American Thinker: The Great Progressive Church

Psychologists say that people need religion in one form or another, and will always invent a theology if they are not given one. I'm not the first to notice that the rise of thetic, unchurched, Godless Secular Humanists has resulted in liberals meeting this human need by converting Progressive Ideology into religious doctrine and admiration for Progressive leaders into unquestioning worship. Self-righteous calls for civility aside, this explains why they get so angry and vicious when you challenge any of their tenets. You are not disagreeing with them over policy. You are attacking the core of their religion, and their reaction is often the same as if you told a member of the Westboro Baptist Church that Jesus wasn't divine or a member of the Muslim Brotherhood that Mohammad was a fake. Blasphemy cannot be tolerated by fundamentalists of any stripe.

Of course, like all religions, the Progressive Church has degrees of belief, from the moderates, who are rather like Christmas and Easter Christians, to the Fundamentalist Progressives, who respond as you'd expect from a Salafist told that Allah wasn't really in favor of slaughtering Jews. (Why are you picking up that stone?)

To understand the Progressive Church, you must first understand that for them, intentions matter, not results for real people. If they can feel all warm and fuzzy about intendions, the actually outcomes are of no interest. Note that they find no cognitive dissonance when their principles collide with each other or with reality -- they just ignore it, in the grand tradition of many great religions...

Read more: 

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/12/the_great_progressive_church.html#ixzz2ExFrUSsz

Merry Holiday!

Watching any TV lately?  Seeing a few commercials with Christmas trees, presents, music, sales, etc., right?  Have you heard the word “Christmas” even once?

I noticed this over the Thanksgiving Turkey Day weekend; while every retailer on the planet wants you to buy your Christmas presents from them, not one out of all of them will actually say the word “Christmas” in their ads.  To someone who wants things to make sense it's a little puzzling.  I mean, I began to get the feeling it was coming after how it seemed to pain people to say “Thanksgiving”, and then seeing the absurd commercials where people talked about being generically thankful for this, that or the other thing.  And of course, they have to be just generically “thankful”, because to go any further than that would mean to actually give thanks, and if you give thanks, there has to be an object of the giving.  So I kind of get it.  If we have to acknowledge to Whom we’re giving thanks, then we have to admit that this holiday isn’t just a day of feasting and getting together with family so that you remember why you don’t get together with your family very often.  (Uncle Fred got drunk again and did what this time?)

But the Christmas thing is another whole level of weird.  I mean, I suppose I could almost be convinced that it’s a matter of not wanting to offend the Jewish consumer who is buying Hannukah presents.  Well, no, not really.  See, while I see indications of Christmas in these commercials like trees, decorations, etc., what I never, never see is a menorah.  So no, it’s not for the sake of our Jewish compatriots that we’ve foregone mentioning the name of the holiday retailers depend upon annually for their very survival and profitability.  No, this is something else entirely.  There’s a wink and nod thing going on here that is just plain bizarre.  Yes, it’s Christmas.  Yes, we want you to buy your Christmas presents here.  Yes, the sale ends on December 25^th.  Yes, there’ll be a Santa in the store.  Yes, there will be gift-wrapping services available.  Yes you’ll hear Muzak versions of Christmas carols and songs on the overhead, vocal-less so as not to offend whoever it is that might be offended.

And... there it is.  Someone cares that someone thinks someone's going to be offended by Christmas.  Not offended enough, mind you, to avoid trampling and hospitalizing a total stranger in order to get $10 off some underwear that’s the wrong size at a store from which they wouldn’t even want people to know they got their underwear.  Not offended enough to refuse the annual Christmas bonus, should they be fortunate enough to work for a company that can still afford one.  Not offended enough to tell their family members that they’re going to stick with their convictions and no longer acquiesce to these blatantly religious holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas and just lay low until New Years.

How does this work?  The only way it can…  in someone’s imagination.  The imagined offense doesn’t actually exist, but in this hideously deformed politically correct culture we’ve developed where the phrase “too bad” is reserved strangely for the majority, any possible offense to anyone other than a Christian is imagined to be the real thing and therefore avoided at any cost.  The same people who balk at saying "Christmas" seem to have no similar problem saying “the holy month of Ramadan”.  The same mouths that can’t utter the name “Jesus Christ” except in the most offensive ways (but remember, if it’s Christians who will be offended it doesn’t count) seem to have no problem at all with “the prophet Mohammed”.

That pine tree with the lights on it isn’t a Hannukah tree or a Ramadan tree, it’s not a Kwanzaa tree either.  It’s a Christmas tree.  Don’t like it?  Too bad.  Oh, and Merry Christmas!

George Will: Obama’s empty, strident campaign - The Washington Post

George Will: Obama’s empty, strident campaign - The Washington Post

By George F. Will, Published: October 31

“It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man.”

— Calvin Coolidge

Energetic in body but indolent in mind, Barack Obama in his frenetic campaigning for a second term is promising to replicate his first term, although simply apologizing would be appropriate. His long campaign’s bilious tone — scurrilities about Mitt Romney as a monster of, at best, callous indifference; adolescent japes about “Romnesia” — is discordant coming from someone who has favorably compared his achievements to those of “any president” since Lincoln, with the “possible” exceptions of Lincoln, LBJ and FDR. Obama’s oceanic self-esteem — no deficit there — may explain why he seems to smolder with resentment that he must actually ask for a second term...

The Second Amendment Does Not Grant Any Right

(Don't remember where I got this, but if anyone can tell me I'll be glad to credit it...)

The Second Amendment does not grant any right.  It states that the right (which already exists) shall not be infringed.  The Declaration of Independence clearly articulates the source of unalienable rights as our Creator. 

