Today, to my great dissatisfaction, I learned that Congressional leadership??? and the Administration plan to pass the Health Care bill through what is called reconciliation. This process is to attach the bill to some piece of legislation for which no Senator or Representative would not vote for such as budget or funding the troops. In other words, it will be crammed down our throats even though the American people are thoroughly against the bill.
I wrote the attached letter to my "representatives", however, I doubt they will respond or even take notice as they are so much smarter than you or I and know what is good for us! Does this not bother you or am I alone?
Dear Senator Levin, Senator Stabenow and Representative Peters,
I am writing to you today to express my strong opposition to the planned maneuver by the Administration, Speaker Pilosi and Leader Reed to pass the health care bill. As I understand it, the bill will be attached to a bill for which everyone must vote, such as a budget bill. This tactic will not work. It is devious and subverts the will of the people.
This health care bill which is opposed by the American People in such numbers rarely seen in politics. Any Senator or Representative who votes for this bill will bring down the wrath of the voters onto their heads. They will stand no chance of being elected to dog-catcher, no less to the positions they now hold. This is not only applies to Republican voters but also Democrats and Independents. The person who votes for this bill is completely out of touch with those he/she represents and should be sent packing.
Additionally, I know you think that November is a long time away and that the voters will soon forget. That could not be more wrong. We will remember who votes for this bill whether you stand for election this November or November 2012 or November 2014.The recent Pew poll found that 80% of their respondents indicated they were dissatisfied with THEIR Senators and Representatives, that means YOU. It is time for you to start listening to us.
The American people are tired of being told by their representatives in Washington what is good for them and to sit down and shut up because "we know better." We expect our elected officials to vote for what we want. We are the people who sent you there to "represent" us and not special interests or what ideas you think might be "good" for us. So represent us and vote AGAINST the health care plan regardless of the bill to which it is attached.
We are watching you.
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Friday, February 19, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
The Deep Roots of the Teaparty member
A good friend asked me about Sarah Palin and although this article does not talk about her, I believe Pat sums up the feeling that many Americans have when it comes to the government. Sarah, at this point in time, is the one person who is expressing what most Americans are thinking. You may not like HER, and maybe she will not be the candidate that pulls most Americans together, but it is her MESSAGE that resonates strongly with many of us diseffected Americans.
THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - February 16, 2010
Secession in the Air
by Pat Buchanan
No, it is not 1860 again.
But with all the talk of the 10th Amendment, nullification
and interposition, states rights and secession -- following
Gov. Rick Perry's misstatement that Texas, on entering the
Union in 1845, reserved in its constitution a right to
secede -- one might think so.
Chalk up another one for those Tea Party activists who
exploded in cheers when Sister Sarah brought up the dread
word in endorsing Rick Perry in the primary.
Looking back in American history, however, these ideas,
these sentiments, decried as insane inside the Beltway,
were once as American as "The Midnight Ride of Paul
Revere."
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good
thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms
in the physical," wrote Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
from Paris in January 1787, about Revolutionary War Capt.
Daniel Shay's anti-tax rebellion in Massachusetts.
In the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, both of these
founding fathers sanctioned the idea that states could
interpose their own sovereignty and nullify acts of
Congress. Both were enraged by the Alien and Sedition
Acts of John Adams and the Federalists, written into law
to combat sedition during the undeclared naval war with
France.
On taking office, President Jefferson declared the acts
unconstitutional, refused to prosecute those charged and
freed the imprisoned writers.
In 1814, Timothy Pickering, another veteran of the
revolution and secretary of state to both George Washington
and Adams, was a force behind the Hartford Convention,
which argued for New England's secession and reuniting with
Great Britain. Massachusetts opposed Madison's War of 1812
that had caused the British blockade that destroyed their
trade and prosperity.
The war's end and Jackson's victory at New Orleans,
however, aborted the Hartford movement and finished
off the Federalists forever.
In 1832, it was Vice President John Calhoun who inspired
South Carolina to vote to nullify the Tariff of Abomination
that was killing the cotton-exporting South and enriching
Northern manufacturers. To the chagrin of Madison, Calhoun
invoked his and Jefferson's Virginia and Kentucky
resolutions in defense of Carolinian defiance.
In 1845, it was Massachusetts again. Ex-President John
Quincy Adams declared that admission of Texas to the Union
as a slave state might constitute grounds for secession
and civil war.
With Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 and Republicans,
the Northern party, assuming power, South Carolina,
Georgia and the Gulf states seceded.
But not until after Fort Sumter, when Lincoln called for
volunteers to march south and crush the rebellion, did
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas secede,
rather than remain passive or participate in a war on
their kinfolk.
