There are always many issues that each generation faces on the political landscape that they live through.  Many are mundane orders of business that are a natural progression of an evolving, growing society, yet others stand out as hallmark issues that offer significant change one way or another.  At times these issues are so resoundingly clear, that their importance cannot be overlooked.  Other times the impact of these issues does not become clear until well after the decisions have been made and it is too late to undo what had been done.

The hallmark issues of yesterday are always easy to identify.  Those defining moments when a nation changed forever are easy to spot through the crystal clear view that we are fortunate to posses of history.  There is no doubt that the rejection of tyranny, taxation and violation of personal and property rights that spurned simple farmers, tailors and smiths to take arms against their distant masters was one of the most defining moments in not only American, but in world history as well.  Another clear hallmark in our own history was the abolition of slavery.  This forever changed the course of this nation and of an entire people in ways that could scarcely be imagined at the time.  Were you to tell a civil war soldier, even one fighting for the North, that we would eventually see black people in all walks of life, even holding the office of Commander In Chief, he might have not believed you.  In the years leading up to the Civil War, as the states in the North began to forbid slavery and reject the appeals of the South to return slaves, it might have just seemed like a simple State’s rights issue to them.  These states may not have even realized the impact that their decisions would have, bringing a nation to its knees on the brink of destruction, yet freeing an enslaved people forever.  However, looking back it is easy to see what an impact on this nation was made by their decisions. 

Some hallmarks in this nations history were clearly defined by others.  When the peaceful morning worship of Pacific island residents was shattered by explosions at Pearl Harbor or as an entire nation stood still, holding their breath, watching its people jump to their death rather than be burned alive from two stricken and doomed buildings, we changed as a people.  Other hallmarks were defined sometimes by the death of a single individual.  In a single decade, two great men fell to the shots of assassins.  One man’s legacy drove an entire species to reach beyond their planetary bounds and set foot upon another world, while the legacy of the other forced people to face the hatred and racism that still plagued this nation from a conflict that was over a hundred years old.  The deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were hallmark moments in the history of this nation that forever changed us as a nation and a people.

These clearly definable moments in history are easy to see and to recognize the effects they had upon this nation.  The ones not so easily defined are the one of which I wish to turn your thoughts today.  For starters, let us take one of the more contentious issues we face today, 2nd Amendment rights and gun control.  Can you tell me at what point in our history did it all of a sudden become illegal for a law abiding citizen to carry a firearm?  Can you tell me what the hallmark issue was that gave the government the right to tell you when, how and what type of gun you may buy, own or carry?  Probably not.  At the inception of our nation, carrying a firearm was not a privilege, licensed or otherwise. It was a fact, a way of life.  Fast forward a hundred years to the expansion of our nation into the West.  Again, no one ever would have challenged a citizen’s right to own or carry a gun.  Leap forward another hundred years, to just a few decades ago and now things have changed drastically.  At that time you couldn’t openly carry a sidearm, but long rifles and shotguns were still seen hanging from the racks of the pickup trucks that teenagers drove to school.  Now examin this today.  You may only carry a firearm under certain circumstances, with a license issued by a state that will allow the carrying of weapons and with a ton of restrictions upon that RIGHT.  Not upon the privilege, but upon the right to bear arms.  Now when did this happen?  What was the catalyst to cause such a drastic departure from the will our founding fathers?  What gave the government the ability to suppress your right as a citizen of this nation to carry a firearm.  Two hundred years ago if you walked into a local store, attended a political rally or just walked down the street with a weapon slung across your back no one would have paid you any mind.  Do so today and you are sure to be visited by the police and quite possibly told you cannot do that which is your basic fundamental right under the Constitution of the United States of America, bear arms.

The problem is that this did not happen in one critical defining moment in our history.  It happened slowly and deliberately over time.  Many years ago, laws began to surface that restricted where you could openly carry a weapon.  First it was in saloons, then churches, then entire communities, then states.  Finally, the Federal government stepped in and began to tell you what kinds of guns you could own, how many bullets they could hold and what type of attachments and accessories they could have.  Oddly enough, we just simply accepted these changes.  We sat back and justified our complacency with statements of how is was sensible for no one to have a gun in a saloon, or for that matter a church.  This just made sense, there was no need for a gun there.   Ah, well I guess if that city/county/state does not want people to carry guns then it is their business.  Surely we could not argue that anyone needed this certain banned type of weapon to hunt with, or that it was in anyway practical to have a clip that held more than ten bullets.  Slowly, in small steps and stages, we agreed to these restrictions and we allowed our view of what the 2nd Amendment meant to be twisted and warped into someone else’s vision, not that of the founders.  We forgot that this Amendment was never about self-protection, property protection or the ability to hunt.  Our forefathers would have seen no need to make an Amendment to convey such things as they were simply an absolute necessity and an understood way of life for them.  We have forgotten that the 2nd Amendment was designed to protect the freedom of the States against the biggest threat to life, liberty and personal property that the founders could see: the very government that they just created.  Therefore, we have allowed our rights to be stripped from us, not in one clarion moment as in the examples above, but through our apathy, complacency and willful acceptance that our government knows best.  I find it ironic that we have allowed the very entity that our founders saw as the biggest threat to our freedom, to strip away our only means of securing that freedom.

