Energy tax moves forward (like a steam roller heading your way)

While my family and I were en route to an undisclosed location for our summer vacation, the cap and trade bill passed in the House and is moving forward to become the biggest tax increase in American history.

Liberals who think the price tag is worth it should be reminded: you are clearly not thinking of the consequences for the economy:

I have read estimates that this will cost anywhere from $120-over $2000 per household per year, with plenty of geographical variation. I haven't seen any estimates about what it will cost businesses, but clearly that depends on your businesses' energy usage. If you have 1000 Costco stores to air condition, watch out.

If you wanted to design something to put the brakes on an economic recovery, this would be a fine plan.

You are clearly not thinking of the snowballing disincentives this tax will cause. The increased corruption and kickbacks. The problems for "the little people" on a fixed income facing higher energy rates and more "green" enforcement regulations, like members of my family, and probably yours (unless you are Nancy Pelosi or a Kennedy). You are probably not thinking of the jobs that will be lost in the "discouraged" industries.

Two other things I found remarkable:

1. Nobody even read the bill before it passed (yes, once again, just as in passing the emergency rushed porkulus bill). "The manner in which the Democrats have run the House since taking control in 2007 has been disgraceful"--that's right.

2. More and more people are even now recognizing the global warming hoax for what it is--including the EPA, whose report is being hush-hushed by the Democrat administration. Obama and the Dems and leftists want their brand of "green" policies passed not to save anything but to swell government and leftist entrenched power. And they're not afraid to use any tactics to cram them through.


Sickening. Just as bad as I predicted it would be. All you who voted for Obama, is this the hope and change you sought? Or did you not think that far beyond Stage One?

UPDATE: Steve Margolis explains how "cap and trade" sets the transitional gains trap: "Along with our national debt and our Social Security and Medicare obligations, cap and trade is one more way of shifting burdens to our children and their children. This is a heck of a way to start a “new era of responsibility." Read the whole thing--it describes yet another set of important unintended consequence the liberals and leftists are not heeding. (Via Betsy's Page)

UPDATE: Is there hope for stopping the steamroller? "...by better than a two to one margin (42-19 percent), Americans think the Waxman-Markey bill will hurt rather than help the economy." Are our Congresspeople listening? Here's one who heard the outcry!

On the brink of shooting ourselves in the head

These are now the scary times I predicted if Barack or Hillary got elected and got handed a complicit Democrat Congress. As Power Line puts it in "Thoughts on Health Care 'Reform'"--

Our would-be masters have no intention of relying on hideously substandard socialized medicine--that's for those who are without influence in the Democratic Party. In what many have viewed as a watershed moment, Barack Obama, during the ABC News infomercial last night, refused to commit to treating his own family under the "public option," insisting that he "always want[s] them to get the very best care." Well, sure, so do we all. The difference is, Barack is special. He gets to write his own exception into the statute, along with Democrats in Congress.

Opinions vary as to whether our political system is temporarily out of whack or pushing-up-daisies dead. Congress's willingness to adopt socialized medicine strikes me as a sort of acid test.

They think they're special and they think we're stupid. Guess we'll soon find out if they're right.

UPDATE: Neal Boortz says Obama's grasp of logic and basic economics is lacking, since he can't figure out how government monopolies crowd out private businesses. Oh lordy, who elected this dolt? And where in our Constitution does it give the federal government the authority to command that private citizens buy anything, let alone health insurance?

Where are the leaders standing up for our rights against our would-be political masters?

Many are understandably pessimistic and tuning out of politics altogether. I understand the sentiments, especially the bitterness against ineffective, lazy, and corrupt Republicans who had power and wallowed in it (and still do) instead of cleaning up the mess in Washington as if all our lives depended on it. Indeed, it seems that our political system is broken, with too many moral hazards built into it to avoid collapse.

I still think the best route to take now is to work tirelessly at the grassroots level. We need to grow and encourage better leaders and a better educated populace from the bottom up, and too much is at stake to give up. There is an awful lot of "awfulizing" out there, in the media and among politicians of all sides and their supporters, that is primarily self-serving and superfluous and is best tuned out when real, longlasting, effective work is to be done.

