January, 2016, Part 6, Political Class Insanity: Bad Obama Priorities, North Korea REALLY Goes Nuclear, Homeless Boston, and More

It is the start of another month which means it is time for our monthly review of the latest political class insanity that continually spews forth from America’s politicians. Their actions, words, quotes, incompetency, and general ineptness continue to reinforce our theory that we are currently being served by the worst set of politicians in the history of the nation.

As you read about the latest shenanigans and ineptness of the political class, keep in mind what should be their priorities in these difficult times and compare this list to what they are actually working on:

• NBC recently reported that ISIS forces are getting larger and stronger despite the Obama administration spending billions of dollars on a failed air campaign and military strategy.
• The stock market is cratering.
• Job creation is barely keeping up with population growth.
• Wage growth is anemic, growing just .2% in the second quarter, the lowest quarterly growth since 1982.
• The labor participation rate is at the lowest level in decades because the Obama economy cannot generate enough jobs.
• Thousands of veterans are still not getting the medical care they were promised by the Federal government.
• 45 million Americans are still receiving monthly Federal food assistance.
• Our borders still leak and thousands of illegal immigrant criminals continue to walk our streets.
• Major programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are hurtling towards insolvency and lose hundreds of billions of dollars every year to fraud and mismanagement.
• Our kids are still getting lousy public educations at most public schools.
• The IRS and other government functions seem to be getting their computer systems hacked on a regular basis, exposing tens of millions of Americans to identity theft potential.
• Obama Care is a failure along so many dimensions as health care costs continue to soar despite the Obama promise that they would decrease.
• Annual Federal deficits, while down, are still about half a TRILLION a year meaning that even though the Federal government is collecting more in taxes than ever before, it still cannot run a balanced budget.

Again, keep these real crises in mind as you read what our politicians are actually doing, saying and wasting.

1) Of all the world crises that have been exploding lately, the North Koreans added another dire action when they recently announced that they not only had atomic weapons but had successfully developed a hydrogen bomb. Given how closed their society is, there is really no way to verify that this is true but if so, the potential consequences are horrifying. 

It is my understanding reading the news accounts of their announcements that a hydrogen bomb is much more powerful than an atomic bomb. In fact, an atomic bomb is used to ignite a hydrogen bomb. Putting this kind of weaponry in the hands of the nut jobs that run North Korea is truly scary.

Given the serious dangers of this development, how did the Obama administration react? Consider the words of White House Press secretary Josh Earnest and his response:

“The interests of the United States can be successfully advanced through principled, focused, tenacious diplomatic engagement and that’s what we’re going to continue to pursue. The thing that I should reiterate at this point is the rock solid commitment on the part of the United States to the safety and security of our allies in South Korea. But at this point, what we want the North Koreans to do … is we want the North Koreans to end their provocative acts, both in the form of missile tests and nuclear tests; to commit to de-nuclearization; and to demonstrate a commitment to pursuing peace and stability on the Korean peninsula. 

We would like the North Koreans to begin to orient their public posture and their behavior in the direction of constructive international engagement. We’re not asking them to do that out of charity. We actually also believe that that would be in the interests of the North Korean people and certainly the broader region.”

This is what passes for effective and strategic foreign policy under the Obama administration. “We want,” “we would like,” “we believe,” phrases that are going to have absolutely no effect on North Korea’s leaders, phrases that exist in the place of hard hitting, strategic plans and actions. 

Nothing will be done, nothing will change. While Obama was playing golf and taking multi-week Hawaiian vacations, while Congress was enjoying five week summer vacations, North Korea was busy potentially mastering the art of hydrogen bombs. Insanity.

2) The next piece of insanity has me scratching my head on why Obama has not been impeached, removed from office, and possibly tried for violating the Constitution of the United States. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the Obama administration has been caught spying on Israeli leaders AND members of Congress, especially during the negotiations over the failed and stupid Iranian nuclear weapons negotiations:

The U.S., pursuing a nuclear arms agreement with Iran at the time, captured communications between Mr. Netanyahu and his aides that inflamed mistrust between the two countries and planted a political minefield at home when Mr. Netanyahu later took his campaign against the deal to Capitol Hill.

The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears—an “Oh-s— moment,” one senior U.S. official said—that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress.

White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’

In closed-door debate, the Obama administration weighed which allied leaders belonged on a so-called protected list, shielding them from NSA snooping. French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders made the list, but the administration permitted the NSA to target the leaders’ top advisers, current and former U.S. officials said. Other allies were excluded from the protected list, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of NATO ally Turkey, which allowed the NSA to spy on their communications at the discretion of top officials.

Spying on our allies, spying on Congress, probably still spying on American citizens. We are truly living in Orwell’s “1984” world. Maybe if the Obama administration had used some of these spying resources on our enemies, e.g. ISIS, Russia, North Korea, it would not look and be so inept when its foreign policy crashes and burns so often.

