Support Obama?

Should Christians respect Obama? That’s the question asked by Evangelist Dr. David Barton on a radio talk show. Dr. Barton stated that; “Respect the Office? Yes. Respect the Man in the Office? No, I am sorry to say. I have noted that many elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans, called upon America to unite behind Obama. Well, I want to make it clear to all who will listen that I AM NOT uniting behind Obama!” I can readily understand Dr. Barton’s sentiment, and I certainly agree with him. Along with the good doctor, I’ll see what I can do to make sure that Mr. O is a one-termer!

Why? Because along with Dr, Barton I do not share Obama's vision for America. I certainly do not share his radical Marxist concept of re-distributing wealth, his views on raising taxes, nor his beliefs on how to reinvent healthcare. I don’t share his view that America is arrogant and not a Christian Nation. I fail to see how reducing our military forces by 25% will solve any of our overseas problems. I do not share his idea that Radical Islam is our friend, and I certainly do not agree with his plan to negotiate with terrorist regimes. And I object to his view of amnesty for illegals. No, my vision of America was learned by living and working in this country for well over sixty years, and seems to be quite different from Mr. Obama's concept, one learned in Kenya, Indonesia, Chicago, and Lord only knows where else.

I didn’t learn about economics from studying the failed theories of Karl Marx, I learned from sitting down each month with a paycheck and a seemingly endless stack of bills. I learned about a Christian America from occasionally attending church, and from my studies of history. I learned about the “glories of Islam” and their “religion of peace” from visiting several Islamic countries while in the Service (I wasn’t impressed). I learned about our health care system from spending years as a fireman-paramedic, and from spending the last few years as a cardiac patient. I learned about our need for a strong military from spending a number of years (regular and reserve) in military service. I learned about the “arrogance of America” from spending a few years overseas, helping defend other countries, and from watching Americans bend over backwards trying to assist the victims of wars, natural disasters, tyranny, and often just plain bad luck. Strangely enough, I learned about American “intolerance” only from reading about it in assorted leftist books and newspapers, certainly not from observation or personal experience.

My background is somewhat different from Mr. Obama’s as well. My folks were married, they stayed that way, and they raised a crop of kids while doing so. Mom, and a few Pastors, took care of my religious education, while a lot of public school teachers made sure I learned the three R’s. Dad, and his belt, taught me to respect the law, and that certain childish activities are not considered socially acceptable. He also taught me to keep my nose out of other peoples business, and that I was the only responsible party when I did something really stupid. Living on a farm for a few years taught me the meaning of hard work. I learned to save money, because no matter how much I whimper and wail, the world does not owe me a free ride. I learned to set realistic goals for myself, and not to expect the impossible of others. At some point after my teenage years I also learned that I don’t have all the answers, and I’ve been learning something new every day since.

Mr. O and I differ on a few other points as well, for one thing I can prove where I was born. My religious education taught me Christian values, not “God D- - - America”, or that the “Islamic call to prayer was the sweetest sound I ever heard”. I had a career as a working firefighter, not as a “Community Organizer”. Well, I didn’t get to attend an Ivy League College either… but does a lot of night school… and an advanced degree from the School of Hard Knocks, count?

For years the liberals in our society have attacked our country, our morals, and our spiritual beliefs. They have portrayed us as a land where everything is tolerated… except being intolerant or using politically incorrect words. They have mocked and attacked the values of our Country, teaching our children that immorality is proper behavior and that crime does pay. They have made every effort to remove the name of God from our Society. They have challenged the right to bear arms, and the most basic principles of our criminal codes. They have attacked the most fundamental of all our Freedoms, the right of free speech, unless of course it’s in the name of flag burning or pornography. Mr. O travels overseas, on my dime of course, and promptly bows to foreign leaders who are our sworn enemies! Adding to the insult he apologizes for America being American, then tells the world that we’re arrogant and that all the problems in the entire world are our fault! He, and his left wing cheering section, want us to drop the tried and true policies that have made us the most successful nation in history and the leader of the free world, instead we're to follow in the footsteps of assorted petty tyrants whose regimes have utterly failed! Majority rules in America, and I can fully agree with the concept. However, the left has been an extremely vocal and totally irrevelent minority for years, a rabid mob that demands we follow their rules, and has the avowed goal of totally destroying my country! I will be a voice in opposition to Obama, his leftist minions, and their "Goals for America”. I am going to be a thorn in the side of those who would allow that Socialist – Marxist crowd to change everything that is good about America. Unite behind Obama? Never!