And in the end, if the tipping point has been passed, and all else fails, there is always emigration, and saying "So long" to an America we'll no longer even recognize or feel allegiance to. The warm bodies and better brains will be following the erstwhile "American" jobs already being driven out of our homeland by our stupid tax policies and non-business-friendly, non-individual-friendly, non-freedom-friendly soulsucking Blob of a federal government that seems to grow larger and more out of control and lawless each year.

Now, where are the leaders who represent me whom I can enthusiastically support and work for?

UPDATE: Thank-you Saxby Chambliss, in this one instance. Thank-you Hillsdale College Journalism programs.

"Republitarian"?

Maybe that's what I am now, since the Libertarian Party has gotten so anti-war and Reason magazine has gotten so inscrutable in many of its stances over the past few years (silence on many issues, and confusing anti-immigration with anti-illegal immigration). With traditional political parties in philosophical flux these days, it's more a safe bet to just hang with the people whose views most comport with your own rather than to ride under some one-size-does-not-fit-all political label. "Republitarians" seem to be saying a lot of the same things I do:

Fiscally Conservative, Socially Tolerant, and Strong on Defense. From Barry Goldwater to PJ O'Rourke to Ted Nugent, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, Andrew Breitbart & Dennis Miller. As Larry Elder says, "We're the Republitarians." Libertarians who believe in protecting liberty from attackers both at home and abroad.

And I'd throw in "Ronald Reagan," "Milton Friedman," "limited government" and "laissez-faire free-market capitalism," too. Does that exclude me from the club?

(Via Instapundit)

Socially vs. politically correct

It has been my experience to note that liberals (and I have loved many of them in my life) will often (invariably, if you wait long enough) inject their political opinions into a social conversation, no matter how casual (at a dinner party, block party, in line at the grocery store, etc.), in the evidently unquestioning and childlike assumption that everyone present will find their political comments both welcome and correct. It seems to me that liberals are unique in having no scruples or bashfulness about sharing their political views in the company of one and all, friends and strangers, while seeming never to realize they have done anything at all controversial. It's almost as if they don't realize other people could ever legitimately have other views. Or perhaps it is more like the behavior of fundamental evangelists whose divine mission to save your soul outweighs any mere social convention. In other words, they purposely raise rudeness to a virtue by considering confrontation in social settings to be a virtue.

Sometimes it is just at first one or two words, an idle aside, a would-be witticism or a glancingly oblique joke (usually at the expense of that old familiar football, the most recent Republican President) inched forward as a liberal conversational touchstone. I have seen it so many times, in conversation and in art: liberals do this quite amiably and quite unapologetically, as if they simply can't stop themselves from testing (or polluting) the social waters to confirm who will respond favorably and thereby feed them back solidarity, appreciation, and familial agreement, reinforcing their political selves.

In fact, all social interactions are composed of these kinds of exploratory feints but through longtime tradition most social conversation purposely lacks the charged political content, if only as a concession of politeness to the host or hostess, or the innocent bystanders. Yet liberals seem blind to the difference discussing politics makes, and blind to the charge in the conversational bombs they matter-of-factly throw. In fact, they often seem pleased with themselves for portraying themselves as informed, open, daring, topical, and smart to bring up such subjects. All I can figure out is that they are either chronically deluded into thinking they are always surrounded by like-minded people who will share their sophisticated and knowing political opinions and worldviews--or they have no respect or cognizance for those who may not agree with them. It's a puzzle.

When a liberal injects unsolicited political opinions into a social situation, it is often seen by conservatives in the vicinity as a social gaffe. We are both embarrassed for them, and annoyed, for it leaves the conservatives within earshot in a mild but chronic dilemma. Should one chirp up forthrightly and offer a direct, equally sophisticated conversational parry to what the liberal has just said, or otherwise slap down the feelers the liberal has just put out for convivial agreement? And thereby be equally rude? Or should one continue to adhere to the traditional (and wise) custom of steering clear of talking politics and religion in polite society--while all the liberals in the room go on to yuk it up together?

