While wiping his feet on the First Amendment by trying to force Catholic institutions to bend to his will and force them to provide services that go against their core beliefs, President Obama took time to lecture us on the Bible, and twist it to fit his reelection campaign. This outrage doesn’t get a pass.

The Bible Supports Obama’s Tax Plan

Obama tried to use the bible verse about from those who have been given much, much is expected, as a call from God to pay more taxes. To follow the Buffett Rule, if you will. Here is the verse from Luke 12:48:

When much has been given a man, much will be required of him.

But the context is in terms of doing the master’s will, not paying taxes. When it comes to paying taxes, Jesus was asked specifically about it. Here is that passage:

They sent some Pharisees and Herodians after him to catch him in his speech. The two groups came and said to him: “Teacher, we know you are a truthful man, unconcerned about anyone’s opinion. It is evident you do not act out of human respect but teach God’s way of life sincerely. Is it lawful to pay the tax to the emperor or not? Are we to pay or not to pay?” Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “Why are you trying to trip me up? Bring me a coin and let me see it.” When they brought one, he said to them, “Whose head is this and whose inscription is it?” “Caesar’s,” they told him. At that Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar’s what is Caesar’s, but give to God what is God’s.” Their amazement at him knew no bounds – Mark 12:1-17

When asked specifically about taxes Jesus dismissed them, seeing the political trap. Jesus didn’t say let’s go to Rome and lobby for the least of our brothers. He didn’t say, you know, we need a new government program. He didn’t tell of the Good Samaritan, calling his Roman Senator to pass a new law to provide free health care for victims of highway robbery found laying in a ditch. He said we should take care of such things ourselves, not pass the buck to someone else. So instead of asking the rich like Romney to pay more in taxes, ask Joe Biden how much he gives of the public’s money, that he has been living off most of his adult life, to charity. See if Obama wants to brag about so-called Catholic Biden, giving an average of $1 a day to charity while pulling down a tidy six figure income. Since 2010, Romney gave $7 million to charity. What about the Obamas? Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 through 2004 to charities, or less than 1 percent. As former Louisiana Senator Russell Long famously said, “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.” It is hypocrisy at its boldest. But then this president has never been shy.

Wasted Gifts

What should be embarrassing to Obama is that the passage he used really refers to him. Who has been given more than Obama?  He grew up in Hawaii, he got an Ivy League education, he has drawn a salary from the public trough as an Illinois state senator, a U.S. Senator, and President of the United States. What has he done with these gifts? We know he has played golf over ninety times, he has taken long vacations, he plays basketball every week, and rather than meeting with members of Congress he stonewalled them and then blames them for the state we are in. Let’s take the passage from Luke that Obama quoted and back it up a few verses:

The Lord said, “Who in your opinion is that faithful, farsighted steward whom the master will set over his servants to dispense their ration of grain in season? That servant is fortunate whom his master finds busy when he returns.”

It is not the rich who according to Obama do not pay enough taxes that the Bible refers to, but him, who was given bountiful gifts from God but squandered them. What would Jesus say to Illinois Senator Obama who opposed legislation that if a woman went to a hospital to have an abortion and if the child was actually born alive, the surviving child should be given all necessary medical care? Is that caring for the least of his brothers? Is that emulating the Good Samaritan? Is there no level to which Obama will not stoop to get himself reelected? America has had enough of this president. America deserves better.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

They are still using the same tired rhetoric, about inheriting the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. The truth is that the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression is the Obama administration. Barack Obama stands with Herbert Hoover as the only presidents with negative job growth during their administrations. As if stuck in the 1930s, Obama dusted off FDR’s playbook, since he had no personal executive experience to draw on, and that playbook didn’t work then and it’s not working now.

So along comes an opportunity for a major “shovel ready” project, backed by unions, that can create thousands of jobs, move us closer to energy independence, help us depend less on getting oil from Middle East despots, and what does Obama do? He kills it. What he wanted to do, was defer a decision on this until after the election, eleven months away. He wanted to do what he does best, vote “present”.

