My Beauty Best Teacher

On the right sidebar of my blog (under a 'Donate' button) I have a description of Bizarro World, also known as Htrae, which is a fictional planet in the DC comics universe. Htrae is home to Bizarro and his companions, who are ruled by the Bizarro Code, which states that you should do the opposite of everything.

For example, if a past US President was actually a forward-thinking President who embraced new technology, a resident of Bizarro world would give a speech suggesting that this President was the opposite of that. Like President Obama just did:

President Obama got a laugh out of a Maryland audience on Thursday when he mocked the Republican Party in a speech, comparing their skepticism of alternative energy to the “Flat Earth Society” in Christopher Columbus’ day and President Rutherford B. Hayes’ apparent dismissal of the telephone. But while Obama thinks the GOP is in need of a science lesson, he may need to bone up on history himself.

In mocking the GOP, Obama cited an anecdote about Hayes in which, upon using the telephone for the first time, he said, “It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?”

But Nan Card, curator of manuscripts at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Ohio, told TPM that the nation’s 19th president was being unfairly tagged as a Luddite.

“He really was the opposite,” she said. “He had the first telephone in the White House. He also had the first typewriter in the White House. Thomas Edison came to the White House as well and displayed the phonograph. Photographing people who came to the White House and visited at dinners and receptions was also very important to him.”...

....“He was pretty technology-oriented for the time,” Card said. “Between the telephone, the telegraph, the phonograph and photography, I think he was pretty much on the cutting edge.”...

President Obama was suggesting that Republicans are anti-technology for opposing windmills and not supporting railroads and and for denying that the globe is rapidly rising in temperature because of actions of mankind, and attempting to make his point by comparing the Republicans of today to past backwardness. But as usual, the reality is the exact opposite of everything that he said.

The reality is that President Obama is pushing for energy sources that are older than modern oil and nuclear which he opposes, that President Obama's attempt to force us to railroads and away from cars it the kind of anti-progress sentiment that one could expect from a Luddite, and that his theories about global warming have long-since been discredited by now, and that his examples of backwardness are in fact either made-up or forward looking in reality.

One has to wonder sometimes if my crazy joke that Bizarro world is real and that residents of this world have been flooding into the United States through some sort of interworld rift is really a joke or just may be true. I struggle to explain how so much of what Obama says is just so sheer the opposite of reality- on so many issues, so many policies, and so many 'statements of fact,' on further research not only is he wrong but he has been proven to be direct opposite of correct.

I call on all good Americans to resist these Bizarro's and their Bizarro agenda, and vote Republican in 2012.

On the lighter side of things, apparently you and I are working hard right now to help re-elect President Barack Obama, donating millions through taxes to his campaign to help transport security vehicles, armored limousines, and communications gear into cities ahead of his various campaign appearances. President Obama has decided to fly around the nation giving speech after speech instead of working hard to rebuild our economy, right-size government, lower the deficit, bring efficiency to operations, root out waste and fraud, and working to strike the compromises and deals needed to reform our bankrupt entitlement programs- and you're gonna pay for it.

Via The Daily Caller, Obama campaign gets more Air Force aircraft:

The U.S. Air Force is pulling nine cargo aircraft from military operations to support President Barack Obama’s stepped-up visits to campaign events.

The five medium-capacity C-130s and four heavyweight C-17s will be used to ferry security vehicles, armored limousines and communications gear into cities ahead of Obama’s campaign appearances.

In the months before November, the president is expected to fly into multiple cities per week, and speak at multiple sites per day. On Mar. 8, for example, the president will fly to Richmond, and then drive over to a Rolls-Royce aircraft-parts factory. That evening, he’ll fly down to Houston, Texas.

His wife, Vice President Joe Biden and many of his cabinet secretaries are using the Air Force’s fleet of VIP aircraft to visit more states as the election season speeds up.

The nine cargo aircraft will begin operations in April, said Maj. Michelle Lai, communications officer for the Air Force’s 89th Airlift Wing. “They’ll stand down in November 2012,” she said...

...The cargo aircraft have been used to fly troops, weapons and supplies into U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Iraq and other sites in the Middle East during the decade-long operations in Afghanistan and Iraq...

...The squadrons will supplement the existing fleet of VIP passenger aircraft at Andrews. Those aircraft include two giant Boeing 747s — which are tagged Air Force One while they’re carrying the president — as well as five Boeing 757 wide-body passenger jets, and 11 Gulfstream executive jets.

Those passenger aircraft are already helping shuttling cabinet secretaries to their election-related events, many of which are in critical swing-states...

So, to sum up, rather than protecting our nation, or carrying food to poor starving children, or just sitting and not wasting expensive jet fuel, the President has ordered that military assets be used to supplement his already extensive fleet in ferrying people and supplies around the nation, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands.

It's kind of hard for liberals and progressives to argue that President Obama's actions as demonstrated here are anything other than wrong. On the other hand, I kind of feel like this borders on criminal- it's the utter misuse of government resources to support a person's political ambitions and fly friends and family around the nation in taxpayer paid luxury.

Here are ten consequences of a victory by President Barack Obama in November 2012 over Mitt Romney:

1. Obamacare will not be repealed. It is already being demonstrated to raise costs of healthcare and as its taxes and regulations sink deeper through the system, it will cause our healthcare system to increasingly be in a crisis, likely resulting in greater and greater government control to 'fix', until we have a massively inefficient and expensive and bad healthcare system.
2. The unprecedented levels of spending in Obama’s first four years will become the new floor, as America continues its experiment in reckless spending and adding up massive debt. The new normal of debt that Obama has established- $1 trillion a year of living beyond our means as a nation- will erode the value of our currency, lead to higher interest rates, lessen our national security, and eventually cause our nation to collapse. Four more years at our current levels might just about do it.
3. Job creators will face massive tax increases and more Americans will come off the tax rolls—resulting in fewer citizens with a stake in keeping taxes low and more with a stake in protecting benefits. The Bush tax cuts and other tax cuts may be allowed to expire while Obama and the Democrats who still support his failing policies will push for more taxes, fees, and fines to pay for the exploding cost of employing more and more government workers and providing ever more 'free' services and products to citizens.
4. Government dependency, already at record levels, will continue to grow. Based on the results of his first 4 years as President in which record numbers of people went on welfare, more people will go on food stamps and bridge cards and lifelong unemployment and other government programs. They will not gain job skills and any skills they have will be eroded by time, rendering them unemployable, unhappy, and dependent on elites above to provide them with what they need to live. They'll become slaves to the state, living in permanent poverty, and I don't think we can afford four more years of accepting this.
5. Four more years that we have already lost in dealing with the looming and inevitable entitlement crisis will become eight. The reforms needed for strong and healthy Social Security and Medicare programs  will need to be in place many years to avoid the collapse that is coming, and the delay of electing Obama on a myth of hope and change has already set our nation back a critical 4 years- another 4 years of Obama might change the conversation from 'implement reforms to keep these programs' to 'its a crisis and we're facing a collapse.'
6. Obama, unworried about the impact of gas and electricity prices on his reelection, will finally wage the regulatory war on fossil fuels the Left demands. As Obama stated in March, no President wanting to win re-election wants high gas prices- but a President not needing to win re-election because he is a lame duck for four years will not need to worry about high gas prices, and he is sure to wage a war to drive up the cost of gas. The cost of gasoline is a very regressive tax, which means when it goes up it hurts the poor more than the rich, and the effects of 4 more years of Obama will be a more unequal society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
7. He will unleash the Environmental Protection Agency to impose crushing new burdens on U.S. business. Already the EPA is an agency just barely under control, in every way it can waging its green communist war against freedom and liberty and property. Another 4 years of executive orders and ever expanding budgets will make this agency uncontrollable and its regulations and policies will be a corrupting influence on any potential economic growth.
8. President Obama will continue and heighten his administration’s assault on religious freedom, expanding it into other areas in his effort to wipe out the influence of Christians in our nation. Already liberals and progressives speak about removing the 'tax-exempt' status from Churches, closing down all religious schools, and increasing the wall of separation that already exists between church and state. Eventually, once organized religion- mainly Christianity, especially Catholicism-  is walled off and isolated, personalized and demonized, he can finally kill God and replace him with himself or one of his idols.
9. Another 4 more years of Obama will gut the Defense Department, with cuts so deep that America will no longer be a superpower. Already under Obama we have abandoned our long-held policy of fighting two wars; another 4 years of Obama may lead to our inability to fight one war successfully. While the military is cut, Obama as commander-in-chief focuses on making it more gay-friendly and more green, and another four more years of this may result in the US losing its ability to protect its citizens and interests around the globe.
10. Obama could have the opportunity to appoint more Supreme Court justices, and we have seen from President Obama's past two picks for the judicial branch that he does not even pretend to try to appoint moderates and independents, rather fighting hard to advance and appoint the most partisan and extreme judges in our system. If he is given another four more years by winning re-election in November, we could be looking at a majority of the court that agrees with current liberal Justices who argue that the US Constitution is inferior to the constitutions of other states and that we should use international law instead of US law when making decisions for our nation. This extreme and rogue and partisan Court of unaccountable and unelected lawyers will be a great threat to your life, liberty, and property.