It has been my lifelong experience that liberals and conservatives invariably clash on what constitutes a social conversation and what constitutes polite society. Hence the liberal is usually first to muddy the etiquette waters and the conservative is always debating with herself whether to just shut up and fume or walk away yet again, or to break her own etiquette code and draw attention to herself as a crank and a wet blanket who spoils all the suddenly energized liberal bonding in the room by throwing social bombs of her own and turning a friendly conversation into political debate unwanted by all. But conservatives are by nature rarely bomb throwers. They more often tend to turn aside and get on with more important and constructive things in life, leaving the liberals to game the room into a delusional echo chamber.

But the more conservatives walk away, the larger the echo chambers get. Classrooms. University departments. Editorial boards. School boards. City councils. The White House.

Begad, how dreary. There is a real cost to everyone when people who know better don't speak up to counter a wrong perception. And is this the thankless work to which I, an ordinary housewife, am morally obliged to dedicate my remaining years? In a would-be free society like ours, where debate is vital, I think the answer is yes.


Vital reading: A Conflict of Visions and The Vision of the Annointed by Thomas Sowell and anything by Jane Austen, unrivaled mistress of deft social conversations.

And maybe this: I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican by Harry Stein.

"Confessions of a Lapsed Atheist"

is a pretty good essay, at American Thinker. I have found myself on a similar evolutionary path in life, except that unlike Jenn Q. Public, I was lucky enough to have grown up with a mother who raised me to be a Christian (if only a lukewarm one), until I reached my morally and intellectually "superior" teenaged years and slipped the noose.

I am glad and deeply grateful to say I have since wised up. Yes, religion is experiential, and developmental. It is wide and deep enough to keep the youngest and the oldest and greatest minds and hearts sustained. It is also particular and individual: God will find you wherever you are, as you are, in whatever way you are able to understand Him, if you look for Him or invite Him in. After that you realize He was with you always.

As a parent you hope your kids are able to move from that trusting childlike faith (if they are lucky enough to have that) to a mature trust in a higher power greater than themselves, without falling into any inescapable holes along the way. Religion can look awfully useless and inconvenient to a youth who feels both immortal and omniscient and finds adequate fellowship in huddling with similar sheep. When one is too young to know much about life--and death--and too young to even know what one doesn't know--one can be most vulnerable, and blind to the need for, or existence of, the shepherd.

How's that Medicare working out for ya?

Neal Boortz points out, from the Pacific Research Institute:

The results are clear: Since 1970 -- even without the prescription drug benefit -- Medicare's costs have risen 34% more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid, the vast majority of which is purchased through the private sector.

Since 1970, the per-patient costs of all health care apart from Medicare and Medicaid have risen from $364 to $7,119, while Medicare's per-patient costs have risen from $368 to $9,634. Medicare's costs have risen $2,511 more per patient.

For another point of view, here's a dispatch from the trenches--one doctor's experience with Medicare (via Maggie's Farm):

As a practicing internist, I've been dealing with two government insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid, for more than two decades. Over the years, I've seen the government shrink reimbursements under first Medicaid and then Medicare -- to the point that, in 2005, I finally decided that I couldn't stay in business unless I stopped taking Medicaid patients, and saw no more than a few Medicare patients each day.

It was costing me more to file the Medicaid paperwork than I got back from the government. I now either charge Medicaid patients a few dollars, or just see them for free....

Read the whole thing. Predictably, the liberal's practical response is to chastise the doctors for being greedy. Yeah, that'll work. Maybe they can shame millions of people into changing self-interested and self-protective human behavior if they can't coerce them by boxing them into having no other choices.

I still say Congress and Obama should fix Medicare first --and fix the VA healthcare system and the reservations Indians' health programs first-- since those government-run health care programs are already causing the most immediate problems for the patients forced to use them and for the health care providers struggling within their constraints, and it is the government programs that are causing the biggest drain on the public coffers and the private health care industry.

In other words, the Federal government has already had carte blanche in screwing up large portions of our health care delivery system for many, many years, with evidently no accountability for lack of success and no fiscal restraint. First let Congress and the President try fixing these messes before they have our permission to screw up the entire health care system and health research industry by enacting more of the same. All in the spurious name of helping (what is in reality a small minority of) citizens!

Heh: I kid you. There is no way the Federal government can fix any of this mess it has created. Because the legislators and pundits and politicians in Washington don't understand health care and never will. They will never be able to run a centralized market of any kind, without killing it off and making things hellish and Sovietized for everyone. All of their economic "reforms" are doomed to failure, as they always have been.

