My Beauty Best Teacher

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 Obamacare will not be repealed.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!

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!

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.

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.

From time to time I comment on other people's blogs and on facebook, and last week I made a comment on a liberal blog that offended someone, and as is typical of liberals when their ideas and beliefs are questioned, they attempted to silence me.

For years I've pointed out that personal attacks and bullying is now the domain of the left- liberals reject freedom and liberty and so do not support or respect those who exercise it and speak their views and beliefs, liberals do not respect property rights and so have no problem in damaging others property through cyber attacks or other attacks on property, and liberals do not respect life and so see no problem in ruining others simply to score political points.

It doesn't matter who did what and I'm not going to name names- I don't want to engage in childish games like that any more than I want to moderate vile comments that used to be spewed in my comment section, or respond to emails filled with childish insults, or spend my weekend recovering lost posts, or press charges of any sort.

Hopefully I didn't lose any readers over this mess and you all will find your way back to my blog again and once more be loyal readers. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

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.

Last year I wrote the following in a post called "Bombshell" Experiment: Global Climate Change Caused by Cloud Cover:

Times have to be getting rough on those who worship the Green God; science and reasoning are killing their religion in a way that it never could do with Christianity. For years people have been preaching that humans are the cause of global warming, that global warming is bad, and that the only way to reverse this climate change is to repent and tithe. Symbols of the evil of humans abound to these true believers- SUV's, air conditioning, electric power, comfort, happiness, etc- and these modern-day followers of Mandaeanism inevitably preach that humanity is responsible and needs to turn towards communism in order to stop the rise of the seas and the heating of the earth.

But it turns out this entire religion is built on a false premise- humans are largely not responsible for the changing of the climate and thus bear no obligation to give up any sort of symbols of progress to fix a problem that isn't theirs to fix. That doesn't mean that humans can pollute as much they want- there is still the tragedy of the commons, which can be solved by stronger rule of law and more property rights, which is the exact opposite of what environmentalists preach. But it does mean that government policies discouraging certain things and encouraging other things are built on a faulty foundation of unreality that will do more harm to society than good if continued.

Humans are not responsible for any sort of change in climate, and thus we should dash the dreams of Democrats and liberals and environmentalists and wake them out of their paradise world of railroads, bike paths, windmills, and other relics of the 1800's. CAFE standards, denying permits to mining and drilling companies, using the laws of the national government to stop developments everywhere, and cap-and-trade schemes are unreal, in the sense that they do not reflect the reality of the world. The only thing that these policies do in reality are empower elites in society to take and keep control of the means of production in order to put in place a more unjust world where life, liberty, and personal property is attacked- they do not do anything to the temperature of the globe or the environment or the climate.

The reason that these policies do not work is because humans are not responsible for any sort of changes in climate- the sun is. Shout it from the rooftops and yell it with passion at any environmentalist or liberal or Democrat whose party has been captured by these believers in the false Green God-

THE SUN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH!

Today on RealClearPolitics, I read a good article that touches on this subject again. Here is part of the article called The Galileo of Global Warming:

...Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark, who seems to have discovered the most important factor that actually regulates Earth's climate, and who is quietly in the process of proving it.

I linked last year to Svensmark's latest big breakthrough, but I didn't get a chance to discuss it much, so I want to give a little more detail now, then show one of the recent consequences of Svensmark's achievement.

Let me briefly sum up Svensmark's theory. The temperature of the Earth, he argues, is regulated by the intensity of solar radiation, but not in the obvious way. It is not that the increase is solar radiation heats the Earth directly. (It does, of course, but not to a sufficient degree to explain climate variations.) Rather, an increase in solar radiation extends the Sun's magnetic field, which shields Earth from cosmic rays (highly energetic, fast-moving charged particles that come from deep space). How does this affect the climate? Here is the crux of Svensmark's argument. When cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, he argues, their impact on air molecules creates nucleation sites for the condensation of water vapor, leading to an increase in cloud-formation. Since clouds tend to bounce solar radiation back into space, increased cloud cover cools the Earth, while decreased cloud cover makes the Earth warmer.

So if Svensmark is right, lower solar radiation means more cosmic rays, more clouds, and a cooler Earth, while higher solar radiation means fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer Earth.

