Simple Observations

The following list of non sequitur observations is simply that, observations. Some naturally trigger questions that the media never gets around to asking. Maybe they go unasked because the media doesn’t care for the answers.

Drug Testing
Most American businesses require a job applicant to pass a blood/drug test before being hired and are subject to future random testing as a condition of employment. Why aren’t applicants for government welfare, or for that matter, any public assistance required to do the same?

Is it possible that they are on public assistance because they can’t pass the drug tests?

Subaru
Without liberal support, it’s doubtful that Subaru would survive. Keep an eye out! The bumper stickers placed on them by their owners near universally tout Senator Obama, Senator Clinton or other Democratic candidates. Animal rights and environmental slogans are also commonly displayed on Subaru’s.

Racist Labels
It’s understandable why African Americans are excited by the prospects of the first black candidate being in strong contention for the Oval Office. Senator Obama is winning the votes of about 96% of the black electorate. They are obviously voting for him because of his race and maybe because of his politics.

This begs the question: Why aren’t black voters decried as racists if they vote for him?

TV Commercials
Have you noticed that the characters depicted in TV commercials that are incompetent, clumsy, or stupid are always white males. Asians play neutral roles and blacks and women are portrayed as intelligent problem solvers.

Tenure
Just about every person employed by government is protected from termination by tenure or civil service laws. Most American tax payers would agree that government delivers few quality services efficiently. Thus, it’s reasonable to ponder if job security encourages lackadaisical, sub-standard performance, or if the incompetent are attracted to tenured positions out of a sense of self-preservation.

Carbon Credits
It seems that the super wealthy are the most vocal alarmists about global warming. And they are all big proponents of carbon credits. These credits are actually private donations to companies dedicated to re-forestation and renewable, non-carbon generating energy technologies.

It’s nice that these wealthy environmentalists compensate our nation for their outlandish energy usage. Hey, just a second! Wouldn’t the planet be better off if these jet-setting alarmists immediately reduced their energy consumption (carbon footprint)?

Not to be a cynic, but it seems that buying carbon credits entitles the wealthy to maintain their “me first” lifestyle, while condemning everyone else for consumption.

Speculators, Oil and Democrats

The recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on oil prices, convened by the Democrats, was a charade. It is standard operating procedure for our pathetic elected representatives to parade oil executives in front of a camera and chastise them when oil prices increase.

It’s just theater without the cotton candy and Barnum & Bailey logo. But the political circus leaves the impression that Congress is doing something. If they were really searching for the culprit, they would resemble dogs chasing their tails.

Sam Bodman, the US Energy Secretary, recently stated that oil prices are driven by global demand and tight supplies. That’s true, but he omitted to mention the declining value of the dollar, the lack of refineries, the stalemate against off-shore drilling and shale oil development, international uncertainty and the depletion of easily accessible oil reserves as causes for the soaring prices.

And that is only part of the reason why energy costs are crippling American families.

Economic and market experts almost universally agree that oil speculation is responsible for about 50% of the recent price increases. Mr. Bodman, in his statements, all but dismissed the influence of financial speculators. Of course, this is outright balderdash.

The origin of this rampant speculation can be traced to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act passed in 2000, with the full backing of President Clinton. This legislation gave the Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC) oversight responsibility for retail foreign exchange trading.

In 2006, this independent agency (CFTC) granted the Atlanta based corporation, Intercontinental Exchange, the lead Internet energy exchange company, the right to route commodity trades through Great Britain. This procedural change placed the company under its jurisdiction.

CFTC, created in 1974 to monitor commodity trading, has since turned a blind eye to the “off-shore” transactions conducted on Intercontinental Exchange’s Internet facilities. This opened the door to speculators, including US companies and citizens, to trade oil futures through Intercontinental Exchange, rather than through the well regulated US stock exchange.

In effect, this independent agency removed the restraints on commodity trading. Congress should be screaming. But we only hear silence. In an election year it is natural for liberals to blame the oil companies for the market chaos rather than to admit a Democratic packed Congress has been asleep at the helm.