The only hope our country has is to keep the government bureaucracy contained and out of all marketplaces as much as possible. Set free the Invisible Hand working for the common good. Let the people be free to innovate and work legally in and for their own interests.

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense... They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chapter III

UPDATE: Think we'll hear any of these kinds of comments on ABC's infomercial for Obama's healthcare plans? Nyet--not coming from inside the ABC facilities, anyway. Outside is a different matter.

UPDATE: What we'll lose if Obamacare becomes a reality:

The main reason Americans spend more on medical care is not about life expectancy - it's about two simple things: quality of life, and the trial lawyers.

(American life expectancy stats are also pulled down by the numbers of premies and babies with terrible abnormalities we attempt to save.)First, in how many countries can you get a shoulder repair or a new knee or hip in a week? Annual screening colonoscopies and mammographies? Guys with advanced ALS on home ventilators? And how many countries generate the new treatments that the US does? (We do 90% of them. For a recent dramatic example, see this via Insty.) We all wear out and die, but there aren't many countries where my 83 year-old Mom would be playing tennis with her new shoulder, hips and knee, her synthetic mitral heart valve, her pacemaker, her cataract surgeries and her hormone replacement. She calls herself The Bionic Mom. She is willing to die, but while she is alive she wants to live: play tennis, work in her gardens, go to the ballet, sit on her volunteer boards, cook for my Dad, and go to Europe every August. What is that worth in $ terms? Of course they are on Medicare, but they would gladly buy private insurance instead.

Re the trial lawyers, where else in the world do you get a $7000 work-up if you walk into the ER with a migraine headache? Where else in the world do obstetricians pay $350,000/year in malpractice insurance because the law permits suits for bad results, not just practice errors (like amputating the wrong leg)?

If something needs fixing, it's the latter, not the former.

UPDATE: The VA health care system is still not fixed.

GA Tech robberies of students will continue

as long as students remain sitting ducks known by all the local bad guys to be legally disarmed and local and campus police remain indifferent and/or incompetent. It's the same at other college and university campuses. Not very reassuring to parents about to send their kids off to college. Maybe I should've made my son take karate after all.

Today's meditation

"Why would anyone advocate dismantling our health care system for something that won't work and will further bankrupt our nation?" Good question. Doug Ross has some answers (via Maggie's Farm). The administration is lying and the press is covering up for them.

Why?

Related? What my son and I watched yesterday: "The Manchurian Candidate." As Kevin Hassett wrote, "It's clear that President Obama wants the best for our country. That makes it all the more puzzling that he would legislate like a Manchurian Candidate ."

Why?

It's not like there's not plenty of refuting evidence out there proving that government-run anything is the worst possible solution. George Gilder, to name just one, has been writing about the same issues for years, as in this excellent book that will give any reader deja vu: Recapturing the Spirit of Enterprise. Even laypeople and non-economists like me and Barack Obama can easily understand these arguments and evidence.

Why do these byzantine, statist schemes to increase government power and repress the individual's freedoms keep re-emerging in our country's legislatures? Why do our representatives persist over decades to toy with dismantling what works in order to institute what clearly won't--now to the point where they don't even read the hundreds of pages of gobbledygook in the rushed bills they pass? Why has our nation elected someone hellbent on pushing through this kind of scheme without caring who will be hurt, what will be lost, how much it costs?

Why?

Because they can?

Because we let them?

UPDATE: George Will sums it up and says: Grab Occam's razor and just give the uninsured money. It makes sense on every level except to politicians who don't get any payoff for themselves from that. Our politicians now have the entitlement attitude that a salary and a pension for themselves is not enough compensation for their awesomeness. (Why do I keep wanting to yell at politicians, "Get a real job, you bums!")

UPDATE: "The Three Rules of Obama" --the most congent, pithy summation of Barack Obama as a politician and President as I've read yet, by Michael Barone; read this and you'll know exactly what's going on (via Neal Boortz, who also points out that Cheerios is now a drug. Government run amok. My head hurts!). Next up on the life-imitates-art reading list: 1984.