The Ninth Amendment, proposed along with the Second by a single act of Congress, states "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."  In order to retain something, one must first have it.  This wording makes very clear that these rights are not granted by having been mentioned in the Constitution.

This is important because the Left always tries to win the battle of definitions so we have to fight the rest of the war on their terms.  Don't surrender to the idea that government grants a right.  Government merely grants privileges and immunities, which it may then revoke at its whim.

We can't afford four more years

I mean, I don't know, maybe you can, but I can tell you I can't.

How Will Taxmageddon Impact You? The Foundry - Heritage Foundation

How Will Taxmageddon Impact You?

Excerpt:

A horrifying combination of expiring pro-growth tax policies from 2001 and 2003, the end of the once-temporary payroll tax cut, and just a few of Obamacare’s 18 new tax hikes, Taxmageddon will be the largest tax increase EVER to hit Americans. It’s nearly $500 billion in one year, starting January 1. That’s two months away.

The number $500 billion is rather large and abstract, so The Heritage Foundation has broken down the expected tax increases per person just for 2013:

• Families with an average income of $70,662: tax increase of $4,138
• Baby boomers with an average income of $95,099: tax increase of $4,223
• Low-income workers with an average income of $24,757: tax increase of $1,207
• Millennials with an average income of $23,917: tax increase of $1,099
• Retirees with an average income of $42,553: tax increase of $857

Iowa warns international observers of arrest - Bobby Cervantes - POLITICO.com

Iowa warns international observers of arrest - Bobby Cervantes - POLITICO.com

So, the OSCE is coming.  Who invited them anyway?  Who are they?  They are the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and they're here to bring the United Nations' gold standard for world corruption to a polling place near you.  But why?  Why would a "a crisis mediation and conflict resolution group in Europe, Asia and North America" be monitoring (rather uselessly, I might add) elections in America?

If anyone else were the incumbent, I'd be fascinated by the idea of an election monitoring body supposedly looking for vote fraud when we can't even get the liberales to quit with their manufactured outrage over the concept of voter ID.  But in this scenario, it has a sort of an inevitable feel to it.

Here's my question...  Everyone knows who is doing the vote fraud.  If these "observers" actually do any observing instead of just being of pawns with Democrat marching orders, they're going to know too.  So, can anyone imagine a scenario where the OSCE fingers the Democrats for their inevitable and constant cheating?  Anyone heard anything from them yet on the polling machines in several states where you choose Romney and it comes up Obama?  No?  Yeah, me neither.  Anybody else getting sick and tired of this garbage, or is it just me?

Obama Met With Panetta and Biden at WH As Benghazi Terror Attack Unfolded | CNSNews.com

Obama Met With Panetta and Biden at WH As Benghazi Terror Attack Unfolded | CNSNews.com

Imagine if we had a media in this country that reported on what's really important...

Anticipation...

Anyone remember the old ketchup commercial?  No?  I'm that old, huh?  Sigh.  Ok, anyway, like the ketchup, the wait was worth it!  Paul Ryan for VP...  Even with the debates being mangled handled by left-leaning opinion news outlets, it's still going to be great unless the Democrats simply lie and make up fake numbers and the lackeys moderators let them get away with it.  Er...  I mean, it's not like the average rank and file Democrat would know the truth from a lie, especially on matters economic.

I mean seriously, are they really going to let Joe Biden debate Paul Ryan?  I will be all popcorned-up for that one, I'll tell ya that for free!  What are the Vegas odds on how long before Biden cusses?

A World Without America - by Kyle Becker

A World Without America

By Kyle Becker on Jul 30, 2012 in Conservative Philosophy, featured opinion, Opinion

“There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation,” Adam Smith said to an anxious young man named John Sinclair, who was concerned about the British’s surrender to a rag-tag outfit of colonialists at Saratoga in 1777. Smith’s maxim is certainly being tested to the utmost by an American political class seemingly bent on national implosion.

Since the precarious period when America’s fate as a free nation was yet to be decided by a test of arms, the rugged and fiercely independent people of the New World built a country that ascended to the world’s greatest embodiment and defender of ordered liberty.

Yet a government charged to preserve the morally just system of human freedom, based on the individual rights to be secure in person and property, now threatens to be undone by a rapacious political class bent on subsuming all under an oppressive regime of coercive equalization.

Human history’s greatest champion of liberty is in dire threat of being lowered to the mediocre tier of middling dictatorships and disintegrating European welfare states.  There is a great deal of ruin a nation, as Smith once said, but the political elites who have been at the helm for the last one hundred years have in the main done everything conceivable to usher in America’s demise.

The successes of the last century are attributable to the afterglow of a philosophical revolution that sought to liberate mankind from the arbitrary caprice of statist overlords. Everything from the invention of the lightbulb to the mass production of the automobile was predicated on a consumer-driven market that exalted the profit motive as emblematic of the American Dream and a way of ensuring people were getting what they desired.

If people don’t get what they want in a market, they can stop paying for it. If the government doesn’t get what it wants from the people, it can tax them, fine them, and put them in prison. This is the normal state of affairs for mankind: some form of enslavement to whip-bearing masters.

But while the country was roused to fight and defeat European and Asian aggressors in defense of freedom, the fundamentals of civil society and market economy were being undone at home. Since the Wilson administration’s Espionage and Sedition Acts, a throwback to the rebuked Alien and Sedition Acts and Lincoln’s temporary suspension of habeas corpus, followed upon by Franklin Roosevelt’s desire to establish permanent central planning via the New Deal, the United States as a beacon of liberty has been waning.

