Last night on the way home, I was listening to the Mark Levin show. One of the callers talked about how they were excited about all the events that happened yesterday in Washington, D.C. After the event, they got to their car and heard about the shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. That was a letdown after the high of the event organized by Michelle Bachmann, Republican from Minnesota.

Having these two events at nearly the same time highlights the urgency of the problem. The positive event in Washington was to show our Congressional Representatives that we are serious about keeping the American way of life. The negative event in Texas showed us that we cannot be too careful when it comes to terrorists.

Officially, the Major that killed those soldiers was just trying to commit suicide. He had been upset for a long time about the role of the United States in this war against Islamo-Fascism. He converted to Islam only 5 years ago. During that time, he increasingly had problems with American involvement in the Middle East. He had been transferred to Fort Hood after a negative work report in his previous assignment. He may have been trying to commit suicide, but you do not do that and bring others to the event. This smells like a terrorist event. It looks like a terrorist event. It sounds like a terrorist event. The fact that the government is not calling it a terrorist event does not mean that it is not a terrorist event. We will probably never know the truth about what happened. We may learn a lot of the facts, but there will always be something left unsaid. The fact that he was a Muslim should figure prominently in the reports. The fact that he is a Muslim is hardly mentioned, except as background material.

This shooting at Fort Hood tells us that we have more to do when it comes to security in our Armed Forces. If a Major can commit murders like this, then there are probably other suspects out there. That this Major was a convert to Islam within the past 5 years sounds to me like something that should be looked into. I am not saying that every convert to Islam is a murderer or terrorist. I am saying that they should be checked to determine whether they are security risks. That is because another recent convert to Islam killed those soldiers at the beginning of the war to liberate Iraq by rolling a grenade into a tent. For these reasons, they should be checked for a potential security risk.

The two events yesterday should be a wake-up call for the Obama administration. Somehow I do not think that the Obama administration will wake up. I have a feeling that they are deliberately sleeping on the job when it comes to security. I cannot prove that last statement, but it just feels that way. The Obama administration does not support the troops like the Bush administration did. They use the troops as photo ops instead of bonding with the soldiers, marines and sailors they come in contact with. George W. Bush always made it a point to bond with the military units he visited. He would walk among them and shake hands. He gave them what they needed to do their jobs. I do not see any of that from the Obama administration.

Michelle Bachmann’s “Tea Party” was meant to drive home to our elected representatives that we are serious. The elections last Tuesday showed that the voters in blue states are serious about what is going on. That there were at least 10,000+ at the event yesterday showed that people across the country are serious. It is time for Congress to get serious. We will see if they get the message. Or we WILL see that they get the message next November.

The news is reporting that the AARP is selling out Senior Citizens today. They are supposed to endorse one of the Obamacare bills that are floating around Washington. Since all of the Obamacare bills contain provisions to restrict care to Americans that are past 60 years of age and have an illness that will cost a lot of money. Each bill is slightly different in its treatment of these Americans, but the net result will be a similar removal of care for these patients. The AARP is supposed to represent Senior Citizens over the age of 55. They obviously are not concerned about the effects of these Obamacare bills on the Senior Citizens that make up the membership of the AARP.

There is a reason why the AARP is endorsing Obamacare. That is because the Obamacare bills are reducing Medicare. Medicare has a program called Medicare Advantage that is very popular with Senior Citizens. It covers them when Medicare does not. The Obamacare bills will effectively eliminate this program. It does not actually eliminate it, but guts it so much that it might as well put it out of its misery. AARP sells a competing Medicare gap coverage that is not as popular with Senior Citizens. With the Medicare Advantage program effectively eliminated, the AARP insurance program will be the only one selling Medicare gap insurance. That would be a windfall for AARP. That is why they are endorsing Obamacare. They are selling out Senior Citizens for the almighty dollar. The leadership of AARP is also composed of far leftist types. That also comes into play on the issue.

