Are We to Bow and Scrape Before Washington Politicians?

"Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant." George Washington

Ayn Rand wrote something profoundly pertinent to today's degradation of our economic system and the increasing loss of our freedoms by caused by government. She reminds us of what our basic right is and that without it there can be no other rights.

"The right to life is the source of all rights - and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave."

"To violate man's rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force. There are two potential violators of man's rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these two - by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first." (Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal - pg 322-23).

What the government has been doing for the past 100 years but at an alarmingly rapid rate today is destroying our right to our own lives. How? By denying us the right work, earn our money as we see fit and to keep it. In so many ways today the government dictates to us where we can live (zoning laws), how much we can earn (minimum wage laws and now denying industry leaders the right to set the terms of their salaries), using our tax dollars to fund the lives of anointed or favorite groups, forcing us to send our children to public schools that actually turn out damaged goods, and on and on. Let's face it we do NOT live in the "LAND OF THE FREE AND THE BRAVE". We live in a quasi controlled economy which every day gets closer and closer to totalitarianism.

The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago. But my question is - are we building our own Berlin Wall? The wall between those that comply and curry favor with the government and those that stand tall and free...there are fewer and fewer of the latter because we don't truly understand the ideal that our country was founded on.

We slave and toil to pay tribute to Big Government in Washington, to our state capitals and to our local governments. And there is no end in sight unless we do something about it. Our politicians act like the Lords and Ladies of yesterday, demanding tribute - our bowing and our scraping (Madame Pelosi comes to mind). And there's no end in sight...When will enough be enough? Are we so comfortable that we have no more will to defend our principles? I hope not.

Madam Pelosi: Let's Talk Constitution

As Americans go through our Public School system, we are ever more and more relegating our Constitution to the back burner because our teachers and administrators are derelict in their duty to inform us of our history. Our Founding Fathers envisioned a document that would provide guidance for Americans regarding the protection of individual liberties. Written mostly by James Madison it is well worth our effort to read this document, understand it and then hold our politicians accountable when they try to diminish our liberties.

Listen as Pelosi squirms her way out of answering the all too infrequently asked question to politicians as to "where specifically does the Constitution grant congress the authority to enact an individual Health Insurance Mandate"? Pelosi's NON-answer and clearly she is squirming - is truly disgusting.

Lies and Hypocrisy Of Pelosi and Reid

Watch as Pelosi and Reid vilify an industry because of their profits! America IS the land of Can Do and Profits! Figures that power-lusting politicians and rich ones at that would come out with this anti-American stand. To cap this off the insurance companies are way down the list in terms of profit margins! This is nothing but scapegoating and down-right lies to pass the Health care reform bill come hell or high water.

The Health Care Bill - Why Won't They Let Us Read It?

Congresses disapproval rating is at an all time high of 72%. Why can't we read that dastardly Health bill? What have they got to hide? Why are we putting up with these shady shenanigans going on in Washington? IBD has a good article about the 1000 page behemoth of a bill which none of us has read...Why is it so big? To confuse us as well?

Congress: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been asked repeatedly to put the proposed health care bill on the Web. They've refused. Do they have something to hide?

Even Democrats have asked their leadership to put the bill online at least 72 hours before a vote, so that any American can read the 1,000-plus-page monstrosity.

"At a time when trust in Congress and the U.S. government is unprecedentedly low," a group of Democratic senators recently wrote to Reid, "we can begin to rebuild the American people's faith in their federal government through transparency and by actively inviting Americans to participate in the legislative process."

We agree. In the same spirit, at least one group, Let Freedom Ring USA, has posted an online petition calling for Congress to mandate that any bill be posted online at least 72 hours before it's voted on. If Democrats are serious, they might look into that.

Of course, Reid and Pelosi know very well that putting the bill online would jeopardize its passage. Anyone who actually reads it will discover what it contains, and what the media have largely ignored — new taxes, fewer health care choices, the destruction of a successful industry and the creation of a massive new bureaucracy.

All at a cost of more than $1 trillion over the next decade.

But what else can you expect from a Congress that is arguably one of the worst in the nation's history? In power since 2006, this Democrat-led bunch has stood by as a financial meltdown led to a deep recession. Given the chance to reform our nation's financial system, they punted — instead spending trillions on bailouts, handouts, welfare and a phony "stimulus" that have done little for the economy. READ AT IBD

The Democrats Living in Alice's World

Read the latest absurd world the dems live in. A world where up is down and their skewed view of the world is right. IBD describes this upside down world we currently live in.