You and your family and friends should be opposing President Barack Obama and working to remove him from power because of consequences above, which are all policy options that President Obama freely chooses to engage in. Most of these policies he pushed for when his party controlled all of Congress, and even today his party still controls the Senate. No one forced him to adopt the policies above, which will have the logical and reasonable consequences I detailed. Racism, partisanship, extremism, and dislike for the guy personally are not to be found in my analysis above. Rather my analysis is based on logic, history, reason, and results, from those principles we can see the consequences of President Barack Obama winning re-election in 2012, and knowing this, we should all oppose him and vote for his likely Republican opponent Mitt Romney.

UPDATE: Thank you for linking Right Wing News and Adrienne's Catholic Corner!

Sandra Fluke is not demanding that the government provide free cough drops and viagra to men- but Remy is.

Conservatives are both funnier and more intelligent than liberals, and as evidence I submit the following music video from Remy, in which he crashes Sandra Fluke's Congressional testimony to demand a mandate for his cough drop addiction. Brought to you by Reason.tv and running under 2 minutes, it makes an utter mockery of liberals like President Barack Obama who suggest that taxpayers should provide birth control of any sort to any female on demand and that to question this sort of give-away is to want women to go back to the dark ages.

Laugh and enjoy:

Don't buy the narrative that the main-stream media is selling regarding the Republican Primary- the truth of the matter is that Mitt Romney is not having trouble putting away a weak field of Republicans because he is unlikable and doesn't connect with voters, but rather he is doing pretty much exactly as good a job as other past non-incumbents did in close primary races and is doing a good job of winning over key voters and will soon with the nomination over a highly qualified and determined primary field. Although the liberals and progressives and elites in the media want you to think otherwise, analysis and data (as usual) destroys their uneducated arguments and shallow judgements.

Via Powerlineblog comes this excellent analysis from John Hinderaker called THE MORNING AFTER:

...So Romney has won 56% of all of the delegates that have been chosen so far. Normally that would be considered a strong performance, but Mitt struggles to get respect from the commentariat.... But by historic standards, there is no reason to scoff at Romney’s performance so far. After Super Tuesday in 2008, John McCain had won 740 of the 1,235 delegates that had been selected, or 60%. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama had a hair over 50% of the delegates, leading Hillary Clinton 965-951. Were reporters then talking about the Democratic contest “plodding on” as Obama “failed to land a knockout blow?” Of course not: they thought the contest was a thrilling one, because they liked both candidates.

Or consider 1992, when the Democratic presidential field was considered so weak that the candidates were called the “seven dwarves.” Bill Clinton, who we now know was a politician of genius, won that race. But as of early March 1992, Clinton was running behind “uncommitted” and, of the committed delegates, he had won just 57%. By early April, Clinton had 68% of the committed delegates (a much lower percentage if uncommitted delegates were counted) against some of the weakest competition ever: Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown....

...So by historic standards, Romney is within the ballpark of what one would expect from a non-incumbent candidate who goes on to win his party’s nomination.

The truth of the matter is that Mitt Romney is winning against a very good field of candidates- a two-term Senator who is a gifted speaker and has a solid person life named Rick Santorum (a resume that is superior to President Obama in 2008), a former Speaker of the House of Representatives named Newt Gingrich (a resume that is superior to President Obama in 2008), and a long-time Congressman who is a veteran and doctor and has a committed following (a resume that is superior to President Obama in 2008). And Romney has already knocked out of the race several other good candidates- the Governor of booming Texas named Rick Perry (who has a resume that was superior to President Obama in 2008) and a former Governor and Ambassador named John Huntsman (who has a resume that was superior to President Obama in 2008).

This is a strong field, especially at a time period when the Republican Party is transitioning away from the old guard liberal establishment of Bush and McCain and Dole towards the new conservative talent of Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindhal and Sarah Palin and others. The GOP is at an odd place where the Reagan and conservative revolution generation is too old or too discredited and the new tea party generation is too young and untested- and yet a guy like Mitt Romney has a strong resume and background and talents that has enabled him to ably bridge this gap.

Even in a rather down year, the GOP has a wealth of talent and ideas to offer to contrast to the tired and old partisanship and personal attacks that President Obama is offering, and Mitt Romney has connected with voters and fought a national and organized campaign to take a solid and commanding primary lead. This is the narrative, based on an analysis of the resumes of his opponents and the delegate math in comparison to other primaries, and this is the narrative that the media is refusing to tell because of its sloppy reporting, personal bias, and lack of quality research.

Mitt Romney is doing a great job of rising to the top of a group of able Republicans who would all do a better job of being President than Barack Obama. This is the true narrative of the Republican Primary race of 2012.

Full Disclosure: I endorsed Mitt Romney recently. See my post Endorsement: Vote for Mitt Romney for GOP Nominee.

Over the last several years, I have been fighting my own brand of war against those people who are the enemies of freedom and liberty. My style of fighting is to write about freedom and liberty; to discuss and expand on the ideas found in our founding documents; and attempt to apply to modern day policies the principles of protection of life, support of liberty, and protection of property. And those who oppose me have also been fighting me.

But unlike my style of warfare, the thugs who oppose me rely on intimidation, threats, attempts to damage my property, and efforts to silence me. And I am just the sort of target that these thugs like- although elected officials and big-time bloggers are good targets too, they are able to fight back and could become martyrs to the cause, but me and those who support the elected officials and bigger bloggers and private citizens who are attacked are one removed from the dispute and smaller so make much better targets for the thugs and cowards out there who disagree with our views and policy positions.

Although there is no way to compare what I have faced to the attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and others, being a secondary target does not mean that I haven't been attacked too.

In recent years, the worst attacks that I have suffered have come after I have supported and defended those who were attacked by liberal thugs. My defense of the Koch brothers from the President Barack Obama's orchestrated attacks on them caused left-wing fascists to respond by attempting to shut down my blog. The vile creeps even went so far to write a letter to the employer of one of my loyal readers- they thought they were targeting me- as they attempted to respond to differences in views by causing the loss of employment and income. They didn't like the fact that I defended private citizens from slanderous attacks by the President of our nation, and responded to it by engaging in slanderous and personal attacks on me.

Another round of attacks came on me after I defended the tea party on several blogs and forums, responding with reasoning and calls for a more adult discussion to those who called those who supported tea party views and ideas various names. Those who disagreed with my views- those on the left who call themselves progressives or liberals but in reality are simply fascists- responded by filling up the comment sections of all of my posts with their various rants and foul language, and because I didn't want my blog to be a forum for their hate I was forced to disable the comment section on my blog.

One of the most clever attacks on me came after I defended in blogs and in forums and on social media Rocky Raczkowski, who was tea-party favorite and GOP nominee in 2010 for Michigan's 9th District. Someone emailed me pretending to agree with my comments and asked questions about the advertisers on my blog, and the next day my advertisers dropped me and confiscated my money due to what they said was fraud. I'm not going to say exactly what happened (I don't want to give the thugs ammunition), but the result was a loss of income for me and the loss of a good sum of money (Google never responded to my inquiries or pleas for reconsideration).

These attacks on me are not isolated to just me. Over at Legal Insurrection, Will has a story up that rings very close to my own experiences, called Welcome to total political war:

...I’m not talking about the attempt to get advertisers to stop advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s show, or Fox News, although that would be bad enough. I’m talking about the second-tier of the warfare, the attempt to intimidate those removed by one or more degrees of separation from the dispute, and to use them as tools against the target.

We have seen it a number of times in the past couple of years.

When King & Spalding agreed to represent the U.S. House of Representative after Obama changed positions and announced that the Justice Department no longer would defend DOMA in court, there were not only protests against King & Spalding, but threats to picket and protest clients of the firm who had nothing to do with the dispute. The threat that clients of the firm who were completely unconnected to the dispute would be harrasseed was enough to cause the firm to withdraw the representation.

Similarly, when the new Rhode Island Attorney General announced that he would cooperate with the federal goverment in the enforcement of federal immigration laws, protesters not only invaded the lobby of his offices, they picketed his house and confronted neighbors about the issue. Dragging his neighbors into a dispute which had nothing to do with them did not cause the RI AG to back down, although not for lack of trying.

Which brings me to the present dispute with Rush Limbaugh, and radio show host Kim Komando, who has a very well-known computer talk show. What did or does Komando have to do with the dispute? Nothing, except that one or more of the advertisers targeted by the anti-Limbaugh groups also advertises on Komando’s show. Komando received a flood of e-mails demanding that she drop the advertisers....

...What is happening goes beyond Obama’s call for people to argue with their neighbors and get in their faces. It goes far beyond Bill Clinton’s politics of personal destruction directed at accusers, and beyond name-calling by right wing pundits.