Another event is happening today that is far more important than AARP selling out Senior Citizens. That is the Tea Party rally at the Capitol Building at noon eastern time. This idea is the brainchild of Michelle Bachman, Republican from Minnesota. She has invited Mark Levin and Jon Voigt to come and give speeches. After the talks, the crowd is supposed to enter the office buildings and find members of Congress to talk to. The idea is that thousands of people coming to Washington and showing up to talk to Senators and Representatives in person will bring a powerful message. Nancy Pelosi is waiting with baited breath for this to occur, in her secret meeting.

If they get enough people to the event, it can be impressive. Members of Congress are already soaking up the idea that Obama does not have coat tails to rescue them if they vote against the wishes of the public. With large numbers of people on their doorstep, that reinforces the idea that the public is interested in this issue and they better watch what they do. Those that have Democrat Kool-aid in their veins will not be moved. Those that are the least part insecure will be moved by the demonstration. This is a great opportunity for Republicans to make the Tea Party protests part of the Republican platform. They just have to remember not to fumble the ball when it is served up on a silver platter.

As I got home last night, Michael Savage had a guest on who was talking about the impact of the votes in Virginia and New Jersey on Democrats. I did not get to hear everything he had to say, but I did understand that he felt that Democrats were shaken by the magnitude of the defeat in Virginia and that they lost in New Jersey at all. Barack Obama won both Virginia and New Jersey by hefty margins in 2008, just one year ago. To lose by 18% in Virginia after only one year, must cause Democrats to wonder what is going on. Also losing New Jersey had to shake them to their core. New Jersey is one of the very bluest of the blue states, so that it elected a conservative Republican must be troubling. Electing a moderate (liberal) Republican like Christie Todd Whitman was not so much of a stretch. Doug Christie is a conservative Republican. He has very few moderate or liberal tendencies at all. Christie must have been outspent by about 10-1. There is no way that Jon Corzine should have lost. Christie won because of the Obama factor. People are afraid of the way Obama is steering the country. This is a way they could voice their opinion and get Democrats to listen.

This next year will be very interesting. Will Obama, Reid and Pelosi remain tone deaf and try to lead us off of a cliff? Will the Republicans plug into the energy of the Tea Party movement and become the true conservative party that it should be? All this and more will play out over the next 12 months. Election Day 2010 should be every bit as interesting as Election Day 2009 has turned out to be. That would then set the table for 2012 and who will replace Barack Obama. I can hardly wait!

Glen Beck is still under attack from the left. In a way that is a good thing. It means that he is being effective in finding the skeletons in their closet. It is also a bad way because it shows how many companies are spineless lapdogs of the left.

Glen Beck has a terrible time slot to get high ratings, yet he is now frequently the top show on all of cable news. Bill O’Reilly has had the top slot for a long time. Glen is now getting ratings that challenge Bill for the top spot each day. Bill O’Reilly undoubtedly does not like that, but it is the nature of TV that shows wax and wane in the ratings. Right now, Glen Beck is hot and it shows. Both Bill O’Reilly and Glen Beck are on Fox News. Either one gets more people viewing their shows than view the total of the top shows for any other cable channel.

The higher the viewership a show has the more advertisers generally want to advertise on that show. The reason is that you want to be seen. You also want to be seen on the “best” shows. The “best” shows are usually defined as those that bring in the highest viewers. A side note to this is that conservative show viewers tend to be more loyal than viewers for other shows. All of this would lead one to believe that advertisers are knocking down the door to get on the Glen Beck TV show. After Van Jones started the boycott, a number of advertisers have pulled their ads from Fox News and the Glen Beck show in particular. In my mind, those are advertisers to avoid. If they don’t want to advertise on Glen Beck, then I don’t want to buy their products. All I need now is a list of those advertisers and I can change my buying habits.

Why are advertisers boycotting Glen Beck? A couple of weeks ago, Glen Beck said that Barack Obama is a racist on his TV show. The next day on his radio show, he explained why he believed Barack Obama was a racist. Whether you agree with Glen Beck or not, he has a right to his opinion. Viewers have a right to watch his show after a comment like that. His viewership is through the roof. Obviously viewers are not put off by the comment about Barack Obama being a racist. Advertisers also did not have a problem with it until Van Jones started his boycott movement.

