My Hero, My Son

Some of you might not know that my son who now is a Freshman at Michigan State University was diagnosed with cancer when he was fifteen and a half.  He spent the next year in chemo treatments but never in that year did he complain, whine, or whimper.  He was stoic and strong. He took the disease as a challenge, something that he could beat.  And so far (Lord, I am not bragging, just reporting), he has remained cancer free. But with this disease, he might be in remission but you are  never "cured."

Even as he was undergoing treatments another student in his high school was diagnosed with cancer and Stephen  made sure that she felt that someone cared and offered counsel and support.  A couple years later, his football coach came down with this dreaded disease and he described my son as his "rock", an example of how to handle the adversity. 

Before his disease he did not know what he wanted to do with his life. That changed with the diagnosis.. He became very interested in his treatment regimen, how the body works, and what he could do with his knowledge and experience to help others. He has decided to become a pediatric oncologist.  Now, I realize that is a long way from being a freshman in college, however, now he has a goal, a desire that was created out of his own experience. I know he will become a doctor and he will be a  very good one.

Both his mother and I are very proud of Stephen and want to share a video that he made.  This way you can put a face with a name.  And if his high school classmates are right, he will be "the person who finds a cure for cancer." 

Please check out the video  http://youtu.be/2r_Ycxe_KE8  and forward it to others that you know.  Thanks.

Success, Hubris and Decline?

Several months ago, retired Fed Chairman Greenspan on NBC's Meet the Press was asked about the affordability of Social Security, Medicare and other social programs in an era of a poor economy.  His answer (which was never repeated on any media outlet) was "we never could."  As I said in a previous posting on this issue, I was shocked.  If we could never afford the benefits, what are we going to do?  The answer is no a pretty one.

The only option is to severely restrict all benefits or significantly increase the requirements to obtain them like increasing the age on could get Social Security or to means test the benefits. None of those answers are going to make you or I happy especially when it comes to Social Security for which our own money was put into what has become nothing better than a ponzi scheme.

So when I read Michael Barone's article that follows, I thought it was a natural follow up on the Greenspan comment..

Our economy was/is one of the strongest in the world and therefore our representatives at all levels of government thought that they could start  programs that would benefit those who elected them   The problem  is that down the road costs go up or there has to be maintenance done on the program which never is figured in the initial expenditures and somewhere down the road, the entire program has to be redone.

It is like building a house. Everything is great for years. Of course, there are the little repairs which we can absorb without any problem. However, say 15 years later the roof needs to be replaced and that is not pocket change.  Most homeowners have not established a "roof replacement fund" for the time when a new one is needed. So what do you do, get a loan, not today.  You borrow from wherever to get the money to put on the new roof.

Our infrastructure in this country is no different.  We built great roads and bridges but our leaders never planned for the time when they would needed major repair or to be replaced. Now they are falling apart or in the case of some bridges, literally falling down.  We are in a panic, what are we going to do.

Next Thursday we will hear from President Obama on his jobs proposal which supposedly includes an Infrastructure Bank. Now I don't know what that means but I can guess, it is going to be another government program to fix the bridges, tunnels and roads of this country.  It might include other things and I guess we will have to wait to find out (after the football game.)

We need to look at infrastructure completely differently by making provisions for repairs and replacement. Or my idea is to privatize roads, bridges and tunnels. Let the users pay for maintenance and future replacements. I doubt we will hear that from the President, he just does not think that way.

Our success as a nation, the hubris that we felt has brought us to this pivotal point. Many very tough decisions that most of us will disagree with, have to be made.  Are we as Americans ready to make those difficult choices to ensure the nation survives? Or will be demand the same programs and benefits to which we have become comfortable and drive this great nation onto the scrap heap of history?  It is your and my decision--I know what mine is, do you?


THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - August 30, 2011

The Costs of Success by: Michael Barone
Townhall.com

Some of society's most intractable problems come not from its failures but from its successes. Often you can't get a good thing without paying a bad price.

A prime example is our public old-age pension system, Social Security. It has been completely successful in wiping out poverty among the elderly. Old ladies no longer have to eat cat food to survive.