3) We have often discussed the reality that the Pentagon is one of the worst Federal entities when it comes to wasting taxpayer money on stupid programs and projects. They recently added to their horrible track record when its latest, supposedly highest tech warship basically had to call AAA for a tow when it completely shut down about 40 miles out at sea.

The USS Milwaukee, launched with much fanfare last month, had to be towed back to shore after engine problems shut it down. They think that “fine metal debris collected in the lube oil filter” which shut down everything. Senator John McCain kind of summarized the absurdity of the event: “Reporting of a complete loss of propulsion on USS Milwaukee is deeply alarming, particularly given this ship was commissioned just 20 days ago. US Navy ships are built with redundant systems to enable continued operation in the event of an engineering casualty, which makes this incident very concerning."

The ship cost $437 million to build and had to be towed home. Last month the Navy claimed that the: “Milwaukee is a fast, agile, focused-mission platform designed for operation in near-shore environments yet capable of open-ocean operation. It is designed to defeat asymmetric "anti-access" threats such as mines, quiet diesel submarines and fast surface craft.” 

Instead it needed a tow home because of a clogged oil filter. Insane.

4) If Obama is to be believed, he has done a wonderful job lifting the economy out of the Great Recession. Of course, we have discussed this fantasy many times in this blog. His so-called recovery has been the weakest, most anemic economic recovery in a very, very long time:

• Years after the recession ended, over 45 million Americans are still receiving Federal food assistance every month, about 50% more than when the recession started.
• Annual national economic growth never attained the long term average annual economic growth, never exceeding 3% a year.
• About 14 million Americans want full time jobs but cannot find them, settling for no job or for a part time job.
• The labor participation rate is at forty year lows.

These horrible economic results were attained even though Obama had the benefit of a $800 billion (failed) economic stimulus program, record low energy costs, and trillions of dollars pumped into the economy by the Fed. Pathetic economic management and strategies.

But forget the high level economic numbers for a minute. What has been the effect of Obama's economic policies on ordinary Americans? Consider a recent Boston Globe interview of a Boston cabbie:

• Bill Ford has been driving a cab in Boston for 42 years.
• In those 42 years he has seen good economic times and bad economic times on the streets of Boston.
• But he has never seen things so bad as now despite the economy being in “recovery:” “But when I’m out on these streets I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before, at least not as bad as they are now. When I heard Marty Walsh saying Boston would be willing to take in some of those refugees, I knew he was speaking from his heart. But if we bring them in we’re going to have to give them the works: housing, food stamps, welfare, medical. You can’t just bring them in and say, ‘OK, now you’re on your own.’ I’ve never seen so many people (Bostonians) sleeping on stoops or in doorways.” 

A major homeless problem in Boston as seen from someone on the front lines of society and the political leaders of Boston want to take care of Syrian refugees first. Sounds like the Obama approach to society’s ills: screw Americans who are homeless, hungry, drug addicted, jobless,...let’s spend billions of dollars to relocate and resettle foreigners and give them housing, food, and jobs. A world insanely turned upside down.

5) As we discussed a few days ago, gun control/gun violence ranked no better than 16 other issues facing Americans today according to a recent Gallup poll. Only 2% of those polled said gun control/gun violence was the top issue in their minds, trailing at least 16 other issues. 

So, of course, what did Obama focus on this past week or so, holding a major news conference and a townhall meeting? Gun control and gun violence. While he was focusing on this relatively minor topic in the eyes of America, the following crises and dire events were going down around the world:

• U.S. Special Forces troops were pinned down and surrounded by Taliban forces who continue to gain and control more and more territory in Afghanistan.
• North Korea conducting another nuclear weapons test and claimed they now know how to make a hydrogen bomb.
• China started landing planes on the man made islands they created in the South China Sea as they attempt to take over the major sea lanes that go through that area.
• The Chinese stock market bombed, and in doing so, cratered the U.S. stock markets.
• Dozens of people were arrested across the country, charged with planning terrorism plots within the United States.
• Saudi Arabia and Iran got into a spitting match when it was reported the Saudis had shot a missile at the Iranian embassy in Yemen after the Iranians firebombed the Saudi embassy in Iran after the Saudis had executed an Iranian favored cleric.
• ISIS announced that they had established a Bombmaking University to create even more dangerous weapons and bombs. 
• French police shot and killed an ISIS sympathizer after he tried to enter a Paris police station wielding a cleaver while shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Add in all off the other crises listed at the beginning of this post, which obviously did not get any better in the past couple of weeks as this administration focuses on a non-issue and one that Americans are unenthusiastic about, and you can see why the country is in the state it is.

That will do it for this month’s political class insanity, not a pretty picture. Today we learned (again) that this Presidency has no answer for North Korea’s nuclear weapon drive, this President has no qualms about spying on allies and members of Congress, an act that must be illegal and impeachable, the American taxpayer just paid half a billion dollars for a warship that does not work, the economy is still in the doldrums, and the priorities of this administration are all out of whack. 

