Knownothingism???

John Kerry accuses the Republicans of ushering in an era of know nothingism. He claims that folks like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are confusing the electorate making them think Dems are responsible for our current condition. This makes me scratch my head in total wonderment.

The Dems have been in charge of both the house and the senate since 06. They have been in control of all legislation that got passed. They controlled all of the sub-committees and thus in control of everything that would come up for a vote. Since 08 they have had the house, senate and the White House. Their numbers were so large that they were filibuster proof. There was nothing the Repubs could do against them!

Now this moron is claiming that our condition is not their fault???

Take a look at the states where they have been in charge for years. California, New York, Ohio, Illinois, all of them are in trouble because the Democratically controlled state governments were developing European style social democratic systems. Systems that punished success with higher and higher taxes so they could reinforce those who are not productive. All of these states are now on the financial shoals as they are having fewer and fewer folks they can rob in in order to support their socialistic schemes.

Now after 4 years of Dems being in total control of the entire country and them trying to implement the same policies for the entire country, we see ourselves headed down the same path. What is it they say? "The definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing expecting a different result."

Now this fraudulent Purple Heart, lying Viet Nam vet, opportunistic marrying slug accuses us of being know nothings because we believe the Dems are to be held accountable! I would postulate that the exact opposite is true.

The Dems are not in trouble because the public is uninformed. The Dems are in trouble because we are aware. For the first time since Clinton in '94 or possibly since the Carter era, the public has been forced to wake up and say "Whoaa! WTF are you clowns doing? This not what this country is about. We didn't become a great country through the efforts of government. We became a great country through the efforts of individuals!"

Americans are poised to tell the Dems to get the hell out of the way and let us do what we do!

The electorate is going to tell the Dems like Kurt Russell told Ike Clanton in "Tombstone", "You tell 'em I'm coming and Hell is coming with me!"

Democratic Shenanigans

I don't know where to start! I'm so flummoxed with the crap going on around the country. Clearly the liberals will do literally anything to win.

That sleazy, door to door vacuum salesman looking, Harry Reid, in conjunction with various unions are blatantly bribing folks for votes. If I didn't know better I might think that ACORN was involved. Oh wait, they probably were! I do seem to remember the ACORN in Chief being out in NV trying to help the little dweeb.

To think that in a state with around 15% unemployment, caused in large part by the actions and policies put in place by liberals and unions, they would literally try to buy votes with food giveaways and gift cards in exchange for votes. It is truly disgraceful.

No, wait, one must first have some semblance of honor before they can be disgraced, and clearly, the liberals have lost any honor they may have had.

On top of this Nevada debacle, in PA, one Democratic operative, during a taped interview, admitted to their using of the old time practice of giving out "walking around" money. Straight up votes for cash. A literal attempt to buy the election.

Already in NV and NC, reports are coming in of "malfunctioning" voting machines. Machines where voters will try to vote Republican but the machine keeps registering Democrat. Or when they open the ballot the democrat is already selected.

One might believe that this is just a random malfunction. But if that were the case, wouldn't you expect at least a few of these malfunctions to go the way of the conservatives? I don't suppose the fact that union folks are in charge of machine maintenance, at least in NV, would have anything to do with it, do you?

And then there is this topper to the whole cake. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the most liberal federal court in the land, has over turned the AZ 2004 law requiring voters to show proof of citizenship to vote. What a concept! To insure that the people who vote in this country's elections are actually citizens of this country! But Nooooo! The leg warmer wearing, tree hugging, worry about feelings over what is right, San Francisco based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would hate to put obstacles in the path of someone trying to vote.

Is it really asking to much of a citizen of this great country to verify that they are truly a citizen before participating in the selection of the individuals who will chart the nations course? Heck, you have to be a stock holder of IBM before you can vote on who the board will be. Shouldn't we be at least as vigilant about who makes the laws for our country as any company is about who will lead it?

When I look at all the horse squeeze going on out there, I truly fear for the future of this country if we don't have a course correction soon. That opportunity is next week.

Rand Paul

Wow! I just listened to Dr. Rand Paul talking to Dennis Miller on a clip from last weeks Dennis Miller Radio Show. I'm ready to move to Kentucky just so I can vote for him.

DM asked him to list the top 4 or 5 changes he would make if he could. They were:

1. He would require all Senators and Congressmen to read a bill before they would be allowed to vote on it. (What a concept!)