Those who have followed the global warming controversy over the years may recall that cloud-formation is one of the major gaps in the computerized climate "models" used by the consensus scientists to predict global warming. They have never had a theory to explain how and why clouds form or to account accurately for their effect on the climate. Svensmark has smashed through this glaring gap in their theory.

Like I said, Svensmark hasn't just put this theory out there. He has been working to prove it. He has done some studies that attempted to track measurements of cosmic ray flux against surface temperature and cloud cover, with some success. But his big breakthrough last year was a long-awaited experiment at Switzerland's CERN particle accelerator that demonstrated the most controversial part of Svensmark's theory.

It is widely accepted that the Sun's magnetic field helps shield Earth from cosmic rays, and it is also widely accepted that increased cloud cover cools the Earth (though expect this to suddenly come into question as Svensmarks' theory gains ground). What Svensmark needed to demonstrate was that cosmic rays form nucleation sites that seed clouds.

Hence the aptly named CLOUD experiment performed at CERN last year, with the results published last August. The experiment was actually more than a decade in the making, but as Lawrence Solomon explains, it was help back for years by the scientific bureaucracy because of its potentially unwelcome results.

The results are indeed unwelcome, at least for the advocates of the global warming consensus. Anthony Watts explained the experiment at his blog, Watts Up With That? The CLOUD experiment used CERN's particle accelerator to send a beam of artificially generated charged particles—simulated cosmic rays—into a gas-filled chamber and then measured the formation of aerosols, the kind of compounds that can serve as cloud nucleation sites. It found a direct and very significant relationship.

This is not a total demonstration of Svensmark's theory. The Nature paper on the CLOUD experiment notes that "the fraction of these freshly nucleated particles that grow to sufficient sizes to seed cloud droplets, as well as the role of organic vapors in the nucleation and growth processes, remain open questions experimentally." But last year's result is a clear demonstration of a crucial step in Svensmark's theory...

Full disclosure- I don't worship the Green God and don't hold true to the tenants of True Science, so emailing me to extol the virtues of your religion and way of life won't have any effect.

To loosely quote Mr. Universe, there is no official government news- the kind of puppet theatre that the government jesters push through their various institutions to the sleepwalking masses of morons- there is only the truth of the signal- what we see, what we know, and what is reality. And you can't stop the signal.

Henrik Svensmark is also the author of The Chilling Stars: A Cosmic View of Climate Change.

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:

Via Liberty for Kids:

The following interview scares me but it doesn't surprise me. That liberal indoctrination of youth in many public school classrooms and through varied media platforms (movies, TV, Internet) should not be a surprise to anyone. I once read that most adults don't stray too far from the political views they held prior to the age of 20. Similar to many religious organizations, the statists realize that if you get them young they will likely hold onto those beliefs.

In the interview below Jack Chambless, an economics professor from Valencia College in Florida, tells of an assignment he gave his students on the first day of class. He asked them to write an essay on what the American Dream meant to them and what they expected from government to help them realize the American Dream. He said only 10% said they wanted the federal government to stay out of their lives as much as possible. 80% said they wanted the federal government to pay for their education, find them a job, help them buy a house, and give them money in retirement. Professor Chambless suggests that his students are simply parroting back what they have been indoctrinated to say from their years in public schools.

As I said, this interview scares me because I suspect Professor Chambless is correct.

Click here to link to Professor Chambless' 5 minute long interview where he details his assignment and his conclusions.

The results the professor saw on assignment fit with my own observations. From my post Students Accept Majority Tyranny:

Last week I was asked by a testing group out west to help grade some essays that students wrote. I apologize for not being too specific- I always fear for my future employment when I write posts like this. Thousands of students from the area took this test, which was designed to evaluate how well students understood how government worked in our society. These students all took either a semester or year-long course in government prior to taking this class, and all the students who took the test were either seniors or juniors in high school (17 or 18 years of age). I personally graded over a thousand of these essays over several days of work. In doing so, I was able to read first hand what the students in our classrooms thought and believed, and what I read chilled me.

The test asked students to discuss the advantages of being in the majority party in Congress compared to being in minority party. The correct answers included being able to control the agenda, controlling debate, having the presiding officer, setting the rules for debate, and having their majority also reflected in committees....