Perhaps there was no perfect “Golden Age” of American liberty, as conservatives imagine, when the government restrained itself in deference to the rights of the people. Rather, millions of Americans were able to escape the long reach of government in the Manifest Destiny period, when the government was preoccupied with fending off external adversaries and didn’t have the manpower and resources to track tax absconders down. In any event, the settlers were serving the government’s purposes of colonization; just as did the building of the railroads. This arrangement made “freedom” all that much easier to sell in Washington.

The condition of slavery and the ineluctable but painful process of emancipation tarnished this period, when a fully committed experiment in human liberty might have demonstrated more impeccably the merits and the potential successes of the project. Yet the philosophical underpinnings of the revolution, as expressed well in the Declaration, had provided the impetus and inspiration for greater equality under the law, including Women’s Suffrage.

Surely, there was one prior period when the nation was in tremendous danger of falling apart at the seams; as Lincoln had said at that moment of tremendous trial, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” But we should also point out that a house without a foundation cannot stand.

The American Empire is consolidated, and the wars against major external foes won. The great powers of the world possess nuclear weapons, making acts of aggression against one another suicidal. We are in an extremely dangerous period when the elites of the world see one another as natural allies against the people, instead of rivals for power on the world stage.

We must grapple with the fact that those of the political class of the United States see themselves as having more in common with European sophisticates and Chinese mandarins than with the shuffling masses; or at least, America’s elites aspire to the towering heights of political control and social esteem of their globalist colleagues.

Our elected representatives are being led by their unchecked egos into a world of miserable mediocrity, inescapable impoverishment, and unrevenged atrocities; in sum, a world without America. It is a willfully blind movement of shamelessly arrogant intellectuals who refuse to grasp that even their benevolent intentions cannot ensure that vast accumulations of power will not be abused by an increasingly unaccountable stable of central planners.

And their drive also reflects a hopelessly naive outlook that cannot fathom how a world of socialist despots, Islamist potentates, and petty tyrants would want to see America brought low for less than honorable reasons. In these warped individuals’ minds, it is America, the indisputable emancipator of tens of millions from state terror and ritual genocide, which is the aggressor and the one that should be humbled. And without a doubt, there are men scrambling for power over this country whose intentions can be considered anything but benign.

But our supposed betters should ask themselves a few questions before laying low the most magnificent empire in world history:

Where will all the socialist regimes of the world be without the despised capitalist economy of America to consume their goods? Where will the hopelessly oppressed peoples of the world turn to without a country that not only cares about them but will come to their aid and rescue? Where will the money come from to pay for the exorbitant generosity of politicians who bribe voters with the money of their children?

A world without America is a lonely place without a champion of liberty. But the good news is that the nation is ultimately a reflection of who we are as people. If we seek to restore this country to greatness, we must personally embody the ideals of our Founding and promote them in the culture despite all adversity.

In essence, we are the torchbearers for our Founders’ legacy. We must enter the philosophical cave of darkness to cast light upon mankind’s future travails if our nation should fail freedom. The struggle that many American “conservatives” refused to take seriously and thus forsook for decades, which is taking the fight to our political opponents on the basis of moral principles, must be taken up in earnest if there is to be any hope of winning the long ideological war to restore the noble America of our longing.

The Gun Control Elephant In The Room

There's no shortage of opinion on the Aurora shooting.  Nothing new either; the usual suspects making the usual demands, including the standard insipid bleats for more gun control, outlawing guns, etc., etc.

Frankly, I've found it amazing that you can explain logically to these people that if you outlaw guns, what you're basically doing is taking the guns away from the people who could fight back against the bad guys.  You'll only get the guns away from the law-abiding who grudgingly give them up; the criminals aren't going to give you their illegal guns any more than they cared about acquiring them legally in the first place.  So effectively, all you're doing is making sure that the criminals end up being the only ones with guns.

I've never heard a gun control advocate give a good response to that reality.  It's at this point that they employ the liberal debate tactic that makes you want to scream, changing the subject slightly so that it seems like they're still debating even though they've fallen and they can't get up.  (And if that doesn't work, then they just get downright derisive and start insulting you and everything you believe.)

The stark reality of this situation is simply this:  there are crazy people who are going to do crazy things, and the tools they use change little or nothing about the fact that they and their actions exist.  I mean, do we seriously think that if the guy who did this couldn't get guns legally that he would have decided not to do something else instead?  Was the point of what he did killing people with guns, or was the point killing as many people as possible?  Are we honestly expected to believe that the point of the event was the use of guns and not the killing of the innocent people?  The apartment contained dozens of home-made booby-traps constructed from liquid explosives, chemical, powders and bullets, according to the Washington Post.  A guy who wants to kill will find a way to kill.  What we should do is outlaw killing.  Oh, wait...

Yes, this criminal procured his weapons legally and that's pretty much not preventable, because he was the extremely rare case where there was no history with the law or mental health services.  There was nothing about this guy (so far) to raise a red flag and say he shouldn't be able to acquire what he wants to in a sort of free country; there was no indication he'd do anything wrong with it.  If we're going to live in a society where we're going to say people can't have something because they might do something wrong with it, then we're in trouble.  You'll have to take away the cars, because sometimes people go berserk and drive them into a crowd.  You'll have to take away airplanes for similar reasons.  You'll have to take away 2X4s, because there's the possibility of swinging one at someone and injuring them.  And so on.  And let's say no one could buy a gun.  This guy obviously lived in Unibomber territory mentally; are you seriously telling me he wouldn't have just shifted his modus operandi to using explosives or something else for his plans?  Don't insult my intelligence.