2. He would mandate a wait of 1 day for every 20 pages of a bill before it could be voted upon. (Had this rule been in place they would have had to wait 116 days to vote on the health care bill. How many of those yes votes would have been no votes if 116 days of revelations been allowed to surface prior to the vote?)

3. Every bill would be required to identify where in the constitution they got the authority to do what the bill was proposing to do. (Just imagine the mental gymnastics they would have to go through to connect many of these things they foist upon us to the constitution. The very document that is supposed to guide all things governmental in this great country of ours.) and

4. Congress should pass no bill that they themselves are exempted from. (How many of those yahoos would have voted for the health care bill if they thought they were going to have to use that gawd awful system for their own health care?)

The apple didn't fall to far from the tree here. Clearly Rand has inherited many political beliefs from his father, Ron Paul, the former Libertarian now Republican Senator from Texas.

Rand shows many Libertarian leanings. One of the clearest being his desire to have all bills trace their roots to the constitution. Libertarians believe that the central and state governments only have the powers enumerated in the constitution. All powers not specifically given through the constitution then reside within the people themselves. The sole role of government is to protect individuals life, liberty and property from being taken or impinged upon through the use of force or fraud! Period.

Go Rand, Go!

We need more folks like you and your father looking out for our individual rights!

And Now I Know

I have often wondered how in the world certain elections could have possibly turned out the way they had been reported. I now know. Read the following paragraph and do the math. I'm willing to bet the board of elections in this case is controlled by the Democrats.

"About 2,200 people had voted in the county by mid-day yesterday since the start of early voting. Slightly more than half the voters were Democrats, with Republicans making up 36 percent and unaffiliated voters making up another 15 percent, a board of elections official said."

This statement was given in the aftermath of the email that was sent out from the Winston-Salem State University's Student Affairs Office encouraging students to vote early and vote Democratic. Reminds me of the Chicago admonition to "Vote Early....Vote Often!"

So according to this Board of Elections Official over 50% of the voters are Democrats, 36% are Republican and 15% are unaffiliated bringing us to just over 101%. This makes me think of the old joke,"What are the 3 worst years of a North Carolina boy's life? ..... The 4th grade!" badump bump! Clearly the Forsyth County election board had a long 3 years.

But it is this type of math that allows Minnesota Senator Al Franken to lose the election on election day, but after 3 months of recounting and "discovering" votes, to eventually win! I seem to recall the very same thing happening in the Washington State gubernatorial election a few years ago also.

Funny how this revisionist math always seems to favor the Democrats.

As I believe the line from Alice in Wonderland goes ....... Curiouser and curiouser.

Another Viet Nam

The leg warmer, panty wearing, tree hugger set turned out to be right about the war in Afghanistan after all. Afghanistan is turning out to be another Viet Nam. And for the same reasons!

The politicians are not letting the soldiers do their jobs.

I remember guys coming back from Nam talking about their rules of engagement. They told me they would fly missions to the north and watch SAM sites being built and were not allowed to destroy them until they fired on our flights! That is a politician's decision. A soldier would never, ever, make such a rule.

Now I read about the rules of engagement our guys are laboring under and have to shake my head. Our soldiers are fired on from a position close to a village and they are not allowed to return fire because they might hit an "innocent". What a crock of horse squeeze.

Our soldiers actually see some dirt bag fire on them and then drop his weapon. They are not allowed to arrange a meeting with allah for this creep because he is no longer holding a weapon.

No wonder our soldiers are having troubles coming back from this type of idiocy! Our political class would rather our own boys die than possibly have some nominally innocent noncombatant get injured.

As John Stuart Mill so aptly put it, "War is an ugly thing...". It should be avoided and undertaken only after careful deliberation. However, once the decision has been made, the military should be given all of the support and supplies the nation can muster and then get out of their way. The purpose of the military is to break things and kill people. Once you unleash the hounds of war, let them do their best.

I submit to you that if we unleash all holy hell with devastating effect, we will actually save lives in the long run, both theirs and ours. By letting the politicians ham string our forces because they are worried about what others think we only make it easier for our foes to carry on the fight and encourage their supporters.