Another of these slow, creeping abrogation of rights is found in our system of taxation.  While the passing of the 16th Amendment is certainly a hallmark moment for this issue, it alone is not what has stripped us of our rights.  Can anyone tell me the percentage of taxation that prompted the colonist to throw tea into the Boston Harbor?  Was it a 30-40% tax like most of us face on our personal income?  Was it even an 8.25% tax like most here in Texas pay as a sales tax for all products?  Nope.  This nation practically started a blood war for independence over a meager 25% tax on one single item, which amounted to a tax burden of a bout 1.5% adjusted to the average earnings of a family at the time.  Now we face taxes levied on what we earn, what we purchase and even what we out right own.  This has not come in one large stroke, but again in small steps over time that have burdened us and made us beholden to the government that we are forced to surrender our personal labor to.  We are indentured servants, whether we want to admit it or not.  I hold that ANY tax on personal property is a direct violation of individual liberties and an assault on personal freedoms.  No one has the right to force you to work for free, we abolished that more than 130 years ago just to have it return in a government sanctioned method supported by an Amendment to our Constitution making it legal.  We are slaves.  Your labor is not income nor is the wage that you barter your labor for.  You have traded one hour of your labor, your personal property, for a amount of compensation that you agreed to with another party.  Taxation of this amount is a taxation of personal property and liberty.  No one has the right, other than the government, to forcibly take the money you have earned for you labor.  Should an individual walk up to you and force you to surrender 30% of the money that you made this week, threatening your very freedom if you do not surrender, you would call him a robber and you would have the right to resist him with deadly force.  When the government does this it is called taxation and you have no right to resist at all.  The same is directly true of property taxes.  If you are taxed upon the property that you own, under penalty of law and the potential loss of that property, then in reality, you own nothing.  You are merely renting that property from the government, by payment of said taxes.  Again these are direct violations of personal liberty.

So, now what are the issues that our generation faces that bear the weight of these mistakes of the past?  If healthcare is not immediately upon your tongue, then I pray for you and your children.  How people cannot understand that this is the clarion issue of our time, is beyond me.  We have already surrendered so much of our rights, piece by piece, to the control of our government, how could we ever consider giving them the control of our health and well being.  Just as many of the laws passed in our history must have seemed benevolent and wise, do not be fooled by those who tell you that they can act in your best interest far better than you can.  When a people surrender themselves to a government so wholly as to allow it to do for them what they can and should do for themselves, they become beholden to its will.  This is not a new thing upon this Earth.  It has been repeated many a time throughout history and has always ended in disaster for those who surrender their freedom so willingly.  This is the defining issue of our time.  The one that will pave the way of our future.  Will it be a future where my health or my very life is dependent on the will of a government for which I have no control or recourse?  Will it be one where the decisions of my children’s well being are taken out of my hands and made the domain of some distant, disconnected bureaucrat?  Will it become one where the decision to let my child live or die is one made by a budgetary committee that must weigh the value of my child’s life against the cost of the procedure needed?  No, it must not!  It cannot!  This must never come to pass, else the 234 year struggle for liberty dies with a pitiful whimper as we willingly surrender one of our last vestiges of freedom to the very entity that our founders new we would need to be armed to protect ourselves and our liberty from.

We must end this now.

How this nation is not in full fledged revolt at this stage in the game is a mystery to me. Maybe it stems from the apathy permeating our culture or perhaps it is the feelings of complete detachment and helplessness that many people feel about our political process. We are currently faced with one of the most serious threats to life and liberty that we have ever seen in this nation and we are still allowing these people to stand behind their podiums and lie through their teeth.

President Obama was finally publicly called out for lying to the American people about one aspect of this healthcare reform yesterday, when the AARP denied any endorsement or support of any healthcare proposal. During a completely phony town hall meeting stuffed with Obama supporters and strategic plants, he commented that the AARP had endorsed this reform. He further stated that the AARP would not be on board if they thought that this legislation would reduce MediCare benefits to the elderly. Almost immediately, the 40 million member strong AARP organization denied the endorsement or support of any healthcare reform. Although they did admit to agreeing with President Obama that they did not see any threat to benefits from the reduction in MediCare, they strongly denied any endorsement such as President Obama had claimed. Of course the excuse from the Whitehouse was that the President simply misspoke. Really? Has he been simply misspeaking all this time? This is not a new claim. This has been repeated for months now.

Maybe AARP is feeling the wrath of its members. How this organization could even consider supporting this legislation is far beyond my comprehension and that of many of its members that I know. Most of the seniors that I know are deathly afraid of what this legislation means for their future care and do not support it at all. The AARP is playing politics with the lives of its members and they are starting to react.

For those of you who think senior citizens have nothing to fear from this lead into single payer socialized medicine, allow me to introduce you to Barbara Wagner of Springfield, OR. Wagner has the Oregon Health Plan (OHP) as single payer system put in place several years ago in Oregon. She also has lung cancer. When she found this out, her doctor suggested a new form of aggressive chemotherapy that has shown very promising results in treating the disease, even in someone of her age. Unfortunately for this senior citizen, the bureaucrats at the OHP did not agree with her doctor since the treatment cost $4,000/mo. They denied the treatment and offered to pay for hospice care or medically assisted suicide. How nice of the government to tell this woman that she was not worth saving, but she was worth being allowed to die slowly in her home or they were more than willing to pay to have her kill herself right now. Can you imagine a government behaving this way? Well you better start. By the way, there is good news on this front. The greedy pharmaceutical company that produces this incredibly expensive drug has contacted Barbara Wagner and will be giving her the medication for free so that the State of Oregon does not decide to kill her off. How nice of them.

