Pride Goeth Before the Fall

The seven deadly sins are commonly known: Extravagance, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride. While many in government of all political stripes love to indulge in many of these, it's become quite clear that Pride is the current favorite of the Democrats. The pride of course starts at the top (remember BOH's "humble" acceptance of his party's presidential nomination that was followed by his boast that his nomination marked the time when the seas began to recede, blah, blah, blah?), but now seems to have flowed all the way down to even lowly congressional aids.

The past few days have treated us to two more examples of this pride.

First we had Barbara Boxer, dressing down a Brig General for not calling her "senator." The general was answering the regal Boxer's question, when he made the mistake of starting the answer with "ma'am." Boxer cut him off and whined: "Do me a favor, can you say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am'? It's just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title, so I'd appreciate it. Thank you." Give me a break. Yeah you've worked so hard. It must be really hard getting elected in California when you're politically to the left of Stalin. It must also be really hard spending other people's money and passing bills that you haven't read.

The first thing that jumps out at me is her utter ignorance. Using the term "ma'am" is military protocol to show respect. The general referred to the male senators in that same meeting as "sir."

The next thing that jumps out at me is her dripping arrogance and pride. A senator is supposed to be a "public servant" right? Instead, because of her huge salary and copious perks, Boxer has come to see herself as somehow superior and she's obviously not the only senator in congress to suffer from this malady. What makes her and other senators' arrogance all the more surprising is that they don't notice that most citizens hold them in contempt. As low as Pres. Bush's approval ratings were, the approval rating of Congress is even lower. Their popularity rating resides somewhere between used car salesmen and the H1N1 virus. Instead of petulantly whining about being addressed respectfully as ma'am, Boxer should be kissing the feet of a member of our military that has preserved Boxer's right to make an ass of herself. I'll tell what Barb, I'm sure that a majority of Americans have a title in mind for you and it's not nearly as respectful as "ma'am."

If the arrogance and pride of Congress aren't enough, how about the pride of congressional aids? When dealing with Elizabeth Becton, aid to Jim McDermott (D-Wash), you better be sure you call her by her full name. Otherwise, you're in for a flurry emails that are sure to overwhelm you, as an executive assistant at one company found out. The assistant sent an email to Becton, trying to set up a meeting with Rep McDermott and representatives of JP Morgan Chase. Here is a brief excerpt from politico that explains what happened:

Days later, the assistant checked back in and unfortunately began the e-mail with “Hi Liz.”

Becton curtly replied, “Who is Liz?”

When the assistant wrote back with an apology, Becton turned up the heat. “I do not go by Liz. Where did you get your information?” she asked.

The back-and-forth went on for 19 e-mails, with the assistant apologizing six times if she had “offended” Becton, while Becton lectured about name-calling.

This garbage has got to stop. Our founding fathers (at least most of them, Hamilton being a possible exception) never envisioned a professional political class ruling this country. And this is what we have now: rulers instead of representatives or public servants.

Instead, they wanted our representatives to be fellow citizens who would serve a few years and then return to their normal lives. In this way, to paraphrase Thomas Paine, these people would have to go back into their own communities and go back into business so they would never vote a rod against themselves.

Today, however, more and more people go into government for life. For example, the before-mentioned McDermott has been in Congress since 1988 and was a Washington state senator from 1977-1987 (that's 31 years in government). He's no representative; he's a professional ruler. And there are scores of other congressmen just like him. These out-of-touch rulers are the main reason that vast numbers of Americans feel like the lady who wrote this letter: Open Letter to Our Nation's Leadership.

So what is to be done? Many have floated ideas that range from barring lawyers from serving in Congress to revoking the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. In my mind, the very least that needs to be done is to cut their pay and perks. Longer-term goals should be a term-limits amendment and a repeal of the 17th Amendment. Luckily, many are already pursuing these goals and have started grass-roots campaigns and other efforts. The Tea Parties are also providing platforms for these ideas and giving like-minded people opportunity to meet.

Proverbs tells us: "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." Hopefully, the pride and arrogance of today's leaders will compel more Americans to want to take back their government so that our leaders become public servants again rather than career rulers.

The Power of Prayer

It's been quite awhile since I added a new post to this blog. Beside being extremely busy, I was tiring of being so negative. I'm not a negative person and venting about this tyrannical regime that currently plagues us requires a good bit of negativity, which was weighing me down. Therefore, I'm aiming to make this post more positive: I want to reflect a bit on the power of prayer.