Open letters

My tendonitis/carpel tunnel symptoms are improving, but I am still taking it easy. Happily I find others carrying on the vital work of offering views and voices to the public dialog.

Bookworm writes the open letter to the Iranian people I'd like to endorse. I wish our President Obama had said something to the people of Iran like this.

Glenn Beck highlights an open letter to our nation's leadership which seems to have captured a lot of attention. It's a bit verbose and I don't agree with every point, but it certainly echoes a lot of my feelings. Especially this:

Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.

I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. ...

Listen to Uncle Milton

I like Milton Friedman's prescription for U.S. health care reform. Makes the most sense to me, like most of his advice. (Via Maggie's Farm). That's why politicians won't do it--they're not in power to make sense or serve the country, and many of them actually don't even care about doing what's right. They're in power to stay in power for their own gain, while masquerading as the saviors of the little guy (to win votes).

Sickening. And it's so obvious--they are crafting "health care reform" that won't even apply to themselves. How much longer will the U.S. population consent to being fleeced?

Let's see Ted Kennedy put on a months-long waitlist for brain cancer scans and treatments--or denied treatment altogether on the basis of his advanced age and unhealthy lifestyle. It would be a good lesson to us all in how the proposed socialized health care reform would work.

Afterword: Entrenched oldstyle politicians are similar to entrenched oldstyle Hollywood moguls who just don't get it. But happily I see many alternative voices raised, and I think a new corner is about to be turned.

Best way to start a Saturday mornng

before heading down to the river for a walk:

The latest from JibJab: "He's come to save the day!"

Yes!

More chickens coming home to roost....

...in the Age of Obama:

Lloyd's Banking Group in the U.K. telling Americans to take their money elsewhere. Also Brits who visit the U.S. for any longer than a normal holiday (via Drudge Report). Guess that Bermuda solution and that iPod for the Queen (before stiffing her at Normandy) ruffled some feathers after all. People (once our allies) are giving up showing civil good will toward our neophyte cool, cool leader. They are starting to realize what The Obama Touch(TM) turns everything to, and the wise ones want none of it.

High school teacher teaches both sides of the issues, gets fired for "not fitting in"

This is astonishing and sad: Tim Latham, a public high school government/history teacher in Lawrence Kansas, had his contract dropped (not renewed) for not being an Obama supporter. An unfounded report by a biased liberal student, a few snarky, politicized encounters with other staff members during the past Presidential election, maintaining a website deemed "too patriotic" by school staff members, and his reasoned decision not to make his students watch Obama's inauguration speech were all it took for him to be shown the door (in violation of due process, it seems).

I think the only thing unusual about this case is that, at the urging of his supporters, Mr. Latham has decided to speak up and protest, bringing attention to the situation.

If I were a parent with a student in that school I would be very glad to have the situation and the politicized nature of the faculty and administration there brought to my attention. I think I would be seeking alternative schools (or assuming the responsibilities of homeschooling) for my children. I would certainly be attending the upcoming school board meetings to show my displeasure as a taxpayer and a parent. What kind of inferior, stunted education (or rather, indoctrination) are the students in that school getting, if the faculty and administration are all in ideological lockstep? (So much for the virtues of true "diversity" and "open communication" so supposedly admired by liberals.)

I doubt the left-leaning ACLU or the NEA will get enthused or involved on behalf of this teacher. Too bad FIRE only handles cases of university and college persecution--but they've got their hands filled there. Maybe Mr. Latham and his supporters should contact Parents and Students for Academic Freedom.


Support Mr. Latham and join the Facebook protest here.

Hat tip to Clavdivs.

How to think about our economy and the crisis

Alas, we can't ask Milton Friedman for advice or analysis anymore, but the next best thing is to ask his longtime coauthor, Anna Schwartz, who here reveals her disappointment with the performance of the Federal Reserve. More here at City Journal. (Via The Corner).

Or if this kind of discussion is a little too technical for you, you can just go directly to the visuals:

The Obama Stimulus: Predictions vs. Reality

And now we want to let this administration take over our entire health care system? Based on what evidence of demonstrated competency?

