The Ghost of Mossie's Past

An Attack of Righteous Indignation

2009-04-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the Pittsburgh police shootings, there has been a lot of concerned commentary coming out to of the left denouncing the right-wing, anti-government, pro-gun culture that supposedly nurtured and bred the animal otherwise known as cop killer Richard Poplawski.

Liberals, who can usually barely be roused from the latest issue of Vanity Fair to formulate an opinion on cop killings, suddenly found a cause célèbre to back: cop killing can now be identified as a function of the conservative culture of hate.
In a snarky conversation comparing Dick Cheney’s oh-so-relevant hunting accident (it happened over 3 years ago) with the murder of the policemen in Pittsburgh, Markos “Daily Kos” Moulitsas quipped, “When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparently prefer to talk ‘revolution’ and kill cops.”

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s liberal “humorist” Reg Henry spoke with disgust of the “mother’s milk” imbibed by the right: anti-government, pro-gun vitriol spewed by conservative talk show radio hosts. Henry then quickly distanced himself from directly blaming Limbaugh, by first cowardly refusing to name him (lest a Lexis Nexis search by Limbaugh’s producers drag Mr. Henry into the awkward position of having to defend his thin accusations and tortured logic on a national stage) and by secondly claiming that “[t]hese hate-mongers did not fire the fatal shots at the Pittsburgh police….But the killer took the general illogic to its logical conclusion.”

It should be noted here that Mr. Henry, in his righteous indignation, refused to give the killer “the perverse pleasure of naming him”, but didn’t he dignify the fallen officers by naming them, either. Instead, at the end of his column, Mr. Henry collectively calls Stephen Mayhle, Paul Sciullo II and Eric Kelly “needlessly dead heroes”, a moniker that rings hollow coming as it does after a thorough politicization of their deaths.

Over here on the border of cop killer central, we Philadelphia suburbanites mourned with our city as it lost six officers to deliberate murder in the line of duty in the last three years.

Officers Gary Skerski, Chuck Cassidy, Isabelle Nazario, Patrick McDonald John Pawlowski and Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski, were all killed by career criminals. Even Andre Butler, who killed Officer Nazario by ramming his stolen Escalade into her vehicle, had already amassed a significant criminal record at the tender age of 16. He was, in fact, a fugitive from the juvenile justice system at the time of his arrest.

Meanwhile over on the other side of the country, on March 21, 2009, four Oakland police officers were killed in two related incidents. Sergeants Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans, Daniel Sakai, and Officer John Hege were killed by Lovelle Mixon. In 2007, Mixon was released on parole after serving five years of a six-year sentence for assault with a firearm. Shortly thereafter, he was named as a suspect in a homicide, but there was insufficient evidence to hold him. Nevertheless, there were enough other charges to send him back to prison for an additional nine months. This pillar of society and suspected rapist of a 12-year old girl was so well respected in his Oakland community that he inspired rallies in his name. I seriously doubt that anyone attending any of those rallies was a Rush Limbaugh listener.

In fact, all of these cop killers have had significant and multiple run-ins with the criminal justice system, all had a history of violence, weapons violations, and drug use and by rights, every last one of them should have been in custody at the time they were on the streets murdering policemen.

Based on the laws we have on our books already, none of these perpetrators should have had access to a firearm much less been able to commit murder. Yet for liberals, the solution is always more laws. And now, thanks to Poplawski, we can add in a culture that breeds hate and violence.

Let’s talk about what kind of culture breeds a cop killer.

Could it be a culture of criminal justice that is more about catch and release than punishment or rehabilitation; a culture that offers rewards for crime that far outweigh the risks or the consequences?

Could it be a culture that holds up the admitted and unrepentant cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal as a “political prisoner”, a poster boy against the death penalty and a fitting commencement speaker to lecture our nation’s youth?

Could it be a culture of “stop snitching” perpetuated by the rap and hip-hop community and characterized by ostentatious displays of wealth? A culture that glorifies violence against cops and women in heavy rotation and multi-platinum albums and whose message is not only condoned but praised as “art”.
Could it be a culture that perpetuates victimhood and oppression as a way of life?

A culture whose spiritual leaders include race baiters like the Reverend Al Sharpton, the Reverend Jesses Jackson and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? And hasn’t that culture of victim and oppressor just been validated on a national scale by the election of the first true product of that culture, Barack Obama?

Is this the “conservative culture” that breeds cop killers, or is this a very sour “mother’s milk” of another, more liberal kind?

Every attack on a cop is an attack on us all, not just those that fit in with a specific political agendas.

Published in the Norristown Times Herald. April 16, 2009

Left Not Right on Matters of Faith

2009-04-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

"One of the great strengths of the United States is ... we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." Barack Obama at a press conference in Turkey, April 6, 2009.

We are a nation adrift. As part of the left’s relentless campaign to remove all mention of our nation’s founding Judeo-Christian principals from public life, we are now, as Obama states correctly, a nation devoid of religion. We are instead a nation of citizens bound by a set of flimsy ideals and faux values.

Gone is the American dream, the model of the rugged individualist and the goal of success through hard work. They have been replaced by the ideals of collectivism, entitlement and victim worship. Honor, sacrifice, honesty, personal responsibility and a culture that believes in the sanctity of human life have been replaced with the false morality of diversity, tolerance, environmentalism and a culture of death.
As a lapsed Catholic, for some time I have felt a void in my life where a certain spirituality should be. And by spirituality, I don’t mean some goofy Oprah book on the subject; I mean a set of standards that answers to a higher moral authority.
Twenty-five years later, I find myself revisiting those old Catholic values and wishing the church’s moral authority were still intact and unblemished with the stain of the pedophile priest scandals. I see society crumbling due to a distinct lack of moral clarity and the pillars of our new values and new ideals are far too flimsy to prop it up.

It has gotten to the point that if you dare to live your life according to a code of traditional morality, the left will call you a hypocrite unless you are now and always have been perfect. The more publicly you espouse these values, the more zealously they will hunt you and the more celebrated will be your downfall. This is in hopes that the lesson sinks in to the unconverted: living a life according to a code of traditional morals is futile unless you can do it flawlessly.
And because we are human, that is an all but impossible task.

Charges of hypocrisy are an effective weapon indeed. Indeed, it is the only tool in the left’s arsenal.

Sarah Palin dared to live her life according to a Christian code, so when the left found out about her pregnant teenage daughter it was a perfect example of exposing the hypocrisy that everyone knows is lurking just beneath the surface of every Christian. We watched the left gleefully celebrated the downfall of this girl and ridiculed her for choosing life instead of abortion. It was in fact, such a delicious story of justice in the eyes of the morally bankrupt that it still lives more than six months after Sara Palin herself left the national spotlight.

Yet a far more egregious campaign scandal barely saw the light of day: John Edwards and Rielle Hunter had an affair during Edwards’ run for the presidency while Edwards himself was exploiting his wife’s battle with cancer to gain as much political mileage as possible. When Hunter became pregnant and the father of the child was rumored to be Edwards, the story gained little play in the media. Rielle was quietly paid off and sent out of the public spotlight, while Edwards performed the required Kabuki Theater of asking for the public’s forgiveness on the eve of what looked like his possible appointment as Barack Obama’s running mate. Rumors of a love child, however, were too much for even Barack Obama’s famously low character standards; Edwards instead dropped out of the public eye and was allowed to return to private life.

Because the Palins dared to live according to a code of ethics dictated by traditional religion, they have been labeled hypocrites because of their very human failings. John Edwards and Rielle Hunter however, are not hypocrites because you can’t fall short of your standards if you have none.

This lack of moral clarity infecting our once great nation has thrown us back in time; instead of worshipping a good and just God, we worship the random whims of nature. Gaia is angry; we must ask for forgiveness for the sins of our modern conveniences and we offer penance with our sacrifices of carbon credits.

We look with contempt upon human beings, seeing them not as part of the Earth’s natural ecosystem, but as an intruder into an otherwise perfect world. Humans encroach on the habitat of animals, they create pollution, they invade open spaces, and they suck the Earth dry of resources.

There are no evil-doers, only misunderstood victims. Whether it be 19 radical Islamists bent on returning the Caliphate, or a random lone gunman opening fire on his colleagues, our obsessions with getting to “root causes” inevitably leads to an explanation of the victimization of the perpetrator and a ready availability of weaponry. It’s all just a big circle of violence of which we are all a part and because we have abandoned personal responsibility, the only solution is further curtailment of our freedoms.

You see, it is only ok for the left to tell you how to live your life. It’s ok for them to force their false values on you and make you comply through rule of law and confiscatory taxation. Its ok for them to indoctrinate your children in our public schools with their false religion and it’s your duty to pay for it with your taxes. It’s not only ok to experiment on human embryos but it would be immoral not to since the new gospel says that the potential in destroying an embryo is so much greater that the potential in a fully realized human being.

It’s ok for society to fall into moral decay because we’re none of us perfect and therefore we’re none of us qualified to judge what moral decay is anyway.
To say otherwise would be hypocrisy.

Published in the Norristown Times Herald, April 9, 2009

Darkness, like Ignorance, is Bliss

2009-04-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

I sat in the dark this past Saturday night during Earth Hour, the only light in my house from the glowing ember of my patchouli-scented incense, while I contemplated our great mother Gaia. As I took a sip of my Vente Chai Tea Latte with extra froth, it occurred to me that perhaps I have been too hard on Barack Obama. Perhaps instead of embracing change, I have been resisting it. Perhaps I have not been as hopeful as I could be.

Then it came to me: It’s only the words that matter. Everything else is incidental.

I just didn’t get it before. But I do now.

I simply have been paying too much attention to what Obama is doing and not enough attention to what Obama is actually saying. For instance, I’ve been far too consumed with the colossal expansion of government, which I thought was Obama’s way of dismantling our current system of capitalism and replacing it with a European-style socialism or fascism. But I understand now that all of this spending is being done with reluctance, and that’s what really counts. Because if I really listened to Obama, I would have heard him say, “I don’t like the idea of spending more government money, nor am I interested in expanding government’s role.” Like a loving parent, you can see that this action hurts him more than it hurts us; he’s only doing this for our own good.

And when he said that the omnibus spending bill didn’t have any earmarks in it, what he meant was, “Every omnibus spending bill after this one.” It was, after all, last year’s business, and Bush left such a mess it’s going to take at least a trillion or two or three or ten to clean it up.

I don’t know where I got that “massive power grab” stuff from.

And as for Tim Geithner, it doesn’t matter if the markets don’t have faith in him; Obama has faith in him, and that should be enough for us.

For a while I was upset about Obama’s announced intentions to close Guantanamo Bay. What, I wondered, would he do with all of those dangerous terrorists we’re keeping there? But then I heard that they aren’t terrorists at all; they’re not even “enemy combatants.” They are “detainees”, which is a whole different thing. These aren’t people who are being locked away for any specific reason, they are people the United States is holding back from doing whatever it is that they would otherwise be doing if they weren’t being detained. When I heard that, I thought the very least we can do is offer them some good ole American hospitality as an apology for “detaining” them for so long. Imagine my surprise when I found out that our president was a step ahead of me, promising these poor, freedom-starved folks some taxpayer funded welfare benefits just until they get back on their feet again.

You can just imagine how the rest of the world will look upon us after this meaningful gesture.

When Obama was elected on a promise of ending the war on terror quickly, I worried that if we pulled out too quickly that it would embolden our enemies to commit more acts of terrorism. After my epiphany during Earth Hour, I realized that there are no acts of terror; there are only man-caused disasters. With a little reasonable, intelligent diplomacy, man-caused disasters are much easier to control, predict and prevent than those random acts of terror committed by religious fanatics during the Bush administration.

Clearly there was too much “worry” in my life and not enough “hope”.

While I was sitting in the dark on Saturday night, cleansing my life from the toxic assets of modern civilization, I thought about the innovative new ways that the Obama administration is tackling foreign affairs. Most importantly, they made it a point to make sure that Gordon Brown and the U.K. don’t think that they are any more special than any of the other 190 countries in the world. Playing favorites is part of the reason the world hates us, after all. We all know that diplomacy didn’t work under Bush, but that was because of how we were doing it, not because of the countries in which we were attempting it. Obama’s YouTube message to Iran was hip and modern, kind of like Iran’s own personal Jay Leno appearance, if Iran has anything like the Tonight Show. By embracing technology on the foreign policy front, the possibilities for Obama are endless: I can’t wait until he starts texting Cesar Chavez (“OMG! Did U C Hannon dis Brown? ROTFLOL!”), twittering with BFF Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and sending friend requests to Kim Jong Il on Facebook.
If that’s not change, I don’t know what is.

Finally, I know that there are a lot of open-minded moderates out there whom I’ve offended with my over-the-top, out-of-touch conservatism; reasonable people whom, by their own admission, can always see all sides of the issue and whom, Lord knows, are much more qualified than I to state an opinion.

Allow me to apologize if I’ve harshed anyone’s mellow in the last couple of months.
By choosing to put my faith and trust in the government, I can devote some much needed time to updating my hairstyle and makeup, and also give the proper attention to picking out the exact right belted sweater, leggings and boots combo that will allow my gardening experience this year to not only be a fabulous foray into high fashion, but to be a far “greener” venture than it has been for the last fifteen years.

The new Lisa Mossie wants to be part of the hope, change and the government goody handout. I now hope to change and have changed to hope, and most importantly, am so much more hopeful about change. And I owe it all to Earth Hour.

You could almost say that instead of seeing the light, I was embraced by the darkness.

And darkness, like ignorance, is bliss.

Happy April Fool’s day.

Published in the Norristown Times Herald, April 2, 2009

And the Businessman Takes the Fall

2009-03-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

Thieves. Murderers. Rapists. Drug dealers.

Businessmen.

Ladies and Gentlemen: the rogues gallery of America’s most despicable criminals.
At least the thief, killer, rapist or drug dealer has family, friends and neighbors who are unashamed to defend him as misunderstood; to cry to the cameras and explain, “He was a good boy, he just fell into a bad crowd.”

But so distasteful is the image of the American businessman that he stands alone as a symbol of greed and depravity. A straw man set up to take the fall for singlehandedly collapsing our financial system to satisfy his own selfish desires.

