Mr. Obama's black?!?

Did you know Mr. Obama is black? Did you know we can start having a serious conversation about color now? And I thought this was 2008. I didn’t realize it was 1968.

Mr. Obama was elected for three reasons. One: he talks gooder than John McCain. Two: main stream media gets tingles up their legs whenever he speaks. Three: even though America thinks the President is doing a better job than Congress, we still despise Mr. Bush and don’t make the connection between the two. There’s a tangential reason that I have a hard time accepting. Three people have mentioned to me how exciting it is to finally have a black man in the White House. Bull.

If this were about skin color, why not vote for Sharpton or Jackson or Rice? If this is about skin color, ask yourself if you’d vote OJ Simpson. A segment of the population are about electing a black man, no matter what, but most of us are about electing the best person running for the job.

Can we move on to real issues now? Black, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, or Indian we’re people. We have different backgrounds, genealogies, accents, and styles, but we’re all still people aren’t we? I don’t imagine I’m much different than a dad in Baghdad, Bangkok, Dublin, Lima, or Sydney. We all worry about our family, try to be the best men we can be, and work to build a better future. So, don’t give me this BS about having a serious conversation about race or how amazing that a black man could become President. Until neither of those questions don’t enter our minds, we’ll remain slaves to our pasts. Does his skin color in some way make him more qualified to run the country and represent us to the world? I can think of a bunch of requirements and desires for the person we hire for this job. Skin color ain’t on the list.

History in the making

Now we know what outspending your opponent 3:1 and having the media in your pocket buys. If you’re Barack Obama, the answer is only about six million more voters than the other one. And now we get to listen to weeks bragging, talk of payback and mandates, and pundits theorizing about the whys and the hows and what nexts, and the pendulum continues to swing. I’m pretty sure I’ll make out like a bandit for the next four years. I looked at my four-year-old to thank for her financing the welfare we’d be receiving, and she shot me a perfect ‘no, wait, what?’-look.

A friend sent me a text celebrating a good day for Democrats and a good day for America. I told her she was half right. Change in inevitable. Growth is option. And as the renowned economist John Maynard Keyes said, in the long run, we’re all dead. Time will tell just how far left the country will head under an Obama White House and a Pelosi/Reid Congress. I really hope he’s better than I think he is and half as good some people think he is, but I stand by everything I’ve said and written. The extreme left wing of the Democratic Party now has unfettered control of the direction of the country. And they’ve made their agenda pretty clear; from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

Yes, we can… but should we? Should government provide all the needs the community has? How much welfare can a person receive before their self esteem is diminished? How many entitlements can we afford before we run out of money? How much regulation and taxation can our economy stand before it just doesn’t make any sense to do business? How much appeasement can we extend before we appear weak and someone takes a shot at us? How much greater good is worth our personal freedoms?

Make no mistake about it. America needs a change, but the change isn’t in Washington. It isn’t in the White House or the halls of Congress. It’s not in Wall Street or the universities or the court rooms. The change we need lies in the hearts of every person who loves the principles that founded the United States of America. We take for granted the liberties we enjoy. Apathy creeps in and promises of an easier, wider path tantalize our tastes and our passions. America requires advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad! Because there will always be someone working to take it away. There will always be someone leading you to believe that if you just help them out, they will help you out. You’ll never have to worry about putting gas in your car again. You’ll never have to worry about paying your mortgage again. But damn it, you should worry about those things! As Oprah has espoused, fear can keep you alive. Fear keeps you from stepping out in front of a bus! Responsibilities are what keeps us getting up in the morning, pullin’ up our pants and going out to kill something and drag it back to the cave. Contributing is not optional.

The change America needs starts with you and me and everyone else. We need to move away from greed and selfishness. We need to take our hands out of each other’s pockets. We need to care again and appreciate what we have and fight for it. We own house needs to be in order first before we can start helping others. Our answers are not external. We must value industry and work for what we have and what we want. We have no further but the ends of our noses if we want to find the source of our situation.

Barack Obama can’t provide the type of change we need. He represents a political machine with an agenda that worked very successfully to put him there to advance that agenda. That lobby now has a very modest check on its power.

Obama has timing on his side. The economic benefits we’ll receive in the next three years will be part of the normal business cycle, not his executive brilliance. The results we see in Iraq will be the results of a hard decision to stay the course and help the country find itself, and now we have turned over 13 of 17 provinces and set a complete pull out date. No thanks to Obama or Biden. Health care, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will not be solved by more government health care. Immigration will not be benefited by amnesty or by looking the other way. Homeland security will not be helped by being nice to the rest of the rest of the world. The middle class will not be strengthened by Obama/Biden. They will continue to disappear as the habits are repeated.

I can only think of one other time in my life when I’ve wanted to be wrong more than I do right now. Change is coming. I hope we don’t regret it.

Character counts

The Obama/Biden Blueprint for America sounds nice. I’d enjoy all the welfare they’re offering, but the fact is that it’s not the job of the government to ensure that I have everything I want. There’s a lady who was interviewed after an Obama event and she said she’d never have to worry about putting gas in her car or paying her mortgage. She said that if she took care of him, he’d take care of her. It’s a nice idea but America isn’t about getting something because of which power is in office. America is about freedom and opportunity. It’s about self determination and independence. The more guarantees a person gives you, the less opportunity they allow you.