Billions of dollars, including pension funds, are being poured into hedge and commodity funds through this untamed portal. Sam Bodman would have us believe that this uncontrolled speculation and the insane price of energy are just a coincidence. Who or what is he protecting? Maybe it’s Enron, who lobbied for the change.

But those who have allowed this trading frenzy are cut from the same political cloth as those who oppose nuclear energy, off-shore drilling, new refineries and shale oil conversion. They are called Democrats.

There is a simple cure for the commodity trading fever: Prohibit any buyers incapable of taking delivery of the goods from purchasing them.

But the Democrats tipped their hand during the recent hearings. They are toying with the idea of nationalizing the oil companies. If they can get government control of energy, they can control every aspect of our lives. That’s the dream of socialists like Speaker Pelosi and Senator Obama.

Trading Military Lives for Votes

It’s just more of the same. The Democrats are pushing a bill which will increase the college benefits of GIs. At face value, few would argue with the merits of the proposal sponsored by Senator Jim Webb (D), Virginia.

But never confuse merit with intention.

As with many appropriations shoved down the throat of the Pentagon by lawmakers, this is another political boondoggle. It’s a shortsighted effort to curry favor with voters by mending the national security reputation of the Democratic Party prior to the November presidential election.

When Senator Obama, their presidential nominee, is combined with their two year effort to cripple national security, the Democrats need a quick fix to establish a semblance of pro-military credentials.

What better way than to offer legislation which increases military benefits? It gives them a peg to hang their hat on.

Hope springs eternal. Maybe the voters will forget the Democrats buried the Patriot Act, the nation’s first line of defense against terrorism, in parliamentary gamesmanship. Maybe the voters will forget the Democrats demanded captured terrorists be given the same legal rights as American citizens.

The Democrats see the problem. After more than thirty unsuccessful attempts to end the Iraq War and cripple national defense, they have taken a new tack. They figure the country can’t fight a war without soldiers.

Senator Webb’s legislation will gut re-enlistments by providing free college tuition and housing benefits/supplements to military personnel after three years of service. The Pentagon is screaming that the duration of active duty should be lengthened to secure the benefits, to insure military readiness.

The Democrats counter that the bill will encourage enlistments. Maybe they are right. But they forget to mention the cost of maintaining this turnstile program. Everyone in business knows the frontend cost of training new personnel and turning them into productive workers outpaces the cost of retaining seasoned veterans.

In combat there is more at stake than can be measured by a profit and loss statement. Rookie mistakes cost lives. So the bottom line of this proposed legislation is the willingness of the Democrats to trade the lives of more GIs for political gain.

The Democrats can’t put enough lipstick on this pig to cover their treachery.

Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid are bottom feeders. They won the congressional majority in 2006 by promising to end the Iraq War, to reduce energy costs, to eliminate earmarks and by guaranteeing Americans that they wouldn’t introduce new entitlements without funding them.

Compared to their willingness to sacrifice military lives for political expediency, the cost of Webb’s proposal is hardly noteworthy. Suffice it to say that if they banned earmarks as promised, taxes would not have to be increased $54 billion to fund the education of GIs over the next five years.

It’s doubtful they care.

Homosexuals and Marriage

Well, it seems the California Supreme Court found a paragraph in the state’s constitution that demands the term “marriage” be applied to homosexual coupling. Imagine that! Who knew this right was buried in the fine print.

In terms of legal protection, the ruling offers the gay community nothing beyond what civil union regulations already grant. But that’s not the point. The ruling helps legitimize their stature in society and endorses their lifestyle. That was the goal.

And there is nothing wrong with these objectives because homosexuals are treated as second class citizens by many within society.

But marriage is not about respect and acceptance within the community; it’s about responsibility to children, family and mankind.

Homosexuality is a natural phenomenon within the human race. For reasons buried in DNA, a certain percentage of men and women are only sexually attracted to their own gender. This is not in dispute. Thus, from a purely scientific point of view, there is nothing unnatural about homosexuality.

But the institution of marriage, in historical context, was never intended to solely define the rights of a partnership and property ownership.