For some time now, private business has been much maligned in the media. After Enron, all private companies were characterized as greedy and unscrupulous. Entire industries have been demonized in this way, after which they are forever labeled as “big”: Big Oil, Big Pharma. Big Tobacco. Big Three Automakers.

The only big that is good is “Big Government”, because only they have the power to save us from Big Business.

After the news of the AIG bonuses hit, the outrage that had been smoldering unfocused for so many months burst into flames with the help of some accelerant from Washington and a bit of hot air from the bellows mainstream media.

Yes, AIG did things wrong. The list of AIG’s transgressions against basic business ethics has been well documented and publicized; it is not my intention to rehash their crimes here, but simply to acknowledge it as only one piece of what went wrong.
The federal government, which sets itself up as a necessary stop gap against Big Businesses’ worst excesses not only failed to regulate this mess effectively, but actually encouraged the economic downfall with the regulations they put in place.

What was surprising was that for an all-too-brief instant, the mainstream media actually took a break from their primary function as cheerleaders for the new Administration and actually started doing their jobs: It was in that fleeting moment that the press actually was interested in how that clause allowing AIG executives to keep their bonuses remained in the bailout package. Nancy Pelosi was quick to distance herself and her House from the provision. Chris Dodd denied writing it in; then admitted writing it in. But did Dodd write it in at the behest of “someone” in Treasury as he claimed? Or was it a demand of the new administration as he claimed later? Or was it the fault of some anonymous staffer as he claimed later still?

All this work was giving the mainstream media a collective headache. It was hard to keep Dodd’s stories straight. Add to that the continued bumbling of Timothy Geithner, and it was far easier to “report” on the history being made on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” than to actually track down the real story of government corruption and greed.

Barack Obama was the number one recipient of campaign donations from AIG last year with $104,332. Number two should come as no surprise: Chris Dodd received $103,900 in campaign funds. And bringing up a pathetic third was John McCain with $59,499.
If we go back to the origins of this meltdown, back to the mortgage mess originating at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we can look again with little surprise. The number one recipient of campaign funds from Fannie and Freddie from 1989 through 2008 was none other than Chris Dodd, who received a grand total of $165,400 during that time. The number two recipient is also unsurprising: Barack Obama. What is surprising is that Barack Obama managed to collect $126,349 from these organizations only since 2004.

Look back even further to Countrywide and take note that Chris Dodd was also privy to one of those very special mortgage rates available only to “Friends of Angelo”.
How are these people supposed to police Big Business when Big Business funds the means for keeping them in power?

Meanwhile, Congress trots the beleaguered executives in front of their committees for puffed up show trials where they can fan the populist rage even further on behalf of their victimized constituencies.

The flames of populism had been stoked to such heights that this past weekend, angry citizens climbed aboard busses with their torches and pitchforks to take a tour of AIG executive homes and protest in their front yards.

And congress, too, was busy this past weekend wherein they may or may not have actually violated the Constitution by passing a 90% punitive tax against bonus recipients who work for companies that accepted TARP funds.

Timothy Geithner, after much dilly dallying, finally announced a plan to rescue the banking system which depends on participation from the private sector. These investments have the potential to pay off big for investors and carry little downside risk; that risk is being taken on by the American public.

So which businessmen want to volunteer to make a lot of money by buying toxic assets, especially when they will be vilified for making that money and perhaps punitively taxed on it when all is said and done? Haven’t we successfully destroyed any semblance of trust between private business and the government?
The insanity deepens: The New York Times reported on Sunday that the Administration is considering placing limits on executive compensation for financial institutions that will not be limited to those companies that took federal bailout money.

Apparently, according to the NYT piece on Sunday, “Increasing oversight of executive pay has been under consideration for some time, but the decision was made in recent days as public fury over bonuses has spilled into the regulatory effort.”
Are we really talking about the government regulating the wages of private institutions here in America? Think about that. Really think about that, and not in the context of AIG, which is how they want you to think about it. Think about it in the context of your own paycheck.

Are the American people going to let the government get away with regulating their pay?

Sure they are. To a large extent, they already have. Congress has already demonized the American businessman to the extent that the American public will probably cheer this move as justice being served.

What the American public doesn’t yet realize is that they are the American businessman. He’s you. He’s every one of us. Anyone who has a job whose wages are not paid by American tax dollars benefits from the prosperity of the American businessman.

And the American government is doing the best they can to kill him.

Originally published in the Norristwon Times Herald March 26, 2009

Anti-Bush Stem Cell backlash unfair

2009-03-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

Have you heard?

The president lifted the ban on federal funding for stem cell research.

Oh, no, it was not President Obama who did this, it was President Bush and the year was 2001.

And the ban was originally imposed by President Clinton.

All true. But you wouldn’t know it by being a casual observer of the news. You have to dig a little deeper and think a little harder to really understand the stem cell debate as it is today.

In 2001, George W. Bush lifted the ban on federal funding for stem cell research.

Bush, a famously pro-life president, strove to create a policy that balanced the sanctity of human life with the need to advance the cause of medical science. Not wanting to encourage the further destruction of human life, but recognizing that embryonic stem cell research had been started with private funds, Bush limited federal funding of stem cell research to existing lines: those embryos that had already been compromised as of August 2001. Unfortunately, as is usually the case with any compromise on an issue about which people feel passionately, Bush’s compromise on stem cell research angered both sides.

The pro-lifers did not want embryonic stem cell research continued under any circumstances; the pro-choice segment called it an outright “ban” on stem cell research.

And, as always in the battle for rhetorical dominance in the era of the liberal media, the left won.

Therefore, a rather large segment of the public knows nothing about embryonic stem cell research other than the fact that George W. Bush “banned” it, and that last week Barack Obama signed an executive order that represents a “180-degree reversal of the Bush policy.”

This is great news only if you didn’t understand the Bush policy in the first place, and therefore what a 180-degree reversal of it entails.

There are three types of stem cell research being carried out today: embryonic, induced pluripotent, and adult stem cell research.

Only one type, embryonic, dismantles and subsequently destroys human embryos to utilize stem cells. Induced pluripotent and adult stem cell research can utilize stem cells without harming the donor. All of these types of research have been going on for many years; all have benefited from government funding, although embryonic research was subject to the funding restrictions mentioned above.

All three types of research have been carried out in the United States with private funding sources. And all three types of research have been carried out without any such funding restrictions placed on them in other parts of the world.

The result is that in spite of the very limited restrictions placed on embryonic stem cell research, it has yielded nothing. No cures, no therapies, no treatments. Only tumors.

Adult and induced pluripotent stem cell research and the breakthrough using pluripotent cells, however, have yielded many treatments for diseases such as diabetes, Crohn’s disease, heart disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, lymphomas, leukemias, and produced treatments for immune deficiencies, spinal cord injuries, and corneal reconstruction.

As part of that 180-degree sweeping reversal of policy, Obama has promised to de-fund this type of research — the research that is actually producing results.

Obama is the most pro-abortion president this nation has every seen. His endorsement of the “Freedom of Choice” act essentially grants abortion on demand, at any point in the pregnancy, for any reason. It eliminates the parental consent laws we currently have on the books now. As an Illinois State senator, Obama voted numerous times against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, a law that protects the lives of babies born alive after a failed abortion. So it comes as no surprise that a man with beliefs such as Obama’s would endorse the unrestricted destruction of human embryos all under the cover of advancing science.

If advancing science were really his intention, Obama would not be de-funding the science that is actually producing viable cures and treatments. It’s important to keep in mind that President Obama did not limit those federal funds to “left over” embryos that are “going to be destroyed anyway” as the argument has gone for the past eight years. As if the suppliers of this “genetic material” (conservatives call them “parents”) have never had the choice to donate their unused embryos to privately funded research labs prior to Obama’s new policy.

Indeed, Obama has placed absolutely no limits on the use of taxpayer dollars. Instead, in what has become a pattern early in his administration, Obama has once again left the heavy lifting of sorting out the complicated details to his minions, in this case it’s up to the scientists at NIH to decide what research can and cannot be funded.

Which means that right now, there are no limits to what your tax dollars can pay for, even cloning or creating embryos specifically to be destroyed for research. Which also means that we are relying on the scientists themselves to determine the ethical boundaries of embryonic stem cell research.

For an example of how successful reproductive science has policed itself in the past, see: Suleman, Nadya, aka “Octomom.”

Dr. James Thomson, the scientist who discovered embryonic stem cells, recently said “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”

Judging by the amount of comfort this administration has with destroying human life, it’s clear they haven’t thought it about it nearly enough.

Originally published in the Times Herald March 19, 2009

No breathing room for this president

2009-03-12T16:54:00.000-07:00

Am I going to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt?

The answer is no. Unequivocally and unapologetically, no.

I don’t have any doubts at all about Obama’s agenda.

I never have.

And I oppose it all, down to the tiniest earmark.

This is not some sort of a “payback” for liberals’ shameful and immature foot-stamping and breath-holding of George W. Bush.

George W. Bush’s tenure is over and what’s done is done. Those who would presume to lay the blame of the economy solely at his feet do so only by mistakenly believing that history began in January of the year 2000.

Those of us that have been paying attention know the seeds for this economic downturn were sown during the Carter Administration with the Community Reinvestment Act and government tinkering with the housing market.

Those seeds were left to grow during both Republican and Democratic administrations with little cause for alarm from the government appointed watchdogs that should have seen it coming. There is plenty of blame to go around: Democrats for their misguided social engineering policies and Republicans for not having the guts to take a stronger stand against them.

The bottom fell out of the market in October of last year. Under normal circumstances, the American economy would be starting to show indications of an impending recovery by now.

But we’re not. All we keep seeing is the market continuing to spiral down.

Why?

Because Barack Obama is remaking America.

And he’s starting with the economy, which means all bets are off. The normal machinations of the economy are not simply being tweaked or tinkered with; they are being replaced entirely by the slow, clunky ill-fitting gears of socialism.

It won’t work.

You see, in spite of liberals’ insistence that conservatives have nothing to offer but the same old ideas of lower taxes and smaller government, it is those ideas that have actually worked in the past.

Socialism never has and never will. But it’s all good because the solution to society’s ills under socialism is more government. And more government. And more government. Until he gets it right, we are all subjects in Barack Obama’s great social engineering experiment.

This is Obama’s economy now. He sold himself as the fixer of all things wrong with the country, and so far, his fixes are being met with something less than enthusiasm on Wall Street.

Indeed, Obama’s admonition to ignore the gyrations of the market and his comparison of them to political opinion polls is yet another glaring example of that lack of experience that conservatives were worried about. If only the markets ignored him half as much as he says he ignores them.

But how do we read Obama’s dismissal of the plummeting stock market? As an inappropriate and scary level of naiveté for a national leader? As an arrogant condescension by one who is untouched by such events? Or as a remark made by someone who smugly believes that the economic crisis affords him an opportunity to remake America from a nation of rugged individualists into a country of bleating sheep reliant upon the almighty government for every facet of their very existence?

I know that last one’s a stretch. After all, what would be the attraction of having the helpless multitudes dependent upon your great benevolence for their very existence? Where your only pleasure in life is bestowing gifts from your generous bounty onto a barely worthy public? Who would strive for that except someone who had an extremely over-developed God complex?

Ahem.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be taking Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, at his word when he said to never let a serious crisis go to waste. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

But after all, we are being told that everything is in crisis.

Yes, yes, yes: the economy is in crisis.

But let’s be clear: there is no “crisis” in health care. There is no long line of people in this country dying for lack of medical care. There is, however, a problem with the uninsured, who use emergency rooms for primary care and then don’t pay their bills. This results in higher insurance rates and a lower quality of emergency care for the rest of us.

The health care segment was one of the only thriving segments left of the economy. But Obama’s intentions to dismantle our private health care system and replace it with socialized medicine are tanking that sector as well.

As for those long lines of people dying while waiting for care, you’ll just have to wait until Obama wipes out private health care and puts us all in the ever-loving arms of a government-run, single-payer system.

There is no crisis in energy; however, Obama’s policy of cap and trade will create one.

Cap and trade is nothing more than another tax that will drive the price of traditional energy sources through the roof.

And when the public can no longer afford to pay for their energy needs? That’s right: enter a new government program to solve the problems created by the “free market.”

The so-called crisis in education is by far the most obviously manufactured.

Education has been almost exclusively under the control of the government for the last 50 years and beyond, but it’s not working.

OK, let’s see who’s been paying attention: Boys and girls, what’s the solution to a government-created problem in education? That’s right: More government.

Obama’s policies are hostile to businesses, both small and large.

They reward irresponsibility and punish the producers. They seek not to raise the standard of living for the downtrodden, but to lower the standard of living of the producing, non-political classes, thus achieving a perceived “fairness.”

This is Obama’s big-time radicalism, and it’s happening here and now.

And no, I’m not about to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not for one minute.

Originally published in the Times Herald March 12, 2009

The Octo-mom, a media creation

2009-03-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

For a while there, I thought the Octomom was getting her own segment on the Today Show.

It seemed like every morning I was watching yet another installment of a never-ending interview of Nadya Suleman regurgitating every intimate detail of her life to Ann Curry on the assumption the public found her and her offspring fascinating. It was all Octomom, all the time.

Then something happened that the media did not anticipate: rather than rapt fascination with this story, the public was revolted. They viewed Suleman like they viewed a train wreck, a plane crash or a school shooting: a horrible tragedy from which they simply cannot turn away.

Because the media are in the business of capturing and holding audiences, the Octomom story has since taken on a decidedly different tone. While the media and Suleman still enjoy that symbiotic relationship of exploiter and willing exploitee, the way the Octomom story is being presented to the public represents a departure from the media’s voyeuristic business as usual. In order to keep from alienating their audiences, the media are now presenting the Octomom story with implicit distaste and disapproval.

For an idea how deep this disgust with Suleman has gone, Billy Bush, the Ken-doll host of “Access Hollywood”, soberly announced last week that covering the Octomom story was a little too tabloid-esque for the tastes of “Access Hollywood’s” discerning viewers, therefore they wouldn’t be covering it anymore. Octomom, said Bush, was just “gross”.

