The wheels are definitely coming off of the Obama Express. In November, 2008, he seemed unstoppable. He had a Democrat Congress to work with and the news media in his back pocket. Then, on inauguration day he seemed to step in it a bit with his speech. Still, with a fawning press, what could go wrong?

Today, seven months into the Obama Presidency, the wheels have come completely off the bus. His healthcare proposal is facing opposition from the public and even members of his own party. There are polls out today that show that for the first time in a very long time, more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal in every state in the country.

Also 57% of the public does not believe that the stimulus bill has done anything to stimulate the economy. Only 19% think that the stimulus bill has actually stimulated the economy. Looking to the future, 60% of the public does not think that the stimulus bill will do anything to stimulate the economy. These are not the kind of numbers that help keep Democrats warm at night. They are the kind of numbers that give Democrats nightmares of election debacles. They appear to be staring at one in 2010.

There is a report out that Senator Barbara Boxer is likely to face stiff competition for her seat in the Senate. She is likely to face a Republican that will have enough money to at least match her dollar for dollar, if not outspend her. Also, the potential Republican challenger is articulate and obviously intelligent. She has run major businesses in the past. Barbara Boxer is widely known to be one of the Senate’s least intelligent Senators. This would be a major pick-up of a seat in the blue state of California.

Other Democrats across the country are looking at potential challengers and are seeing people that are well-funded and articulate. Democrats are known for walking in lock step with the Democrat leadership, which makes them vulnerable to quick thinking challengers in areas that are not solidly Democrat blue. In marginal districts or districts that generally vote Republican, Democrat Congressmen and Senators will face opposition that could easily dislodge them from their cushy digs.

I also read an article on World Net Daily by Hilmar von Campe. He grew up in Germany during the 1930’s and saw the rise of Hitler. He has written a book about his experience called, “Defeating the Totalitarian Lie”. His parents were forced to enroll him in the Hitler Youth at age 10 and the army at age 18. According to Mr. von Campe, the steps Hitler took in the 1930’s and the steps Barack Obama is taking today are remarkably similar. He is particularly worried about the euthanasia program that Hitler endorsed and implemented and the one that Obama has written into the healthcare legislation. Neither was called euthanasia by their authors. Once Hitler got his plan approved, he started with making the Jews non-people. Obama hasn’t had his plan approved, but he has talked about needing to reduce the cost of medical care for seniors. The easiest way is to deny services to those deemed too old to be useful to the country. That would make the healthcare plan delivery unequal.

We can only hope that the Democrats cling to this failing health care proposal for a while longer. The more they talk about implementing government healthcare, the lower their polls go. Pretty soon, we might even hear about Democrats in the Northeast being worried about their seats. That would be a good thing. Fear of losing your seat makes you a better Senator or Congressman. You suddenly take an interested look at what the people in your district (state) are telling you.

I always thought the wheels would come off for Obama. I just never thought they would come off so fast. The fact they have come off so fast gives us some clear shots at cleaning up the current mess. It also minimizes the amount of mess that he could create. Those are good things.

At some fund raisers in Las Vegas and Hollywood, Barack Obama said that the “stimulus” plan was working. It had saved 150,000 jobs. The economy is turning around. Things are starting to look better. He also said that he is pleased with the performance of his administration. That, in my opinion, was entirely fiction.

Now for the facts, since taking office in January, 2009, the economy has lost approximately 1.8 million jobs. There is no way to say if the “stimulus” plan saved 150,000 jobs or not. To claim that it had saved 150,000 jobs is pure baloney. There is no data available to back up that comment. There is ample evidence to show that the economy is still losing jobs.

There are faint signs that the economy may be nearing bottom. Every now and then, you see a sign that this indicator is showing positive news. So far, there has not been any consistent indication that the economy has yet hit bottom. With all the new taxes that the Democrats in Congress want to impose, the economy will not have a chance to recover before it goes into another tailspin. With an economy in shambles, you cannot add new taxes and expect it to recover any time soon. If the economy was humming along like a well tuned engine, you might be able to add some taxes and not mess up the machinery. But, why mess with success?

The general performance of this administration is in the eye of the beholder. If you are a socialist, communist or other person from the far left, this administration has performed well. If you are from any freedom loving part of the United States, this administration has created one disaster after another. We would have to rate the administration’s performance as worse than extremely poor. I thought Jimmy Carter was the worst President in my lifetime or maybe even American History. I was wrong. Barack Obama has Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy, which was the worst ever. Obama also has a much worse economic policy than Carter. We may look back at Carter’s economy and wish we were there by the time Obama and the Democrats are through with us.

The interesting thing about these fund raisers in Las Vegas and Hollywood is that they have had to lower the price of admission. They were not getting many takers at the original prices. They had to slash the prices a lot to get enough people to attend. It shows that even Hollywood and Las Vegas fat cats are feeling the pinch of this economy. That is a good thing for us all. It may wake them up to the disaster that is occurring around them.