Move on to more of these town hall meetings. Let us examine the other lies and falsifications pouring out of these dishonest charlatans from Washington. For starters, we will look at the town hall conference hosted by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee in Houston, TX yesterday. This Democrat embarrassment to the State of Texas had the unfettered gall to get on a cell phone while a woman stood and asked her a question about the healthcare legislation. Her pathetic excuse that she was actually trying to get information to answer the woman’s concerns and that they are taught to multi-task in Congress was a pitiful example of her ignorance and detachment. She did not give the woman the common courtesy of her undivided attention at least long enough for her to ask her question and she proves that she has no clue about this legislation and was horribly unprepared to answer her constituents.

To top off this disgraceful behavior, how about the doctor who stood up in support of this legislation? She originally identified herself as a pediatric primary care physician, but with a little research it was discovered that she was actually Roxana Mayer, an Obama delegate for the State of Texas and a campaign volunteer. Let’s make this clear. She was a plant. A dishonest plant who misrepresented herself as a physician (read as she lied through her teeth) to give her comments a false sense of weight in an effort to spread disinformation to the public on behalf of the Obama healthcare initiative.

Lies! Lies from the President, lies from our Congressional members, lies from the mainstream media and even lies from civilian plants placed inside these town hall meetings. You my friends are being lied to on a scale far more massive than you have ever seen before. It is time to wake up and fight back. As I have stated so many times in the past, this is not a debate or a discussion. This is a fight for your life. This is a battle to control your life and death.

Enough. When you can read through the Declaration of Independence and directly pick out offenses in that document that could easily be applied to the Federal government today, it is time that we act and take back this government of the people, for the people and most importantly by the people.

We have seen some frightening developments in the seven short months since Barack Obama was ‘anointed’ to the presidency. One of the aspects that I simply abhor is the Orwellian style ‘newspeak’ that is surfacing from this administration and the blatant hypocrisy of the left. To clarify things, let us go over some of the new rules.

For starters, let us examine some behaviors.

Private Jets

It is apparently absolutely unacceptable for captains of industry to fly on private jets when their companies are struggling and near collapse, even though multiple business analysts have confirmed that by driving to Washington or flying on normal commercial flights, these men wasted more of their shareholders money than the private flights did. However, if you are in Congress while our nation is struggling economically and hemorrhaging taxpayer money at an alarming rate, it is perfectly acceptable for you to order eight high-end Gulfstream G550 jets to ferry them around. Even when the Air Force says they do not need that many new aircraft and don’t have the proper resources to operate and maintain them for the Congressional fleet, you can simply ignore those who actually have a clue about the issue and set aside over half a billion dollars so that you can travel in luxury.

Protests

Apparently, when you are protesting former President George W. Bush and his policies it is your patriotic duty to do so and any form of protests is acceptable. You can carry swastikas or even wear Nazi uniforms. You can call him a murderer, a terrorist or anything else you want. You can stalk him and wait outside his private residence for weeks on end. This is your patriotic duty to do so. As Hillary Clinton once said, “I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration somehow you’re not patriotic. We should stand up and say, we are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration!” Oh, wait… She must have meant to say any Republican administration.

If you dare to debate or disagree with THIS administration then you are a political plant, an angry mob or a political terrorist and you should be reported by your friends and neighbors. If you carry a sign denouncing his policies, then you are disruptive and unpatriotic. If you carry a banner with a swastika crossed out by a big red circle and slash saying “No Repeat of Socialism” then you are insensitive to the seriousness of the issue surrounding World War II. I guess if you wore one on your arm to protest Bush and called him Hitler, you were somehow being sensitive to those issues? I see. No, wait. I don’t see it at all. Nice double standard you hypocrites on the left have established.

It was perfectly acceptable for thousands of people to hold marches, rallies and protests over whatever struck their fancies about the Bush administration. Fast forward to the Obama administration and suddenly common everyday American citizens who speak out about their governments action by hosting nationwide TEA Party demonstrations are labeled racists, tea baggers (a sexually insulting connotation) and potential terrorists. They are chastised by Congressional members as if they were unruly children disobeying their elders. They are plotted against by the very people who’s job it is to serve their interests and they are ridiculed by a shameful media that has lost all sense of journalistic integrity. This is oppression of dissent is eerily reminiscent of things we have seen before.

Definitions

I was so glad to hear that the War on Terror was over when the administration announced it a few days ago. I was just a tad bit confused as to who won or what we were still doing in Afghanistan if that were true. This behavior is straight out of Orwell’s 1984 novel. The practice of using less offensive or abrasive terms for things was referred to as ‘newspeak’ by Orwell and it is in full swing today. We are no longer fighting ‘jihadists’ but we are fighting someone, so who is it? We are no longer at war with terrorists, just at war with al-Qaida. I am sure that the Taliban are glad to hear this. Even though we are still killing them on sight, it must be nice to know that we are no longer at war with them. At least this will limit the number of unlawful enemy combatants we obtain. Oh, I am sorry. There I go again using plain English to explain things. What I meant to call them was ‘unprivileged enemy belligerents’. That sounds so much better doesn’t it?

You know, the next time I get pulled over for speeding, I need to tell the officer that I was not actually speeding. I was simply traveling at an increased velocity to expedite my transit. Surely, I would not get a ticket for that, right? When someone commits murder, we should call it something else because murder just sounds too bad… Let’s call it an unsanctioned life force termination. Or maybe even an extreme post-term abortion… Those sound more acceptable.