Unlike the issues of yesteryear that tore the Union
asunder, Tea Party issues are not sectional but national.
Yet, they are rooted in a similar set of beliefs -- that
the federal government no longer serves their interests,
but the interests of economic and political forces that
sustain the party in power.
In 1860, the South saw power passing indefinitely to a new
regime, a Republican Party that represented high-tariff
industrialists and New England radicals and abolitionists
who despised the agrarian South and celebrated the raid on
Harper's Ferry by the terrorist John Brown, who had sought
to incite a slave uprising, such as had occurred in Santo
Domingo.
What called the Tea Party into existence?
Some are angry over unchecked immigration and the failure
to control our borders and send the illegals back. Some
are angry over the loss of manufacturing jobs. Some are
angry over winless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some
are angry over ethnic preferences they see as favoring
minorities over them.
What they agree upon, however, is that they have been
treading water for a decade, working harder and harder
with little or no improvement in their family standard
of living. They see the government as taking more of
their income in taxes, seeking more control over their
institutions, creating entitlements for others not them,
plunging the nation into unpayable debt, and inviting
inflation or a default that can wipe out what they have
saved.
And there is nothing they can do about it, for they are
politically powerless. By their gatherings, numbers,
mockery of elites and militancy, however, they get a
sense of the power that they do not have.
Their repeated reappearance on the national stage, in new
incarnations, should be a fire bell in the night to the
establishment of both parties. For it testifies to their
belief and that of millions more that the state they
detest is at war with the country they love.
The secession taking place in America is a secession of the
heart -- of people who have come to believe the government
is them, and not us.
Obama's problem, like the Bushes' in 1992 and 2008, is that
one thing these folks are really good at is throwing people
out of power.
END OF Conservative Review
Copyright 2010 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved.
Please feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.
THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - February 16, 2010
Secession in the Air
by Pat Buchanan
No, it is not 1860 again.
But with all the talk of the 10th Amendment, nullification
and interposition, states rights and secession -- following
Gov. Rick Perry's misstatement that Texas, on entering the
Union in 1845, reserved in its constitution a right to
secede -- one might think so.
Chalk up another one for those Tea Party activists who
exploded in cheers when Sister Sarah brought up the dread
word in endorsing Rick Perry in the primary.
Looking back in American history, however, these ideas,
these sentiments, decried as insane inside the Beltway,
were once as American as "The Midnight Ride of Paul
Revere."
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good
thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms
in the physical," wrote Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
from Paris in January 1787, about Revolutionary War Capt.
Daniel Shay's anti-tax rebellion in Massachusetts.
In the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, both of these
founding fathers sanctioned the idea that states could
interpose their own sovereignty and nullify acts of
Congress. Both were enraged by the Alien and Sedition
Acts of John Adams and the Federalists, written into law
to combat sedition during the undeclared naval war with
France.
On taking office, President Jefferson declared the acts
unconstitutional, refused to prosecute those charged and
freed the imprisoned writers.
In 1814, Timothy Pickering, another veteran of the
revolution and secretary of state to both George Washington
and Adams, was a force behind the Hartford Convention,
which argued for New England's secession and reuniting with
Great Britain. Massachusetts opposed Madison's War of 1812
that had caused the British blockade that destroyed their
trade and prosperity.
The war's end and Jackson's victory at New Orleans,
however, aborted the Hartford movement and finished
off the Federalists forever.
In 1832, it was Vice President John Calhoun who inspired
South Carolina to vote to nullify the Tariff of Abomination
that was killing the cotton-exporting South and enriching
Northern manufacturers. To the chagrin of Madison, Calhoun
invoked his and Jefferson's Virginia and Kentucky
resolutions in defense of Carolinian defiance.
In 1845, it was Massachusetts again. Ex-President John
Quincy Adams declared that admission of Texas to the Union
as a slave state might constitute grounds for secession
and civil war.
With Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 and Republicans,
the Northern party, assuming power, South Carolina,
Georgia and the Gulf states seceded.
But not until after Fort Sumter, when Lincoln called for
volunteers to march south and crush the rebellion, did
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas secede,
rather than remain passive or participate in a war on
their kinfolk.
Unlike the issues of yesteryear that tore the Union
asunder, Tea Party issues are not sectional but national.
Yet, they are rooted in a similar set of beliefs -- that
the federal government no longer serves their interests,
but the interests of economic and political forces that
sustain the party in power.
In 1860, the South saw power passing indefinitely to a new
regime, a Republican Party that represented high-tariff
industrialists and New England radicals and abolitionists
who despised the agrarian South and celebrated the raid on
Harper's Ferry by the terrorist John Brown, who had sought
to incite a slave uprising, such as had occurred in Santo
Domingo.