Obama did give his usual stirring speech, which said nothing, to the people that paid to hear him. In reading his speeches, I come away with the thought that I just read a jumble of nothing. He says things in generalities. He also gets it wrong when someone disagrees with him, so his examples of disagreement are always off the mark. That makes his arguments against the people that disagree also off the mark. You do not catch that when listening, just when you read. When you listen, you get caught up in the emotion of the speech and not the meaning of the words. It is the same with every Obama speech I have read. They all have the same pattern; stirring words, wrong straw men, poor arguments and wrong conclusions. All of that is then wrapped up in emotion. As a result, people that hear the speech are moved. People that read the speech think it is pedestrian at best.

We are in for a long period of bad times. Too bad we do not have a Presidential election in 2010. That way we could rid ourselves of this error very quickly.

Now that the Trojan Horse Pork Spending Bill has been passed and signed, some of those that were opposed to the bill are all of a sudden showing a change of heart. It is really difficult to look at billions of dollars coming to your state and telling the federal government, no. That takes a monumental amount of courage and faith in what you believe. Most of the Republican Governors are willing to accept the federal money because it relieves budget crunches.

Here in Arizona, the money will mean that there will be more money available to fund the normal budget items in the state budget for next year. That means good things for the community college budget. This is assuming that the state legislature restores the funding that they were going to take away. It will also be great for ASU. They were really facing tough budget crunches and even limiting enrollment. That is something they have never done in the past.

The problem with federal money is that it always comes with strings attached. Those strings usually lead to problems down the road, if you are not careful in how you manage those strings. Most states do not manage the strings and then the strings manage the states. The same holds true for education. When they accept federal money for anything, there are strings. The districts never allow for the strings, so the strings bite them. Then the district has to arrange things to allow for the strings that were attached to the funding. States manage their money in much the same way. They take the federal handout and do not allow for the strings. Then when the federal government reviews how the money was spent, the State has to spend additional funds to cover the strings.

We will see how the states that accept the money deal with the strings that are attached. Most states will take the money because the amounts are so large. If the funding was smaller, the states with Republican Governors would not take the money and the programs would fail. By making the dollar amounts huge, states cannot resist having large portions of their budget covered or their deficit covered by federal money. That is our position here in Arizona.

The correct position is not to ever take federal money unless you want to fund the strings. That has to be an up front decision or you get yourself in deep trouble. As a result, the best course is not to take the handout because it will rise up and bite you sooner or later.

Rick Santelli was right when he went on his rant last week. The Trojan Horse Pork Spending Bill is spending our grandchildren’s money to do absolutely nothing to help the economy. Anyone who voted for the bill should be run out of town on a rail. There is no justification to spend our grandchildren’s money to do nothing. In three or four years, this bill will have spent over $1 trillion and have nothing to show for it. The economy will be worse off for having had the bill and we will have the $1 trillion to pay off. Inflation will be on the rise because you cannot put that much money into the economy without increasing inflation. That will make everything worse less. If the people that voted for Obama knew anything about economics, there would be a tremendous revolt in this country. Unfortunately, there are few who know anything about economics and they will accept whatever the government says, especially if it is from Obama. That is, until he really screws up in their eyes.

What should have been done is give everyone tax cuts. I am not talking about the phony tax cuts the Democrats talk about. I am talking about tax cuts for the people and businesses that pay taxes. If you do not pay taxes you do not get a tax cut. That would stimulate the economy into producing new jobs at a fantastic rate with little or no inflation. You had put little to no new money into the economy. Putting money into the economy will increase inflation. Decreasing taxes on income earners will not increase the amount of inflation at all. We need to be smart in this economic mess the government got us into.

President Reagan said it best in the 1980’s when he said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” That is exactly the problem today. That is exactly the solution today. How come so many people cannot see that is beyond me.

Future generations are going to ask the question, “Did they know what they were doing?” For a large portion of our country, the answer would be, “No”. For a minority of our country the answer would be, “Yes”. Unfortunately, there are far more no’s than yes’s. The Democrats have sold this spending bill as a “stimulus bill”. Those that believe that Democrat politicians tell the truth took that story hook, line and sinker. For those who do not follow politics or government, they believed what the media said and the media is the propaganda arm of the Democrat party. So, a very large percentage of the country believes that the Congress actually did something to combat the recession. They were sold a pig in a poke.