Gun control is a "solution" looking for a problem.  The problem isn't guns, it's criminality.  More laws will not change anything.  If laws were the answer, we'd have no criminal activity already.  Oddly, the same people who argue for gun control often argue for decriminalizing drugs, and one reason they give is that it takes away the incentive for drug cartels to exist and work outside the law.  If you outlaw guns so that none can be purchased, the law-abiding certainly won't have any, but what do you think the criminal element will do?  Of course, exactly the same thing the drug crowd has done; go underground and grow their own.  How long before you have a black market for guns being manufactured and sold not by corporations but by cartels and gangs?  How would this be an improvement?

Aurora shows us what happens when the guns are taken away from the good guys; making that theater a "gun free zone" also made it a slaughterhouse killing pen.  Who can say what would have happened if when this pathetic figure threw that tear gas canister (where did he get tear gas anyway?) and fired that first shot, 15 legally armed citizens had stood up and opened fire?  Could he have been stopped?  Maybe.  He certainly would have been slowed down and couldn't have done as much damage.  I'll take "maybe" over "no chance" at all any day.

In the end, guns are like nukes.  Neither one is going away, and you can't pass laws that will make the bad guys get rid of theirs.  In other words, no matter what you do, the bad guys will always have them. The question is, will the good guys be able to defend themselves and their loved ones?  A cold war is better than a hot war, but even a hot war is better than an outright slaughter of the helpless.  Taking away guns from the law-abiding does nothing but tell the bad guys that no one can stop them.  It guarantees not less violence, but more and worse violence.  Think carefully about your position on guns, yours or that of a family member may someday be the life that a firearm in the hands of a law-abiding citizen saves...

Hey Stupid, They Mean YOU!

One would think by now that Americans would get what's going on.  Recent polls, however, continue to show a startlingly high incidence of "head in sand syndrome".  So it's time to spell it out.  This won't take long, but please pay attention if you're one of the ones who still plans to vote to re-elect the president who makes Carter look good.

I'll be honest up front; if you're on the government dole, part of that rapidly growing demographic being built to ensure Democrats are elected until the soon-to-come day when America swirls down the pipe, this isn't for you.  Stop reading now, because there's about a 1% chance you may end up feeling guilty and I wouldn't want that to happen.  Oh, who am I kidding?  Hahaha!

Maybe today, maybe within the next couple of days, comes "Tax Day" or "Cost of Government Day".  Do you know what that is?  It's the day where those of us who actually pay federal income taxes (all 51% of us who aren't the recipients of the redistribution of our earnings) finally get done paying for the cost of government, get done paying for other people and their families and begin to earn money to take care of our own families.  That's right, if you're one of the privileged to actually pay federal income taxes in this country anymore, you work until some time in July for the great social experiment's entitlement society and the cost of continually growing government.  Less than half of your income, around 45% maybe, do you get to keep.  (FWIW, the founding fathers had a word for what to do in a situation like this, it was "revolution".)

But hey, it's for a good cause, right?  I mean, Congress needs Cadillac health plans, right?  The president and his wife should live like royalty in America, playing over a hundred rounds of golf while Rome burns, spending millions on every whim, eating lobster everywhere they go, right?  We absolutely need to be nation-building in the quagmire of a so-called country whose impossibility had a great part in the demise of the Soviet Union, right?  And by all means, we should be maintaining an annual $1.3T deficit, never passing a responsible budget, spending obscene sums of money on only government knows what, growing our debt by completely unpayable amounts of money every year just for the sake of, well, I don't know, do you?

Now I know, my intended audience isn't reading this.  If they did, it wouldn't matter, because the last few sentences would have sounded like Charlie Brown's teacher...  Wa wa wa wa wa...  The people who are the problem only seem to hear one thing: "free stuff".  The government is going to give me free stuff.  Like free healthcare.  And free checks for doing nothing but sitting around and watching Oprah or worse.  They only hear things like "fair share", "tax the rich", "Bush tax cuts", "capitalism has failed", etc.  Ok, let's talk about a few of those then.

Fair share.  So, you pay nothing or close to it and I pay 65% of my income.  I have an idea.  How about we ALL pay 65% of our income as long as those of us who actually pay income taxes have to?  How about YOU start paying your fair share?  Sounds great, right?  No?  Then what makes you think it's "fair" for us to pay YOUR share?!?

Tax the rich.  Really?  Tell me you're not that ignorant.  Wealth is not taxed in America, INCOME is.  Who earns income?  Wage earners and businesses.  So your great plan for getting America out of the insane mess we're in is to tax into oblivion the people who create the jobs and the people who buy the products and services that keep those companies going?  What exactly DO they teach in the public schools anymore?  Aside from stuff that really should be taught by parents anyway, that is?  The rich in America won't even notice what your pet socialist government is doing because THEY are the rich and THEY will make sure that THEY are not affected.  THEY will never tax "wealth", THEY will simply continue to target income because people who actually earn money don't vote for THEM anyway.  Get it?

Bush tax cuts.  Um, if they've been around for a decade, we probably ought to be calling them standard tax rates and making them permanent.  Because anything you do now that involves letting any part of them expire, including the president's brain cramped idea of extending them only for "the middle class" amounts to a tax INCREASE and even the smartest man in the world said himself not so long ago that you never raise taxes in a recession.  And if you don't think we're in a recession, maybe you should watch less Oprah and get out there and have a look around.  Of course, if you're like him and you think that adjusting the workforce numbers so that you can fake an unemployment number of 8.2% means the recession is over, then yeah, I guess maybe it may be time to raise taxes.  (Real unemployment, by the measuring standard used during the Bush administration, is still over 10%.)