Sounds about right, just another month of wasteful spending, bad priorities, illegal actions, etc., courtesy of the worst set of politicians ever to serve this country.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Corruption, Cronyism, Syria and Term Limits: Correlated of Causative?

As most informed Americans know, President Obama issued a dare/threat to the Syrian government in August, 2012, warning them not to use poison gas in their civil war against rebel forces. The President then proceeded to do nothing to operationalize that threat over the next twelve months, despite numerous and long vacations and many, many rounds of golf. He did not get Congressional approval to strike militarily if poison gas was used, he did not get United Nations approval to strike, he did not get the American public behind him, he did not pressure Syrian allies to force Syria not to use chemical weapons, nothing.

As a result, if reports are to be believed, the Syrian government did use poison gas on its people and the President is out on a very thin limb. He has now gone to Congress, twelve months too late, and is trying to get them out on the limb with him by authorizing a military strike on Syrian targets. Over the past week, Congressional hearings and meetings have been held to determine if Congress should give him this ill thought out and probably ill fated power to attack.

The first Congressional voted was held by a Senate responsible for such matters and a resolution passed, 10  votes for military action vs. 7 voted against military action. That resolution will now move along the Congressional process for a vote by the entire Senate. We have made the case this week, as have many other, smarter Americans why attacking Syria is a very bad idea. Those posts can be reviewed starting with the first one:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special.html

So, given that so many Americans are against military action, I wondered why a majority of Senators on this committee voted to support military action. Was there something going on behind the scenes that we are not aware of? Well, an analysis posted by the Wired magazine website provides a theory and hypothesis of what is really going on.

Before going on, a quick discussion on correlation and causation. Just because two factors look to be interrelated, it does not mean that one caused another. Simple example. I recently went on a diet and as my weight dropped, my golf game improved. On the surface, it looks like my weight loss made me a better golfer, or said another way, my weight loss caused my golf improvement.

But I also took some lessons and bought new golf clubs in the midst of my weight reduction effort. In all likelihood, the new clubs and lessons CAUSED my golf game improvement, while the weight loss was CORRELATED with the improvement in my golf game, it did not cause the improvement.

Okay, that is a long winded way of saying that just because defense and intelligence companies and contractors gave a lot more reelection campaign money to the Senators who voted yes to go to war does not necessarily mean that their money caused them to vote yes for war, it could just be a correlation or a coincidence. 

But it is a worthwhile avenue of investigation since we are talking about spending billions of dollars to attack Syria and putting our fighting service men and women in mortal danger. It would be a shame if those costs were incurred for a few thousands dollars of campaign contributions from companies that would profit handsomely from another Middle East military action.

The following graphic of how the “yes” voters got more money from defense contractors and companies vs. those that voted “no” to war is lifted from the Wired article (double click on the image for a larger view):








The data is based on campaign contributions from 2007 through 2012. The information comes form the fabulous Open Secrets website that tracks all money being donated to all politicians over the years and what was the source of those contributions.

For this analysis, these sources include political action committees and employees from defense and intelligence firms related to such companies as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, Honeywell International, and others. This category of contributors in the Open Secrets website gave $1,006,887 to the 17 members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who voted yes or no on the authorization Wednesday, The analysis and data research was done by Maplight, a Berkeley-based nonprofit that performed the inquiry at WIRED’s request.

Let’s review the findings and do a little math work of our own:

• Those Senators that voted yes for war on average received 83% more money from defense contractors than those that voted no to war.
• A majority of those Senators that voted no to war (four out of seven), received less money from defense contractors than the lowest recipient of funds among the ten Senators that voted yes to war.
• If you assume that McCain on the yes side and Barrasso on the no side are outliers which distort the results, removing these two highest paid recipients on each side of the issue and recalculating averages show even worse results, with the yes side getting about 92% more from defense firms than the no side.
• If you leave Barrasso in and just remove McCain, the results are still damning, with the yes voters getting on average 54% more than the no voters.
• The top three recipients of defense contributions on the yes side received, on average, 94% more than the top three recipients on the no side.

It is tough/impossible to cut the data anyway possible and not come away with the conclusions that those that voted yes to going to war with Syria were much better financially supported by defense firms, companies that would do very well in a war environment, than those Senators that voted no. Again, this does not mean that heavy financial support to the yes voters influenced their vote, remember correlation vs. causation. It could just be a coincidence that it ended up that way.

But who really believes that. Consider another viewpoint that again, could just be a correlation/coincidence and have nothing to do with going to war or not. In the past month, the stock market’s S&P index is down about 2.49% while the Dow industrial stock average is down even more, 3.83%. 

However, if you look at four major defense firms, firms listed above that are heavy contributors to Senators’ reelection campaigns, we see that the Lockheed stock price over the past month is down only .43%, Boeing’s stock price is down just .91%, United Technologies is down 1.87%, and Honeywell is down 2.97%. Thus, in general, defense firms have done much better than the overall stock market in the past month as war talk and attacking Syria talk has ramped up.