Marriage formalizes the grave responsibility for the birth and care of children. It defines the goals of the relationship between a man and a woman, and their mutual responsibility for their offspring and the community. Among the religious, the relationship is considered holy.

Marriage is not applicable to the sexual libido of homosexuals because children are not merely a by-product of marriage. It’s the purpose. Granted, the standards of moral behavior have eroded. The birth of children outside of marriage has reached epidemic proportions.

This behavior doesn’t justify comparing a homosexual union to marriage. It’s just symptomatic of the leftwing’s subversion of religious principles throughout society. And to a large degree the deprivation of children, who are born out of wedlock, emphasizes the need to sanctity marriage, and herald the intrinsic values of the unity between a married man and a woman.

It’s not a reason to equate homosexuality with heterosexuality.

Of course, the liberals are thrilled with the ruling of California’s Supreme Court. It’s a natural fit and consistent with their universal ploy to achieve conformity by melding civil rights with religious values. They have spent two decades preaching there is no biological difference between men and women that can’t be corrected by law.

Whether the subject is education, poverty, healthcare, taxation or lifestyle, the liberal goal is to erase the absolute truths intrinsic to the human condition. It’s a subterfuge to besmirch Judeo Christian values and promote socialism.

Committee for Small Government

Two Massachusetts citizens, Carla Howell and Michael Cloud, and a handful of volunteers are organizing a petition drive to eliminate the state’s tax on income, capital gains, interest and dividends.

It’s conceivable that this tiny organization, the Committee for Small Government, may be writing the obituary of the big spenders in the Massachusetts Democratic Party. If successful, the consequences of its efforts will reverberate across the nation.

It sounds impossible, but don’t bet against this pair. A similar ballot initiative received a positive response from 45% of the electorate in 2002. And keep in mind that it was a word-of-mouth, grassroots effort without an ad campaign.

The local media and other liberals in Ted Kennedy Land initially wrote off the first effort as a joke. All were shocked to discover that 45% of the Massachusetts’ electorate was sick and tired of the rampart corruption; tired of the political gravy train; tired of supporting the lazy and the loony, leftwing programs.

The liberals in Massachusetts are inherently myopic and not very astute. It’s a state with essentially a one party system. Caution can be thrown to the wind in this atmosphere because no one in government is around to say no.

So once the 2002 initiative was defeated, the loony left controlling the budgets went right back to their insane spending practices. From the top to the bottom of the state, spending on entitlements and massive abuses within the retirement programs for political hacks reached a new zenith.

The current Governor, Duval Patrick, needs another 500 million for more worthy entitlements.

Perspective is important. From 1990 to 2007 the state’s population only increased about 8%. Much of this growth was due to the smorgasbord of entitlements that continue to encourage illegal aliens to hang their hats in this sanctuary of diversity, multi-culturalism and sumptuous handouts.

In the same period, 1990 to 2007, the spending of the state government more than doubled. That’s criminal! It gets worse. Not to be outdone, the majority of towns and cities followed the state’s example and doubled their budgets.

The 2008 edition of this tax revolt is against unbridled taxation and unbridled spending. The accumulation of spending outrages is about to cut the throats of the zany liberals whose appetite for revenues knows no bounds.

The Massachusetts electorate will revolt and deprive the state of 39% of its income. Are you ready for this? The state will have to survive (proportionally) on the same revenues required to run it in 1995.

Once the ballot passes, the games will begin. Rather than cutting the bureaucratic blubber off this government whale, the miscreants will cut the heart out of the police and fire departments. This will be done to spite the taxpayers. The school systems will disband sports, the arts and music rather than cutting through the maze of bureaucratic duplicity in the system.

This nastiness will crush the Democratic Party. And it could be coming to your state soon.

America's Despondency

It’s nearly impossible to find a Republican who is enchanted by Senator McCain. At best, he is perceived as another Democrat ready to deed the southwestern states back to Mexico. This is the contentious subject that turned Republicans against President George W. Bush.

