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THE PEOPLE’S INQUIRY

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Authored by William Robert Barber

Office holding politicians, particularly the Democrats, cannot comprehend the prevailing message: The American people are angrily frustrated with the leadership, as well as followship of congress.  The citizenry are resentful of this ‘I know better’ elitist approach by the elected to the governing of the people. Additionally, disingenuousness, lies, distortions, and purposeful, politically motivated directives aimed to distort the truth for the sake of the moment also add wood to the fire of governmental distrust.

The people want the truth — the good, the bad, and the ugly truth. These are the wishes of the people. Instead, the Obama administration, Pelosi’s House majority, and Reid’s Senate majority insist on managing the Democrat-led government by presuming that the people are ignorant of what’s good for them; therefore, enlightenment of the masses is the obligation of every liberal progressive. After all, only through such practice can those who know and understand less be lead by those who understand so much more.

The very fact that political leadership for years — not just at the federal level — have managed to pay Paul with Henry’s money (the very definition of a Ponzi scheme); such behavior is a testimony of not simply pure unadulterated governmental mismanagement, but also the perfect example of what happens when constituents take their eye off the ball of political involvement.

The goal is not about trusting government; indeed, a sound responsive populous should never trust government. Nor is trust a factor in government transactions or affairs; this is particularly true as to the elected. Trust is not in the dictionary of political or governmental intercourse. However, mistrust is the guiding line of reason when auditing all aspects of governing.

No person living today, as with those persons of the past, has the constancy of either righteousness or truthfulness. Every person is blinded by one’s own predetermination of what is right or correct. Wisdom is only accurately measured in arrears. We are all guessers. The result of deductive logic is only as reliable as the veracity of the information imputed.

When legislation is rushed, it is only prudent to believe that mistakes will be made. So why rush legislation? Well, we all, despite our presumption of ignorance, know why legislation is rushed. Either because the congress is changing the name of an airport, or because the measure debated is politically significant and one party or the other would rather not stand the test of scrutiny.

I do believe that the American people have had their full of politics as usual. Certainly, congressional nonsense has risen to the top of the glass and has spilled over onto the floor. Enough of the useless political bickering (by the elected and the wannabe elected); the country is financially busted. It is time to spread the burden of sustaining the cost of governing, not emphasizing the spread of wealth. It is time to objectively, vigorously, lower the cost of governing at every level of government.

Remember, the author of “Utopia” lost his head…

MR. PRESIDENT, STEP AWAY FROM THE ECONOMY

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Authored by Andy Matthews   —   February 1, 2010

“The country has had enough of your fixing, thank you”.

The conventional wisdom has it that President Obama’s most egregious error during his first year in office was his decision to focus the bulk of his attention on health care, rather than on “fixing” the economy.

“At the exact moment the public was announcing it worried about jobs first and debt and deficits second,” conservative columnist Peggy Noonan wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal, “the administration decided to devote its first year to health care, which no one was talking about.”

Nebraska Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, he of Cornhusker Kickback infamy, lamented to the Fremont Tribune that “it was a mistake to take health care on as opposed to continuing to spend the time on the economy.”

This misplacement of priorities, we are told, explains the precipitous drop in the president’s poll numbers over the past year. Now, a course correction is needed if Obama wants to a) salvage what’s left of his presidency, and b) do right by the country.

The White House got the message. In his State of the Union speech last week, the president told the nation that “jobs must be our number one focus in 2010, and that is why I am calling for a new jobs bill tonight.” Obama referred to “jobs” 26 times in his speech, more than twice as often as health care or health insurance.

And so it’s agreed: The administration has seen the error of its ways, and from now on, fixing the economy and creating jobs will be Priority One for Team Obama.

Now, not to rain on this fun, bi-partisan agree-a-thon, but isn’t this just about the worst thing we could ask for right now?

If memory serves, the guy who’s telling us he’s now gearing up to “fix” the economy is the same guy who, way back in the year 2009, gave us the historically massive American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was supposed to … fix the economy.

For those who missed it, Obama’s first take at playing economic Mr. Fix-it didn’t exactly work out as we were told it would. That $787 billion “stimulus” package bought us double-digit unemployment and deficits as far as the eye can see, but that’s about it. Should Americans really be salivating for another helping? Didn’t this guy do enough damage the first time?