If, on the other hand, a withering attack is laid upon them, the will to fight can be taken from them. I give you Japan and the end of WWII as an example. They were prepared to fight yo the last village until the bomb was dropped on them. Yes, a couple of hundred thousand people were killed in an instant and that was terrible, however, millions would have lost their lives and the entire country would have been laid to waste had we gone about it in the way we had up to that point. As awful as Nagasaki and Hiroshima were, in the big picture they saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Not only does this unleashing of hell shorten the fight, it reduces the likelihood of someone else attacking us. If they see the destruction we not only can but are willing to loose on them, it will give them serious second thoughts before striking out at us.

Now our politicians make the decision to go to war, then worry about the PR aspects and proceed to handicap our forces so it makes their job WAY more difficult if not impossible.

Yes Afghanistan is becoming another Viet Nam, but it's not the military's fault. It's the fault of the lilly livered liberals and the weak kneed politicians!

What Did You Expect

Once again the headlines raise my "Boy ain't that ironic!" quotient. The first read "Teacher in oval office when Obama signed the educational stimulus bill.....laid off." the second read "CT Blue Cross/Blue Shield to raise rates up to 47%."

Now if these two headlines don't point out the ineptitude of the current PotUS to those who voted for him, nothing ever will!

PresBO spends millions and billions of dollars he had to borrow from China to "stimulate" the economy. This a patently bad plan on two fronts. First, government is not the engine that drives the economy. The economy is driven when consumers want products and have the resources to purchase them. This then encourages producers to increase their efforts employing more people, who then have more income to spend and so on and so on. Government throwing out one time buckets of cash does not affect this equation in the long run, it only makes a one time blip in the purchasing, not a sustained demand.

The second disastrous effect is that it puts us in debt which not only must we pay off, but it will be putting a drain on the economy for generations to come. And to make matters worse, we are indebted to one of our biggest enemies.

The second headline points to the true effects of government injecting itself into private business. PresBO, Pelosi, et. al. Told us how wonderful government mandated health care was going to be and how we were entering the golden age of high quality low cost health care for all. They assured us we would be able to keep our doctors and it would cost less. Now we are seeing the first stages of this wonderful universal health care. Doctors are leaving the business or refusing to see MediCare patients because of the low reimbursement rates and the high cost of non-patient time required to get the reimbursement. Insurance companies have to charge higher rates to stay in business now that they have to pay for things that were not accounted for in their actuarial tables. Companies are not hiring because of the high costs associated with having employees if the employee count goes to 50 or above.

This is what happens when you put somebody in charge who has never run so much as an lemonade stand in his entire life.

Socialism sounds real nice in theory. It's when it runs into reality that it all goes to you know where in a hand basket. Yet two years ago, with a large contingent of non-productive (college students, professors, professional welfare recipients, etc.) people with no experience at actually making anything work, put PresBO in charge.

Should anyone really be surprised at how that's worked out?

"Hey Dumby!"

I see where VP Joe B says Democratic candidates are not running on the Obama (their) record because it's to hard to explain. Now I don't know about you but it seems to me that Joe just called everybody who may not be fix'n to vote democrat stupid.

Now don't go gettin' your feathers all ruffled. It's nothing new. This is the way democrats/progressives/liberals have felt about the rest of us for years. The unusual part is one of them actually saying it out loud. Normally it is part of their internal monologue unless they are in a group of fellow travelers. At which point they feel quite comfortable belittling us about "clinging to our God and our guns".

Wait a minute, forget the "unusual that they would say it out loud" comment. Heck, he was with fellow travelers. He was speaking with the media. Of course he felt comfortable in talking about how dumb he feels we are.

But back to the point. This comment is a true "poker tell" on the way the liberals feel and why they believe in an all powerful central government. They don't believe we are smart enough to make the "right" decisions for our selves/country/world, so to save us from making a mistake, they will just relieve us of the burden of deciding.

How should we spend the money we worked all week for? This is not nearly the question it once was. Thanks to the liberal belief that they know better. Through the use of an over powering central government, they are taking more and more of your dollars to spend the way they want. They are doing it with little or no regard for how we want the money spent, because remember, we are to dumb to know what's best for us. They use the tax system for social engineering purposes. They tax behaviors they don't like and encentivize things they do.

I don't mean to say that I disagree with all of their positions. I agree that smoking is bad. But using the tax system to punish someone who chooses to use a lawful product is wrong. Taxes should only be levied as a source of revenue, not a means of behavior modification.

