We have recently written of signs that the bloom is coming off the Obama rose.

His popularity has fallen in the polls and disapproval risen, though not in proportion to the fall in 401k plans held even by liberal cable commentators, and certainly not in proportion to the evaporation of approximately 40% of the world’s wealth since his election, and thus, less wealth to spread with each passing day.

Moreover, while we expressed some optimism lately that Blue Dawg and other Democrats were significantly paring down President Obama’s nearly $4 trillion budget, it appears that all but a tiny remnant of Dawgs and Donkeys in the House were neutered yesterday by Obama’s Speaker and Castrator of the House (pictured).

We hold our breathe in hopes the Senate’s dawgs don’t turn yellow (pictured, too cowardly to vote their conscious?) at least with respect to raising energy prices and socializing medicine.

Sadly, though we doubt anyone should waste a breath hoping even the World’s greatest deliberative saucer-cooler will significantly pare back the Dollar destroying $4T juggernaut.

But let us use up some lukewarm air to combat Obama’s hot “spread the wealth” air first famously directed towards the cool air of Joe the Plumber in hopes that analogies to the real story of Thanksgiving and the skulls full of mush in our nation’s colleges and universities, may snap elitist soccer moms and dads out of their Hope for Obama stupors.

First, a story that may or may not be true (doesn’t matter) concerning an economic professor confronted by a class full of Marxists:

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, and name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed. Could not be any simpler than that.

Lastly, a story straight out of the annals of American history that proves Obama and Pelosi deserve an “F” as well.

RUSH: From my second bestseller, “See, I Told You So, “”Chapter 6, “Dead White guys, or What the History Books Never Told You: The True Story of Thanksgiving.” The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs.

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail [for America]. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford’s own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper!

This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude [to God] grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.

First Compact: From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs led to starvation

Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well.

They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the ’60s and ’70s out in California – and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way.

Second Compact: Homesteading free market capitalism led to plenty

Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.

That’s right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn’t work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation!

But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild’s history lesson If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.

“The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years…that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,” Bradford wrote. “For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense…that was thought injustice.”

Why should you work for other people when you can’t work for yourself? What’s the point?

Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford’s community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?

“This had very good success,” wrote Bradford, “for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Bradford doesn’t sound like much of a Clintonite, does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? Yes. Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph’s suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the “seven years of plenty” and the “Earth brought forth in heaps.” (Gen. 41:47)

In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.

Now, this is where it gets really good, folks, if you’re laboring under the misconception that I was, as I was taught in school.

So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the “Great Puritan Migration.”

Now, you probably haven’t read this. You might have heard me read it to you over the previous years on this program, but I don’t think this lesson is still being taught to children — and if not, why not? I mean, is there a more important lesson one could derive from the Pilgrim experience than this? Thanksgiving, in other words, is not thanks to the Indians, and it’s not thanks to William Bradford. It’s not thanks to the merchants of London. Thanksgiving is thanks to God, pure and simple. Go read the first Thanksgiving proclamation from George Washington and you’ll get the point. The word “God” is mentioned in that first Thanksgiving proclamation more times… If you read it aloud to an ACLU member, you’ll get thrown in jail, but that’s what the first Thanksgiving was all about. Get it. I’m telling you, read it. Maybe we can find it and link to it: George Washington’s first Thanksgiving Proclamation. Folks, if you haven’t read that, you need to read it. It will tell you the true story of Thanksgiving. I’m happy to share it with you each and every year as a tradition on this program.

I’ll bet the dawgs that turned blue from the cold Massachusetts winters would instruct Democrats today not to turn yellow in the face of the Obamanation they face lest they want to inherit a green world of sickness and death for the less fortunate and a world of wood stove smog and donkey dung filled streets for the living.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

I hate lazy thinking, i.e. non-thinking.

Consequently, I rarely use the word “just” when trying to characterize people. Moreover, I loathe the use of vague, substance less words, often employed after the word just, in an attempt to define someone or an event. This is usually the tactic of one that is losing an argument or one that knows they can’t win the argument on substance through logic.

In the courtroom we call it blowing smoke (pictured: Defendant Al Gore testifying in slander case brought against him by my client, The Sun) when someone can’t argue the facts or the law. It is mostly employed by the left in politics, but certainly not exclusively.