It's official (and depressing): we're being governed by a liar

As Victor Davis Hanson accurately points out and builds the case (do read the whole thing), not since Nixon was in office has the U.S. been in the grip of such deceit at the highest levels:

Why has President Obama developed a general disregard for the truth, in a manner far beyond typical politicians who run one way and govern another, or hide failures and broadcast successes?

First, he has confidence that the media will not be censorious and will simply accept his fiction as fact. A satirist, after all, could not make up anything to match the obsequious journalists who bow to their president, proclaim him a god, and receive sexual-like tingles up their appendages.

Second, Obama is a postmodernist. He believes that all truth is relative, and that assertions gain or lose credibility depending on the race, class, and gender of the speaker. In Obama’s case, his misleading narrative is intended for higher purposes. Thus it is truthful in a way that accurate facts offered by someone of a different, more privileged class and race might not be.

Third, Obama talks more than almost any prior president, weighing in on issues from Stephen Colbert’s haircut, to Sean Hannity’s hostility, to the need to wash our hands. In Obama’s way of thinking, his receptive youthful audiences are proof of his righteousness and wisdom — and empower him to pontificate on matters he knows nothing about.

Finally, our president is a product of a multicultural education: Facts either cannot be ascertained or do not matter, given that the overriding concern is to promote an equality of result among various contending groups. That is best done by inflating the aspirations of those without power, and deflating the “dominant narratives” of those with it.

When you realize what kind of man now wields so much power over the personal lives of Americans, it makes you lose your appetite, not to mention worry about what permanent damage can be done to unravel and degrade our kids' future in the next four years. And with the "cartoonish" media in the bag for Obama, and the still-honest investigators being fired by Obama, where will our hope for the truth lie in the Post-Nixon Age of Obama?

I'm voting for venues like this one. And then, there are always those things called "citizens." A few of them are waking up: "I had to take off work to do this but freedom isn't free."


(Via Bookworm)

Enforced vacation

I am still having trouble with pinched nerves in my typing limbs and so will be spending less time at the computer until they improve. In the meantime I couldn't recommend a better political commentary site to visit than Power Line. It will keep you up to speed on current developments with measured, thoughtful analysis. And for whatever's going on of interest, there's always Instapundit. And Bookworm remains my favorite Marin (and Marine) conservative, along with Victor Davis Hanson, holding down the fort in California.

I have to limit my websurfing to essentials until further notice.

Was he drunk at the time or was it just wishful thinking?

What will our President do next?? (Via Power Line) --

In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” He sought to downplay the expectations of the speech, but he said he hoped the address would raise awareness about Muslims.

Um...couldn't this be construed as misleading the Muslim world?

“I think the most important thing I want to tell young people is that, regardless of your faith, those who build as opposed to those who destroy I think leave a lasting legacy, not only for themselves but also for their nations,” Mr. Obama said. “And the impulse towards destruction as opposed to how can we study science and mathematics and restore the incredible scientific and knowledge — the output that came about during centuries of Islamic culture.”

As Robert Spencer points out:

Here is a What-Is-Obama-Smoking? Alert:

Indonesia: 200 million Muslims. India: 156 million Muslims. Pakistan: 150 million Muslims.

United States: 2.3 million Muslims (according to the Pew Research Center).

The man, who lectures America to "educate ourselves more effectively on Islam” is totally, embarrassingly, publicly-on-an-international-stage clueless.

UPDATE: "Does Obama know what he is talking about, or does he feel free to take great liberties with the truth?"

I'm pretty certain by now it is the latter. Like most dyed-in-the-wool socialists, Marxists and other utopian dreamers, Obama is perfectly willing to obscure the truth in order to achieve his ends, no matter who or what may stand in his way. His ambitions are clear. I just keep wondering if my liberal friends and relatives who voted for him fully understand what he wants to achieve, and if they really do approve of the consequences.

Monday morning summer playtime

I'm off to the waterpark today with a vanload of kids. But here are two videos I think everyone should watch:

The Uninsured in America

-- Who are the 45 million uninsured in America? As "health care reform" looms, everyone should take a closer look at these facts, especially those who think our health care system in this country is "broken." As it has been said, "If you can get something for free why would you buy insurance?"

Why Are Conservatives So Mean?

-- Today's companion piece to the above. Why would anybody want to deny kindness to their fellow Americans anyway?