The fact that “Access Hollywood” then covered the story of their non-coverage of Octomom does not minimize their judgment call in this matter; “Access Hollywood” is a show that glories in documenting excess. To actually say out loud that Octomom is too “gross” for “Access Hollywood” is quite a leap indeed.

So has it finally happened? Has the tolerant, non-judgmental American society of the past thirty years finally stumbled upon a story so depraved that even our journalists are appalled?

After many years of compelling evidence to the contrary, it seems the American public does indeed still have sensibilities that can be offended.

On the other hand, it seems to me it’s a little late in the game for society to be pulling the rug out from under Nadya Suleman. How can we be offended by Suleman after standing idly by while the State slowly starved Terri Shiavo to death on a national stage? After watching O.J. hunt for Nicole’s real killer on the back nine of every southern California golf course for the last fifteen years? After watching the political circus that is Rod Blagojevich get rewarded for his abuse of office and the English language wit a six-figure book deal?

Hasn’t Nadya Suleman had every reason to expect that her octuplets would be embraced by an adoring public and corporate sponsorships? Didn’t she have every reason to expect that by enduring this high risk and ill-advised pregnancy for a few short months, that with the right publicist, she could have all of her needs and wants met for life? Isn’t that what has always happened in the past?

Haven’t feminists beaten us on the head for years with the notion that the single mother is the most noble of all citizens: a victim of pure circumstance rather than poor choices? Nadya is a single mother of fourteen; that should make her pretty much the closest thing to a saint that N.O.W. has ever had.

Yet America has turned against her. Why? Why has such an unprecedented level of hostility been directed at Suleman where none has existed before in past highly publicized multiple births?

As she aired her dirty laundry for the world, it became increasingly clear the vapid and self-absorbed Suleman couldn’t be expected to make even the most basic common sense decisions. Yet irresponsibility has been a vice we have been quick to forgive, especially most recently.

People who recognized the flaws in Suleman’s thought processes pointed quickly to the fertility doctors who should have refused to impregnate her.

But there are no laws limiting the amount of children a person can have, and I seriously doubt anyone wants to adopt a Chinese policy on offspring limitations to address one instance.

Nadya Suleman’s fourteen children illustrate just one tiny area of the complicated ethical ramifications of the advances in reproductive science. In spite of the terrific advantages gained in this area, I’m afraid society isn’t quite up to addressing the moral issues surrounding it.

So what’s left? Take the kids away? Why? What is her crime?

I daresay more irresponsible and idiotic people than Suleman have had children.

When an affront to our innate decency like Nadya Suleman shows up, we’re angry, but we’re not sure why.

We are surprised that many people do not have an ingrained set of guiding principles; yet Suleman is hardly the first to clearly demonstrate a glaring deficiency in this area.

We look to authority to control the offender, but authority is ill equipped to deal with the likes of Suleman in any effective way.

For years we have watched society deteriorate, but instead of denouncing that deterioration or calling those responsible into account, we shrug and say, “who am I to judge?” For these days, there is nothing worse than being labeled judgmental.

So we have said nothing as our culture was coarsened.

We have contented ourselves with focusing on shades of gray rather than the right or wrong. We have made excuses with explanations or “root causes” rather than punishing the offensive behavior.

We have prized celebrity and decadence while we have denigrated religion and traditional values.

And just because we make an occasional mistake, we are afraid to stand up for what is right.

Does the backlash against Suleman signal a turnaround in our culture, or have we already entered the era of Octomom?

Was Nadya Suleman an anomaly, or is she merely the first in a long line to come?

We're numb, but we're not stupid

2009-02-26T13:35:00.000-08:00

Washington thinks we are stupid.

They think we aren’t paying attention. They told us it was a crisis so severe that if they didn’t pass the stimulus bill immediately, catastrophe would surely ensue. They told us there was no time to debate the bill, no way to post the bill publicly, no time to read the bill and no time to waste passing the bill, even though it sure seems like there was plenty of time to load it up with pet pork projects.

They think we didn’t notice that Wall Street didn’t exactly react with glee to the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Indeed, at this writing, the Dow is at its lowest point since 1997.

They lecture that now is not the time to be partisan and that we should all be working together to get things done. They think we won’t recognize this for what it is: a call to shut up, stop making waves and get in line, no matter how ridiculously implausible or counter-intuitive their bloated stimulus spending package seems to us.

They told us that doing something is better than doing nothing and they think if they repeat this rhetoric often enough we will begin to believe it. They are counting on us to roll over and quietly accept that the same people who created the environment for this perfect storm of economic collapse have the right plan to get us out, even though it has never ever worked before.

These are the very same folks, in fact, who have still not learned the lessons of attempting social engineering through national monetary policy, which is what got us into this mess in the first place.

They think they can ask us to sacrifice when they do not. Our congressional offices remain fully staffed while businesses are forced to cut back. Corporate executives can’t sell their private jets fast enough, yet Nancy Pelosi still has hers. Obama tells us to inflate our tires and don on an extra sweater to save energy, yet the thermostat in the Oval Office is set at a balmy 78.

Oh yeah. They think we’re really stupid.

Obama thinks we will applaud his promise to hold the “greedy bankers” accountable while he pointedly ignores the culprits in congress. At least Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are clapping.

After an orgy of unprecedented spending on a scale so vulgar it would offend Paris Hilton, our president starts talking of “going through the budget line by line” to look for spending cuts, disguises his intent to hike taxes by saying he’s only going to let the Bush tax cuts “expire”, and whines about “inherited trillion dollar deficits” as if the last month hadn’t happened.

He thinks our attention span is that short.

The government is in the process of nationalizing the banks, nationalizing the auto industry and nationalizing the insurance industry, but why stop there? Let’s move on to nationalizing health insurance while we’re at since the government is so very good at running things. Let’s abandon altogether the shorter term proven energy fixes like drilling for oil and building nuclear plants in favor of pie-in-the-sky “green” money pit projects like wind and solar.

Congress intends to pass the “Employee Free Choice Act”, the “Fairness Doctrine” and the “Freedom of Choice Act” and they think that by using these Orwellian sounding names we will be lulled into ignoring the sinister motives behind them.
The “Employee Free Choice Act” removes the benefit of the secret ballot from workplace votes on whether to unionize or not.

The “Fairness Doctrine” seeks to silence conservative talk radio because liberal talk radio, besides being completely redundant, was such a non-starter they couldn’t possibly compete.

The “Freedom of Choice Act” allows abortion on demand for any reason at any time during the pregnancy. The only one who doesn’t have a choice is the unborn baby.
Hey, dummies, look at all the glorious freedom and fairness the government is giving us!

Oh, and by the way, those of you who have lived your lives responsibly, paid your bills, lived within your means and put off the gratification of owning your dream house until your financial circumstances warranted it, you are the people who will be bailing out your fellow homeowners who maybe weren’t quite as responsible.

Even though the Administration insists that it “will not rescue the unscrupulous or irresponsible by throwing good taxpayer money after bad loans . . . And it will not reward folks who bought homes they knew from the beginning they would never be able to afford," there is good reason to be skeptical of this claim, not the least of which is a president who believes that we will swallow anything he says hook, line and sinker, simply because it came out of his mouth. It was, after all, part of the magic that got him elected.

During the housing boom, the mortgage industry was rife with fraud, speculation and irresponsibility. The criteria for which people can qualify for federal aid is broad enough to drive a truck through which makes it hard to believe that opportunists, speculators and liars will not benefit from this bailout. That’s because it’s hard to believe that there are as many as 9 million people who did every single thing right and now, through absolutely no fault of their own, are simply unable to fund one of their most basic necessities of life.

And while the government now asks us to sacrifice for their shortsightedness, irresponsibility and arrogance, the 92 percent of the population who responsibly managed their finances wonders, “Why is there no help for us? Why are we bailing out people in McMansions simply because they owe more money on their home than it’s worth? Why are we lowering interest rates and extending amortization periods for people who will still be incapable of making their mortgage payments even after these modifications?”

Finally, “Why should we continue to pay our mortgages?”

Sorry, no help for you. And on behalf of the federal government, may I offer condolences on your 401(k)s?

This, gentle readers, is what is known as moral hazard. It is what happens when responsibility gets punished and irresponsibility gets rewarded; when winners pay and losers collect. By propping up failing enterprises, whether individual homeowners or giant banks or automakers in Detroit, the government creates dependency and dependency creates voters.

They look at you, the American people, with a barely concealed contempt. They think you are sheep and they think you aren’t paying attention.

Prove them wrong.

Originally published in the Norristown Times Herald February 26, 2009

Thin line between cure and cause

2009-02-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

“Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,” Bill Gates told a packed house at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Long Beach, Calif., recently. He raised a jar as a visual aid.

“I brought some,” he continued. “Here, I’ll let them roam around — there is no reason only poor people should be infected.”

In fact, Bill Gates isn’t quite correct. There is no reason that anyone, regardless of economic status should be infected with malaria.

Malaria was almost eradicated from the face of the earth thanks to a pesticide called DDT. Then in 1962, Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” was published, warning of the elimination of birds and humans as a result of pesticide use. The environmental movement was born, and 10 years later the EPA banned DDT despite a wealth of evidence of its safety. After considering that evidence, the EPA’s own administrative law judge stated: “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man; DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man; the use of DDT under the regulations involved here (does) not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife.”

Malaria kills thousands of people in Africa every year, yet those African nations that are now considering using DDT to combat the mosquito population are threatened with trade restrictions due to agricultural concerns.

Why, one wonders, does an idea persist long after it has been proven false?

This is the danger of politicized science.

When emotions enter science, the actual science takes a backseat to the cause. The cause takes on a life of its own, and before you know it, people are forming organizations, donating money, funding research, hiring lawyers and ultimately influencing policy.

Australia’s recent wildfires caused, at last count, 200 deaths. Many residents were angered because they believed environmental policy caused the uncontrollable fires. Residents were denied permission by local authorities to cut down trees, clear brush and trim their grass in preparation for brush fire season.

We have the same problem here in America, except our wildfires are out west. We set an environmental policy that forbids responsible logging, thereby creating vast acreage of fuel for wildfires. And every year when they burn, we scratch our heads and wonder what we can do to prevent them.

Closer to home, a few weeks ago there was an item so small in The Times Herald that you may have missed it. “Whooping cough confirmed at Spring-Ford Intermediate.”

Now, I had thought whooping cough had been eradicated. Apparently, I was wrong. Whooping cough, measles and meningitis are enjoying a resurgence, thanks in part to a portion of the population that refuses to immunize their children.

Because “herd immunity” is only obtained when 95 percent of a population in immunized, people who do not believe in inoculation affect the entire population.

In recent years, Jenny McCarthy, who began her career as a Playboy model, then parlayed that into a television and film career, has adopted a new role: that of autism crusader.

McCarthy’s son was diagnosed with autism in 2005.

In 2007, McCarthy went public with her son’s diagnosis with her book, “Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism.” The implication/accusation in her book was clear: the immunization of her son was what caused his autism. Oprah Winfrey, whose track record of vetting the people that she promotes is not exactly encouraging (see, James Frey, the staff at her school in South Africa, Herman Rosenblat and Barack Obama) invited Jenny McCarthy on her show to promote her book, and subsequently, her ideals. McCarthy is an engaging media personality and her impassioned arguments on various talk shows and news magazines are a bit more convincing than the dry experts at the CDC called upon to offer a rebuttal with cold, clinical facts.

And a cause was born: Parents began to question the wisdom of vaccinating their children.

McCarthy may have drawn her conclusions about the autism/vaccine link from a 1998 paper published in Lancet Magazine by Dr. Andrew Wakefield.

According to an article appearing in the Times Online (U.K.), Wakefield’s paper reported that “the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab.

“The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.”

Though McCarthy’s public crusade is only a few years old, her exposure has been enormous. Since 1998, when Dr. Wakeman published his paper in the Lancet, the immunization rate has fallen from 92 percent to 80 percent.

Two weeks ago, it was reported in the London Times that Dr. Wakeman manipulated his data.

Their investigation revealed: “In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records.

“Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated.”

Perhaps this will put an end to McCarthy’s dangerous campaign. But most likely, it will not. Like all politicized science, the adherents of such causes invest too much of themselves in their validity to deny them even when confronted with unequivocal facts to the contrary.

No matter what the cost in human life.

Originally published in the Times Herald on February 19, 2009

Call it socialism by any other name

2009-02-12T17:05:00.000-08:00

Somebody wake me up; I’m trapped in an Ayn Rand novel.

Ladies and gentlemen, and especially you liberals, listen up now, this is important:

The government has no money of its own. None whatsoever. Whatever money the government has to spend is money that it has confiscated from you, the taxpayer.

Try to follow along with me now.

Government job creation is funded by taxpayer money — your money. For every dollar that someone earns working in a government-created job, that dollar was taken from someone else. Possibly you. Possibly me. Possibly anyone, that is, except the newly appointed head of the IRS.

Does the phrase “wealth redistribution” ring a bell with anyone out there?

This is socialism: It’s a zero sum game. Instead of creating a bigger pie, the government’s answer is to cut the pie into more slices. Oh, and don’t think all of those slices will be of equal size, either; the biggest slices will go to the good folks in our benevolent government who are taking care of us, along with a few of their very special friends. We’ll get the paper-thin slices left over.

Don’t expect to “get ahead” or “live the American Dream” under socialism. Don’t look for innovation and don’t look for success. In socialism, success is punished by higher taxes and innovation is stagnated by a lack of incentive.

Class warfare will finally come to an end. There will be no more gaps between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” There won’t even be “haves” and “have-nots” anymore; we’ll all be “have-nots,” but at least we’ll all be equal. Talent, hard work and determination will no longer matter since everyone will get the same. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

There will still be a loose class structure in society, only instead of the wealthy fat cats, the put-upon middle class and the working poor; it will be the privileged political class and the great unwashed who will stand in line to collect their government goodies.

This bloated spending bill is loaded with an obscene amount of pork, and that is also part of the “change”some of you voted for, though it looks suspiciously like business as usual on steroids. It was designed by the very people who encouraged the fiscal irresponsibility that got us here in the first place.