But we pay some prices for this. One is a lower savings rate. China has a humungous savings rate in part because it has no reliable old-age pension system. People have to save if they don't want to starve.

In the United States, we got out of the habit of saving. In the decade up to the financial crash of 2008, the U.S. savings rate fell below zero.

We felt comfortable borrowing on the supposedly ever-increasing values of our houses to support current and sometimes lavish consumption. Now we're paying the price.

But even if our savings rate rises back to the level of, say, the 1980s, it still may be lower than optimal.

The longer-term price any society pays for a public old-age pension system is lower birth rates. Farmers had large families in order to provide additional labor for their working years and sources of income for their dotage. So did factory workers a century ago.

In Western Europe, birth rates have fallen below the rate necessary to replace population -- in some countries, far below. The American birth rate has remained, barely, above replacement rate largely because of immigration. But immigration has slumped during the recession and may never return to the 1990-2008 level.

Unfortunately, under Social Security, like most public pension systems, current pensions are paid for by current workers. As lifespans increase and birth rates fall, the ratio of pensioners to active workers falls toward one-to-one.

That's not enough to support the elderly in anything like the style to which they have been accustomed, unless tax rates are sharply increased. And sharply higher tax rates, as Western Europe has shown over the last three decades, reduce long-term economic growth.

That's the problem, often abbreviated as "entitlements," facing our political system.



But Democrats would have none of it. As Bush's job approval plummeted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and lack of success in Iraq, the issue was quietly dropped.

This year, Republicans addressed entitlements again, in the budget prepared by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and approved in the House.

His proposal was to shift Medicare from the current plan to "premium support," in which seniors would get subsidies to pay for their choice of competing insurance plans. This is similar to the Part D Medicare prescription drug program that has won wide acceptance and has cost far less than projections.

Once again, Democrats have responded negatively. They credit their "Mediscare" tactics for a special election victory in a Republican House district in upstate New York.

What's interesting is that, in contrast to 2005, we have had nothing in the way of presidential leadership on this issue. Barack Obama, hailed by some conservatives and most liberals as a pragmatic problem-solver, has been happy to play politics on entitlements as well as on the budget.

He blithely ignored the recommendations of his own commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. He has said since he would take a look at raising the Medicare eligibility age -- it's now lower than the Social Security age.

But anyone can take a look at a proposal. We pay presidents a good salary to lead, not just to look.

So far, the Republican presidential candidates have not done much leading on entitlements, either. They have tended to take a gingerly approach to Paul Ryan's Medicare proposal, and Newt Gingrich even trashed it.

The conventional wisdom is that this is simple political prudence. Don't give the other side a juicy target.

But we are faced not only with a huge short-term budget problem but with the prospect of a Western European future of an enlarged government, ever higher taxes and lower growth. Is that really what American voters want?

Liberal Professor Questions Obama

 In the August 7th issue of the New York Times there was a four page article entitled What Happened to Obama?"  written by Drew Westen, a self professed liberal professor. The entire article is well worth the time as it is a quick read.  It is clear that when you start seeing articles like this one essentially telling us "the king has no clothes", can Obama's time as President be ending?  I don't know the answer but there are trends which are not positive for the current occupant of the White House.

Today in his lunch posting, Dick Morris, described a Zogby poll which asked those liked Obama, what they thought of his performance.  Roughly 30% thought he was doing a good job.  That is condemning considering it asked that question of only those who had a positive attitude toward him.

However, before we, who oppose Obama, start the celebrations, I think it is important to remember that he is a great campaigner and his rhetoric can be convincing to those who are not immersed in politics.  Also we need to remember that nearly 50% of the population does not pay any Federal taxes and something like 14% are on welfare or some support.  Will these people vote for someone who might increase their taxes or  cut their benefits? I doubt it.

Most likely if the election were held today, it would be a close contest with the result being settled in the Electoral College. However, the election is not for fourteen months and a lot can happen including the quadrennial October surprise. Please read the article and let me know what you think.

An excerpt is reprinted below:

Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president.