But then again, if you believe that the rest of us are to stupid to live our lives on our own, as the smartest kids in the room, it's really OK for you to decide. Because we just can't be trusted to make the "right" decisions on our own, don'tcha know.

Now The Republicans Hate The Middle Class

I just finished listening to a clip of VP Joe Biden. He was campaigning for the person running for his old seat in the Senate. In his talk he seemed to be saying that Republicans don’t hate just the poor people anymore. Now they hate the middle class also. Who knew?

He says if the Democrats lose the election “we will play hell keeping it (the middle class) from evaporating.” Apparently Republicans want everybody to be either poor or million and billionaires. 

Now help me out following Joe’s logic here. He says the Republicans want the middle class to disappear. I can only assume that he is saying he wants them to become poor, although I guess they could disappear by becoming rich also. He doesn’t really make it clear, but the implication is that they are to become poor. By extension, he also wants the rich to stay rich and become richer.

Now the majority of rich Americans become and stay rich through business. Nearly every business I can think of requires other businesses to supply them with goods and/or services to produce what they make. They require other businesses to get their products to still other businesses to sell their products. The majority of these businesses in this chain are small to mid-sized businesses. Nearly all of which are owned and operated by middle class folks.

Not only do these evil rich require all these small business to produce and deliver their products to market. They depend on a moderately well off population to be able to afford these products they are producing, because for them to remain rich they have to have someone buy their products. To merely produce them and send them off to a nonexistent market, it would be like starting up a buggy whip business today. Not having a market for your product is a  certain receipt for economic disaster. 

So the more folks there are in the middle class who earn enough money to have a modicum of disposable income to spend on these products and services equals more potential customers for these businesses. The more customers there are, the more they can sell and the more money they can make.

Just what part of this equation would suggest to you that the rich wants a small or shrinking middle class? Where is it in their best interest to not have a robust and growing middle class? Just who is it that seems to be taxing the middle class into the poor house and who seems to be trying to reduce the tax burden on all so as to stimulate the free flowing economy?

No, Joe! It’s not the Republicans who will destroy the middle class. It’s big government liberals who will handle that quite nicely without any help from free market conservatives.

Liberals Ain't Really Liberal

Just why do you suppose Liberals like government being in charge of everything. It seems rather counter intuitive to the name Liberal. With a name like Liberal you would expect them to be for each person looking after their own affairs. You wouldn’t expect a liberal individual to want to force their ideas on another person. You would expect a Liberal to want everyone to choose their own path. And yet that is not the case.

Liberals want you to be able to choose your own way as long as it’s their way, and to insure that it’s their way they want an all powerful government to enforce their choice on you.

For example, if you choose not to own a gun, a Conservative does not want the government to force you to own one. On the other hand if a Liberal doesn’t want to own a gun, he thinks you shouldn't own one either and thus wants the government to keep you from it.

A liberal wants a woman to choose her own path in life, but if a woman chooses to be something they disagree with, they ridicule and make life hard for them. You would think that they would support a woman who wants to be a housewife or an exotic dancer or a Hooters waitress if that’s what they wanted, but no. Only prescribed choices are acceptable to a Liberal. (I must also say that many conservatives would be against a woman being an exotic dancer or a Hooters waitress also.)

Being a conservative libertarian, I might not think that a woman being an exotic dancer or a Hooters waitress was their best life choice, I firmly support their right to choose it.

I seem to have gotten off on a tangent here, but the point is the same. Liberals want government to be in charge of everything and they want to be in charge of the government. They want it this way because they believe that we, the unwashed masses are not smart enough to know what’s best for us. They feel that they should make life’s choices for us so we don’t go making mistakes like owning guns or smoking or eating the wrong foods or any of a thousand other things. When government is in charge and they are in charge of the government they can legislate every facet of our life. That is why Liberals are in favor of big government.

I submit to you that Liberals/Progressives are the antithesis of their names. They have hijacked the name away from it’s meaning. Just as the Bolsheviks grabbed the name which means the larger or greater party when in fact they were the minority party during the Russian revolution, leaving the majority with the diminutive name of Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks then proceeded to take over the government and order how everyone was to live.

Hummm, do I see a pattern???