Actually, the stimulus debacle did produce two things of enormous value: a teachable moment regarding the administration’s sheer ignorance of all things economic, and the opportunity to watch modern-day liberalism fail so completely and publicly that it may now have been discredited for a generation.

The way to jumpstart a sluggish economy — as anyone who didn’t sleep through the entire 20th Century understands — is to remove governmental barriers to private-sector-driven economic growth. That this point is either entirely lost on or irrelevant to the administration becomes clear when one considers that the stimulus package did the exact opposite: It grew government at the expense of the private sector. The dreadful results were all too predictable. And the ideological rigidity behind the stimulus is exactly what ensures that future attempts by this administration to address our economic challenges will prove no more effective. The only policy solutions with any real hope of succeeding are, by default, kept off the table.

So to say that Obama would have enjoyed a more successful first year had he focused more on the economy misses the point. Any president who so fundamentally misunderstands the reasons why some societies prosper while others remain stagnant is predestined to fail on economic matters. Given this president’s faith in government intervention as the necessary starting point for solving all of society’s problems, anything he touched in the economic realm was destined to go badly — and anything he touches in the future will meet a similar fate. In short, we’ve seen what “focusing on the economy” means to this crowd. And it ain’t pretty. The State of the Union speech — chock full of ideas for new, big-spending initiatives — only confirmed the President’s commitment to his failed strategy.

And so when the president tells us he’s now shifting his focus to the economy, there’s only one serious way to take it: as a threat.

To be sure, President Obama will, through this recalibration, score some short-term political points. By shifting his emphasis to jobs and the economy, he is sending a message to Americans that is sure to be warmly received: Your priorities are my priorities.

But the President’s dogmatic commitment to his statist ideology gives the ending away. Barring a complete reversal of his philosophical bearings, we know that his next attempt to “fix” the economy — and the one after that, and the one after that — will involve increasing the size and scope of government while choking the private sector. As night follows day, things will again get worse, not better.

And the public will begin to long for the days when the president was bogged down in his ill-fated attempt to reform health care.

Andy Matthews is vice president for operations and communications at the Nevada Policy Research Institute.

PAX AMERICANA

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Authored by William Robert Barber

America is the world’s guarantor; the only super power in the world with the means to indemnify against any hostile action anywhere on the globe. American forces are dispersed on every continent, in every seaway our ships and submarines are present. Many nations depend on the presence of US forces as the additional surety that their much needed resources will reach their ports; world-wide commerce, to some material effect, would be jeopardized if not for the force of US arms.

The effectiveness of US arms is not only important for commerce. For example, how much of a deterrent would NATO be to aggressor forces without America? Would the UN even bother to meet without American participation? Would the world be safer without America’s lead in its military alliances? Since 1945, the world is safer not because of America’s force of persuasion; but, because of its force of arms. Obviously, a show of force is never enough; it must be coupled with a willingness to commit such forces to combat.

The American military insures that oil arrives in Japan, Korea, China, and on to its shores. New York and Miami represent the international business city of choice for Europe and all countries south as Texas; Los Angeles is the gateway to the Pacific and Asia. America is the largest consumer nation that has ever existed; it also has the most lethal sophisticated, combat experienced armed forces in the world. Only America’s martial forces are distributed all over the globe; unlike any other nation in the world, America is ideally suited to enforce peacefulness.

Since history has been recorded, warfare has existed. Violence is the addition of humankind. For reasons unreasonable, even irrational, there are nation states that are hell bent on creating chaos to merely service their wanting. Nation states are prompted into the compliance of peacefulness not by some internationally accepted moral obligatory but by the use of power. Power is used to compel.  The power to compel must provoke the counter party into compliance; anything short of abrupt and immediate compliance is simply diplomatic gimmickry.  There are alternatives to military intervention that may compel a belligerent nation to peacefulness; nevertheless, tradition has proven, without the unilateral willingness to use military intervention, other forms of persuasion are no more than an ineffective ruse.

North Korea survived the Korean Conflict because America lacked the will to complete the task. Today Korea has nuclear weapons. Iran is positioning itself to evangelize the Middle East with its branding of Shiite hegemony. Soon, Iran will have the nuclear capacity to deliver an atom bomb. Syria is eager to control Lebanon.  All did, do now, and will continue to support America’s enemies; such support certainly includes Israel’s nemesis Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian militant factions. Iran has reached over as far away as Venezuela so to embarrass the United States. At its pleasure, Iran by military and political means, strives to destabilize Iraq.