And yes, that includes our poor deluded president, who was the picture of outrage and righteous indignation when he found this mess “sitting on his desk wrapped up in a big bow” and waiting for him when he got to the White House.

It’s not like he hasn’t been in Washington for the last four years, right?

Even though this is Obama’s first signature bill, it owes its structure to Nancy Pelosi. A bill so important she urged passing lest “500 million jobs are lost next month” in a country with a population of just more than 300 million might cause the thinking segment of our population to break into a cold sweat as they question Madame Speaker’s abilities to effectively legislate using large numbers.

The cause for this mess lies ultimately at the door of the Republicans.

We all know Democrats can’t control themselves when it comes to spending. That’s practically the definition of a Democrat.

We also know that Democrats have traditionally been able to shrug off accountability for these actions by claiming that Republicans voted for them too. Republicans are supposed to be the countermeasure to Democratic excess and vice versa. That is the definition of the opposition party. For the last few years, the Republicans have been lost in the wilderness, becoming Democrats themselves. There has been no one to stand athwart history and yell, “Stop!”

Even though all but three of our congressmen have seen the light and returned to their conservative principles (paging Arlen Specter: your conscience is calling), our new president feels he can speak with a modicum of authority when he scolds these same Republicans for their lack of credibility on fiscal responsibility. It’s a bit like Lindsay Lohan telling Britney Spears to stop her partying ways and straighten up.

If we are going to try to salvage our free market, capitalism and our way of life, then this is the exact wrong way to go about it.

Nobody thinks this bill will accomplish anything. Even Joe Biden, the unintentional beacon of straight talk in the new administration, only gives it a 70 percent chance of succeeding, and that’s being generous.

Not every Wall Street banker was a greedy fat cat or a predatory lender. Not all corporate executives are undeserving of their pay. Unfortunately, they are the only people you hear about, so no wonder the mood of the country turns with hope to socialism.

We’ve become more dependent on the State, less self-reliant, more risk averse and more susceptible to the self-pitying charms of class warfare. We do not want to forge our own path; we want to be coddled in the big warm lap of the nanny state.

The free market will not rebound without strong leadership and a clear viable plan. This mish-mash liberal wish list of social program spending disguised as “economic stimulus” does not inspire confidence, it inspires uncertainty. Uncertainty makes people spend less, take fewer risks and pull their resources in closer.

Uncertainty causes businesses to contract, make do with fewer employees and use fewer resources. This is not the way to save the free market.

But many of us already knew that. This bill was not designed to save capitalism; it was designed to kill it, once and for all. It’s the golden opportunity the Democrats have been awaiting for years: The perfect “crisis,” manufactured in part by years of bad liberal legislation, which they can now use to justify a massive power grab. They call it a paradigm shift; we call it socialism.

This is the change Obama promised. Change, but inspired by fear instead of hope. He’s doing exactly what he said he would.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Originally published in the Times Herald February 12, 2009

Pot hits the kettle on stimulus deal

2009-02-05T17:02:00.000-08:00

Claire McCaskill called them “idiots.”

In the midst of the debate on the New New Deal (aka the so-called “Stimulus Package”) this statement is a bit like introducing the pot to the kettle.

McCaskill’s labeling of Wall Street executives who meted out bonuses of approximately $18 billion last month was speaking of the fact that such things don’t play well in hard economic times. She was right about that.

But Ms. McCaskill apparently thinks that this pork-laden, government expanding, business-as-usual-but-on-a-much-bigger-scale spending spree bill disguised as “stimulus” is the “change” her constituency voted for. Pot, meet kettle. These things also don’t play well in hard economic times.

Neither do tax cheats being rewarded with cushy government appointments, but that’s a subject for another day.

In spite of the perpetual beatification of FDR and the persistent belief that his alphabet soup mishmash of social experimentation collectively know as the “New Deal” actually ended the Great Depression, there is a plethora of evidence to the contrary. Indeed, liberal New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman is not the last or only word on the subject, in spite of what some Times Herald letter writers would have you believe. People should be aware that there is an active, vocal and intelligent contrary school of thought that claims that the policies of FDR’s New Deal actually prolonged the great depression. Amity Schlaes’s “The Forgotten Man” and “New Deal or Raw Deal” by Burton Folsom Jr., offer the perspective that it was World War II, not the New Deal, that ended the Great Depression. Ironically, this is also the view I was taught in eighth grade history.

The Wall Street Journal broke down the elements of the “stimulus” package and found that only about 12 percent of the $825 billion (and growing) bill will be spent on programs “that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren’t likely to help the economy immediately.” Furthermore, a little more than half of that won’t be spent until 2011. The Wall Street Journal labeled the package a wish list for “just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.”

After the bill passed in the House without a single Republican vote, the mainstream media commenced the predictable tut-tutting of Republicans for opposing it, warning ominously of repercussions from a an American electorate that voted for “change.”

Well, 53 percent of the country voted for the kind of “change” the mainstream media was implying. The rest of us saw that “change” as a sharp lurch to the left and a concerted effort to move the country towards socialism.

There is little opportunity for conservatives to meet in the middle because all attempts by House Republicans to negotiate some terms for their constituents in this bill were handily rebuffed by sore winner Nancy Pelosi. This steamrolling of conservative ideas is the new definition of “bipartisanship.” Republicans who are actually standing on principle for the first time in years are now being accused of “not working together to get things done.”

I say kudos to the Republican members of congress for not voting for this bloated spending, er, “stimulus” bill. The Democrats are only whining about the lack of “bipartisanship” because Republican votes would have provided them with much needed political cover. Without Republican support, this bill will succeed or fail entirely on the backs of Democrats. For a party that’s held the majority in Congress for the last two years, and yet has managed to successfully blame the every crisis of the last few years, real or manufactured, on Republicans, this is new ground and scary indeed.

And speaking of blame, that reminds me: What happened to the promised congressional investigation of the Fannie and Freddie meltdown we were promised back in September? Hello? Chris Dodd? Barney Frank? Either of you guys want to step up and launch that inquiry so the American people can know how we got into this mess?

How best to quash this audacious display of anti-hope and non-change from the Republicans? How can Democrats best deliver on the Obama promise of “unity”?

One way — one very silly and misguided way — is to attempt to silence dissent by trying to marginalize Rush Limbaugh. Somebody needs to tell the Democrats that Rush Limbaugh is not the head of the Republican Party. Sure, conservatives listen to him. But liberals listen to the political ideas of idiots like Al Gore, Sean Penn and Bruce Springsteen, and you don’t see Republicans wasting their time with stupid petitions against them. Rush Limbaugh’s job is to inform and entertain.

He measures success by ratings and he gets ratings by stirring up controversy. Now that all the cable news shows are talking about him, Obama and the Democrats have just handed Rush a big fat bonus while marginalizing themselves. By engaging Rush Limbaugh, Obama is saying that Limbaugh has the power to defeat his agenda.

This from the One who enters office with a 70 percent approval rating for doing absolutely nothing.

I’ve said before that bipartisanship is a crock. If there were no opposition party, there’d be no point in elections.

House Republicans deserve the praise and thanks of their constituencies for voting against this atrocity of a bill.

Senate Republicans had better be paying attention.

Originally published in the Times Herald on February 5, 2009

Praise for Bush, prayers for Obama

2009-01-29T17:08:00.000-08:00

My new era of hope, change and bipartisanship began thusly:

As my co-workers began to gather around the television to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama, one co-worker, whom I’ve never met, saw fit to give voice to her joy at the departure of, in her words, “the worst president we ever had” and the beginning of what she was sure would be a bright shiny new era. “Eight years,” she proclaimed, “will not be enough to clean up the mess he left behind.”

As outspoken as I am in my columns, I generally make it a policy, as do most people, to avoid the topics of politics (and religion) in everyday life, unless I know my audience.

I do not believe the workplace is the proper forum for discussing political beliefs, so I gently, but firmly, reminded her that not everyone in the room was an Obama supporter; though, that should have been unnecessary.

This idea apparently had not occurred to her. “Well, the vast majority of people voted for him,” she replied. Again, I reminded her that a little less than half of the voting population did not vote for him. That was enough to get her to turn down the volume on her comments, but not enough to curtail them altogether.

Welcome to the new era of bipartisanship.

Meanwhile, the coverage of the inauguration amounted to gushing pundits and weeping anchors proclaiming that this was a day not for partisanship, but a day to just be to be proud to be an American.

I don’t know about the rest of the country, but I certainly don’t need to inaugurate a new president to be proud to be an American.

Apparently, that 53 percent of the country who voted for Obama did need that, because even in victory they are incapable of being gracious: Boos and choruses of “Nah-nah-nah-nah, hey-hey-hey, goodbye” greeted the outgoing president when he arrived on the dais.

Liberals talk in rapturous tones about how Obama will restore dignity to the Office when they themselves are the people who stripped it away. Their behavior at the inauguration is Exhibit A. They are only able to support their country if they approve of its leader.

Please spare me the comments that Bush deserved it; that Bush brought this level of disrespect upon himself. Please spare me yet another dose of irrational Bush hatred. The left hated him when he beat — yes, beat — Al Gore in 2000 and they never got over it.

As a country, we were able to come together briefly after Sept. 11 when Bush told the country that the war on terror would be long and difficult.

Apparently, to immature liberals, that meant about nine months. After that, it was time to begin nursing their irrational Bush hatred again, to the detriment of the Office of the President and in turn, America.

Eight years ago, the left was enraged and obsessed merely by Bush’s smirk and what they read into its meaning.

Today, would I or other conservatives be labeled a racist if I make note of the arrogant tilt of President Obama’s head?

Who will become the target of this ire when the promises are not delivered? When the country sinks deeper into recession? Who will be blamed?

When Barack Obama decides to keep Bush policies in place, will those policies continue to be criticized, or will the criticism be muted or non-existent simply because the policies have been blessed by Obama? I’m speaking specifically now of the closing of Guantanamo Bay which, according to the Obama administration, will take at least a year to “study” and “phase out.”

Call me cynical, but the executive order to close Gitmo smacks to me of a giant bone thrown to the radical left. It would not surprise me a bit if, at the end of that year, Gitmo remained open.

After all, whatever would we do with those prisoners? What prison is going to volunteer to take them?

Maybe this is unity. Or maybe it is simply a function of simply ignoring the voices of those who did not vote for Obama. The call to put aside our differences for the good of our country and “heal” is nothing new.

But that doesn’t mean conservatives should have to blindly roll over and accept his misguided policies (the $900 billion bailout leaps to mind) in this new false spirit of “working together to get things done.”

Where was that spirit the last eight years?

Will dissent still be the patriotic enterprise it was a few short weeks ago?

My guess is that now if you dare to voice dissent, you will be labeled as bitter, attacked as a divider and ridiculed as out-of-touch.

And no, dissent is not still patriotic.

In spite of my misgivings, I wish Obama well, for he is my president and he leads my country, which I love.

But he is a man, only a man. Not a god, not the messiah and not a magician. He will make mistakes. He will fail to deliver on promises. He will fall short of some, if not all of his goals.

This is the real world; not fairy tale land.

There is only one thing I hope that Obama realizes: This is the greatest country on earth. His job is to make sure that our place in the world is assured, not preside over our country’s decline.

I hope Obama proves to the country and the world that he is not going to be ruled by the mob or dictate policy based on opinion polls. I hope he has the courage and the integrity to risk his political capital and make the difficult unpopular decisions that are in the best interests of the county.

Say what you will about George W. Bush. Disagree with his policies, if you must; I have taken issue with many of them in this very space.

But afford the man the respect earned by one who has kept this country safe for the last seven years.

And say a prayer that Obama will at least be able to do the same.

Originally published in the Times Herald January 29, 2009

Expo Center doomed to failure

2009-01-22T17:12:00.000-08:00

My dad was a pretty good handyman in his spare time. He could fix or build anything he set his mind to. When he was alive, there was a poster that hung in the workshop he built that said: “Plan your work, then work your plan.” He lived his life by that motto and it brought him no small measure of success.

My husband is another able handyman. Though the walls of his workshop are covered with tools rather than posters, he relies on lists. Many times throughout our marriage I have seen various materials show up in my driveway, sometimes accumulating for years, until he finally decides to build that shed, barn, garage, picnic table or whatever. Then one day, the project begins and it comes together in fairly short order always without a last minute trip to Lowe’s for some critical tool or part without which the project would fail.

Most projects can benefit from good planning, even given sudden unexpected snags. But to undertake any project with no planning seems foolhardy, and depending upon the scale of the project, could lead to disastrous results that in turn could lead to cost overruns and inadequate solutions.

For those of you who haven’t figured out where this is going, I’m talking about the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, and I’m talking to the officials charged with planning a responsible development in Oaks.

The new Expo Center is about two blocks from my house — literally walking distance.

At 10:15 a.m. Jan. 3, I traveled eastbound on 422 to my doctor’s office in King of Prussia and witnessed a solid wall of traffic headed westbound.

My surprise turned quickly to terror when I realized the extent of the backup, the length of the return trip home, and the status of my stomach flu, for which I was going to be treated.

As an Oaks resident, I knew the back way home that most of the train show visitors did not, thus arriving home before any unspeakable flu-related incident should occur in my car.

It was a depressing trip home, though, realizing it’s only a matter of time before they figure out my not-so-secret alternate route (indeed, it was proposed and subsequently dismissed as a main entrance to the Expo Center a few days later), and I wondered dismally if I was going to be held hostage in my home every weekend.

Fortunately, as it turned out, it won’t be every weekend.

Just those weekends with popular, heavily advertised shows, which adds a nice element of surprise to the whole situation, don’t you think?

If you weren’t a model train or gun enthusiast, you probably would be unaware of these events, despite the targeted advertising. That is, until you were sitting in the resulting gridlock on the way-greater-than-144-space parking lot that was formerly known as Route 422.

Imagine what an event that is heavily advertised in local mainstream media will bring.

Something like the Suburban Flower Show coming in February.

Despite some assurances to the contrary, I certainly don’t think the problem has been anywhere near solved, much less addressed. The roads, traffic patterns and exit ramps in Oaks still look exactly the way they did the day before the Expo Center opened except for a couple extra signs along Egypt Road.