The latest media kerfuffle over the supposedly secret "plan" to kidnap or kill al-Qaida leaders shows just how pathetic our Congress has become. Gee, aren't we supposed to kidnap or kill the enemy?

The Democrats, still stinging from the stunning revelation that Rep. Nancy Pelosi lied about being briefed by the CIA about waterboarding, have whipped up a new spy scandal to even the score against the CIA.

To make it even more damaging, they've thrown in former Vice President Dick Cheney for good measure, charging that he pushed a covert program to kill or capture al-Qaida's leaders through the CIA. The plan began after 9/11, when President Bush authorized a secret program to capture or kill al-Qaida terrorists.

This is a rare two-fer for the Democrats: They protect one of their own (Pelosi) while going after the now departed bogeyman (Cheney), whom they've tried to build up as an archvillain who tricked Americans into deposing Iraq's lovable Saddam Hussein. (READ HERE)

Madame Pelosi - LEAVE US ALONE!

Message to Nancy Pelosi and her gang in The House. LEAVE US ALONE! Don't try to help the economy by your infusion of dollars that you don't have. LOWER TAXES and STAY OUT OF THE WAY. The American people, by hard work and ingenuity -will get us out of this mess that you have created.

WASHINGTON -- The House Democratic leadership is crafting new legislation to stimulate the shaky U.S. economy, and could call lawmakers back to the nation's capital shortly after the Nov. 4 election to take up the $150 billion measure.

No final decisions have been made on details of the package or changes to the congressional schedule. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and other Democratic leaders have discussed reconvening the House the week of Nov. 17 to act on a package that could include new government spending in areas including road and bridge construction, and possibly a tax rebate, congressional aides said.
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are considering reconvening the House the week of Nov. 17. ' We have some harsh decisions to make. Some of them can ' t wait until January,' she said this week.

Democratic congressional leaders and the White House worked closely in September to shepherd through Capitol Hill a $700 billion plan to attempt to stabilize U.S. financial markets. The camps also worked together at the beginning of the year to enact a $168 billion stimulus package that provided tax rebates to millions of Americans, a measure the White House says shored up growth through much of the year.

But the Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House are at odds over whether a second stimulus effort built around spending is needed to boost the economy. Democrats argue a one-time jolt of federal dollars would create jobs and shore up consumer spending. President George W. Bush contends spending-focused efforts are a waste of taxpayer dollars...(Wall Street Journal).

...Letting markets work is messy and costly. Nevertheless, the only sensible way to deal with the current crisis is to force the companies who created the mess to bear at least some of the costs of their mistakes. Most of all, if the markets are to get back on track our regulators must put an immediate stop to their current practice of publicly demonizing the markets and work to restore confidence in the system. (Wall Street Journal - Read The Government is Contributing to the Panic)

The Democrats, Lead by Pelosi, Reject Colombia At Our and the Region's Peril

By all accounts Colombia has made a remarkable transformation primarily by being tough on Narco traffiquers which are the local terrorists. Kidnappings, drug traffiquing and murder is down all due to the remarkable leader in that country, Alvaro Uribe. So how is it that the US congress is incapable of passing the Free Trade Agreement with this country so that tariffs will be lowered on our goods going into Colombia? Craven corruption.

Over at WSJ John Fund has a good column about how important this trade deal is to Colombia, to us and the region as far as a barrier to Chavez' designs on the rest of Latin America.

President Uribe made clear how disappointed he was that the Democratic front-runner had chosen domestic politics over geopolitical stability: "I deplore the fact that Sen. Obama . . . should be unaware of Colombia's efforts," he said in a statement. "I think it is for political calculations that he is making a statement that does not correspond to Colombia's reality."

The simple truth is that the opposition to the trade agreement--from the Democratic presidential contenders to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi--has nothing to do with reality. Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, admitted as much recently: "It's not the substance on the ground--it's the politics in the air."

There was another period when raw politics was allowed to trump what many in Congress privately admitted was common sense. In the spring of 1930, as the economic downturn set off by the previous year's stock market crash set in, Congress was debating the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill that sought to raise U.S. import barriers to record levels.

