  In King’s county, the final tally had 3,539 more votes counted than voters who participated in the election.

Fast forward to Minnesota.  When the election results came in Norm Coleman, the Republican won by just over 700 votes.  After the election, ballots started showing up in the trunk of cars; some districts were ruled that the election night votes were accurate, other districts were ruled the opposite;  a number of duplicate ballots were not marked duplicate as required and so were counted twice.  Many districts had the same situation as the Washington election where the numbers of votes tallied exceeded the number of voters.

So where is the outrage from the media.  Bush wins four out of four and he “stole” the election.  Gregoire and Franken lose the general election and some shady counting turns up in the recount or recounts (you have to keep recounting until the Democrat is ahead and then you immediately stop), where you have more votes than voters and everything it just fine.  Just like we have heard next to nothing about the Washington election these past four years, don’t expect to hear much from the press when Democrats steal an election.

I was wondering how long it would take for Barack Obama’s lack of experience or a power base to manifest itself, but it appears the moment has arrived, and the problems keep coming.

His recent announcement or leak by his aides that Leon Panetta is his choice for head of the CIA is confounding, to say the least.  Panetta may be a nice man, and a good administrator, but in the midst of the War on Terror who but a rookie would put a rookie as head of the CIA?  Apparently Obama couldn’t push back those on the left who want no one who agrees with the Bush Administration in the post.  Two other potential appointees got hooted down by Obama’s supporters so he had to go with this pick.  The CIA is notorious for not liking outsiders.  Panetta has no intelligence experience, other than listening in on security briefings as Clinton’s Chief of Staff.

Bill Richardson withdraws his name from nomination as Commerce Secretary, due to a gathering scandal.

Eric Holder as Attorney General pick approved pardons for the FALN terrorists while working in the Clinton Justice Department and now he is responsible for prosecuting terrorists.

The Blagojevich scandal doesn’t want to go away and now the Democrats are battling over whether or not they will seat the man appointed to replace Obama in the Senate

We have the Coleman/Franken fiasco in Minnesota; Charlie Rangel under investigation for not paying taxes despite being chairman of the committee that writes the tax laws (Ways and Means); an item in the NY Times about a donation to the Clinton library from an individual who benefited from legislation supported by Hillary Clinton…

How long before the press decides the honeymoon is over?