What called the Tea Party into existence?
Some are angry over unchecked immigration and the failure
to control our borders and send the illegals back. Some
are angry over the loss of manufacturing jobs. Some are
angry over winless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some
are angry over ethnic preferences they see as favoring
minorities over them.
What they agree upon, however, is that they have been
treading water for a decade, working harder and harder
with little or no improvement in their family standard
of living. They see the government as taking more of
their income in taxes, seeking more control over their
institutions, creating entitlements for others not them,
plunging the nation into unpayable debt, and inviting
inflation or a default that can wipe out what they have
saved.
And there is nothing they can do about it, for they are
politically powerless. By their gatherings, numbers,
mockery of elites and militancy, however, they get a
sense of the power that they do not have.
Their repeated reappearance on the national stage, in new
incarnations, should be a fire bell in the night to the
establishment of both parties. For it testifies to their
belief and that of millions more that the state they
detest is at war with the country they love.
The secession taking place in America is a secession of the
heart -- of people who have come to believe the government
is them, and not us.
Obama's problem, like the Bushes' in 1992 and 2008, is that
one thing these folks are really good at is throwing people
out of power.
END OF Conservative Review
Copyright 2010 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved.
Please feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Obama Administration After One Year
Victor Davis Hanson writes a very provactive article today. I post it here for your commentary. What is the next step that Obama will take? I want you input.
As Predictable As Clockwork
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, (Political analyst extraordinaire)
The Jewish Press, February 5, 2010
I think we could see what was coming. This presidency has about as much subtlety in plot as a grade-B western, soap opera or teenage tantrum. A lackluster McCain candidacy, the September 2008 meltdown, weariness with eight years of Bush incumbency, conservative anger over spending, liberal furor over Iraq, a toady media, and Republican congressional corruption all led to a 50/50 electorate that was open to being mesmerized by Obama’s rhetoric and the dream of the nation’s first African-American president.
With congressional majorities, a compliant press, soaring public support, a soon-to-be President Obama was convinced, as he had been convinced by his success in the Ivy League, in Chicago, and in the Senate that he had a left-wing mandate. He believed he could hope and change his way to almost anything he wanted, despite the thin record, self-contradictions, constant inconsistencies and general confusion.
The hard left was salivating that at last it had an effective delivery system that could usher in a long awaited European-style socialism. Therefore, what followed was predictable: In his hubris, Obama cast off the campaign mask of moderation. Thick and fast came proposals for state-run healthcare, government takeovers, talk of nationalizing the student loan program, bailouts, mega-deficits, more, borrowing as stimulus, multicultural mea culpas abroad, loony symbolic appointments, and promiscuous talk of higher income, payroll, inheritance, and healthcare taxes, but only on “them.”
In other words, we saw in a trendy, cool form the age-old attempt to institutionalize equality of result, as freedom and liberty give way to mandated egalitarianism and fraternity. But wait — two thorny problems arose. The country is not quite yet left wing, but voted for Obama for the perfect-storm reasons outlined above. Anyone who had read the history of America could see that it was always a different sort of place than France, Germany, or Sweden — and will be, at least for a while longer.
So to ram down a left-wing agenda, the thespian Obama would have to continue his role as the bipartisan healer, centrist, reformer, purple-state uniter, trans-racial unifier, etc. But, alas, old habits die hard and the public soon began, here and there, to get glimpses of the old reality behind the new mask.
The wages of years with Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, the easy path through the Ivy League, the Axelrod-at-our throat politics and the snow job that had wowed deans, philanthropists and suburbanites all reappeared. Even as Obama sought to convince the farmer, plumber and insurance agent to accept state healthcare, a landscape of windmills and a EU-foreign policy, he slipped back into his old self. Thus, we got Van Jones and his racist, 9/11 truther bombast. Anita Dunn praised Mao. Commissars at the NEA boasted of the new Caesar.
The Professor Henry Gates incident prompted the president to trash the police first and get the facts second. Creditors were politically rescheduled for bailed-out businesses. The president thoughtlessly weighed in on everything from the Special Olympics and the tea party movement to Fox News and America’s purported sins. Suddenly we were no longer exceptional, but the Muslim world in fact had-jump-started the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The old bad guys — Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chavez and Putin — earned new, kind talk; the prior U.S. president was reduced to satanic status.
