Dividing the Country while Destroying the Economy

Not many years ago in America, when a son asked his father the reason why a classmate or a neighbor had a bigger house or a nicer car, the answer was along the lines of, “he went to college, he worked hard to get where he is and he works hard every day to earn the money.” Today, in President Obama’s America , the answer is more about the wealthy being immoral and greedy; and Mr. Obama uses those words every day to describe the wealthy or the companies where they work.



The president of the United States should not fan the flames of class envy and class warfare, while showing no basic understanding of capitalism and economics. The actions of our current government leaders have been disturbing to those of us that understand what turned America from a collection of agrarian colonies to the economic superpower that we are today.



Over the past fifty years, we have come a long way from the founding fathers' vision of America . Even among the founders, the early advocates of a strong central government would be deeply disturbed by the level of invasiveness and control exhibited by the federal government today and dismayed by the level of federal taxation and debt. None of this, however, would disturb them as much as the rhetoric of class warfare and the shameless promotion of class envy by this president and the other democratic leaders.



The majority of the millionaires in America today did not inherit their fortunes, they earned them. They earned them legally and through education, personal risk and hard work. We need to encourage the next generation of Americans to follow in their footsteps and resist the temptation to use the tax code to punish their success or to garnish additional revenues to temporarily boost the standard of living for the rest of us.



Every dollar taken from the investment class diminishes our ability to create new companies and grow jobs. In the long term, this dollar will produce far more for America in the hands of those that know how to invest it, than it will by the temporary redistribution that is underway. While the new administration learns about basic economics through on-the-job training, I would hope that they can refrain from dividing this country with their rhetoric and personal attacks.

Submitted by D.B.Jackson

The Transformation of Arnold

It seems so long ago but few can forget Arnold Schwarzenegger's introduction into American politics. He was campaigning for George H. W. Bush in the 1988 Presidential race and uttered this memorable line:

"They call me the terminator, but when it comes to America's future, Michael Dukakis is the real Terminator...of the American dream."

Well, it seems, things change. The one-time chum of Presidents Bush is now, in 2009, singing the praises of one President Barack Obama.

In a recent article in Politico, Carol E. Lee writes of the Obama-Schwarzenegger hugfest:

“When have you ever seen a president be that out there?”

That was a mesmerized Arnold Schwarzenegger after Obama’s town hall meeting.

“I’ve never seen that,” Schwarzenegger said to a couple reporters as he and his wife, Maria Shriver, tried to make an exit. “Usually people are so guarded. The aides are always so guarded. They’re so afraid that you will blow it or that you will make news that’s unintended and all those things.”

Schwarzenegger continued to gush about Obama.

“But I think he’s so smart,” he said. “He’s so clear with his thinking and he’s so well informed and has been dealing with policy in all this and is also very philosophic it’s almost like. I think he’s just like – I think it’s beautiful.”

Asked how he feels about supporting a stimulus package most members of his party did not, he said. “You know me. I don’t look at things as a Republican. If it’s good for California, it’s good for me.”

There has been a transformation in Arnold Schwarzenegger from Republican hopeful to Democrat fellow-traveler. This was not an overnight change. As governor of California, Schwarzenegger has seemingly determined that political survival depends upon personal transformation into a left-leaning "governator." The final stroke is his embracing of Barack Obama, a man even more radical than the Michael Dukakis that Arnold once saw as the Terminator.

If you do not think that California's 40-plus billion dollar deficit has something to do with it, you are not paying attention. Arnold sees federal largess as the short-term solution to California's problems that should be solved by common sense governing. Obama comes to California with cash in his pocket and Schwarzenegger wants some of it.

Even has Barack Obama's policies continue to drive the U.S. economy further into the tank with his excessive spending and taxation, some things never change. Money can still buy political friendship.

--Submitted by B. Bryant

No Room for Life

The practice lives in infamy in Scripture and other ancient texts. It is child sacrifice, the killing of children to appease a deity for the purpose of obtaining some temporary benefit.

In Scripture, God called it an "abomination" (Jer. 32:35) and assigned the death penalty for anyone who practiced it (Lev. 20:1-5). Greek and Roman writers attested to the practice, describing its utter cruelty. To destroy one's own children is considered by most thinking people to be the lowest form of depravity.

It is alive and well in twenty-first century America.

This past week, President Barack Obama did what liberals have been wanting all along. He countermanded a Bush-era executive order that barred federal money for stem cell research using frozen embryos.

He did it with great fanfare, reminiscent of Bill Clinton's celebration of partial-birth abortion. He did it to great acclaim. Ted Kennedy said, "Today, an extraordinary medical breakthrough was achieved with the stroke of a pen."

Candidate Barack Obama, like all liberals, castigated the Bush administration for placing "ideology over science" primarily because of this issue and that of global warming. George W. Bush, after agonizing deliberation, could not bring himself to sanction the destruction of human embryos for the sake of medical research just as he would not sacrifice American economic prosperity for the pseudo-science of climate change. To most conscientious people, Bush's actions demonstrated political courage in the face of tremendous pressure, from both the media and politics.

For those responsible decisions that placed human life and human welfare above unthinking science, Bush was pilloried by the media, academia, the left, and some who call themselves Republicans. In his inaugural address, Barack Obama promised to "restore science to its rigthful place." By that, he seems to mean that science goes from servant to master.

In no place is this more clear than with this issue of embryonic stem cell research where human life is sacrificed in the hope of medical breakthroughs. The only difference between using embryos for medical research and the Nazi experiments upon people is stage of gestation. The morality is the same.

