Looking Through A Glass Darkly

I am worried about what is happening to my country and so, after a long break, I decided to bring out my rarely used crystal ball to see what the future might hold. Now was that a mistake! Talk about scary things. Perhaps I am over-reacting but my dusty crystal ball is showing me a dangerous future and it is not your grandchildren’s future but what might happen in just the next month and year. So what near future am I seeing in my crystal ball?

First I am seeing Republican politicians speaking to nearly deserted arenas this summer. Why? Where are all the people? I asked my crystal ball to show me what happened more recently so that I might understand this future. It takes me to the Easter break, when the Tea Party Express makes its third trip around the country. Although defeated over the health care bill, tea party goers were invigorated and perhaps because they were defeated, conservatives were more determined than ever to replace the members of the House and vote in more conservative politicians. Yes they were angry but they wanted to channel that anger into positive energy going forward. But then my crystal ball returns me to the empty arenas of this summer and that is when I realized that the rooms were empty due to the fact that there were no Tea Party participants to cheer on the conservative candidates. So I looked deeper into the ball and shuddered at what I saw.

It started after the health care bill was passed when a few liberal politicians claimed that they were called names. No one questioned their claims, although there was no proof, not a single unfocused footage in spite of the camera men and regular folks filming the event. Then more and more politicians complained and yes there was now proof as they played voice messages from angry people, some who crossed the line of acceptable behavior. And once one angry person denigrated the President then it was obvious to the liberals that these conservatives were all racists and bigots. (Republicans had equally violent and upsetting calls but the government’s opinion was that they pretty much asked for it due to how they voted.)

Starting with a few name calls it snowballed into all liberal politicians saying they were afraid of the violent, racist conservatives. Obviously these name callers had to be a part of the Tea Party since the Tea Party participants admitted to being angry. Not only were they angry but everyone knew that the Tea Party was started by Republican law makers or maybe it was by big bad businesses or the evil banks or even the KKK. Regardless, there was just no way that normal people would band together in defiance against liberals, since liberals were trying to help the people. OK so maybe the Democrats were not trying to help those people, you know, people who were tax payers or wealthy or even middle class suburbanites. But those people should understand that they are getting more than their fair share and should want to be helping everyone else. Those people have never protested in the past, they always just worked a bit harder and had a bit less but now they must be insane if they actually are rebelling against the government.

My crystal ball even showed me a headline from today when the Tea Party released a statement saying that they were a peaceful group who denounces all forms of violence including racial attacks. But will that help? Probably not, because the media won't bother to cover it and the few that do, well liberals who hear it will just think the statement is untrue and that these conservatives are all liars anyway. And unfortunately, my crystal ball shows me that there will be one person at a Tea Party rally this spring who does yell out a racial slur at a politician which will support the liberals’ views that the entire Tea Party, and by default all conservatives, are racist.

It won’t take long for leading Democrats to jump from denouncing the Tea Party as being racist to stating that it encourages hate crimes and that their participants are the real terrorists in this country! From there, Obama will enact the Homeland Security Act and label the Tea Party and its participants as being threats to our national safety and therefore must be disbanded. Hence the empty rooms when Republican candidates give speeches this summer; as the conservatives are afraid to come out in public for fear that they could be arrested for terrorist activities if they simply cheer on a conservative candidate or disagree with a liberal politician.

It is strange, isn’t it how liberals were furious at George Bush and all the Homeland Security laws that he enacted which limited our rights for the sake of protecting us against terrorists. And yet Obama has not done one thing to liberalize those laws. Perhaps he wants them in place. Perhaps liberals don’t mind limiting freedom of speech, freedom to gather, freedom to worship and all our other freedoms – if it is withdrawn from the right kind of people, those people. And the media continues to see only one side of it. If conservatives were branded terrorists and treated as such, would the media say anything? Or would they remain quiet since it would be happening to those kinds of people and not to the good kind; the liberals, the poor, or even illegal immigrants. If violence occurs to Republican or conservatives, well, they deserve it for not thinking correctly. But if violence occurs to Democrats or liberals, well then those people must be the real terrorists and stopped at all costs. And it will cost us everything…

By now you must be thinking my crystal ball is cracked to prophesize such things. This is America. It could never ever happen here, right? Admittedly, I was going a bit far but trying to make a point of what could happen. Then, in the last paragraph I was going to write something about real terrorism and Al Queda but I wasn’t sure how to spell it. In fact I still am not sure of the spelling because when I got online to The Drudge Report, to my horror, at the top was a link to the following headline VIDEO: Clyburn says Republicans 'aiding and abetting terrorism' against Dems.... Perhaps my silly crystal ball isn’t that silly after all.