Congress, particularly the Republicans who seem to be the only adults working on Capital Hill, included a provision in the payroll tax holiday extension, to make a decision within sixty days. People are hurting, gas prices are creeping up, unemployment benefits have been extended to extraordinary lengths, and this incompetent president says that sixty days was not enough time to review the proposal so he had to, sadly, reject it. Perhaps if he hadn’t played all those rounds of golf, perhaps if he had studied it a little closer instead of spending all that time in Hawaii, perhaps if he put this job creating proposal on the top of the EPA’s to-do list instead of their focusing on the job killing regulations to limit power plant emissions, he would have gotten his job done. But no, sorry, I don’t have my homework, teacher, I dunno, I forgot, my dog…. Enough!

Let China make an oil deal with Canada. We can always buy the oil back from them at a premium. Why not, they probably don’t have enough of our dollars as it is now. Why not give them more? This president is making decisions that will cobble together a coalition of supporters to get him reelected. This is about appeasing the environmental movement so that they won’t abandon him.

At an event in Ottumwa, Iowa, on Dec. 31, Rick Santorum mocked the idea that the pipeline posed the threat of environmental damage, noting that there were already many other pipelines in the area it would go through. “This is just, again, pandering to radical environmentalists who don’t want energy production, who don’t want us to burn more carbon,” Mr. Santorum said.

The State Department, which has authority over this since it goes between us and Canada, “said there was not enough time to draw a new route for the pipeline and assess the environmental harm.” Bullfeathers. It’s a 1700 mile pipeline. The area in question is a fraction of that length. Agree to the pipeline, get started hiring people and building it in areas not in dispute, and work to resolve the section in question. But unless it is killed, Obama risks losing the green vote and what is more important, America or Obama’s reelection?

I’d like to ask my Congressman, Tim Bishop, to weigh in. What do you have to say about this, Tim? Or are you too busy manufacturing your own campaign issue around outsourced phone center jobs. If jobs are really important to you, you would stand up and challenge Obama for killing an opportunity for good, high paying, union jobs in America. On the other hand you can stay silent, not challenge President Obama’s error and risk his ire and possibly lose campaign funds and support. So what do you stand for, Tim? Putting America first or putting your interests right up there with President Obama’s and above America’s.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Congressman Tim Bishop held an online town hall meeting to hear questions from constituents and give his answers. Perhaps he thought this a safer forum than a live town hall meeting. Last year’s meeting in Setauket did not go well and was soon viral on You Tube.

I will comment on three of the topics from that meeting: the payroll tax cut, regulations, and manufacturing jobs.

Payroll Tax Cut

Congressman Bishop came out heavily pitching the extension of the payroll tax cut, from the normal level of 6.2% to the current level of 4.2% and even to go lower to 3.1%, for at least another year. He made the startling claim, quoting some experts that if the payroll tax cut wasn’t retained it would cost 400,000 jobs. It must be from the loss of all that spending power generated from a 2% cut in the payroll tax. I am sure pizza parlors will be devastated, as the weekly savings to a typical family will be about the cost of a pizza pie. The other statistic was that if the payroll tax was cut further to 3.1%, 750,000 new jobs would be created. Interesting. Raise the tax by 2% and 400,000 jobs would be lost, cut it by an additional 1.1% and nearly twice as many jobs would be created. Like prior predictions of how government intervention would affect jobs, we are supposed to believe that employers will start hiring if the cost of hiring a new employee  is reduced by 3.1% for just one year, before going back up. Only those people who never worked in private industry, like Bishop, Schumer, Obama, would believe that.

Bishop insisted that these cuts would have no impact to the Social Security Trust Fund. Considering that there is nothing in the Social Security Trust Fund other than a bunch of IOUs from Uncle Sam’s other pocket, he may be correct on that front, but he said that the cut would be paid for cutting spending elsewhere. Not surprisingly, he didn’t say where exactly “elsewhere” was.

Throughout the call, Bishop’s press secretary was conducting a dopey poll. To paraphrase, “If you are in favor of the payroll tax cut that will put $1,500 in your pocket, press 1, if not, press 2.” Who wouldn’t press 1? What would the results be if he asked, “If you are in favor of borrowing $600 from China that your children and grandchildren will have to pay back, so that we can give you $1,500 today, press 1, if you think more borrowing and debt is a bad idea, press 2,” I think the poll would turn out quite differently.

Regulations

A caller who owned a small construction company asked about all the regulations and paperwork that businesses had to deal with. Bishop said that President Obama had things well under control forming a commission to “zero base” all regulations and hundreds and hundreds of regulations have been taken off the books. In the Wall Street Journal today there is an editorial titled, “Regulation for Dummies,” that paints a very different picture.

