As I bemoaned one public policy or another, a friend suggested that all that was needed to understand today’s challenge was made clear by Rudyard Kipling in “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.”  It had been a long time since my first reading of that work and well worth review.

An introduction by johnderbyshire.com relates, “Published in October 1919 when the poet was 53 years old, ‘The Gods of the Copybook Headings’ has proved enduringly popular, despite the fact that copybooks disappeared from schoolrooms in Britain and America during, or shortly after, World War 2.

A copybook was an exercise book used to practice one’s handwriting. The pages were blank except for horizontal rulings and a printed specimen of perfect handwriting at the top. You were supposed to copy this specimen all down the page. The specimens were proverbs or quotations, or little commonplace hortatory or admonitory sayings — the ones in the poem illustrate the kind of thing. These were the copybook headings.”

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Receiving requests, regrets, and regards for a talk show recently concluded; I am deeply honored to have met and talked with so many of you – the patriots of Northeastern Oklahoma.  The most common request has been for the list of reading material I covered in the last segment of The David Arnett Show.  That list follows.  In addition, the last show’s core content is included here for your consideration.

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Rock icon and successful businessman Harrel C. “Buddy” Jones passed to the next adventure Sunday February 20, 2011 in Tulsa, the city of his birth.  Buddy liked people and cared for many who loved him and he enjoyed their company.  His junior year at Rogers High School, several friends began to play “new music” and Buddy decided he should play.  As he often told the story, “there were a number of guitar players around already and I didn’t really want to take piano or horn lessons, so I decided drums were the thing to do.”

As a fellow drummer, I was always impressed by the tale.  His mom bought him a drum set on credit Buddy later paid off on time and as agreed.  However, the word had gotten around before the transaction and on the same day Buddy picked up the drum set, he got a call to work.

As Buddy told author Ted Blackwell, “Back in those days, if you had a set of drums, you were automatically a drummer.  There weren’t very many bands around and the bands and the music were so spontaneous that almost anyone who played an instrument could join a band or was welcome to at least try.  Anyway, all of my friends knew I was getting this set of drums because I’d been bragging about it at school for days, so I guess the word got out and the day that I finally got them, I also got a phone call asking me to come play in a club that evening.  I told the guy that I didn’t know how to play, but he said to come on anyway.  So, the next thing I knew, I was working.”

As Johnny Cale detailed in the movie, “To Tulsa and Back, On Tour with J.J. Cale” Tulsa was booming with oil money and Tulsa based Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys began what Elvis soon refined – a blending of hillbilly and soul music.  The clubs were rowdy and the music reflected the inherent individualistic and risky business of oil and gas exploration with musical creations refined by immediate response from live crowds in dozens of clubs.

Buddy played that first night with the Wally Sewell Band, Lee Weir on guitar and Wally working vocals at the 400 Club on East Admiral.  As Buddy told Blackwell, “All of the songs were pretty basic back in those days, it’s not like there were a lot of arrangements to deal with, and our song list wasn’t that big, so after playing them over and over, three or four nights a week, for several weeks, I got to where I was feeling comfortable behind the drums.”

Buddy joined Benny Ketchum’s band and played regularly at the Cain’s Ballroom, “Tulsa’s Timeless Honky-tonk” back when it was new and the band provided back-up for many of the touring country stars as most traveled just with a guitar in hand.  Sometimes he was invited to go on the road.  During the short time he played for Ketchum, Buddy backed such stars as Red Sovine, Patsy Cline, Farron Young, Webb Pierce, the Louvin Brothers, Roy Acuff and Carl Smith, but Buddy was never really interested in country music.

Before he left Ketchum’s band, Buddy got a call from Johnny Cale.  The two had played teenage “sock hops” together and Johnny asked Buddy to join him and Bill Raffensperger to play at the Casa Del Club at 11th and Sheridan Road.  They were known from that point as the Johnny Cale Trio.