The Day After

I am watching President Obama sign the new health care bill into law. How do I feel about this? It scares me. Taxpayers will have more taxes and lesser health care in order that unemployed or poor people can have health insurance, many of them for free. I worry what this will do to small businesses. I hear that businesses that do offer health care have determined that it would be cheaper to pay the penalty and not help out their employees. And I really am concerned about the added power they want to give to the IRS. The IRS is already out of control at times and now the government want to expand that department? And no way will it help the deficit, of course it will make it worse!

Obama is now talking, people are applauding and standing for an ovation. But why? Because they forced members of their own party into voting the party line? They had to bribe, strong arm, and as they admitted, do whatever it takes to get their own Democrat Congressmen and women to vote “Yes”. It just shows how flawed this bill is, if even with all the maneuvering by Obama, Pelosi, Rahm et al, there were still some Democrats who stood by their values and voted “no”. Good for them.

So now what? There is talk now about Republicans being “ugly losers”. I can understand why, people are very upset with what just happened. They can’t understand how a President with a 41% favorably rating, a Speaker of the House with an 11% favorable rating and a Senate Majority Leader with only a 9% favorable rating could come together and decide how to spend our money. I would say it is simply unimaginable except for the fact that it happened.

Yet I don’t think we should be ugly losers. Instead we should fight harder, fight smarter on the next bills, primarily immigration, and cap and trade initiatives. We must stop both of them. We must go across the country explaining why these are bad for the U.S., for us. No name calling or any other tactic along those lines which would only make us look bad and give sympathy to them. We need to publicly be nice and polite but behind the walls we need to fight as hard as Pelosi did and stop being so nice and polite. The country simply can’t afford another loss, another step towards redistribution of the wealth.

I bet that Obama will next try to bring in all the illegal immigrants. He has to. He needs those new citizens as potential new voters. Democrat voters, of course, who would then be bused to the voting polls in November 2012 to make sure that Obama is re-elected, even though the tax paying population is turning against him. (Obama has already shown he could care less about his party and Democrat politicians up for re-election this year. If he cared about them he wouldn’t have forced them to vote Yes on the health care bill knowing full well that their people hate the bill and will vote them out in November.) Anyway, we must stop any new bill to ease illegal immigration. If we couldn’t afford all those poor illegal immigrants before, just imagine the cost since they would all get on the federal insurance plans! We need to close the gates now because if I were a Mexican I would get my ass in this country ASAP in the hopes of some mass legalization thus allowing me to use the United States wonderful health care system, for free, of course.

Tea parties are great but we need more than that. We need stronger voices. We need Nancy Reagan. We need both Bushes and their spouses. We need Sarah Palin to do more than comment on Fox News. I just heard that McCain, who has always had a more liberal view of immigration and was hoping to put together a joint bill, has just said that there will be no more bipartisan efforts. What little goodwill there was has totally evaporated in light of the shenanigans by the Democrat party to ensure their recent victory. And then we need young voices.

Over the past week there have been a few younger Congressmen who have slowly risen to, perhaps not the top, but they have risen above the crowds. Other than Scott Brown I can’t tell you their names. But they know who they are and they need to start making the rounds on Sunday mornings and standing up for our causes. Speaking of which, most people are at church Sunday mornings but if you think of it tape Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. He is hosting the first one-on-one of the Republican candidate’s for Florida’s open Senate seat between Florida Governor Crist and Marco Rubio. At the start of the Republican primary Crist was a shoe in. Now? Rubio, a second generation Cuban, very conservative, young tea party goer now has a solid majority of 56% vs. Crist’s 34%. That is what we need to do.