To answer the most basic question—has regulation increased?—we’ll focus on what the government defines as “economically significant” regulations. Those are rules that impose more than $100 million in annual costs on the economy, though there are hundreds if not thousands of new rules every year that fall well short of that.

According to an analysis of the Federal Register by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, the Cabinet departments and agencies finalized 84 such regulations annually on average in President Obama’s first two years. The annual average under President Bush was 62 and under President Clinton 56

As the graph clearly shows the number of “economically significant” regulations under Obama has skyrocketed. This is what is causing the uncertainty that is hindering employment. How can this be curtailed? A bill just passed in the House of Representatives called the “Regulation from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny Act (REINS)”. This would require any of these economically significant regulations to be sent to Congress for approval before becoming being enacted. What the process is today is that Congress can vote against regulations, but that can be vetoed by the President. If the regulations are coming from the president, wouldn’t you expect him to veto it? This turns it around so that the Congress has to approve the regulations, if they don’t, there is nothing for the president to veto. The Democrats say this is a Congressional encroachment of the Executive.

“The REINS Act would undermine our ability to protect children from harmful toys, prevent asthma and lung ailments resulting from pollution, and ensure that our small businesses can compete fairly in the marketplace,” House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer added. “At the same time, it would force Congress to play a larger role in the regulatory process, leading to even more gridlock in Washington.”

Surely he forgot to mention killing bunnies in there somewhere. But let’s look at the process: Congress passes a law; departments in the Executive branch write regulations to carry out the law Congress passed. So why is it an outrage that Congress reviews economically significant regulations to see if the Executive is actually implementing what they passed? Tim Bishop voted against the REINS Act. This is another case of Democrats focusing on piddling regulations while saying “hands off” the really impactful ones.

Manufacturing Jobs

Another caller asked the Congressman about manufacturing jobs. He patted himself on the back for helping to bail out the auto industry. He said if he and others hadn’t done that that hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost. I addressed the implausibility of this in an earlier post. In that post I argued that if GM and Chrysler went bankrupt and even if they didn’t come out of it leaner and meaner, people still needed transportation. They would buy Fords, Toyotas, Nissans, Hondas, etc., that are currently built here in the U.S. Those car companies would need to increase their purchases from suppliers and those who formerly supplied GM and Chrysler would be well situated to supply the remaining car companies. The argument that we don’t manufacture here anymore is a myth. On a dollar volume basis, we still manufacture more than any country on earth. A few miles from where I am writing this, in Georgetown, Kentucky, is the largest Toyota factory outside of Japan. Due to a free trade agreement with South Korea that the Democrats blocked for years, that Toyota plant will begin exporting about 6,000 Camrys a year from Kentucky to South Korea.

One of the reasons we don’t build more here is our lousy tax code. Fix it. A reason there is not more manufacturing in Mr. Bishop’s district on Long Island is high electric rates. Factories run on power and power on Long Island is expensive. One of the reasons for that is that government approved the building of a $5 billion nuclear power plant on Long Island, and then when it was ready to throw the switch, they changed direction and said it couldn’t open. So Long Island rate payers had to find and buy electric from other sources and pay for the mothballed plant that produced nothing. Once again, the government helping us out.

But Tim Bishop has a solution. He wrote a bill to ban offshore call centers from federal contracts or loan guarantees for five-year. Nothing like micromanaging a corner of the economy while the rest of it burns. Why not look to the root cause? Tax structure, too much regulations, ObamaCare, out of control government spending. If Congress would fix those problems maybe companies wouldn’t look offshore to set up call centers.

The Budget

Tim Bishop also touched on the deficit and debt. He said we need to cut spending, but he never said what he would cut; he said we needed to control entitlement spending, but he didn’t say how he would do that; and he said we needed to add revenue, but he knew exactly how to do that, tax the rich. Here’s how I see it. The government got us into this mess by spending too much money, they should get us out of it by spending less money. Asking for any more tax revenue is just shirking their responsibility for which they are paid handsomely, and passing the problem on to us. Who couldn’t solve the problem with enough money?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

With the economy in shambles and his campaign sound bites and early interviews as president coming back to haunt him, President Obama has ramped up the class warfare rhetoric. Let’s put the lie to these strategies.