This total war, in which no one is allowed to be non-political and neighbors and clients become mere pressure points, is a dangerous development.

This is indeed total war, and that realization has only slowly dawned on me over the years that I have been writing on this blog. It is scary, but not surprising- most of humanity today lives in a state of fear and oppression from tyrants, and for most of human history humanity has lived in fear and oppression from tyrants.

It is in the worst nature of people to attempt to oppress others and use them as slaves- use their labor and intelligence and skills and drive to provide them with things they did not earn- food, clothing, shelter, medicine, drugs, influence, power, money, loans, etc. The worst nature of people is to react to arguments and reasoning with intimidation, threats, and personal attacks. And the worst nature of people is to take that which they did not earn, suppress and lessen the freedom and liberty of others, and if possible choke the very life out of those who oppose them.

It's a total war and it's getting worse as our opponents grow more bold and get closer to winning the war. I can only hope that in 2012, you and your friends and family recognize that we're at war and take the proper steps, because the last time the American people pretended that they weren't at war, we saw the error of that thinking on September 11.

UPDATE: Thank you for linking to this post Conservatives on Fire and Fuzzy Logic!

If someone has been wronged or there is some sort of problem, a personal phone call from the President of the United States can be an important piece to improved understanding of the problems and can help to get past any sort of communication issues that are out there. The office of the President is one that is filled with prestige and honor, and a phone call from him that carries the weight of that august office can go far in putting pressure on people to overcome problems or calm down inflamed emotions and right wrongs. But the President's time is valuable and important, so it understandable if his personal touch isn't applied to every situation in the form of a personal phone call and it is okay if he sometimes waits several days before talking to people who are important or who have been wronged.

The important quality for the President of the United States to have is the judgement and decision-making skills to determine who he should take the time to call and when he should decide to just sit it out and not get involved. It is important that the President have the sound judgement to focus on the important issues facing our nation and use his office and the power that goes with it to improve situations and smooth past difficult issues. It is important that the President be able to decide when to use his office to bring light to issues and focus public attention on them with a phone call.

President Barack Obama (Democrat) lacks sound judgement and proper decision making when it comes to making personal phone calls and when to make them.

On April 20, 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded, resulting in a severe oil spill from the ruptured well. BP, which had employed Deepwater Horizon to drill on its Macondo Prospect, immediately began to work with the a range of U.S. federal government agencies and assets to try to reduce the flow of oil into the Gulf, figure out what happened, and try to assess blame and responsibility for the large oil spill. There were a lot of moving and complicated aspects of the US government tied up in this effort, and to coordinate them and make sure that they were used properly at some point the President of the United States should have talked with top level decision makers in BP, including its CEO Tony Hayward.

But for over two months, President Obama did not talk to the CEO of BP and did not make a personal phone call to him to discuss efforts to limit the oil spill, to figure out why the oil spill happened, or to figure out how to overcome the important issues that the spill brought up. This represented an important failure in judgement and a bad decision; a phone call between the President and the CEO of BP could have resulted in more coordination between BP and the US and more understanding of how and why the accident happened, resulting in less oil spilled, less wildlife killed, and a quicker resumption of drilling in the gulf and the lower oil prices and greater economic growth that would have resulted form this. Obama eventually did meet with the CEO, but it took him over two months to do so.

In contrast, two days after radio show host Rush Limbaugh called community activist Sandra Fluke a slut, President Obama took time out of his busy day to make a personal phone call to her to "offer his support to her, he wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and to thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy."

The quick personal phone call, especially in light of his two month long wait before calling the CEO of BP after the oil spill earlier, and the fact that he would use the office of the President to call a private citizen and apologize to her for the comments of a private radio host represents a failure of President Barack Obama's judgement and decision making with who receives a personal phone call from the President of the United States. His office phone, rather than being used to coordinate the assets of the United States or figure out how to avoid oil spills in the future, was used instead to make a quick phone call to a private citizen to give official support for their views and to side with her in a controversy between her and a radio host who is trying to generate ratings.

President Obama, rather than following important events around the world and with our economy, clearly is just sitting in the White House listening to talk radio and making phone calls to people mentioned on talk radio stations. The President did not call the CEO of BP earlier about the oil spill, even though he was called many names by bloggers, radio show hosts, and comedians, further demonstrating his poor judgement and poor decision making skills.

Our nation needs someone who understands how and when and why the President of the United States should call people, and these two examples clearly indicate that Barack Obama is lacking in judgement and decision making. We need to- and can- replace him in 2012 with someone with better judgement and decision-making skills, someone who understands that the CEO of BP should have been called in two days and that a private citizen who is called a name by a radio show host should not receive a phone call from the President.

Bizarro World escapee Barack Obama (currently President of the United States) has called for an end to end $4 billion in subsidies for small companies that produce oil and gas for consumers, saying “You can either stand up for the oil companies, or you can stand up for the American people."

This latest effort to raise the costs of doing business on oil and gas companies is in response to the soaring price of gasoline in the United States, a development that will choke off the feeble recovery this nation has experienced under Obama's leadership.

Despite extensive research, it is still unclear exactly what Obama would cut that adds up to '$4 billion in subsidies', but based on past proposals Obama would likely cut out tax breaks that oil and gas companies receive for buying more efficient refining and industrial equipment, for creating and keeping manufacturing jobs in America, for costs related to repairing wells for safety, for encouraging more environmentally-friendly oil extraction, and for searching out and discovering new sources of oil.

Even though Obama pretends to support all of the stuff that the tax breaks go for, he doesn't like oil companies for some reason, and so he is going to make it more expensive for oil companies to do business in the hopes to lowering the costs of gasoline at the pump. If this makes no sense to you, you just have to think like Barack Obama and remember that up is down, good is bad, successful is wrong, laziness is a virtue, higher costs to produce somehow make a product cheaper, and demonizing others is okay if you're doing it but wrong for others to do.

President Obama though does not demand an end to all subsidies- only for an end for subsidies for companies that he personally does not like. Obama practices crony capitalism, whereby companies that give him political support in the form of campaign contributions get large subsidies, and companies who give money to his opponents (like the Koch brothers) are demonized and attacked. In the game of political power, President Obama intends to win so that he and his family and supporters and friends can benefit financially. Oil and gas companies oppose him because they want to provide cheap energy for poor people and manufacturing while making profits that are then distributed to shareholders and investors and they see Obama's policies as running counter to these ideas, and for their opposition Obama attacks them. So-called 'green companies' on the other hand cough up money to him and so receive substantially greater subsidies.

To wit, from John Hinderaker at Powerlineblog:

As the graph shows, in terms of per unit production, solar and wind companies receive considerably more subsidies than oil and gas, making support for these 'green' industries considerably more expensive, and thus wasting valuable resources like time and money that could have been spent curing cancer or building flying cars. It is not efficient or resource-usage friendly to support solar and wind energy, and yet Obama does, because executives and employees who run and work for these companies provide him with considerable campaign finances, which he then uses to maintain power for himself and redirect greater sums of money to his picked friends in those industries.

In this coming election, the left-wing that has seized control of your parent's Democratic Party is going to try to make this election about how Romney is successful, about how Santorum has good moral values, about how conservatives want people to pay their own way in the world, or about how some people make money providing cheap and efficient energy. They are going to make these things into bad things, and then make you feel bad if you write that they are actually good things, and they are going to pressure companies and individuals to say what the political power wants them to say. You are going to have to ignore all of this, and instead vote against tyranny- you need to vote Republican in the coming election and send Barack Obama back to Bizarro World where he belongs.

Via RightWingNews I read this piece by Michelle Malkin called The Autoworkers Obama Left Behind that I think is important for you to remember in the face of the propaganda that the Obama administration is going to churn out:

The White House fairy tale about the Happily Ever After Auto Bailout is missing a crucial, bloody page. While President Obama bragged about “standing by American workers” at a rowdy United Auto Workers meeting Tuesday, he failed to acknowledge how the Chicago-style deal threw tens of thousands of nonunion autoworkers under the bus.

In a campaign pep rally/sermon billed as a “policy speech,” Obama nearly broke his arm patting himself on the back for placing his “bets” (read: our money) on the $85 billion federal auto industry rescue. “Three years later,” he crowed, “that bet is paying off for America.”...

...The bailout pain was not distributed equally. It was redistributed politically.

Bondholders standing up for their property and contractual rights got shortchanged and demonized personally by the president. Dealers and suppliers faced closures based on political connections and lobbying clout, rather than neutral efficiency evaluations. And as I first reported in September 2010, in the rush to nationalize the auto industry and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members’ costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts.

These forgotten nonunion pensioners (who worked for the Delphi/GM auto parts company) lost all of their health and life insurance benefits. Hailing from the economically devastated Rust Belt — northeast Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states — the Delphi workers had devoted decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees. Some have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish. They’ve banded together to seek justice in court and on Capitol Hill under the banner of the Delphi Salaried Retiree Association.