Selling to the same consumers, China is in competition with India over labor pricing and manufacturing. India fears Pakistan and their ambitions in the Kashmir. Pakistan is fighting a war to keep the Taliban at arm’s length. Pakistan is a nuclear armed nation that has no respectful regard for US interest; factually, the country is politically unstable and its people are ambivalent to American aid and assistance.

Russia is managed with an iron hand by Putin and company. The ideal for Mother Russia is to control their historical sector of influence. Their interest is not restricted to former members’ countries of the Soviet Union but the ultimate prize of prizes is to manipulate the European Union; this manipulation, in their mind, is achievable through the controlled distribution of natural gas and oil.

The only country on earth that can effectively counter these threats to peacefulness is America.

AMERICA’S POLICY OF DENIAL AND HALF-MEASURES

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Authored by William Robert Barber

I am 65 years of age; old enough to have fought in the Vietnam War. If I was 85 years old, I could have fought in WWI; if 76, I could have participated in the Korean Conflict. If 99 years of age, WWI and if just a little older, the Spanish-American War. Sadly, the children of those that fought in Vietnam are now killing, dying, maiming, and being maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since its inception, America has engaged in a number of benchmark hostilities; these events coupled set the standard of this nation’s history. Withstanding America’s long and consistent narrative of warlike behavior, it would be wrongheaded to suggest that successive administrations, from different political affiliations that extend as far back as the Spanish-American War, was all war-mongering Philistines, indifferent to utilizing peaceful means to settle conflicting interest.

Instead, I think the world is, has been, and more than likely will always be, a hostile environment. I also believe that peace as commonly defined is a delusion. Factually, peace has not ever existed and does not now exist. To push the denial just a bit further, I do believe that peace, as popularly defined, is unattainable. If one agrees with these hypotheses, then it follows that a foreign policy designed to establish or attain peace is an illusionary goal, unworthy of effort.

Our current policy is immersed in issues of lethal proportion. I deduce that there has never been a more dangerous time for America. Religious zealots of Muslim origin have submitted to a doctrine of holy war against the West and specifically against the Anglo Christian peoples of the world. It is their intent to destroy the Judeo-Christian alliance by either converting or killing them.

This nation has many enemies which would include North Korea, Iran, Syria, and their martial compatriots. These are the very same provocateurs of terrorism that pledge destruction while complimenting such pledges with exemplifying horrific behavior. To negotiate with those that espouses destruction as a means to their end is not only a waste of effort but takes the nation off focus. Just because our state department creates an unsubstantiated assumption that such negotiations are in the interest of peacefulness, does not mean that in real terms such actions will transmute a negative into a positive. Such head-in-the-sand approach to reality is only an acknowledgement of wishful diplomacy which will never substitute artful statecraft.

Our present action and counter-action will not settle our disagreements; at best our efforts only prolong the inevitable. At worst, putting off the inevitable (war) only strengthens the counter parties’ military might and enforces the counter parties’ belief that as part of their diplomatic efforts, America will not utilize military might to achieve a goal. Clearly, the Obama administration will not go to war to preserve or protect America’s interest. As a consequence, any and all efforts are not sufficient of a deterrent to counter North Korea, Iran, or Syria’s intent on executing war-like measures detrimental to this nation’s interest.

The Obama administration did not set a precedent; even Bush would not commit American might as it should have been deployed. America somehow has taken on the presumption that the exercise of power is inherently a limited act. How absolutely absurd; but is that not our policy?

At a minimum, at least since the ending portion of WWII, our administrations, in unison with congress, have tasked our armed forces with missions that they deem necessary while hampering our forces’ ability to wage war.

For example, Eisenhower’s decision to allow the Russians to take Berlin; Roosevelt and Truman’s ineptness at understanding Russian intentions while dealing directly with a brutal dictator — the very same person that signed a treaty with Hitler and participated in the invasion of Poland; Stalin was a rat and still, these two presidents looked away from the obvious. Imagine, America had the strongest navy and army in the world, logistically in place, with the atomic bomb — and within five years after the end of WWII, freedom-loving peoples still lost China to Mao and Eastern Europe to Stalin.