...According to most of the students (about 2/3rds), the advantage of being the majority party in Congress, like the Democrats are today, is that they can pass laws that favor themselves, they can vote to transfer money from the minority party's districts and supports to the majority party's districts and supporters, that being in the majority means they can pay themselves more money and the minority party less, that being in the majority means that they can tax anybody they want, and can do 'whatever they want.' The phrase 'the majority party can do whatever they want' was written on over half of the essays that were written....

...The overwhelming (majority of students thought that it was) totally okay and fine with majority tyranny. In their minds, there is nothing wrong with one party, just because it has more, putting in place laws and policies that favor their supporters over others. In my class, I pound majority rule with minority rights, and I talk about the problems of democracy and why we went with a republic, but most teachers- in fact almost all teachers- seem to be giving students the impression that minorities do not have rights and that our nation is a democracy.

The future of our nation is mentally and morally okay with a majority group enriching itself and advancing itself at the cost of the minority group.

... The Constitution is almost never mentioned and as far as students know, it might as well not even exist...

.... (the students) are okay with the President doing 'whatever he wants,' students are okay with 'Congress doing whatever it wants,' and after months of government classes they are okay with the majority party 'doing whatever it wants.'...

Students are being churned out of our educational system steeped in liberal views- they have sipped so much liberal Kool-Aid over the years that they parrot out liberal responses to questions in an unthinking and unblinking manner, assured in their ignorance and comforted by limited world experience. The 'American Dream' to these students is an all powerful government controlled by a tyrannical majority or a knowledgeable elite that takes property from minority and unfavored groups and redistributes it to those who it favors or supports- and this is called 'fairness' or 'justice'. These students think that it is right for 51% to jam its views on the other 49% in our nation- that if 51% are okay with something that is justification for it. If 51% felt that I was some sort of threat to the government, students would be okay with me being taken out by government authorities- they believe in 'majority rule' and 'democracy' over 'minority rights' and 'republic'. The future of our nation believes that it is entitled to receive goods, services, and property from others, and in so doing they'll give away their liberty, freedom, property, wealth, prosperity, and ultimately life.

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.

Here are my notes and thoughts as I watched President Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union address:

• All of the conversation on the channels prior to the address centered on how this address is going to be used as a way to launch the President's re-election bid and as a taxpayer financed campaign speech. I've been watching these things for years and although past incumbents running for re-election have used this speech to speak about all their accomplishments, President Obama appears to be the most brazenly partisan in using this speech as a campaign speech.
• I found a list of past 'special guests' who have been invited by the President- Lenny Skutnik in 1982 (saved passanger from drowning plane), Sammy Sosa in 1999 (relief efforts in Dominican Republic and home run chase), Hamid Karzai in 2002 (Afghanistan President), Julie Aigner-Clark in 2007 (founder of Baby Einstein)... and now Warren Buffet's secretary in 2012 (prop to use to try to bring up point of taxing the rich more). Whereas once President's (both Republican and Democrats) celebrated people who had done things, President Obama celebrates someone who has called on other people to do more things (pay more money) and yet has no real accomplishments of her own (no offense- I'm sure she is a fine person).
• It was amazing and wonderful to see Congresswomen Giffords there- she has made such a great recovery and I wish her the best on her future.
• President Obama begins with his foreign policy accomplishments, which he can take credit for, although he should share this credit with George W. Bush, who put in place the foundations and background for many of these accomplishments (the pull-out in Iraq, the groundwork for catching Osama, drones and catching terrorists in the War on Terror, etc).
• Obama next suggests that private citizens should be more like the military and act as soldiers for the state. Citizens should stop fighting one another, stop disagreeing about the direction of the nation, stop pushing for their individual rights and liberties, stop trying to keep their property and the fruits of their labor, and instead citizens should serve the state, citizens should put aside their differences and just follow orders, and people should give up their wealth and property to the state so that it can redistribute it to those people who it favors. This all sounds vaguely familiar and has strong echo's of fascism in it, although I could sugar-coat it if you'd like.
• In 2008, the 'house of cards collapsed'- banks made loans they shouldn't have (which he pushed for a community activist), regulators didn't do their jobs (which they were not held accountable for), bonuses were paid to these banks and government agencies (to which they were never held accountable for)... he is on the wrong side of the ledger here- he was pushing for the collapse and after the collapse did not hold those people accountable.
• "State of the Union is getting stronger"- as if the mounting US debt is to be ignored and we're all just to pretend that trillions of dollars in my children's spending is not damaging the foundations of our nation and creating a time-bomb that will destroy America.
• President Obama says that he can't get anything done without control of every single aspect of our political system- he decries the 'obstructionism' of the GOP controlling one single house of Congress. No one- no one- should ever be elected President who says that he can't get anything done unless he has total power- that is bad for America and bad for democracy.
• "What is happening in Detroit can happen in other industries"- what happened in Detroit was that the auto companies were bailed out, costing taxpayers $80 billion in loans, debts forgiven, pensions guaranteed, and other loans. GM made $6 billion last year in profits- taxpayers should get that back, plus the next $74 billion in profits, and then we'll claim success in saving a company at no cost. Imagine if he were to bail every unprofitable business out at massive losses to taxpayers- what would that sort of economy look like?
• Proposes new tax on multi-national companies, to be redistributed to companies that 'hire here in America'- some sort of new loan to be administered by Obama officials based on conditions that he'd set. The increased taxes on MNC's will be sure to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices on goods and services, causing inflation and hitting the poor especially hard. Why does Obama hate poor people so much?
• "We brought trade cases against China at over twice the rate as the previous administration"- but the Chinese just laughed at us because Obama bowed to the Chinese President and begged to borrow trillions more of their money so that he could blow it on his wasteful spending. It's nice that he's suing China though- I'm sure that's employing lots of lawyers.
• President Obama is mystified on why employers don't hire workers- perhaps if he would have had some sort of a job at some point in business or in the private sector or in some sort of productive economic enterprise he'd know that increasing regulations, fees, requirements, red tape, and the such encourage employers not to hire.
• Obama proposes starting a temp agency company... with taxpayer money. This government financed and supported company will compete with all of these Michigan companies.
• Obama is right- good teachers like me matter, and also he's right that teachers like me are attacked all the time- I'm bashed by liberals and progressives who call me all sorts of names. The President's other education policies are pretty- they are nice words that mean nothing since the federal government isn't supposed to be involved in education in any way other than making sure that there is equality in education for different races and sexes (Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965).
• It is almost as if the right answer to everything that Obama says is the opposite of what he says. He says that it is wrong for taxpayers to be giving illegal immigrants a paid education and then sending them home at the end- he suggests we should make these people here illegally citizens after investing all that money into them, while I kind of think that taxpayers shouldn't be investing money into people here illegally. Get a work or education visa or something to stay here or pay your own way.
• President Obama attacks inequality in pay between mean and women in work- that's right Obama, tear this straw man up! That straw man can't fight back- I suggest he go after those who want children to work in coal mines next!
• I followed this line... "need more bullet proof vests... computers chips... innovations... industries... energy..." what???
• President Obama claims that our nation needs an "all out all of the above strategy"- it's double-speak though, because in his next line he clarifies that this strategy means less oil, less natural gas, less coal, and less drilling. His 'all of the above' strategy is going to include additional fees, regulations, and rules on companies that he doesn't like. So, in summary, he is pitching a "some of the below strategy".
• On to exploding batteries discussion... Bryan (the guy Obama referenced) used to build luxury yachts, but when government policies that Obama supported (he wanted a higher tax on yachts) destroyed Bryan's company and industry, Obama was there to throw taxpayer dollars at him to get him restarted building taxpayer subsidized wind turbines, and now Obama is some sort of 'good guy.' He's the bad guy in the story, kiddies. Holland-based Energetx Composites LLC, you just got mentioned by Obama in his State of the Union address- that's the kiss of death.
• Proposed more small fees and regulations and burdens on businesses... I missed what sort of scheme it was supposed to pay for in order to be 'budget neutral'.
• I'm caught up now... "we need smart regulations"... "we need rules"... these rules and regulations "make the free market more free"- LOL. Did he just say "I've ordered thousands of federal agents to spend thousands of man-hours to search for useless regulations that waste taxpayer money"- I must have heard this wrong. He's moving on though to proposing new rules and regulations- I guess he was done with the part about getting rid of regulations and rules after he threw the joke out there. Listening to him talk, I feel like he's a joke of a President.
• Someone add up how much all these regulations, agencies, bureau's, rules, and investments are going to cost America... I'll have to look at the transcript, but I'm pretty sure all he does is to propose these things without any sense of cost. A man (or woman) could spend a hundred years undoing all the damage that this guy is doing to our Republic.
• "The recovery is still fragile"- but earlier he said the "State of the Union is getting stronger"- let's square this round issue, folks.
• Did you know that President Obama has cut the deficit $2 trillion? And not raised it $5 trillion like what really happened? BIZARRO WORLD!
• Let's not forget this people- President Obama hates people earning millions and wants to go after them and confiscate their income redistribute it to people making less. Those who are already wealthy can keep it, those who are on the bottom might like it, but there will be no more moving between classes in Obama's America. This guy wants to slap class systems on us and turn our nation into the rich- those who already made their wealth and who have connections with government- and the rest of us poor. "You can call this class warfare all you want" he says- it's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare. It's class warfare...
• The partisan divide is getting worse every year he says... especially over the past 3 years. It must be George Bush's fault or something, right? Or maybe it's because you President Obama are the most bitterly partisan figure in the history of our nation and is tearing our nation into serfs and masters. President Obama attacks running a 'perpetual campaign'- but yet he is the worst offender in this, running continually for office in a way that no President in history has ever done, running campaign commercials a year in advance of the general election, and even trotting out his wife to make frequent partisan attacks.
• He just said-"With or without this Congress I will keep implementing laws and putting in place policies that I want, but if Congress went along with what I was already doing it would give me cover and get us all involved." This guy is a bully and a dictator. Maybe I heard him wrong though; I'll go back and re-read the transcript, maybe I got it wrong.
• The speech must be coming to an end- after spending a couple minutes in the beginning to address our military and veterans, we're now going to end with a couple minutes at the end about the military and veterans- I though think that the military shouldn't just be props in Obama's game of 'we're all in this together' meme; maybe he should talk about military programs in the body of his speech that he wants to cut or increase, about what he's been doing as commander-in-chief, etc. The military is not simply there to make Obama look good. "No one thought about politics on that day" Obama says- but yet the photo of Obama in the war room was staged. Nice words Obama, but in your mouth, they are just words, merely words.
• President Obama says that as long as we are all commoners, living like peasants on the land, serving our masters like serfs, than our nation will be strong. He said 'common' several times at the end- but private property, liberty, and protection of life wasn't mentioned.