The Payroll Tax Cut

The issue here is that President Obama wants to help the middle class and he claims the Republicans do not. The famous payroll tax cut puts about $8 a week in the pocket of individuals. But everyone who pays the payroll “tax” expects to get every dollar back, and then some, after they retire. So what is really going on here? The government forces you to participate in the Social Security system. It offers a lousy rate of return compared to alternatives and if you die before you start collecting, everything you paid into it is gone. Your heirs get nothing. If Obama believes in cutting back on payroll taxes, why not convert everything to private accounts and eliminate the tax altogether? Let people save for their own retirement. Let them put more away in the good times, and be able to scale back in the bad times.

The Republicans are not opposed to Obama’s plan, their only requirement is that we cut somewhere else in the budget to make up for the shortfall. This is nothing new. Former Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning raised this very point nearly two years ago, when the Democrats held both houses of Congress. In this enormous government can’t we find anything to cut? Find the cuts and the Republicans will sign on. If not, this is just another case of piling debt on our children and grandchildren, because they will have to make up the difference when we retire.

Taxing the Rich

This week we saw former senator and former New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine testify before Congress to say how sorry he was that he couldn’t find over a billion dollars of his customer’s money. But since he resigned from MF Global he doesn’t have access to any of the records to help in the search. Is the Justice Department beginning a criminal investigation?

Has anyone been charged with a crime for what happened in the fiscal meltdown of 2008? Has anyone collected more campaign cash from Wall Street than Obama? So is it unusual to conclude that President Obama, other than giving speeches, is perfectly fine with Wall Street ripping off the American people, as long as he can rip off the most successful people in America and claim he is looking out for the little guy. Let his pals get boatloads of government money to bail out their companies so they can keep getting richer and then say he wants to tax them more. Is it any surprise that a lot of rich Democrat supporters are coming out and saying they are all for paying more. Who wouldn’t?

President Obama says you can have billions of tax dollars and I just want a kickback in the form of higher taxes so that I can keep spending recklessly. However, ask anyone of these guys to write a check to the Treasury voluntarily, and they all balk. Why? Nobody gets any credit for donating their money to the government. They want the government to take it, not just from them but from every successful business person.

An Economic Winter

If President Obama gets another term, we may face an economic winter from which we may never recover. If the last three years were painful, the next four could be even worse.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Photo by No Nein

President Obama has a plan to pivot toward jobs, after nearly three years on office. After spending boatloads of our money on a stimulus program that failed, according to his own standard of capping unemployment at 8%, he wants to spend more. He claims that he is also cutting spending, but when you drill down into the details, it is a myth.

We can’t cut our way out of this problem. Why not? We spent our way into it. The worst annual deficit under Bush, who was also a big spender, was $485 billion. Under Obama it has been well over a $1 trillion every year. Some say it is the fault of the Bush tax cuts, but after they were implemented, the Treasury took in more money than at any time in history. Some say it is because of the bad economy, which is a contributor, but estimates that I have seen peg the impact of the economy on revenues at around $400 billion. Is it the two wars? They were there before Obama took office, and they are there now, but we are withdrawing forces from Iraq, so what accounts for the super-sized deficit? Spending. When your family is in a tight spot, you don’t spend your way out of it, you cut back. The government has no money of its own so it sucks it out of the private sector where jobs are actually created, to do what? pump it back into the private sector? Or it prints money, which will come back to ravage the country through inflation when the economy recovers.

Let’s Be Fair

So President Obama’s plan is to “tax the rich” in the name of fairness.  Is that a real plan or a slogan? A clue to the answer to that question can be found by asking your progressive friends how much they think is fair. The response you will see is a lot of mumbling and stumbling. Stuart Varney tried vainly to get Mary Ann Marsh, a Democrat strategist, to answer that simple question, “How much is fair?” He tried multiple times and her answers excluded state taxes, and then included them later, she simply dodged the question. He kept coming at her, and she kept dodging, because any reasonable person would know that it is bunk.

Is a system where 47% of Americans pay no federal income taxes, fair? Do they not benefit from the protection of our armed forces? access to our court system? having a common currency? mail service? Elizabeth Warren, who is challenging Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts, told her supporters, “nobody every got rich by themselves.” She went on to say that the roads that a businesses, travel over are paid for by “all  of us.” Apparently not. If you look at the following chart that shows the share of the tax burden carried by income level, it would appear that the “rich” are the ones paying for the roads, while Ms. Warren’s “spread the wealth around” crowd get the free ride. Yes, they want to spread the wealth around, but not the expense.