As people finally learn what is in the bill, they turn against the bill. This was happening to the Democrats during the short time the bill was before Congress. That is why they had to rush it through without debate or allowing anyone the time to read it. The Democrats that voted for the bill have admitted that they did not read the bill. They had no real idea what was in the bill. They voted for the bill because their leadership said that they should vote for the bill. Now, I do not know about you, but that is not why I sent my Senators or Congressman to Congress. I sent them there to make the best decisions for the United States of America in my absence. I expect them to read every bill and make informed decisions on what is best. I may not agree with them on all their choices, but if that is the process they follow I have little to object to. I have a big objection when one of my Senators or my Congressman votes on a bill because someone tells them to do so. That is not their job. If I wanted a rubber stamp in Congress, I would have purchased a rubber stamp and sent that to Congress instead of a Congressman. It would have been a lot cheaper to maintain.

I do not know how the Democrat Senators and Congressmen will be able to face the voters in 2010 and tell them why they did not do their job on this massive spending bill. If all the bill did was spend wildly on all the Democrat pet projects, it would still be a terrible bill, but one I could live with. What this bill does is impose socialism on our medical system and some other systems as well. We are still finding out all of the socialistic dreams that the Democrats have had for the last 40 years that are contained in the bill. The reason we are still finding them out is that they were hidden deep within the bill to make them difficult to find. If they were easy to find, they would have been taken out by Republicans. By hiding them they were able to slip them by the unsuspecting dunces, Specter, Collins and Snowe.

When the voters elected Barack Hussein Obama on November 4, they voted for change. They are getting change in this bill. They are getting more change than any American ever dreamed possible even three months ago. They are getting so much changes that the country that we have come to know as the United States might even cease to exist as the United States. It might still have the name, United States, but it would not have the soul of the United States. The United States has a soul of individualism and adventure. Those have been taken out by this bill and replaced by the nanny state of socialism. Socialism will take the soul right out of the country and make us a second rate backwater just like France or Italy. If we become a second rate backwater, we likely will have someone take us over. Second rate backwaters do not have enough gumption to fight back and win.

If I sound pessimistic I am sorry. I am usually always optimistic. But, having a Democrat in the White House and huge Democrat majorities in the House and Senate leaves me cold. There is not a lot to be optimistic about when thinking about what those people could do to my beloved country in the next two years. Then, I would only be able to re-elect my Republican Congressman. That is not much help in regaining the country.

“We are all Socialists Now”, screams the headline of Newsweek last week. I was disappointed that Newsweek would be so presumptuous as to assume that all Americans support Socialism. Obviously at least 47% of us voted for the Republican in the last election. We would most likely not be considered in that socialist group. There are others that voted for the Libertarian party that would be surprised to find that they have been lumped together with the socialists. I have never been a socialist, nor will I ever be a socialist. I have never support a socialist idea and I cannot conceive of a time that I ever would support a socialist idea. That is why the headline is so offensive.

I know why they put the banner on their magazine. The “stimulus” bill passed Congress last week. Contained in the stimulus bill are numerous socialist agenda items. Since the bill passed and is to be signed by Barack Hussein Obama today in Denver, they will become law. They were not supported by any real Republican in the House or Senate. To call Collins, Snowe or Specter Republicans is to sully the term Republican. They are turncoats of the lowest order. They knew or were supposed to know what was in the bill. So, supporting a bill that contains socialist agenda items is wrong for America. We do not need a western European socialist state here in America. What we need is freedom. Freedom is what made this country great, not government. God gave us freedoms and the government ensured that those freedoms would be respected. As long as that relationship was maintained, this country led the world in everything. As soon as the government started granting “rights” we started on a downward spiral. To get us out of this spiral, we need to get back to the foundation of what made us great and that is the fact that God gave us the rights and the government merely respects those God given rights. The government does not grant anyone any rights to anything. God grants those rights and the government just respects those rights. The proper order should be maintained at all times. When it gets out of place, we start declining.

Our country has been in decline for a long time. It started out small in the 1930’s with Franklin Roosevelt. It has now snowballed into an almost unstoppable avalanche. We must stop the avalanche of government at the expense of freedom. The way to do that is to take our government back with people that truly believe that government is there to serve the people not the people are there to serve government like we have in Washington today. We have a few in Washington that do understand the proper relationship, like Jeff Flake or even Jon Kyl. Every Democrat believes that the people are here to serve government and it is the government that made us great. Both are false arguments.

The first false argument is that it is the government that made us great. That is not true on its face. It is true that our government got out of the way and allowed us the freedom to be innovative Americans. If that is your tack that government made us great from that angle, then you are mostly correct. The second false argument comes from the first. If the government made us great, then it is the purpose of all Americans to serve the government that made us great to make us even greater. This is a false argument. Americans are great in spite of government, not because of it. Americans are taught to think for themselves and this is what has separated us from other countries during war. In a war, if you kill our officers, our enlisted men will take over until all are gone. In other countries, if you kill the officers, the unit is almost completely unable to function. That is how we defeated Germany and Japan; our enlisted men were able to make command decisions that their enlisted men were incapable of doing.