Just like I support Michael Savage in his effort to remove the stain of being “Banned in Britain”, I support Glen Beck in this effort. Whether or not talk show hosts will support one another is not important to me. I understand why other talk show hosts do not support Michael Savage’s efforts in regards to England. They believe if they put their support behind Michael Savage’s efforts then they will be lumped together with his views. I can’t really tell much difference between the views of Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. If you boil them down to their essentials, they agree on most issues. That is as it should be because they are all conservatives. But, they also all believe that they are the best talk show on the radio/TV. To put their support behind another host would acknowledge that the other host is important. Their egos will not allow another talk show to be nearly as important as their talk show. That is why they will not support one another, even though they should.

As a private person who has no ax to grind, I can support multiple hosts and have no problem with that support. I listen to all of them and more to gain as much information as possible. Dismissing one or more as unimportant would diminish my information base. When one of my sources of information is in trouble, all of my sources of information are in trouble.

Glen Beck has been exposing the circle of advisors to Barack Obama. Van Jones is one of the closest advisors to Barack Obama. After the revelations this past week, Van Jones cannot last much longer as the Green Jobs Czar. I look for him to disappear from the White House this weekend or early next week. That will diminish the standing of Van Jones, but will most likely cause him to work that much harder to stop Glen Beck from broadcasting. That will kick this battle up one notch. Van Jones has a problem in his fight with Glen Beck. The problem is that Glen Beck only uses highly researched information. Van Jones is using lies to support his position. Glen Beck is using facts to support his position. Eventually the advertisers will see the light and tell Van Jones where to stick it. Companies can lose only so much money over principle.

That the Democrats “government option” is in trouble showed another sign. The White House website is asking for people to make comments to the White House if they hear or see any comments against the healthcare proposal. Basically, they are asking people in the United States to snitch on one another. When you stoop to that level of activity, you have lost the debate.

Democrats continue to be hammered when they hold Townhall meetings in their districts. They continue to complain that the people that are giving them trouble are paid by the insurance industry. They are wrong. These people are local people. They are motivated to do something because they see a loss of liberty and feel a need to act.

Last night, I had to move my car and heard Mark Levin talk about why people are turning out to these Townhall meetings. I wish I could repeat what he said because he put it so powerfully. Basically, Mark said that people are motivated by that same force that helped us win WWII and all the other wars. Americans are a forgiving people. We can take a lot of abuse without reacting. People continually mistake this lack of reaction as a lack of resolve. As Admiral Yamamoto put it after Pearl Harbor, “I fear we have awakened a sleeping Giant.” The reaction that the Democrats are getting at these Townhall meetings is the awakening of the sleeping Giant. We have taken all we are going to take. From now on, we will fight for every inch of ground. Anyone who opposes us will be defeated, just as the Germans and Japanese were defeated at the end of WWII.

The Democrats have not figured out what is happening. They look out at the landscape and see an America that will take a lot of abuse. They also believe that America will take this abuse because she has been conditioned to take it after 70 years of liberalism in our schools and courts. They cannot see what is happening because it is not happening to them or to their liberal allies. It is only happening to conservatives, independents and even liberals that believe in liberty. The Democrats are looking at the America they want to see, not the America as it is. That will be their undoing. They are acting defiant in the face of this opposition. That would be the correct action if this were isolated grass fires. This is not a situation where there are isolated grass fires. This is a situation where there is a truly mass movement.

This mass movement is not a Republican movement or a movement by any other group. Whoever gets out in front of this movement and grabs the reins will have a platform to truly make major changes in 2010 and 2012. That would take a politician with vision and one that is willing to take risks. Right now this movement is still in its infancy. Getting in front of it now will reap great rewards down the line. Waiting until it is fully formed might yield big results, but much less than getting on board in the beginning. The risk is also there if you get in front in the beginning. You have to read the American people clearly. You have to articulate what they want. If you get it wrong, you will crash and burn and never be heard from again. It is much safer to wait until the movement has taken form. You also take the chance that someone else might take the lead. This is a great opportunity for someone to show us his/her mettle. Who will be that person?