I am generally a proponent of development, especially in Oaks where I daily lament the lack of a Super Wawa on the corner of Egypt and Black Rock roads.

So when we first heard the news of the opening of the Expo Center, my husband and I believed it would be good news for the area.

But we also believed the Upper Providence Township officials had done the necessary due diligence on traffic and parking issues before approving the project. We were wrong.

The weekend of the opening can be described as nothing short of absolute gridlock in Oaks. Employees who worked at the existing businesses in the industrial park were late to work, if they made it at all. Parties scheduled at the various entertainment complexes were ruined because guests couldn’t get there. Tournaments at the indoor sports venues were disrupted or cancelled because the participants were stuck in traffic.

The Expo Center was supposed to bring business into the existing businesses of Oaks, not make people think twice about patronizing those businesses due to fears about traffic congestion. Adding 144 parking spaces or letting people make a right to cut through the soccer fields of Lower Perkiomen Park instead of a left into Egypt Road’s string of traffic lights every 30 feet is not a solution. It’s a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound.

I used to be one of those folks who watched, with some amusement, the ongoing saga of “As Lower Providence Turns.” I had often dismissed the residents of Lower Providence as mostly a bunch of not-in-my-Backyardigans, intent on opposing any development project basically on the grounds of simply opposing development. Case in point: The very public and vocal battle regarding the American Revolution Center has been raging there for the last couple years.

Meanwhile, across the creek, Upper Providence was quietly and swiftly approving a project with a far greater impact on the quality of life in the surrounding communities virtually unopposed.

Now I’m thinking the folks in Lower Providence have the right idea after all.

The Expo Center was approved, shows were booked, and now that its impact has been felt in real time, township officials — in conjunction with the Audubon Land Development Corporation — are scrambling to find a solution.

If they spent as much time studying the impact of this project as they do approving a building permit for a private citizen who wants to add a deck to the back of his house, we could have avoided this situation.

The bad news is that any solution they come up with — any solution that will work, that is — will take time, perhaps months or years to implement.

In the meantime, the citizens of Oaks will be held hostage in their homes on random weekends while the traffic gridlock and dearth of parking spaces cripples the existing businesses and jeopardizes the success of the Expo Center.

It couldn’t have been a worse scenario if they planned it.

Originally published in the Times Herald on January 22, 2009

A true bread and 'Nutter' issue

2009-01-08T17:15:00.000-08:00

Let’s talk for a moment about the power of the press.

Because of our proximity to the city, you’d have to be living in a cave if you haven’t heard the news about Philadelphia’s budget crisis.

In November, Mayor Michael Nutter announced an impending budget deficit for the city of $108 million that could grow to $3 billion by 2013 if drastic measures were not taken immediately. The city announced major cuts: close pools and libraries, suspend planned tax reductions, layoff 220 existing employees, eliminate 600 open positions and reduce salaries by 3.5 – 5 percent for some city administrators. Police and firefighters would not be affected by the layoffs, but almost as an afterthought, the mayor announced that “some fire equipment would be taken out of service.”

Nobody wants to see services that benefit the public good eliminated. Sure, there’s an economic crisis but that doesn’t account for all of it. The last few years have been marked by record crime punctuated by more cop killings than the city has ever seen in such a short span of time. Add the nonchalant practice of Philly politicians supplementing their personal life with “OPM” (“Other People’s Money” in the Vince Fumo vernacular) and an apathetic electorate that perpetually returns these crooks to power and you have a recipe for a large scale urban demoralization.

Yet amidst all of this, the one issue that rose to the forefront was the closing of the libraries.

Now don’t get me wrong. I believe that libraries are important, especially to Philadelphia. But hard times bring hard choices. If it comes down to going a few extra blocks to the next library branch or risking slower response times to fires and injury or death due to a lack of firefighting equipment, I’m going to choose to support the cause that’s going to save lives.

But that’s not what happened.

What happened was a parade of histrionics that defied rational thinking. Teachers proclaimed that the only way — the only way — they could inspire their kids was by sending them to the library. Closing certain branches, “experts” told us, would create a “period of adjustment” that would cause untold discomfort because each branch has its own “character” that cannot be replaced. Large-eyed innocent waifs asserted that the library is a great place to go because it “changes kids’ futures.”

Grown men actually wept for the local news crews.

There were demonstrations, pickets, and angry protests, seemingly every day.

And news cameras were everywhere filming it all and projecting it into homes all around the Delaware Valley. Here was a warm and fuzzy cause everyone could get behind; here was a cause everyone could agree was worthy; here was a cause everyone could feel good about supporting. And for the media, here were the ratings.

Yay, libraries!

With the local media behind them, lawsuits were filed. In this media circus, which judge wants to be the scrooge who denies the heart’s desire of crying men, noble teachers and the chilllldruuuun? Thus, it came as no surprise that an injunction was granted preventing the closure of the 11 library branches and granting the courts a veto power over the Philadelphia budget, which I’m not sure that can be found in the city’s constitution.

Meanwhile, no one was weeping for the fire companies. The actual meaning of taking some fire equipment “out of service” came into focus as Engine 1, Engine 6, Engine 8, Engine 14, Engine 39 Ladder 01 and Ladder 11 were retired. Suddenly — too late — the media was paying attention.

As the firefighter blogging as Captain America at the blog “First In” explains, “These companies combine to respond to thousands of emergency calls every year. They protect large areas of urban city scape. And now 148 positions in our dedicated and proud department are eliminated.”

Perimeter companies will have to take up the slack created by the closed companies, creating more work for the already busy stations and effectively doubling these stations’ coverage areas, a task, he says, that may be “insurmountable.”

Yet the failure is not the city’s alone. “Very little in depth reporting was done on these cuts. What was said minimized the drastic effects of these cuts, most likely to curry favor with the Nutter administration. The media failed the citizens of Philadelphia. Eight people have died in fires since these cuts were announced. Yet no one cares.”

The local media chose not to inform the public on the ramifications of the fire company closures in favor of the ratings-grabbing, warm-fuzzy, feel-good cause of saving 11 of the 54 branches of the Philadelphia Free Library, virtually guarantying a favorable response to the protesters’ lawsuits.

And the same media who ignored the ramifications of the closing of the fire companies will cynically place blame on the city and the fire department when the next person dies in a fire due to the slow response times caused by the retired equipment.

Because that will bring ratings too.

Originally published int he Times herald on January 8, 2009

New Year brings recycled challenge

2009-01-01T17:17:00.000-08:00

I’ve always been a little superstitious about New Year’s Eve. Somebody told me once, a long time ago, that whatever you were doing at midnight on New Year’s would set the tone for your whole year. Even though I knew it was silly, this idea stuck with me and added to the stress of that night for many years. Basically, I worried about being alone on New Year’s Eve, which, coincidentally, is exactly what I was for many years before I met my husband.

For the last few years, I’ve been asleep at midnight on New Year’s. Consequently, I’ve all but abandoned that little superstition because I can be categorized as many things, but asleep is not one of them.

Given that New Year’s is the one and only holiday I’ve ever been even the tiniest bit superstitious about, it’s kind of odd that I’ve never been much of a New Year’s resolution maker. Sure, there have been fleeting moments in years past when I considered being nicer to liberals or marginally embracing some form of organized religion. For about five seconds this year, I even contemplated making a resolution to make an effort not to ruin Mary’s Christmas next year, but then I decided that it’s not really my column that ruins Mary’s Christmas; it’s the fact that I exist and dare to speak my mind that ruins Mary’s Christmas. I could write a column about how the sky is blue or the air is free, and people like Mary would still call it venom and threaten to cancel their subscriptions lest my column is permitted to continue to upset their rather narrow utopian worldview on a weekly basis.

So anyway, the New Year’s resolution thing is not something I indulge in.

That’s different, however, from the lifestyle reset that I engage in around this time every year.

Just about all of my adult life, I have fought a battle with the same 25 pounds. I can get it off, but I can never keep it off. Not for long.

It sounds like a lot of weight, and I guess it is, but as I am fairly tall (5 feet 7 inches) it really only amounts to the difference between a comfortable size 10 and an uncomfortable 12. I got all the way down to a size 8 one year and everyone thought I was anorexic.

When I was younger, I used to be in a constant state of denial tinged with self-pity. Why couldn’t I eat whatever I wanted (or at least as much as many of my peers) without consequences?

Why did my body betray me the minute I stopped exercising regularly?

I know a lot more people who don’t exercise regularly than those that do, yet, the second I stop exercising six days a week, my body pays me back by packing on the pounds. Forget the rare candy bar or occasional piece of pizza — maybe you can get away with it, but I can’t. Not without consequences.

In the past few years, I think I’ve finally figured it out.

My body reaches its natural state of equilibrium at about 25 pounds heavier than I am comfortable being. It’s not purely vanity, either, because I actually feel bad when I’m heavier. It’s a perpetual cycle that goes something like this:

Sometime around Christmas I grow disgusted with my eating habits, depressed with the aches and pains in my knees and joints from disuse and uncomfortable in my clothes. I order my one last farewell cheesesteak from the Oaks Italian Deli and then I set a date to (re)start my life.

Once I make it through the first week, I refer to my mental state as “locked and loaded” and do not deviate from my course (no offense meant to the overly sensitive anti-gun nuts out there for using what might be construed as an inappropriate gun metaphor).

I exercise six days a week, strictly measure my portions and caloric intake, religiously drink my eight glasses of water a day and journal my food and exercise.

Some years have been tougher than others to get myself mentally engaged; the year my daughter was diagnosed with diabetes and the year I turned 40 were tough hurdles for me to clear to “get my head into it.” Those years, I needed the extra moral support and accountability that came with attending organized weekly support meetings.

I’m focused and determined during the “locked and loaded phase” (again, my apologies). Everything in my life is geared toward reaching my goal.

Then I get there. And I lose my focus.

My weakness seems to be the maintenance phase.

I don’t know whether I get bored, get tired of the strict regimen, feel like I need to reward myself with a cheesesteak, or some combination of all three, but by September, the exercise has slacked off until I’m down to two days a week by November and by Christmas, all the weight I lost earlier in the year is back.

This is by no means a lifestyle I recommend or endorse. It’s just my life and how I live it. I could simply give up every year and accept myself at equilibrium, rather than the constant yo-yoing. But I’m not ready to give in yet. And there’s something masochistic in my personality that looks for that regular Spartan challenge every year.

So if you haven’t noticed from all of the ads for diet and exercise programs inundating the airwaves, January is the season of getting back into shape and, as they say, misery loves company. Or is it accountability breeds results? In any event, I’ll be blogging my progress weekly at bluftooni.blogspot.com. If you’d like to join my quest this year (you don’t have to commit to the annual yo-yo thing like I do) drop me a line at lisamossie@yahoo.com.

Consider it my way of wishing everyone a venom-free happy New Year.

Even you, Mary.

Originally published in the Times Herald January 1, 2009

Princess Caroline doll takes new form

2008-12-25T17:24:00.000-08:00

Celebrating more than 50 years as a global icon, the Princess Caroline doll is the “must have” toy for every girl this Christmas. For five decades, the Princess Caroline doll has been inspiring girls all over the world with her famous face, story and name.

As always, the Princess Caroline doll comes with all of the accoutrements you would expect of an American Royalty doll: privilege, fame, and a keen sense of entitlement. Of course, every Princess Caroline doll comes complete with a “birth certificate” certifying that she is indeed a genuine Kennedy product. For Christmas 2008, Princess Caroline has many new career play sets that will launch your daughter’s imagination into a world that she can only dream about due to her unfortunate circumstances of not being born a Kennedy.

Manhattan Socialite Princess Caroline comes with a bottle of Dom Perignon, a pair of genuine Swarovski crystal goblets etched with the Royal Kennedy Crest, a chauffeured stretch limousine, a busy social schedule and a complement of paparazzi dolls to enhance her own self-importance. Dress her in a stunning Donna Karan for that charity ball or a fabulous Versace for the museum opening. Complete her look with genuine Cartier jewels that only a true princess of royal birth can afford.

Hyannis port Princess Caroline comes with the Kennedy Yacht, perfect for sailing around Martha’s Vineyard or down the intercoastal for a long weekend of sun and golf at the “Winter White House” in West Palm Beach. Or make it a week—-it’s not like Princess Caroline actually has to be anywhere-she’s a Kennedy, after all! Princess Caroline’s sailing outfit comes complete with Coach sunglasses, a Hermes swimsuit and Manolo Blahnik Sandals.

Campaign Trail Princess Caroline allows your little girl to imagine rolling up her sleeves and using the immense power of her name, and only her name, to endorse Barack Obama and subsequently knock the Clintons, those mere pretenders to political royalty, from their high horse.

Help her use her exclusive education at the Brearly School, Concord Academy, Columbia and Harvard to reach out to “the little people” as vice chairman of the Fund for Public Schools while juggling society elbow rubbing as chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library. Campaign Trail Princess Kennedy comes attired with a “Got Hope?” tee shirt to be stylishly worn under a tailored Channel suit.

And now, for a limited time only, the Senator Princess Caroline play set is available. She comes with tons of unearned influence to hold over the head of New York Governor David Paterson and millions of potential fundraising dollars attached to her name. Also included is her very own, handcrafted and fitted Senate seat, which she will never relinquish. Senator Princess Caroline comes complete with voting machines ready for 2010, stuffed with sympathy votes for the tragic “private Kennedy”, an empty briefcase for those busy on-the-go days when it’s more important to look like a Senator than to be a Senator, and a disgruntled Chuck Shumer doll, who is destined to forever be upstaged by his junior Senator.

Most fabulous of all, the Senator Princess Caroline doll comes with an easy to use computer program so your little girl can print up as many $2,500-a-plate fundraiser invitations as she can imagine. With Senator Princess Caroline, your daughter can raise funds for Princess Caroline’s re-election, or simply choose to lend her star power to any one of the numerous lesser Democrats (like poor Chuck Schumer!) who needs a favor. With Senator Princess Caroline, the possibilities are endless! Hurry! Supplies are limited!