If fairness is the goal, dump the tax code and the IRS and implement a flat tax. Make it a requirement that everybody pays something, and has some skin in the game. Get rid of the loopholes and deductions so that people can file their tax returns on a post card. But if you are just reaching for a class warfare slogan in an attempt to get yourself reelected, and continue the economic nightmare we are in, not for another fifteen months but for another five years, then for once, be honest with the American people and just say so.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.

Photo by Violentz

Most presidents view an address to a joint session of Congress for serious non-partisan purposes. Outside the annual State of the Union address they are rare. President Bush only did it once, in the aftermath of 9/11, and while jobs are very important to the country at this time, it is no place for a lecture (saying pass this bill seventeen times) from the most inexperienced president in our history.

This is not to minimize the importance of getting the economy moving. Who does not know that this is a problem? But it rings hollow that it was not important enough for the president to call Congress back into session in August, nor to delay his own two-week vacation to Martha’s Vineyard. Even scheduling the speech was bungled. President Obama does not seem to understand that Congress is co-equal to the Presidency and to the Judiciary. They do not report to him. He does not commandeer their chamber for his use whenever he so desires. He can make a request and then Congress can pass a resolution to invite him.

But let’s look at it a different way. Can anyone imagine John Boehner requesting an audience in the White House where he would bring in television cameras and then lecture the president about how things are done around here? Preposterous. But this president used his State of the Union address to lecture the Supreme Court, also guests at that speech, on a ruling that they made. Just who does he think he is? He is not king; he is not a dictator. He is a candidate for reelection who is rapidly sinking in the polls and is looking for the Hail Mary that will save his sorry presidency.

Having added four trillion dollars to the national debt, he is back looking for more. After a bruising battle to raise the debt limit, all he can think about is spending. But this time it will be different. This time it is paid for. Let’s think about that. Paid for by whom?

The federal government has no money other than what it takes from the private sector. So how is it possible that President Obama and his merry men and women are smarter than 340 million of their fellow Americans? How do they think that they can take money from the private sector, and only they know how to best put it back into the private sector to make the economy grow? I know there are readers out there objecting that it is not just the private sector who pays for government, but actually it is.

Think of it this way. If a Congressman takes his $174,000 salary and, assuming he knows how to actually use TurboTax, he figures out that he owes $50,000 in income tax and pays it. Is he really paying for any part of government other than a portion of his own salary? To put it another way, would it be any different to cut the salary to $124,000 and make it tax-free? Not really. The Congressman will never pay enough in taxes to cover his own salary. The same can be said of any government worker. They will never pay enough taxes to cover their own pay and put additional money to pay for the rest of government. So the government is ultimately supported by the private sector. The more government spends, the less there is available to the private sector that really creates jobs, because at a minimum, some of the money collected has to go to paying the rest of the salaries and everything else that is government. If you leave a dollar in the private sector it is still a dollar, If you pass it through the government first, you will never get the whole dollar back into the private sector.

So if you want the economy to grow; if you want to create jobs, the way to do it is to make the government as small as possible to still meet its basic mission, as spelled out in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8), and leaving the rest to us. Shrink the government back to what the Founding Fathers laid out, and reduce the taxes accordingly. This is not the time for political posturing.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Photo by Neil T

I had no idea. I thought that runaway spending was a bad thing. I know that in business as well as in our personal lives when we borrow and spend far beyond the amount of money we take in, trouble comes calling. How did I get it so mixed up?

What did I do? I spoke up along with my Tea Party brethren. I should have kept my mouth shut. After all, John Kerry said so, and John Kerry went to Harvard. This is what he said,

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, the Massachusetts Democrat called Standard & Poor’s lowering of the nation’s credit rating from AAA to AA+ as “without question, tea party downgrade.”

“A minority of people in the House of Representative countered even the will of many Republicans in the United States Senate, who were prepared to do a bigger deal,” he said.

Kerry defended President Barack Obama’s repeated efforts to put a grand bargain deal on the table, which would have cut upwards of $4 trillion from the deficit over a decade, rather than the final debt ceiling deal that cuts between $2.1 to $2.4 trillion.