We are moving toward the kind of country that we have always despised. We despised those other countries because they could not function without their officer class. We are turning into that type of a society. I do not want to live long enough to see it happen in my America. I want my Americans to think for themselves and do for them to make themselves better. That is how we became the best and how we can become the best again. The German best were better than our best. But, our second thru one thousand+ best was better than their second thru one thousand+ best. That is why we won. German guns were better than ours. German tanks were better than ours. German airplanes were better and faster than ours. Yet, we won the war because we could make our inferior weapons do the job that they could not do with their superior weapons.

American spirit and can-do attitude is what has made us the best. Socialism will destroy the American spirit and can-do attitude. Socialism saps the strength to survive out of a country and eventually it just dies thru disinterest. Democrats want us to emulate Western Europe and go down the socialist road. We need to resist that siren song and head down the individualistic road of independence. That is where true greatness lies. We want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We do not want life, liberty and equality. Equality is what killed the French Revolution. Equality is what is destroying Western Europe. It destroyed Russia. We do not want it to destroy America as well.

The Trojan Horse Porkulus Bill was passed yesterday. The Democrats promised that the public would have 48 hours to review the bill before they voted. That never happened. The only people that got to review the bill before the vote were the lobbyists that had interests in the bill itself. They finished work on the bill late Thursday night and passed it on Friday afternoon. The reason for the haste is that Nancy Pelosi was leaving the country Friday evening to go to Paris, France. That is a lousy reason to speed up passage of a bill with such an impact on the American public.

I have been tied up in work all morning, so I do not know if Barack Hussein Obama has signed the bill. Since it is exactly what he wanted, he will sign it.

Some of the agreements that were made look really suspicious. The Reid train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas was only in the Senate bill for $2 billion. After they negotiated the agreement, the train had grown to $8 billion. I thought that the negotiations between the House and Senate were to iron out the differences between the bills, not increase earmarks. If someone put an earmark in the bill in the first place, that should be the amount that they want for the earmark. They should not suddenly need 4X more over the space of a couple of days. It is things like this that cause us to lose confidence in our elected officials.

The only good thing about the bill is that it did not get ANY Republican support. I do not consider Specter, Snowe and Collins to be real Republicans. They are RINOs and as such are really Democrats. That means that this bill is entirely on the shoulders of the Democrats. When it fails and fail it will the blame will go entirely to the Democrats.

When the American public learns what is really in the bill the Democrats better be real worried about their seats in the House and Senate. They may have won a victory today that puts billions of dollars into Democrat hands, but in the end, they will lose the confidence of the American public. People will not stand to be told that they cannot have health care for their loved ones after having it forever. The public will rise up and vote anyone out of office that voted for this bill. The only ones that will vote for the Democrats will be the Communists and Socialists. They will get election results in the 30% or lower range in supposed safe Democrat districts. The Republicans will come into Washington with a mandate to repeal most or all of this boondoggle that would be left. Any socialist ideas hidden in the bill would be instantly removed by the Republicans when they got the majorities. Of course, Obama would veto the legislation. But the boards would have no funding and any appointments would not be approved. In that way they would be hamstrung until they could be repealed after Obama is soundly defeated in 2012 by a Conservative Republican, not a liberal Republican like we had in 2008.

Better times are ahead for the Republicans. Unfortunately, we will have to endure a long depression until we can vote the depression enablers out of office. Obama and the Democrats are doing exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. What they did will turn this recession into a depression. Inflation will raise its ugly head and savings will be wiped out in an instant. The public will be very upset with anyone that voted for the bill and had not been talking about fiscal responsibility. At least, that is how I see it on Valentines Day, 2009.

When I was in high school I had a good friend named Bill Dickey. Bill wanted to become a journalist. I lost track of Bill after high school because his family moved and I went to Colorado to college. But, Bill was one of the most curious people I ever met. He wanted to know everything about everything and loved to write about everything. Back then, that is what it took to be a journalist. Now, those are not the qualities that would make someone be a “journalist”. Today, all you have to do is read the Democrat talking points and write about that.

During this entire episode with the miss-named Stimulus Bill there has been a curious lack of interest from journalists about the bill or what it would do to or for the country. Back when a journalist was really supposed to find the truth out about things and be a watchdog, there would have been a flood of articles about the Trojan Horse Bill also known as the Pork Spending Bill or the Porkulus Bill. Today, there have been few articles from people that call themselves journalists about what is in the bill. Ten or twenty years ago, that would never have happened to any bill before Congress whether it is a Democrat bill or a Republican bill. Republican bills always got more investigation, but Democrat bills also got their share. Today, there is nothing.