We’re in the home stretch of the election campaign. In less than two weeks we will head to the polls to vote for the future of our families, our communities, our state, and our country. We’re seeing the closing arguments now, which are what the politicians want voters to have in mind when they head to the voting booths. Those arguments should be very simple and to the point. In 1984, Reagan’s closing argument was “Morning in America” versus returning to the malaise of Jimmy Carter. In 1994, the Republican closing argument was the “Contract with America” versus decades of broken promises from the Democrats. This year, the “Pledge to America” is a closing argument for unseating left-wing, big-spending Democrats. It’s a fact that in January 2007, when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took over Congress, unemployment was 4.6% and food stamp usage was around 26.5 million people. Today, the unemployment rate is 9.6% and rising, with over 40 million Americans on food stamps. The choice in this election appears to have evolved into paychecks versus food stamps.

Trust Obama and the gang? Well, which future do you want? More food stamps? Or more paychecks? Now, go Ye forth and voice your opinion, by voting your convictions.

Less Government?

"POLITICIANS & DIAPERS NEED TO BE CHANGED OFTEN,
AND FOR THE SAME REASON"

The Tea Party is often described as a self-generated grass-roots protest against the growth of government and the resulting deficit. One commentator calls it the “Tea Kettle movement” — because “all it’s doing is letting off steam”. Well… Okay… I can agree with that to a point. The Tea partiers are letting off steam which, I suspect, is a good thing. We can all envision what happens when a boiler gets overheated and the safety valve is stuck. The results aren’t pretty. When that happens in a socio-political situation, the damage is widespread, long lasting, and really hard on society. A prime example would be the French revolution. The somewhat volatile French proletariat was bedeviled by a tax and spend government, the economy was a shambles, and the gentry ignored the anger building up. When the explosion came, French society crumbled, the gentry really did loose their heads, anarchy ruled the streets, and dictator’s filled the power vacuum. Eventually France got Napoleon and what was at the time “the Mother of all Wars”. With all that, the French political scene has yet to recover, having been in somewhat of a turmoil for the last two-hundred years! I’ll grant that we haven’t reached quite that extreme… yet, but there’s a lot of anger is building up. And that anger exists for many of the same reasons that happened in France. It’s building, and our leaders are blissfully ignoring the warning signs.

The issues that upsets the Tea Kettle, our debt and bloated government, are symptoms of the problem, not the cause. They’re signs of a country that’s in decline and losing its competitive edge. The first question that should be asked is; how does the leader of the free world, the richest and most successful country in history, come to this? And all that’s needed is to look at history. Rome was the military and economic power of the world a couple of thousand years ago, yet they deteriorated and fell to a few rag-tag bands of barbarians. The Chinese empire was a cultural and scientific power second to none, yet they simply disintegrated, and were soon swallowed piecemeal by a greedy world. The sun never set on the British Empire, yet in a few short years following WW I England went from being the worlds’ superpower to just another country. The Soviet Union was a super power, abit a somewhat shaky one, but they totally collapsed seemingly overnight. And now it appears to be our turn. How… Why…

The short answer is of course, debt, in every example government simply overspent their available resources. But that is not the root cause. The cause is, and has always been, a failure of leadership. In our case, politics has become just another form of entertainment, Congress a forum for legalized bribery, and our lawmaking institutions are divided by partisanship to the point of paralysis. The Tea Party folks, who run the full scale from Republicans through Independents to Democrats, understand this at a gut level wither they know it or not, and are fumbling around in the dark looking for a leader who can turn this sorry state of affairs around. Nor are they alone, as neither of the established mainstream parties have a leader worthy of the name.