I heard some democrat say that people will forget about this by November. Perhaps. But that might be why the symbol for Republicans is an elephant. We don’t forget. And we won’t let anyone else forget. As for the health care bill, we will do anything and everything we can do to delay, if not stop, it. A recent poll showed that 49% wanted their states to sue the government; primarily challenging that the health care bill is unconstitutional. Make sure yours is one of those states and that yours is one of the voices protesting, challenging and making sure people know the truth. This is my voice - where is yours?

A Show of Raw Power

People I talk to are truly scared that the passage of this bill would change America, many of them fearing it is an irrevocable giant step towards socialism. However, if the news that the Democrats have the votes for the health care bill upsets you, here are some things to think about.

For the past six months, ever since summer really, it feels as if the whole country has been paralyzed because of the health care bill. Republicans should actually be grateful. All this attention and effort on just one bill has meant that nothing else is getting done in Congress.

If Obama wins on Sunday and the health care bill is passed, it won’t mean that everything will go his way from then on; far from it. I keep thinking of the phrase “political capital”. Obviously with all the arm twisting and bribing, Obama and Pelosi will have used up all of their political capital. If a Congressman ends up voting for this bill I wonder how receptive they will be to future liberal causes, and threats.

For example, there is my own first term Congresswoman, a Democrat who voted No on the first health care bill. If I am being bombarded by telephone ads from both left and right to call her I can only imagine what her life is like right now. Well, no actually I can’t imagine what it would be like to be browbeaten not only by my Speaker, dozens of Democrat leaders but also confronted by my President in his Oval Office, and all of them threatening to annihilate me in November if I don’t support my party.

Then there is the “pep rally” planned this afternoon for all Democrat Representatives plus Obama, now that he has cancelled his trips. Some analysts are comparing what is happening to the Stockholm syndrome which is when hostages begin to sympathize with their captors. I think it is more along the lines of mass hysteria. Remember the pictures of the crowds cheering Hitler over and over again?

I really can’t see my Congresswoman continuing to stand up to so much raw power. And that is what it is. Absolute raw ugly power against, in many cases, first term idealistic Congressmen and women. But once Obama and Pelosi have used this tactic they will have nothing left in their bag of tricks for the rest of the year, which is why I doubt that any other very liberal bill gets passed this year.

We all know that Obama came into office promising a laundry list of far left changes. He has now spent his first year on just one issue – health care. Once that is passed he will try to quickly move on to other issues, immigration is already next on his list, but I believe that he will find each vote to be a painful reminder of the damage he and Pelosi have done in order to pass the health care bill.

First, the passage of the health bill will result in dozens of law suits questioning the legality of forcing people to get insurance. Already over half the states are planning to fight this bill. There is also the “fixes” which Democrat Senators promised the House will be added but they might find it difficult to pass when faced with Republican opposition. The bill already isn’t supposed to force health care on us until 2014 and between now and then Congress will be swamped with law suits and delaying tactics making it difficult to implement this bill or to move on to any other bill.

I also think that what is happening is similar to any action movie. The good guys always take a real beating and then at the end they pull themselves together and finally succeed in defeating the bad guys. I have a feeling that as in any action flick, if the health care bill is passed then the people, the soccer Moms and racecar Dads, the elderly widows and the young family man, the single women and the mother of four, Republicans, Independents and Tea Party people of any and every color, age and creed will pull together in a tidal wave of anger, frustration and purpose to block anything else proposed by Obama and to win this November. And like any good movie, in the end the good guys will win.

A Lack of Leadership

If we were in England, Obama, who just a year ago was riding high, would be facing a vote of no confidence right about now. Instead, we have the Health Care bill which has morphed into more than simply an up and down vote on this issue. It has become a test of Obama’s leadership skills and his ability to get something, anything, done in his friendly Democratically controlled Congress. The only problem, however, is that in order to prove he is a leader and can get something done, he must ask his party to vote on a bill that is unpopular with a public who no longer even want it. (The most recent Rasmussen poll shows that 53% are opposed to the bill and 57% believe it will be harmful to our economy.)