It makes perfect sense. John Kerry was for out of control spending before he was against it. He makes it crystal clear. The Tea Party which sprang up like the grass roots movement that it is, after TARP and the stimulus spending passed the Democrat controlled Congress and was signed by the Democrat President Barack Obama, spoke out against the spending and made it a front and center issue and then demanded a smaller amount of spending cuts? How could that be? (Hint: John Kerry likes taxes; lots of them).

Since becoming a Tea Party activist, I have visited Washington several times. It looks like a normal city. I guess you have to live there or work there a long time before you realize that up is down and down is up. It takes a lot of imagination to grasp that spending a little more money than spending a lot more money is a cut in spending, even though you are spending more. We rubes who don’t live in Washington don’t get it and the politicians keep rolling their eyes to let us know they are tired of explaining it to someone who didn’t go to Harvard. The real estate market in Washington is doing fine, but the real estate market in the rest of the country is in the tank. How does that happen? (Hint: all those additional federal government workers have to live somewhere).

How could I be so foolish? I guess I needed another lecture from David Axelrod to ‘splain it to me. And, hey, here he is:

“If we had defaulted on our debt, the consequences would have been dramatic and lasting,” Axelrod said. “It was the wrong thing to do to push the country to that point. It was something that should never have happened that clearly is on the backs of those who were willing the see the country default, those very strident voices in the tea party.”

I need to work on lowering my strident voice. I should have shut my mouth so that the debt limit could have been raised without a peep and the spending binge could have continued. I didn’t realize that I was jeopardizing Barack Obama’s chances for a second term. How could I possibly expect the dear man to fix “the mess” he inherited in less than eight years? After all, Roosevelt couldn’t get us out of the Great Depression in eight years until he hired all of those unemployed men into the Army, Navy and Marines. Obama is following Roosevelt’s playbook and it is not working today either. If Roosevelt could get elected four times, why not Obama? (We’ll get around to that Constitutional Amendment problem later).

Defaulting on our debt means not paying the interest or principle on our debt not on the failure to subsidize ethanol or Chevy Volt cars. As President Obama holds the checkbook, he could always make those payments on time with the tax revenue coming in, but somehow default, default, default is all we heard. I guess the “devil would make him do it,” the Tea Party being said devil.

The Tea Party supported strong fiscal conservatives in the 2010 election. How dare we?! Those we elected put together a budget in the House of Representatives shortly after taking control. How reckless! The Senate hasn’t passed a budget in over 800 days. John Kerry ,call your office. The Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a plan called Cut, Cap, and Balance that would actually bring down the spending and toward a balanced budget. When that bill arrived in the Senate, it was immediately stuffed in a drawer. John? Rand Paul, a freshman member of the Senate who has not yet breathed enough of the rarefied air there to understand that spending is cutting, put together his own plan to cut $500 billion from the deficit immediately and balance the budget in four years. Does John Kerry know who Rand Paul is?  John, look him up, you can probably find him easily enough on the floor of the Senate when you are not out wind surfing or figuring out how not to pay sales tax on your multimillion dollar yacht.

So, I apologize for causing the downgrade of America’s debt. I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble for the ruling class. After all, they are very busy meeting at the Harvard Club deciding how to run our lives, so that we don’t screw that job up, with all that Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness crap. I will try very hard to mind my peas and cues, or is it, mind my cues and eat my peas? Whatever. I will try very hard…but don’t bet the ranch on it.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

You almost have to wonder, why in the world did he run for president? Was he swept up in the ego trip? Was he reading too much into his own press clippings? Did the historic opportunity of being the first real black president, sorry Bill Clinton, in U.S. history overwhelm a careful consideration of what the job entailed?

For those who believe in federalism, as James Madison said, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined.” As the powers of the federal government are (supposed to be) few, so are the responsibilities of the President of the United States; important and focused, yes, but few. So why does President Obama look to avoid those few responsibilities and get involved in so many that are not in his purview?

From golf, to beer summits, to healthcare, to golf, to conferences on bullying, to golf, and now on guns, he seems to find that which is least related to his job to focus his energies and those of his administration. Even senators from his own party decry his lack of leadership on perhaps the most important issue of the day, spending and the debt. The Middle East is in flames and he talks tough but does nothing.