UNC's Football Coaching Question

The University of North Carolina’s football team is currently undergoing an exam that only a known drug runner crossing an international boarder could relate to. Do they deserve this level of an exam? Of course they do. They have done things that are against NCAA rules. One of their coaches (now ex-coach) had a close relationship with a sports agent involving some level of finance, which is strictly verboten! Players have received things of value from persons with connections to this agent, also verboten! Additionally, it seems that an academic advisor developed a relationship with some of the players and did some things they shouldn’t have done. Writing papers for them and stuff like that. So yes and double yes UNC deserves this investigation.

Having said that, the next logical question then is, should the Head Coach resign or be fired?

Well, my personal feeling is…..not necessarily.

Understand, I was a college football player myself. While I never played at this level and it was many years ago, I do have some experience with how things play out with college athletics. Coaches can only control players while they are in direct sight of them. Whatever period of time the player is out of sight from the coaching staff, they can do as they please. Yes, coaching staffs give players rules they are to abide by, but these are 18 to 24 year old males who believe they can do anything. Rules are viewed more as suggested guidelines. They can be followed at their own discretion.

You also need to understand that these are not a bunch of choir boys we are talking about. These are highly aggressive and competitive young men. Even at the level I played at, these guys were more aggressive than the normal population.

Any institution that decides it is going to have an athletic program that will compete inter-collegiately must knowingly decide that this is the type of individual they will be bringing into their midst. The higher the level you wish to compete at, the more competitive and aggressive the athlete you will need to bring in. And like any other population you look at, it will be distributed along a continuum. You will have a limited number of folks who are your Payton Manning and Walter Payton types on the positive end and your Lawrence Taylor and Ben Roethlisberger on the other end and everything in between. With this type of population, the only way a coach could hope to control their behavior would be to lock them up and only let them out to practice and play.

As far as the assistant coach is concerned, should Butch Davis have known about his dealings with an agent? Well only if he controlled the other coach’s finances. Some people are saying they were friends and thus he must have known.

Well think about that for just a second. If you are friends with someone for 20 years and you know he is in charge of making sure things are done correctly and you know you are not. Are you going to tell him you are breaking the rules? I think not. Now look at it from the reverse angle. You have been friends with someone for 20 years, you ask him if he’s doing things the right way and he tells you “yes”, what are you going to do? He’s your friend. You have no reason to doubt him. Of course you will believe him.

I feel that any college athletic program that strives to compete at the highest level in football as well as any other sport requiring high levels of physical aggression will have its share of athletes who get into trouble. That share will probably occur at a higher incident rate than you will find in the general population at the school.

I feel the coaching staff’s responsibility is to inform the athlete of what the rules are and tell them what the punishment is for breaking the rules. They must then follow through on this and not give the offenders a wink and a nod. If this happens you will have scenarios like the Barry Switzer era of Oklahoma football.

It is NOT the coaching staff’s responsibility to police their behavior. They should be active in reinforcing what the rules are, but these young men will chose to do what they will. Believe me, I know, coaches cannot control players when they are out of sight.

Customer Service Or The Lack There Of!

Customer service is at the top of my mind today. No, it's not just because this is Customer Service Week either. It's at the top of mind because I'm experiencing both good and bad examples of it centered around the same financial transaction.

My wife and I are in the process of purchasing a condo. We have contracted with a buyers agent and are arranging financing through the bank my wife and I use for our businesses.

Now our agent has been wonderful. He has gone above and beyond in making sure he has done everything he can to expedite the process. He has even taken to calling us just to check in and see if we need anything. This behavior is made to seem even better when placed next to the poor customer service we are receiving from our lender.

As we try to schedule closing, utilities, moving and the myriad of other things along with scheduling time off from business, the bank has been passive aggressive in communicating with us. Case in point. Yesterday morning I spoke with our loan officers assistant and asked if we could get an approximate date we could work with, knowing that the loan had gone to the underwriter 3 business days prior. She told me that she would speak with the loan officer when he got in and have him call me...... I'm still waiting on the call. In my world, that is unacceptable.

We could have gotten the very same loan through the developer but chose to use the bank we had experience with. We seem to have jumped to the wrong lilly pad.

Understand that this is not a difficult loan to approve. We are purchasing at below bank appraised value, we are borrowing less than half the purchase price, and we have qualified for a loan over 5 times the amount we are borrowing. I fail to see where the big holdup is.