Near Death Experience
May was the one-year anniversary of my dear wife's brush with death. That day in May 2008 started like any other day: I was at my desk working when I received a phone call from a neighborhood friend. She told me that Gretchen had collapsed at the school and that an ambulance had taken her to the hospital. By the time I got to the emergency room, they had Gretchen in a room, strapped down to a medical table. She was totally unconscious but was constantly thrashing and mumbling. They said they were trying to sedate her but that nothing was working very well. They needed to sedate her to keep her still enough to perform an MRI on her head. They finally succeeded in getting the MRI done but it was blurry because she was still moving about a bit, even though they had given her the strongest sedative that they dared use.

The MRI showed blood on Gretchen's brain. The ER doctor asked if it were possible that she had hit her head when she collapsed. I told him that those who were with her when she collapsed said she was participating in a Walk-a-thon at the school when she complained of extreme dizziness. She said she needed to sit down and that after she sat down, she collapsed and started convulsing. So no, I didn't think that she had hit her head. With this bit of diagnostics completed, the doctors decided she needed to be transferred to a nearby hospital that had a very experienced staff of neurological experts. They put her under general anesthesia, intubated her, and loaded her onto an ambulance for transfer.

At the new hospital, they performed an angiogram and then moved her to a room in the ER to await the results. We had been waiting in the room for about hour, when I noticed a group of people in surgical scrubs gathering outside the door. When the anesthesiologist arrived, he said that Gretchen was being taken in for emergency brain surgery and that the neurosurgeon would be there soon to explain the surgery. The surgeon then arrived and showed us the image derived from the angiogram that had been performed. He indicated that Gretchen had suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by the rupture of an anterior communicating aneurysm. Even with my untrained eye, I could detect the aneurysm in the image; it looked like a large Mickey Mouse balloon wedged into the tight Y branch formed by two tiny blood vessels. He said that it looked like Gretchen had suffered one hemorrhage and that the goal was to seal off the aneurysm before a second hemorrhage occurred. He said the chances of surviving a second hemorrhage was only about 7-10%. He instructed us that the surgery would take about three hours and that the patient services lady would show us to the waiting room and then he followed Gretchen as they wheeled her out of the room.

After the longest 4 hours of my life, the surgeon appeared in the waiting room saying that the surgery had gone well and that they were closing now and that she would be moved to a room in the ICU in about an hour. The surgeon said that the surgery was a little tricky because of the location of the aneurysm, but I wouldn't understand exactly how tricky until a couple days later when the ICU nurse explained everything that was done. She explained it like this: first they shaved her head and opened a 7-inch incision that ran from her ear, up the side of her head, and curved to an end about the middle of her forehead at about where the hair line ended. They then pulled the skin and muscle down to expose the skull. They opened a 3-4-inch hole in her skull and used a retractor to pull her brain up to expose the location of the aneurysm (it was located on the bottom of her brain, close to where her right optic nerve connected). They clamped off the aneurysm with a tiny titanium clip. After the first clip was applied, the surgeon could see that blood was still swirling inside the aneurysm so a second clip was applied at an almost perpendicular angle. The application of the clips was extremely dangerous because if the surgeon went too deeply, it could cause scaring on the brain that could cause later seizures, and if he didn't go deep enough, he could perforate the blood vessel and kill her.

Quick Recovery
Obviously, Gretchen's condition was extremely dire. After the surgery, the doctor predicted that she would be in the ICU for about 14 days and would then be moved to a regular room where she would probably stay for another week. While she was in the ICU, I was at the hospital about 20 hours/day. Our four great kids took over to keep the house running while I was at the hospital. But the outpouring of love and support from our friends and neighbors made things much easier for our family. The support ran from the delivery of groceries and meals, to house cleaning and yard work. The greatest support they offered, however, were their prayers. At the time of her collapse, Gretchen was an assistant teacher at a special needs preschool that was held at the local elementary school. She also was a teacher of 4 and 5 year-old children in our church congregation. The parents of these children constantly told me that their little ones were praying for Gretchen daily. I also heard from my far-flung friends of all different faiths that they were keeping our family in their prayers.