Now, to the words “entertain” and “entertainer”, in the context of liberals’ and moderate conservatives’ (or lazy thinkers of all stripes) attempts to diminish the importance of Rush Limbaugh. By the word “entertainer” I assume most people mean one who makes a living in the arts. But when they use the words “just an entertainer”, what I hear is an elitist attempt meant, not primarily to diminish the the entertainer, but, rather, an attempt to elevate themselves and those they consider their intellectual kin in “important” positions in politics.

Yet, some of us with a little distance from the Washington, D.C. Beltway elites understand that the word “just” is more accurately and appropriately employed thusly: Brian Williams is just a teleprompter reader or Senator Voinovich is just a yes/no voter on mostly easy choices in Congress.

Every person is entertained by different things. I am most animated by profound truths delivered in a way that makes it understandable and vivid. Consider a recent conversation (subscription required) between The Doctor of Democracy and a George Mason journalism student assigned to report on Rush Limbaugh to his class:

On Real Journalism

RUSH: We rejoin Andrew in Fairfax, Virginia, who is a journalism student at George Mason University. There’s a textbook that his class has been assigned with a highly critical chapter of me after acknowledging career accomplishments and success, and Andrew has a presentation on this chapter before his class. How much time do you have, by the way, to get this done, Andrew?

CALLER: Well, I’ve put together my presentation, but I don’t present for another two weeks.

RUSH: Okay. Very good. I want to repeat what I said. The first thing I want you to tell them is that they’re in a journalism class. And you are quite unique in one way, and that is, most of the existing journalists in America today — the vast, vast majority, well over 90% — who report on me, never call me, never ask for my reaction to what they are going to report about me. They take it from what I told you: Media Matters or other left-wing “watchdog groups.” Their purpose is not to get it right. Their purpose is to discredit — and it’s not just me. It’s any prominent conservative, because I feel they don’t think they can win a substantive argument. So the way they attack is to try to discredit people who threaten them in the arena of ideas. I clearly represent a threat. You’ve done something as a student that most practicing journalists today do not do. You have called me. You have asked for my reaction to this. You ought to get an A for that alone.

On the individual as the world’s smallest minority

RUSH: But as far as the factual aspects of my presentation on this program, or wherever I speak — as far as whether I make it up or lie about it or whatever — the greatest source for information on my show, the greatest source for proof of what I actually say every day is my website: www.RushLimbaugh.com. On my website, there is a complete and total transcript available for every word I utter. There are links to the news items or stories or reports that I have used to make the statements that I make. Why would I lie all the time when I provide the proof right there for everybody to see? Critics never mention this. The journalists never go to my website. They rely on others who take out of context what I say. The other thing I want you to tell these students is that I am a soul mate of theirs. You and your students — because of your age and your future and where you are in life — you’re very focused on yourselves as individuals, and I am the greatest asset individuals in this country have.

I believe that the smallest minority in the world is the individual, and I believe if you do not respect individual rights, you do not really respect minority rights. The individual is unique. No two people are alike. I resist the tug of popular sentiment. Please quote me: “I resist the tug of popular sentiment to basically conform with movements and ideas that are not based on thought, but rather are based on raw emotion.” I have nothing but a fervent desire for everyone in your class to succeed, to be the absolute best they can be based on how willing they are to work hard, use their passion and the ambition and God-given talent that they have been given. I have no desire for anyone to be held back. I do not see people as men, women, black, white, red, green, orange. I see Americans. I see human beings. I see human beings who, unfortunately, are co-opted into a conformist way of thinking that it is in itself erroneous — such as all the reporting about me and all the opinions of me that have been formed by people who do not listen.

Illustrating absurdity by being absurd: “caller abortions”

RUSH: I believe that all human beings have a yearning spirit to be free, that we are endowed with it. I believe the founding documents. I believe that our existence is owing to a Creator who created us with inalienable rights: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Our Founding Documents, Declaration of Independence mentions these rights. They don’t come from people, they come from God. Life. Somebody has to stand up for life; somebody has to defend it. Now, anybody can go on the radio and say, “I’m pro-life, and those pro-abortionists are wrong!” Big whoop. What I’ve always strived to do, Andrew, is illustrate my opinion. Sometimes… I have a phrase: “illustrating absurdity by being absurd.” So the caller abortion was — and I will admit, it irritated a lot of people. It caused… And the reason why, Andrew, is because it made people confront the reality of their belief. Do you know what the caller abortion was?