Buddy told Blackwell, “After the Casa Del closed, usually around 2:00 am; the three of us would meet up with Chuck Blackwell and others at a restaurant, have breakfast and talk for a couple of hours.  Then we’d go back to the Casa Del, lock the doors and jam for several more hours … often until daybreak.  There would sometimes be a couple of dozen guys from different bands, and we’d all switch around so that everyone played, and hell, we all played the same music … what we call, I guess, the Tulsa Sound.”

After a couple of years Buddy said, “Johnny got the bug” and headed for California.  A few months later, Buddy followed and he first worked with Jimmy Karstein in Los Angeles – playing together at the Gold Room in Bellflower.  Buddy caught some other jobs including a gig with a young Johnny Rivers and toured Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Las Vegas.

Buddy’s world changed when he got drafted in 1963 and for the next two years, he played in the Army Band stationed in Germany.  He played big band jazz and learned a great deal about musical arrangements.  Once released from the army, Buddy returned to Tulsa to play with David Teegarden for a few weeks to get his “chops back” in the rock music he loved.

Buddy then returned to California and was hired by Leon Russell to be his personal manager for several years.  In 1967 Buddy returned to Tulsa and went into business for himself in retail.  He owned several businesses over the years most notably Maxie’s Special Sizes with over 22 locations at one time.

Leon also returned to Tulsa and again asked Buddy to manage and promote his road tours.  During this time, Leon lived in the old McCintock mansion on 24th street in Tulsa and Buddy lived in the third floor apartment of the home.  Working both at the home and Church Studio with Leon’s Shelter Records, Buddy discovered the GAP Band.

As Buddy described it to Blackwell, “One evening I was in a club in north Tulsa with some people, which was near the Church Studio, and the band that was playing absolutely had that entire joint rocking.

“They called themselves the GAP Band (The Greenwood, Archer and Pine Street Band) and I thought to myself, I gotta’ get these guys into the studio…and quick!  So we got them into the Church Studio and started recording them, but realized everything they were doing were covers, that they had no original music.  So I told them that if they were going to record, that they needed original material.  It turned out that they were good at writing the music, but hadn’t learned to write lyrics.  So, I produced their first album and Charlie Wilson and I wrote most of the songs.  After we started the sessions, Leon got interested in them and took them on the road to open for him.”

In fact, Buddy wrote eight of the ten songs on that first GAP Band album and one of those “Easy Life” credits another Oklahoman with a long music history, Kay Poorboy.

Buddy married Kay Poorboy a sweet petite Cherokee girl with a great voice that can be heard as a backup singer for Joe Cocker’s version of “Cry Me A River” on his Mad Dogs and Englishmen album.  But those were the party days and Buddy told me that Kay would sometimes disappear for weeks then show back up at the house glad to be home.

Buddy told me he frequently would have to meet some doe-eyed-stud-puppy at the door with a shotgun to explain that Kay Poorboy-Jones was married. 

Kay had a daughter, Moon Poorboy, that Buddy adopted.  Kay was deeply depressed by the death of Carl Dean Radle one of the best bass players ever to play rock.  Carl and many other Tulsans helped launch Eric Clapton’s career as a solo artist, but Carl liked drugs and when Clapton decided to stop doing drugs, he fired Carl.  Depressed, Carl overdosed in 1980 and three years later on November 29 1983, Kay Poorboy Jones took her own life with a bullet to her heart when her daughter was only eleven years old.  Moon’s biological father is known as Dr. John, of New Orleans fame, but he was not around for Moon.

Buddy doted on Moon, enrolled her in the best schools, traveled the world and took her shopping in New York.  Buddy’s parents, George and Doris Jones raised Moon as their own when Buddy’s business took him out of town.  However, Moon for years practiced many of her mother’s bad habits.  I met her in those dark days, but could not change or save her from herself.  That is how I met Buddy Jones, by introduction from his daughter.  Buddy told me Moon was a “handful he could no longer hold” and I soon agreed.  To her credit, Moon is now happily married and building a more sober successful life for herself and that was always Buddy’s greatest wish for her.