This mind numbing bullshit is just that. It is designed to restrict speech and limit debate and those are but a few examples of the insane amount of politically correct crap spewing out of Washington. Orwell would be shocked at how close he came. He was just about 25 years off the mark.

Policy

The government is tired of wasteful spending by these corporate executives and it is bound and determined to do something about these irresponsible executives. However, Congress and the President continue to waste trillions of dollars on programs that the American people do not approve of. Are we simply to accept this? We are told that we must conserve energy and drive more fuel efficient vehicles, while we watch Nancy Pelosi fly back and forth to California on the taxpayers dime and see President Obama take three times the normal staff on trips with him around the world. How about you give up your fleet of SUVs that you drive around in Mr. President? I am sure some one can figure out how to armor plate a Chevy Volt for you.

We are to believe that insurance companies are responsible for denial of services, massive healthcare costs and limited availability of healthcare to Americans. Yet, when you look at all of the government programs concerning health you actually will find those traits there. The tell us that we must surrender our choices in an effort to reform healthcare, but Congress refuses to adopt the same plan for their families that they are trying to shove down the throat of the American public. They talk of greed and profit in the healtcare industry, yet will not touch the issue of tort reform for that very reason. Having the tort lawyers in their pockets are very profitable for them.

If we take things from another that do not belong to us by coercion or threat of force, it is a felony in most states. When the government does it, they call it taxes.

This hypocrisy must end and it needs to end now.

In a striking turn of events, that actually surprised no one, it has now been confirmed that Nancy Pelosi is one of the most ignorant people that has ever held a public office. I have not given out a Blithering Idiot award in some time, so maybe one is due. Congratulations Nancy Pelosi, you are the Blithering Idiot of the Week. She has plenty of company in Congress right now and they are willingly showing their ineptitude day after day.

Astroturf? Seriously? Did that take you all morning to come up with Nancy or did one of your staffers write that little line for you? The indignation and arrogance on display by our Congressional leaders against the American people right now is simply appalling. These corrupt, out of touch, elitist morons cannot fathom that the American people are completely fed up with their crap and are finally standing up for ourselves.

Just a few short months ago Hillary Clinton stated that it was our patriotic duty to voice our dissent against a government that we disagreed with. There were multitudes calling President Bush everything from a murderer to a terrorist to Hitler himself. We saw morons like Cindy Sheehan literally camped outside his home, shouting horribly insulting and borderline threatening comments at the President. How did the former administration act when these ‘angry mobs’ showed up? Did he encourage other Americans to report them to their government for exercising their free speech? No. Did he chastise them publicly claiming that they were an unruly angry mob? No. Did he demand that others show up to counter their protests? Nope. He simply acknowledged their right to have their own opinions and protest against the actions of their government.

Now we see astounding arrogance coming from Washington in their personal attacks on citizens who are speaking their mind openly and honestly. Nancy Pelosi even went so far as to claim that these citizens protesting the nationalized healthcare were carrying swastikas and similar symbols to the protests. Really? I have done some extensive searching and can find not a single photo or video from these protests containing any such symbols. However, I was able to find multiple photos containing swastika symbols from earlier protests against President Bush. Was that who she was talking about? I wonder… This just goes to further show the feeble intelligence of this woman. If she actually knew anything about the Nazi (or National Socialist) Party, she would realize that it would more likely be those in favor of this national socialized medical program that would bear symbols hailing the Nazi regime. After all, one of the questions often ask of German citizens in the 1930s and 1940s was, “Are you a good socialist?” Well, Nancy, are you?

What they do not realize is that by dismissing these normal, everyday citizens who have legitimate concerns as nothing but an angry mob, they are likely to turn them into just that. Now we hear that they are canceling these town hall meetings in an act of pure cowardice because they do not want to face the truth of a public turned against them. They might as well stand upon the steps of Congress and shout, “Let them eat cake!” This will not sit well with an America already tiring of the wasteful, corrupt and reality deprived administration that has shown nothing but contempt for the will of the populace. I will point you to another time in our history, when the calls from the people went unheeded. A time when taxation was used as a means to control and laws were forced upon a people from a distant, detached government who did not concern itself with what those governed desired. We should learn from this past where the voices of the people went unheard and the protests that they staged were dismissed as a bunch of unruly ingrates and angry mobs. In the end this did not fare well for the governing body responsible for such injustices against the American colonies, nor will it do so now.

If we stare into the Abyss long enough, the Abyss stares back at us. Right now we stand at the edge of the Abyss, what we do will define the future of this nation for generations to come. I say we stand and fight.

Arise you sons and daughters of Liberty. Stand firm in your beliefs and make your voices heard from the tip of the Aleutians to the Florida Keys. Call them out and give them no quarter to the lies being told. Fight for your freedoms and liberty, lest they be stripped from you while you sleep.

Now that the veil has begun to lift and the public is opening its eyes to the massive assault on our healthcare industry that is occurring in Washington, it seems that a new movement has been spurned in the style of the TEA Parties. This past weekend at town hall meetings across this nation, common citizens shouted their dissent at politicians over the issue of nationalized healthcare. America is finally rising up and her citizens are demanding to be heard. The odor in the air that you smell if fear and it is coming from Washington, D.C.