I am convinced that, in answer to the many prayers offered on our behalf, Gretchen was helped to recover quickly. For the first few days after the surgery, she was mostly out of it and her short-term memory was shot. Every few hours, the ICU nurses would check for complications from the surgery that might need to be addressed. They would ask her if she knew where she was. She usually didn't know so they would remind her that she was in the hospital. Then they would ask if she knew why she was there. One of the times they asked this, we all had a good laugh when she answered: "well, whenever I've been in the hospital it's been because I've had a baby. I didn't have a baby, did I?" However, after the first few days, she recovered rapidly. When the physical therapists first made her get out of bed to walk around the ICU, she could barely make it around the ward, and this was with the therapist helping support her on one arm and me helping on the other. But two or three days later, she was able to complete the route a couple times in a row with little help.

A week after the surgery, Gretchen was ready to leave the hospital. However, her doctors weren't quite so ready to let her go. They wanted to keep her in the ICU a couple more days and then wanted her to stay in a regular room 3-5 more days after that. Nine days after her surgery, Gretchen was moved to a regular room but while in this room, she was restless and just wanted to go home. She constantly pestered her doctor until he relented and let her go home just a day-and-a-half after leaving the ICU. So just a little over 10 days after major brain surgery, Gretchen was back home.

A couple of weeks after leaving the hospital, I had to take her in to the neurosurgeon's office to have the staples removed that had sealed her incision. She was able to walk up a flight of stairs and into the office almost completely under her own power; I only held her hand and arm to help steady her. The nurse that was to remove the staples couldn't believe it. "You're walking?!" she said. "I have been reading your chart and I thought to myself that this is a person that is going to be have some major problems, but you look great!" After this office visit, I searched the web for the prognosis for those that have suffered a ruptured aneurysm. It was not encouraging. One citation that I found said this:

The prognosis for people who experience a ruptured aneurysm is not good. About 15 to 25 percent of those who experience a rupture do not survive the event. An additional 25 to 50 percent survive the immediate episode, but die of complications caused by bleeding in the brain. Of those who do survive, about 15 to 50 percent suffer permanent brain damage or physical disability.

I found further, that some of those that recover completely aren't able to walk unaided even a year after their surgery. On top of that, when Gretchen was referred to the neurologist to continue her treatment, the neurologist looked at her chart and said, "I can't see how you're sitting here in my office. You should be dead. I don't see any reason why you didn't die." However, I know why she didn't die and why, a year later, if you look at her, you couldn't tell that she had ever had an aneurysm: a loving Heavenly Father that answers prayers.

Tools
I believe completely in the power of prayer. I believe that all prayers are answered; sometimes they may not be answered as we'd like them to be, but they are answered, none the less. Often they are answered in ways that we don't recognize until years later. I also believe that we are often meant to be tools in the hands of our Father to be the answer to the prayers of those around us. A friend of mine tells this story about his wife: his wife and daughter were driving down a residential street when they noticed a family out on their lawn, in obvious agitation and distress. The two little girls were crying and the mother and father looked worried. My friend's wife felt prompted that she should pull the car over and ask if she could help but her daughter said: "why would we do that? We don't know them and we probably wouldn't be able to help anyway." So she kept driving but after a couple of blocks she couldn't fight the feeling that she should offer to help so she pulled the car over so she could make a u-turn. While she was checking to see if it was clear to turn around, she saw a little puppy in the middle of the street. Something told her that this was the cause of the family's distress so she opened her door and, with her daughter's help, coaxed the puppy into the car. She returned to the worried family and opened her car door and let the puppy jump out, after which a happy reunion ensued. I am sure that those little girls were praying for the safe return of their puppy and my friend's wife was the tool through which their prayer was answered.

Our Responsibility
This blog is meant to be political, rather than religious, in nature. So let me close by relating this to the current state of our country. While this country has always benefited from the prayers of its citizens, the need for prayer has seldom been more acute. I believe that it is important that we pray for our leaders each day, both for those that we oppose as well as those we agree with. I believe that, unfortunately, we are ruled by a wicked government at this time (I use 'ruled' here on purpose. With the unconstitutional powers that our president is wielding, with the numerous new bureaucratic czars that he is appointing, we aren't being governed; we're being ruled). This is not hyperbole; I sincerely believe that many of our current leaders are a fulfillment of Isiah's prophecy:

Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!

