Category Archives: Tulsa Speaks

Uncle Sam’s Car Lot and Repair Shop

Editorial: Government has not been able to repair our economy, but it has put taxpayers on the hook for billions to repair cars.  

President Obama last week promised that the government — i.e., taxpayers — will make good on warranties issued by GM and Chrysler,

Three days earlier, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced new mileage requirements that could raise the price on each car by $4,000 to $10,000.  Way to stimulate car sales, Mr. President!
The Washington Post reports that Obama’s team wants to help pick new directors for the board that runs GM.  Way to take over, Mr. President!
Who knew last year’s elections were all about who would become Car Czar?  The Obama White House is now dictating auto-industry management (including the firing of GM CEO Rick Wagoner), designing the cars (by dictating mileage standards), honoring warranties and offering high-risk financing.  

The Obama White House is resembling a full-featured car lot, including the management, repair shop, high-risk financing and high-pressure sales tactics.
 
The pledge to backstop auto warranties is a costly new wrinkle among government bailouts and loan guarantees. GM was quick to take advantage. The day after getting taxpayer backing for its warranties, General Motors expanded them, which also expanded the potential loss to taxpayers.  Ford also announced expanded warranties, but without using taxpayer money.

Warranties are not cheap.  Claims paid on U.S. auto warranties totaled $13.1 billion last year, according to Warranty Week.  Financial Week reporter even higher claims for 2007.  General Motors alone paid $4.46 billion in warranty claims in 2006; DaimlerChrysler paid $6.1 billion.  (Chrysler models were not separated from Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz in the report.)

With even more taxpayer money likely destined for auto bailouts — possibly even after bankruptcy filings — the billions in warranty guarantees may seem a small piece, but so do other pieces if viewed in isolation.  When linked together, they are gargantuan.  

Bloomberg News pegs the total cost of Washington’s auto, banking and other bailouts at $12.8 trillion to date — about $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the country.  It’s also 14 times the total amount of U.S. currency in circulation. And nearly as much as last year’s our total gross domestic product–$14.2 trillion.

Have your and your family gotten $42,000 apiece in benefits from the bailouts?  If not, who did get the benefits, and why should taxpayers continue to foot the bill?

In announcing his warranty plan, the President displayed his skills as a pitchman.  “Let me say it as plainly as I can,” he said. “[I]f you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired, just like always. Your warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it’s ever been. Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warranty.”

People are already joking that they’ll take their car to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for repairs. And if warranty guarantees are a stimulus, then why stop at cars?  Why not have government guarantee everything from computers to refrigerators to hair dryers and electric toothbrushes?  All of those are part of an important consumer industry that creates jobs.

Maybe because we couldn’t afford that, either?  Back to the numbers.

The president’s “Warranty Commitment Program” states, “The total amount of cash to be contributed will equal to 125% of the expected cost of paying for warranty service on each covered vehicle. The manufacturer will contribute 15% of the projected cost from its own funds, and Treasury will provide additional funds to cover 110% of the projected cost.”

What does that mean?  Part of the fast-dissipating $700 billion bailout fund approved by Congress will be loaned to the car companies to fund their warranties.  Reserve funds to pay warranty claims are set at 125% of the projected claims, and 110% will come from taxpayers as a loan.  General Motors and Chrysler need only put up 15%, rather than their usual 125%.

Based on its recent $5.1 billion experience in annual warranty payments, GM would have to set aside only $765 million (15%) for warranty payments.  Taxpayers would have to pony up the remaining $5.61 billion required for the warranty reserve fund.

Nobody knows what the actual cost to taxpayers might be. The per car warranty reserves depend on the number of cars actually sold. And nobody can tell how long the government warranty program will last.

The warranty guarantee program evidently will cover cars sold overseas, as well.  Although the participating companies must be “domestic auto manufacturers,” it covers “every car sold” without regard to geography.

Meanwhile, the new fuel mileage standard seems to have been issued without regard to cost. The Department of Transportation decreed manufacturers must field fleets that average 30.2 mpg starting with model year 2011.  That’s a 19% leap above the current standard and nearly 3 mpg higher than had been expected.

Rather than doing so gradually, the Obama team rapidly moved toward the 35 mpg standard Congress created for 2020.  When Congress set that mark, General Motors warned lawmakers it would push car prices up by $4,000 to $10,000 per vehicle, especially for the most popular sizes.  The higher price tags created by DOT’s fast-forward of fuel-economy standards certainly won’t help car sales recover.