Even the Democrats in Congress have started to feel the sting of public opinion, but they still fail to grasp the reality of this message. As if they were alcoholics in denial, they have begun to deny the validity of these protests, claiming they were staged by insurance companies who fear the passage of healthcare reform. They have gone so far as to accuse the people protesting of being paid plants, who were bused in and given instructions on how to appear that they were not together. They cannot come to grips with the reality that the American people do not want, need or trust the Federal government to control our healthcare.

In Austin, Texas this weekend, one of the embarrassments of our state, Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex) held a poor excuse for a town hall meeting in the parking lot of a supermarket. It quickly became clear that the citizens at the meeting were far better informed about the healthcare issue than Doggett himself was. When he was pressed with someone asking him if he would support this bill even if he found the majority of his constituents strongly opposed it, he admitted that yes he would. Suddenly a voice arose from one of the many protestors carrying signs opposing socialized medicine and this Obamacare initiative, yelling, “Just say no!” The cry quickly rose across the group turning the meeting into an ad hoc political protest.

This was not an isolated event. In Philadelphia this weekend both Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius were met with vociferous protests shouting “Read the bill!” Of course, the Democrats were not having it. Sebelius coyly chastised the crowd saying, “Excuse me… Excuse me! We can either stand here and shout at one another and then we can leave the stage, or we can have a conversation. It’s really up to you.” However, when the crowd engaged them in conversation, asking specific pointed questions about the bill, they were not impressed with their answers. When she talked about making sure Americans receive the best healthcare, they shouted “We already do!” When Specter spoke of the supporting Obama’s healthcare program he was quickly shouted and booed down. At one point a man shouted to Specter a simple question, “Will you sign up for it?” All Specter did was avert his gaze and continue prattling on about government run healthcare. At the mention of a single payer system, it almost seemed the crowd was about to set upon him. Shouts calling him a liar and demanding to know where the constitutional authority for this was could be heard among the continuous booing

Again, this was not an isolated incident. These happened everywhere, all around this nation. Yet, it seems that it is not enough to penetrate the stupidity and arrogance that permeates Washington, D.C. Today the Democrats are ignorantly claiming that all these events were staged. They seem to actually believe that the American people could not possibly be this passionate or have this much will to fight over the matter of healthcare.

I find this argument so odd coming from the Democrats, until you remember that this is not at all about healthcare, but about power over the individual. Most Democrats support a woman’s right to choose by claiming that it is her body and it should be her decision alone as to what to do with it and what medical procedures can be performed on it. Following that logic, it should be safe to assume that the right to decide what medical procedures can be done would extend to every American citizen, not just a woman attempting to use abortion as a form a birth control. However, with this plan that is not the case at all. Apparently, your right to choose is only important when you want to kill an unborn child, not when you want to determine which doctor you go to or what treatment you or your children receive to treat an illness. It seems that this warped form of logic makes perfect sense to Democrats, but it is completely lost on me.

As I have stated before this is a struggle for life and death and our ability to control both aspects personally. This is potentially one of the most threatening pieces of legislation that the American public and our individual liberties have ever faced. This must be defeated at all costs, or we lose the very ability to make decisions of a very personal nature.

I have not had much time to write over the past few days. Some changes are taking place in my personal life that have had me quite busy and I have been working on getting a project off the ground that has taken some of my time as well.

However, I have been keeping a close eye on this healthcare debate and it is scaring the hell out of me. I cannot believe that this is even under consideration, until I look at those pushing this agenda. There is so much subterfuge and deception surrounding this issue that it is almost impossible for the average American to get their minds around and understand what is really occurring. This administration and many in Congress are trying to shove this legislation down the throat of the American people, yet do so with coercion and deception.

Lie Number One – 47 Million Uninsured

For starters, the number of uninsured Americans in this country is greatly inflated. The 47 million that the President claims he is trying to cover is not as clear as you might think. Within that 47 million exist around 10 million illegal aliens, around 17 million that make well over the median income of $46,300 annually who could afford health insurance but choose not to have it and a small percentage of people who lacked health insurance for short periods of time only. Even if you just take number of illegal aliens and those who could afford insurance, but choose not to, you more than cut the 47 million figure in half, leaving only 20 million Americans uninsured, just 7% of the population. Some estimated put the number of critically uninsured as low as 8.2 million or 3% of the total.

Lie Number Two – The Government is the Solution

While I acknowledge that some healthcare reform is needed in this nation, I flatly reject the notion that it is the right, duty or business of the Federal government to mandate or control it. Constitutionally, not only does the Federal government lack any and all power over this issue, but it is explicitly barred from action on matters such as these via the 10th Amendment. Not to mention that what they are currently proposing will be drastically harmful to the healthcare industry in this nation. Just look at the example that the government provides in Social Security, Medicare and the Veterans Administration. All dismal examples of government waste, corruption and bureaucracy at one time or another. Now we are told that the government can reduce healthcare cost, improve quality and not reduce services. Even when the Congressional Budget Office releases report after report disagreeing with this claim and greatly expanding the projected cost of this program, it is just ignored. Even when the very sections of the bill that point out planned cuts to Medicaid and Medicare are pointed out, excuses are made and those calling foul are branded as cold hearted obstructionists. The plan currently in the House would create twelve additional government agencies just to deal with this massive undertaking, creating more inefficiency, waste and bureaucracy.