(The Kennedy Compound play set and Manhattan pied-a-terre are sold separately.)

But the excitement doesn’t have to stop with the Princess Caroline doll. For fun the whole family can enjoy, plan your next vacation to Kennedyland.

Test your skill in the “Streets of Washington Traffic Barrier Test” a virtual reality sensation as you attempt to navigate the tricky twists and turns of our nation’s capital while under the influence of narcotics then scream with terror as you try to escape from the haunted rehab center. Relive the suspense of the fully staged “animatronic” William Kennedy Smith Rape Trial and experience what life is really like when the rules don’t apply to you. Then take a trip on the virtual realty Kennedy Babysitting tour (children under 14 must be accompanied by a parent).

Finally, experience the thrill of a lifetime on the “Chappaquiddick Bridge” as you are taken on a terrifying ride culminating into a plunge into icy waters making for a wild, underwater adventure!

For families that desire that “continental” flair, “EuroKennedyland” is set to open in Nice, France just in time for the 2010 election season. And nobody knows what it’s like to wish he were a Kennedy more than your guide to EuroKennedyland, John Kerry.

Experience the magic that only comes to the wellborn. Taste the privilege of American Royalty. Enter the world of Princess Caroline where all you have to do is say the magic words, “I am a Kennedy” and the world is handed to you on a silver platter.

Originally published in the Times Herald December 25, 2008

Blagojevich scandal makes Obama itch

2008-12-18T17:21:00.000-08:00

What’s the best part of the Rod Blagojevich scandal?

The abrupt cessation of those annoying dispatches from the fictional “Office of the President-elect.”

Quite suddenly, almost overnight in fact, the “Office of the President-elect” has faded into the oblivion from which it was conjured. Coincidence? I think not.

The Illinois governor who was wholeheartedly endorsed by Barack Obama is going down in flames this week and media members are shocked — simply shocked, I tell you — to learn of the existence of corruption in that political cesspool known as Chicago.

And of course, the Obamaphiles have been quick to point out — over and over and over again — how absolutely amazing it is that Obama has managed to emerge from this environment untainted.

There is no evidence tying Obama to Blagojevich’s putting Obama’s Senate seat on eBay. However, those dispatches from the “Office of the President-elect” aside, the president-elect himself has not exactly been forthcoming with his level of contact with Hot Rod. That there was contact is not in question; the legality, level and appropriateness of that contact are where the questions lie.

And for all that gushing about what a great campaign the guy ran (it was his primary qualification for office, after all) Obama sure hasn’t learned how to make a media scandal go away. In fact, Obama’s handling of this and every media scandal that has come his way has been tantamount to throwing gasoline on barely glowing embers.

First, Obama denied all contact with Blagojevich. Then a few days later, when asked whether Obama aides John Harris or Rahm Emanuel had conversations with Blagojevich, Obama interrupted his questioner on the grounds that it was “an ongoing ... investigation. I think it would be inappropriate for me to, you know, remark on the situation beyond the facts that I know. And that’s the fact that I didn’t discuss this issue with the governor at all.”

A few days later, Obama asserted that he was “absolutely certain” that his staff had made “no deals” with Blagojevich, an assertion that only raised more questions than it answered.

This week, Obama’s transition team has announced that it has completed an internal review of the team’s contact with Blagojevich but has declined to release the findings until Christmas week, purportedly at the request of federal investigators, but one can’t help but make note of the fact that it is very easy to bury a news story during Christmas week.

All of this is amid recent revelations that Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can be heard on 21 different federal tapes discussing Obama’s Senate seat.

Dozens of little fires, burning hot and bright, and legions of minions armed with ineffective fire extinguishers running to and fro, pushing through the throngs and setting up random rope lines: “Move along. There’s nothing to see here,” they order as they attempt to herd the people away from the scandal. But the more they say it, the more a curious public is convinced there is indeed something to see, and the longer they will gawk and linger waiting for answers, making up their own stories, each more salacious than the next, the longer it goes on.

This is puzzlement to me. Clearly, Obama is bright (Haven’t we been repeatedly beaten on the head with assertions of his superior intelligence?) and he has the added advantage of a friendly press that wants to believe him. They’re practically begging him to come out with the script they’ve prepared for him to make this disappear, yet he makes them wait. He changes his tune and he makes them talk about it.

It took an Iraqi “journalist” throwing his shoes at President Bush to knock Blago from the headlines. And while the left tittered joyously and hailed this one man a hero as someone who has validated their viewpoint and therefore must speak for the whole world, it’s worth remembering that these very same people would be outraged and scandalized had some American soldier dared toss their shoes at a suspected terrorist being held at Guantanamo Bay. That would be torture.

But back to Blagojevich.

With his arrogant disregard of the political process, his pay-to-play mentality, his contempt for those he would presume to govern and his colorful speech liberally peppered with “sentence enhancers,” one gets the feeling that Rod Blagojevich is the rule, not the exception, to Chicago and politics. One has difficulty deciding whether his wife or his hair is more obnoxious.

What did Obama know and when did he know it?

Here we are, a little more than a month before Obama takes office and already he is embroiled in a scandal due to the company he keeps. And, yes, it is a distraction, but instead of coming clean with the American people and reducing it to nothing more than a semi-interesting news blip, Obama has made every wrong move and created, by his own handling of the situation, a full-blown scandal.

While half the country desperately clings to the last wisps of hope and change as the clay feet of Obama are revealed, the other half of the country, the conservative half, knows that all politicians are human, some more so than others. When conservatives questioned his judgment, when we wondered about the character of a man that would surround himself with the likes of Tony Rezko, William Ayres, Ali Abuminah, Rashid Khalidi, Jeremiah Wright et al, we were called racists and told we were not talking about the real issues.

But conservatives know the truth of that old adage: “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

And certainly, Obama is nothing if not itchy over this Blagojevich thing.

Originally published in the Times herald on December 18, 2009

Watching in a state of stunned disbelief

2008-12-11T17:27:00.000-08:00

When I first moved to Oaks back in 1997, my husband instructed me to change my address to “General Delivery, Oaks.”

No street address. Just “General Delivery.”

The words “General Delivery” immediately inspired visions of Pony Express deliveries to Lars Nelson’s General Store in the “Little House on the Prairie” series. However, Oaks wasn’t some inaccessible frontier town like Walnut Grove and this wasn’t 1850. It was 1997 and Oaks was five miles from the thriving megalopolis of King of Prussia. Because I could practically walk to the post office, what was the deal with this General Delivery nonsense?

Apparently there is a little known regulation in the postal code that says if a postal customer lives within one mile of the post office, the post office is not required to deliver said postal customer’s mail to his home. My husband, whose reputation for frugality is known far and wide, refused to pay a monthly rental on a post office box for a service most Americans get for “free.” Therefore, we trekked down to the post office every day and had our mail begrudgingly hand sorted by the postmaster there.

That went well for a few months until the postmaster flexed some unilateral bureaucratic muscle: He decided to end the practice of “General Delivery.”

“Did you hear that, all you General Delivery people?” He announced while glaring at my husband. “You’re going to have to rent a box from now on.”

My husband was a step ahead of him. He called the Phoenixville post office and asked about establishing a rural route. The Phoenixville post office complied, but for the three weeks during the change-over, our mail floated from post office to post office throughout Southeast Pennsylvania with out a home. Calls to the Oaks, Phoenixville or Southeastern Pennsylvania post offices were unsuccessful as the unhelpful folks who answered our calls seemed genuinely unconcerned with our plight.

“You’ll get your mail eventually,” they told us.

What about our bills?

“Call your credit card companies. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

Finally, we surrendered to the bureaucratic apathy. What else could we do? It’s not like we could take our business elsewhere.

Since the election, I’ve seen a lot of love for government services. Yet, it seems to me that the very same people who want the government to take over more of our private sector are the same people who blame Bush for all of their misfortunes.

Browse around the Internet; you don’t have to go far. Read some of the comments on Times Herald articles, check out the blogs. What you’ll find is an ill-informed segment of society that thinks simultaneously that the federal government is both the cause of and solution to all of their problems.

For people like this, that body of elected officials called “Congress” does not exist. It’s all about President Bush doing favors for his greedy capitalist cronies.

But, of course the truth is much more complicated than that. And those arrogant pontificating members of Congress who are doling out taxpayer funds and judgment as if they the saviors of our economy are the last ones we should be trusting to “fix” this.

Because they played the biggest part in getting us here.

The Fannie/Freddie mortgage meltdown was built up to this devastating crescendo by government regulations designed to increase homeownership without regard to sound lending practices. The crisis was foretold and forewarned, but ignored.

Now we’re looking at another crisis in the Big Three automakers. And once again, everybody is pointing to the corporate greed. And yes, CEOs showing up in corporate jets posing as beggars before Congress are an easy target for our ire.

But corporate CEOs did not bring Detroit to its knees on their own.

Congress first started monkeying around with the auto industry back in 1975 when it defined CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards as part of the Energy Policy Conservation Act. As defined by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, CAFE “is the sales weighted average fuel economy, expressed in miles per gallon, of a manufacturer’s fleet of passenger cars or light trucks with a gross vehicle weight rating of 8,500 lbs. or less, manufactured for sale in the United States, for any given model year.” So since 1975, Congress has basically mandated that the auto industry must build cars the public doesn’t want to buy; certain cars are manufactured to primarily comply with CAFE standards and they are built and sold at a loss.

But that would be crazy, wouldn’t it? Almost like congress passing regulations that mandated banks make loans to people who couldn’t afford them.

That favorite Democratic voting block, the United Auto Workers, have historically negotiated unrealistic pay and benefits for their members. Setting aside those notorious $72-an-hour paychecks that some UAW workers earn today, it’s estimated that for every GM car that rolls off the lot, there is some additional $2,000 in legacy costs built in: costs to cover health care, pension and post-retirement benefits for workers long since gone from the assembly lines.

How’s that old Detroit joke go? “We lose $200 on every vehicle we build, but we make it up in volume.”

As Congress works a deal to procure stock for the U.S. government equivalent to at least 20 percent of the loans any company receives, speculation abounds over who will be appointed “Car Czar”: the government watchdog that will bring together labor, management, creditors and parts suppliers to negotiate a restructuring plan and have the authority to review any transaction over $25 million. “Car Czar” is an especially apt name for the person who will be charged with overseeing the nationalization of the auto industry.

As some folks naively cheer the “heroic” charge of Congress to the economic rescue, others watch in stunned disbelief as our government slowly and incrementally nationalizes our free market. By creating policies that are destined to fail and subsequently require extraordinary government measures to correct them, government grabs more power for itself while replacing healthy free market competition with bureaucratic stagnation.

Yesterday, the banks. Today, the auto industry. And tomorrow, health care.

Eventually we’ll all just surrender to the apathy. What choice will we have left?

Originally published in the Times Herald December 11, 2008

Underwhelmed by Chris Matthews

2008-12-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

Did you feel that?

Did you feel that thrill go up your leg at the prospect of a Chris Matthews run for the Senate?

No?

Me either.

To be honest, though, I wasn’t exactly doing back flips of joy when Arlen Specter announced he was running for the Senate either.

Chris Matthews has always struck me as a guy whose mind is on where he’s going rather than where he is. A highly successful, and, at least until the last presidential election cycle, respected journalist, he’s seems to treat his career working in the media like a really well-paying summer job he’s just passing the time with until he finally lands that post-graduation job working in his “field.”

Back in April, on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report,” Chris Matthews told the country what he wanted to be when he grew up: “Some people growing up, some kids want to be a fireman. I want to be a senator.” Now, the magnanimous thing to do would be to take Matthews at his word about his childhood aspirations, but I find it pretty hard to believe that Matthews always wanted to be a senator, as opposed to say, president, fireman, astronaut or cowboy. Most little kids have no idea what a senator even does. Heck, most adults are still trying to figure that one out.

In any event, it would probably be a mistake for the voters of Pennsylvania to take the word of a man whose philosophy of life is encapsulated in his book, “Life’s a Campaign.” In his October of 2007 appearance on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” Matthews described the premise of the book as life as a political campaign. “Everything about getting jobs, it’s about convincing someone to hire you. It’s about getting promotions. It’s about selling products. It’s always a campaign. It’s a campaign to get the girl of your dreams. It’s a campaign to do everything you want to do in life.”

When Jon Stewart observed that Matthews’ philosophy was nothing more than contrivance and that it was more about doing what he thought would win, rather than what he thought was right, Matthews asked Stewart if he had read the book.

“Yes, I read it,” Stewart replied. “I thought it was a recipe for sadness. Only because when I read it I thought, ‘This strikes me as artifice. If you live this book, your life will be strategy.’”

In his position as host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” and political analyst for NBC, Matthews abandoned all pretense of journalistic objectivity during the presidential campaign, beginning with the “thrill up his leg” comment and going downhill — fast — from there. His scarcely disguised venom aimed at Hillary Clinton’s candidacy earned him the status of sworn enemy from Hillary supporters on the blog “Hillbuzz”: “After what Matthews did to Hillary Clinton (and then to Sarah Palin), raising misogyny and sexism to a vile art form, he’s truly earned our lifelong scorn, and a promise from everyone (at Hillbuzz) to work our hearts out against him at every twist and turn.”

Matthews and fellow anchor, moonbat Keith Olberman, were so over-the-top in their biased coverage of the election, NBC replaced them as political night anchors at the height of presidential race.

But Matthews hit the nadir of journalistic integrity during a post-election wrap-up show on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” with Joe Scarborough, when after defining himself as a journalist, he announced, “I want to do everything I can to make this thing work, this new presidency work.” And incredulous Scarborough replied, “Is that your job? You just talked about being a journalist!”

“Yeah, it is my job.” Matthews countered. “My job is to help this country…” … by abandoning objectivity and presenting my lefty opinions as hard, unbiased news for the gullible MSNBC consumer.

Oh, that’s right. He didn’t say that last part. At least not out loud.

Matthews’ run for the Senate will surely be an uphill climb against the known quantity of Pennsylvania’s longest serving senator. Since he’ll be running as a Democrat, he’ll need Southeastern Pennsylvania and Philadelphia to win the state. Even though he originally hails from this area, Matthews is now better known as a member of the inside-the-beltway media elite. So how does the outsider re-establish his credentials as a “local”?