We committed our forces to Korea to stop and impede an invasion from the north. Right there, at that very moment, this nation’s leaders should have known we were in trouble. Stop and impede is not wiping out the root of North Korean aggressiveness. It is instead the equivalent of pushing the bully back rather than smashing him in the nose, gouging out his eyes, and breaking both his arms. Today, because of our faint-hearted unwillingness to destroy North Korean command, control, and political hierarchy, North Korea is a rouge totalitarian nation armed with nuclear weapons.

Eisenhower enabled the CIA to recruit, train, and arm Cuban dissidents; he promised air support for their invasion. Kennedy permitted the invasion to go forward but reneged on air support… the invasion failed. This demonstration of weakness and timidity, this blatant disregard for those lives within the invasion force, bolstered Castro’s image and prestige. Domestically and throughout the world, Castro confirmed that America can be managed and manipulated; it also verified that American resolve is limited. Khrushchev and his politburo were watching.

President Kennedy is credited with ending the Cuban missile threat — which only existed because we did not invade Cuba!

Laos and Vietnam are other examples of America’s inability to commit to a foreign policy task; at the time, we actually believed that a show of force was enough. How very silly of us. Such harebrained behavior all stems from a canon of foolish naïveté; this American doctrine of naïveté established precedence that is very hard to overcome. After all, our presidents want to be re-elected or revered; elected representatives want the wind at their back; the entire objective is retention of power, therefore the concern is safeguarding political interest. Hence, a guiding rule of the elected applied: Controversy in any form should be avoided.

From a strategic, even tactical prospective, in order to disable the North Vietnamese from invading the South Vietnamese, the United States should have invaded the North. That should have been the minimum requirement for engagement; if congress disapproved of such an invasion then it would be clear that America could not support the South Vietnamese people. But once again the policy half-measure won the argument and 58,000 or so Americans, not to mention many thousands more of Vietnamese, lost their lives because of the bewildering incompetence of the administration(s) and congress(es).

Soon, Iran will have a nuclear weapon and the means to deliver and America is immersed in the utility of the same head-in-the-sand foreign policy; a policy of half-measure and denial. This administration (not unlike the many that preceded Teddy Roosevelt) will not accept the reality of world affairs and as a consequence, there are two distinctive operating dimensions. One is the department-agencies of state and the other real-time reality. Neither seems impaired by the existence of the other.

However, unlike the foreign policy challenges of yesterday, this time the threat has the biological, radiological, chemical, and nuclear weapons to choose from. This particular threat has demonstrated its resolve by killing thousands of innocents (regardless of their sameness of religion); what they want, no sane person or state can give them. There is nothing to negotiate over, no other options are open to the West, except deterrence by any and all means.

But instead of addressing the issue unilaterally and head-on, the Obama administration is contemplating self-invented options where no option exists. Obama will inevitably break with half-measure and just execute a full measure of denial.

Iran will soon have a nuclear weapon; neither Israel nor the United States will act to eliminate this threat to Middle East stability. There will be no embargo or blockade, the UN will accept an Iranian declaration that these weapons are for defensive measures only; Obama and Clinton will submit to the UN acceptance.

Iranian prestige will rise, particularly amongst the hard-line fringe of Islamic militarism. Syria notes the weakness and re-establishes final control of Lebanon. The political-terrorist tactics of Hezbollah and Hamas will be validated; by any and all means the radical elements of Islam will dominate over the moderate. The stage will be set for WWIII…

OBAMA’S UNITED NATIONS AMBITIONS

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Authored by William Robert Barber

I do understand that differing opinions are natural; I concede the need for a variety of opinions. I am convinced that in order to achieve the ‘best efforts’ in defining of a problem-solution, differing opinions are indispensable to any prudent discovery. When the topic of discussion is political in nature, divergence of opinions will enable disagreements. Clearly, I comprehend the obviousness of inevitable disagreement; such to and fro are fundamental to the process of logical deduction.