Again, the better than market performance of defense firms in the midst of Senate debate on going to war could just be a coincidence. But if war is your business and the potential for engaging in military action is on the table, than business can be very good, especially if you can influence the events via lobbying and campaign funding.

These facts and figures could all be just a coincidence. But why take the chance? Shouldn’t Congressional actions, decisions, and votes be based on the merits relative to the majority of American citizens and not based on how much money incumbent politicians can potentially sell their vote for? 

And if we are not talking about a coincidence, isn’t it a disgrace that just over a $1 million in campaign donations can risk billions of dollars in war supplies and the potential deaths of American troops and seamen and airmen?

That is why we need to remove the chance for causation by implementing two steps from “Love My Country, Loathe My Government:”

1) Step 7 would allow only American citizens to contribute to political campaigns. No companies, no unions, no PACs, no Super PACs, and no lobbyists would ever be allowed to contribute to any political election campaign. Washington politicians should be voting on issues as dictated by citizens, not defense firms or any other kind of organized entity.

2) Step 39 would impose term limits on all Washington politicians. We get into these difficult situations because the primary purpose of anyone serving in Congress is to continue serving in Congress, election after election after election. These perpetual elections require money from various sources. 

And with money comes debts that need to be paid back in order to get more reelection campaign funding. Make reelection impossible and that would certainly focus sitting politicians on the real issues, making the proper decisions since reelection and the need for reelection funding goes away.

If those ten Senators that voted yes to go to war, those ten that had received much more campaign money from defense firms than the seven no voters, knew that reelection was not possible, it would be interesting to see if they still would have voted yes. 

In any case, we need to remove this suspicion of acting for reelection rather than the safety of our country,  our taxpayer wealth, and the safety of our armed forces. You can help make that possible by joining our effort to impose term limits on all Washington politicians at:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

Because, really, how much worse could it get when just over a $1 million could cost us much more in treasure and lives?

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w 

Political Class Insanity Special Edition Part 2: Syrian Madness, McCain Plays Video Games, Obama Fails To Plan, and Other Insults

Today is the second in a special series of posts we are doing on the political class insanity about Syria. Most informed Americans know that President Obama is itching to send U.S. military resources into action to teach the Syrian government a lesson for allegedly using poison gas on some of its citizens. As we discussed yesterday in detail, the reason for his desire is that he issued an idle threat to the government of Syria about a year ago, his now infamous “red line” ultimatum, i.e. if Syria poison gassed its own people that would be bad and incur Obama’s wrath.

The problem with issuing this ultimatum, as we discussed yesterday, is that the President never took the time or effort to establish a plan to operationalize his threat. Now, he is standing in front of the world with egg on his face with no plan and no strategy, trying to convince the world that our military should be drawn into a vicious civil war in a Middle East country. 

Yesterday’s post with more details on how he got us into this pretty untenable position can be accessed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2013/09/political-class-insanity-special.html

Today and over the next few days we will continue to review why this is such a stupid idea, sending us into war in Syria, how idiotic some of our politicians have acted with regard to this crisis, how Obama’s desire to shoot missiles makes no sense, and what others in the world are saying about this problem and why military action is NOT the answer.

1) This issue is probably one of the biggest foreign relations problems that this nation has had to face in many years. Military personnel are being put at risk. Taxpayer dollars are being diverted to go to war. Congressional members are in heated debate with each other and members of the administration on the issues.

And Senator John McCain, one of the Senate’s biggest proponents of going to war in Syria, was recently caught on film by Washington Post reporter Melina Mara….playing online poker on his smartphone the middle of the Senate hearings on whether or not to attack Syria. One of the biggest issues of our time and he thinks it is fine to play a video game while lives are at stake.

And to add insult to injury, once the Post pictures were made public, McCain actually made light of the incident by Tweeting, "Scandal! Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing - worst of all I lost!" Talk about disgraceful, talk about condescending, this is pathetic. 

Lives hang in the balance he gets sarcastic after getting caught being distracted by such an important Senate debate and eventual decisions. These are the types of people that are leading the country today, the types of people that do not even have enough attention span to engage in a life and death matter.

2) The Heritage Foundation did a nice job with a recent posting where it laid out five questions that the administration needs to answer or clarify because the current status of information does not make sense:

- On August 31, 2013 and September 1, 2013, the President repeatedly stated that any U.S. military operation against Syria would be “narrow and limited” and would not involve troops on the ground. But when the administration put together a draft Congressional resolution that outlined how we would attack Syria, the resolution stated that the purpose of the U.S. military action is to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of weapons of mass destruction or to “protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.” This is a very broad objective, it is not narrow and limited.

Narrow and limited military strikes are very unlikely to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stocks or delivery capacity since the Syrian government has now had more than a week, or a year, to move and protect those chemical weapons and other military hardware. So what is it, narrow and limited or wipe out the Syrian chemical weapons capability. You cannot have both, and given the warning we have given the Syrian government of our attack intentions, Obama will likely get neither.