Capitalism has failed.  I love this one.  The government meddles in the free markets to the point where it's a conflicting mess of instruction like the ones that made HAL go insane in "2001: A Space Odyssey" and then blame the failure on capitalism.  The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (hey, there's Carter again!) demanded that banks make loans to lower income and inner city entities who banks would normally see as bad risk.  (Yeah, this is the part where you yell "RACIST!"  Go ahead, it's ok, I'll wait.  There, feel better?)  Now could there have been some banks who were being unfair?  Sure.  But you know what's cool about capitalism in its un-government-adulterated form?  You can just go try another bank.  Now, if ALL the banks laugh when you ask for $300,000 and you make, um, burritos at a certain fast-food pseudo-Mexican joint, well, maybe they're not being racist, maybe they think you can't make enough burritos to possibly pay off that loan.  So why should they give it to you?  I mean, I ended up with a fairly small house knowing the bank wouldn't think I was a reasonable risk for a half-million dollar lake-front mansion, does that make them anti-white-people too?  (Or maybe it's that I look vaguely Hispanic...)  Here's the key:  I didn't try to take out a loan I knew I couldn't pay.  So the banks had instructions to make bad loans, all these bad loans on the books, AND instructions not to have bad loans on the books.  Is it any wonder they did what they did?  What else were they supposed to do?

Free healthcare.  This one may be the best of all.  Think about this.  Is anything free, or doesn't someone always end up paying for it?  You realize that it is entirely possible to destroy the system by putting too heavy a burden on it, right?  I won't spell this one out, I'll let it be a surprise.  And believe me, if you think the Affordable Care Act was a good thing, then you sure are going to be surprised!  But here's a hint.  No one writes a 2,000 page bill and then rushes it through claiming "you have to pass it to see what in it" if it's a good thing.  If it's a good thing, you tell people what's in it and they beg for it.  When people find out what's in this thing they're going to beg for forgiveness for supporting the whole mess.

Here's the bottom line.  Moral constraints aside, a vote to re-elect is a vote for the end of America.  It's a vote for crippling taxes for earners, class warfare for everyone, huge socialistic government and a regulatory nightmare that makes entrepreneurs and corporations (you know, the employers) throw up their hands and leave the country.  (You'd think by now that even leftists would realize that more jobs means more revenue to spend on their crazy ideas.)  Now, if that's what you want, and you feel strongly about it, then technically I applaud you for standing up for your beliefs, especially because success to you includes your own personal destruction and you realize this and embrace it.  Sort of like how everyone who claims that euthanasia is a good idea should eventually commit suicide for the greater good.  If you're  a proponent of euthanasia but think YOU should live to die of natural causes no matter how old you get, we have a word for that:  hypocrite.  Likewise, if you're voting for the destruction of America because you think it should be destroyed and you should go down with it, then good for you.  But if it's just that you're too ignorant, uninformed or generally thought-less to realize that this man is a destroyer, then shame on you.  You are responsible for your vote, it's not something "cool" that you do on a whim.  If you're voting because you think it's about time America had a black president, well, been there done that got the $5 trillion dollar t-shirt, let it go.  America is over the racism thing, we elected a black president, now it's time to move on and elect someone whose agenda does not include the relegation of America to the garbage heap of history.  It's time to move on and elect someone whose agenda doesn't include taking what the earners earn and giving it to the non-earners for no other reason than simply to buy their votes with our money for future elections.

So Happy Cost Of Government Day, America.  There's no 1% and 99%.  They'd love you to buy that lie.  It's 51% and 49%.  51% of us pay for everything.  49% pay no federal income tax at all, and actually receive "rebate" checks.  Yeah, from the 51%.  Because of the jokers we elect.  And when that number flips the middle, and there are more not paying than paying, it's over.

When they talk about taxing the rich, they're talking about YOU.  Get it?

What I Miss About America

By Stella Paul at American Thinker.

Here are just a few of the things I miss since America entered the golden age of Hope and Change in January 2009.

1. Optimism
2. Going for minutes, hours, even days, without worrying about what weird insanity the government is dreaming up next
3. Having money
4. The Border Patrol
5. Looking up at the moon and thinking, "America - we own space!"
6. Having a president whose background isn't more closely guarded than the formula for Coke
7. Going on vacation without the TSA auditioning me for "Stella Does Dallas"
8. Jobs
9. Not feeling like I have to whisper, if I say something that's not completely, 100% complimentary about our president
10. Listening to the latest rant against Israel at the UN, without wondering if it's coming from the American Ambassador
11. Feeling protected
12. Having a president who doesn't want to fundamentally transform me
13. Getting a doctor's appointment right away and not thinking, "That was nice while it lasted."
14. Having a president who would never, ever bow to the Saudi king, the Chinese premier, the Japanese prime minister and the mayor of Tampa
15. Gazing up at the sky and not wondering if that's a bird or a drone
16. Snacking on whatever I want, while the First Lady remains calm and indifferent
17. Having a president who thinks it would be unimaginably crazy to bring the 9/11 conspirators to New York for a civil trial
18. Privacy
19. Separation of State and Media
20. College graduates with a future in America, not China or Hong Kong
21. Having a president who inspires us to feel that Americans are all in this game together
22. A dollar that's worth 100 cents and isn't signed by a tax cheat
23. America's Triple-A rating
24. Having a president who doesn't seem needier for attention than Paris Hilton
25. Strolling through the mall without worrying about racially-motivated flash mobs
26. Looking at maps without trying to figure out where I can run
27. Reading 1984 as an interesting work of fiction
28. Dignity
29. Pride

What do you miss?