UPDATE III: Thank you for linking to this article The Western Experience, The Bitter Americans, and others!

Domestic policy results are a mix of both Congress and the President, and so Obama supporters can attempt to say that the reason why domestic policies have failed so badly over the past years is because of the Congress (House under Democratic control 2007-2011, Senate under Democratic control 2007 to today). But the results of foreign policy decisions are almost always the result of actions made purely the President, so these results can not be blamed on former President Bush (2001-2009) or the Republicans in Congress (House 2011+). President Barack Obama is responsible for foreign policy actions of the last several years.

And the latest news from Egypt is that Obama messed up badly and in so doing has led to the people of Egypt being less free, less prosperous, and private property rights being less protected. Via the New York Times:

Egyptian authorities confirmed Saturday that a political coalition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the 84-year-old group that virtually invented political Islam, had won about 47 percent of the seats in the first Parliament elected since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. An alliance of ultraconservative Islamists won the next largest share of seats, about 25 percent....

...Parliament the authority to choose the 100 members of a constitutional assembly, so it may shape Egypt for decades to come, although the military council has sometimes tried to influence that process...

...The Brotherhood has said it intends to respect personal liberties and will focus on economic and social issues, gradually nudging the culture toward its conservative values. By contrast, the ultraconservatives, known as Salafis, put a higher priority on legislation on Islamic moral issues, like the consumption of alcohol, women’s dress and the contents of popular culture.

Among the remaining roughly 30 percent of parliamentary seats, the next largest share was won by the Wafd Party, a liberal party recognized under Mr. Mubarak and with roots dating to Egypt’s colonial period.