THE real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right

Obama Gets Cute--Scheduling His Speech

Just a quick note on the scheduling of Obama's address at the same time as the Republican debate in California.  Who does he think he is fooling?  He knew there was a conflict but somehow thought that no one would notice that he was trying to preempt it by his "important jobs" teleprompter reading.  (I would not even call it a speech.)  Is this Administration so out of touch ?  I believe so.

On top of that, the Administration lied that they had checked with the Speaker's Office regarding the date.  If they will lie about something so insignificant, what other lies are they telling us?

And lastly, it chokes me when the President condescendingly says that "Washington needs to put aside politics and start making decisions based on what is best for our country..."  What that really means is "do what I want."  What he wants and what the country wants are miles apart.  Oh yes, and this move to schedule the address at the same time as the debate was not political? Hardly.

I support Boehner's call for a one day delay and applaud him for the slight of hand excuse he used. It is about time that Republicans start pushing back and  not letting this Administration do whatever it wants.


It is my hope that more Americans will see the duplicity that is occurring in the White House and lies that seem to be the hallmark of the Presidency.

Here is the article that was published in The  Hill:

Boehner asks Obama to move his jobs joint address to Thursday

By Michael O'Brien and Molly K. Hooper - 08/31/11 04:22 PM ET

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has asked President Obama to address a joint-session of Congress on Thursday, Sept. 8, when it wouldn't conflict with the Republican presidential debate. 

Citing logistical difficulties, Boehner requested that Obama hold his jobs address, which Obama wants to deliver next Wednesday, one day later.

The Speaker's letter made no mention of the more obvious conflict: between the president's speech, and a Republican presidential debate scheduled on Wednesday night at 8 p.m. EST. That debate is the first of the post-Labor Day political season, and the first one in which Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is set to participate. 

The response by Boehner sets up an early showdown between Obama and the Congress just returning from its August recess.

Boehner, in a letter responding to Obama's request, said the House wouldn't have enough time to prepare for a speech that evening. 

"As your spokesperson today said, there are considerations about the Congressional calendar that must be made prior to scheduling such an extraordinary event," the Speaker wrote. 

"With the significant amount of time — typically more than three hours — that is required to allow for a security sweep of the House Chamber before receiving a president, it is my recommendation that your address be held on the following evening, when we can ensure there will be no parliamentary or logistical impediments that might detract from your remarks."

Boehner noted that the House isn't scheduled to reconvene until 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday. 

"As such, on behalf of the bipartisan leadership and membership of both the House and Senate, I respectfully invite you to address a Joint Session of Congress on Thursday, September 8, 2011 in the House Chamber, at a time that works best for your schedule," Boehner said. 

A White House official said Wednesday that the administration was "in touch with the Speaker's office this evening to try to resolve date and time of the speech to Congress."

Boehner's move appeared to surprise the White House, which according to a senior administration official had cleared the Sept. 7 date and 8 p.m. time of the address with House Republicans before making the formal request. The official said Boehner's office was consulted about the letter before it was made public, and that "no objections/concerns were raised."

Boehner’s office flatly denied the White House assertion that the Wednesday date was cleared with the Speaker. A Boehner spokesman, Brendan Buck, accused the White House of ignoring “decades, if not centuries” of protocol on such events.

"No one in the Speaker's office — not the Speaker, not any staff — signed off on the date the White House announced today,” Buck said in a statement. “Unfortunately we weren’t even asked if that date worked for the House. Shortly before it arrived this morning, we were simply informed that a letter was coming. It’s unfortunate the White House ignored decades — if not centuries — of the protocol of working out a mutually agreeable date and time before making any public announcement.”

Meanwhile, the White House downplayed the scheduling conflict with the GOP debate as just that, an innocent coincidence. 

Asked whether the speech was purposefully scheduled the same night as the Republican debate, White House press secretary Jay Carney said, “Of course not.”

“It is coincidental,” said Carney, who explained that a number of considerations were taken into account when Obama settled on Sept. 7.

“One debate of many that’s on one channel of many was not enough of a reason” to pick another date, Carney said.

He added that Obama had chosen to speak directly to Congress in hopes that members had been chastened and softened after hearing from angry constituents over the August break.