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/07/what_i_miss_about_america.html#ixzz20Pp153ib

7 Reasons Americans Are So Complacent About Our Country's Impending Bankruptcy - John Hawkins - Page 1

7 Reasons Americans Are So Complacent About Our Country's Impending Bankruptcy - John Hawkins - Page 1

It's About The Children!

Something very interesting is going on in the Workers' Utopia a little to the south...  the Chicago Teachers Union has voted to go on strike.  90% in favor.  "The vote not only exceeded the 75 percent required by state law, but some school networks voted 100 percent to authorize a strike, the union said."  Because, as always, it's about the children.  You know, the Chicago children with the 50% graduation rate?

Why?  I think I'll just give you the exact words of union president Karen Lewis to avoid any confusion or sense that my sarcasm and supreme annoyance is getting in the way of actually just reporting what's going on:

"They asked for a 20 percent increase in our school day and year, so we asked for a 20 percent concomitant raise to that. They stole four percent of our raises from the last contract, so we asked for that. Then we asked for a five percent raise," said Lewis.

Personally, I couldn't be more excited, and I'm serious.  For the Chicago teachers to pull this stunt right on the heels of the resounding "ENOUGH!" spoken by their neighbors to the north just last week, well, to say it's rich is an understatement.  But it's good.  CTU apparently has little sense of context, irony, or pretty much anything outside of their demands du jour.  And at this time that is a very good thing.

The spotlight is on you, public sector unions.  Think about your situation.  The gravy train has left the station.  In fact, the gravy train has pretty much jumped the track; it's gone and it's not coming back.  What you've got you should be happy with, because unless I'm reading Emmanuel wrong, it's what you're getting.  If you were smart, you'd hunker down and lay low until the economic storm passes (assuming that it will).  Instead, you jump up with a golf club in your hand, waving it in the sky, daring the lightning to hit you?  It's still a free country, sort of, but do you really want to do that?  Lighting just struck here in Wisconsin, and they said it was impossible here too.

If you'd climb out of your bubble, you might notice something.  The only people singing "Solidarity Forever" anymore are you guys, and your numbers are dwindling.  People of conscience are simply worn out and tired of trying to ignore what they're affiliated with...  and they're leaving.  Union membership anywhere there's still freedom is falling rapidly.  And the rest of us out here in the real world, frankly, are simply fed up with your whining and demanding.  ENOUGH!

Let me tell you about a real job in the real world.  In the real world, when there's more work than workers, the boss says, "You're going to need to come in on Saturday", (and maybe Sunday too) and you do.  No overtime, no extra time, nothing but lost time.  And many of us out here are salaried employees.  The phone rings at 3AM, I have to get up and go fix the problem.  I don't get an extra penny, I don't get to make demands, I don't get to say anything except to give an ETA as to when I think I'll have the task completed.  I've been on call 24/7 for 9 years straight.  I work through all my vacations and frequently lose vacation days at the end of the year because I couldn't take them or just had so much work that I never got around to it.  My children know that when we are on vacation, there's a good chance that I'm going to miss out on part of it because I'll be stuck in the hotel room on the computer while they're off having fun with their mother.  And it's use them or lose them; I don't take the vacation days, I don't get a lump sum for them someday like you guys.

Hmm, what else?  Well, I have no company-paid-for pension I can retire on, and then go double or triple-dip the system.  I'm grateful for what they have given me, but frankly it would cover pretty much my funeral and burial expenses at this point and that's about it.  After 9 years. And as for health care, I have to take out $4,000 a year to put into a flex account to cover co-pays and such...  and that's after what they're taking out of my salary to cover the health plan.  Be glad I don't have THAT number handy, because it would shut up your mouth.  I sure don't get summers off to bum around or take a fake class or two so I can get a sort-of Masters Degree so that I can demand more money.  In fact, I can't demand anything, ever.  If I did, I'd be outside with a cardboard box containing the few things here that actually belong to me.

But you know what?  I am not complaining.  I am immeasurably blessed and extremely grateful to have this job.  I know how many people are out there who wish they had this job.  It humbles me that I'm the one who does in this economy.

You see, teachers unions, you have been lied to by your union leadership, and rather than check the things they tell you against reality you just buy it all because you want to.  You don't want to check if it's true because if you do, you'll be forced to see that your constant complaints and demands about a deal that's incredibly sweeter than anyone out here is getting (short of executives) are tone-deaf, selfish, and have made you look as though it really IS about the children...  it's just that we initially misidentified who the "children" are.  You've been brainwashed.  Your union leadership enables you to believe that you are the oppressed class, always put upon, never adequately compensated.  The truth is that for awhile now you have been the privileged class, and your constant demands for more and more serve only to anger those of us who you apparently think only exist to support you at the expense of the support of our own families.  

Guess what?  Things are tough.  The rest of us out here are fed up with paying more and more taxes to support your preposterously selfish demands.  Be glad you have a job.  Be glad you have retirement.  Be glad you have healthcare plans.  Remember who is paying for them...  through the nose.  And if you can't do that, then at least have some common decency and sit down and shut up!  Be glad you're not in the private sector, where you'd probably be canned simply for making the insane demand of a 30% increase just because your company needed more work done and you felt put upon.  And be glad I'm not in charge, because I'd privatize the entire education system, terminate any relationship with the union whatsoever and let you re-apply for your jobs individually based on your merit...  with a private sector corporation like where so many the rest of us who currently have to pay for your parasitic insanity actually work.