Respective of my previous paragraph, understanding that I am a conservative by thought and action, I was shocked to my core when I heard and then read Obama’s speech at the UN. Emphatically, that speech, literally and in spirit, put me on Mars and Obama on Venus. The President of the United States actuates his behavior like a Harvard professor of political philosophy instead of the leader of the free world. He speaks with the confidence that all of us Americans reside in a protective impenetrable sphere wherein attack by a hostile power is impossible. The basis of Obama’s international policy seems captured in the world as he wishes it was, instead of the world that exists; Russia and China will eat his heart and Iran will settle for the scraps.

I have a hard time accepting the liberal-progressives’ belief that the UN is a viable foreign policy tool. Are Obama and cohorts so naïve, so blatantly innocent and childlike in their Liberal-Progressive belief system that they will actually depend on the UN to facilitate US foreign policy initiatives? Have they no empirical sensibilities?

Possibly, Obama merely believes that the separation between Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran is nothing more than a grandiose misunderstanding; maybe it is a simple matter of idiom or semantics, some cultural misinterpretation or something to do with George Bush’s legacy. Admittedly, I am mystified by the Obama administration’s intentions… I do ask myself if my conservative prospective is acting as an intellectual blocking mechanism. I cannot see the Obama foreign policy intent or incentive as such policies interface with the United Nations. Is my inability to see the Obama policy as projected by his administration because I am blinded by my own ideological beliefs?

It is a reasonable guideline of prudence to sophisticate the contextual of an argument when the final sum of the argument could effectuate an at-all-cost result. If Obama has his way, Israel is on its own. The United States will not go to its aid if Iran transcends its covert attack on Israel in favor of an overt attack on its territory. Such an attack will surely follow an Israeli military attempt to blow up Iran’s nuclear facilities; hence Israel will not attack. Iran will have the weapon of mass destruction and eventually, by means direct or indirect, Israel will suffer its effect.

Obama’s general political philosophy and political ideology will enable our enemies; America, the once stalwart defender of all international transactions, the shining light of a once mighty contra to Russian interest, will unilaterally cede its power; all of this will come to form because Obama’s Liberal-Progressives believe in the interest of moral righteousness over sensibility.

The UN is a cabal of misfits, a loose confederation of usually disharmonious, self-dealing affiliates, whose only interest – other than the persistent pleadings of contrived contrarian’s posing as nation-states – is the perpetuation of the nonsensical and farce. Obama should feel especially welcomed.

THE FEDS

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Authored by William Robert Barber

The federal government, by taking bits & pieces as well as snatching huge swaths of power from what was heretofore the state’s sole and unabridged indisputable authority, has effectively perverted the original meaningfulness of the Constitution of 1787. Interestingly, aside from the post civil war era, the snatching of these rights was affirmed by the very congresspersons sent to the House and Senate to protect and preserve the Constitution. Indeed, the mood of today’s congressional attitude is, more rather than less, to shape the Constitution by the perceived light of today’s priorities and governing adaptation. The Constitution’s original contextual intent is all too ready to be set aside by courts, contrary law, or selected enforcement.

Did the framers of the Constitution foresee that the right of Congress to tax would translate into the power to tax individual citizens on their personal income? Obviously not, otherwise there wouldn’t be any need for an amendment; those who voted for such an amendment to the Constitution did so in violation of the framers’ intent. In fact, the 16th amendment, ratified July 2nd, 1913, was a benchmark of stupendous measure; in fact it was the beginning of the end of our republic.

Although federal dominance of the state’s right started almost from the very beginning of the republic, it wasn’t until the effectual of federal right to tax and distribute that the overpowering of state’s right become a factual. The super-federalization of the nation, crystallized as the lethal adversary of state sovereignty after the civil war. The draconian compliance to socialistic policies established by FDR turned the nation abruptly from the virtues of self-determination and self-reliance to relying on the evergreen assurances and promises of the federal government. Dependence became an entitlement, a right of citizenship, all bowed before the Pharaoh of public works, city owned parks & recreational facilities. Public education administered by the federal government and its cadre of unionized school teachers taught our children the political persuasion most suited to the ideology of liberal and progressive philosophy. In addition to this curriculum of teaching, secularism is a dominant consideration when contesting traditional theologies, except when discussing the teachings of Mohammed. Government salaries rise in proportion to the percentage of government union workers; soon the cost of governing spirals beyond tax revenue. No matter, government gets into the casino business; it hawks lottery tickets and taxes all consumption. The federal government is now so immense, it ignores the very source of its revenue; it does so with lustful disdain for popular recourse, blatant disrespect for its constituency, and arrogant disregard for the spirit of the law.