Buddy told the Tulsa World in 2003, “I think musicians in every town think they’re special.  But I look back and I see all the old musicians we used to play with, and everybody’s still friends.  They’re all real mellow, and they play mellow so mellow relationships followed naturally enough.”

In October 1991 a friend from Grand Lake, Bob Spencer, called Buddy to meet him at a local club to hear Flash Terry play blues.  Spencer told Buddy that “Kelly” would also be with him and that name did not ring a bell.  Buddy thought Kelly was a guy, but finding that not to be the case, Buddy and Kelly danced all night.  Buddy said they fell in love dancing.  Their first “official” date was at the Celebrity Club.  In December for Kelly’s birthday, Buddy took her to New York – their first of many trips together.

In April 1996 Buddy began what would become twenty great years when he married Kelly in the Cayman Islands.  They made a marvelous couple; quick witted, engaging, warmly hospitable.  You could see they were having fun in almost everything they did together and they did everything together.

I would often talk of Tulsa’s music scene with Buddy and yet, there was some sadness in those talks.  In 1979 while working for the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce as Visitor Development Specialist, I was one of the incorporating officers of the Tulsa Music Association (TMA).  Active for a short while, TMA eventually faded, but by default and twenty years later, I ended up with the non-profit corporation.  I wanted Buddy’s help in capturing the history of the Tulsa Sound and other styles and stars of Tulsa’s significant musical past.  Unfortunately, Buddy thought I was mostly interested in JJ Cale and he knew Johnny well enough to know that he would not participate.  I have come to believe Cale is still a little mad at Tulsa because of treatment he received from law enforcement decades ago.

By the way, that is the second most common reason talent left Tulsa back in the day – politicians using heavy-handed enforcement against musicians and clubs to make a name for themselves and gain another term in office.  The top reason musicians left were financial.  After the oil boom, eventually Tulsa ceased to be the Oil Capital of the World and the “flash cash” that provided a vibrant club scene disappeared.

Buddy’s wife Kelly asked me to serve as the Officiant at the memorial service February 26 and I was honored to do so.  I can’t write now all that was said, but in short, I believe it is never too late to see the face of God and, as God calls us to love and laughter, I believe I saw God’s face often reflected in Buddy Jones – in how he cared for others and enjoyed good fellowship from the heart.  Buddy kept friends a lifetime and that is not an easy thing to do.

In the 2003 Tulsa World article Jimmy Markham, a musician and Tulsa Sound pioneer, said he and Jones had been friends for more than 50 years.

“Back in the early days, we hung out a lot, played a lot of the same gigs,” he said. “We were on the road together for a while. He was a funny, funny guy. He and I always laughed and carried on when we got together.”

Also quoted, Chuck Blackwell, Jones’ longtime friend and fellow drummer, played the same clubs in the early days, and the two later spent a lot of time together in Los Angeles.

“Buddy was a good drummer – right in the groove, and ‘not too much is enough.’ He was one of the best. We will miss him,” Blackwell said.

Buddy Jones is survived by his beloved wife Kelly Jones, his sister, Judy Johnson and husband Ray of Tulsa, brothers, Steve and Betty Jones, FL. and Robert Jones and wife Dixie of Pryor, Oklahoma.  Buddy’s mother-in-law Winnie Mullinax, Kelly’s sisters Tonye Townsend, and Terry and her husband Tony Winkle, niece Jessica Winkle and nephew Jason and his wife Kyla Townsend and many extended family and friends.

Analysis:  If Sarah Palin were President of the United States and did what Barack Hussein Obama has done, the Left would be screaming for her impeachment.  What must Obama do… how many offenses and derelictions of duty must he commit before other elected and appointed officials in all three branches of government begin to understand that he must be impeached?

You’ve already heard the news.  Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said in an interview:  “Imagine that Governor Palin had become president.  Imagine that she had announced that Roe v. Wade in her view was unconstitutional, and therefore the United States government would no longer protect anyone’s right to have an abortion because she personally had decided it should be changed.  The news media would have gone crazy. The New York Times would have demanded her impeachment.”