As government injects itself more and more into controlling companies and the economy, it resembles the dysfunctional auto companies it claims to be rescuing.  Still, there’s one major difference.

Politicians don’t come with warranties.


About the author:
Ernest Istook calls himself a "recovering Congressman" from Oklahoma. He is now a Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and chairs the National Advisory Board for Save Our Secret Ballot, www.SOSballot.org.

Suddenly one morning, tyranny

Editorial:  Imagine waking up one morning prepared to do your daily Bible study and discovering that Exodus Chapter 20 had been completely erased. The Ten Commandments were missing. Of course, you would wonder what possibly could have happened.

You then become panicked as you quickly turn to the New Testament, only to discover that the Sermon on the Mount had vanished as well. The verse about loving one’s enemy was gone. Even the Golden Rule had disappeared. Upon closer examination, you discover that every guideline concerning living a better way of life was gone.
Non-believers suggest that humanity is on its own, and that’s all right with them. They believe they are justified in finding their own way. They feel comfortable that a sense of "the collective good" (which keeps them from becoming destructive to one another) will prevail, without the need to rely on God.

It’s undeniable that horrors and hurts have been inflicted upon the world in the name of religion, including Christianity. Some misguided men within the ministry have perceived their actions as God’s will. In eras long past, persecution was wrongly justified. Innocent people were literally destroyed by those who didn’t agree with them. These shameful acts will never be forgotten.

On the other side of the fence lies the question: What are the results when God’s Word is totally rejected and the Almighty’s laws are distorted or ignored? Do we fare any better?

When there is no moral authority

If you’re not a religious person in any real sense, then you reject the authority of a loving God. If so, what stops you from acting in a manner that is morally wrong?

We live in a country where some of our politicians can be bought and paid for — those who possess little or no sense of moral obligation. There is a big problem when our nation’s Treasury Secretary is a tax cheat.

Timothy Geithner is the Obama administration’s embarrassment. The fact that Geithner is a law-breaker does not seem to bother those who voted for President Barack Hussein Obama. We’ve obviously become a nation of foolish people who no longer see right and wrong in clear, bold, and distinctive colors.

"Thou shalt not steal" is a commandment that is uniquely germane to the culture in Washington, D.C. Soon, those who earn $250,000 or more will be paying higher taxes. This president seems to believe it is noble to redistribute wealth — but Obama merely wants to rob from those who have and give to others in order to shore up his own political capital.

The entitlement trap

Americans are generous people. In down times, our country has always made provision to lend a helping hand when our fellow citizens need lifting up. But social programs were intended, at best, to be a temporary fix, not a way of life.

Actually, it is cruel to facilitate this type of entitlement mentality. People who live on government programs lose their dignity. They fall prey to their own insecurities. Many of them never become successful achievers and accomplish the American dream. The Democrat Party can be blamed for this dilemma. They see people as nothing more than a voting bloc to be manipulated.

Caring conservatives are saddened when they see what is happening within the black community. Too many lives are broken. Too many live in the past, continually looking backward, instead of acknowledging America’s noble achievements and their own God-given potential. Some are willing to blame all of their cultural problems on slavery.

Christians must focus on Obama’s liberal social agenda. They need to continually point out to those living in the inner cities the dire effects that an ever-expanding welfare-nanny state will have on poor communities. Traditionalists and people of faith understand how religious beliefs encourage personal responsibility, as well as civic pride. If Europe, with its overwhelming welfare rolls, is a reliable indication, it just might be that Obama is willfully taking the United States down the path to hell.

Deceiving the undiscerning

It is obvious that Evangelical and Catholic Christians were purposely targeted during Obama’s campaign. He went out of his way to attract churchgoing Americans. Obama spoke about his faith when he took part in Pastor Rick Warren’s special forum held at the Saddleback Church. Obama managed to fool naive and trusting God-fearing voters. Obama lied about himself — while his campaign downplayed his outrageous radical social views. He continued lying by putting an emphasis on a contrived commitment to tolerance and civility toward those with whom he disagreed.

Let it be understood that it was Obama’s purpose to exaggerate the ways in which his progressive policies and positions were consistent with biblical faith. Unfortunately, his beliefs are far from the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. "You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act" (Matthew 7:16).

It is most unfortunate that Obama’s efforts were successful. Inroads were made among traditional religious people with a "self-inflicted guilty conscience." If Christians would have heard God’s still, small voice, they would not now be crying over their lack of better judgment.

Outright fraud

It’s too bad that Pastor Rick Warren delivered his inaugural invocation and gave credence to a pandering fraud. Obama has suckered the faithful into believing that his administration is not an adversary of full-gospel, Bible-keeping Christians.