A Gun Summit

A deranged man in Tucson, Arizona, slipped through the cracks of existing laws that prohibit the sale of a gun, under both Arizona law and federal law to someone who is mentally ill or a drug user. Jared Loughner is guilty of both, but no one bothered to take the step to have a court declare him mentally unstable and no one made sure the system was updated with his drug use. If the laws on the books aren’t enforced, what will the addition of more laws do, other than further curtail liberties?

Of course that does not stop President Obama from wading in. On his team he picks Eric Holder and Hillary Rodham Clinton. I hope I am not being overly critical by saying, with the Middle East crumbling into chaos, a major ally recovering from an earthquake and tsunami in the Far East, and the function of the State Department being how we interface with other nations, am I the only one who thinks HRC is probably a little busy right now, or should be?

Then there is Eric Holder, who wouldn’t know a terrorist if he were jumping up and down on his desk screaming Allahu Akbar, while sweeping a sword inches over his head. Who sees Black Panthers intimidating voters in Philadelphia as just a couple of guys from the ‘hood hanging out. Who will twist himself in paroxysms to avoid saying in Congressional hearings that the possibility that Major Nidal Hisan was a radical Islamist, instead saying, “No, I don’t want to say anything negative about a religion.”

One of the knee jerk comments you hear from the gun opponents if you criticize gun restrictions is, “Should we allow machine guns!!” Considering that the U.S. government and this president have abdicated their responsibility to defend our border, even to the point of putting signs up 100 miles inside our country warning travelers that it is unsafe to travel in parts of Arizona, the idea of a couple of .50 caliber machine guns mounted on the roof of some rancher’s home in that area might not be a bad idea. With drug cartel members active in that area with automatic weapons, why not?

A Simple Approach

Let me suggest a simple approach. The laws should not be about what property you own, but what you do with it. Laws should apply to actions, not who we are, what we own, or what we think. The rules can and should be different for people who have violated laws by their actions or who have diminished capacity to safely operate something that could be dangerous. Felons should not be allowed to buy a gun nor someone who is mentally unstable. We are allowed to drink. We are allowed to drive. We are not allowed to drink and drive. The prohibited action is the combination of the two. If you drink and drive repeatedly, you don’t get to drive at all.

Our government should not stand in the way of its citizens being able to defend themselves. In a Supreme Court case Warren v District of Columbia, it was ruled that a police department is not responsible for failing to protect its citizens. It should be my responsibility to protect myself and my family. The Supreme Court seems to agree that you cannot blame the police if they do not respond.

So Hillary, go back to the State Department and focus on foreign policy not on guns. Mr. Holder, try being our chief prosecutor not a busybody. Mr. President, put away the golf clubs and start figuring out how to cut a very large slice out of the $1.6 trillion deficit you are running. If you didn’t want the job in the first place, you shouldn’t have asked for it.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

The order in the Middle East has been crumbling, but it seems that the only place President Barack Obama knows where to lead is on the dance floor or when ramming through his socialist programs. When it comes to real solutions to fix the economy or on foreign policy he is utterly lost.

When students rose up against the mullahs in Iran, the Obama administration was strangely silent while demonstrators were murdered in the streets.  But Israel is condemned at the drop of a hat. When the Mubarak regime started to wobble so did the president’s position, for Mubarak, against Mubarak, for Mubarak, against Mubarak. In capitals across the Middle East and around the world our enemies rubbed their hands in glee, while our friends started looking for new friends.

When Khadafy rattled his saber at Ronald Reagan and bombed a discothèque in Berlin that killed two American servicemen, Reagan responded with a raid on Libya that landed 277 hits with 5 misses. Khadafy went back in his cage. When violence broke out from this terrorist slaughtering his own people, President Obama remained silent for days due to a “scheduling conflict.” The scheduling conflict concerned getting Americans out of the country. Between Reagan’s action and Bush’s taking out of Hussein in Iraq followed by Khadafy’s throwing in the towel on his nuclear program, it seems clear that Khadafy does not want a military conflict with the U.S. So a clear message to him that the fastest way to get into a military conflict with the U.S. would be to impede the evacuation of any U.S. citizens will give him pause. To back that up the Sixth Fleet should have been put on station in the Gulf of Sidra and Obama could then be a leader and speak out forcefully against this terrorist.