Conservatives are in a “I told you so mood” as the 2008 talk-radio bombast about Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, “re-distributive” spread the wealth, European socialism, etc., turned out not to be bombast at all. Moderates and independents sigh, “I can’t believe this is happening to me; he seemed just like Clinton with all that balanced budget talk, balanced energy policy, and mainstream help-the-little-guy talk. What happened to the Barack we trusted?” Liberals wonder, “Why is the coolest guy around suddenly flubbing every opportunity to get our agenda passed?” The hard left laments, “This guy is a triangulator who gave us a nibble, then pulled away the bone.”
His supporters counter: “See, he is a pragmatist and centrist who alienates the extremes.” No, No, No. He alienates them, but now the middle as well. What keeps his approval ratings in the forties is only the idea that the American people cannot quite yet accept a failed presidency after a mere 12 months — a presidency in which they had invested such hopes after the poll-crashing of Bush’s final two years.
Finger pointing and blame-gaming have begun because no one can properly address the real and only problem: Obama has had no previous identity or independent ideology. By osmosis (rather than by careful study or lifelong experience) he absorb the trendy left-wing cant that variously manifested itself wherever he traveled, from the Occidental lounge dorm to the Ivy League salon groupthink to Chicago organizing to Rev. Wright’s pulpit to the liberal caucuses of the U.S. Senate.
For a while, it was all as easy as sonorously thundering “hope and change. He never before had to articulate his leftism in any real detail, defend it, debate it, or analyze it. Now as his polls dip, we hear instead gripes over tactics, not the essence of the problem, which is the absence of an identity confidently and honestly expressed. So we get nonsense: “He’s too detached and cool.” He outsourced his agenda to the polarizing, corrupt and inept Reid/Pelosi wing.” “He surrounded himself with one too many shady Chicago polls.” “He took on too much all at once.”
What’s next? We can predict it in our sleep. He will continue the “let me be perfectly clear,” “fat-cat banker” talk to his base, do his selected-audience hope and change rants while trying to do a move-to-the-center light. Oh yes - a commission to balance the budget - sorta. Tough talk abroad — kinda. Health-care reform we can all agree on - maybe.
In the past, every time Obama has been in a jam, two things followed. He first threw under the bus perceived liabilities (yesterday’s Rev. Wright and grandmother will be this year’s Rahm Emanuel, Timothy Geithner and Janet Napolitano). Second, he adopted bipartisan “there is only one America” rhetoric. Yes, soon we can expect to hear of American exceptionalism, and a thing called “the war on terror,” and deficits that must be paid back and “working across the aisle.”
I doubt we’ll get genuine effort at balancing the budget, keeping businesses competitive, cutting waste, restoring American alliances, securing borders, centrist appointments, real bipartisanship, or a simplified tax system.
Instead, we’ve gone from the idealistic-sounding, centrist candidate Obama, to the Carter McGovern President Obama, to the wannabe Clinton triangulator. The only constant is no real identity, no firm belief, no core convictions from which to make the argument that his left-wing vision is good for the country. Obama never had to make that argument. Left-wing dogma was always a state religion in his circles and once Obama the nightingale started his song, few of the hypnotized worried about the inane message that followed. Being president is all so... so unfair!
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of numerous works on military history.
As Predictable As Clockwork
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, (Political analyst extraordinaire)
The Jewish Press, February 5, 2010
I think we could see what was coming. This presidency has about as much subtlety in plot as a grade-B western, soap opera or teenage tantrum. A lackluster McCain candidacy, the September 2008 meltdown, weariness with eight years of Bush incumbency, conservative anger over spending, liberal furor over Iraq, a toady media, and Republican congressional corruption all led to a 50/50 electorate that was open to being mesmerized by Obama’s rhetoric and the dream of the nation’s first African-American president.
With congressional majorities, a compliant press, soaring public support, a soon-to-be President Obama was convinced, as he had been convinced by his success in the Ivy League, in Chicago, and in the Senate that he had a left-wing mandate. He believed he could hope and change his way to almost anything he wanted, despite the thin record, self-contradictions, constant inconsistencies and general confusion.
The hard left was salivating that at last it had an effective delivery system that could usher in a long awaited European-style socialism. Therefore, what followed was predictable: In his hubris, Obama cast off the campaign mask of moderation. Thick and fast came proposals for state-run healthcare, government takeovers, talk of nationalizing the student loan program, bailouts, mega-deficits, more, borrowing as stimulus, multicultural mea culpas abroad, loony symbolic appointments, and promiscuous talk of higher income, payroll, inheritance, and healthcare taxes, but only on “them.”