One strategy Matthews might have already embarked upon is to cultivate a close relationship with a local talk radio host who bills himself as a moderate conservative but supported Obama for president. Someone like Michael Smerconish. Matthews might then angle to become a frequent guest on said highly-rated morning drive show, talking up his Philly roots and yukking it up about the good old days in the “old neighborhood.” Smerconish in return, say on a quid pro quo basis, might get a recurring guest spot on “Hardball” as MSNBC’s token “conservative.” Matthews may even dangle that anchor seat at “Hardball” in front of Smerconish since his contract with MSNBC is up in 2009.

Another thing he might do to shake off that carpetbagger moniker is call on his brother Jim, who bills himself as a Republican but has recently made great inroads into the local Democratic Party in the name of “bipartisanship.” Jim can make the necessary introductions for him and hook him up with the movers and shakers in the Democratic Party.

While we’re on the subject of Jim Matthews, it’s important to note a correction to last week’s column. Chris Matthews’s less successful brother Jim did not place second in the county commissioners’ race in 2007, as I wrote in this space last week. In fact, the order of finish was Castor, Hoeffel, Matthews, then Damsker; the first time in history that the Republicans failed to finish one-two in the county commissioners’ race. Which kind of makes the whole Jim Matthews power grab all the more egregious, doesn’t it?

But I digress.

In Montgomery County, the Matthews name is synonymous with outrageously transparent power plays and a subsequent reliance on the willingness of a disinterested and/or gullible public to look the other way. I know Southeastern Pennsylvania has seen enough Matthews shenanigans in the last year. Must we be the conduit to expose the whole state to more Matthews chicanery?

In the Matthews world, life is a campaign. Everything is a contrivance for appearances’ sake. It doesn’t matter who you are, it only matters who people think you are when they are pulling the lever for you.

Originally published in the Times Herald on December 4, 2008

Caution: Democratic Party not what it appears to be

2008-11-29T17:34:00.000-08:00

Remember the famous McDonald’s coffee lawsuit? An elderly woman was initially awarded a huge sum of money because she was burned by a cup of McDonald’s coffee. Whatever the merits of the original case may or may not be, one upshot of the lawsuit was the printed warning on all McDonald’s coffee cups forever after: “CAUTION: Contents are hot.”

So now even if you spill the contents of a McDonald’s coffee, you may get burned, but you can’t say you weren’t warned. I guess that’s truth in advertising.

In politics, truth in advertising is taken far less literally. The two-party system, whatever its merits or detractions, serves as a kind of shorthand for voters in determining which kind of government they want, generally speaking, a liberal Democratic one or a conservative Republican one.

As the post-election soul-searching of the Republican Party continues, one of the main conclusions that’s been drawn by party loyalists is that the party’s candidates and representatives have strayed from conservative principles and thus have muddied what it means to be a Republican. This is evidenced at every level of government, from the Republican Party’s nomination of “The Maverick” candidate, who made a name for himself bucking the Republicans, to the abject failures of our representatives in the House and Senate to do what they were elected to do: curb spending and shrink government.

But for Montgomery County residents, nowhere has this betrayal been so vividly illustrated as it has at the Montgomery County Commissioners level.

Jim Matthews was elected on a Republican platform and backed by the Republican Party. He received far less votes than his running mate, Bruce Castor, but more than either of his opponents on the Democrat ticket, Joe Hoeffel and Ruth Damsker. In fact, voters were so disillusioned with Democratic leadership at the county commissioners level that they ousted Damsker and voted in perennial-candidate-for-any-available-office, Joe Hoeffel, in her place.

Shortly after the election, Matthews struck a backroom power deal with Hoeffel, wherein Hoeffel agreed to back Matthews for chairman over Castor.

Matthews claimed the “voters had spoken” and asked for bipartisanship. I’m not sure what tea leaves and chicken entrails Mr. Matthews was reading when he came to that conclusion, but by my reckoning, there were a whole lot of people in Montgomery County that would have preferred to get a government for which they actually voted rather than usher in a new era of so-called bipartisanship by royal proclamation.

Now this is nothing new: Politicians, stabbing each other in the back, breaking promises to their constituencies, betraying their principles for personal power grabs. This is almost business-as-usual in politics, and not coincidentally, what disgusts people about the whole process.

What is new —refreshingly new— is that the Montgomery County Republican Party leadership under Bob Kerns spoke up and officially denounced Matthews’s behavior. The resolution to censure Jim Matthews was unanimously approved by 56 Republican county officials.

Marcel Groen, the chairman of the Montgomery County Democratic committee, weighed in on the MCRC’s resolution in a letter published this past Sunday in several publications, including this one. After stating that his policy was not to interfere with the inner workings of the opposition party, Groen did just that by stating the MCRC’s censure sets a bad precedent. Groen continued, “If either party starts to punish elected officials because they try to govern in a bipartisan manner, I think they risk losing the support of the public. If this year’s election proved nothing else, it demonstrated that the American people want their elected officials at every level of government to drop petty bickering and partisan sniping and just do the job of governing.”

Mr. Groen’s letter, of course, assumes that the voters think that there is no right or wrong way to govern, no liberal or conservative values to uphold. According to Mr. Groen’s letter, when the public actually votes for someone who claims to represent their values, they shouldn’t be upset when their trust has been betrayed and the platform they voted for is not being implemented; they should instead be thankful that their leaders are engaged in the very important work of “governing” in the best of all possible manners: bipartisan.

I don’t have much time for bipartisanship. I think ideals like bipartisanship have gained traction in a morally weak America that values things like diversity over achievement and raising awareness over actual service. Bipartisanship is promoted as a faux virtue over real virtues such as integrity, honesty, loyalty and honor.

According to the censure resolution, Matthews “has promoted the cause of Democrat elected officials and implemented the Democrat platform; and he has systematically engaged in the hiring of Democrat Party operatives and Democrat failed candidates; and he has taken retribution on certain persons, because he perceived they did not support him in the Republican Party endorsement process.” Since taking office, Matthews has voted with Hoeffel 100 percent of the time.

No wonder Marcel Groen is denouncing the resolution. Jim Matthews is delivering the Democratic platform that lost the election last year. Hmmmm ... maybe bipartisanship is only a great virtue when you’re a member of the party that’s out of power.

The decision to censure Matthews was not arrived at lightly by Kerns or the MCRC; however, it was the right decision. In putting their ideals in writing, they are proclaiming that they are ready to get the Republican House in order and that the candidates will be held accountable for their actions. It is the first step in rebuilding the grassroots at the local level.

As for Matthews, well, if he wants to continue to stay in the political arena, the MCRC has just done the public the very great favor of labeling him with a warning:

CAUTION: Contents are not what they appear to be. You could get burned.

Originally published in the Times Herald November 29, 2008

Nothing so wrong with being right

2008-11-20T17:37:00.000-08:00

Who’s afraid of the religious right?

A lot of people, apparently.

I have an associate who identifies himself as a Republican, yet regularly expounds on his dislike of the “religious right” and their influence in the party. When I ask him to point to specific examples of such, he can give me no more than a fuzzy musings on scandals with Catholic priests and Christians who try to force their views on him. He cannot, however, name specific instances of the notorious “religious right” trying to control his life; he’s simply reciting what he has learned from the mainstream media.

It should come as no surprise, then, that our new president was elected with the solid support of the non-religious. It should further come as no surprise that our new president has been likened to a Messiah of some sort; after all, when you believe in nothing, you’ll believe in anything.

But the truth of the matter is that the fear of the “religious right” on the left has less to do with religion per se as it does to do with abortion.

Is there an issue today that has divided this country more than abortion? The passage of Roe v. Wade marked the beginning of the great divide in this country and in the intervening years, those divisions have only deepened.

Feminists promoted the right to abortion as a way of gaining equal rights. By nature of their biology, women must bear heavier consequences for unprotected sex simply because men cannot get pregnant. During the sexual revolution, feminists found this exceedingly unfair; why should a man be able to be as promiscuous as he wanted without having to deal with the repercussions of an unwanted baby? To level this playing field, there must be an alternative available to women to partake in the joys of free love: non-committed sex with the same lack of consequences that men enjoy. Abortion, feminists told women, would liberate them from the constraints of biology and allow them to be free to enjoy sex purely for pleasure and without consequences, just like men are able to do.

Like so much of the “wisdom” that has come from modern feminism, this is a lie.

First and foremost, in spite of feminism’s best efforts to the contrary, women who “sleep around” still suffer from damage to their reputations that men do not. The English language is chock full of epithets for promiscuous women, which, this being a family newspaper, I will not enumerate here.

Men, on the other hand, are called “ladies’ men” or “players.” Not exactly derogatory. Not even insulting. And no, it’s not fair. But after 35-plus years of in-your-face feminism, if these attitudes haven’t changed yet, they probably will not.

And the simple truth is that promiscuity hurts women. Abortion hurts women. The Web site AbortionChangesYou.com offers a forum for women to tell their post-abortion stories about how having an abortion changed them in ways they never thought possible and were never warned about.

And is it any wonder that the repercussions of abortion have caught so many by surprise? Feminists have spent the last 35 years conditioning women to fight for this “right” to kill their unborn child as if it is as precious as life itself without bothering to talk about the consequences. They’ve told women it’s a simple procedure to scrape out a clump of cells. They don’t tell women how hard it is to maintain that narrative to themselves once the deed is done.

Many women tell themselves that it’s not for themselves that they fight for abortion rights because they’d never have one themselves; it’s for other women who should never be denied this right.

When most people think about abortion and the Republican Party, they think of a bunch of fallible white-haired old men who want to appoint themselves as the morality police. And I’m here to tell you that while that perception is not entirely without merit, feminists have done their jobs extremely well in promoting this image.

Women are conditioned to believe that Republicans want to tell women what to do with their bodies, which is why feminists stress the importance of electing Democrats, who will then appoint liberal judges who will then keep their precious Roe v. Wade safe. But what these women never stop to ask themselves is that if Roe v. Wade was rightly decided, if abortion is indeed a right that is enumerated (however obscurely) in the Constitution, they would have nothing to fear from a Republican appointing a strict Constitutionalist judge. Indeed, in a perfect world, no matter what one’s feelings on abortion are, strict interpretation of the Constitution should be a factor in evaluating justices that should offend no one.

But of course, we don’t live in a perfect world.

What if the worst were to happen and Roe v. Wade were overturned? What would happen? Would abortions end?

No. What would happen is what just happened with the gay marriage question. It would go on the ballot in the states and the people would get to determine the legality and limitations on abortion in their states by letting their voices be heard, instead of being subjected to laws handed down by sweeping judicial fiat. Perhaps this is what scares abortion rights advocates more than anything else, for if the results of the gay marriage questions across the country said anything, it’s that this is still a pretty socially conservative country.

But once the issue has been put to a vote, perhaps a modicum of sanity can return to the actual debate. It would at least take the hysteria factor out of the question as the fear and hype over appointing the right judges would be lessened.

It seems to me that this country is more divided than ever. On some issues, like abortion, there really is no middle ground to be found. But perhaps if the issue was put to a vote, there can be a return to civility.

Perhaps more importantly, if there was a more honest conversation about the realities of abortion, maybe women would not find this right quite as precious as they have been conditioned to believe it is.

Originally published in the Times herald on November 20, 2008

Oh no, here we go, it's leftward ho

2008-11-13T17:39:00.000-08:00

What is the point of winning elections if the candidate you are putting in office does not represent your ideals?

I’ve been hearing quite a lot from the left side of the aisle that if the Republican Party does not move to the “center,” we will never win an election again. Furthermore, these same “well meaning” liberals inform me that the party has been taken over by the far right and that’s why John McCain lost.

This just goes to show the power of the Obama brand of Kool Aid. John McCain, “far right”? What color is the sky in that world?

John McCain was arguably the least conservative Republican to run for our party since George W. Bush.

The only reason he performed as well as he did is because of Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin energized the ticket and her choice was an acknowledgement of the base.

It seems to me, the only reason it appears to liberals that the Republicans have moved right is because the Democratic Party has lurched so far leftward. If the attempt to move the Republican Party leftward is successful, perhaps a president with a blatantly socialist agenda whose inner circle includes racist preachers, Weather Underground radicals and apologists for Palestinian terrorists will seem “mainstream.”

Liberals have been driven farther leftward by the irrational fever of war, a war that they do not understand, do not believe in, and cannot be bothered to learn about if it requires an attention span longer than a 30-second sound byte will fill. What of the intelligence estimates the whole world believed were credible, even their beloved Bill Clinton and Colin Powell? Saddam gassing his own people to death? Enriched uranium found in Iraq? Rape rooms? Torture?

It matters not to these folks: BUSH LIED. Now bring our troops home!

From the madness of war, the derangement deepened. Witness the rise of the Internet king of the angry left, Kos, and his like-minded disciples, who believe that not only are epithets like “President Select Shrub,” “He Whose Name Shall Not Be Written (or spoken),” “Repukelicraps,” “Grumpy Old Party,” “McShameless” and “Moose Patty” the height of sophisticated wit, they also serve as incisive political commentary. Scratch your head in wonder as they put absolute blind faith in a cipher who has no real record to recommend him but enthralls them with nothing more than beautifully nebulous promises of hope and change articulated by the sound of his mesmerizing voice. Watch as they clamor for cradle to grave government care not because they need it themselves — oh, no. But because there are so many less fortunate souls who are simply incapable of surviving without the support of a benevolent government provided by the votes of charitable, big-hearted Democrats and funded by your tax money.

Then snap out of it as they swing the pocket watch in front of your face and soothingly repeat: “Move to the center….moooooove to the centerrrrrr…..”

Immediately after the election, such noted “hard line conservatives” such as Sen. Arlen Specter, Gov. Ed Rendell and Obama supporter Michael Smerconish proclaimed that Republicans could never win again in Pennsylvania if they do not move to the center.

Then Ed Rendell magnanimously offered some helpful advice to his opposition party: “A Republican Party that is dominated by the philosophy of people like Sarah Palin can, in my judgment, never win again in places like the Philadelphia suburbs and the Philadelphia media market.”