I believe that we must pray each day that our honorable leaders will keep up the fight and do what they can to preserve our nation and pray that those who wish to harm the country will see the errors of their ways. However, we should also do more. Like my friend's wife, we must work to be the tools that will help these prayers to be answered. We must write letters, join peaceful protests like the Tea Parties, register our opinions with our representatives, become involved in the political process and in our communities and neighborhoods. It is not enough to just vote, we must be educated voters. We must actually learn about the candidates and not just base our vote on the rock-star status of the candidate. We must, in short, do the things that were considered a normal part of good citizenship for our forebears. It is the least we can do to show our appreciation for the legacy that they have bequeathed us.

Open Letter to Barack Obama

Open letter to Barack Hussein Obama on your 100-day celebration:

As is your wont, you relied on a lot of misinformation and misdirection to keep the faithful eating out of your hand, didn't you? Let's revisit some of those, shall we?

We began by passing a recovery act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs...

This little bit of political sleight-of-hand has been trotted out a number of times, but you never seem to tire of using it, Barack. Others have document the fraudulent nature of the so-called "saved" jobs but for the sake of argument, let's assume that 150,000 jobs were "saved" by your pork-barrel-palooza (they certainly weren't created). Crowing about "saving" 150,000 jobs at this point is roughly equivalent to your boasting $100 million in cuts when the budget is trillions in the red. Earlier in the year, economists predicted that the US would lose 2 million jobs in 2009. That prediction has been proven to be extremely optimistic since the economy has shed over 2 million jobs in the first three months of the year alone (651,000 in January, 706,000 in February, and a record 742,000 in March). 150,000 jobs is a drop in the bucket when compared with the rate we are losing them right now. That number of "saved" jobs looks even punier when you consider that you've strapped us and our children with unimaginable debt. Good boy Barry, you've saved 150,000 jobs and only spent, what, about $1 million per job? Here's your gold star.

It contains new investments in education that will equip our workers with the right skills and training...

Oh yes, we will throw money at the schools and they will churn out workers with the right skills and training. If you believe that, I've got this bridge to sell ya. The US already spends more money per student than almost any other country on the planet. What do we get for that huge investment? Not much. In a ranking of students from the 30 richest countries, our students' test scores in science lag behind 16 of those countries. In math, it's even worse: 23 of the 30 had better test scores. Coming in 17th and 24th out of 30 isn't much to celebrate.

It also isn't very heartening to think that one of your few stints outside of government was serving as Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was supposed to work to reform education. The CAC gave out millions to Chicago-area schools and tests scores went down. Is that the kind of "skills and training" that you intend to equip our students with?

...new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses, and new savings that will bring down our deficit...

I think one basic principle that we know is that the more we do on the prevention side, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road.

This is a pipe dream at best and pure sophistry at worst. The AP reports that the New England Journal of Medicine, back during the campaign, poured cold water all over the idea that preventative medicine will save huge amounts of money; it certainly will never save enough to make any kind of dent in our current deficit. The fact is, nothing that you have proposed will bring down the deficit in any significant way, and that is before we start spending to pay for all of your other pet projects.

We've begun to end the war in Iraq...

Ahem, the withdrawal in Iraq was already planned and the draw-down in troops had already begun before you even took office, in spite of your shameful attempt to scuttle those plans during the campaign.

...and we forged with our NATO allies a new strategy to target Al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

What strategy was that, Barack? It sure looks like the same strategy to me: we supply the bulk of the troops and the majority of Europe gets a free pass. What was the response to your request for more European troops in Afghanistan (even after you sold out your countrymen during your "apology" tour)? "No" in any language is still no.

We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals by closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and banning torture without exception.

Please explain the "false choice," Barack. Also, whose ideals are you talking about. Certainly not mine or those of most of the people I know. Our ideals say that we have the right to defend ourselves from evil madmen that have masterminded the deaths of thousands of our fellow citizens and that boast about beheading others of those citizens. Our ideals say that those "enhanced interrogation" techniques are NOT torture. The worst of these "tortures" was water-boarding, a technique that has been administered to thousands of our own soldiers as part of their training. The other techniques ranged from placing these scum into an enclosed space with a live caterpillar to grabbing their collar (oh, the horror!). Ann Coulter has a very informative (and comical) column that details each of these "tortures".