Slowly, by means ever so clandestine and overt, by the insidious propagation of half-truths, deceptive pronouncements, misdirection, and pseudo-transparency, the federal government marketed their governing dominance over what was once understood as exclusive to the rights of states. It must be noted that, withstanding the entrenchment of FDR’s brand of socialism into the nation’s operating systems, Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and both Bush administrations, endorsed the precedence by offering the very same. Charging the fare of liberty and freedom, ‘free’ bread, beer, and circus was offered to one and all. The people, after paying their fare, ate, drank, and were entertained.

In direct proportion to the ever growing omnipotent force of federal authority which was once reserved to the power of states, so is the steady regression of individual rights and freedom.

Now the Obama administration is about to nationalize healthcare and energy and all the while forcing states to comply with a number of federal mandates in order to receive federal funds. Where is that manifested in the Constitution? I fear the very worst; the dragon is not in the cave, the king is not looking for a worthy knight to save the day. The dragon is amidst this nation’s very bastions of power and privilege — He is Barrack Obama.

I DON’T THINK THAT ELEPHANTS CAN FLY

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Authored by William Robert Barber

Unless elephants learn to fly or by means other than the Democrats’ pre-recess playbook on ‘the selling of healthcare to the great unwashed’ which heretofore was vested in the now debunked hypothesis that Obama’s hero-protagonist popularity will put down the ‘blue-dogs.’ After all, controlling the conservative wing of the Democratic Party is a Pelosi ‘give-no-quarter’ requirement for the eventual success of her liberal-progressive legislation.

Well, not only were the conservatives within the Democratic Party not swayed to be put down, the draconian persuasion of the liberal-progressive wing back-fired in a manner that not even the great modern day Machiavellian Rahm Emanuel could envision. The great unwashed, with passive outrage, questioned the motivation, legislative integrity, and sensibility of not only a nationalized approach on healthcare; but took the occasion to question all of the federal government’s actions since, and the months leading up to Obama’s inaugural.

There is a prevailing point of view that President Obama’s version of nationalized healthcare will fade into the abyss of compromise. The compromised version will not have any of the material characteristics of the original; nevertheless, Obama will declare victory and move on to other legislative issues in his pursuit of implanting a pro-union expansive government, coupled with higher taxes, all the while, if applicable subordinating governing policy, agencies, departments, and the state school system into a pro-socialist populism that is designed to degenerate and substitute traditional American values for those of the secular progressive.

Of course, it’s not over until the fat lady sings, there is a chance that Obama will not compromise his single-payer vision; presently, the Democrats are huddling. The notables of the liberal progressives are licking their wounds after running right into the people’s double coverage and stubborn disregard. Their liberal progressive offensive might be staggering, but they are far from dead. They know full well that they desperately need a new down field play, or national healthcare will be benched until next season. I expect a surge; a new strategy will appear before September 15, and this time they know the extent of their opposition.

Interestingly, every time the great orator stands to explain healthcare, the proposal’s negatives rise even higher; the populous clearly disagrees with the Obama and Pelosi version of healthcare legislation. For passage, things look bleak, but then, the Democrats are resourceful. Surely they will package a new approach before attempting the political suicide of reconciliation.

If the Democrats insist on a single-payer nationalized approach to healthcare, such an adherence is another example of ideology triumphing over governing sensibility. In the last six months the tax-and-spend Democrats have, by a marathon, out-distanced the spend-what-we-don’t-have Republicans; clearly, the choice for the American voter is the worse of two incompetents. It is obvious, both political parties have strayed off the fairway and into the rough; not sure if they will ever find that little white ball of prudent governess. It seems very unlikely… just as elephants that can fly.

ADVICE OFFERED BY A LEFTIST

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Authored by William Robert Barber

At a recent Town Hall gathering Barney Frank delivered a profound communiqué to his constituents: He implicitly suggested that a voter should not trust him or the government. In this specific instance, I am going to take Barney’s advice; after all, he – like Obama – earned a law degree from the bastion of liberal learning, Harvard University. Interestingly, aside from Mr. Frank’s cautionary counsel, both of these attorneys are Democratic elitists. As a consequence, each defiantly believes that on all things material, they know better than their constituents. So let’s all take Barney’s sage advice.