CALLER: It was a, I guess a sound bite “with a vacuum sucking sound followed by a bloodcurdling scream.” That’s what it says in the textbook.

RUSH: Yes, it was. See? Okay. That’s in the textbook?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Yes. That’s all that’s in the textbook about it?

CALLER: Um, yes.

RUSH: Yeah. See, that’s…

CALLER: Well, it says whenever you wanted to end the call, that you used the caller abortion.

RUSH: That’s a classic example of how what I do was distorted. That was actually a brilliant illustration of my belief about this. This took about 30 minutes to do, to set up, which also made it great radio. It gave us a lot of time spent listening on the ratings. But basically I wanted to illustrate this, and I looked at my telephone, and I asked the question, “When does a call become a call? Does the call become a call when you dial? Does the call become a call when you connect? Does the call become a call when I answer, the moment of conception? You call me. Your line connects with my receptacle. Bam! I answer the phone. Is that when the call begins?”

So I called the phone company, Andrew, and I asked them, “When does a call begin?”

They said, “What are you talking about?”

I said, “Well, does a call begin? When do you start charging for a call? When that call has life? When is there…? When you start billing for a call, does it happen at the moment the person has dialed it? Does it happen while it’s ringing? Does it happen with a busy signal, which means there’s call control on it? Does it happen when somebody answers?”

And they said, “Well, a call begins when it’s answered. A call takes two people.”

I said, “Thank you.”

So, that was to illustrate: When does life begin? See, I believe it can only begin at conception. When else can it begin? So I wanted to illustrate using the phone, making a phone call. Then I got a bunch of people pretending to be scientists and so forth on the phone to discuss this in great detail. But I said, “Until I decide to answer, that call’s nothing but a blinking light. That call has no life. That call has no meaning. That call has nothing to it until I answer it,” and then what happens? When I answer that call and I don’t want it? What if I’ve made a mistake answering that call? What if it’s a bad call? What if it’s somebody who’s not going to enhance the radio program? What do I do? I didn’t want the call. I took the call. I made a mistake! I went out there and I conceptualized the phone call, and now I’m stuck with a call I don’t want.

Well, I do what we do in the pro-choice movement: I simply abort it and pretend that the call never happened! So I turn on the suction device and I suck the call right out of the phone. That, to me, was brilliant, Andrew. I hope you’re recording this, and I hope you read this to your class. Because everything that’s done here, Andrew — whether it be done with humor or seriousness or with a satire or a parody, everything that’s done here — is designed to make a point. Nothing is done here frivolously. I don’t do anything just to make people mad, because that’s going to happen anyway when you tell anybody what you think.

On allegations of bigotry

By definition, people are going to not… Why do you think Tiger Woods doesn’t tell you what his politics are? Because he wants to sell all of his endorsed equipment to everybody, not just Republicans or Democrats.

But that’s not my business. My business is to tell people what I honestly believe. I love America. The racism and sexism and so forth? Yeah, I came up with the term “feminazi,” to describe the 12 women to whom the most important thing in the world is every abortion possible taking place — and the reason people get mad at that’s ’cause it’s dead-on accurate. As for racism, this is a constant, average, everyday charge the left makes against conservatives trying to fulfill the stereotype that we’re racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes. But the truth about that is you can tell your class this: I look at the majority of the black population in this country and I cry, ’cause I see that they have been conditioned to believe that the Democrat Party and large government programs are going to raise them from the life of bondage they believe that they’re in.

And after 50 years of voting Democrat, after 50 years of complaining about the circumstances they’re in, after receiving all these benefits the Democrats have passed out (AFDC) they’re still complaining. Their lives have been stolen from them. The federal government has become the father; the father has become absent. Single mothers are raising kids in neighborhoods and schools that you would not send yours to. The Democrat Party refuses to close them, and insists that those people still go to those schools while still voting Democrat. I think it’s a shame. I think the federal government and the Democrat Party has destroyed the black family. I love Americans. I love human beings! I want the best for them. I want what’s happened to me to be experienced by every damn person out there, and the people standing in the way are my enemy — and that would have to be liberals in the Democrat Party.