Through two costly years of litigation and investigation, the Delphi workers have exposed how the stacked White House Auto Task Force schemed with union bosses to “cherry pick” (one Obama official’s own words) which financial obligations the new Government Motors company would assume and which they would abandon based on their political expedience. Obama’s own former auto czar Steve Rattner admitted in his recent memoir that “attacking the union’s sacred cow” could “jeopardize” the auto bailout deal....

...As ebullient UAW officials hooted and hollered on Tuesday, Obama smugly attacked Republicans for “anti-worker policies” and their “same old you’re-on-your-own philosophy.” The Delphi workers know better: One union’s government-subsidized, government-manipulated “success story” is the rest of the workforce’s nightmare.

In Michigan, I daily hear the meme that "Obama saved the auto industry," and it bothers me, because in spite of so many factually wrong aspects of that statement people still believe it and are going to vote on it in November. The truth matters.

It matters that the TARP program was sold to the public and passed by Congress to save our banking industry, and then was turned into a slush fund to bail out politically favored industries and businesses. George W. Bush proposed saving GM and Chrysler, and I didn't agree with it then- there were two many questions as to why those companies were picked to be saved by taxpayer cash, why smaller companies didn't receive bailouts of their own, and the effect that bailing out a few companies would have on the rest of the larger un-bailed out economy. Still, Bush's program was small and would follow established laws and standards for bankruptcy, so it was bad, but not corrupt.

It matters that President Obama then took Bush's program and expanded it and turned it from a 'bailout to save the auto industries' into a 'government takes over GM and gives half of it to the union and gives Chrysler a lot of cash to get bought by an Italian company.' And rather than simply giving the money out as a loan with conditions, like Bush was going to do, Obama and his officials instead made far more daily decisions and played political games with the closing of dealerships and who got pensions- they played political games at a time when our nation was facing a deep crisis. That was gangster capitalism at its finest.

It matters that General Motors Corporation then went bankrupt, taking down thousands of properties and ruining whole communities, while dealerships were shuttered and thousands lost their jobs. This was 'you're-on-your-own' philosophy at work, only now instead of it being free people making free decisions on their own, it was Obama and his officials who decided who would be 'on-their-own' and who would get government help and support. Even today, the company that the government had the most contact with and control over- General Motors- lags its competitors who had less of the stink of government on them and less Obama influence. That matters.

In this coming election, it is going to be hard work to correct those who spin the lie that "Obama saved the auto industry", but we need to, because the truth is out there.

Although many liberals and progressives (and those who unwittingly do their business for them) are going to try to continue to extend the race for the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney's victory in Michigan should end this long and draining contest. From my hotel room in Cheboygan (I was up north this week visiting my grandparents) I managed to watch his victory speech after winning the primaries in Michigan and Arizona, and from that and his overall conduct in the campaign I think that we learned some important things about Mitt Romney from this victory.

First, when Mitt gives speeches and speaks with people he provides clear objectives and lays his views and policies clearly out, although sometimes in a way that lacks passion or in a way that is too complicated for your average voter to understand. Either when delivering prepared statements using a teleprompter as he did in his victory speech on Tuesday or when responding to question and answer periods with no preparation as I saw him do the week before at an event in Royal Oak, Mitt Romney is able to address a range of questions and issues in a manner that is more clear than either his GOP competitors (with the exception of Newt) or Barack Obama (who after four years as President still knows very little about how government really works or operates, understanding only power and rhetoric).

Second, I think we learned from the Michigan primary that Mitt will continue to keep his eye on the real goal of this election- defeating Barack Obama. While his rivals attack him in their speeches and statements (and may even win an occasional victory against him), he personally does not frequently engage in this sort of behavior and in his public speeches and at rallies he focuses almost entirely on comparing his resume and policy proposals with the results of the last four years of an Obama Presidency. He is focused in a very clear way at beating Obama, and in doing so he is still beating his opponents- one can only hope that voters recognize this and reward him with the nomination, because if he gets dragged into the gutter of negativity and attacking speeches like his opponents, that will take away from his appeal and damage the GOP in general.

Third, from Romney's schedule and the sheer volume of his actions we can get a taste of the kind of worker he would be in the White House. Right now our President is perhaps the laziest President we've had in many years, working few hours, taking many vacations, and frequently playing golf. The bulk of the 'work' that President Obama appears to do (from reports from his own people) is giving speeches and making comments on proposals and research that other people come to him with. Imagine a king sitting on a throne, making a pronouncement or favoring a chosen advisers advice, and you get a good picture of President Obama's 'hard' work in office. In comparison, Romney appears to be everywhere, crossing the nation to attend debates, go to a NASCAR race, make speeches all over Michigan, and somehow find time to spend with his family (I met his niece and she told me about the nice lunch and enjoyable lunch she had with her uncle last week when he was in town). Romney works long hours, shakes a lot of hands, patiently signs every sheet put in his face, and moves with strength and energy from place to place. My observations match what people have said about him during his time as Governor or saving the Salt Lake City Olympics or as CEO of Bain- that he is a hard worker and willing to put in the long hours doing real work as President to make our nation better governed.

Fourth, out of all of the candidates that I have heard speak and met, Mitt Romney refers the most to the principle of federalism. Federalism is one of our nation's founding principles and is not just a talking point to him- he truly thinks that people should have more ability to make decisions at the local level regarding their lives. This is one reason why I believe his defense of Romneycare and his attack on Obamacare- healthcare is an issue that was constitutionally left to the states and there is nothing constitutionally wrong with states deciding to tackle healthcare in whatever fashion they wish (although I personally don't like Romneycare). But Obamacare is different- there is nothing in our constitution regarding government control of our individual health choices or health insurance choices- in fact, because health insurance does not cross state lines it is not interstate commerce and even even liberals with a broad and utterly tortured interpretation of the commerce clause can not defend Obamacare on those grounds. Romney as President will spin off many national government functions to the states, and our nation learned a great lesson from the welfare reform debate in the 1990's- that liberals were utterly wrong on all the horrors that would be unleashed if states regained more local control and that conservatives were completely proven correct that more local control would lead to better policies and more people gainfully and happily employed. The success of the Welfare Reform Act in 1996 was not lost on Mitt Romney, and his belief in federalism shows through in his many speeches.

The last observation that I am going to offer after watching Romney campaign in Michigan and win is that he appears to be running a convention campaign that in resembles candidate campaigns in 2004, 2000, 1996, 1992, 1988, etc. By 'conventional campaign' I mean that he is targeting issues and speaking about them and developing policies to address them, and systematically going after Obama on a range of issues and policies. He isn't engaging in an Obama '08 campaign or a Santorum '12 campaign and relying on hope and change and rhetoric and tapping into the culture of an American people- rather he is playing a game of small ball and going to bunt and single his way to victory in the general election. As a government teacher I've watched almost all of the campaign commercials on Living Room candidate and put together units on campaigning and elections, and as a history teacher I've taught about the elections of the past, and Romney's campaign looks the most like these. Obama is going to go small ball in 2012, focusing on individual policies and small gains in a range of measurables to make his case for re-election- and this is going to be a winning strategy and much better than his 2008 hope-and-change and people-fainting and soaring-rhetoric strategy. To continue my baseball metaphor a little further, since we don't have a candidate who can smash rhetorical home runs (like Reagan) and just power to victory on the strength of an amazing resume (like Nixon), it is good to see that we have a Romney who is going to match Obama bunt for bunt, single for single, and engage him and win the election by battling on each specific issue and drawing clear contrasts in policy decisions.

As you can see, Romney's victory in Michigan showed me some important things, and I know that the media is going to try to spin it differently because they want to keep this thing going and bleed Romney dry of resources, but this government teacher saw some very positive signs out of Michigan and hopes that readers in other states will continue to vote for him and move him through these primaries and to victory.

Please read my endorsement of him from earlier this week for more of my thoughts on why Romney is the best candidate for the GOP in 2012.

A Conservative Teacher officially endorses Mitt Romney in the Michigan Republican Presidential Primary of Michigan and encourages all of his family and friends and colleagues to vote for him next Tuesday, February 28. Do not sit at home hoping that change will come to our nation and that hope will be restored- go vote for Mitt Romney in the primary and assure it.

After spending a year following the campaign, after watching all of the campaign commercials, after researching all of the candidates, after recently hearing them all speak in person, after shaking the hands of Romney and Santorum, and after spending a lot of time thinking about what kind of candidate our Founding Fathers would have wanted as President, I have decided that the best candidate that there is from either party to be the next President of the United States is Mitt Romney.

As Rick Santorum said about Mitt Romney in 2008- “this is the guy who is really conservative and we can trust him.” He is conservative in that he believes in and attempts to put in place policies that follow the founding principles of our nation- limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and national security. And we can trust him as a person- he does not back down from his views, he is a decent guy who has spent time volunteering and giving back, he says what he means and means what he says, he stays on his message even without a teleprompter because he believes in his message, and he has a firm handshake.