Did Barack Hussein Obama, not do that very same thing when he proclaimed from his high and lofty perch that he would not defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), even though DOMA is the law of the land?

Does Obama actually believe that he is the Dictator of the United States?  Does he believe that he may personally pick and choose which laws he will defend and which laws he will not defend even though one of the primary duties of the President of the United States, under the Constitution, is to enforce all the laws?

Obama said he believed that DOMA was "unconstitutional" … does he believe that the authority of the courts rests with him?  Obama has thumbed his nose at the courts often enough by ignoring or attempting to circumvent the rulings of the courts … and he has usurped the authority of Congress as well by attempting to legislate via Executive Order.

All hail Barack Hussein Obama… the one man who believes that he occupies all three branches of government simultaneously.  Obama is clearly out of control and with each infraction… with each usurpation of power… he gets bolder.  He must be stopped… he must be impeached.

It’s time to tell our so-called leaders to stop hiding under their desks.  When Obama said he would not defend DOMA, some said it was all probably for the best because his heart was not into defending it aggressively anyway.  Others, such as Speaker of the House John Boehner, said that Congress would take up the mantle and defend DOMA.

Those are the wrong answers.  While they may sound rational and tough… those are cowardly answers. Our conservative leaders should not be providing rationalizations for Barack Obama’s actions… and they should not be offering to step in and do his job for him.

In a matter of months Obama has; convinced every unfriendly government around the world that the United States is a paper-tiger, taken over the banking industry, the automotive industry, our health care system, offered the hand of friendship to nations that have openly supported the slaughter of Americans, effectively given constitutional rights (rights that should only be reserved for Americans) to foreign terrorists, destroyed our economy and tried to ruin the American dream forever for our children and grandchildren.

Not enough?  There’s more, but suffice it for now to say that, nail by nail he has tried to refashion a proud America into a sick and twisted socialist illusion – a myth often proclaimed, but never successful in human history.

What our elected officials do not understand that it is not enough to simply oppose various aspects of the radical Obama agenda… such an enterprise would be as futile as attempting to destroy the mythological Hydra…. NO… we must remove the source of what is making our country sick and endangering our very lives.  The time to derail the Obama “transformation” is finally upon us… it is now.  The time to Impeach Barack Hussein Obama is upon us… it is now.

Barack Hussein Obama presides over a country he clearly loathes.  Hardly a president, Obama behaves more like an ungrateful, hostile and obnoxious guest in a grand and historic home addicted to :”party on” while the world burns.

As Tammy Bruce said, Obama has an "unabated malevolence" toward this country… a country he swore to serve and dutifully protect… an "unabated malevolence" which makes him a very dangerous man.

It is clear with each passing day the 2012 election may be too late for America.  Obama will plunges this country over a cliff… to its doom. And all the blood, sweat and tears that those who came before us sacrificed to mold us into a great nation, will have been for naught… discarded like yesterday’s trash.

Barack Obama’s insane actions and policies go far beyond simple incompetence… he’s not just another misguided garden-variety liberal who wants power and control over our day-to-day lives.  OBAMA IS ON AN OVERT CAMPAIGN TO DESTROY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

He has created an avalanche of debt that is sweeping away our prosperity and promises to crush our economy.

As governments fall and the Muslim Brotherhood gains a foot-hold in the Middle East, Obama fiddles around. He appears out of his league… indecisive if not clueless.

He ignores or delays American oil drilling while funding foreign competitors even while our foreign suppliers are increasingly threatened by revolution.

He is wantonly crippling the best health care system ever developed to replace it with a system that will actually raise cost and lower availability.

In addition to his failures in the Middle East, Obama’s actions represent a clear and present danger to our safety and national security.

Can Obama be impeached?  Or to put it another way; exactly what constitutes an impeachable offense?

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution reads: "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Obama hasn’t been charged with, or convicted of, treason (although many would argue that his behavior is certainly treasonous) and he has not been convicted of bribery (although it is entirely possible that he has actively sanctioned bribery while in the Oval Office on a number of occasions… the Sestak allegations are just one example).