Thus the opening salvos in the war for the soul of the Republican Party have been fired. And as part of that war this past week, those who would move the party left have tried to hang McCain’s defeat around the neck of Sarah Palin.

This despite the fact that Sarah Palin was arguably the only reason John McCain was running in a dead heat with Obama until the bottom dropped out of the financial markets. Palin united Republicans who were ambivalent at best — outright hostile at worst — to a McCain presidency.

McCain has made a career out of bucking Republicans. That’s why, back when he was running against George W. Bush and was still a media darling, he was christened the “Maverick.” He stands against conservatives on issues such as immigration, global warming and his handling of the economy. A collective nationwide conservative groan was heard during the first debate, when McCain announced that he would spend $300 billion of the $700 billion bailout money on keeping speculators — errr — I mean, homeowners, in their homes.

And it was perhaps a bit of poetic justice that McCain’s signature First-Amendment-trampling Campaign Finance Reform laws and his strict, but honorable, adherence to the same, crippled his fundraising efforts. Those laws were soundly ignored by Barack Obama, and Obama’s disregard of them soundly ignored by a complicit media, thus Obama fundraising broke all sorts of records.

Sarah Palin helped us to forget about all of that. She made the prospect of holding our nose and voting for the lesser evil a little less foul-smelling. She is a Washington outsider who has an actual record of governing and fighting corruption in our own party. And corruption is the issue that has really taken the heart out of Republicans this year.

So should we follow the Reaganite instincts of the base and return to the principals of smaller government, free markets, and personal responsibility, or move farther leftward, thus become indistinguishable from the Democrats?

The Republican Party as it stands right now is already indistinguishable from Democrats: undisciplined spending, rampant corruption and mammoth expansion of government. This is the party that took a sound beating last week.

I say we follow our instincts. And to you liberals offering us that “move to the center” advice out of the goodness of your hearts?

Thanks, but no thanks.

Originally published in the Times Herald on November 13, 2008

Chance for conservatives to start anew

2008-11-06T17:45:00.000-08:00

Conservatives, do not despair.

I come to you in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, admittedly punchy, after a grueling 15-hour day at the polls. And though I have tremendous respect for Sen. John McCain and for his lifelong honorable service to our country, he was not our candidate.

John McCain was the media’s candidate. As was Barack Obama.

Our election process brought us not the two most qualified candidates, but the two candidates the elite media told us were the best men for the job. And too many of us, on both sides of the aisle, bought into this.

And of course, once the media actually anointed McCain, they turned on him. I’m sure Hillary Clinton can relate.

But I must confess, after my initial disappointment when I saw the map turn blue for Ohio then Pennsylvania shortly thereafter, I felt a sort of relief.

It has been exhausting the last eight years defending a president who refuses to defend himself. A president who does not articulate the ideals of conservativism and instead lets others do that for him. A president who has refused to articulate the message of Iraq and let the media dictate the narrative. And finally, a president who has expanded government far more than any president since FDR.

It is hard to defend conservatism when the congressmen who claim to represent your ideals have engaged in reckless spending and unforgivable corruption. No wonder they say the Republican brand is broken. It is.

Conservatives, this is not the time for despair. This is the time for getting to work. It is the time for building our party into what it should be, not what the Obamacons — like Michael Smerconish, Colin Powell, David Brooks, et. al. — say it should be. We have had to compromise our principles too often for unworthy Republicans because the threat of Democrats has been slightly greater. This is the time for real leadership to emerge that can represent and articulate our beliefs.

True conservatives do not aspire to government power; they abhor it. Which is why it is so hard to find true conservatives willing to serve in the public sector. We need these reluctant leaders. We need the people who do not aspire to power, for whom public service truly is service.

Democrats failed to get their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, so while they did expand their power base in both houses, there will still be some measure of restraint possible.

It will be a long four years. It will not be eight. We have just elected the most inexperienced and unknown man to the highest seat of power in the world based on empty rhetoric. This lack of substance can only prevail in an atmosphere where the alternative is unpalatable.

The angry left has their candidate; they have the power they have so bitterly desired for the last eight years. They cannot claim stolen elections, they cannot claim racism, they cannot claim sexism or media bias. They are back in control and they are now responsible for navigating the most difficult times this country has ever faced. They can no longer indulge the angry immaturity that has defined them for the last eight years; they must grow up and lead. This alone will be a refreshing change.

And if they fail, they will try to blame it once again on their favorite whipping boy, George W. Bush. We cannot let that narrative prevail and here is the reason: Barack Obama was the candidate who would transcend the Bush years. He was the candidate of hope and change. If Barack Obama and his Democrats in Congress cannot get done what they promised, they must own that failure.

The 2006 Congress got elected based on promises to rescue America from the so-called damage of Republicans; they got elected on the promise of change. Yet somehow, the colossal failure of Congress and their abysmal approval ratings have somehow failed to define the Democrats as the failures of Republicans have defined us.

It is the time for conservatives to take back a Republican Party that has been overrun with big government politicians.

Let’s hit the reset button on the Republican Party. Let’s purge it of the elements that do not represent us. Let’s hold our officials to a higher standard. Let’s take advantage of the tremendous freedom now afforded us because we no longer have to defend policies with which we disagree as a trade off for judicial appointments and the backing of our troops. We can let the Democrats lead for a few years; we must, for we have no choice.

But perhaps most importantly, we must not allow the angry bitterness that has defined the left for the last eight years be the defining attribute of the new right. Let us stand for something larger and take this opportunity to regroup.

This is not the end, conservatives. It is an opportunity for a new beginning. Let’s get to work.

Originally published on November 6, 2008

Neither scenario looking too heavenly

2008-10-30T17:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve said recently that our choice in this election basically boils down to this: We can either take the express freight train, downhill-with-no-brakes route to hell, or we can take the slow meandering route to hell, with a chance of getting lost on the way.

Hell, of course, being the complete abandonment of the principles of a democratic republic in favor of big government socialism.

Regular readers of this column know that this columnist has been lukewarm — at best — about a McCain candidacy. Part of that reason has been McCain’s record of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship, my friends, is highly overrated.

As an advocate for smaller government, whenever Republicans cross the aisle to work with Democrats, we usually end up compromising by making government only half as big as the Democrats were originally asking for. This is still going in the wrong direction; it’s just a matter of speed.

The Bush years have seen an expansion of government we have not seen since the New Deal. In case you missed it, we just partially nationalized the banking system last week.

I don’t pretend to understand advocates for bigger government, though their numbers are many and apparently growing. Their argument, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is that big government is the answer to everything — if only we had the right people running it. They look back fondly on FDR’s New Deal and see a panacea to tough economic times. Conservatives look back at the New Deal and see a massive government power grab that may have contributed to the longevity of the Great Depression and exacerbated an already failing economy.

Ummm … Hello? Memo to big government proponents: The people running the government are … politicians. Most of them are primarily motivated only by their own self-interest, as in doing whatever it takes to stay in their elected seats. Why would you want to give these folks even more power over your life than they already have?

The list of government failures in social issues is long and spectacular.

Let’s start with the response to Hurricane Katrina. In spite of the approaching storm, the citizens of New Orleans stayed in their homes. The local government, headed by the infamous Ray Nagin, provided the government sponsored safety cushion plan B of offering the Super Dome for shelter for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t evacuate, while hundreds of city-owned school buses sat idle in municipal parking lots.

When it became apparent that New Orleans was going to suffer a direct hit from Katrina, it was too late to evacuate. In the wake of the storm, Governor Kathleen Blanco wasted precious time before declaring a state of emergency and calling up the National Guard.

But the real villains of Katrina? FEMA.

FEMA’s original purpose was simply to provide coordination between local first responders. During the post-Katrina blame game, however, FEMA’s purpose was re-interpreted to be that of the Justice League of America: to swoop in with their government-granted super powers and save Americans from their own poor judgment.

Social security, that epic centerpiece of the New Deal, was never intended to be the sole provider of a person’s retirement income, yet that is exactly what it has become. The program will most likely become insolvent within the next 10 to 20 years, meaning that those of us younger than 60 who are currently paying into it will never see a dime from this program. All that money supposedly “paid in” to Social Security is basically just another tax.

Yet nobody in Washington feels the least little bit compelled to address this looming problem.

How about the financial crisis? It is the government’s position that the markets cannot regulate themselves, therefore they need government oversight.

But if government is such a great watchdog, there is no way that a meltdown of this size should ever have occurred. And nobody is holding those watchdogs accountable for their lack of oversight in this disaster.

But none of these dramatic examples is enough to turn off the big government proponents.

In their eyes, all of these government failures happened for only one reason: because George Bush was president.

George Bush, the all-powerful, all knowing, all seeing. He purposely bungled everything he touched in this country.

And Barack Obama can single-handedly make it right.

What a fairy tale.

Obama, with his promises of “spreading the wealth,” “health care for all” and job creation from thin air, promises to wrap every citizen in the ever-loving arms of big government. An Obama administration will skip right over the “level playing field” government programs and proceed directly to “evening up the score” through government confiscation and redistribution of private citizens’ wages.

There has never been a pause for consideration by big government proponents that all of these programs designed to “help” the “disadvantaged” may actually damage the character and morale of those they intend to support by making them dependent on a nebulous and unreliable system.

So here’s where we are: Definitely big government right away, or possible big government a little more incrementally. Who do you trust to best decide how to spend the money you’ve earned, you or Barack Obama, and the “no-brakes-going-downhill” team of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and a pork-barrel-infatuated liberal supermajority?

Michael Knox Behran recently wrote in City Journal: “one of the objects of a mature political philosophy is to reconcile the people with the painful limitations of their conditions.”

Obama is promising government with no limits; a citizenry with ever-diminishing personal responsibility propped up by wealth redistribution disguised as “tax cuts for the middle class.”

Sounds like a socialist utopia for big government proponents.

And hell for the rest of us.

Originally published in the Times Herald October 30, 2008

Obama plans to limit opportunities

2008-10-23T17:54:00.000-07:00

Simply defined, a mission statement is a one-sentence definition of your organization’s reason for being: Why does your organization exist? What common goal are all members of your organization working towards?

To give a few examples, the mission statement of the Walt Disney Company is “To make people happy.” Merck’s is “To preserve and improve human life.” 3M: “To solve unsolved problems innovatively.”

If I were asked to come up with a mission statement for the U.S.A., it would be “Land of Opportunity.”

Not “Land of equal opportunity.” Not “Land of limited opportunity.”

“Land of Opportunity.”

The dream of our founding fathers was to create a country where every man could excel to the best of his abilities. They envisioned a government that would stay out of the way of the enterprise of a free people. Their vision did not include cradle to grave health care, forgoing funding our national defense in favor of nanny state entitlements or even taking on the responsibility of educating our children.

Indeed, as a conservative, I have always believed the function of the federal government does not go beyond what Alexander Hamilton defined in Federalist No. 23:

“The principal purposes to be answered by union are these the common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries.”

The vision of our founding fathers certainly did not include redistributing the wealth of the successful to those less successful citizens.

That was what they left behind in Europe.

Last week, in a chance encounter on a rope line, Barack Obama met a regular American named Samuel Joseph “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher. Joe had the audacity to question The One about his tax plan: “I’m being taxed more and more for fulfilling the American dream,” Mr. Wurzelbacher said Sunday.

Obama replied, in part, “It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success, too.

“I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

This exchange revealed far more about Barack Obama’s ideas of America than his fellow Democrats are comfortable admitting. The campaign immediately realized its mistake and swung into action. What followed was a chilling series of attacks on a private citizen who committed the very great crime of asking a question that made Barack Obama look bad.

We were told that Joe wasn’t really a plumber because the state had not licensed him. He was not even a member of the plumbers’ union (the horror!). Then, after attempting to discredit his livelihood, his personal finances and unpaid debts were splashed across the news.

If that attempt to stifle free speech using the combined power of the government and the press was not sobering enough, then you need to bear witness to the utter contempt the leaders of the “party of the people” had for the little guy they are supposed to be fighting for.

Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden wondered aloud on the campaign trail “How many plumbers do you know that actually make $250,000 a year?” Bwahahaha! Silly Joe! You’ll never be rich; why even bother to try? Even if you bought a business and built it up, you’re only a plumber. The American dream isn’t for guys like you. It’s really only for guys like Barack Obama whose compelling story of his rise from obscurity serves as a parable only to worship; certainly not to inspire or emulate, least of all without government assistance. And only guys like Barack Obama can toss out that same wealth-defining amount of $250,000 on a mere 90 minutes of primetime television to further inundate the already saturated American public with his message of socialism — err, I mean hope and change.

Barack Obama wants to be the sole deliverer of the American dream. He does not believe that success can or should be achieved on its own without government intervention and/or regulation. After that, it’s time to spread the wealth around. If you have too much success, then “everybody behind you” won’t have a chance for success also. Barack Obama sees only the sizes of the slices; he never considers making a bigger pie.

Obama talks a lot about his tax breaks for 95 percent of Americans. What he doesn’t mention is that about 40 percent of Americans pay absolutely no federal taxes at all. And these tax “breaks” are really tax “credits,” as in something you have to know about to claim. More lines, more schedules and more worksheets on the 1040.

It’s already galling that most of us have to actually hire a professional just to figure out how much money we owe the government. Now everyone will.

But the part of this plan that’s supposed to be attractive to the middle class — you know, those guys like Joe the Plumber — is that nobody who makes under $250,000 will see their taxes increase. Great! Soak the rich, right?

But most small businesses are listed as S corporations, sole proprietorships or limited liability companies which means that all income from the business that cannot be claimed as a business expense must be claimed on the owner’s personal income tax.

This is where Obama’s tax plan will do the most damage, because instead of investing in expanding the business or in hiring new employees, small businesses will either remain stagnant or shrink.

Why grow your company when you will only be punished for it with higher taxes?

But Obama’s tax plan is all part of the grand socialist plan to “spread the wealth around.” When you take money from people who have worked for it and give it to people that haven’t, that’s not cutting taxes.

That’s welfare.

Originally published in the Times Herald October 23, 2008