Oh, I know some of his positions and views and statements are nuanced and guarded, filled with technical details and complicated arguments, and that this at times has made him sound like a technocrat or a cold robot- but I think that it is time for our nation to go back to electing competent, articulate, and measured people to the President and ignore all the candidates with thin resumes who simply preach hope and change.

Our nation can no longer afford to have as President someone who governs based on rhetoric and gimmicks- we need someone able and competent who will issue executive orders, make judicial appointments, act as commander-in-chief, hire the proper administrators, and budget appropriately. Being President is not about being a symbol, or making a statement, or doing the will of some sort of heavenly being- being President is about doing a job, and doing a good job of it, and Mitt Romney is the best one to put at that desk to push papers around, make decisions, talk with people, and do the real work of being President.

Conservatives want a magical being to be the White House who will throw conservative pixie dust around and say pretty conservative things; liberals want a magician in the White House who will dazzle them with tricks and gimmicks and pithy sayings- but real patriots should want someone in the White House who will return our nation back to its first principles and do the right things through competent hard work based on a lifetime of experience in managing and being an executive, and that man is Mitt Romney.

As I wrote in my post Elect a 'Clerk' For President in 2012 and Restore Founding Father's Vision of Executive Branch?:

...The President of the United States should be clerk, and nothing more. Conservatives and Tea Party people should not be looking for the President to be a 'king' who commands us to go forth and do his bidding, they should not be looking for the President to be the source of ideas about how government should run, and they should not be looking for the President to be an outsider who will shake up Washington.

The office, as designed by our Founding Fathers and illustrated in Article II of the Constitution, is an office that empowers the President of the United States to execute the laws passed by Congress in the most efficient manner, act as Commander-in-Chief of our military, act as the dignified ceremonial chief of state, handle foreign policy with other nations, and discharge effectively the various other duties of the office. A true conservative or someone who wants our nation to return to its Founding Principles should be pushing for the person who is best able to act as a clerk, a manager, and a CEO for America Inc…

… Look, I know this isn't exciting to you guys- you all want a President who will blow your socks off, light up the system, ride in on a horse of hope and change and remake the world. You want a king to rule you and control other people who you disagree with. You wish that someone who will go into the White House and then start just shutting down executive departments, slashing spending on programs, and ignoring the Judicial and Legislative Branches to bring you closer to our Founding Fathers. The problem is, that isn't how our Founding Fathers designed the office of the President and it is not how our Founding Fathers would have wanted the system to work…

I know- you want to go to the polls on Tuesday and feel like with one vote you will once again restore America back to its founding principles and with one magical check mark or bubbling in you will have fixed all of our nation’s problems. There are candidates out there who are basically telling you that.

But the truth of the matter is that the damage that President Barack Obama did to our nation is not going to be fixed by one President, or even two, and so we should not indulge in these sort of fantasies but rather go about electing someone as our next President who is willing to do the hard and solid and thankless work of stopping the decline that Obama has ushered in and perhaps- and I personally think this is a small possibility- putting in place a culture that will push further down the road for the real changes our nation needs to once more have hope for the future. And Mitt Romney is that guy- he is a hard worker, an able administrator, and a positive person, and just the kind of person who you should vote for on Tuesday.

Many of you conservatives and tea party supporters who read this post will think that we need a President who will be a source of conservative ideas and that Romney isn’t- my reply to you is that our system, as designed by our Founding Fathers which you all pretend to honor, clearly makes the legislative branch the source of ideas and legislation and merely makes the executive branch a clerk and executive. Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul would all be great legislators- even President Obama would have made a fine liberal Democrat Senator- but we are electing a President in 2012, not a legislator-turned-king, and the best executive in the race is clearly beyond a shadow-of-a-doubt Mitt Romney.

As Governor of a liberal Democrat state with an overwhelmingly liberal Democrat Congress, Mitt Romney was able to hold the moderate line on a range of issues and push for conservative policies as well and only let slip through an occasional liberal policy (like Romneycare)- imagine what he would be able to do as President of the United States with a Republican Congress animated by conservative tea party values. To make this image come true all you need to do is vote for Romney in the primary elections.

The image of stronger property rights, more protection and support for life, a recovering and prosperous economy, freedom and liberty embraced, and class warfare ended is a lot more welcoming to me than an image of President Barack Obama destroying a far-right wing GOP nominee and then ignoring the GOP Congress and issuing executive orders and making arbitrary policy decisions, and the only way we can avoid this image is by voting for Romney in the primary elections.

Over the past year, Mitt Romney has been challenged from the right and left and has beaten them all, emerging time and again as the front-runner. This was an important process and has forced him to be better- but at a certain point the primary needs to end and the race for the President needs to begin, and that point is now. Romney has responded to Perry, Huntsman, Bachman, Gingrich, Cain, Daniels, and now Santorum, fending off their attacks from the right and the left, and he is now a fine candidate to support. Let go of your anger and fear and embrace the good side of the force- Mitt Romney is the candidate who we can win back America with.

As President, Mitt Romney will leave America better than he finds it, he will work to reduce the intergenerational theft that is robbing our grandchildren of their future, he will work on repairing the destroyed foundations of our nation’s social safety nets, he will continue to keep our military proud and strong, and he will stop the incredible and amazing decline in our nation that has taken place over the past 4 years.

Mitt Romney says that America’s best days are ahead- with him as President and with a Republican Congress dominated by conservatives and tea partiers and with a Democratic minority party that regains its sanity, I think he could be right. He needs your vote though- go to the polls on Tuesday, February 28 and vote for Mitt Romney for Presidential nominee for the Republican Party.

As a conservative teacher, I plead guilty to the worst sort of offense for a public school teacher- thoughtcrimes. I am guilty of thoughtcrimes- I am a conservative teacher even though I do not push or encourage my conservative views and values in my classroom, even though I make conscious efforts to articulate all sides of every debate and situation, even though I play devil's advocate and am critical of all politicians and views at one time or another, and even though I seek primarily to inspire critical thinking.

You see, it is not my actions which threaten liberals and leftists and Democrats- it is my very existence and the fact that I do not quietly acquiescence to their thuggish attempts to convince me to think differently.

In his novel 1984, George Orwell described a thoughtcrime as an illegal type of thought. Liberals and leftists hate and fear me, because while in the classroom I may be a model teacher and may be inspiring and motivating students, in private I am the author of this blog where I state my thoughts and opinions on a range of subjects in a conservative manner, and for that they feel I must be silenced, fired, and perhaps worse.

Increasingly as our nation descends into a totalitarian fascist state, people like me are a threat to the government. Some people might be conservatives or libertarians or Republicans, but they're usually not teachers, and if they are they have been successfully revealed as thus and thus marginalized and silenced already. What really bothers the government and the fascist thugs who run it is that I'm still hidden in the system, unexposed, unsilenced and unmarginalized, and still teaching. I'm still teaching young children the skills of how to think critically. I'm still exposing students to tough questions and hard facts, and them giving them the skills to grapple with them- without telling them what to think about those facts or without answering the questions for them as a liberal leftist teacher would do. I'm still employed, even though I am a conservative and a teacher.

Some teachers inspire a few students to be conservative by accident or just absently are a conservative and a teacher- but I've thought about this beforehand and put forethought into it, showing that I have a plan to teach students how to think and to give them a wealth of information to think on, and I have done all of this knowingly and purposefully- and that's a crime worse than actually pushing my views or indoctrinating students. I'm not just a conservative and a teacher- I am A Conservative Teacher, and that's a threat to liberals and leftists and makes me guilty of thought crimes of the worst sort.

In many ways, thought crime is an even more serious offense than committing an actual crime, and that is why I have inspired such hate and attacks from my comments and blog posts, more so than others who simply are conservatives. Our outward actions and character stem from our inner world, and my inner world is conservative, and thus it does not matter to liberals and leftists what my outer world of teaching is like and how professional I am in that environment- they know and I know they know that I am a conservative teacher.

Many out there, including President Obama and the modern day Democratic Party that has been infiltrated and taken over by liberal fascists, believe that you can practice one thing all you want, but you must think and believe only what the fascist government tells you to believe. And I don't, and that is why I am a threat that they need to silence, intimidate, and threaten.

The good news is that I have for years been lying about who I am- using friends for radio interviews, having family members post my comments and blog posts from their locations, and even mixing up personal details. Since I started this blog in 2008, I've moved three times and worked in two school districts on either edge of town, gotten married, had a dozen kids, and even taken up urban farming! Because I am still unknown, I remain a threat. I'm nearing retirement age though and just need to hold on for a couple more years. And you wolves, although you may circle me, I am a friend of liberty and a patriot, and you will not terrorize me into thinking differently. Two plus two does equal four.