- But U.S. military strikes are not the only entanglement that Obama wants to create for us in Syria. The administration reportedly intends to do “more for the Syrian rebels,” including providing arms. 

But given that the Syrian rebels are fighting beside Islamist extremists, some of whom have ties to al-Qaeda, how does the administration plan to arm the “good” rebels but not the “bad” rebels. So far, that little snafu has not been ironed out. If it does not get done properly, we could be providing military hardware to the very people that blew up the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon on 9-11.

- The Administration assesses “with high confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year, including in the Damascus suburbs.” However, these earlier attacks did not result in a military response from the U.S. Thus, why now and why because of just the latest alleged gas attack?  Arbitrary enforcement of a “red line” or any ultimatum is not a convincing argument.

- The President stated in late August that the Syrians’ behavior regarding the potential gassing of its own citizens was national security threat to the U.S. But he never said what that threat was except in the broadest and vaguest terms possible, as if we should just take his word for it. 

He also stated that we need to militarily attack to discourage other fiends around the world from getting into the chemical warfare game. But it is highly doubtful that a “narrow and limited” attack over a period of a couple of days is 1) going to make us more secure and 2) is going to discourage any madman from getting into chemical weapons if the only world answers to such a move is a few cruise missiles.

- The final Heritage point is one we covered yesterday. With the exception of France, Obama has not built any kind of allied, United Nations, or international coalition partnership to help us out in this self created crisis. He is trying to lead the charge up the hill while those he would like to have allies are staying back in their fox holes, not seeing this charade as worthwhile or likely to do any good.

Heritage tied these serious shortcomings of the administration’s thought processes very nicely and accurately: “The Obama Administration’s Syria policy has been disturbingly ad hoc and reactive. The Administration has not clearly explained why it must act at this time when earlier incidents did not require action, how its proposed actions will achieve its stated objectives, and what its plans are if the military strikes do not succeed in achieving those objectives. Answers to these and other questions are vital if Congress is to take its responsibilities seriously.”

Given that a high ranking Senator like John McCain would rather play video games than take this potential war situation seriously, I am not sure that Congress is ready, willing, and able to take the situation seriously. Also, based on these five issues, it is quite apparent the administration has not been ready, willing, and able to do their homework to properly address and resolve the issues of military intervention.

3) Ron Paul, former U.S. Congressman and Presidential candidate, recently had three insightful observations/warnings about this crisis that Obama’s careless red line threat has caused:

• “We are not really positive who set off the gas. The group that is most likely to benefit from that is Al-Qaida. They ignite some gas; some people die and blame it on Assad.”
• “Assad, I don’t think, is an idiot. I don’t think he would do this on purpose in order for the whole world to come down on him.”
• “What if there is an accident and 100 Russians get killed by our bombs? Who knows? Some type of unintended consequences. Wars always expand because of unintended consequences. They always provide short-term war. Just think of all the promises over in Iraq: short term; not much money; it’s over; we’ll get that oil. And don’t believe it.” 

Another view from a politician that has always been leery, and correct, about getting involved in other people’s business. What if we do kill some Russian citizens that are working for the Russian government in Syria? What if we end up with a stray missile that lands in the center of a residential area and which would likely kill far more Syrians than died in the alleged gas attack? What if Assad is actually a rationale tyrant who knew he was winning the civil war and would be crazy to get involved in such an attack? 

So many questions and so few answers on such an important issue.

4) Speaking of killing civilians, this issue has always bothered me. Best estimates say that over 100,000 Syrians have died as a result of the civil war. This war has been going on for years. These people died from gun shots, mortar rounds, artillery rounds, torture, etc. Why is it so important to inject ourselves into this civil war now? If the 400 or 1,400 people (various estimates) had not been killed by poison gas but by artillery shells, would we not be having this discussion and issue? 

Are Obama, Kerry, McCain and others  saying it is okay to kill someone with a mortar round but we need to get involved when it is allegedly poison gas? Unnecessary death is unnecessary death. If the administration and others had been this concerned about any civilian deaths than maybe they should have addressed the issue years ago before 100,000 people died.

Okay, heavy duty stuff and we are still not done reviewing all of the issues and opinions and ramifications of going to war, again, in the Middle East, a foreign policy strategy that has NEVER worked out well. More to follow tomorrow. In the meantime, if you agree that this insanity must stop, I urge you to call your Congressional representatives now before they decide military action, limited and useless as it is, has any merit at all.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now:http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w 

61 Reasons Why Jimmy Carter Is Off The Hook, Part 1: The Legacy Of Failure Of The Obama Administration

Before I get into my conclusions on why Jimmy Carter is now off the hook as the worst President I have ever seen, replaced by the failed legacy of President Obama, let me set the stage:

• Until the midterm elections in November, 2010 I had never voted for a Republican for national office, President or Congress, in my life.
• I have voted for very few Republicans for local, county, and state elections in my life.
• Thus, I am not a long term Republican voter or conservative.
• The reason I wrote and published my book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government” was because of the insanity I witnessed during the Republican Bush administration. The waste, stupidity, and corruption of that era was something I found unacceptable in a democracy and wanted to do my part to fix our ailing democracy. It had nothing to do with the Obama administration and its failures.
• Thus, I am not out to do a hatchet job on President Obama, I would do a similar assessment on any other person with the same dismal track record.
• I am not saying that John McCain would have been more effective than Obama has been. We will never know, given McCain did not get elected.
• I am not enthusiastic about Romney by any stretch of the imagination and I am not saying that Romney would be more effective than Obama has been.
• The information sources for my writings, analyses, conclusions almost never include Fox News and never include conservative/Republican blogs or forums. Most of the time my sources are unbiased or liberal leaning organizations that tend to portray the Obama administration in a more favorable light than it deserves.
• I believe that in sports, politics, and life, the old saying that “you are only as good as your record” should be the only guide to reality. Saying you tried hard or claiming the failure was not your fault are easy to do. But results are the only things that count in the final assessment. Excuses are a sign of weakness and immaturity when it comes to leadership in life. However, they are an ongoing trait of this administration.
• Some of the points of failure listed below might be viewed as petty and unimportant in the big picture. However, this assessment is meant as a comprehensive view of the Obama Presidency and one person’s view of pettiness and unimportance might be viewed as a failed opportunity at leadership by someone else. That is why everything was included
• Harry Truman once eloquently stated: “The buck stops here.” He realized he was the overall boss so that anything that went wrong on his watch ultimately was his responsibility, a responsibility he was willing to accept. The Obama administration should not be held to any lower standard of excellence.
• For the first two years of his Presidency, Obama’s Democratic party held a majority in the House of Representatives and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. His approval ratings were sky high. He could have done anything he wanted. He wasted that historic opportunity and as a result, he does not now get to blame Bush, the Arab Spring, the Iranians, the Japanese tsunami, ATM machines, Congress, the Republicans, or anything else for his failures. The buck stops at his desk, he accepted the job and both the glory and the blame that goes with it.

Okay, let’s get started. Today, I will review the first thirty reasons why Jimmy Carter's Presidential administration is no longer the worst administration in my lifetime and possibly the past century. Tomorrow, I will review the final thirty one reasons along with some final observations and summaries to validate my claim that the Obama administration is so bad that Jimmy Carter is off the hook as the worst President of the past century or so.

I am 59 years old and have always viewed the Carter administration as one of the most inept and ineffective presidencies of all time. With the exception of the Israeli/Egyptian peace accords, I cannot remember anything else positive from those years but I do remember long gas lines, high gas prices, the Iranian hostage crisis and the timid response to it, high unemployment, and sky high inflation and interest rates. Not a legacy of success or hope.

But along comes the Obama administration and the following failures across just about every dimension, in no particular order:

1) Failure to implement an economic stimulus program that lived up to its objectives, the President predicting that unless the Federal government spent about $800 billion, the unemployment rate could go as high as 8%. Over $800 billion was spent, and wasted, and the unemployment rate remained above 8% for a record 42 straight months.

2) Failure to implement to an effective overall economic strategy, instead relying on petty, tactical, short term, and unsuccessful economic programs that accomplished nothing but wasted billions of dollars. The short list of failures includes Cash For Clunkers, Cash For Appliances, Cash For Caulkers, HAMP, General Motors bailout (currently billions of taxpayer dollars still unpaid), and a small business tax credit package.

3) Failure to reduce this high unemployment rate, with almost 13 million Americans still unemployed, millions of other Americans who are underemployed or have become to discouraged to look for work, resulting in a total unemployment/underemployment rate of an unacceptable 14.9% in September which translate into about 23 million Americans who are unemployed or under employed. As a result, we have record high welfare payments and record high food stamp recipients.

4) Failure to provide a healthy, growing economic climate, with about half of this year’s college graduates not able to find a position in their preferred field and more than 80% of them moving back in with their parents or relatives since they cannot afford to strike out on their own.

5) Failure to protect the nation’s AAA bond rating, resulting in a major credit rating agency downgrading the credit worthiness of the United States for the first time in our history and other major credit agencies warning that they could follow suit unless the Federal government gets its spending under control.

6) Failure to reduce the Federal government’s annual spending deficit by 50% as promised in his 2008 Presidential campaign.

7) Failure to get Federal government spending under control, creating record annual TRILLION dollar deficits for the entire time of his Presidency, adding about $5 TRILLION to our national debt to bring it to over $16 TRILLION.

8) Failure to even consider forcing Congress to consider implementing the fine work of his deficit reduction commission, a commission he himself put together but ended up completely ignoring.