Had this bill been authored by Republicans, the bill would have had its share of articles, all of them negative. This bill does not get any articles about it other than repeating what some Democrat says about the bill or maybe some Republican criticism. There is no original research by any journalist to determine for themselves what is in the bill.

That is not to say that there have not been articles about the bill and what is in it. There have been a lot of articles about the bill and what is in it. The problem is that all of them are from people who are not journalists and do not have access to newspapers, radio news programs or TV news programs. There have been a lot of articles about the bill on the blogosphere. The only people that read the blogosphere are the hard core news junkies. The average person just reads the newspaper or listens to the radio or watches TV news to get their information. They will not get any of their information about the bill reading blogs.

In my opinion, the problem with the main stream journalists is that they all lean hard left. Since they all lean in one direction, in talking among themselves they only get one viewpoint. In this last election this problem really came to a head when the news media dropped all pretenses and actively supported one candidate. That had never happened before in the entire history of the country. There were always two sides to the main stream media and they always tried to portray the two main contenders for the Presidency in the same tone. In this election, they ignored that ideology and just all went for one man. Even if they had supported my candidate for Presidency, I do not think that I would want the news media to actively support one candidate. I want the news media to be as impartial as possible.

As a teacher, I take great pride when a student tries to guess my political positions and gets them wrong. That means that I am teaching as impartial as is humanly possible. It is never possible to be completely impartial. You will always favor one over the other. That is not the question. The question is did you treat both candidates as equally as possible? Did you ask the same or similar questions to both candidates? If you asked follow-up questions to one candidate, did you do the same with the other? If you can answer yes to all those questions, then you have done your job well. In this last election, there were very few journalists who could have answered all those questions with the answer of yes.

Right now, the news media and journalists in general are held in a very bad light. People realize that they are not impartial news reporters, they are partial news makers. The news now has to be filtered by the question, what does this journalist believe about this issue, event? That is sad. The only other countries that do that are countries where the news media is tightly controlled like Communist China or Cuba. Our news media voluntarily decided to become like Communist China or Cuba. That is really sad. Our news media was always the pride of the world for its independence. Now it has become the arm of the Democrat party. What a shame that they have sunk to that low. I would say the same if they were the arm of the Republican Party. They should never be the propaganda arm of any party. They should be fiercely independent and never take no for an answer. That is the type of journalist I know Bill Dickey would have become. I hope that he had that chance.

The Trojan Horse Bill has been agreed to by the Democrats in the House, Senate and White House. There is nothing to stop this Trojan Horse Bill from being signed into law. The Democrats like to call it a stimulus bill because that way they can claim this is an emergency. This bill is not a stimulus bill and should be treated as any other bill that comes before the House and Senate. Since the Democrats refuse to call it what it is, the bill is being treated as an emergency bill and will be signed into law as soon as it is approved. The only way it could be stopped would be for the three turncoats in the Senate to suddenly grow a backbone. That is unlikely to happen. They are liberals at heart and are only Republicans when it suits their purposes, like when they want to win elections.

This bill will effectively end America as it has been known for 240+ years. We have been gradually moving towards this end for the past 70 years. Franklin Roosevelt started us on this slippery slope and we have now reached the bottom where our freedom is now lost. It will not disappear in a flash when the bill is signed. It will disappear gradually as the plan for socialism is implemented. Within four years we will realize that we have lost our freedom and will scream. By then, it will be too late. It could still be repealed, but the information will have been gathered and that would be a tremendous database for the Democrats to mine for dirt. The odds on the database ever being destroyed is virtually zero. In fact, the chance of getting rid of Democrat socialist programs is zero. We still have them from the Great Depression.

Realistically, the best we can hope for is to strangle the program to make it ineffective. Democrats would scream bloody murder if that was to happen, but it would be better than funding it and having it destroy lives. The best thing would be to completely remove all the socialist programs from the federal government list of programs. That would greatly reduce the amount of debt that we would have to finance and increase the freedom in this country. The programs have been around for so long that there is little or no chance of ever getting rid of them.

The one thing this Trojan Horse Bill actually has accomplished is get the House Republicans some backbone. The House Republicans played the bill perfectly. By playing it perfectly, the support for the bill has gone down about 10% per week since the bill was introduced. That is another reason the Democrats want it passed right away. If they wait too long, nobody will want it at all.

We are being lied to by Obama, Pelosi and Reid. They all claim there are no earmarks in the bill. The entire bill is one giant earmark. It is just a collection of earmarks tied up in a bow. The Democrats called it something other than earmarks and so that is why they can claim that it is not earmarks. Democrats are great at changing the words or the meaning of words. In this case, they changed what they called everything so that it would not be called an earmark. Then, when they claim that there are no earmarks in the bill, there is nothing in the bill called an earmark. There are lots of things that are earmarks by definition, but nothing called an earmark. You have to understand how the Democrat mind works to get around that one.