[Quotes are from NBC News 5 in Chicago "Nearly 90 Percent of Teachers Authorize Strike"]

The Eleventh Hour

All right Wisconsin, and to some degree America by extension, it's the eleventh hour.  Tomorrow determines whether reform is possible, or if the powers that scream (when you ask them to carry their share of the burden rather than actually being the burden) will rule the day and bring on the night.

Over the past several decades, the public education system, run by the left, has managed to influence society to where it is today.  Conscience has become a quaint throwback to a past whose faith and desire to do the right thing is now seen as superstition and radical fundamentalism by people who demand acceptance and tolerance of themselves and their priorities by the people whose priorities they belittle and disdain and certainly will not accept or tolerate.  Such is the double-standard of the left.  When the right says, "Enough, parasites, we're already paying too much!", the left responds with, "It will be enough when we say it's enough, and we didn't say anything yet!"

The left demands that the right pay for it, pure and simple.  The disgusting Sandra Fluke story was a perfect example...  It's almost inconceivable to me that someone would even be so undignified as to publicly demand that society pay for her contraception, and yet there she was before God and everyone doing just that, whining about how she couldn't afford it...  in law school.  We on the right have a suggestion/solution for you Sandra, but we realize you may find it a little too pragmatic for your tastes...

In Wisconsin, the injury added to the insult is that the left's poor, down-trodden union types, the oh-so-grievously injured party here generally have better pay and benefits than the average corporate employee... at the cost of the taxpayer.  (I am grateful for everything I receive from my employer as compensation.  But the truth is that it's nothing like what a teacher gets in this town...  If I want to retire, I have to pay for it out of that compensation.  Not quite the same deal for the public sector union people who live off my taxes.)  And yet, every year, every election, every contract renewal, we of the property-tax-paying class who are not of the public-sector-union-employee-million-dollar-pension-receiving class are expected to just pony up; whip out those checkbooks and pay even MORE taxes in a state whose property taxes already annihilate the limits of sanity.  (My property could not fit two of my 1,000 square foot house on it no matter how creative you got, and I am paying $3,000 a year no matter how low the now-five-figure value of my house goes.  If you don't think $3,000 a year on a house valued at $97,000 is insane, than one of two things is true:  you own property in California or you've lived in Wisconsin far too long.)

The left in Wisconsin wants you to believe that Scott Walker has done something wrong.  The "wrong" thing Scott Walker did had to be done because of the wrong things the left has been doing for decades, and the only wrong thing about it was that it took so long to get done.  Why did Scott Walker kill collective bargaining for public sector unions?  Because that was the only way to get rid of the rapacious WEA Trust health insurance gouging scheme that was charging the taxpayers of the school districts millions of dollars more than equivalent plans from other insurers such as United Healthcare.  Why did Scott Walker stop the government from doing the unions' dirty work collecting union dues from paychecks?  Because it's the right thing to do!  In what reality should the government be working for unions on the taxpayer dime anyway?  I mean, really, no one sees the massive conflict of interest here?  The interests of the unions are at odds with the interests of the customer, the taxpayer.  This isn't really that hard to figure out.

The left hates Scott Walker in Wisconsin not because he did something wrong, or even did something wrongly.  They hate him because he had the nerve to stand up and say, "Hey, you're ripping off the taxpayer, and I'm not going to sit for it."  The man should get a medal.

Time For Some Heavy Metal...

QE3 is coming...

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Our Composite President | Washington Free Beacon

Our Composite President | Washington Free Beacon

The 2012 National Debt Road Trip

Oh boy, are you going to be surprised...

Hey conservative!  Yeah you, doing a jig and high-fiving your buddies now that it's starting to look like the Supreme Court might not actually just roll over for the individual mandate.  What do you think is going on here?  Have you learned nothing in the past three years?

Oh, I know, you think the president is a detached, hyper-partisan goof who is way in over his head.  You think the people he's surrounded himself with are a bunch of incompetent buffoons, typified by that preposterous performance at the Supreme Court this week by Solicitor General Verrilli.  You probably think that, finally, a win for the good guys is on the horizon.

I, unfortunately, am the Crusher of Silly Dreams today, and I'm here to beat you about the head and shoulders with truth.  The truth lies not in the panicked, breathless reporting of CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin as it dawns on him that the individual mandate may indeed be struck down due to its abject unconstitutionality.  The truth is most certainly not that if this happens it's a victory for freedom and liberty in America even though the ignorant are selling it to you that way.   The truth is absolutely not that the administration "has no Plan B" for if the individual mandate is struck down.

Come on, you say.  You're about to accuse me of playing for the other side.  That couldn't be farther from the truth either.  And once I explain the truth to you, I expect I'll hear one of two sounds:  the sound of your facepalm or the sound of you not getting it until it happens, the latter of the two sadly having become the theme song of the tattered fragments of the conservative/constructionist movement of late.  (But just for the record, I want the entire law struck down.  Strike down part of it and the remainder only becomes even more toxic.)

So let me spell it out for you:  The individual mandate was meant to fail.  It was always meant to fail.  Think about this.  What do they want?  A single-payer system (government-run health care where the only payer is the government) where choice is killed and decisions are in the hands of government bureaucrats who know better than doctors what you should get.  When do they want it?  As soon as they can shove it down your unwitting throat.  I mean, nothing about this is a surprise, go search YouTube and you'll find video of everyone who is anyone on the left all the way up to the President saying that's what they want to do to us, I mean for us.