But Obama has MOST CERTAINLY committed "high crimes and misdemeanors?"

And what does "high crimes and misdemeanors" mean anyway? Well… some would have you believe that the term refers to some kind of lofty felony… an act so egregious that it is beyond human comprehension… but that’s simply NOT TRUE.  Our Founders were very familiar with the term… it’s from English Common Law, and essentially means "bad behavior" … and anyone who tells you otherwise is either grossly misinformed or a liar.

Are we saying that our Founding Fathers actually set the standard for Impeachment of the President of the United States at "bad behavior?"  Yes, exactly.

Strange isn’t it?  When people starting talking about the impeachment of Bill Clinton years ago (a battle that we started by the way), far too many pundits deceptively told the American people that Clinton’s actions "simply didn’t rise to the level of impeachment" … what a load of propaganda… they actually tried to make the American people believe that turning the Oval Office into a House of Ill Repute and then committing perjury to cover it up simply didn’t rise to the level of "bad behavior."

But then again, some of these pundits had been in Washington for so long, they wouldn’t have known "bad-behavior" if it bit them in their chair-pushers.

Newsflash, our Founders actually intended that the person occupying the highest office in the land should be held to the highest standard and that violating that lofty standard made that person unfit to hold the office.

Here’s a passage from CSPAN.org that explains the intent of our Founding Fathers more clearly: "The Congress decides the definition [of impeachable offenses]: by majority vote in the House for Impeachment, and by 2/3 vote in the Senate for conviction. The Framers of the Constitution deliberately put Impeachment into the hands of the legislative branch rather than the judicial branch, thus transforming it from strictly a matter of legal definition to a matter of political judgment."

CSPAN.org continues: "Representative Gerald Ford put it into practical perspective in 1970, when he said an impeachable offense is ‘whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.’"
 
Is it an impeachable offense for a president to REFUSE to do his Constitutional duty and DEFEND and ENFORCE all of the laws of the United States… he’s NOT the Supreme Court after all… he just can’t take a pass… he simply cannot choose which laws he wishes to defend and which laws he does not wish to defend.

Is it an impeachable offense for a president to attempt to take over every major industry?

Is it an impeachable offense to take over and devastate the world’s best health care system?

Is it an impeachable offense to be so blind to reality and so compliant to the worst elements of radical terrorists… that you put American lives at extreme risk?

You betcha. Obama’s behavior is BEYOND BAD. The Obama Administration’s behavior could be the dictionary definition of maladministration. Obama could replace Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen as the poster-children for bad behavior.

Obama and the maddened leftist fools around him are gutting this great country from the inside and are penning a sorry chapter to our noble history.

Impeachment, as written in the Constitution, was tailor-made for Barack Hussein. Our Founders placed it in our Constitution for such a time as this. It could be easily argued that we have a DUTY to impeach Barack Hussein Obama.

Of course, our elected officials won’t have the back-bone to go it alone. They have failed miserably to defend us until now. They cannot be relied upon, at this time of great peril, to do the right thing without feeling a small amount of pressure. The question is not whether we should impeach Barack Hussein Obama. Rather, the question is, can we impeach Barack Hussein Obama before it is too late for us, our families and our great country?

America is a shining monument to the triumph of human freedom against adversity in a world cloaked in the shadow of oppression. Most of the world is shrouded in darkness… America is the light. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan; America is a shining city upon a hill.

But when Barack Obama looks at America, he sees a place in which some people, due to personal initiative and good fortune, will do better than others… live better than others.

And in that regard, he is right. But Barack Obama sees that as unfair. Where you see freedom, liberty and the opportunity for any American to be all that he or she can be, Obama sees greed and bigotry.

To quote Ronald Reagan again: “He knows so much that isn’t true” and in another quip that seems to have been written just for Obama, Reagan said. “[he]can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.”

And, like so many of the far-left ideologues that have the unabated desire to control peoples lives, going all the way back to Karl Marx, Obama believes that he is on a sacred mission to promote "equality of outcome" over "equality of opportunity" even if the proud people of American must live in chains for eternity to make that happen.