Most of the leading economists of the day opposed Smoot-Hawley. A front-page New York Times headline on May 5, 1930, read: "1,028 Economists Ask Hoover to Veto Pending Tariff Bill." But for entirely selfish and shortsighted reasons, both Congress and President Hoover went along with the protectionist hysteria. As a result, the Great Depression was probably deepened and extended for years.

Today, another no-brainer trade vote is before Congress. The foreign-policy benefits of the agreement are immense and the economic costs are minimal. "This is a test of whether the Democratic Congress is ready to accept the responsibilities of the majority," says Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute.

Everyone plays politics with trade. But there are times when the stakes are too important. The Colombia agreement is another example of when politics must take a back seat for a larger good. We certainly know how Hugo Chavez is rooting for the congressional vote to turn out.

The Hyprocrisy in Our Congress is Stunning

In the Wall Street Journal today in their Review and Outlook section there is an article called "Waterboarding: Congress Knew". (Surprise, surprise!) The orginal article is in the Post Web site.

"One certainly may hold as abhorrent the idea of aggressively interrogating any terrorists ever, either for fear of what they might do to our people, as John McCain does, or because one thinks this violates our values. What one may not do -- at least not if one wants the system to function -- is assent to such a policy in 2002 and then, when the policy is made public, put up the pretense that one is "shocked" and appalled to learn of it."

"This is bad faith. Worse, it risks setting in motion the ruin or eventual criminal prosecution of CIA employees who in 2002 did what the Bush Administration, Congress and indeed the nation wanted them to do to protect the American people from another September 11.

"It has been widely reported by now that waterboarding was used on only three individuals... If Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues want the handling of such terrorists conformed to what they call "our values," then she should define that and put it in an explicit piece of legislation. Then let the Members vote yea or nay, in public, on the record.

"But don't sign off on such a sensitive policy at a moment when the nation's "values" support it, then later feign revulsion when you can't take the heat from the loudest in your political constituency. There was a time when politics at least assumed more backbone than that."

It is beyond understanding how morally corrupt our Washington politicians are. For people like Pelosi to say yes to waterboarding then pretend that they are revolted by it a few years later to fit some political scheme is beyond belief. What kind of people are we sending to Washington to lead this nation? That´s what we should all be asking ourselves. Another question is why can´t we find better.

Politicians Fiddle While Iran Goes Nuclear

Please tell me if we're in some parallel universe where up is down and wrong is right. While our lovely Democrats invent issues with which to bring down our president, Iran is cooly building it's nuclear weapon of MASS DESTRUCTION! Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The total disregard for our 'clear and present danger' is simply astonishing - the hyprocisy, anti-Bush hate mongers and appeasers of the beginning of the second millenia will go down in our history books as the American evolution from a strong-willed people who fought the mighty British army and won to a lame, weak-willed and cowardly populace who refuses to face the dangers of our times.

Thankfully there are some clear-eyed leaders showing how we can deal with Iran, a country which has been a major thorn in the West's side for over twenty years. Thomas G. Mcinerney puts forth his views on how we can take down Iran in the Wall Street Journal article "Iran Escalates"(read).

"The obvious punishment for a defiant Iran could be an air strike that aims to destroy its nuclear development facilities and overt support for Iranians working to overthrow their government. This is where the discussion of taking stringent actions against Iran usually breaks down…

"This is where President Reagan in confronting the Soviets is instructive. The Gipper was elected in 1980 at a time when it appeared inevitable that the Soviet Union would dominate world affairs and just as inevitably that the U.S. was unable to do anything about it short of waging a bloody, military campaign that would have few allies in fighting and not every chance of success. In the end, as they say, Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot.

"We have similar options now. One of which is to enact drastic economic sanctions that, oddly, would involve forcing a gasoline crisis in Iran. Tehran is kept afloat on oil revenues, but it has done so at the expense of its oil industry. While it exports large quantities of crude oil, Iran imports 40% of its domestically consumed gasoline, and each gallon at the pump is heavily subsidized. Shutting off or even restricting the supply of gasoline flowing into the country would put the regime in a crunch and drive up public discontent without creating a corresponding humanitarian crisis."

The question is what can we do as citizens of the United States to demand the likes of Pelosi and Reid to stop fiddling with sideshows, to try to contain their hatred of our President and to get down to the task at hand and the reason why we have a government - They need to be reminded that their primary mandate is - TO DEFEND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ITS CITIZENS.