Where do we go from here? All we can do is play the part of the loyal opposition. The House and Senate Republicans have to continue to show that they have backbones. Backbones need to be found for the three Benedict Arnolds that have so stripped the Senate Republicans of any power. This bill will be paying its evil dividends by 2010 and the time will be ripe to pick up a lot of Democrat seats. There may even be Republican majorities in the House and/or the Senate. That would be a terrific block on any further erosion of our freedoms by Barack Obama and his minions. It might even be early enough to derail the socialized medical board that the Trojan Horse Bill contains. Let us hope that we can get some power in time.

Today, the big government liberals in the Senate passed the Trojan Horse Bill, otherwise known as the Emergency Pork Spending Bill or the Stimulus Bill. This Senate bill is different than the bill that passed the House. That means there will be a conference between the Senate and the House to iron out the differences. The new bill will most likely take the worst parts of both bills and call it good.

The official vote had all Democrats voting for the bill and three RINO’s voting with the Democrats. The three RINO’s were Specter (PA), the two Senators from Maine, Snowe and Collins. The three RINO’s voting with the Democrats will give Obama some cover when the bill falls flat on its face. He can claim that the bill was bipartisan in nature. That is not the truth at all, but Obama has not been restrained by the truth since he took office. He seems to have caught the same bug that Al Gore has.

At a Town Hall meeting today, Obama took questions from the audience. They were the usual Democrat whiners with no jobs or poor jobs. Obama told them that the bill would help them get whatever they desired. That was a bald faced lie, but since he said it with compassion it is so good.

The economy is too big and too varied to be controlled by government. The Democrats acted out of haste for two reasons. One, they wanted to act before the economy recovered on its own. And two, they wanted to push through their socialist agenda in one bill as an emergency measure. They were sure that nobody would read it, especially the liberal Republicans. People have read it and are hopping mad about the bill. Calls are 100-1 against the bill in Washington. The public opinion polls have only 37% support for the bill and that support is dropping rapidly. The only ones who support this bill will directly benefit from it. Everyone else opposes the bill because it does nothing to help America and lots to hurt America.

Obama has succeeded in fundamentally changing America from a free country into a socialist country in one fell swoop. Most people in the US do not realize it yet as the chains have not taken hold. When the chains are fully in place, people will howl with pain and the Democrats will laugh. By then they will have succeeded in putting 20-30 million new Democrat voters on the rolls by making the currently illegal immigrants, legal. This will insure that Democrats get elected far into the future. It will insure that America is no more. The America that our Founding Fathers fought and died for is gone when this bill is signed into law. My father and many generations before from the Revolution to WWII fought for the United States, to keep it free. In my generation, we gave it away to the socialists without as much as a whimper.

We are going to have to get used to the government telling us what to do and when to do it. If Obama manages to get re-elected, he will probably be President for life. He would probably suspend the Constitutional provisions on terms and even the length of terms to get what he wants. We would have a tyrant on our hands. If you have a gun, keep it in good working order. If you can get a gun, get one and learn how to use it. There may come a time to have an armed insurrection to claim our country back and it may happen in my lifetime. We have to teach our young people the importance of freedom and what it means. If enough understand, we may have a chance to claim our freedom back. The socialists will not want to give up their power and it will not be pretty or quick.

I listened to Michael Savage on the way home last night and he had a caller who was a retired Washington, D.C. policeman. The policeman’s opinion is that most of the people in the halls of power in Washington are corrupt. Michael Savage agreed with that assessment. I put in my second to the motion that most in Washington are corrupt. Michael Savage likened it to shoplifters now running the store. Something has to happen to break this chain of corruption. It has caused us to lose most of our freedoms. Let us hope that more people can see our loss of freedom and rise up together and stop this nonsense before it goes too far.

I was going through my usual websites and on Lucianne.com, she recommended Mark Steyn. I read the article about the Emergency Pork Spending Bill and was amazed. He is so right. But there was one paragraph near the end of the article that absolutely was the best analysis of Democrats and taxes that I have ever read.

Mark Steyn said: “The bloated nonstimulus and the undertaxed nominees are part of the same story. I'm with Tom Daschle: I understand why he had no desire to toss another six-figure sum into the great sucking maw of the federal Treasury. Who knows better than a senator who's voted for every tax increase to cross his desk that all this dough is entirely wasted? Tom and Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel and all the rest are right: They can do more good with the money than the United States government can. I only wish they followed the logic of their behavior and recognized that what works for them would also work for every other citizen. Instead, they insist that the sole solution to our woes is a record-setting wasteful government spending spree.”

When he put the non-stimulus and the tax problems of the Obama appointees together, I laughed and even read the quote to my wife. Even she was impressed and she does not like to discuss politics at all with anyone.