It is a shame that many in our country are not paying attention to the egregious effects of Obama’s stimulus plan, which will encourage more people to depend on the government. People who support more social entitlement programs don’t understand the consequences of Obama’s overextending hand of socialism.

"We The People" are not interested in being led down the very same secular progressive path as the European countries. It is becoming clear that Obama’s ambitions might finally bring Americans out in droves demanding to take their country back.

I have absolutely no intention of playing down my personal disdain for this usurper who sits in the White House. I do question the sincerity of Obama’s religious experience. Black Liberation Theology espouses racism and is definitely Marxist. Obama is a devotee of this bigoted, quasi-religious system. Although he chose to walk away from Trinity United Church of Christ, I believe his heart remains with Revs. Otis Moss and Jeremiah Wright.

Excerpts from "Obama’s New Pastor Club" by Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily.com:

"While Barack Obama has not found a new church since he left Jeremiah Wright’ den of anti-American, socialist hate-mongering, he has assembled a new club of pastors for ‘private prayer sessions on the telephone and for discussions on the role of religion in politics.’

"The Times tells us none of those Obama sought out are affiliated with the religious right, but ‘the group can hardly be characterized as part of the religious left either.’

"Oh yeah?

"One of those selected by Obama is Jim Wallis. Show me an issue in which Wallis is not in lockstep with the religious left and I’ll eat my hat." Full article

False hope

Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs. History records the hard reality of those nations that tried to separate God’s rule from their laws and culture. They never lasted, disintegrating into tyranny and horrifying persecution. The drive-by media never tells the American public the truth, however. When the game of "class warfare" is played out, bad consequences ensue. What is happening to our country is not by happenstance.

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levi used to be a Marxist, but later in life found his Christian faith. One of his memorable quotes is very honest and telling: "Apply Marxism in any country you want, you will always find a Gulag in the end."

It is very strange that progressives say they have brought us hope and change. How can that be? America was founded on our Constitution. The primary danger associated with the rise of the nanny state is that when government assumes the moral responsibility for others, people are less likely to do so themselves.

In countries like Sweden and Denmark, the large increases in welfare spending over the last half century have ended up eroding the moral fiber of families, and have disrupted civic institutions within these societies. Sound familiar? People have become dependent on the big government Sugar Daddy to meet their basic needs.

The problem with welfare dependency is that when people take the welfare state for granted, they are less likely to attend to the emotional, social, and material needs of their family and friends as earlier generations did. As the resultant social pathology deepens, crime, drug addiction, and similar ills begin to stifle lives. With government taking on an ever-expanding role, and with an ever-increasing rise in tax rates to support this growth, taxpayers can easily lose their sense of altruism and feeling of moral unity toward others.

Socialism then becomes self-fulfilling — as it destroys society’s voluntary support system and fills the void with a police state.

Do we want our government to penalize hard-working citizens because they are high earners? A good work ethic should be rewarded because earned wealth creates jobs and promotes healthy, productive capitalism. Why should legislators demand that anyone be forced to share their wealth?

Related Reading:

The blind faith of America’s statists

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

AIG ACORN bus tour mob touts socialist agenda

AIG exec resigns in open letter on NY Times op-ed page, says he’ll donate bonus to charity

Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

Listen to the Brannon Howse interviews on the Cloward-Piven Strategy here
 


About the author:
Marie Jon is a political/religious-based writer and founder of www.DrawingClose.org — a sister website to RenewAmerica. Marie’s writings have appeared on many sites, including The New Media Journal, ChronWatch, ABCNews, and USATODAY,  to name a few. Marie brings a refreshing and spirited point of view that is reflected in her writings. Marie is a nurse, a lay student of the Bible, and a patriot. She is an advocate for American troops serving abroad, as well as the Blue and Gold Star Mothers of America and their families. Marie enjoys Townhall.com radio, Rush Limbaugh, Larry Elder and Bruce Elliott Saturdays 5AM-9AM EST

While Obama’s yackin’, our country’s slackin’

Editorial:  Barack Yackin’ Obama loves to hear himself speak.  Yes, he’s a talker allright.  He “talked” his way in to the office of the Presidency of the United States of America.  Now that he has been elected, he continues to “talk” his way through his Presidency.  Whenever we want to know where our President is, all we have to do is turn on our televisions and, tadaa!, there he is!