9) Failure to pressure a fellow Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to do the Majority Leader’s job and produce an annual detailed Federal budget plan, a failure that has resulting in the Senate not producing a formal budget in over 1,200 days, a performance by Reid that has to be un-Constitutional and impeachable on some level

10) Failure to rein in waste, corruption, inefficiency, and criminal fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, all of which cost the American taxpayer anywhere from $110 to $150 billion a year.

11) Failure to rein in waste, corruption, inefficiency, and criminal fraud in the Social Security program, which costs the American taxpayer at least $100 billion a year.

12) Failure to rein in waste, corruption, inefficiency, and criminal fraud in the food stamp and unemployment benefit programs, which cost the American taxpayer about $25 billion a year.

13) Failure to streamline government functions and operations, which would save tax payers tens of billions of dollars a year, as witnessed by the fact that after three and a half years of this Presidency we are still burdened with 15 different agencies overseeing food safety laws, more than 20 independent programs helping the homeless, 80 different programs to help economic development, 82 different government agencies working on improving teacher quality, 47 different government agencies working on job training, and 18 different programs working on food and nutrition assistance.

14) Failure to improve tax collection at the Internal Revenue service which estimates that it fails to collect about $380 billion a year from tax evaders, putting additional tax burdens on honest taxpayers who actually pay their taxes.

15) Failure to live up to his campaign promise to close the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, a facility that annually costs the American taxpayer about $160 million to operate.

16) Failure to live up to his campaign promise to not allow lobbyists to serve in high ranking positions in his administration, an administration that currently has several dozen ex-lobbyists high up in the administration

17) Failure to live up to his campaign promise of significantly reducing budget earmarks which are only thinly disguised schemes for incumbent politicians to finance their reelection campaigns.

18) Failure to live up to his campaign promise of not using executive privilege when he invoked executive privilege to hamper and cover up a legitimate Congressional investigation into misconduct and illegal activity relative to the fatal Fast and Furious gun walking operation.

19) Failure to live up to his statement several years ago when as Senator he boldly asserted that raising the nation’s debt limit was a Presidential failure of leadership, a statement he contradicted the first time he was confronted with out of control spending bumping up against the nation’s debt limit level.

20) Failure to lead the country to a comprehensive and effective strategy for educating our kids, who currently rank behind dozens of other countries around the world in the quality of their education despite the U.S. spending more than every other country in the world. At the Federal level, the continuing failure of the Department of Education has cost us over $200 billion since the Obama inauguration.

21) Failure to lead the country to a comprehensive and effective strategy for cost effective energy independence, with no strategy in place to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources and our carbon footprint. At the Federal level, the continuing failure of the Department of Energy has cost us over $100 billion since Obama’s inauguration.

22) Failure to lead the country to a comprehensive and effective health care reform strategy to rein in our escalating health care costs, with Obama Care likely to cost well over $2 TRILLION to execute, likely to drain wealth out of the economy with dozens of new taxes, likely curtail economic growth, likely result in tens of millions of Americans losing their current health care insurance protection, likely to have millions of Americans have their working hours reduced, will definitely leave at least twenty million Americans without health care insurance ten years after the legislation was passed and likely have no chance to succeed since the legislation never addressed the root causes of our higher and higher health care costs.

23) Failure to lead the country to a comprehensive and effective restart of our strategy relative to our illegal drug usage problems, resulting in the enrichment of violent Mexican drug cartels, the continuing imprisonment of non-violent drug users, the continuing emphasis on law enforcement vs. drug treatment, and the continuing lost “war on drugs.”

24) Failure to lead the country to a comprehensive and effective restructuring of our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs, all of which are hurdling towards fiscal insolvency.

25) Failure to lead the country to a comprehensive overhaul of our 70,000 page, cumbersome, inefficient, and economy inhibiting Federal tax code, a tax code that results in hundreds of billions of dollars every year not being collected and a tax code that results in American companies keeping over a TRILLION dollars in profits overseas, sitting idly, not helping the U.S. economy to grow.

26) Failure to lead the country to an overhaul or termination of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two main culprits in the creation and collapse of the housing bubble, leading directly to the Great Recession and a taxpayer bailout of the two government housing entities that has already cost the American taxpayer over $180 billion (and growing).

27) Failure to lead the country to an overhaul of the country’s financial regulation processes, claiming responsibility for the Dodd-Frank legislation that has already missed three major financial industry disasters, the collapse of MF Global, the dangerous investing and reckless style of JP Morgan, and the collapse of Peregrine Financial Group, three situations that were supposed to be impossible with the new regulations.

28) Failure to eliminate the “too big to fail” syndrome of America’s largest banks, with the five largest banks now larger on every banking measure than they were prior to the Great Recession.

29) Failure to terminate the ill-fated Fast and Furious gun walking campaign, a campaign that broke numerous laws and at least one international treaty while resulting in the unnecessary death of a U.S. agent and dozens of innocent Mexican civilians.

30) Failure to have his administration prepared and act promptly when the Gulf oil spill occurred, with himself taking several vacations, playing numerous rounds of golf, and making several long campaign fund raising trips while the Gulf environment and economy suffered the ravages of the multi-month oil spill.