The Republican National Committee (RNC), however, accused the Obama administration of politicking by scheduling the speech simultaneously with the debate. 

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus slammed Obama's request as "a thinly-veiled political ploy" in a statement. "While the White House claims it’s simply a ‘coincidence,’ the American people can see right through that excuse," Priebus said of the timing of the president's request.

"If the President were serious about putting ‘country before politics,’ as he said in his request to speak to Congress, he wouldn’t be caught in such a thinly-veiled political ploy. This is yet another reminder that the President is out of touch and out of ideas. The only job he seems to care about is his own.” 

A speech on Thursday would compete with the opening night of the NFL season, traditionally a ratings winner.

This year's opener, televised on NBC, features the reigning Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers against the New Orleans Saints. More than 27 million viewers watched last year's NFL opener on NBC. By contrast, 32.1 million people -- on a total of 10 networks -- watched Obama's speech on healthcare to a joint session of Congress shortly after Labor Day in 2009.

In a letter to congressional leaders requesting the Sept. 7 slot, the president said he will urge Congress to put aside politics and focus on creating jobs during the speech.

“As I have traveled across our country this summer and spoken with our fellow Americans, I have heard a consistent message: Washington needs to put aside politics and start making decisions based on what is best for our country and not what is best for each of our parties in order to grow the economy and create jobs,” Obama wrote. “We must answer this call.”

According to a Democratic leadership source, the House Democratic leadership was not consulted with respect to Speaker Boehner’s letter requesting a new date for the president’s address.

ATF Promotion Program

I always enjoy Michelle Malkin as her writing so often agrees with my point of view. She must really be smart!!

Her article today is about the worst political flop since Watergate.  Operation Fast and Furious was designed to entrap legal gun store operators by having them sell weapons to people who would sell them to gun runners in Mexico.  The whole operation blew up when the law abiding store owners reported the whole affair to the ATF and FBI. It got worse when one of the guns was used to kill a U.S. Border Guard.

Congressional hearings were held and only two resignations have resulted but a significant number of "promotions" have occurred.  This must be the land of OZ because whatever is up is down and down is up!  Why are these people not being charged with crimes against the government?  They intentionally violate the law trying to catch legal gun sales and it blow up. Why is there not any punishment.

Had the plan not been exposed, law abiding citizens would have been tried, fined and imprisoned for "selling illegal guns." There also would have been a chorus from the media and the anti-gunners, to stop the sale of all guns! So why is punishment not being demanded and those who participated being promoted?

One can only lay the blame at the doorstep of that little 'ole house on Pennsylvania Avenue where the President resides. If the plan had worked you can believe the Justice Department would be all over it.  So why not now?  Because it was a White House plan from the beginning!

The Administration has been looking for a way to stop the sale of weapons and they thought that imprisoning gun store operators who were not obeying the law,  was a way to do that. They thought that the public would support their efforts to control all this "illegal activity" and their friends in the media would support their efforts by running story after story demanding changes to the law and swift punishment for those who violated it.

 However, they did not understand  law abiding Americans.  This Administration felt that all Americans are as corrupt as they are. They were wrong. Most Americans try to do the right thing and are repelled by someone who cheats to get ahead.  They follow the rules.  When faced with what they feared was illegal activity the store owners reported it. That was what most American would have done.

Now the Administration is put in a tough position. Does it bring charges against those who were only "following orders" or do they let the thing die. Their choice obviously has been the latter.They promote this miscreants to keep them quiet. No one is punished. No media coverage means that they will get away with another travesty.  This administration is not Teflon, it is super Teflon! Nothing sticks!

Our only choice is to make a wholesale change in 2012 and maybe we can right the ship of state. I hope it is not too late.

Here is the story:

Michelle Malkin   

Screw Up, Move Up, Cover Up: The Fast and Furious Edition

8/31/2011 

There are now enough Operation Fast and Furious officials playing hide-and-seek in the Obama administration to fill a "rubber room."