Your ideals include denying medical care to infants who are born alive after botched abortions (clearly infanticide) and kissing up to ruthless dictators (and standing idly by while they slander our country) while you spit upon long-time democratic friends and allies. Clearly, we don't share the same ideals and I would prefer that you quit pretending otherwise.

And we've renewed our diplomatic efforts to deal with challenges ranging from the global economic crisis to the spread of nuclear weapons.

Yes and what have those diplomatic efforts produced? The Russians laugh at us when we ask for help in halting the Iranians' drive to possess nuclear weapons and the Chinese laugh at us when we request help in checking the North Koreans' ability to deliver their nuclear weapons to some far-flung location across the globe. Yeah your vaunted diplomatic efforts are really paying off.

About Chrysler & GM: What we've seen is the unions have made enormous sacrifices on top of sacrifices that they had previously made.

Oh yes, huge sacrifices. While investors who spent billions on Chrysler and GM bonds get pennies on the dollar, the unions, who haven't invested squat get a majority stake in Chrysler and a huge stake in GM. On top of that, the American taxpayer gets to pick up the tab of guaranteeing their pension and health care deals while Chrysler is in bankruptcy. A lot of sacrificing there, sure.

On water-boarding: I am absolutely convinced it was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

Nice bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking there, Barack. What makes you so sure we could've gotten the information in other ways? Especially in a timely manner? Remember, we had picked up a high level of chatter (greater than that picked up around 9/11) amongst the terrorists that indicated that they intended to hit us again soon. KSM had to be water-boarded, what, about 180 times before he broke, right? Chances are, if we had relied on asking "pretty please give us the information we need," we would've gotten the information about one hour after the terrorists flew another high-jacked plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles. The truth is, there is absolutely no way you can be sure we could've gotten the information in other ways. That's why you only released the memos that discussed the interrogation techniques without revealing that those techniques saved hundreds if not thousands of lives in LA. You're just speaking out of your anal sphincter again, aren't you Barry?

And Churchill said, "We don't torture," when the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat.

You got this little "factoid" from some left-wing blogger, didn't you Barry? When will you learn that you can't trust those nuts to report anything accurately? The British threatened to hang captured Nazi spies if they refused to transmit false information to Germany. I think hanging is just a tad more brutal than water-boarding, don't you Barry? Plus, your very own family tells stories of your grandfather being tortured by the Brits, don't they? I don't understand why you would try to leverage Churchill anyway, since you clearly have disdain for him his country. Was it just desperation on your part? Was it the only way you could think of to dupe the American people?

Part of the reason why I called for a gradual withdrawal as opposed to a precipitous one was precisely because more work needs to be done on the political side to further isolate whatever remnants of Al Qaida in Iraq still exists.

You really are quite the liar revisionist, Barack. During the campaign you never called for a gradual withdrawal. You never called for a gradual withdrawal until it was clear that the surge was going to be successful. Remember, the surge that you and your leftist cohorts (the slimey Reid and maleficent Pelosi) opposed?

I do think that our administration has taken some steps that have restored confidence in the American people that we're moving in the right direction...

Oh yes, that is why all of the latest polls show that, despite your personal popularity, the majority of voters are against all of your initiatives.

Well, I think our -- our first role should be shareholders that are looking to get out. You know, I don't want to run auto companies. I don't want to run banks.

You keep saying this Barack but then you do things like: refuse to allow banks to pay back the bail-out money they received or take a huge chunks of equity in the car companies while giving other huge chunks to your cronies in the unions. Me thinks thou dost protest too much.

I know you've been hearing all these arguments about, oh, Obama is just spending crazy, look at these huge trillion-dollar deficits, blah, blah, blah. Well, let me make a point. Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit -- that wasn't from my -- that wasn't me.

You really are pathological about passing the buck, aren't you Barry? You're like some petulant 4-year-old, always pouting, "it wasn't my fault." Fortunately, the AP has again been helpful in pointing out this lie. Congress controls the budget and you and your leftist comrades have controlled both houses of Congress for the past two years. You gave us the current deficit and you are making it much, much worse.

So, you know, when you see -- those of you who are watching certain news channels that -- on which I'm not very popular -- (laughter) -- and you see folks waving tea bags around -- (laughter) ...