Let's say the Supreme Court upholds the individual mandate in some bizarro world where the commerce clause can actually be interpreted such a way as to support forcing citizens to purchase product.  (Hey, after some of the creativity that's been foisted on the first and second amendments over the years, it wouldn't be that much of a surprise, would it?)  How does that get us to single-payer?  Well, really, it doesn't any time soon because forcing everyone to get insurance means more income for the insurance companies to help cover the enforced losses.  (Universal healthcare, yes, but remember, single-payer is the real goal here.)  Hmm.  This left, this president...  this Reid and Pelosi...  wanting the insurance companies to make more money or even break even?  That would only be plausible if the insurance companies weren't corporations, or if any of these valiant, selfless public servant-leaders owned them.  Or if they could be unionized or were green energy companies with pre-failed business models, but that's another whole galaxy of pudding.

So let's leave the insurance companies as standard corporations outside the left's "most-favored pet industry status" where they belong.  What is the corporation-hating left's interest in insurance companies?  Two-fold:  their revenue stream and their destruction.  How do you get rid of insurance companies and get their money?  Actually, it's pretty easy.  Make it so they have no choice but to supply coverage at any time, regardless of pre-existing condition, to anyone who applies even from the hospital and force them to compete against the federal government's printing presses.  Premiums naturally skyrocket, employers drop coverage and opt to pay the $2,000 fine per employee over the five-figure cost of coverage.  Private insurers go out of business and viola!  Single-payer government-run health care.  Government is all that remains, insurance premiums are converted to taxes, nothing to it.  But, you say, that's too obvious, hardly anyone who hasn't been mind-faked as badly as say someone in the Occupy false movement would ever go for that.  (Sigh, more pudding.)  And you would be correct.  They barely even went for it even with the individual mandate, which apparently was enough to make the insurance companies betray themselves and get in line behind it.  Apparently people figured if the insurance companies think it's ok then it must be ok enough that I'll get to keep my insurance.

In a nutshell, what if you passed a law that forced huge costs and liabilities upon the insurance industry that would normally make it impossible for them to continue, but then promised them tens of millions of young, new customers who are cheap to cover to refill the coffers?  Yeah, dogs behind a meat truck.  (Yes, there used to be meat trucks.)

So far so good, where's the evil plot, right?  Imagine that the administration knew the individual mandate would fail SCOTUS, and wrote it specifically with that in mind.  In other words, what if they intentionally wrote the law so that part of it would be struck down, leaving the rest to stand without it and do the job they couldn't really say the law was meant to do in the first place?  It was meant to look like universal healthcare.  It was meant to create single-payer healthcare, universal or not.  And this is why all the waivers were granted; they don't matter.  In a couple of years, they'll evaporate with the private insurers.

I know what you're thinking, provided you're one of the six people who have been paying any attention to this situation at all.  "But there's no severability clause in the law, therefore if they strike down one part they have to strike it all down."  Umm, no.  Not even close.  The only reason they would have to do that is if by striking down one part of it, the law becomes something that Congress didn't vote for; in other words, it has a completely different effect than the original bill.  That does not apply to this situation.  It may seem like it does, after all, wasn't this about all those poor people who can't get insurance?  Think back.  What did the Congress think they were voting on?  Frankly, it's hard to guess, but mostly something that the president and his agonizingly brilliant henchpersons in the House and Senate claimed would lower the cost of healthcare despite the impossibility of comprehending it, or even reading it, before the vote was taken.  2,700 pages of "you have to pass it to see what is in it".  Do you honestly think that any coherent argument could be made that by striking down any particular feature of this legislative hydra you've changed the intent of a law the lawmakers voting on it admittedly did not understand and thereby made it into something they did not think it was?  Why did you think they had to vote on it before anyone read it?  Plausible deniability.  They knew it was a total lie before they got done killing the forest they printed it on, but if they could say they never had a chance to actually read it...

What, you don't think this is possible?  You're still under the false impression that these are political Keystone Cops and ivory-tower academics who don't know what they're doing?  I understand.  The old saying goes, "The best place to hide an elephant is at the circus."  (I'd love to make a wisecrack about the best place to hide a donkey, but I'll leave that to your imagination.)  I was with you at first, I really wanted to think that this bunch really had no idea what they were doing.  The problem is that they have a game plan, and they have tactics, they're following both to the letter and even broadcasting it for anyone who will pay attention because they think it's over and they've won.  They have masterfully made it appear that they are bumbling, when what they're doing is more like a ballet.  The game plan is "The Road We're Traveling", by Stuart Chase (1942).  Chase is the guy who coined the term "The New Deal".  And of course, the tactics are from Saul Alinsky's "Rules For Radicals".  If you ever get bored, look up the dedication in "Rules For Radicals".  Once you've read that, it will all become clear to you.  Or, I suppose, you can take the blue pill, go back to your red-white-and-blue "we beat the commies" celebration and make believe that all is well when the individual mandate is struck down.  If you're on the government plan in a few years because your insurer folded up and disappeared, I promise won't say anything if I see you acting surprised.  I do have compassion.  But in all seriousness, it's time to take the red pill.  Going back to sleep is no longer an option.  We're nearly defeated and we haven't even started fighting yet.

Someday I suspect we're going to look back on this day with a grudging admiration for a ruthless enemy who defeated us long before we even understood we were at war.  The Progressives have been building this day for a hundred years.  While we celebrate the possible death of the individual mandate, champagne bottles are waiting in undisclosed locations all over the left for the day the announcement of the things we are currently celebrating is made.

Solicitor General Verrilli's performance this week was not a failure.  It was spit in the eye of the founders.  It was a one-finger salute to those who love this country and wish to preserve it.  It was Progressivism dancing on the grave of freedom.