Getting Democrats to actually do and say the same thing is a real problem. As I wrote yesterday, at least 85% of Democrats fall into the hypocrite category. That is why they have a problem saying and doing things that are compatible. Since they talk about raising taxes and don’t pay them, I would rather the opposite. I would rather they talked about lowering taxes and paying the taxes they owe. Wait a minute that is what Republicans do. Democrats can’t do what Republicans do. So that is why they take the stance of talking about raising taxes and not paying them. I always wondered about that.

One thing is clear about this Emergency Pork Spending bill, that is that if it passes and right now it looks like it will, that our economy will go south for a long time. I am not talking about weeks or months, I am talking about years. Even the Congressional Budget Office, which is staffed by Democrats, announced that the stimulus bill will reduce the GDP for the next decade. Part of that is because over half of this “stimulus” bill is not even supposed to be spent until 2010. That fact, in and of itself, proves that this is not a stimulus bill.

One thing is clear. That is that Obama is not the wonder kid that everyone was talking about in the election. He is an ordinary Chicago politician and he is not even a very good Chicago politician. He managed to fool over half of the electorate in the election, but he cannot fool us in the glare of the bright lights. He stumbles around and makes so many mistakes. He picks crooks as advisors. There is little to like about what he has done in his first month in office. If he hadn’t been able to buy off some liberal Republican Senators he would have lost his first big legislative test. He should have lost this test as it will punish us for decades.

Yesterday, the House passed the Emergency Pork Spending Bill. It passed with only Democrat votes. All Republicans and 11 Democrats voted no on the measure. The measure is basically a collection of Democrat spending measures that will kick in 2-15 years from now. There is little to nothing that will impact the economy right now. The highest estimate is that 12% of the $825 billion bill is actually to impact the economy. I suspect that the real number is much less after you subtract the government costs to any project.

The good news on the vote is that all the Republicans voted no on the vote. But, more than just voting no, the Republicans also put forward things that would actually work. They proposed a bill that would cost half as much and have at least twice as much impact on jobs as the measure passed by the Democrats. That was rejected. They proposed an amendment to the bill that anyone that has problems with the IRS could use the Rangel rule and write Rangel on the top of any IRS bill to eliminate any penalties. That was rejected. They also put forward some other measures that poked fun at Democrats and their difficulty living within the law. Each was rejected in turn. For the Republicans, it was fun to be a conservative again.

Now this Emergency Pork Spending Bill goes to the Senate where it faces an uncertain fate. There are three things that can happen to the bill in the Senate. First, the bill could be brought to the Senate floor for a vote and passed. Second, the bill could be filibustered by a solid Republican minority. That would effectively kill the bill. Third, the Republicans could filibuster the bill until changes could be made to the bill so it could pass in a bipartisan manner.

The first option will happen if some Republicans decide not to hold fast on a filibuster. They can still vote no on the bill, but not to have a filibuster. This would allow the bill to come to a vote. The bill would pass with or without any Republican votes. The Democrats would love one or more Republicans to vote for the bill. Then, when the bill fails, the Republicans could take all the blame. If, by some miracle, the bill succeeded in producing jobs, the Democrats would take all the credit.

If all the Republicans, with no more than one Republican defector, vote to have a filibuster, the bill would not come to a vote. That would effectively kill the bill. The Republicans would have to have some better options for the public, or they will be labeled as stopping economic recovery. This is the highest risk option, yet one that is the most important to do. The bill effectively moves us toward socialism, so it needs to be killed. I am not sure that all the Republicans have enough backbone to stand up to the media frenzy that would occur if they actually killed this Emergency Pork Spending Bill. It would be the best thing for the country however.

The middle ground and the one most likely to be taken is the revision option. This is where the Republicans threaten filibuster until the bill gets fixed to their liking. The Republican leadership and the Democrat leadership then get together and hammer out an agreement that the Democrats will not keep, for a bill. That revised bill will be put to the Senate for a vote. Since the Senate bill and the House bill would not be the same, it would go to a conference of House and Senate leaders. This conference of House and Senate leaders would probably put the original bill back on the table, because almost all of them would be Democrats. We would then be back to square one, but have taken a month or two to get there.

Eventually, this bill or something much like this bill will probably be passed. If Obama is true to his word, he would veto the bill. However, he is a Democrat and wants this Emergency Pork Spending Bill as much as any Democrat. That means he will not veto the bill. By not vetoing the bill it will signal that Obama is in the pocket of Pelosi and Reid. That will move the balance of power from the President to the Congress. Obama will have a difficult time getting that power back from the Congress for the rest of his Presidency. This would be interesting to see.

Recently, the Democrat Congress passed legislation to expand the SCHIP program. The program is supposed to provide health care to low income children. The program was expanded to include children up to 30 years of age and incomes up to, I believe around $80,000. Now, I am not sure about your children, but mine were full grown long before they ever hit 30. Mine were mentally adults by the time they hit 21 at the latest. Having “children” covered until 30 is nothing more than an attempt to get them to accept government health care.