First and foremost a political leader must have three characteristics. He must be a person who is more interested in fighting for his country than any particular political ideology. Second, he must be able to persuade Americans that he actually has a workable plan, not just some vague idea to cut taxes or hand everybody free medical care, but rather a plan to make America successful, thriving, and respected again. Thirdly, he must have the ability to lead in a rapidly changing world, an individual who believes his job is not to complain about the polls, but to change the polls by his actions. So what do we have today? The Republicans are effectively leaderless; there is no Teddy Roosevelt on their horizon. On the other hand, the Democrats have Mr. Obama, and about all I see him do is to whine about how tough things are and blame everything on somebody else. There’s no Truman or Kennedy of that front either. As for the TEA party, in its present state it doesn’t have a leader unless you count Sarah Palin. A more or less staunch conservative “party”, I have yet to see a Ronnie Reagan show up in their ranks.

So… all you wannabe political leaders, pay attention. It’s remarkable how the federal government imposes its will on a resistant public. True, it takes a lot to stir the American people to civil disobedience, but still, I’d think there aren’t enough bureaucrats and federal agents in all the land to impose the ridiculous and detailed rules the fed’s have forced on us, which should reminded us of just how destructive people can be when they grab political power, or when their “wisdom” is used by bureaucrats in some new scheme to “reinvent” government. More of anything when government is concerned only means more government, and more government is the problem, not the solution. The very fact that the best and the brightest among us feel the need to reinvent government every few years proves that such government doesn’t work. Government is not supposed to “provide” for us, it’s not supposed to control our lives, and nothing in the Constitution calls for “entitlements” either. “Government” is merely intended to be the lubricant that makes our society run a little smother. Despite the wistful thinking and fuzzy theories of the progressive left, the solution to our current crop of problems is a whole lot less government. How difficult can that be to understand?

A recent article in Fortune Magazine discusses the idea of reinventing our government into what they call “Government 2.0”, which is envisioned to be “a citizen-centric philosophy and strategy that believes the best results are usually driven by partnerships between citizens and government, at all levels”. I read this to mean yet more government, with the feds being the “senior partner”. Let me offer this: A little more of this and a little more of that in governing adds up to nothing but more government, not necessarily better government. So, how about giving less government a chance? “Give us a chance” is the whole idea around which grass-roots political action is rising. That rumble we hear in the background is building to a crescendo, and politicians are ignoring it at their peril.

Since the days of Woodrow Wilson, progressives have been searching for ways to change our government, which they believe will bring us to some utopian level of greater good and promote the general welfare. The truth is, we don’t need to change our current “Government 1.5” to a “2.0” version, we need a return to “Government 1.0”, the Constitution we started with. And that is my hope for the Tea Party, that somehow they will find a way to “reset” of our federal government to the Constitutional Republic it was meant to be!

Wolf Wars II

Idaho County is certainly on the map now! It seems that the County’s Wolf Disaster Declaration has ignited a medium sized firestorm across the entire country, with several other Idaho and Montana counties following our lead and considering similar action. A quick search of the internet brings up thousands of commentaries, news articles, and other stories on the subject, along with objections from environmental terrorists and the raging of pro-wolf activists. If all of this isn’t bad enough, the political administration is following Mr. Obama’s ideas, and it’s the most “left-wing, anti-hunting, anti-gun, pro-environmentalist, in love with global warming, animal loving mob the world has ever seen.” Surely we can’t expect the Obama administration to allow the states to manage the wolves, as that would be allowing state sovereignty. After all, the federal government must control everything, as per the left, and this will be a great tool to reign in those unruly, conservative westerners. We’ve pretty well had it with the Department of Interior and the USFWS, many are disgusted with our own fish and game departments, and mostly we’re tired of the unending lawsuits from outsiders who demand their own way, have the money to force the issues, and have activist judges in their hip pockets. In short, we’re being put into a position where either government accedes to our wishes, or we’ll be forced to take extreme measures. We could just give up I suppose, but surrender has never been a real popular option in these parts. Hello Washington? The natives are getting restless out here.