Lie Number Three – You Will Still Have a Choice

This is one of the most grievous fallacies of this entire fiasco. You will lose your ability to choose, period. For starters, the President has already made it clear that you will be forced to have health insurance whether you want it or not. No choice there. Now we hear that doctors will be rated and paid based on how well they treat an illness, not per patient or per procedure. Really? I want to know who in the hell decides by what benchmarks to gauge my doctor? What if I think my doctor has performed admirably, but some distant, detached bureaucratic moron in Washington, who has no clue about me or my doctor, decided that he is not as ‘efficient’ as they would like and decides not to pay him? How to I have a choice in that? When my personal physician that I have had for well on twenty years has to quit his practice because he cannot afford to function on his government allowance, where is my choice?

Now we discover the horrible truth about other aspects of this bill such as end of life care. After a certain age you will be compelled to meet with a ‘counselor’ every five years to discuss your future healthcare needs. Really? Discuss what about them? Why would I need a counselor at the age of 65 and beyond to discuss my healthcare requirements, unless you are planning on restricting the services available to me due to my age and failing health? You see once you pass the age of 65, you are not as good of an investment as when you are young and healthy. You have less time to live and you consume more resources via the healthcare system, therefore it only makes sense to a cold, calculating government bureaucracy that they not spend money on you. Sure they will offer to make you comfortable, but will not approve the procedure that might extend your life because the return on investment will not be enough.

Lie Number Four – Not a Single Payer System

While this statement may be true at this point, it will not be so for long. As Barney Frank openly admitted a few days earlier, this is a gateway to a single payer system.

“If we get a good public option it could lead to single payer,” Frank said. “The best way to get single payer — the only way — is to have a public option and demonstrate the strength of its power.”

You notice the words he chose there? Power. This is after all what this is really all about. Power. Power to control. Power to have millions depending on the government for their very health and survival.

The other part of this lie is that the private insurance companies can survive this ‘public option’ when it is more likely that it will cause the failure of most major insurance companies, costing this economy precious jobs and destroying the healthcare industry as we know it. The government option could be as much as 20% lower in cost for private business, since it will use taxpayer money to support the implementation of this program. How many businesses do you think would love to get a 20% reduction in the cost of benefits they provide to their employees? Suddenly, millions of people will be shoved onto this government program, taking critical market share away from the private insurance companies. Without the monthly premiums, these companies will not be able to provide for their remaining insured parties and will quickly fold, leaving even more people with nowhere else to turn but the government. Of course, that it the real objective of this, not healthcare at all.

Those are just four obvious ones. There are multitudes of more that I could expound upon, but these should be enough to wave us off of this destructive past. With the example of failures in the States where these single payer models have been tried such as Wisconsin and Massachusetts, we should be scare to death of even discussing any government run options at all. I sincerely hope that the governor of my great State meant what he said early last week. Governor Perry stated that if the Congress was foolish enough to pass this destructive legislation, Texas would assert her right under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and flatly refuse to conform or participate in any way. God bless that man and give him the strength to stand his ground should this disaster find its way into law. Should Texas refuse Federal interference and further usurpation of her citizens right by the Federal government, I believe that others would follow her lead.

This is a battle of life and death. Either you control your life or the government will control both it and your death.

Welcome to the USSA.

There has been an awful lot of focus the past few days on the apparently scandalous bonuses paid out to AIG executives in the sum of $165 million dollars. There are thousands of news and opinion articles out there vilifying these executives and now our Congress is demanding the money be returned else they will tax the living hell out of it after the fact.

Now, I am not going to get into the blatant unconstitutionality and base immorality of Congress targeting individual private citizens and enacting revenge upon them with ex post facto (after the fact) laws. These acts are specifically prohibited under Article I of the Constitution and are just more proof that Congress is willing to ignore the basic founding laws of this nation whenever it suits their needs. I will also not dwell much on the fact that Congress knew of these bonuses and included specific legislation in the stimulus package allowing them. Even the fact that these bonuses were contractual legal obligations, made years earlier to these employees and that AIG had to pay them or face the legal consequences of not doing so, has not deterred the feigned outrage and innocence from Congressional leaders who are at the very least as responsible for this mess as any company or executive, if not more so.

I could not possibly care less that some executives received less than one tenth of one percent of the $170 billion dollars that Congress irresponsibly gave to AIG; turning their collective heads while AIG funneled huge sums of tax payer money to foreign banks.

This is all a distraction to the horrible injustices that are occurring in this nation on a daily basis and I would not doubt are designed to foster hostile sentiment towards the free market from the American people. Congress knew about these bonuses and allowed them to happen, even giving their consent in law by amending the stimulus package to guarantee that these bonuses would be paid. Now they pretend to be shocked and appalled when AIG follows the law and honors their obligations… Bullshit.

This is all an exercise to distract the American people so they will not notice things such as what has been occurring with the Veterans Administration in this country and the horrible, disgraceful actions threatened by our President and his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. Just a few days ago, word broke of a meeting between President Barack Obama, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and eleven veterans’ service organizations where the President revealed his plan to expand funding of the VA healthcare system and its coverage to wounded veterans. Sounds good, right? You might think that until you hear what he planned to do to these brave men and women that have selflessly served this nation.

The Obama plan to expand VA coverage and increase its funding would have forced wounded veterans returning from war to use their own private insurance companies to pay for injuries received as a result of their service. This plan drew outrage from veterans across the nation, one of the most vocal of which was Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion as quoted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 after his meeting with the President:

“It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan. He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”

By the end of that day it appeared that the groundswell of opposition to this abuse of our servicemen was beginning to wear on the White House and veterans were given until Thursday afternoon to come up with another way to generate the additional $540 million required or this is the plan they would get.