Chuck Colson said it well:

"If we deny the things that make us truly human, by definition we create a culture that is inhuman - a culture that, for example, embraces moral horrors like the killing of humans at the earliest stage of life on the spurious grounds that doing so might cure other people's diseases. Or cloning. Or medical experiments on humans, as the Nazis conducted."

The culture of death that this administration promotes does not end with stem cells. In one of his first acts as President, Barack Obama rescinded Bush Administration restrictions on using American money to pay for abortions in other countries, thus putting the United States on the side of the international death merchants. Also, in stressing his objection to human cloning, Obama words were "for reproductive purposes," seemingly leaving the door open for therapeutic cloning, cloning for the harvesting of body parts or the creation of stem cells.

We are truly entering a brave new world...one in which science not only trumps ideology but also morality.

It is both a testimony to modern smugness as well as an ignorance of history that we can condemn the ancients for sacrificing children to a god while we sacrifice them for our own convenience and monetary gain.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Welcome to the Obama administration where we smile and affirm our love for children even as we kill them for our own selfish benefit.

May God have mercy on such a wicked nation.

--Submitted by B. Bryant

Bernie Madoff, Democrat (LINK)

One of the great misconceptions about the current political landscape is that it is the political landscape from ancient history. The media helps to keep the legend alive, but much has changed between the parties.

Some gross misconceptions:

Republicans are the party of the rich.
Republicans don't care about the poor.
Republicans are not charitable.
Republicans exploit the poor.
Republicans pollute more.
Republicans are against science.
Republicans are the establishment.
Republicans are corrupt.

A co-worker once told me assuredly that he always voted Democrat because the Republicans are the party of the rich and the Democrats are the party of the poor and middle class. (Despite the combined income of he and his wife topping $175,000, he still considered himself middle class).

He was surprised to learn that the top 13 richest U.S. Senators were Democrats. The Democrat that he intended to vote for for president in a few weeks, John Kerry, was #1. He was also surprised to learn that the Republicans raised most of their money on donations of less than $50 per person. The Democrats cannot nearly make that claim. The majority of their campaign contributions come from people giving the legal maximum. Over 50%. (I had fortunately just been provided the data from a column on townhall.com).

Ann Coulter's latest column contrasts the four most famous representatives of their party for salary and charitable donations: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Joe Biden. It is enlightening (link above). I wish she had reminded her readers about the charitable donations that Al Gore made the year that he ran for president...$147 (sic).

anncoulter.org

Without the time or space to prove that the exact opposite of all of the above misconceptions are true - I will leave you with the thought that 'whatever the democrats or the media tell you is true, the truth is more likely the exact opposite.'

Submitted by D. B. Jackson

No More Talk of Obama's Centrism

Election day had hardly come and gone with Barack Obama winning the Presidency than when we began to be assured by seemingly everyone that he would now "govern from the middle." It is understandable that Democrats would do this, knowing that they would need moderate support for Obama to effectively govern and establish their agenda. What was surprising was how many, supposedly, conservative voices said the same thing. The verdict was overwhelming. Obama, having won while espousing virtually every position of the radical Left and who now had a commanding majority in both houses of Congress, would now throw it all away in a grand move toward the center.

We are now less than two months into Obama's presidency and no one is talking about centrism any more. Barack Obama, true to his far-left roots, in accordance with his campaign rhetoric, and in cahoots with the Democrats' radical Congressional majority, has uncorked a liberal agenda that is unprecedented in American history. None of us who had really paid attention to Obama's speeches over the past two years was surprised at this. He is doing what he said he would do and what his party has been wanting to do for years. That some talking heads believed he would throw that aside in a mad rush to the middle casts great doubt on their abilities as analysts.

Let's have a quick review of President Obama's emerging vision for a "new" America.

• Abortion: Obama's first official act as President was to reverse an executive order by George W. Bush so that international abortion providers would now receive federal funding thus putting the U. S. government into the international abortion business.
• Higher Taxes: Not only will Obama let the Bush tax cuts expire, he will impose new higher taxes upon those making more than $250,000. The marginal rate will return to 39% for these people but new changes in what they can deduct will raise their taxes even more. For example, his proposal only allows those "rich" people to claim 28% of their charitable contributions as deductions on their taxes. This will have a terrible effect upon charitable institutions.
  
• Radically increased spending: Following Hillary Clinton's dictum to "never waste a good crisis," Obama has proposed a trillion-dollar economic "stimulus" package that has a lot of social engineering but little stimulus. Thus, we incur tremendous debt to no effect. Obama's first pork-filled budget proposes a $1750 billion deficit with more red ink to follow.
  
• A Remade Medical System: The American medical system is the envy of the world. Why else do foreigners come here to be treated. Obama wants to transform this system into European-styled socialized medicine. Without going into the long lines for treatment and the reduced coverage, the cost is prohibitive. Obama's 2010 budget contains a $634 billion "down payment" on universal health coverage. The Administration claims that this is two-thirds of their estimated $1 trillion cost of this program over 10 years. Does anyone really believe that this program will only cost $1 trillion to cover "all" Americans, both legal and illegal?
  
• Socialism, More Socialism: The Obama Administration seemingly wants to get the government into "everybody's" business. There are bailouts for banks, bailouts for states, bailouts for cities, bailouts for the auto industry, bailouts for homeowners, etc. etc. This all amounts to the federal government having their fingers in everyone's pie. With federal money comes federally-attached strings. Uncle Obama Sam is no philanthropist. He expects government control in return for his money.
  

These are scary times. The economic problems would concern anyone. Add to that the Obama Administration's seeming determination to literally "break the bank" with radical tax increases and spending in the midst of a growing recession. Only fiscal sanity can lead us to the financial recovery we need.

I see no evidence of sanity of any kind in this new Administration.

--Submitted by B. Bryant