Obama is an empty suit. He is a backbencher who talks good and has the right friends. He doesn’t seem to have an original thought and only offers solutions that already exist or that he got from someone else. He talks a good game but when I look at his Blueprint for America, each page is another step towards socialism. Obama is many thing, but above all else, he is the beneficiary of good timing.

We the people seem to be willing to look past his record and rhetoric, look past our disapproval of the job he and co-workers have been doing, and only see an alternative to George Bush. We can do better. We must do better. We need to look to the candidate with character, and for all this flaws, John McCain is a man of character.

Obama surrounds himself with political extremists. Whether he agrees with their ideology or is using them for political gain doesn’t matter. Either speaks to his character. A person who attracts supporters like Wright, Dorn, Ayers, Khalidi, Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, and refuses to protect survivors of botched abortions has a character I don’t trust.

No way. No how. NObama.

Today, vote John McCain for America.

Obama's civilian national security force

I’m not sure what to make of this. On July 2, 2008, it appears that Barack Obama was at the University of Colorado delivering a speech, issuing a call to service. Rocky Mountain News carried the story and transcript, and the video of the speech ended up on at this location on youtube. About 16 minutes and 50 seconds into the speech, Obama says:

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

These comments don’t appear on the transcripts and a finding a record of the speech is hit and miss, although I did find it on a Wall Street Journal posting. It’s like he was there, then he wasn’t, then he said it, then he didn’t. Something just doesn’t smell right. I have no reason to believe it didn’t happen. I just wish I could find wide spread reporting on the event.

In any case, the question is, what does he mean? In context, I could take it to mean that a strong, well funded force of volunteers in agencies like AmeriCorp, Peace Corp, and diplomatic corp will move to strengthen our reputation in the world. But that’s a stretch.

What if he means exactly what he said? What if he wants a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded as the strongest military force in the world? What would this group do? Who would they be responsible to? How would they perform their duties? What about the FBI, DEA, ICE, IRS, Secret Service, National Guard, state police, and local policing agencies? Do those not count? My mind instantly thinks of Hitler’s brown shirts. Obama needs to either refute this incident or explain himself in more detail because the connotation suggested by this is disturbing.

Obama and health care

Americans are very proud of our rights. We have the right to do this. We have the right to do this. We assume we have the right to do pretty much anything we want to. An interesting thing about the rights contemplated in the Declaration of Independence and guaranteed through the Bill of Rights, all of our rights are stated in the negative. Our philosophy is that we are born endowed with certain rights and no one has the right to take those rights away from us. We establish laws and administrative rules to manage the bureaucracy and keep our communities running, but still the pattern is the same. Government shall not… You have rights because you are born. No one gave them to you. You don’t have to do anything to earn them. You simply have them.

What would happen if we suspended that pattern to define a right as something given to you by another person? We’d be dependent on another person to tell us what and when we have the right to do something. Imagine having to ask permission to voice your opinion. Imagine being a non-Caucasian male needing to ask permission to vote. Imagine a government sensor in the news rooms of America and surfing the blogosphere to approve news and opinions. Imagine police having the right to enter your home without probable cause of a crime, search your property and seize it without telling you why or for how long? Imagine being detained for an indeterminate amount of time for a reason you have no right to know. That’s the difference between inalienable rights and bestowed rights. Your rights are dependent on the whims of another person.

Barack Obama wants to make health care a right. He wants to insure every single person in the country. My family has been on private, employer-paid health care, uninsured, and recipients of public health insurance. We understand what it means to be uninsurable. A common theme is that you get what you pay for.

Our health care system has its problems. John Q spoke to me. Western medicine does not practice healing. It prescribes drugs to cover up symptoms and then more drugs to address the symptoms caused by the other drugs, and you can have access to the system if you can afford it or work for someone who can. We have traded a connection with our bodies and nature for a sterile, detached institutional model directed by drug companies, hospitals, doctors associations, medical schools, unions, and government agencies.

For what it is, our current system has been the most effective health care system in the world. It’s produced more drugs, therapies, technology, procedures, and detailed understanding of the mechanics of the human body than any other model. The medical advances achieved through the competitive model are astounding, but there is a difference between health care/management and healing and living healthy. There are many disadvantages to our current model, and until the holistic revolution restores our connection to the wisdom of the ages, it’s what we have.

Given that context, single-payer health care will bankrupt this country, slow the advance of modern medicine, frustrate the opportunity to receive the health care we want, and put our lives in the hands of actuaries calculating the cost of providing continued care.

The Government Accounting Office published a report in April of 2008 that examined the long-term challenges faced by our economy and the trends in health care costs and demographics. They founded a funding gap in the amount of $54 Trillion (that on top of the $10 Trillion national debt) to cover the lifetime benefits of those eligible to for Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs. $54 Trillion is roughly $500,000 for every household in the nation.

The reason is because our society is getting older, living longer, living less healthy, and getting sicker more often and in more ways. Obama and most other democrats want to increase this liability to cover everyone for longer! We just can’t afford it.