In addition to Mr. Frank’s elitist status he does know how to put on a show; a host extraordinaire, Barney cuts through the audience’s question with vociferous abusive panache. His entertainment is coupled by some pandering, relentless sarcasm, and outright disrespect. Nevertheless, the town hall meeting was great theater; as always, Barney plays the feisty central character in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. An operetta wherein he is the producer, writer, cast (naturally all union), and most importantly, he is also the critic.

Now, if Barney Frank was running a for-profit entity instead of an open ended government job, his actions over the last few years would, at the extreme, prompt a criminal investigation or, at the standard, our advisor, Mr. Frank, would be ignominiously fired.

Barney Frank is in his own mind a Paladin legislator; a secular-liberal progressive inspired by his opposition to champion the right of entitlement, regardless of cost or sensibility, from cradle to grave. Considering his self-imposed mission, Barney is, by ideological passion, obligated to realign America as a socialistic state. Barney envisions his role as an enlightened politician amongst a horde of ignorant ignoramuses who do not recognize that he is the way and the light. Withstanding, Barney’s right to form and exploit his political ideology, his years of public service, his belief in his own righteousness; he is in fact, the perfect of the ineffectual, the dysfunctional and chaotic. Barney is a persistent hypocrite, a practitioner of half-truths and disinformation; although a charter member of the Noblesse Oblige, Barney’s political tenure has been purely an ideological endeavor that wholly neglects his obligation to noble service.

Barney is also a choreographer of great political influence. Elected representatives of differing political affiliation have practiced the Barney Frank dance. His dance is a sway timed to the rhythm of disingenuous lyrics. A sampling: That’s not really what I meant, it may sound contradictory but let me assure you, it is not. Yes, I voted for the bill, but not for the reasons expressed, I am against ‘pork’ or paying off special interest via earmarks; but the millions I have added on to the budget (in the dead of night) was vital and critical, I believe in transparency, I am a servant of the people, when I am coached abut town by limo or flown to far off places in a private jet, paid for by taxpayers, I do so in the interest of the people, that’s something that Bush did, and the beat goes on.

Never trust a politician or a government. I say this not in disrespect for either but to insure vigilance; liberty and freedom composite the very ethos of what it means to be an American. Barney’s belief system abates the value of the individual in favor of the collective. His ideology embraces a nation managed by an oligarchy of selected elitist who are politically liberal-progressive, utopian in scope and by means societal, political, and economic dedicated socialist. Barney will trash American traditions of existentialism for his interpretation of the common good; Barney Frank is a dangerous man; regretfully, there are many who drink his brand of poison — one of them being the President of the United States.

OBAMA IS BLEEDING POLITICAL CAPITAL

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Authored by William Robert Barber

The Declaration of Independence explicitly stated that: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”

After the Revolutionary War the Constitution formalized how the “just powers” of this new government would be implemented. The binding expression within the preamble, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America,” sets the government’s measure of empowerment.

The originals started their political philosophy with the concept, that man intrinsically had the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and that government was subordinate to the will of the people. The Constitution established that the order of government was “to form a more perfect union;” and within that context government was authorized to promote the general welfare. It is under the heading of general welfare that we the people are wrestling with today’s most contentious issue: Obama Care…

There is a very motivating and politically critical battle raging upon the land: On one side of the contest, under the authority vested in the Constitution noted under “the general welfare,” is the Obama administration. The president is allied with Pelosi’s Democratic insistences on establishing a socialist health-care regime that will undoubtedly expand the size of government, cost the taxpayer’s more than estimated and enable another federal bureaucracy to perform the uniquely government brand of effective inefficiency. This wholly new add-on to the current cost of governing; naturally, comes with unions, the cost of the federal health-care coverage, and the long-tail liability of retirement pensions.

On the other side of the contest, countering “the general welfare” phrase of Obama and Pelosi’s liberals are another phrase of Constitutional empowerment, to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” It does seem blatantly clear that one cannot expand the length and width of government bureaucracy, substantially-plus increase the cost of governing, enhance the federal deficit, and cavalierly invade the heretofore private space of individual citizens; without violating a citizen’s blessing of liberty in the present and into posterity. The conflict is irreconcilable.