In 2008 in my post Obama Intends on Bankrupting all Coal Producers in the US I wrote:

Check out this clip. In it, Obama tells the interviewer that he intends to put in place government policies that will bankrupt anyone who wants to build a coal power plant, and progressively ramp up pressure on coal producers already there in the hopes of bankrupting them too. He clearly states this as his goal as President- to bankrupt coal producers.

Look, a lot of people in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Colorado, or Wyoming work in the coal industry. He is telling you he intends to take your job away.

Look, a lot of our energy in this country is produced by coal. Obama is telling anyone that uses any energy at all that he intends to drive up the price of it. Combine this with his anti-drilling stances for oil, and get used to an economy that is starved for energy- high inflation, low growth, unemployment, and bad times.

The beauty of being a conservative instead of a liberal is that my predictions are usually correct more often, and 4 years ago I predicted exactly what would happen after our nation elected someone who was opposed to life, opposed to liberty, and opposed to the creation and protection of property- high inflation (maybe?), low growth (yup), unemployment (yup), and bad times (yup).

And President Barack Obama (Democrat) has followed through with his stated intentions- via the Gateway Pundit I read this anecdotal evidence that his personally-run agencies are systematically implementing rules and regulations that have caused at least 3 coal-fired plants in West Virginia to close, causing loss of jobs, higher energy prices, more people on food stamps, and more Democrat-dependent voters:

Ohio based FirstEnergy Corporation announces it will close three coal fired power plants in West Virginia by this fall. The closings come directly from the impact of new federal EPA regulations.

The plants to close are Albright Power Station, Willow Island Power Station, and the Rivesville Power Station. The company says 105 employees will be directly impacted.

The three plants produce 660 megawatts and about 3-percent of FirstEnergy’s total generation. In recent years, the plants served as “peaking facilities” and generated power during times of peak demand for power.

The plants operated under subsidiary Monongahela Power. Mon Power recently finished a study of unscrubbed coal fired plants in the system to determine the potential impact of the most recent environmental regulations from EPA. Company officials determined the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) made it unfeasible to retrofit or continue operating the three plants.

“The high cost to implement MATS and other environmental rules is the reason these Mon Power plants are being retired,” said James R. Haney, regional president of Mon Power and president of West Virginia Operations for FirstEnergy.

Let's not lose sight of these decisions made by the President of the United States that have adversely affected our economy- he'll try to confuse us, attack his opponents, and will point to signs of economic growth (companies that either fought through and past Obama's policies or companies that gave political support and cover to Obama and were rewarded with loans and support), but the reality is that policies that he implements and tries to implement still are bad for America.

There is a choice though in 2012- between President Obama and more of these sorts of policy decisions and the Republican nominee (whomever it is) who will not put in place these sort of EPA policies that force industries to go bankrupt. Let's make the right choice in 2012.

Via memeorandum (and here too) I read this report from The Hill: White House to offer 10 states waivers on No Child Left Behind:

President Obama on Thursday will offer waivers to 10 states that applied for exclusion from some aspects of the No Child Left Behind Law, according to a report in The Associated Press that cited an anonymous White House official...

...The George W. Bush-era legislation requires that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014, and would penalize those schools where the children failed to reach required standards...

...There is broad support among both parties to reform the legislation, which Obama has called admirable but flawed. However, Congress has been gridlocked over how to do so since it came up for renewal in 2007....

President Obama once more done the wrong thing. As I wrote in my post Obama's Change to NCLB Policy: Violation of Nation's Principles?:

In 2001, George W. Bush proposed a major change to education law called The No Child Left Behind Act. This piece of legislation was supported with extensive bipartisan support in Congress and leading up to its implementation and passage there was extensive debate regarding this bill- people were given an opportunity to discuss it, come to grips with it, and properly weight its merits and problems.

NCLB at its heart was a deal- education would be reformed by putting in place at the federal level higher standards and the establishment of measurable educational goals, and in return Congress would dramatically increase the amount of amount of federal funding for education, increasing it from $42.2 billion in 2001 to $54.4 billion in 2007. In return for states developing assessments in basic skills to be given to all students in certain grades, the federal would expand funding for reading programs and Title I programs which benefit disadvantaged children, and would considerably expand funding for IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education) to support education. That was the bargain made, after considerable discussion and debate- money in exchange for accountability.

And now, with no debate and discussion, President Obama has decided without any support from either party in Congress to go ahead and change the deal, and we can only pray that he does not alter it further....

...President Obama is once again demonstrating his unfitness for office by changing the deal, and this is a bad thing- education will continue to receive funding, but now will no longer have to meet the deal that Congress put in place- rather, they will have to meet the deal that Obama puts in place, conditions that he will establish without legislative authority or approval. This sort of action should be causing libertarians and liberals and conservatives to howl, because it is a slap in the face to democracy, elected government, separation of powers, and our Constitution. His time in office can not come to an end quickly enough...

It is time that we change directions as a nation- and thankfully in one short year we can do so. The Republican Party will eventually nominate someone who isn't Obama, and this Republican will not support the 'go it alone', unconstitutional, 'slush fund' methods of Chicago-style gangster-in-chief Barack Obama. Republicans on the House Education and the Workforce Committee have recently released two pieces of draft legislation to overhaul No Child Left Behind, with provisions in them that support state-developed accountability systems and a smaller federal footprint in education. These resolutions will be debated in our legislative branch- our law making branch of government- and funded there, and once the details have been figured out, compromises made, and hearing and testimony taken on the powers of the unintended consequences of the law, then it will become law and be executed by our President.

THAT'S HOW WE DO IT IN AMERICA- this isn't Kenya or Indonesia, where the dictator who runs our nation can just jam through his way, hopefully get Congress to approve it, and fund it all through giant slush funds that were designed to stimulate the economy or bail out failing banks back in 2009.

The ends do not justify the means in this nation- and our President is not smarter than the American public and their elected Representatives and Senators. He is not a King, ordering his advisers and czars and secretaries to implement policies and rules and waiver plans without any Congressional authority to do so simply because HE believes it to be the right policies- our President acts (especially on domestic policies) only with Congressional approval and direction. Imagine how the liberals would have howled had President Bush just decided to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan without any Congressional direction, using funds designed to pay for healthcare or education, and then laughed off any sort of oversight of his efforts. It would not be right for Bush to do that then, and it is not right for Obama to grant waivers to states for NCLB now.

Race to the Top should have been opposed, and changes to NCLB should be opposed- in America, laws must come from the legislative branch, not the White House, and President Obama's attempt to ignore the separation of powers in our nation in the hopes of jamming his views on the sovereign people of America must be opposed. Vote Republican in 2012 and throw him out of office.

UPDATE: Ace of Spades has a great post up on this subject, and says something that I have been saying to the liberals and progressives who are cheering the Presidents unilateral actions recently:

I don't even want to think like this, but if we're playing Lord of the Flies like this, I can see a Republican president waiving compliance with the National Labor Relations Board too. And the EPA. And unilaterally offering a "waiver" permitting a company to drill in ANWR.

One important power of the President of the United States that conservatives apparently didn't realize that he had is the power to appoint federal judges. It's surprising, because usually conservatives have a good idea of what is going on in government and are usually pretty educated about the Constitution, but on radio show after radio show I hear conservatives arguing that they would rather that President Obama wins another term of office and appoints judges who do not like our Constitution rather than Mitt Romney win and appoint judges who would follow the Constitution.

They comment on blogs and on facebook that they would rather stick to their perfect principles and not vote in 2012 and let Obama win and stock the court system with judges who believe that our courts should stand up for social and economic justice and fairness.

In spite of Mitt Romney stating his desire to appoint people to the Court who have a strict interpretation of our Constitution, in spite of Mitt Romney's many statements in support of President Bush's conservative judicial appointments, and in spite of Romney's frequent criticism of Obama's appointments, many conservatives would rather that our judicial system be instead filled by liberal activist judges who ignore the Constitution and make up laws and regulations that they can't get passed in Congress. These conservatives argue that it is important to believe in something and that voting for Romney would be betraying their principles, even as they help Obama fill our court system with lifetime appointments that will destroy our nation.

Conservatives need to figure it out and figure it out quick- “No other candidate will do more to advance the conservative judicial movement than Governor Mitt Romney … Governor Romney is committed to nominating judges who take their oath of office seriously and respect the rule of law in our nation.” Judge Robert Bork- a conservative judge if there ever was one- said this in his 2008 endorsement of Mitt Romney.

President Romney is not going to be the perfect conservative or tea party guy- but he will appoint conservative judges to the court. If you or anyone you know persists in spewing this 'I would rather stay home than vote for Romney' rhetoric, make sure that they know that in doing so they may possibly be giving President Obama the opportunity to replace two of the four conservative judges on the court system with radical left-wing liberals. And if they decide that they'd rather destroy the Constitution, our nation, and our future rather than vote for a moderate/conservative Romney who will appoint solid conservatives to the bench and reduce the deficits and debt, then call them a liar- they are not voting their principles like they say they are, but are cutting off their nose to spite their face.