When Barack ran for office, his smooth oratory skills were key to his election to the highest office in the land.  The great orator mesmerized his audiences in to a trancelike euphoria which sent them leaping and bounding in to the voting booths to vote for the “great one”.
Yes, Obama’s teleprompter made people just feel gosh darn-it good.  How could any human being NOT vote for someone who appeared to be so wonderful?
Here’s the thing.  The great yacking memorizer snookered his flocks.

For example, take the Black American community.  Black Americans are, by and large, very spiritual by nature.  They seem to be closer to God because they have had to go through more hardships, as a race, than most ethnic groups that make up our wonderful nation.  If it were not for the faith of the Black community in California, same-sex marriage would not have been overturned in the state of California. Another example would be that studies prove the majority of abortions in the US are disproportionately of black babies.  Obama’s abortion policies have even been attributed to as “the genocide of the Black American race.”

One would deduce from the above example that Black Americans are conservative in their Christian values, yet, they voted for a man who represents everything that most Black Americans stand against, even to the point of using their tax dollars to aid in the extermination of their own race.

And let us not forget that the “No Earmark” Obama has blatantly gone back on this and many additional promises to do with the stimulus package while he is selling our country out to the highest bidder, whether the countries, like China, be friend or foe.

Oh, and let us not also forget the Yacker’s countless pay backs to his cronies like ACORN, which was awarded (ha ha) as the “National Partners” to the 2010 US Census, not to mention that the Census was moved to the White House under Rahm Emanuel. Hmmmmm.  Could Yackity be planning on stealing a second term at the White House?  Oh wait, is he really a natural born US citizen? Oh shucks, who cares about what that pesky Constitution says. Obama’s so cool.

There’s a lot of snookering going on, weekly, daily and hourly.  Which brings me back to my original point.  While Obama Yacks, this nation is slackin’ in to deep doo doo.  It’s the smoke and mirrors game.

You see, the same strategy that worked for Obama to make people feel so good about the “way” he said what he said, versus the objective “content” of what he said, is still in lightning speed motion.  The dog is still using his tricks to continue to hypnotize the flocks while the real machine that is running this country swiftly and methodically strikes before we know what has hit us.

Wake up America! You would not wake up during the campaign to his rhetoric!  Do ya’ think you could wake up even now?  Or are you going to keep on listening to this talking head’s speechifying until it’s too late to make a dent in the damage? Have you had enough? Are you waking up yet?

While Yakety is talking, who’s minding the store? As the CEO of the United States of America, shouldn’t he be running the country?  He can’t be two places at the same time.  I haven’t seen him pause even once from his teleprompter to veto a socialist policy. 

Yakety smokes us up while the real people, and we don’t know who they are, enact un-American policies that We The People have no control over…because he can.
So you all just keep listening to “Angle of Light” while he spreads death, and I mean this literally, to our once great nation.

About the author:Tricia Erickson was the first Damage Control and Crisis Management Expert in the country, as stated by Barbara Walters on the show, "20/20".  She is also a frequent on-air contributor who has opined on FOX, CNN, MSNBC and all major networks. 

She is the President of Crisis Management, Inc (crisis management and communications) and also the President of Angel Pictures, LLC (a major motion picture, TV, publicity and development company). Tricia comes down on the conservative side of all issues.  She may be reached by e-mail casting33@aol.com. 

“Bristol Bashing” reflects Left’s fear

Editorial:  The Left’s tolerance knows no bounds.  Practiced in the art of understanding and forgiving human foibles, and averse to the “judgment” they find so intolerable in those who think there are actually values such as right and wrong, good and bad, virtue and evil, liberals demonstrate every day how morally evolved they are. No matter how egregious or even illegal the behavior, they say it’s either a “private matter” or “irrelevant.”  For instance:

·   President Bill Clinton’s serial philandering, years-long Oval-office affair with a White House intern, and conviction and disbarment for perjury.
·   Presidential candidate John Edwards’ cheating on his cancer-ridden wife and fathering a child with his girlfriend.
·   Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt becoming the parents of six children but not getting around to marrying.
·   Jodie Foster, Jessica Alba, Nicole Richie, and other Hollywood denizens “choosing” to have babies without getting married, including teenagers Jamie Lynn Spears, Keisha Castle Hughes, Solange Knowles, et al. – which Hollywood celebrates in movies like “Juno.”
·   Uncountable celebrities and politicians’ “acting out” with driving-under-the-Influence and drug arrests, stints in rehab, relapses. 

“It’s none of anyone’s business,” the understanding liberals intone. “It’s not related to the job they do!”
Except, that is, when these moral arbiters decide that it’s everyone’s business and highly relevant to the “public’s right to know.”