In my opinion Obama and company have a much more exalted goal than simply enacting single payer-universal health coverage. I do believe that Obama is a socialist. When compared to the political traditions of this country he is a political radical. He is a politician hell-bent on moving this country’s domestic policy onto the track of governmental dominance. His weaponry includes taxation, regulation, a passive press, a gullible constituency and a gift for sublime rhetorical nonsense.

Across The Drawbridge And Over The Moat

InTheInterestOfSensibilityLeave a comment

Authored by William Robert Barber

Within the confines of academia, a laboratory, or in a self-created stage wherein one is the writer, producer, and director, a political ideologue, for purposes of controlled delusion, could – with fashionable flair – create a solution for any problem. However, when the confines are discarded and, one venture beyond the moat and into the hinterland, the effect of controlled delusion gives way to the often non-moral, customarily unforeseeable, usually apathetic reality of dealing with the ever changing constancy of terrain and situation.

Once President Obama (the ever onstage campaigner) passes over the moat he can no longer pretty-speech his way through dealing with the harshness of serious issues and problems. Events and the circumstances of such events force one away from the TelePrompTer and into the real world of contesting, wherein the only outcome is victory or death. Obama faces many problems; of course, he believes they were all brought about by that nasty Bush administration – regardless – someday this president must stand and take responsibility for his own self-creating issues and problems.

The closing of Guantanamo is just one such problem; there are many more. Sometime soon the music will stop and the dancing will end and our president, along with his cadre of helpers, must finally find a chair and make a real-world decision on Guantanamo.

I do find the underlying philosophy of the Obama liberals interestingly delusional; they speak of an America of vintage moral standards – moral standard – that I am totally unfamiliar with. I really do not know where to start but is it not true that we Americans decimated the Indian indigenous to this land before our concept of Manifest Destiny became fact? Did we not purchase the Louisiana territory from France, as well as Alaska from Russia, before congress voted to do so? Did we not take Texas, California, and New Mexico and invaded Mexico under the most egregious of causes? Did this country not illegally lock up and confiscate the assets of Japanese Americans during WWII? Did we not fire-bomb Dresden and drop the atomic bomb on two Japanese cities, overtly killing thousands of innocent civilians? Of course I could go on… but I do wonder where Obama and company finds this moral standard exceptional of America — must be from a comic book.

As to America’s historical behavior — all the world’s historical reference, regardless of country, will document the unspeakable violent actions of humankind’s struggle with their own. In my assessment of America’s history, I conclude that moral standards are a nicety, a nicety that lags behind the one all-important-tangible. A tangible that is an a priori to America’s survival – that irreplaceable tangible being power. America must be and forever maintain a status of the most powerful nation on earth. From such power-moral standards, the Obama interruption of moral authority is allowed to exist.

When Obama and his leftist liberal minions speak of America’s moral authority and that such authority is the strongest of America’s currency – in the world, no less – I do wonder what planet these Obama minions live on. Certainly, it cannot be earth!

The evidence of their reasoning is registered in such declarations as: To paraphrase, enhanced interrogations not only do not work; such undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world and serve as a recruiting tool for terrorists and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with us. Does any person charged with the obligation of and to reasonable deduction actually believe that liberal leftist inspired stream of rhetorical nonsense?

I would ask Obama and his minions to render the empirical-plain-fact-evidence of these declarations. Does any one American, charged with the protection of his or her fellow citizens, actually believe that it is better to suffer the loss of thousands of American lives instead of attempting enhanced interrogation to solicit, cajole or (by any means) force a terrorist to spew out where the nuclear, biological, or radiological bomb has been placed? What moral standard does Obama cling to when, because water boarding or any and all means was not tried, hundreds of thousands of Americans have been killed?

The Obama disciples believe that reason and persuasion will eventually change a terrorist from acting like a terrorist; after all, America will apologize, they will understand the righteousness of our ‘change of conviction’, and stop slitting throats, killing innocents in market squares, planting bombs, and hatching plots against general populations, even if the population is of their own faith or tradition. This change of behavior will become a reality as soon as Pelosi becomes a Republican and hell freezes over.

The Obama society of contrarian silliness cannot (maybe do not want to) even stop the criminal breaches of Acorn, much less the actions of a determined terrorist. Obama has left his classroom and crossed over the moat — and reality is a bitch.