Pardon me, but what a whiny little puke you are, Obama. Why don't you grow up and quit mocking the people you're supposed to be serving. Pres. Bush, for all his faults, never belittled code pink or the other goofey war protesters, no matter how much they deserved it. You promised to be the "great uniter." One hint: making fun of good, hard-working people that have legitimate grievances against the government is not the way to unite the country. Of course, you really don't care, do you? That "great uniter" bit was just some good-sounding campaign slogan meant for the kool-aid drinkers, wasn't it?

We are going to have to tighten our belts...

ROFLMAO!!! Yeah right. Us little people will definitely have to tighten our belts (or already have tightened them) but you and your fellow elitists will never do it. Just like when you declared during the campaign that we won't be able to keep our thermostats at 72 degrees year-round and then you kept the white house warm enough to, in the words of your own staff, "grow orchids." Well, just keep on enjoying your expensive dinner parties and wasteful jet flights around the country and other extravagant perks. Hopefully your profligacy will turn enough of your acolytes so that we can throw you out of the honorable office that you've besmirched these last 100 days.

Lies and Statistics

Benjamin Disraeli is responsible for the quote that Mark Twain popularized: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." This administration excels at all three, but the current con game that Obama perpetrated at his first ever cabinet meeting definitely ranks as the worst kind.

Obama trumpeted his plan to force his cabinet to find $100 million to cut from the budget as if $100 million meant anything. To put that number into context, here are some comparisons:

• $100 million is only 0.0029% of Obama's 2010 $3.5 trillion budget


• $100 million is only 0.013% of Obama's $700 billion Porkulus stimulus bill


• $100 million is only 0.77% of the $13 billion in pork in the omnibus spending plan

Put another way, let's say that I go out and buy a $100,000 stereo system. I bring it home and my wife says, "you paid what for that stereo?! How can we pay for it?!" And I (very calmly of course) respond, don't worry honey, I'll just return these $2.90 speaker cables. I bet that would reassure her, right?

But, hey, at least it's a start, right? Wrong! It's a con just as I stated above and here's why: psychologists tell us that people, in general, can't understand these huge numbers without some context. Beside that, we all instinctively know that $100 million is a lot of money, so the cuts seem pretty impressive. However, many don't recognize that $100 million is a drop in the bucket, compared to Obama's profligate spending. The administration is counting on the general public to miss that fact.

Even though they'll never admit it, the hundreds of Tea Parties held across the nation seem to have rattled the Obama administration. In response to the Tea Parties, the administration trotted out its press secretary, the hopeless Robert Gibbs, to crow about it's great accomplishment of cutting $100 million. However, in a rare showing of journalistic backbone, the press corp pointed out that the $100 million was nothing compared to current spending. It was even pointed out that just a week prior, the self-same press secretary had claimed that $8 billion in earmarks was nothing.

Let's hope that the general public will realize what the White House press corp recognized while Gibbs was trying to slip one by them: this government is spending us and our children into oblivion. We currently pay about $50 million per day on just the interest on our national debt (so the $100 million cut that Obama is so proud of will pay for about 2 days of interest, gee thanks). Our current dept is $11.2 trillion and Obama's spending is expected to add another $1 trillion to that debt in the year 2010 alone. Before long, the interest on our debt could be the largest item in the budget. This is debt that we will never be able to pay off without a huge amount of pain and suffering. Piddling $100 million "cuts" will never change that fact.

The Arrogant Apology Tour

I know this will come as a surprise to many, but I've had it with our arrogant buffoon of a president. This latest moronic apology tour should've been the last straw for any non-Obama-koolaid-drinker who thinks this guy gives one wit for the country he's supposed to represent.

He started out apologizing to Europe for American "arrogance." Let me see if I've got this straight: Because of America, Europeans are not doing the Nazi goose-step across the continent. Because of America, Europe can afford to coddle its citizenry in cradle-to-grave socialism because they haven't had to spend on their own defense. Because of America, Germany is no longer divided. Because of America, the wall came down. Because of America, the French can sniff autocratically and deny us the right to fly our warplanes over their airspace when we need to speedily attack a madman in Libya. Oh yes, how "arrogant" of us.