Just a few weeks ago, Hawaii announced that budget shortfalls led them to discontinue the nation’s only state universal child health care program in the country just seven months after it launched. One of the many problems with single-payer plans like the one in Hawaii and the one that Obama proposes is that people and businesses that can afford health care choose to let the state for it. Why pay for something if you can get it for free?

Obama’s plan reduces the incentive for innovation in our health care system by removing patent protections and allowing for importing of drugs from other countries. His plan makes the Federal government the single largest buyer (if not the only buyer) of prescription drugs in the nation. He will drive down the profit, drive down the incentive and slow the growth of medicine. We’ll see long lines, doctor shortages, and limited care. Don’t forget that people also come to this country for health care they can’t receive at home.

In spite of all the problems that come with universal health care, the most important may be the fundamental difference between an inalienable right and a bestowed right. There has to be a better way to preserve life without turning over our agency to another person.

The more guarantees a person gives you, the less opportunity they’ll allow you.

Obama: the candidate for the same old thing

My favorite thing about Barack Obama is that he says he’s gonna bring change to Washington. In his Blueprint for America, he claims to “have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists – and won. They have not funded my campaign…” He says he’s a leader for reform and reaches across the aisle. He claims that he intends to make government work more efficiently and says he will cut wasteful programs and ineffective programs.

The only change America will find from an Obama administration will be the change left in our pockets. Obama may or may not have deserved the distinction or most liberal senator and Joe Biden may or may not have actually deserved the rating at third most liberal senator in 2007, but a few things are certain. When Obama bothers to show up for work, he votes the party line 97% of the time. Biden has been in Washington since 1972 and has voted party lines 96.7% of the time.

Just what has he done to take on the lobbyists? The only steps I can find evidence of him taking on lobbyists He’s taken millions and millions of dollars from lobbyists and PACs. To say that they have not funded his campaigns is a flat out lie. Among his contributors are NARAL, Planned Parenthood, Chesapeake Energy Corporation Federal PAC, Sierra Club, MoveOn.org, Human Rights PAC, National Right to Life PAC, and unions, unions, and more unions.

He’s going to go through the Federal budget with a red pen to strike ineffective and wasteful programs. There’s only one problem – this isn’t constitutional! President Clinton was granted this power by Congress very briefly in 1996, but a US District Court ruled this was unconstitutional and this determination was upheld by the US Supreme Court.

The rest of his plan to change Washington is full of duplications and undeliverable promises. The only thing Obama would change is the political affiliation in the Oval Office. What’s scary is that the legislative and executive branches would have a rubber stamp to push forward their agenda. The country's just not ready for the extreme liberalism they would push forward.

I voted!

I dropped off my ballot at county elections, and sadly my vote was more a vote against Obama rather than a vote for McCain. (One of these days I want to feel compelled to vote for a candidate!) At the end of the day, I’ve accepted that the country may be headed for Jimmy Carter’s second term, but right now isn’t the right time to go silently into the night. Let me make one thing crystal clear, if Obama wins I will make out like a bandit! I’m a married 30 year old unemployed student who receives socialized health care. I expect to pocket thousands of dollars in cash and additional benefits from the Feds under a democrat controlled White House and Congress. My problem with that is that I haven’t earned it or paid into it for years. I paid under $1000 in Federal income taxes in the last two years. How is it fair for me to receive all these benefits from Uncle Sam when I’m not paying anything in to the system? Thanks, by the way, for all the hard work you do on my behalf.

I’ll still do okay with John McCain in the White House. I just won’t have as much of a windfall. With that said, I’ve been spending a lot of time researching Obama’s “Blueprint for America”. I’ll be posting a series of responses to his remaking of America. Many have already compared the two candidates ad nausea, but for some reason undecided voters are still in the double digits and voter turnout is lower in Oregon than one would expect for such a hyped vote. Could that be because we’re hoping for one of these two to really hit it out of the park?

The simple fact is that John McCain is a Democrat masquerading as a Republican and Barack Obama is a socialist masquerading as a Democrat. So I ask myself, just how far left do I want the country to swing? Should we correct to the center compared to the hard right of the current administration or should we swing to the opposite extreme of the political spectrum? Obama represents a hard left swing. The answer for the United States is not another extremist in the White House. What we need is a relative moderate. On Tuesday, I hope you’ll join me in voting for John McCain because our country doesn’t need another extremist in the White House.

If not him, who?

I don't like John McCain. I'm sure he's a fine man, and I certainly appreciate his sacrifice in the name of our country, but his politics in the last few years have really rubbed me the right way. Here are a few examples just off the top of my head. I'm uncomfortable with his record on illegal aliens. I really don't like that he wants to close the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and bring the enemy combatants into the U.S. where they'll receive Constitutional rights. I think his opinion on human's contribution to Global Warming is politically motivated. I also think he's a little gruff and his administration leaves something to be desired.

But I think I have no choice but to vote for him. I've asked a number of people why I should for Obama and to paraphrase the two recurring answers I get, he's not George Bush and he makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I really need to know that answer to my question because there are a number of things about Barack Obama I just can't get past.