Tomorrow we will review the final 31 reasons why this Presidential administration is the worst this country has seen in a very long time and why Jimmy Carter is now off the hook, given the failed legacy of the Obama administration.

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The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

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How Dare you Talk To My Child Like That!

I guess that President Obama is going ahead with his talk to American students on Wednesday, the first day of school for many of them. As with most things in our current political climate, nothing is easy. The Republican wing of the political class is up in arms about how Obama will indoctrinate young minds to his socialist agenda. The Democratic wing of the political class has called this "silly season", stating that the President's message will be one of stay in school, study hard, and get a good education. If that is all his message was going to be, than I would probably agree with the "silly season" position. However, there are some other components of the whole talk to students event that are a little creepy in some ways and hypocritical in others. My thoughts:

• Part of the original plan was to have kids write letters to Obama describing things that they could do to help him. While this part has been changed to have the kids write letters to themselves about their goals, the original plan was not a good approach. First of all, the kids should not be helping Obama, he should be helping them by setting proper education standards, processes, and funding so that each American kid can grow up free to be all they can be and to help themselves, not devote time to helping a politician attain his vision. They should be focused, via getting educated, to attaining their own vision.
• When I originally heard about this part of the program, North Korea and its devotion to its tyrannical ruler came to mind. Fair or unfair, I immediately thought of Kim Jong II and his cult of personality ruling of North Korea, a country void of any type of freedom. Maybe I am too sensitive to the issues of liberty and government, but I get really suspicious when someone tries to put themselves at the center of America. The basis and success of America has always been the individual's vision, not any leader's vision. North Korea is a great example when we worship and focus on a leader and his personal vision.
• As someone who despises both parties, I am pretty sure that if George Bush had put this exact same program in effect a few years ago and asked students to write him letters on how to help him implement his vision of America, the Left and Democrats would be in a similar uproar. I really have no patience for hypocrites and that is what the Democrats are being in this case while the Republicans are being a little over the top.
• In fact, from what I can gather from various sources on the Net, the first George Bush spoke to students in a nationwide broadcast in 1991 and the Democrats went off, claiming it was an unfair and inexpensive way to do political advertising. However, the one thing that Bush did not ask for was an organized letter writing campaign addressed to help him, he suggested a voluntary campaign, something a little less intense than the Obama plan.
• But let's be clear, there is a much larger dynamic here than a 15 minute speech to American students about the merits of education. The political class has caused this nation to devolve into warring camps, pitting one group of Americans against another. Do we really think that these two groups of politicians can get anything of merit accomplished in this country when 1) they cannot even be civil to each other about a simple 15 minute Presidential speech and 2) they cannot execute a simple rebate program like the Cash For Clunkers program (see a previous post about the details). Do we really think they can modernize and economize the American health care system with the way they disrespect each other and those that do not agree with them? Do we really think they can solve the drug addiction problem, failing public schools, bankrupt bound Social Security and Medicare, etc. when name calling and mistrust his their MO. They brought this infighting on themselves and we will suffer for it with either poor governing or no governing worthwhile.
• Finally, there is one aspect that no one has been talking about to my knowledge. It reminds me of old skit that comedian Paula Poundstone did in one of her stage shows. Basically, she recalls about how when she was young, adults would always ask her what she wanted to be when she grew up. As a kid, she thought they were interested in her goals. Turns out, the adults could not care less about the kid's goals, they were looking for ideas for themselves. Could it be that the President is actually in need of some new ideas and is turning to the kids for the answers?????? Lets see what he has accomplished in the first 17% (assuming he is in office for 48 months and about eight months are already gone) of his Presidency:

1. We are still in Iraq and will be for a while despite his campaign pledge to get us out quickly.
2. He is still using the Bush Mideast Road Map for peace in the Middle East, not his own plan, and we are no closer to peace there than when he was elected. All he has done is tick off most Israelis and not produced anything for the Arab world to get excited about.
3. He has talked about closing Guantanamo but does not appear anywhere close to doing so.
4. The economy is still in the trash heap despite spending trillions of dollars on ill advised bailouts that began under Bush.
5. Afghanistan, his "good war", is not going well, despite increased US troop strength.
6. Many of his appointees were tax cheats.
7. He reacted poorly and non-Presidential when he called the Cambridge police "stupid" without knowing any of the facts in the Gates arrest situation.
8. He allowed the Democrats in Congress to write the health care legislation, resulting in at least four different competing health care bills bumping into each other and lost the battle to present a coherent and sensible plan of reform (i.e. there isn't any).
9. His White House staff asked Americans to forward emails from friends and family that did not support his health care plans, very Big Brother-like.
10. He has made America more divisive, angry, and suspicious despite his claim of being a uniter during his campaign.

Do I think McCain/Palin could have done any better? Probably not. They should have asked kids for ideas also, they just should have done it before the election!