For the record, this argument also applies to a President Santorum or a President Paul or a President Gingrich- all of them would appoint better judges to the bench than Obama and avert the utter destruction of our Constitution and way of life that would be another Obama Presidency. A principled, moral person would want this and would vote against Obama no matter who the GOP picks as their nominee.

Via an article on Memeorandum I came across this painting by artist Jon McNaughton called The Forgotten Man. I like political paintings- there are a couple of Norman Rockwell-esque paintings of presidents playing cards that I like, and if this blog would start generating some cash via donations I might actually put them up in my room to provoke thought and discussion.

The Forgotten Man, by Jon McNaughton, depicts a scene in front of the White House with a man who represents average people the sitting on a park bench in the throes of depression. He is surrounded by all 43 presidents. In the forefront, purposefully ignoring the depressed man is President Obama, whose right foot is trampling over the Constitution. James Madison is next to Obama, pleading with him to stop. The painting, which uses objects such as discarded dollar bills and scraps of paper with individual constitutional amendments scrawled onto them as other symbols, echo's the views of many that President Obama is trampling on our Constitution in a way that no President has ever done and that this will not be good for future generations who wish to have the same protections of their lives, liberty, and property that their fathers and grandfathers had.

The painting can be purchased from the McNaughton Fine Art gallery. It comes in many sizes and can be printed on a range of canvas types, from prices ranging from cheaper to expensive.

Here is a small screenshot of it:

Often on Facebook and in comment sections of news articles and through conversations with friends I hear people say "What could President Obama done differently?" To answer that question, we would need some sort of insider view on what options Obama was presented with and to hear exactly what his decision making process was. We'd need some memo's or something that would detail all the paths not taken by President Obama, paths that might have led our nation back to prosperity or prevented the massive deficits that will destroy our children's futures or would have helped encourage businesses to grow and invest.

Such memo's, showing all the options that were there, together with some insider analysis, would be invaluable to answering the question "What could President Obama done differently?" Thankfully for us, that information exists, and has been looked at by The New Yorker's Ryan Issa. Americans for Prosperity sums up what just exactly goes down in the Obama White House and the decision-making of soon-to-be-one-termer President Obama:

Recently, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza released White House memos showing President Obama’s advisers contemplated multiple options for the original so-called stimulus package. The President’s advisers, including economists Larry Summers and Christina Romer, argued that multiple areas of the economy needed federal stimulus. Despite the advisers’ agreement that the President should engage in some type of big government intervention, the economists and the President differed greatly in their approach to dealing with the economic crisis. The memos reveal that the centralized planning inherent in big government stimulus is not quite the rational process that the Left would like us to believe, but rather a messy amalgam of competing political interests from individual planners.

Decision makers in Washington DC, like President Obama and his advisors, believe government planners can spend money more wisely than the private sector by finding specific areas in the economy where injecting federal funds can presumably improve economic prospects. They draw this so-called “targeted, temporary, and timely stimulus” from the economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes. Instead of waiting for the free market to sort out economic problems, Keynesians believe that the government must intervene.

However, as economist F.A. Hayek observed, the knowledge required to direct the economy is too vast for any individual (or collection of individuals) to acquire. Hayek diagnosed presumptuous bureaucrats as suffering from “The Fatal Conceit”: they implement programs on the assumption that they know just what they were doing and exactly how the economy would respond. This self-deception is clearly observed in the White House’s plan for the stimulus.

During the planning and negotiations in 2009, President Obama proposed building a national so-called “smart grid” which would allow energy to flow more efficiently. It was, as Ryan Lizza puts it, Obama’s version of the Hoover Dam. But Obama’s advisers disagreed with the President’s “moon-shot initiative,” which they felt would only look good in headlines but lacked economic sense.

Lizza explained that advisers like Christina Romer had to have a “frank” conversation with the President: the smart grid was too expensive and not likely to produce short term economic benefits. Besides, Romer and Summers had plans of their own. Both proposed granting billions of stimulus dollars to states who were dealing with their own budget crises. Even these advisers, however, differed on how they thought the remaining stimulus funds should be spent. Summers preferred a more limited package with targeted spending in different areas of government. Romer, on the other hand, requested an even larger package with a different vision for the stimulus.

And yet, President Obama persisted with his politically-popular moon-shots. The President proposed a project for high-speed trains; a plan favored by Congressional Democrats. But the President’s advisers pushed back with the same argument: bailouts for struggling states were a better alternative for the economy. The President also differed with his advisers over the stimulus package’s price tag. In as attempt to control the costs of the runaway package, the President had to make a choice: give Congress high-speed trains and add in about $40 billion in Congressional “pork-barrel” spending, or cut $60 billion in stimulus that his advisers said would be more effective (the aid to states). The President showed how politics destroys the so-called virtue of government planning by choosing to give Congress its requested $60 billion in pet projects, including the high-speed trains – a direct example of how the stimulus package wasted (at least) $60 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Lizza’s stimulus memos expose the inherent flaws in any centralized planning effort. Hayek’s argument against centralized planning was not simply that it was an unfavorable method of governing, but that it was logically unworkable. Even though brilliant people worked on the stimulus package, people like Christina Romer who has a Ph.D. from MIT, none of them could possibly complete the impossible task gathering the necessary information to direct the economy. The economy is just too complex for government to direct. Their plans were pitched to the American people as objective solutions, but they really represented the individual (and in the President’s case, politicized) interests of the planners at the table.

The result? A stimulus package that failed to achieve the goals that even its own creators set out for it.

The President made bad decisions. He's on the ballot in 2012. Michigan and many other swing states will decide his fate. Vote the right way.

In my post 3 months ago called Obama Golfs for 73rd Time While President I wrote:

...For the record, I haven't really ever mentioned before anything regarding President Obama playing golf. It is understandable for the guy to get out on the links from time to time and play a round- it is a great to unwind, get some exercise, discuss issues and policy outside of the office or simply make a better connection with someone, and if it is his hobby I really can't fault him for enjoying it so much.

But this last weekend President Barack Obama played his 73rd round of golf since taking office almost 3 years ago. That's a lot of golf- let's round it a bit and call it 25 rounds of golf a year, or a round a golf every other week on average. Although it isn't really fair to compare his amount of golf to President Bush because they are different people and had different hobbies, it is surprising to compare President Bush's 24 rounds in 8 years against Obama's 73 rounds in 3 years- that's a lot of golf...

In the last 4 months, Obama has golfed another 19 times- about 5 times a month, or an average of once a week. He's at 92 now, and nearing the 100 mark. And so in honor of our President breaking that historic barrier in golfing while in office, I want to encourage all of you to visit Doug Ross's site and speculate in his comment section on when Obama will hit the 100 golf rounds as President mark.

There is $25 in it if you guess right, as Doug is doing his part to lift America out of its recession while our President is doing his part as well- spending our taxpayer money to create jobs in the pro shop, golf ball making, grounds crew, ball washer, security guard, and lawn mowing industries. While Obama leaves his wife and kids at home and wacks a little white ball over a manicured and groomed grasses, let's do something to get America moving again and speculate on when he'll hit 100 rounds- visit Doug Ross and guess on his site and win a $25 cash prize (paid via PayPal) to the person who comes closest to guessing the date of Obama's 100th round of golf.

At least President Obama hasn't actually gone ahead though and appointed a golf czar like I thought he would!

Let's not forget the big picture during this primary season- defeating President Obama's attempt to hold on to political power. This is not a partisan issue- I don't suggest that Obama needs to be defeated merely because he is a Democrat or a liberal or a progressive or whatever- but rather this is an issue about putting someone in the White House who is better at getting out of my way.

I'm great a working hard, creating wealth, making my own decisions in my life, living with my own mistakes, and producing goods and services for our great nation- and so are you. All you require to be prosperous, happy, and free is a government which protects your life through national defense and police services and the like, a government which protects your liberty and freedom by making sure that enemies without and within do not gain the ability to order you around, and a government which protects your happiness by making sure that the property you do earn you keep. You are all great Americans.

And yet, President Obama does not think that you are great Americans- he thinks that you make bad decisions, that you don't understand how a baby could ruin your life, and that you are not creating the right sort of property or spending your property in the right way. And this dangerous man with these dangerous attitudes has become President of the United States of America and is now using the power of that executive office to take away your liberty and freedom and property and make your life a little less full.

You've felt it, just like I have, over the years and getting worse over the last three- that feeling like people don't matter any more, like peoples lives are inconsequential, and that feeling that our world is a little less alive. It is not surprising that you've felt this way- as government has gotten bigger and more powerful and more in control with more aspects of your lives this impersonal and vast institution has dehumanized us and treated us as numbers and taken away from our life, liberty, and property.

President Barack Obama supports this dehumanizing and confiscating and controlling philosophy because he does not think that you are all great Americans.