Adding insult to injury, Gov. Otter’s long awaited decision on our disaster declaration has finally arrived, via turtle express. In his letter to Idaho County, Butch “shares our frustrations”, and “no one was more disappointed that I” with Judge Molloy’s re-listing decision. While that’s the “to be expected” platitudes, they aren’t very reassuring. He goes on to inform us once again that “we are in the process of attaining the authority” to address wolves and the unacceptable impact they are having across the state. All well and fine, but just how long are we expected to wait for the gears of federal government to grind? Two or three years perhaps? How about five or ten years? For the most part this decision from Boise does little more than tell the citizens of Idaho County to “shut-up and feed the wolves”.

In some of the western states, groups and individuals are ready with legislation that would force the hand of the Federal government. A few of these proposals are to the point of telling the Feds to get the hell out of their state and take their wolves with them, or the state will take care of the problem. That isn’t a real good idea either, but the states certainly can’t be blamed for that attitude. We’ve been promised all sorts of things from even before wolves were dumped on us, and none of those promises have been lived up to. We’ve had it with false promises as we watch years of work to restore game herds trampled into the dust by the wolf restoration program. We can only wonder how much longer the western states are going to allow themselves be used and abused. It’s been argued that the so-called animal rights groups’ goal isn’t in saving wildlife, and if these groups really had the idea of saving animals, they’ve now reached the counter-productive stage of forcing people to kill wolves, both out of anger, and to protect their property. And that still doesn’t consider the damage an excessive wolf population is doing to other wildlife. Not one of these organizations has ever offered a compromise. The people have been lied to and the federal government still hasn’t the courage to stand up for effective wildlife management. As a side note, I noticed the pro-life folks lining Main Street the other day, protesting instant abortion I think, and for the record I fully agree with them. However, in the case of wolf hugging environfreaks I’m willing to make an exception…

People will only allow themselves to be pushed so far. As I said, once they reach a certain point they will either stand up and fight or give up. The question remains, will Sec. Salazar pursue wolf delisting or will he and the administration continue pandering to the environmentalists? Will the animal rights groups continue their agenda and mount even bigger lawsuits? Will the states draft legislation in hopes of regaining the sovereignty once guaranteed us by the Constitution? Will we fight back, defending our freedoms, property rights, and “home rule”? As far as I’m concerned, the environmentalists can have all the wolves they want, in their back yard, and I’m sure that many of the folks in Idaho and Montana would be happy to send them a few.

With all the environut objections to wolf control, they have managed to leave out one “minor” problem, disease. In mid 2005, Idaho wildlife officials began conducting post mortem examinations of many wildlife species. The study cites 62% of Idaho wolves and 63% of Montana wolves contained E. granulosis tapeworms, and 71% of all the wolves tested contained Taenia sp tapeworms, both of which are known to be parasites that humans generally catch from assorted canine species. The study reports that “The detection of thousands of tapeworms per wolf was a common finding,” and also: “Based on our results, the parasite is now well established in wolves in these states and is documented in elk, mule deer, and a mountain goat as intermediate hosts.” That continues on to any animal that graze in areas where wolves are found, and anyone who works with those animals. The manner of spread of these worms is quite interesting from a biological viewpoint, but for now, all you have to do to become infected is live or work in a contaminated area! Plus you expose the kids when you get home and those minute egg sacs brush off your clothing (or the dog’s fur) and land on the carpet where the young’uns are playing. (Those egg sacs are viable for a couple of years as well.) These species of worm were completely unknown this far south… until Canadian wolves were introduced to our area. The worms can be fatal to humans, and naturally Boise forgot to warn us about this little detail!

The pretense for re-listing was that Wyoming refused to adopt limits on killing wolves. Actually Wyoming had a management plan that was approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service, and did require Wyoming to maintain a specified number of breeding pairs of wolves. The real issue seems to be that in most of that state the wolf was classified as a predator, and could be shot on sight. Humm… Perhaps Gov. Otter should declare a similar program for the state of Idaho?

In my wildest dreams I never considered that Idaho County might be the place that triggered a rebellion, which is what appears to have happened. With that, I’ll say to our Commissioners, “Good on ‘ye lads”. We’ve started something that may well leave the “Wolf War” as perhaps our last legal hope to salvage a freedom loving country. And if the County Commissioners determine that we must “call out the militia” to protect our small part of this nation… Well… arthritis may not allow me to walk very far anymore, but I can still see well enough to shoot a wolf!