I hope that the Democrats continue to misread the movement up through the 2010 elections. If they continue to misread the movement for that long, conservatives will be elected to erase much of the terrible things done in 2009 and 2010. Notice that I said conservatives, not Republicans. It remains to be seen if the Republicans can harness the energy this movement is generating. If they can, then Republicans will be transcendent. If not, some other party will take over for the Republicans.

Last night, Barack Obama held a press conference about his health care initiative. He appeared articulate and in command of the issues when he was presenting his information. When you check his facts, on the other hand, you find that they were made up or completely false. The news media did its usual job of rolling over so Obama could rub its tummy. Just when a couple of them start to ask tough questions, you think they might ask one in the press conference. If they asked a mild question, Barack Obama danced around the issue without answering it for about 5 minutes. As a result, this press conference had to be one with the fewest questions asked since the invention of the radio.

I did not get to hear the press conference. I work nights and so was at work during the conference. I did get to hear Hugh Hewitt make a comment about the opening statement. Hugh said that the opening statement was completely false. On the way home from work, I did get to hear part of the Mark Levin show where he went over the press conference as it was happening. When I was listening the show was delayed by at least 3 hours. The little I heard told me that Obama sounded like he knew what he was talking about, but the facts I knew were completely different than the facts he was giving at the press conference.

The first point that stuck out to me was when Obama was talking about the deficit. I may get the numbers wrong as I was driving in the dark when I heard them. He mentioned that he inherited a deficit. That is a true statement. The projected deficit when he took office was around $200-250 billion. He projected Bush deficits over the next 10 years and came up with a figure of about $9.3 trillion. He then said that he had done wonders with the economy and that the deficit over those same ten years was only going to be $7 trillion. That was a savings of $2.3 trillion. As I remember, the deficit for the first six months of office is about $1 trillion +. The only way his figures can be correct is if he did not expect Bush to collect taxes and that all those taxes went to paying down his debts. Then, I might believe his numbers. Obama is going to rack up deficits in one year that will dwarf all the deficits of all the Presidents from Washington to George W. Bush, combined.

Obama also went on and on that his health care plan was going to save money. He must be the only person on the planet that believes that. The Congressional Budget Office, ran by Democrats, says that the plan will increase costs by $1.3 trillion. And, those costs will not keep down the regular costs of medicine. We all know how accurate the Congressional Budget Office estimates are. When they estimated the cost of Medicare, they said it would cost $9 billion by 1990. By 1990, Medicare costs were over $66 Billion. Other estimates have been even worse than that one. Using that as the baseline, would peg the actual costs of this health care bill at about $9.1 trillion. That sounds a lot more like what the actual costs will be. The $1 trillion figure just seemed way too low.

There is a way to almost instantly reduce the cost of health insurance and then the resulting cost of health care in this country. Right now, health insurance is a highly regulated business. Policies have to contain certain things in order to be sold in a particular state. That means I have to purchase maternity insurance even though my wife and I are both over 60 years of age. We should be able to drop that coverage and then reduce our insurance cost by that much. Other provisions in health insurance are also required by the states and federal government. If we eliminated those requirements, health insurance costs would drop dramatically.

The other related item that would greatly reduce the cost of health insurance is to make health insurance completely portable. Right now, my policy in Arizona covers me if I go to other states. If I move to Georgia, I have to buy a different policy based on Georgia’s requirements. I should be able to find a policy that I want at a price I want to pay and buy it. Say I live in New York where insurance costs are about the highest, I should be able to buy my policy from a company anywhere in the country. Then, I could pay the same low cost for insurance that they pay in Wisconsin.

If those are the only things done to reduce costs, it would greatly reduce the cost to the consumer. There are a lot of other ideas that would get more people insured and reduce the cost of medical practices. Those will have to be the topic for another post. I have lots of ideas on the topic. Strangely, none of them involve the government, except to remove it from the scene.