It was trailed by a coalition known as the Egyptian Bloc. It included the Free Egyptians, a business-friendly liberal party founded by a Coptic Christian businessman, Naguib Sawiris, and favored by many members of the country’s Coptic Christian minority, about 10 percent of the public. The Egyptian Bloc also included the liberal Social Democratic Party, which leans further to the left on economic issues.

A coalition of parties founded by the young leaders of the revolt that unseated Mr. Mubarak won only a few percent of the seats, as did a handful of offshoots of the former governing party....

There is no way to spin this. Mubarak gave a speech where he said that he would transition power over to groups that were business-friendly, were supportive to liberty and freedom, and would not be radically-intolerant Muslim, and President Obama went on TV and gave a major speech demanding that "Mubarak must go now."

"An orderly transition must be meaningful, it must peaceful, and it must begin now," Obama declared in his address, and he got his wish- Egypt has now gone from being a moderately bad regime to putting in place a coalition of radicals that support terror and the destruction of Israel- and it happened in under a year. He got his meaningful change for the worse pretty quickly- and it was all on him, the blame was exclusively on Obama, and the results of his actions were bad for millions of Egyptians and America.

Obama said that he turned on Mubarak in order to support the young leaders of revolutionaries in Egypt- the group that won the least from this revolution. The group that got the most out of the Egyptian revolution was the groups that we supported the LEAST- the radical Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists.

Obama messed this policy decision up. Hold him responsible.

My stances on this issue are also on the record- see my posts Obama is Picking Worst of Bad Options in Egypt: Is Obama Getting Advice from Jimmy Carter? and Obama's Egypt Policy Was a Failure?.

Until 1980, the United States was the world's leading producer of uranium, but today there are only three operating uranium mines left. This may have been due to the fall in uranium prices, which hit a low of $7.92 per pound in 2001. But with the price climbing to over $50 today, there is renewed interest in mining uranium, which is essential to powering nuclear power plants and important for national security- and it gets even better, because there are still considerable deposits of uranium in the United States, including fairly large deposits that were discovered in northern Arizona over recent years.

Uranium mining leads to cheaper nuclear power which leads to cleaner domestic energy production and a better environment- its just the sort of win-win-win scenario that only someone like Barack Obama could reject.

Via RadioViceOnline:

Last week, without much media attention, President Obama, this time via Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, put the nix on certain uranium mining on federal lands in northern Arizona. Sadly, this too, is political pandering, as, apparently nuclear power is as toxic to the left as is coal and oil power. And, per this fiat, the land in question is off limits to uranium mining for the next 20 years.

Let’s look at the process. The Bureau of Land Management is in charge of analyzing whether uranium mining is good or bad for the environment in this area. It found that the

mining would have ‘no direct impacts’ on protected wilderness areas. The impact on drinking-water supply in the Colorado River was also found to be ‘negligible’... The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the northern Arizona parcels [withdrawn from mining] contain uranium that, mined to capacity, would generate enough electricity to power Los Angeles for 154 years.... [t]he land bureau’s impact statement estimates that [the administration's decision] will cost the region $160 million in average annual economic output…

Northern Arizona currently has an unemployment rate of 17%. But, then again, Arizona in general, and northern Arizona in particular, is “red”. Let me suggest an ugly Presidential thought- "I’m not going to win Arizona anyway, so, it makes more sense to appease the left and perhaps pick up some votes."

One of the earlier actions undertaken by the Obama administration was to put in place bans on mining for a range of precious resources. It was bans such as these that have delayed the recovery in our nation and led to tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes and jobs- and even if the economy revives over the next couple months that does not take away from the fact that policy actions such as bans on mining hurt Americans lives, liberty, and property.

One such ban was a ban on mining for uranium in northern Arizona, which was originally put in place for 2 years so that officials could study the situation further. Obama officials were hoping that their meme that energy mining was destructive and bad and wrong would be proved true and so they could stop mining permanently, but then when the report came back that the mining wasn't in any way bad, they just shrugged their shoulders and banned it anyways.

And the cherry on to- President Obama then has the audacity to argue that they did this to SAVE JOBS and ENCOURAGE ECONOMIC GROWTH, and that now he is going to campaign on this theme- that by stopping the extracting of valuable resources he actually made our nation more wealthy; that by stopping thousands from being employed to extract these minerals he created more jobs; and that he has protected the environment even though the environmental impact from the mining was declared to be 'negligible' by liberal bureaucratic agencies which were likely pressured by Obama administration officials.