The question that Democrat Reps are facing is this - do they fall on their sword by voting on this issue as a show of their support of their party and their President but knowing that a "Yes" vote will alienate their district resulting in their being voted out of their office in the fall? I truly feel sorry for the first term Congressmen and women who know full well that they will not be re-elected if they vote for the bill. And yet imagine the pressure they must be under to do just that! Congressman Massa may be a nutcase but I’m sure there is an element of truth to his statement about pressure to vote Yes from Rahm, Obama’s hitman. Add to that the calls from Nancy Pelosi and even from the president, and life is very uncomfortable for the Democrats who plan to vote against the health care bill.

You read that Obama’s leadership is at stake because of this bill yet I feel that he showed his complete lack of leadership skills by letting himself get into this position in the first place. If he had actually turned to the economy and creating jobs, as he promised in his State of the Union, he not only might have helped the country but his approval rating might be on the upturn for once. Instead he has completely squandered the country’s goodwill towards him.

The numbers clearly tell the story of Obama’s downfall:

The President’s approval ratings have been in freefall. The Rasmussen poll shows a swing of 23 percentage points from a positive 16 difference between Strongly Approve vs. Strongly Disapprove to a negative 6 percentage points. As bad as this is, the negatives for Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid are even worse! Sixty-four percent view Pelosi unfavorably while 56% dislike Reid. A recent remark by Pelosi is so outrageous that it is almost impossible to believe she said it. But she actually did say this: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." Wow. No wonder people are in such contempt of Congress.

So what is going to happen? If they had the votes, Pelosi would have called for a vote on Monday. But they are still a handful short of even a simple majority to pass the health care bill. To add further pressure, Obama just postponed leaving for his big trip by a few days. One assumes he will use this time to call the recalcitrant Congressmen and women into his office to apply the greatest pressure of all – Presidential appeal and probably bribery. I truly hope that these Representatives, including my own, Suzanne Kosmos (d), can continue to stand by their first vote of no but I can understand how difficult it must be when faced by an irate President in the Oval Office. Yet in the long run I don’t think it will matter.

If the President and Pelosi are successful in passing this bill there will be a major upheaval as irate blue dog Democrats, Independents and Conservatives vote in Republican candidates en masse this fall. The primary campaigning point will have been to overturn the health care bill and once in office I am sure that they will find some way to do this. Or there is still a chance that the Democrats will not obtain the votes needed to pass the bill. Either way, within a year the Obama, Reid, Pelosi health care bill will not exist. Hopefully the next President, be he (or she) Democrat or Republican, will have finally learned that in order to succeed, a health care bill must be a joint venture with input from both sides and not a complete overhaul of our system by one side only.

As for Obama, if he is unable to pass bills when both the House and the Senate is controlled by Democrats then the rest of his term will be abysmal if the Republicans win big this fall. His legacy will revolve around how he squandered the nation's goodwill, wasted time during an economic crisis on a health care bill the public didn't want and showed that his retractors were right - Obama knows how to campaign and run for an office but once there he has no idea how to lead.

The Americans

Tonight a friend of mine echoed a thought that I have had... why are we pouring millions and millions into Haiti and now offering to help Chile when our own country is hurting so much? Can we continue to afford to be this generous when we are broke? Shoot, instead of sending all that money to help others, we simply could have used it to pay for health care for everyone here!

I recently read that China is maneuvering to surpass the US as the biggest country in the world and I say go for it. You take care of all these countries in need and let us simply take care of ourselves because sure as hell no one else will help us.

And then I recalled a letter from the 70's written by a Canadian which is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. If you are old enough to remember this letter which was also recorded, the sentiments are worth reminding ourselves. If you are too young for when it was first published, please take a moment to read it and afterwards you'll stand a little taller, a little bit prouder to be an American.

~~~

Gordon Sinclair's editorial broadcast from Toronto as printed in the Congressional Record in June, 1973:

This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.

Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.

The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans. I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States Dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar, or the Douglas 10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American planes?

Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - - not once, but several times - and safely home again.

You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the American who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.

I can name you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those.