I spend a significant portion of my time teaching employees how to treat customers. To take ownership of their issues and solve them like they were their own. It is much easier to keep a customer you have than to attract one to replace the customer you lost through inattention.

Simple common courtesy goes a very long way when dealing with customers. Most business aren't like the DMV, they have competitors. It would do them and their employees well to remember that simple fact. Without the customers there is no income to pay employees or cover expenses. The customer usually has options, as my long standing insurance company discovered earlier this year. They lost my family business, my business' business and my wife's business' business (yes I'm aware of how many times I just used the word business in one sentence!). They have been receiving premiums for years. The same may be in the near future for a certain bank I know!

Some businesses learn the hard way!

Politicians vs. America

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like politics has taken precedence over the good of the country. As I watch the political posturing and back biting take place I have to ask myself, “How much of this do these people actually believe and how much are they doing to ‘win the game’?”
 
The politicians in this country all seem to have read Machiavelli and taken it to heart. The ends justify the means and the “ends” for politicians is winning and staying in power. Staying in Washington, or Raleigh, or Des Moines, or Sacramento, or where ever the seat of power is for that level.
 
And power has to be the final motivator. It’s not the money. The top job in the country only pays about $400,000 per year. What other explanation could there be for people spending hundreds of millions of dollars for a job that pays $400k?
 
Now I’ve never been rich or powerful so I can’t possibly explain the allure of either, but I can only assume it’s more powerful than a drug addiction. My only experience in that area is a current addiction to caffeine and a past addiction to nicotine. I can say without fear of contradiction that the drive for nicotine was a subtle but ever present one. One that had to be fed until I finally would not let it rule me any longer. I don’t know that you can go cold turkey on power, at least on your own.
 
By my outsider’s observations, it appears that politicians drive for power is all consuming. They will do anything, say anything to anybody to get it and to hold it. There seems to be some un-holy thrill associated with wielding power over others. This thrill seems to be shared equally by both the right and the left. These power addicts will sell out their morals and principals at the drop of a hat in order to maintain their power fix.
 
Case in point; Heath Schuler, Democrat from NC was reportedly not in favor of ObamaCare, yet, when pressured by Nancy Pelosi and undoubtedly offered some incentives, he voted for it. Now, he is up for re-election and he is distancing himself from his own vote on health care and Pelosi. Going so far as to say he may even run for Speaker of the House himself if the Democrats retain the majority.
 
What is one to believe when their representatives act in such a way? Clearly they are more interested in themselves and the power they can use over the rest of us then they are about what’s good for America.
 
This country needs people in government who don’t really want to be there. People who would rather be doing something else, but feel it’s their duty to serve the country for a limited period of time. Folks who are interested in, as John Kennedy so famously put it, what their country can do for them but for what they can do for their country.
 
For the good of the country, the professional politicians, both right and left, need to go!
 

Insanity Test

OK, I’m really confused about how to start this post. I am outraged at what I just read and can’t believe we have put government officials in place who will allow this to happen.
 
I just read that the US Border Patrol has actually abandon sections of the US Border with Mexico. Our political class has totally removed our presence from the area, leaving the residents to fend for themselves against well armed narco-terrorists, and the disadvantaged, low skilled illegals coming to America. (Yes I said low skilled. Let’s face it, we aren’t getting a lot of doctors and engineers sneaking across the border to work here.) And that’s not even to mention the Islamic Radicals who are undoubtedly crossing. I say undoubtedly because korans and prayer rugs have been found in the desert. I doubt your average low skilled Latin illegal would be toting either of those.
 
It’s clear that the political class in America is behind this abandonment. The rank and file Border Patrol personnel believe in their mission and would like to enforce our border, but are 1. ordered not to, and 2. Not given the resources to complete their mission if they were allowed to. And who is at the head of the chain that is ordering this retreat?
 
The President, that’s who!
 
When the President took office he swore the following oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
 
In the preamble of the Constitution it sets forth the following:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
 
Now the way I read that, it is the President’s JOB to secure the border and protect our citizens from foreigners entering our country illegally and interfering with our citizens securing the blessings of liberty. If these politicians are unwilling or unable to do this, they should leave. RESIGN! GET OUT! Let someone take the job who is actually willing to DO the job.
 