Jay Cost on Saturday touched on these ideas in his blog post, where he spoke about just exactly what sort of person Obama was, what his vision of the world was, and why opposing him rises beyond simply a partisan or jobs or improving economy thing- it is a real battle of vision for the future for America- one in which the individual is great and free and prosperous, or another one in which the individual is a slave to the state and controlled by the state and prosperous only as much as the state lets them be.

Here is part of Jay Cost's blog post, from the Weekly Standard, called What's So Bad About Obama?

...Obama is not “radical,” at least not in the way we usually define the concept. But that actually points to the big the problem with this president and his worldview. The progressive ideology dating back to the turn of the last century, and in which Obama is comfortably situated, was never really about overturning the established order, but rather in co-opting it...

... the hallmarks of the First New Deal – were all about grand bargains between government, labor, farmers, and capital owners. The point was to draw all classes to the bargaining table, with the meeting chaired by the progressives, naturally. So it goes for modern-day progressivism. Both Clintoncare and Obamacare did not try to implement “socialized medicine,” but rather strike a grand bargain that would encompass all of the “stakeholders” to manage the nation’s health care...

...Obama has not set out to destroy capitalism. He is no socialist in the traditional sense of the word. He is not interested in controlling the means of production, as Marx put it. He’s happy to let commerce and industry remain in private hands, but that does not mean he's a free market advocate in any politically relevant sense of the phrase. He wants the free market to do its thing, so long as the government can socialize an ever-greater amount of the profit, and also take an intimate role in managing the private sector to “socially beneficial” ends....

...The principal reason for this opposition is that there has always been more than a whiff of anti-republicanism to the progressive agenda. Just consider the name "progressive," which implies a social, epistemological, or moral vanguard -- hardly the hallmark of true republicanism. And what one person views as “socially beneficial," another may rightfully call political patronage. For instance, the New Deal was full of payoffs – small and large – to Democratic constituencies....

...And so, the Democrats’ grand dreams of a “Fair Deal” always stink of unfairness to conservatives in the republican tradition... And Barack Obama, the president who promised to bring change to Washington, has been a very diligent patron to his party's extensive list of clients. On item after item, the topline claim to benefit the national interest is regularly belied by the particularism of the fine print. Klein mentions three items in particular in his column – the auto bailout, the financial reform bill, and the health care bill – that were all justified on purely nationalistic grounds, but peel off the top layer and the stench of clientelism will overwhelm you. To this list I would add the stimulus bill, the jobs bill that Obama proposed in the fall, and the cap-and-trade bill. Liberals look upon them all as fulfilling a great national purpose, but republicans (small "r") see massive payoffs to core Democratic groups.

If you want to understand the seething anger on the conservative side of the aisle, this is what you need to appreciate: It’s not just that Obama is a big government guy in the progressive tradition, which conservatives have opposed for more than a century. It’s also that he’s a client guy, meaning that his idea of big government inevitably has special payoffs hidden in it somewhere. And more than even this, he's a boundless client guy in what should be an age of restraint. Payoffs to party clients are one thing when the economy is growing at a four percent rate per year; that is a situation where the times are so prosperous that government patrons are really just drawing upon the national surplus to satisfy their partisans. But when the economy is growing at less than two percent per year, barely enough to keep up with population growth, paying off party clients is actually like robbing from Peter to pay Paul. And while Obama and congressional Democrats have put off that bill -- in the form of our trillion-plus deficit -- conservatives are not fools. They know they'll be asked to pay up sooner or later, and with a stagnant economy that means less money in their pockets, in part because the president wants to hold together his voting coalition.

That's what's so bad about Obama.

Let's get past all of our past labels- Republicans and Democrats, Romney vs Newt, establishment vs anti-establishment, Tea Party vs Occupier, right vs left, conservative vs liberal- and realize just exactly what the battle is about today: republicanism vs dictatorship. This 2012 is about returning power back to the people of our nation by empowering them as individuals to make lives, be free, and earn property. Obama opposes that desire, and that is what is so bad about him and why he must be defeated in 2012 and his vision of government rejected with extreme manliness.

Jay Cost is the author of Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic.

During his State of the Union address on January 24, 2012, President Barack Obama offered up reasons why voters should give him a second term of office, arguing that

...In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs...

Many on the left (like Balloon Juice) are trotting out this statistic as evidence that President Obama's policies are successful at creating jobs and putting Americans back to work. Although the jobs are being created by businesses, and it could be argued that these jobs would have been created regardless of who was in office, liberals and Democrats and progressives argue that President Obama deserves credit for 3 million jobs created by him while he was President and that we should all vote for him again in 2012.

And to be fair, if President Obama's policies have been successful in creating millions of jobs for workers, then we should give him credit and a second term of office- President Clinton, who was a Democrat, deserved another term of office in 1996 on the strength of a booming economy. But also to be fair, if President Obama's policies have not been successful in creating millions if jobs for workers, let's hold him accountable and throw him out of office, because it is important to be fair.

So let's take a look at some numbers, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which are pretty unbiased (although I will point out that any likely bias to be introduced by this government agency would favor Obama). These numbers are generated here, and are not seasonally adjusted. All numbers are in the thousands.

For comparison, let's first look at President Bush, the Republican in office who preceded Obama. According to the BLS, when President Bush took office in January in 2001 the number of people age 16 or older employed in our nation was 136181K. Over the next year, that number dropped to 134177 (Jan 02). By January of 2007 the number climbed to 144275K. Democrats took over control of the House and Senate at this time. The number of employed though continued to climb, hitting 146867K in July of 2008. It is at this point that the 'crash' occurred, and on leaving office the number of people employed had dropped to 145362.

A couple ways to look at this data. Overall, 9181K (over 9 million) jobs were created during Bush's time as President. If you want to say that 'the first year doesn't count', then Bush created 11185K jobs. If you want to say that 'the first year doesn't count and the first year of the next guy's Presidency does'- in other words, count as 'Bush' the years from Jan 02 to Dec 10, then Bush created 2392K jobs. If you want to simply count by 'first three years', Bush created 1555K jobs.

Now let's look at President Obama. According to the BLS, when President Obama took office in January of 2009 the number of people age 16 or older employed in our nation was 140436K. Over the next year, that number dropped to 136809K (Jan 10). Buy January of 2011, the number climbed to 137599. Republicans took back control of the House at this time, although the Senate was still controlled by Democrats. The number employed continued to climb, hitting 139869 today.

A couple ways to look at this data. Overall, 567K (half a million) jobs have been lost during Obama's time as President. If you want to say that 'the first year doesn't count,' then Obama created 3060K jobs (or, 'over 3 million' as he bragged about in his speech). If you want to simply count by 'first three years', Obama lost 567K jobs.

So, let's go back to the earlier point that Obama was trying to make- that his policies helped us to recover from a recession and created 3 million jobs, and so he should be re-elected. In comparison to the Republican who was in office before him- a Republican who Democrats said was 'dumb' and who made 'lots of mistakes'- Obama fares considerably worse by any measure. In overall comparison, Bush created almost 10 million more jobs; in 'first year doesn't count', Bush created almost 8 million more jobs; and in 'first three years' comparison, Bush created almost 2 million more jobs. By any comparison, the 'bumbling idiot' who was in office prior to Obama did a considerably better job at being around when jobs were created by businesses.

The argument against why Obama should be elected to a second term is not 'things got worse under Obama', because that's going to turn out to be not true (I imagine employment will grow enough over his last year to give him a positive balance overall). The argument against why Obama should not be elected to a second term is that his policies made the road to recovery longer, tougher, and worse and that his job-killing policies, supported by a Democratic Congress, led to the loss of jobs in America versus what we could have expected from anyone else.

If the Republicans nominate a candidate comparable to Bush, whom Democrats constantly attacked as unqualified and dumb, than we can expect millions more jobs than what Obama has demonstrated that he can create; if the Republicans nominate a candidate better than Bush (someone smarter, with more business savvy, leadership skills, experience saving bankrupt enterprises, experience balancing budgets, etc) than we can hope for more jobs created than under Bush. Either way, Obama should not be re-elected.

And keep in mind I ignored for our purposes here the increase in population in our nation that has occurred (see my earlier discussion breaking down the Employment-Population Ratio, which measures number of people employed as a percentage of the population- under Bush that rate averaged around 62%, and under Obama it has hovered around 58%, even over the past 22 months of job growth that Obama is bragging about the ratio has only gone up 0.6%). Population growth should naturally lead to more jobs being created- it did under Bush, but yet it hasn't under Obama.

And also keep in mind the debt that our nation has taken on to achieve these results. Bush created 9 million jobs and added 4 trillion in debt- Obama lost 500 million jobs and added 5 trillion in debt. This means that my children and grandchildren gave up a lot of their future for nothing under Obama.

Personal insults, soaring rhetoric, and misleading claims don't stand up the force of data, information, facts, and reasoning. President Obama needs to be gone.