SELECTIVE OUTRAGE
Now how exactly does the Left decide on these matters? What criteria do they use?

That’s easy.  If the problem involves their biggest fundraisers in Hollywood and elsewhere or people who subscribe to their leftist views – meaning other liberals – then any “judgment” is off limits.  In these cases, said problem is often met with praise for this-or-that woman’s “courage” and “independence,” or empathy for this-or-that man’s “pressured” job or “unfortunate” lapse.

Not so if the problem – which liberals instantly convert to “outrage” – is a Republican’s.  But there are exceptions.  If a Republican like Sen. John McCain crafts legislation with leftist Democrats like Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold or Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, or joins liberals in bucking or bad-mouthing his own Party, then he is treated benevolently and considered beyond judgment.  But if he runs for president, not only he but his wife and family are vilified, insulted, and lied about.  That’s how being non-judgmental works in the minds and – excuse the presumption – hearts of liberals.

Exceptions notwithstanding, the Left in today’s America is particularly sensitive to – paranoid about is not an exaggeration – anyone they perceive as a threat to their hegemony, or, in plain English, absolute control.

EXHIBIT #1

It was clear from the moment Gov. Sarah Palin appeared on the national scene as McCain’s vice-presidential choice that the Left was terrified of her charismatic appeal, effortless (and teleprompter-less) articulateness, formidable track record in political life, beautiful family, can-do American optimism, and also her success in actualizing what the largely-leftist feminist movement has advocated for since the 1960s, the notion that women could “have it all.”  Palin’ genuinely self-made-woman status embodied the arch-goal of feminism – its paltry stats notwithstanding – but the tolerant feminists attacked her anyway.

As writer Lisa Richards reminds us, “feminists and liberals, who insist they stand for women’s rights, hate Sarah Palin because she has two things on her record they want abolished: Christianity and childbirth.”

Writer and editor Ruth S. King explains that the reason why liberal women – including sneering TV anchors Campbell Brown and Katie Couric – “have a visceral contempt for `that woman’ is that she has actually achieved all their aspirations.  She is successful; she is beautiful; she is a governor; she has taken on the old boys; she has gained national stature; she has clout; she has a son in the military; she has a husband who is a hunk who is also happy to help his wife’s career, and she has four other kids and a great family life, along with its attendant problems.  How dare she? 

Why she did not go to Sarah Lawrence, not to mention Smith College!  And, horror of horrors, she is a Republican.  And even more unforgivable is that she is pro-life and chose to have and love and rear a Down syndrome child, unlike the liberal icon, playwright Arthur Miller, who gave his Down baby to a dreadful orphanage only two days after his birth and never saw him again.”

It is columnist Wesley Pruden, however, who sums it up hilariously: “Not only was she bereft of an Ivy League credential…she didn’t have a master’s degree in women’s studies from Harvard, nor had she ever taken a course in art appreciation at Stanford. She didn’t have a doctorate from Yale in the poetry of Nineteenth-Century Romania, nor had she written a learned paper for the Council on Foreign Relations on the politics of the Third Ten-Year Plan for Agricultural Reform in Uzbekistan. She was begging feminists with fancy credentials who had never accomplished anything to hate her, and they did.”

Yes, the Left’s snobbish fealty to the Ivy League was on full display during the 2008 campaign, especially focused on the Ivy League candidate into whose candidacy they had poured multimillions of dollars and their own credibility.  But while the Ivy Leaguer ultimately won, the public cast a thunderous “no” vote against the so-called mainstream media’s blatantly biased – indeed, fawning – coverage, which can now be seen in the current demise of major liberal newspapers like the Rocky Mountain News and The San Francisco Chronicle, and the death throes of others, among them The NY Times, The Boston Globe, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Miami Herald, The Chicago Sun-Times, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. And that is not to omit the basement ratings of network TV and cable’s MSNBC, among others.

SHE’S NOT ONE OF US

In her acceptance speech at the Republican convention, Governor Palin asked her cheering audience what the difference was between a hockey mom and a Pit Bull.  Then she pointed to her mouth and said “lipstick!”  When it was clear that Palin had captured the threatening competition of conservative voters that Barack Obama feared would upend his campaign, he went into major offensive mode – actually major defensive mode – citing the “lipstick” reference in speech after speech after speech.

Obama and his acolytes seemed to be echoing another liberal icon’s famous song:  How dare this moose-hunting, breast-feeding, happily-married, enormously-popular governor rain on our parade? 