Next he moved on to Turkey where he felt the need to assure Muslims that we are not at war with Islam. Oh good, I guess ole George W. didn't make that clear as he bent over backwards to assure the world that Islam was a religion of peace. Beside W's rhetoric, America has done nothing but aid Muslims in the last few decades. First, Russia would never have been defeated in Afghanistan without American weapons that were smuggled to the mujaheddin (something we would later come to regret but that's beside the point). Then we tried to help feed starving Somalis which turned into Black Hawk down. Next we sided with the Muslims in Kosovo and bombed their enemies back to the stone age. Finally, we liberated millions of Muslims in two countries (Iraq and Afghanistan) and helped them create constitutions that enshrined Sharia Law. Yep, it's a good thing that Obama was there to clarify this country's position vis-a-vie Islam.

With his latest tour, Obama has proven that he is nothing more than a narcissist that cares little for his country beyond it's usefulness as a foil to gain the world's love for himself. "Come on," the Obamabots will protest, "he shows his care for his country by improving its standing in the world." Okay, but the president is supposed to protect the interests of his country. So did Obama's groveling promote America's interests; did America gain anything with that "improved standing in the world?"

The answer, in a word, is nein or non or nyet or however you say "no" in Chinese or Turkish. When Europe was asked to pony up more troops for Afghanistan, we were rebuffed. When the Russians were asked to help with Iran, they assured us, "America has nothing to fear from Iran." When the Chinese were asked to help with the North Korean rocket, we got the cold shoulder.

Obama's apology tour shows that he views himself as more "a citizen of the world" than a citizen of America. He is clearly willing to abrogate America's interests in favor of the so-called "interests of the world." When he was elected, I feared that this would be Jimmy Carter's second term. Instead, it appears that it will be much worse than that. Heaven help us.

More Administration Double-Speak

In the short time that he has been a political force in this country, Obama has proven that he is unrivaled in the world of Orwellian Newspeak. Just a couple examples:

During the campaign, as he accepted the Democratic nomination for president, he claimed to "humbly" accept the nomination and then went on to boast that, "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … . This was the moment when we came together to remake this great nation." Did you notice the great amount of humility in that boast? Nah, I didn't either.

While claiming that he was bringing responsibility back to government, he did the following:

• Constantly blamed each and every problem on the previous administration (on one occasion he claimed to be taking responsibility for the economic problems in one breath while blaming those problems on the previous administration in the next).


• Forced passage of the biggest piece of government irresponsibility of our lifetimes (the "stimulus" bill). Not only did this legislation place our country into unprecedented debt, the bill was passed without a single legislator having read it.


• Claimied that the above "stimulus" bill contained no earmarks when it contained some 8000 of them.

Today's announcement, however, rivals anything he has done thus far. Obama claims that the government has no desire to run GM yet he announces that

• the government was firing the current GM CEO


• the government wasn't going to loan any more money until GM produced a government-approved business plan

Geez, what would the government have done if it did want to run GM?

AIG Updates

My previous post addressed the sliminess of the leftist politicians who were "righteously indignant" over 160 million in bonuses for the AIG employees who "helped bring down our financial system." In the post I pointed out that the bonuses were retention bonuses meant to keep valuable employees around to help transition the company. Here is a letter from an AIG employee that is now resigning which backs up that contention and sheds more light on the situation: I Quit!

This whole situation clearly demonstrates the evil of the current administration and leftist politicians in Congress. And I use that term intentionally because that is what their actions are.

All of the politicians involved, including Barack Obama, knew the details of the bonuses. However, they couldn't pass up the opportunity to direct the public's anger towards innocent targets in order to weasel out of their political problems. Because of these unscrupulous politicians, the AIG employees and their families received death threats. There were protests at AIG and at the homes of AIG employees.

The media breathlessly covered these "protests" but they didn't tell us who was behind them. The protests at AIG offices was organized by big labor: the Service Workers Union. Why would the Service Workers Union be protesting AIG? Can you say political payback to the Democrats? Even more egregiously, who paid for the buses that transported "protesters" to AIG employees' homes? It was ACORN. That's right, the same organization that is under indictment in more than 20 states for vote fraud and to which Barack Obama's "stimulus plan" gives hundreds of millions of dollars.

In my previous post I gave a few reasons why I thought the slimy politicians were trying to whip up public outrage. However, since then I see an even more sinister design behind their manipulation of the public mood: in order to move to socialism and government control, the people must be made to hate our businessmen. This is borne out by Obama's expanded bank take-over plan. With business people out of the way, the government will be the only entity we can turn to in order to get out of our economic malaise. This is the evil that we've been warned against by many of our previous leaders, both political and ecclesiastical.

This must be fought; don't fall for their smoke screen.