In other words, we saw in a trendy, cool form the age-old attempt to institutionalize equality of result, as freedom and liberty give way to mandated egalitarianism and fraternity. But wait — two thorny problems arose. The country is not quite yet left wing, but voted for Obama for the perfect-storm reasons outlined above. Anyone who had read the history of America could see that it was always a different sort of place than France, Germany, or Sweden — and will be, at least for a while longer.
So to ram down a left-wing agenda, the thespian Obama would have to continue his role as the bipartisan healer, centrist, reformer, purple-state uniter, trans-racial unifier, etc. But, alas, old habits die hard and the public soon began, here and there, to get glimpses of the old reality behind the new mask.
The wages of years with Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, the easy path through the Ivy League, the Axelrod-at-our throat politics and the snow job that had wowed deans, philanthropists and suburbanites all reappeared. Even as Obama sought to convince the farmer, plumber and insurance agent to accept state healthcare, a landscape of windmills and a EU-foreign policy, he slipped back into his old self. Thus, we got Van Jones and his racist, 9/11 truther bombast. Anita Dunn praised Mao. Commissars at the NEA boasted of the new Caesar.
The Professor Henry Gates incident prompted the president to trash the police first and get the facts second. Creditors were politically rescheduled for bailed-out businesses. The president thoughtlessly weighed in on everything from the Special Olympics and the tea party movement to Fox News and America’s purported sins. Suddenly we were no longer exceptional, but the Muslim world in fact had-jump-started the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The old bad guys — Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chavez and Putin — earned new, kind talk; the prior U.S. president was reduced to satanic status.
Conservatives are in a “I told you so mood” as the 2008 talk-radio bombast about Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, “re-distributive” spread the wealth, European socialism, etc., turned out not to be bombast at all. Moderates and independents sigh, “I can’t believe this is happening to me; he seemed just like Clinton with all that balanced budget talk, balanced energy policy, and mainstream help-the-little-guy talk. What happened to the Barack we trusted?” Liberals wonder, “Why is the coolest guy around suddenly flubbing every opportunity to get our agenda passed?” The hard left laments, “This guy is a triangulator who gave us a nibble, then pulled away the bone.”
His supporters counter: “See, he is a pragmatist and centrist who alienates the extremes.” No, No, No. He alienates them, but now the middle as well. What keeps his approval ratings in the forties is only the idea that the American people cannot quite yet accept a failed presidency after a mere 12 months — a presidency in which they had invested such hopes after the poll-crashing of Bush’s final two years.
Finger pointing and blame-gaming have begun because no one can properly address the real and only problem: Obama has had no previous identity or independent ideology. By osmosis (rather than by careful study or lifelong experience) he absorb the trendy left-wing cant that variously manifested itself wherever he traveled, from the Occidental lounge dorm to the Ivy League salon groupthink to Chicago organizing to Rev. Wright’s pulpit to the liberal caucuses of the U.S. Senate.
For a while, it was all as easy as sonorously thundering “hope and change. He never before had to articulate his leftism in any real detail, defend it, debate it, or analyze it. Now as his polls dip, we hear instead gripes over tactics, not the essence of the problem, which is the absence of an identity confidently and honestly expressed. So we get nonsense: “He’s too detached and cool.” He outsourced his agenda to the polarizing, corrupt and inept Reid/Pelosi wing.” “He surrounded himself with one too many shady Chicago polls.” “He took on too much all at once.”
What’s next? We can predict it in our sleep. He will continue the “let me be perfectly clear,” “fat-cat banker” talk to his base, do his selected-audience hope and change rants while trying to do a move-to-the-center light. Oh yes - a commission to balance the budget - sorta. Tough talk abroad — kinda. Health-care reform we can all agree on - maybe.
In the past, every time Obama has been in a jam, two things followed. He first threw under the bus perceived liabilities (yesterday’s Rev. Wright and grandmother will be this year’s Rahm Emanuel, Timothy Geithner and Janet Napolitano). Second, he adopted bipartisan “there is only one America” rhetoric. Yes, soon we can expect to hear of American exceptionalism, and a thing called “the war on terror,” and deficits that must be paid back and “working across the aisle.”
I doubt we’ll get genuine effort at balancing the budget, keeping businesses competitive, cutting waste, restoring American alliances, securing borders, centrist appointments, real bipartisanship, or a simplified tax system.
Instead, we’ve gone from the idealistic-sounding, centrist candidate Obama, to the Carter McGovern President Obama, to the wannabe Clinton triangulator. The only constant is no real identity, no firm belief, no core convictions from which to make the argument that his left-wing vision is good for the country. Obama never had to make that argument. Left-wing dogma was always a state religion in his circles and once Obama the nightingale started his song, few of the hypnotized worried about the inane message that followed. Being president is all so... so unfair!
Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of numerous works on military history.