If they are unwilling to do the honorable thing, it is our duty as citizens to do it for them. Our first opportunity to do this is Tuesday, November 2nd. For everyone who believes the United States of America is and should remain a sovereign nation with the right of self-determination, your job is clear. To coin a phrase “Throw the rascals OUT!” for those of you who believe it is time for us to surrender our sovereignty, well, just keep putting the same old back in place.
 
They say the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing expecting a different result. I guess we are about to find out if the majority of Americans have gone insane.
 
 

The Liberal Response

So I see the Liberals (who are to afraid to use their real moniker and go by the stealth name of Progressive) tried a counter demonstration to the one Glenn Beck held a few weeks back. Now understand, I don't recall any professional groups getting involved with Beck's rally. Not the Republican party, not any business groups, nothing.

The Liberals' rally on the other hand had it estimated that 400 groups were involved. Unions hired buses and encouraged their members to attend. Gay and Lesbian groups rallied their supporters to attend. And as it was reported. They were able to get "thousands" to attend.

They didn't report tens of thousands, they reported thousands. But let's be generous. Let's say they got one hundred thousand folks there. That is still only a quarter of what was conservatively estimated to attend Glenn's rally.

When I think back to the scenes from Beck's rally, I see thousands of handmade signs being held by supports. Folks who cared enough to go out and buy the supplies themselves and make their own personal statement. At this event, I didn't see that many homemade signs. I saw lots of professionally designed and printed signs, but very few that showed people were invested enough to spend their own money and time to actually make a sign.

When the rally was over and the Capital grounds crew needed to clean up, what did they find. After the Beck rally, they found the mall in excellent condition. Very little trash scattered about. The majority of trash that was left was left in proper trash bins. When the liberals left, the Mall was a mess. Trash strewn everywhere. The pictures I've seen of the Mall after the two events couldn't be more different. And who is it that talks about how much they care for the environment and how they say the conservatives don't care about the environment? As my mother used to say, actions speak louder than words.

I guess this pretty much played out like the polls have been indicating for many years. True liberalism is only supported by 20 to 30% of the population of this country. If you are generous with the numbers of folks attending this weekends rally and conservative estimating the number of folks who attended the Beck rally, this weekend drew about 25% of what showed up before.

One has to ask, "How is it that Liberals EVER get elected?"

Giving vs. Giving Back

When did it become a bad thing in this country to work hard and get ahead? This country was founded on the concept of INDIVIDUALS working hard and by proper application of brain power and sweat, improving their station in life. As an American you were not placed in some ridged cast system so where you started determined where you would end. Our country has allowed anyone with the drive and acumen to reach their highest levels. Our history is replete with stories of individuals from humble beginnings becoming mega-successes, and due to the nature of an open system, there are just as many stories of individuals going in the opposite direction.

Now it seems like every time I turn around I'm hearing about the "lucky rich" or how folks should "give back" to society.

Well now I'm just sorry as hell that those who "wish" they had more but have made poor life choices and are now unable to have what some others may have, but my experience is that most of the "rich" earned their money. The idea that they were "lucky" or that somebody "gave" them something so there was some giving "back" in order is completely bogus.

When citizens of this country are given access to a free public school education, where no matter how modest their means, if they apply themselves and their families support them they can even get their college and grad school paid for. For those who are not academically inclined, this country has an extensive technical and community college system they can avail themselves of. Gaining skills that if combined with liberal amounts of sweat and savvy can make them successful.

Opportunity abounds in this country. For those willing to put in the effort they can change their station in life. For those unwilling to do so, I have little sympathy.

So the concept of luck and where people end up in life are seldom connected. Thus the concept of giving "back" is based on a faulty premise.

Having said that, I must also say that "giving" is not! And as is often seen in our society, those who have worked hard and become successful often give generously of them selves. This is evidenced by the many charities that flourish in this country. Everything from the ASPCA to the Salvation Army are funded by people giving, NOT giving back!

What I have said about people achieving on their own does not, of course, apply to those who through illness or injury are unable to successfully fend for themselves. I believe society should definitely step in and help to what ever degree is appropriate.

Understand I am not a wealthy man! I am not in the top 5-10% of wage earners in this country. But I have worked as hard as was necessary to live at the level a want. I could have worked harder and lived higher, but I made a quality quantity choice. Having done so, I don't feel a need to take from those who made a different choice just to improve my standing. To me, taking from someone who has earned what they have to give to someone else is robbery, not some noble act.

Or at least that's the way this old farm boy sees it.