That's the nickname for taxpayer-subsidized holding pens, such as the ones in the New York City public schools, where crooked employees are separated from the system and paid to do nothing. Perhaps the White House can stimulate a few construction jobs by adding an entire rubber room annex for "reassigned" scandal bureaucrats at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's getting mighty crowded.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced it was shuffling Kenneth Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, out of his job. The disclosure comes amid continued GOP investigations into the administration's fatally botched straw gun purchase racket at the border and spreading outrage over legal obstructionism and whistleblower retaliation by DOJ brass. The DOJ inspector general is also conducting a probe.

Internal documents earlier showed that Melson was intimately involved in overseeing the program and screened undercover videos of thousands of straw purchases of AK-47s and other high-powered rifles -- many of which ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartel thugs, including those who murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry last December. Fast and Furious weapons have been tied to at least a dozen violent crimes in America and untold bloody havoc in Mexico.

In secret July 4 testimony, Melson revealed he was "sick to his stomach" when he discovered the extent of the operation's deadly lapses. Join the club, pal.

Melson told congressional investigators that he and ATF's senior leadership "moved to reassign every manager involved in Fast and Furious, from the deputy assistant director for field operations down to the group supervisor" after ATF whistleblowers went to the press and Capitol. But according to Melson, he and company were ordered by Justice Department higher-ups to remain silent about the reasons for the reassignments.

In other words: the ATF managers in the know were "effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," as GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, concluded in July.

Melson has been kicked back to DOJ's main office in a flabbergasting new slot as "senior adviser on forensic science in the department's Office of Legal Policy." He may have been "sick to his stomach," but the federal careerist apparently has no intention of quitting an administration with blood on its hands. And now he'll be advising others on how to track and handle evidence. Nice make-work if you can get it.

Others on the Fast and Furious dance card of lemons:

-- Assistant U.S. Attorney Emory Hurley in Phoenix, who helped oversee the straw gun purchase disaster. He's being transferred out of the U.S. Attorney's Office's criminal division and into the civil division.

-- Assistant ATF Special Agents in Charge George Gillett and Jim Needles. Moved to other positions.

-- BATF deputy director of operations in the West, William McMahon. Promoted to ATF headquarters.

-- ATF Phoenix field supervisors William Newell and David Voth. Promoted to new management positions in Washington.

Keep your friends close and your henchmen on the verge of spilling all the beans closer.

There's been only one visible Fast and Furious resignation: U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Phoenix, who quietly stepped down on Tuesday. One of his last acts? Opposing the request of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry's family to qualify as crime victims in a court case against the thug who bought the Fast and Furious guns used in Terry's murder.

The fish rots from the head down, of course. DOJ is run by Eric Holder, the Beltway swamp creature who won bipartisan approval for his nomination -- even after putting political interests ahead of security interests at the Clinton Justice Department in both the Marc Rich pardon scandal and the Puerto Rican FALN terrorist debacle. Remember: Holder won over the Senate by arguing that his poor judgment made him more qualified for the job.

Screw up, move up, cover up: It's the Holder way, the Obama way, the Washington way. And innocent Americans pay.

9/11 Tribute

With September 11 just around the corner, I think it is important to remember that 3000 Americans of all races, religions, and political stripes  who died on that day for one reason. They were Americans.  They had done nothing other than go to work or take a plane for business or pleasure. That was their misdeed.

The knuckle heads who commandeered the planes and flew them into the Trade Center, Pentagon and the ground in Shanksville, did not care about anything except they wanted to kill Americans. The sickness they have has not gone away in the past ten years. In fact it has gotten worse.  Muslim movements around the world have murdered thousands and it goes on every day. When will it stop?  Not until those of authority around the world decide they have had enough. When they (and we) stop making allowances for this radical political movement that covers itself in a religion.  It is indeed a wolf in sheep's clothing.

There will be time for more commentary on the movement in other postings. However, today I wanted to bring to your attention a fellow Michigander (from that liberal bastion of Ann Arbor) Kitty Donohoe, who wrote a song about 9/11 in the weeks following the tragedy.  I had never heard the song until today when a good friend forwarded it to me.  I think it is worth a listen.

If you know anyone in the entertainment business and can help Kitty get more exposure, I would appreciate it as I think her message is a good one.

The link to her site is http://kittydonohoe.com/?page_id=75

Thanks in advance.