And we all remember the near-hysterical jihad against Governor Palin that the media conducted, sending armadas of reporters to Alaska to ferret out anything – anything – that would discredit her.  But failing that, they resorted to tabloid speculation, innuendo, distortions, defamation and, their old standby, lies.

As journalist Michelle Malkin describes:  “Hollywood savaged Palin.  Journalists mocked her.  Liberal blogs slimed her.  Opponents cursed her, Photo-shopped her, hacked her e-mail, hanged her in effigy, called her bigot, Bible-thumper and bimbo, and attacked her husband and children.”

In short, they and the leftwing media, author and journalist Thomas Sowell has written, went into panic mode:

Perhaps the best way to try to understand these reactions is to recall what Eleanor Roosevelt said when she first saw Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Alger Hiss of being a spy for the Soviet Union…`He’s not one of us.’ The trim, erect and impeccably dressed Alger Hiss, with his Ivy League and New Deal pedigree, clearly was "one of us." As it turned out, he was also a liar and a spy for the Soviet Union…the Hiss-Chambers confrontation of more than half a century ago produced the same kind of visceral polarization that Governor Sarah Palin provokes today…[she] is both a challenge and an affront to that vision and that way of life – an overdue challenge, much as Chambers’ challenge was overdue.

So threatened (and thin-skinned) was Obama that a week before the election, his campaign ran a TV commercial attacking not McCain but Palin!  And even after the election, the fear-Palin crowd couldn’t let go.  And they still can’t let go!

Just last week, when teenage Bristol Palin announced that she and her fiancé Levi Johnston – the father of their two-month old son Tripp – had broken their engagement,  the tolerant liberals continued their attack, exactly as they did when New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady left his three-months-pregnant girlfriend, actress Bridget Moynahan, for the supermodel Gisele Bundchen.  Oh, sorry I forgot that they “understood” Brady, who proudly went public with his skinny hottie, and chalked the entire sordid affair up to another of their old standbys:  “Who are we to judge?”

ONCE A THREAT, ALWAYS A THREAT

The Left takes its threats so seriously that according to Politico.com’s Ben Smith, “a vast new left-wing conspiracy sets its tone every morning at 8:45 a.m., when officials from more than 20 labor, environmental, and other Democratic-leaning groups dial into a private conference call hosted by two left-leaning Washington organization…[which] marks a new level in coordination by the White House’s allies…”

This group – which Smith identifies as the leftist Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAP) – is headed by former Clinton crony John Podesta  and “attempts to link the Republican Party to radio host Rush Limbaugh, and has served as the launching ground for attacks on critics of Obama’s policy proposals.”

Limbaugh, of course, who daily exposes the new administration and its flailing followers as the Big Government, high taxes, Constitution-loathing Socialists that they are, poses a tremendous threat to the current powers-that-be. But you can bet that Palin is CAP’s Number One threat, which is precisely why the angry Left continues their assault on her and her family.

Meanwhile, the lovely, modest, well-spoken, intelligent, humble, and well-brought-up Bristol Palin, and her mother, blithely ignore the rabid ravings of The Huffington Post, The Daily Kos, and the shrikes on “The View,” but I’m sure it makes them smile– it sure makes the rest of us smile –that they’re tying the entire Obama machine up in knots!

Yet the harder they try, the clearer it is that Gov. Palin’s popularity and clout is impervious to their efforts.  And their dread is sure to increase as the truth of Ruth S. King’s words finally sink in:  “We have not seen the last of her.”


About the author:Joan Swirsky (http://www.joanswirsky.com/) is a New York-based journalist and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.

Obama’s Toxic Brew

Analysis: It’s not witches, but the three warlocks of the new administration – President Obama, his chief Chicago-Machine-henchman Rahm Emanuel, and his tax-cheating Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – who are boiling the American people in a cauldron of their own, not with poisoned entrails, eye of newt, or toe of frog, but with a fatal mixture of a trillion-dollars of so-called “stimulus” dollars, draconian tax hikes, doomed-to-fail bailouts, and additional healthcare and other expenditures that are, above all, designed to bankrupt the United States of America.

As people helplessly watch their life savings, 401ks, real estate assets, children’s college funds, financial viability, and everything that affects their jobs, security and investments vanish as the Stock Market hurtles downward toward its crashing point, they hear unmistakably gleeful cackles emanating from the leftist radicals who now occupy the Oval Office and the Congress.