Really? How about our government stops wasting untraceable billions in all these frakking bailouts and takes care of our soldiers? How about Nancy Pelosi sits her arrogant ass on a commercial airliner and stops wasting millions by having the military dedicate resources to fly her all over the frakking place? How about we stop funding radical, corrupt activist groups line ACORN and actually care for those who fight to keep us safe? How about you go to frakking hell, Mr. President, if you think that the American public will allow you to propose a $3.5 trillion dollar Federal budget and then believe for one frakking second that you cannot find $500 million dollars, or a hell of a lot more if needed, to care for our wounded vets?

This is the utter height of bullshit and simply proves that his man cares nothing for this nation and the veterans that have served to protect it. This is a soulless act of a man with no moral conscience. As Cmdr. Rehbein noted, this would cause massive harm to the veterans, their employers and their families who would all be affect by having to meet the private insurance deductibles, facing higher premiums and maxing out coverage leaving the families unprotected.

This nation called upon these men to serve in battle and we owe them the best possible care available. We have a moral obligation to these service men, especially those sustaining wounds directly related to our government placing them in harm’s way.

Even if you look at this dispassionately, which I find hard to do myself, you can see that this is a clear admission from President Obama that the Veterans Administration, the only fully government run and funded national healthcare system, is incapable of providing adequate treatment of those it is charged with serving. Now he is suggesting that the only example of a government run healthcare system in this nation must turn to the private sector as the only viable means of proving the amount and quality of service required to treat our veterans. This is President Obama admitting that a nationalized healthcare system would be a horrible disaster if implemented on a large scale. The VA is only a small controlled segment of patients and they are incapable of providing the necessary care without forcing the free market to carry the weight.

Is this the healthcare system that you want governing your well being? Does the President really expect the American people to accept nationalized healthcare, when he is blatantly admitting by these disgraceful acts against out military veterans, that it is incapable of providing treatment for those whom we have the utmost morally commitment to care for?

Due to the massive swell of public outrage over this proposal, it has now been taken off the table and a meeting was held yesterday with the same veterans groups to discuss other options. No word on any resolution has surfaced yet, but I bet if you ask most American they could find that money somewhere in the trillions of dollars our Federal government has been wasting over the last six months to care for our soldiers.

I would not blame any serviceman for refusing to enter a combat zone until this issue is resolved. Even the suggestion that they should be fiscally responsible for wounds received in the service of this nation is a horrible betrayal to them and an affront to the honor, dedication and loyalty they have shown. Such a betrayal is far beneath an American President and he has brought shame upon the office by this unforgivable injustice. While I have been critical of his actions and fiscally destructive policies, this is the straw that broke it for me. I have absolutely no respect or use for this morally bankrupt excuse for a President after this absolute insult to those that have served or this complete farce of a government that would even consider such a thing.

Well the last few days have seen a surge of unbelievable activity on the political fronts. We now see multiple states moving to wrest their rights back from an overly powerful centralized government, trillions of dollars in unanswered spending, assaults on personal freedoms lining up before Congress, Senators proposing the ‘line item veto’ power for the President which has already been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and assaults on individual citizens of this nation because they dare to speak out against this administration. The DOW is continuing to slide down near the 5,000 mark from 13,000 at this time last year dropping to almost a third of its previous value while our government continues to spend and spend and spend.

We have heard so many times of the despair, the tragedy, the crisis and the catastrophe that our current situation presents. So I decided to do a bit of looking at some of the statements that have been made recently and see what was real and what was not. How bad are we being lied too about what we face and how much will those lies cost us?

The first thing that caught my attention was a statement made by President Barack Obama about healthcare in this nation. While I will never deny that the healthcare industry is in some need of reform, I will vehemently resist any notion of socialized medicine as being any form of solution to our problem. President Obama stated earlier this week as a preamble to his healthcare summit that began today, that healthcare cost caused a bankruptcy every 30 seconds in this nation and that we can no longer delay on addressing this issue. Really? A bankruptcy every 30 seconds? Let’s see, that means two every minute, 120 per hour, 2,880 each day finally totaling 1,051,200 every year. Wow, that sure seems like a lot of bankruptcies to be caused by healthcare costs. In fact, it seems like a lot of bankruptcies in general.

After a bit of research it seems that there were 1, 086,130 bankruptcies filed in 2008, a sharp increase from just less than 827,000 filed in 2007. This means that, according to the numbers the President expects us to believe, 96.8% of all bankruptcies filed last year in the United States were filed because of increased healthcare costs. Well, no wonder the President thinks this cannot wait. If he is looking at numbers like this that tell him that ALMOST EVERY bankruptcy in the country was caused by healthcare costs, I could understand his panic. However, just a tad more research revealed that the actual percentage is closer to just under 6% in 2007 and just over 5% in 2008 of healthcare cost related bankruptcies. That is quite a whopper you tried to pull over on us Barry. Thankfully some of us are not so easily fooled. Unfortunately some of us are.

Now think what this lie could cost us. This one single lie could cost us the right to choose our own doctors, determine what care we and our children can receive, have to wait months to see a physician or have a simple procedure done and lose the ability to refuse certain types of care for us and our children. More rights taken from us through lies. How sad.

This is just one of the lies we have been told recently. I will be researching more and posting what I find.