This worldview makes Barack Hussein Obama a very dangerous man and the greatest threat to personal liberty in America today.

His worldview dictates that he control our major banks and all of our money… yours and mine. If you wake up one day to discover you’re broke, don’t be surprised. Barack Hussein Obama (Bernie Madoff with the political power of the presidency at his disposal) will have spent all the money he’s pilfered from your pocket.

His dangerous worldview explains why Eric Holder, a man who has shown nothing but contempt for the 2nd Amendment, is Obama’s Attorney General. If Holder could find a way to strike the “pesky 2nd” from the Constitution he would take away our guns in the blink of an eye, leaving us defenseless against gangs and thugs… and, more to the point, against Obama’s own shock-troops, like the renamed ACORN or SEIU.

Remember, it was the healthy and rational fear of government that led our Founders to include the 2nd Amendment in the Constitution of the United States.

And that dangerous worldview explains why Obama intends to take away your freedom to choose your own doctor… your own treatment. Wherever government controls health care, bureaucrats decide who gets treatments… who gets transplants… who gets dialysis… who gets costly medication… and who needs to die for the common good… it’s a power that no leader should ever have.

What can we do to stop this monomaniac… the First American Dictator? There’s only one answer.

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution reads: "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
He looked us in the face and lied to us when he told us that we could keep our private insurance. He knew that by jamming his oppressive iron-fist into the health care marketplace he could force private insurers out of business.

Barack Hussein Obama has masterminded the effective takeover of private wealth in America. AIG, GM, Chrysler, are all still effectively under government control. No matter that they were owned by bondholders, shareholders and private investors. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but, like a spoiled child, Barack wanted and Barack took.

Barack Hussein Obama is still relentlessly pursuing so-called cap-and-trade… and what he cannot accomplish legislatively, he will simply try to enact… BY DECREE… through misuse of Executive Orders. He’s trying to get as close to the socialist nirvana idea of “taxing the air we breath” as possible by trying to tax the “air we exhale” … and he’s ready to take over or “regulate” anything that gets in his way. He’s a man on a mission… an unholy quest.

Barack Hussein Obama is running up a debt the size of which has exceeded any adjective we have to describe “big things.” He has spent money that was not his to spend. His attitude, when it comes to spending money, is so child-like and infantile that he is not simply content to borrow more than we can ever pay back… he also has no aversion to simply printing money… by the trillions.

The American people are not stupid. We understand the concept of hyper-inflation… some of us alive still remember the Great Depression. Every day that passes Barack Hussein Obama is killing the dollar in your pocket… he’s slitting its throat with a razor.

Barack Hussein Obama has surrounded himself with a rat’s nest of “Czars.” He has “Czars” for everything and they regulate everything. If he could get away with appointing a "Czar" who would regulate when and where you could go to the restroom… he’d probably do it. 

His extra-Constitutional transgressions are so egregious that even the most radical Democrats are disturbed. The Late Senator Robert Byrd said: "The accumulation of power by White House staff can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances." Congressman Jack Kingston called the Czars a "parallel government."

And when it comes to arrogance and lack of accountability… here’s the icing on the cake, Obama refuses to approve the release of his actual birth certificate, college transcripts and medical records. It is almost as if he does not want us to learn about him. How very socialist of him.

The Muslim Brotherhood is flexing its muscle in the Middle East as governments topple like dominoes… some, like Egypt, were allies… some, like Libya, were not friendly to the United States.

But no matter how you slice it, these governments are falling, and as the Muslim Brotherhood steadily exerts its influence and tips the balance of power in the Middle East… Obama behaves as if he can’t decide what to do. Is he clueless? … Or is there another reason behind this appearance of ineptitude?

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he wrote of Muslims: "… I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."

When he spoke at Georgetown University, a Catholic institution, the White House insisted that the name of Jesus, be covered. Sickeningly, Georgetown complied.

In 2006, he said; "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation." He went to Egypt and said, "You might say that America is a Muslim nation."