We have a President who wants socialized health care. We have Democrats in Congress who have large majorities who want socialized health care. The only obstacle that stands in their way is the 41 or 42 votes in the Senate. They can filibuster any attempt by the Democrats to impose socialized health care. They cannot stop it if it ever comes to a vote, so the only hope is that all Republicans hold true to Republican ideals and stop the Democrats. If even two Republicans vote with the Democrats, all is lost. The country would never be the same again and we would never really have the country that was envisioned by our Founding Fathers. There are many that would say we do not have that country right now.

Republicans in the House and Senate need to decide right now that they are going to stand for fiscal responsibility. If they do that, they can win the Congress back in 2010 and the Presidency in 2012. If they decide to go along with the Democrats because the Democrats hold all the cards, they will be in even worse shape in 2010 and might not even be around in 2012.

The Democrats know that nothing they are proposing will get the economy going. They also know that sooner or later the economy will rebound. Their hope is that they can get Republicans to vote with them on these ideas that will help nobody except for Democrat contributors. If they get Republicans to defect and sign on, they will have effectively emasculated the Republicans for the next four years. If the Democrat non-stimulus package gets passed with only Democrat votes, then when it fails it will be entirely on the Democrats. They do not want that to happen. They also know it will happen. That is why Obama is going to Capitol Hill today to visit with the Republicans. He needs some of them to defect to give the Democrats the cover they need.

Of the $825 billion on the table right now, there has to be something that would be worthwhile just by accident. But, the vast majority is all pork. Nancy Pelosi was asked about the $100+ million to fund contraception. She replied that it would help the governments get by with less. All the other projects funded in this bloated Democrat payoff bill are just the same. They pay off one Democrat group or another and do not make any real impact on the economy. It is only called a stimulus bill because a stimulus bill is less likely to be looked at critically. If it was called what it really is, there is no way it could pass at all. The American public needs to understand that the stimulus bill proposed by the Democrats is not a stimulus bill; it is a payoff to constituents that provided the money and votes to Democrat Congressional candidates and to the Democrat Presidential candidate. It is not really intended to stimulate anything.

The Democrats unveiled their “stimulus” plan to the public this week. At the moment it is $825 billion. On the surface, you can say that the amount is too large or that we need a stimulus to get the economy going. Both comments could be considered valid on the surface. As they say, the devil is in the details.

This $825 billion “stimulus” package is nothing more than payback to the people that elected Democrats in the 2008 election. There is no attempt to stimulate anything. Most of the projects have no stimulus effect at all. Most of the projects are totally worthless when it comes to stimulating the economy. Most of the remaining projects have some effect, but usually less than the typical stimulus project. The net effect of this almost $1 trillion will be to pay off Democrats and that is about it. The economy will still be exactly where it was before the stimulus. But, the Democrats could claim that they tried to stimulate the economy and it just did not work. Then, they can craft a new stimulus plan even bigger and better than the last to stimulate the economy even more. Heaven help us from the Democrat stimulus plans.

I suppose the world absolutely needs a museum on organized crime involvement in Nevada. But, the federal government has no business paying for it. If the world needs the museum, let a private group fund the project. This project is designed to re-elect Harry Reid. Harry Reid is set to have a very tough re-election campaign in 2010. In fact, there are a lot of people that do not expect Harry Reid to win his campaign. That would be just awful. The Democrats would have to find some new rummy to get as their minority leader in 2010.

I suppose the national parks and national forests need new trails. The stimulus bill is not the place to put this type of project. It will have little to no stimulating effect on the economy in the areas to be constructed or elsewhere.

You run down the bill and you find this kind of project everywhere. You find projects to help fund mortgages. You find other projects to do things that have no lasting impact on the country. What this bill should have is projects that will make a lasting impact on the country.

The bill should be building nuclear power plants and the power grid or some similar type of big idea. What is in the bill are a collection of small ideas. Democrats cannot think in big ideas because they have to cater to their interest groups and that necessarily lowers their focus. If you want a lot of small things done, elect a Democrat. If you want big things done, elect a Republican. Republicans can think big because Republicans are not a collection of small groups. Republicans are three big ideas that motivate people. That allows Republicans to think big and that is why Democrats always think small.

Democrats always think big when it comes to money. There is never enough money to fund their small ideas. They always want to put more money into funding their small ideas, even after those small ideas are proven not to work. To Democrats, their small ideas do not work because we have not given them enough money. They never acknowledge that their small ideas do not work because they are bad ideas. Republicans on the other hand have big ideas and when they do not work will go on to another big idea without looking back. That is one reason I am a Republican.