Why are they cackling? Why are they gleeful? Because they have finally been catapulted into power and are now able to translate their deep loathing of everything that has made America great – free-market capitalism, the U.S. Constitution, small government, low taxes – into their own Socialist-cum-Marxist-cum-Communist vision.

Obama’s oft-stated “share-the-wealth” philosophy was just the starting point. He’s in a good mood and serving $100-dollar-per-pound steaks in the White House precisely because the Dow Jones average is tanking. This is because he believes, perversely, that punishing the majority of Americans is a way to redress the “sins” he so often attributes to America, and to avenge the have-not career victims who have convinced themselves – and been convinced by liberals and leftists – that the world owes them a living.

As one blogger has documented, since Obama has taken office – and in the face of a devastating recession – he has:
·   Raised taxes on small businesses, the engines of entrepreneurship and job growth.
·    Raised the capital gains tax.
·    Lied about "tax cuts for 95% of Americans," offering instead 13-dollars a week, achieved not through tax cuts but by changing the federal withholding tables!
·    Destroyed charitable giving by axing the tax breaks for 26 percent of all giving (or $81 billion in 2006) because charities reduce the role of Big Government.
·   Proposed a carbon cap-and-trade scheme designed to punish oil companies and further tax consumers.

But the above laundry list doesn’t include the president’s stated intention to inflict Americans with the debt of even more trillions of their hard-earned money by granting amnesty to multimillions of illegal aliens; changing the Mortgage Interest Deduction, which will result in further erosion of home prices and values and lead to a second energy crisis; bankrupting the coal industry with punitive demands on emissions and huge government fees; bestowing $20 million for Palestinians (read Hamas terrorists) to migrate to the U.S.; cutting defense spending, which Oliver North has said is “tantamount to unilateral disarmament”; and, again, in the middle of a devastating recession, funding abortions for women outside of the U.S.! You get the picture!

But in case “the picture” is not clear, Obama’s intention is to cause such devastating losses to all Americans that they will welcome government intervention – and the nationalizing of all major institutions – as their last best hope for survival.  Sound familiar?  It should.  This is exactly the plan that all megalomaniacs, like Marx and Lenin and Mussolini and Hitler and Mao and Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro and Osama bin Laden and the president’s other guiding lights – radicals Saul Alinsky, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Louis Farrakhan, Father Michael Phleger, terrorist Bill Ayers, et al – have spoken and written about in their toxic philosophies of Black Liberation theology, Marxism, Communism, Socialism, and Terrorism.

What do all of them have in common?  A deep envy and hatred of America, and a desire to destroy the freest, most benevolent, and, yes, most powerful and rich and militarily strong country in the history of the world!

WHY? 

The short answer is that they consider “the masses” stupid, indeed too abysmally ignorant to conduct their own lives.  Of course, the corollary to this arrogance is that they consider themselves far better equipped, by dint of their superior intelligence, to orchestrate and choreograph – through Big Government – the lives of the stupid masses from cradle to grave. And who should lead this government? Why of course an oligarchic elite which decides, ala Karl Marx, “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need.”

To that end, for decades on end, the leftists among us have systematically engineered:
·   Cruel welfare systems that suffocate ambition, destroy families, deprive people of good educations and the acquisition of marketable skills, and create life-long dependency;
·   Dumbed-down school systems that discourage independent thought, foster feelings-driven curricula, elevate union demands over education, and discourage parental school choice, as the Obama administration is now doing by eliminating school vouchers (while he sends his daughters to a $55,000-a year private school). 
·   The colossal hoax known as man-made global warming which imposes punishingly harsh environmental strictures not only on the stupid masses but also on any exploration of the vast oil resources extant in this country, as well as the building of nuclear facilities, both of which promise total energy independence, possibly in less than a decade.
·   The subprime-mortgage crisis on both our country and the world, which forced banks to follow our government’s “fair”-lending edicts in order to be – what else? – “fair” to people who couldn’t afford homes, never mind that the 92 percent of Americans who pay their mortgages faithfully now have to pay for the eight percent who don’t.
·   Courts with liberal judges who routinely flout the U.S. Constitution to bring about laws that trample on religion and sanction the wholesale killing of unborn babies, among other violations.
·   A media that mindlessly echoes their dogma.

Neat trick, isn’t it? Create a dependent class of “victims,” make sure they stay needy and ignorant, guarantee that we spend billions annually for foreign energy sources when we already have in abundance in America, push the entitlement concept of “fairness” to its inevitable breaking point of massive bankruptcies, seat judges who violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution, and gain control of a media that perpetuates a hate-America ethos.