This double-speak, hypocrisy, and lying is characteristic of this administration, and the quicker it is gone, the quicker its actions can be reversed, we can begin to safely and responsibly mine valuable minerals, produce cheaper domestic energy, lower the costs of electricity for poor people, and help the working man to get ahead.

Every month teacher unions from around the nation gather together to pray at the alter of the Democratic Party, offering up the usual sacrifices (unions dues) and saying the usual prayers (another term for Obama). As part of this monthly ritual held in every public school district in the nation, union leaders faithfully repeat the claim that Republicans are anti-education and that President Obama is pro-education. Let's examine this claim in light of the a recent release from the House Education and the Workforce Committee Republicans:

Late last year, the U.S. Secretary of Education took unprecedented action and announced a plan that would allow the administration to unilaterally dictate federal education policy without Congressional input.

Secretary Arne Duncan’s plan to grant waivers for certain requirements under No Child Left Behind in exchange for states adopting the administration’s preferred education agenda has been called “the most sweeping use of executive authority to rewrite federal education law since Washington expanded its involvement in education in the 1960s” by the New York Times. In the Washington Post, George Will likened the plan to “coercive federalism”...

...Already, this conditional waivers plan has generated great uncertainty for state and local education officials. States that opt in to the plan will be forced to dedicate time and limited resources to implement a host of new federal regulations. However, the requirements could be easily changed by Congress, Secretary Duncan, or the next administration, potentially rendering a state’s investment in changing its education system meaningless...

...Making matters worse, the secretary's waiver plan – similar to his ill-fated Race to the Top program – pressures states to adopt common academic standards and tests in reading and math, creating de facto national standards and national tests. This one-size-fits-all approach usurps the power of local superintendents, school boards, and parents who know more about what kids need to learn than bureaucrats in Washington...

...House Education and the Workforce Committee Republicans are determined to fix current education law the right way – with smart legislative policies that will have a lasting impact. Toward that effort, Republicans recently released two pieces of draft legislation to overhaul No Child Left Behind. In addition to provisions that support state-developed accountability systems and a smaller federal footprint in education, the legislation includes four provisions that rein in the authority of the Secretary of Education and preserve state and local control...

...We cannot allow the Obama administration to implement a backdoor education agenda. It’s time to advance real change in our nation’s education system. The Student Success Act and the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act provide states and school districts with a clear path forward that will help get more effective teachers in the classroom, enhance accountability, and raise the bar on student achievement.

Our Founding Fathers designed our legislative branch to implement and pass policies and to pass the laws which govern our nation- they clearly did not give the President the power to issue directives and orders establishing policies and laws, paid for out a giant slush fund (stimulus dollars, which were supposed to go for shovel ready projects that would put Americans back to work back in 2009). But this is what we have- a President who thinks he is smarter than the American public and their elected Representatives and Senators, and who thinks that he is supposed to be running our nation as 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. Process and the means matter, and Obama is not going about implementing education policy the right way (with Congressional approval and direction).

Furthermore, by his actions President Obama does not demonstrate that he is any sort of 'friend of education', deserving of one-sided and considerable support by the National Education Association and its various state chapters. Pressuring states to adopt common core standards is the same sort of 'national standards' that the unions opposed so loudly during Bush's administration- the emphasis on national tests is the same sort of 'national testing' that brought howls from unions and magazine articles in education magazines- and the push for merit pay should be met with a storm of opposition by the education labor unions. On these issues and many others, the labor unions have decided to compromise their positions and policy stances so that Barack Obama can remain as President, and by doing so continue to destroy the property tax base and income taxes on which education depends for its funding.

The truth of the matter is that today, perhaps it is the Republican Party which offers the best path forward for public education in America. A rising tide floats all boats, and Republican policies which encourage economic growth- less regulation, more protection of private property, less fees, less red tape and bureaucratic interference, etc- will likely lead to increased tax revenues that will in turn lead to increased funding and money for education. Further, policies designed in the legislative branch and laws passed by our Congress will have more broad consensus and input from more parties and thus be better designed and implemented that dictates issued by an overbearing and close-minded Executive Branch.