Congresswoman Granger,

I just received your letter regarding your recent vote to expand the SCHIP program. I have to comment that I am severely disappointed in your decision to abandon conservative principals in the matter and hand even more control of the healthcare system over to the Federal government. While you will never find me opposed to giving aid to those who truly need it, this program goes far beyond that.

According to the new legislation, my family and my three children will more than likely qualify for coverage. This is an absolute absurdity. I am an Information Technology director for an environmental laboratory and my wife works in the oil and gas industry. While we are by no means wealthy, we live a good life with plenty of leisure and have paid for our own healthcare for years. We have good coverage under a Blue Cross / Blue Shield HSA have done so for a very long time. The very idea that we could qualify for this program is simply atrocious in that we are perfectly capable of providing our own healthcare insurance for our family. This means that thousands of families who could, and by all rights should, provide individual healthcare to their own families will not be able to turn to the government for this coverage. This has many severely detrimental effects on the healthcare industry and on our nation.

First, it is a very basic conservative principal that those who can support themselves should do so and rely upon the government for as little as possible. The expansion of the welfare state in our nation destroys the basic principles of self reliance and individual responsibility. Many who should rely upon their own means to support themselves, will turn to the State to do so if those services are offered. This places an unnecessary burden on the taxpayers and increases the Federal government’s involvement in and power over individual citizen’s lives, something deeply feared by our founding fathers.

This is also a dangerous step closer to socialized medicine, a thing to be avoided at all costs. This nation possesses some of the greatest medical minds in the world. We have pioneered medical procedures, technologies and practices that have saved millions worldwide. We have the highest standard of medical care available anywhere and the brightest minds from across the nations flock to the United States to be taught and trained. If we turn this industry over to the hands of the Federal government it will utterly destroy the quality of care available in this nation. Socialism by its very nature stagnates growth and invention. It destroys ingenuity and the desire of those bright few who could be brilliant medical practitioners to enter the field. It also places the choice of who gets what care in the hands of a bloated bureaucracy that has shown itself to be an inevitable failure when it comes these types of programs. Good examples can be found in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. These are programs designed to provide aid for those who cannot and they have been horribly mismanaged and placed in jeopardy by the very entity that you voted to hand my children’s healthcare to. Or just examine the VA Hospital system. This is a prime example of a system that the government put together to care for some of our most deserving citizens – those who have sacrificed to serve their nation. As has been widely reported, it is also a very broken system.

Finally, as a person who was elected as a conservative representative of the people of the State of Texas, you should certainly not be voting to increase government spending into entitlement programs during the rather severe economic slowdown that this nation is facing. Just use the State of California as an example, where their massive entitlement programs are suffocating the government and strangling the life out of the state with massive budget deficits. We want less government, not more. We want to decrease the size and scope of government and make ourselves less dependent on it, not turn our nation into one massive socialist paradise where everything is provided for us and no self reliance is required or tolerated. We want solid Reagan style conservative principals applied to our government, not the failed bi-partisan pandering that has lost us the last few elections. Fiscal conservatism is a must. Nothing less is expected by your constituents who are fed up with our government taking and taking no matter what we say.

You voted as you should have on this wasteful sham of a stimulus package, then you turn around and discard fiscal conservatism, trying to soften the blow with emotional words on how this is all about the children. These are Democrat tactics – using fear and emotional appeals to obtain approval for a bigger government. This is what we see in the stimulus package. The massive expansion of Federal scope and power obtained through this rush to is going to create a “solution” to this artificially inflated crisis that may be far, far worse than any consequences of the “crisis” itself.

Your constituents elected you to be a conservative leader in the House and represent our ideals and principles. With this vote, you have failed us and we are now watching.

I apologize for no updates in the last few days. I have been really sick since Saturday and spent all of my weekend and most of the last few days in bed. Fortunately, I can work from home remotely on a great many things that I have to do at my job. While working the other day a co-worker sent me an e-mail that I found very enlightening. I haven’t had a chance to look into it until today, but here it is.

Hillary Clinton is apparently a liar. I know that may come as quite a shock to some of you, but it is apparently not the first time she has been caught lying. This case however preyed off of a tragic story of a pregnant woman who was denied care from an Ohio hospital because she lacked the $100 that the hospital required for treatment. Later this woman was returned via ambulance to the hospital where she lost her child and eventually her own life. This tragic tale of denied medical services proves how vital nationalized healthcare is to our country.

There is only one problem with this tragic tale of healthcare gone wrong. It is an absolute lie. According to the hospital where the incident occurred not only was the woman not denied services, she also had health insurance and the reasons that she dies were not directly related to the previous visit.

Once again the Clinton campaign launched immediately into spin / damage control mode and what was her excuse this time? Well, apparently she heard the story from a Sheriff’s deputy and had no reason to doubt it. Her campaign spokes woman, Mo Elleithee, relayed the following defecation from the campaign:

“Candidates are told stories by people all the time, and it’s common for candidates to retell those stories,” Elleithee said. “It’s not always possible to fully vet them, but we try. For example, medical records are confidential. In this case, we tried but weren’t able to fully vet the story.”

Really? Well here is some sound advice for the Clinton campaign: If you cannot vet the story then don’t fraking repeat it. I guess they couldn’t fully vet out whether or not their really were snipers in Bosnia either could they?

Sorry folks. I call adult male bovine excrement on this one. (That means bullshit for all you liberals out there.)

Read the ABC Article for yourself. (More…)