Instead our leader made it clear he was ready to follow the United Nations. So look out, Khadafy, we’re going to let you have it in Switzerland and kick you off the Human Rights panel. Take that! You can almost see Khadafy’s wrist getting red and starting to swell. I’ll bet that any American left in Libya is bursting with pride over that step. Now we are going to start applying sanctions. Am I the only one who thinks Libya will deteriorate to chaos, if it is not already there, before any sanctions can have an effect? How many people think, Khadafy is going to pull up short because we have frozen his assets like his mansion in New Jersey? With all due respect to the Garden State, I don’t think that is top of mind for Khadafy.

Budget Matters

On budget matters we are now kicking around $4 billion in cuts to prevent a government shutdown for two weeks. How about Harry Reid getting back to Washington and putting the Senate in session to consider the bill already passed by the House that cut $61 billion from the budget? We are running a $1.6 trillion single year deficit. A cut of $61 billion may change that number to $1.5 trillion after rounding. Let’s get serious! Where is the leadership from the White House. His budget was a joke, boasting of saving $1.1 trillion over TEN YEARS. We will be that much deeper in the hole by NEXT YEAR.

Meanwhile my congressman is out fighting the spending cuts that were included in the House bill that passed that chamber. Doesn’t anyone understand the urgency of the problem? We are hemorrhaging red ink and it is time to stop blaming Bush and start looking at the people who are doing the spending.

All the Democrats want to talk about is that the Republicans want to shut down the government, the Republicans want to shut down the government, while they pick up their fiddles and play a tune. If President Obama was a leader, the leader of the Democratic party, he would be on the phone to Harry Reid and tell him to get back to work. Put together the best deal you can, but this is a crisis. But President Obama doesn’t see any crisis. He is more focused on preventing  a solution in Wisconsin than in doing his duty.

The Ultimate Organizer

The president is organized, if nothing else. In this realm he shows his strength. He manages to play a round of golf about every other week. He has top union leaders to the White House about every other week and his White House is on the phone with them several times per week. He has hosted swell parties at the White House and today the New York Times introduces us to his personal trainer. But to show his community spirits, he shares his personal trainer with other White House staffers.

Instead of a President Obama with nice six pack abs, I would much prefer the leadership and waistline of Chris Christie.

That’s my opinion. I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

President Obama wants to have it both ways.  He wants to appear to be fiscally responsible and he knows that to do so, that something has to include Social Security.  However, to try to keep as many Democrats in office that he can he has to play that other favorite card of the Democrats, that Republicans want to push grandma in her wheelchair down the stairs by privatizing Social Security.

In a campaign stop in Racine, Wisconsin the president had this to say, “”I’ll fight with everything I’ve got to stop those who would gamble your Social Security on Wall Street. Because you shouldn’t be worried that a sudden downturn in the stock market will put all you’ve worked so hard for—all you’ve earned—at risk.”  Oh, really, Mr. President?  Then perhaps you can show us where all the Social Security money is that you don’t want to put at risk.  The problem is that the government spent it all.  That’s right, there’s no lock box, no account, no bank vault, no hole in the ground were the money is buried, earning nothing.  I only wish I was able to put “at risk” all the money that the government took out of my paycheck along with my employer’s contributions. 

Based on my last annual statement from the Social Security administration, the government collected about $170,000 from me and my employers on my behalf.  Had I the opportunity to put that “at risk” in the stock market, the Dow Jones 30 industrials to be precise, including all the ups and downs, that $170,000 would be worth about $800,000 today.  Thank you Democrats for keeping me safe from accumulating that amount of wealth and instead “investing” it in ethanol, turtle crossings in Florida, bridges to nowhere, airports in John Murtha’s district that no one flies to, etc.  By Social Security estimates, that money they took from me and my employers, will be paid back to me and run out about ten to twelve years before I expire.  So instead of having a real nest egg that I can live off of and pass the rest on to my heirs, my getting Social Security will depend on the next generation getting taxed to the eyeballs to pay me and they can hope the next generation does not rise up in arms when they get the bill.

Everyone who supports the Social Security system as it is today, acknowledging that we have to fulfill our commitment to those who have retired or are very near to retiring, should join Bernie Madoff in cell block C, for the Ponzi scheme the government created.  President Obama, it is time to stop lying to the American people.  We don’t want government to run our lives.  You have crammed your left wing agenda down our throats and we will give you our rebuttal on November 3.  Then your one term will be up two years hence.