All the McCain diehard supporters can offer in his defense is that the likes of Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers won’t be on his short list of Supreme Court nominees. That’s good, but hardly sufficient kindling to build a fire under the electorate.

His only chance of building any enthusiasm within his party is by selecting a Vice President with conservative credentials. This individual will certainly be regarded as the Republican nominee for the 2012 presidential contest.

In contrast, Senator Obama exudes charm. He has the leftwing in a swooning trance. His choice of a running mate will have little impact on his fate. He is going to have to run on his credentials, experience and his tax happy programs.

It’s demoralizing. In a wonderful country with 300 million citizens, it’s a bit disheartening to be stuck with McCain and Obama.

Soon both will be comparable to NASCAR drivers depending on gas vapors to carry them across the finish line with ten laps to go. Except for the intransigent flag carriers, the crowd will be checking their watches and wondering if they should leave early.

Much of this despondency can be laid at the feet of the current stalemate in DC. From budgets to immigration to national defense to energy solutions, there isn’t a single piece of legislation under consideration that isn’t rife with gotcha spurs.

Congress is a joke. It’s filled with party hacks who are more concerned with their committee assignments than the needs of the people they represent.

New Hampshire’s very own Representative Paul Hodes (D) is a shining example of this selfish political greed, cowardice and corruption.

This little weasel refuses to sign the Discharge Petition for the SAVE Act, H.R. 4088, after cosponsoring it. Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want the Save Act debated in the House, and has Representative Paul Hodes hiding under his desk.

What plum assignment has she promised him to block the discussion of legislation that would mandate all businesses verify Social Security numbers before hiring people? Or maybe a better question, what is she threatening if he doesn’t obey her?

The answer to either question is irrelevant. But the questions do shed light on why America is stuck in neutral. And it possibly explains why Obama and McCain have all the resonance of a dull thud. The country doesn’t need another pansy or a warrior. It needs results.

The Clinton Calendar

It’s too late for the Clintons to expect miracles. The primary contests in North Carolina and Indiana all but eliminated Senator Clinton from presidential contention. Senator Obama and Senator McCain will be competing in the fall election.

From a conservative perspective, the only wisp of good news is that the Clintons will eventually disappear for a few years. But not for awhile! If Bill and Hillary hold true to their colors, they won’t bow out of the current campaign gracefully.

If McCain manages to win in 2008, it’s doubtful he will run for a second term because he will be about 1000 years old. But be assured that Hillary will be a candidate in 2012, if Senator Obama is crushed this fall.

Be equally certain the Clintons are already focused on 2012. It’s reasonable to expect Hillary to stay in this race long enough to totally destroy Senator Obama’s chance of winning the general election. This will set the stage for her comeback in 2012. It’s conceivable that she has already accomplished this mission. But the Clintons believe in overkill.

Of course, Hillary and Barack will “kiss and make up” prior to the 2008 election for the sake of Democratic unity. Obama would be wise to wear body armor to this affair. Better yet, he should get a double to stand in for him.

Ignore the polls. McCain could thrash Obama this fall. That’s why Senator Clinton is not about to accept the VP slot. She doesn’t want to be branded a loser. Obama’s defeat will position her to tell the Super Delegates “I told you so.”

Now project a Senator Obama win this election cycle. If so, he will certainly be the Democratic candidate in 2012, leaving no room for Hillary.

By 2016, Hillary will be as old as Senator McCain is today. That is not a pretty sight to contemplate. For the Clintons, 2012 is their last chance to travel on Air Force One.

If Obama is smart, he will walk Bill and Hillary to the nearest exit the moment they concede the contest. It’s a shame he can’t do the same with his wife, who at best is his detriment in wait. For the duration of the contest she will be labeled Mrs. Hate America, the female version of Rev. Wright.

The greatest irony of this contest is that Senator Obama could win all fifty states if he was a moderate Republican and his wife wasn’t an albatross.

Our Trojan Horse

Anyone with an IQ higher than a kid’s shoe size knows there is going to be a showdown with Iran. Western civilization, that’s us, can only pretend the situation is not approaching critical mass.