It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that Obama and his acolytes simply don’t like America. That’s right – the country that gave them everything, made them who they are, blessed them with a bounty of freedoms and unlimited opportunity – this is the country they are now trying to destroy.

WARLOCKS ON THE WARPATH

Like all radicals, President Obama and his minions are following the tried-and-true path to a revolutionary takeover. That path usually starts with a charismatic figure – either a puppet or the real thing – who is good at hiding his real agenda and equally facile at capitalizing on a crisis. As Obama’s alter-ego Rahm Emanuel stated when the stock market began to tank – with suspicious timing, just weeks before the election – "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

The crisis-du-jour is followed by the puppet-in-question (or the real thing) reassuring the nervous masses that he can make things better, “change” the situation and provide “hope” for a better tomorrow. And like clockwork, the nervous masses heave a collective sigh of relief. This is followed by the puppet-real thing offering even more assurances, which he backs up by citing the experts he will call upon to help him – in the case of Obama, the same experts who failed to predict or solve the problem in the first place!

Once the puppet-real thing takes power, his tone immediately changes. Rather than reassurances, he reverts to doomsday predictions, pronouncing that the crisis is even worse than it appeared – a potential “catastrophe.” And he tells the nervous masses that the only way to solve the crisis is to spend their money – not thousands, not millions, not multimillions, not billions, but trillions!

Working at fever pitch – the better to actualize his takeover agenda before the nervous masses catch on to his malevolent intent – the puppet-real thing then launches into a multi-prong assault on all aspects of the society the majority of the nervous masses still love and cherish, its flaws notwithstanding: the banks, the auto industry, the healthcare system, the education system, the environment, the credit system, philanthropy, religious institutions, any dissenting media, et al.
And to deflect attention away from the machete he is taking to the body politic of America, the puppet-real thing creates multiple diversions – photo-ops and interviews with Oprah and People magazine; a media-titillating conflict with the president’s arch nemesis and greatest threat, Rush Limbaugh; and the purchase of a puppy for the first daughters.

And to bolster his agenda, the puppet-real thing takes to telling big fat whoppers that he trusts the stupid masses will believe.  He says his will be the “most transparent” administration in American history but, oops, it’s the least transparent, in fact it is smothered in secrecy.  He says the American people will have five days to read on the Internet any bill he submits but, oops, never happens!  He says that no bill he submits to the Congress will have earmarks but, oops, the last bill had 8,500 slabs of pork.  He says he will not pay for weapons systems “we don’t use” but, oops, fails to tell the American people that he is abandoning the Ballistic-Missile Defense and not upgrading nuclear weapons, submarines, and other vital weapons imperative for our defense – in essence making sure that the superb, heroic and second-to-none U.S. Military will be unable to defend our country from the many enemies that have vowed to annihilate us.  That, and a concerted effort to quash gun ownership right here at home, which will further insure a defenseless America.  Have I mentioned just how much the radical left loathes our country?

The next step for the puppet-real thing is to address the nation, as Obama did in his State of the Union message.  “So I ask this Congress to join me in doing whatever proves “necessary.”  Necessary, that is, to create a Socialist America, or, in my opinion, to skip Socialism and go straight to Communism!

As American war veteran Oliver North has written, “Those unfamiliar with history may not recall that this is exactly what Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler asked their legislatures to do in creating National Socialism.  In the midst of rising unemployment and economic crisis, both men asked for, and got, legislation to do what was `necessary’ and promised new private-sector jobs would be generated by government-funded programs, new tax laws, and novel `lending rules.’  It worked.  Private companies did hire workers to build rail systems, highways and autobahns, invigorated auto industries, and in Germany, the most technologically advanced aircraft in the world.  The rest is history we all know.”

Yes, the most gruesome “history we all know.”

At this point, only halfway through the president’s first-hundred days, a slumbering public – including former cheerleaders from the left – is beginning to wake up and, with growing alarm, question everything about Obama’s toxic brew, from his bizarre overtures to the leaders of terrorist  regimes to his profligate out-of-control spending, to what blogger Dinocrat has described as the Obama administration’s “galactic incompetence.”

But questions are not enough. Now is the time for equally alarmed Americans to put their representatives’ phone numbers on speed-dial, to write them daily e-mails, to join the tea parties that are proliferating throughout the nation, and to work as never before to wrest the Congress from Democrat control in 2010. If not, we’ll have to choke on Obama’s toxic brew for generations to come.


About the author:
Joan Swirsky (http://www.joanswirsky.com/) is a New York-based writer and author who can be reached at joansharon@aol.com.