Why would a man go to such lengths to deny the Christian heritage of the United States when it is carved into the very stone of the walls in government buildings from sea to shining sea… etched on the very money we spend?

Surely Barack Hussein Obama knows that our personal liberties flow directly from our Christian heritage… that there is no surer way to destroy our Republic than to desecrate that heritage.

President Thomas Jefferson: "God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?"

President Andrew Jackson called the Bible; "the Rock upon which our republic rests."

President John Adams said; "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion."

Patrick Henry said, "It is when a people forget God, that tyrants forge their chains."

George Washington, in his Farewell Address said; "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."

Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, wrote extensively on the relationship between the Christian religion and liberty in American: "America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

So why would Barack Hussein Obama go out of his way to desecrate that heritage?  It’s enough to make one wonder… does Barack Hussein Obama realize that every stab he takes at the Christian heritage of this great nation is a blow to the very foundation of our nation… a blow to freedom… a blow to our personal liberty?

We believe the answer to that question is… YES… OF COURSE HE REALIZES IT.

Obama’s denunciations of America, in his words and in his deeds are more than simply faux-pas, they show, as Tammy Bruce said, "malevolence toward this country, which is unabated." 

Barack Hussein Obama’s words and actions clearly rise well beyond the level of "bad behavior" and our Founding Fathers left us a remedy for presidents guilty of "bad behavior" … and it’s not a spanking.

The Obama presidency is a DISEASE… the Constitution, my fellow American is the CURE.

Over the course of this prolonged national recession, Oklahomans and Americans everywhere have been called on to make sacrifices. They’ve balanced their budgets by tightening their belts, and they have found creative, sometimes difficult, ways to live within their means.

Government is not immune to the recession, nor should it be exempt from the kind of sacrifices that Oklahoma’s families and businesses have been making for several years.

Going into Fiscal Year 2012, our state government is facing a $500 million shortfall. Balancing the budget will require difficult decisions and budget cuts.

Originally, those budget cuts were estimated to be as high as 8-10 percent for every agency. While not impossible to absorb, those kind of deep reductions would certainly have a real impact on agencies dealing with public safety, health, and education. 

I am proud to say that, through the use of innovative cost-saving measures, my executive budget has reduced those cuts from 8-10 percent to a much more manageable 3-5 percent. That’s an enormous difference, and it’s one that allows us to trim government waste and tighten our belts without jeopardizing the quality of our schools, the safety of our streets or the health of our citizens; if, that is, these reforms are adopted by the Legislature.

Many of our proposed reforms are just common sense, like moving the state from paper to electronic billing. Everyone knows that it is wasteful to have one government agency print, write, and mail a check to another government agency rather than transfer that money with a few clicks of the mouse.

Other changes involve consolidating administrative and information technology services, so that multiple agencies can share the same support personnel. The Legislature has already taken strides to implement these consolidations, which have the potential of producing over $100 million in savings annually, and they should be applauded for it.

The budget includes a host of other proposed consolidations and changes, all of which are designed to allow government to perform its vital functions while operating in a more cost-effective manner.  

As you might expect, not all of these changes are easy to make or popular among the directors of government boards and agencies. Change can be difficult, and we can expect any challenge to the status quo to be met with resistance.

That resistance will always be headed by individuals who, however well-intentioned, do not want to see a change to business-as-usual and oppose our attempts to make government smaller, smarter and more efficient.

That is their right. But it is our right as citizens to demand that our government make smart, sometimes difficult choices, rather than once again kicking the can down the road and burdening taxpayers with unnecessary expenses.

If the Legislature passes the modernization reforms proposed in my budget, the state of Oklahoma stands to save roughly $286 million annually. That money allows us to close the budget gap without big cuts in vital government services. It brings our government out of a 20th century model and into the digital era and it allows our public employees to better serve our customers, the people of Oklahoma.

In the following weeks, it’s my great hope that the Legislature will pass these reforms, get them to my desk, and work with me to deliver the kind of state government the people of Oklahoma deserve.