Iran is using our petro dollars to underwrite terrorism. The evidence is overwhelming that it is exporting tons of munitions into Iraq for the sole purpose of destabilizing the fledging democracy. Its proxies are killing American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

This is the same country that is planning and promoting the annihilation of Israel and working feverishly to develop nuclear weapons. This is the same country that supplies weapons to the Palestinian terrorists and underwrites global jihad.

Does everyone believe that Iran would be thrilled with another 9/11? Does everyone believe that another attack on our shores is being planned? Does everyone believe Iran is hiding behind proxies?

Within our borders are many advocates of international dialogue who are not sure if Iran is evil. They believe Iran is just misunderstood. They believe a touchy-feely conversation will miraculously cause Iran to change course.

No one likes our troops in Iraq. But pretending that their instant removal will dissolve the terrorist threat is absurd. It will only embolden them by substantiating Iran’s message to the Muslim world. The West is too decadent and morally weak to defend itself.

These advocates of a better understanding through conversation are the same folks who are blocking the implementation of a practical energy solution. These are the same folks who blame America for Iran’s attitude, and promote sanctuary cities. They are the ones who have debased our culture under the guise of free speech.

The liberals would have us believe that average Muslims are victims of our avarice. They are unemployed and poorly educated because capitalism exploits the Middle East for oil. This is pure poppycock.

The Middle East is drowning in petro dollars. The financial resources are there to fund flourishing nations. The governments are too corrupt and mismanaged to secure or care about the well-being of their citizens.

They use the Muslim religion to hold their dictatorial power just as Europe’s rulers used Catholicism in the Middle Ages to control the populace. But they have taken this practice a step further. They use the West as a scapegoat to mask their greed and malfeasance.

The liberals have bought this propaganda hook, line and sinker. This blame America cabal is more dangerous than the terrorists. They are the Trojan horse within our defensive perimeters.

And they have two presidential candidates secreted in this Trojan horse, waiting for night.

One Scary Man

Senator Obama stepped in it again during his interview on Fox News Sunday. His leftwing colors were ablaze. He may not like the war in Iraq, but he is a big proponent of class warfare. And it was clear that he either hates, or doesn’t understand the tenets of capitalism.

His performance was frightening.

Chris Wallace asked him a simple question regarding the Senator’s determination to raise the taxes on capital gains. Of course, the illustrious Senator from Illinois was aghast that anyone would suggest that the tax increase he has proposed would touch the Middle Class.

There is a reason he is a politician and not a financial planner. He is either fiscally challenged, or just another conniving socialist. You decide.

Senator Obama’s answer was very articulate. He wants the government to collect more of the money the wealthy earn on their stock investments. In his worldview, this evil segment of society is getting a free ride because capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes.

Senator Obama believes, for fairness, the government must take more of this money and use it for entitlements. His opponent, Senator Clinton, calls this shared responsibility. In effect, they want the government to confiscate more of the money used to seed, grow and create jobs.

This is the antithesis of capitalism; it’s pure socialism.

Senator Obama was very articulate. He correctly clarified that the stocks held in 401ks by the Middle Class are only subject to personal income taxes when they are withdrawn after retirement. He went on to state that an increase in the capital gains taxes wouldn’t touch 401ks.

He is either economically daffy, or his ignorance is appalling.

If we give him the benefit of the doubt, this presidential contender isn’t aware that 401k retirement investments are frequently changed.

Hey, Senator! Here is some news. Individuals, looking for a better return on their retirement investments, have the right to trade the stocks in their 401k portfolio. It’s a common practice.

Any profits accrued on the original investments prior to their sale are currently subject to capital gains taxes, even if the funds are not removed from the 401k. Your proposal will nearly double the taxes siphoned from these transactions. Your proposal steals the funds that people are relying on for retirement, and the potential growth of the confiscated principle.

Whether you are a liar, or just ignorant, it’s apparent Senator Obama that you are willing to raid the retirement accounts of ordinary Americans to build socialism. You are a virus, Comrade Obama. You represent the blight eating away America’s future. You are scary.