On the comparative offensiveness of Barack Obama’s pro-life stands

RUSH: All right, Andrew, one more point that I want to make for you to include in your presentation to the students on the caller abortions. Your textbook says that critics say I reached a low point with the caller abortion. Let me ask you a simple question. If a fetus is not a human life, why would a caller abortion offend anybody? If a fetus, a human fetus is simply an unviable tissue mass, there could be nothing conceivably upsetting about it. The truth is, it is a baby, and the pro-abort, political pro-abort groups, the NOW gang and other feminist groups, they know it’s a baby, and thus they hate me for exposing their mind-set. But if a fetus isn’t a human being, why would a caller abortion upset anybody?

And finally, Andrew, this. I understand caller abortions are offensive. But then why is President Obama to be praised for his anti-life positions? Do you realize President Obama three times as an Illinois state senator voted for legislation that would allow doctors to kill a baby successfully born during an abortion? Now, what’s really controversial, Andrew? A bit, a vacuum cleaner with callers being sucked off a phone, or an Illinois state senator who’s now president voting three times to allow doctors to kill a baby after it’s born because the mother wanted an abortion? Ask your students to consider that.

Everyone feel entertained? Anyone think that a conservative Presidential candidate that could entertain like that might have a chance to beat any Democrat?

Obviously.

Rush is Right! I wish we had many more “just entertainers.”

[Free audio may? be accessed here. I can't tell since I am a paying member of the website.]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Yes, the announcer of dawns has left the country, but will continue his eight year old streak of filing a column on, and related to, all holidays and other notable days.

The Sun rises three hours sooner here in the Azores, than in Dixie, so this will be a concise, yet informative post.

Despite the fact that I feel a bit foolish for risking bureaucratic snafus that could deny my re-entry into the Shining City on a Hill, I will deign to inform the anticipators of eastern sunrises of all things April foolish.

Who was the first April Fool?:

Eve

When was April Fools’ Day first celebrated?:

One year after Eve bit the apple

By Whom?:

Lucifer

Who will be the last April Fool?:

Lucifer

Largest group of April Fools in America today:

Tied: Prior Bush voters that stayed home or voted for Obama in 2008 and useful idiot pro-life democrats

What color should one wear on this day to capture the spirit of the occasion?:

Whatever color Al Gore wears

What is the official symbol of the day?:

a jackass

How can you know if someone is lying to you on April Fools’ Day?:

When the lips of lawyers not in the Azores, elected democrats in DC, Teleprompters of the United States, and cabinet members of TOTUS speaking about taxes owed, are moving

Enjoy the day, despite its extended suspense, and take comfort that from April 2, 2009 through March 31, 2010, only democrats will continue to celebrate foolishness.

Small comfort, but that’s all we got.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

The Azores, Portugal - This is only the fourth time I have left the Lower Forty-Eight and I admit I am scared I might be denied re-entry due to some bureaucratic snafu.

The other three times were less risky since I walked from San Diego to Tijuana and from Niagara Falls to Thorold and sailed from Miami to Freeport.

But, with a strict liability fee for a severely injured client, we take certain risks.

However, what is more exotic, even than being in an Portuguese archipelago, are the things I have learned via cell phone during all that air time over the Atlantic. I am not a person that likes to talk on the phone for longer than 7 minutes, but with airline mags and no movie, we defaulted to actual human voice interaction for the duration. And boy was I amazed at what I learned from longtime political contacts, many even from my years as a Democrat:

1) Dissatisfaction with President Obama within the Democratic Party is serious and growing, and not just among former Reagan Democrats and Southern blue dogs;
2) Two recently elected House Democrats from traditionally Republican districts are considering switching parties before the budget bill vote;
3) A number of House Republicans are raising hell to their leaders behind the scenes that they need to take the gloves off against Obama;
4) Opposition to Union Card Check is so large among Democrats that it is doubtful it will be brought up for a vote;
5) Obama is getting pressure from not a few Democrats and Emmanuel to make a public statement warning Iran not to aid and abet military action against Israel;
6) Roemer and Summers are drawing up plans for Obama to advocate a supply side tax cut stimulus this summer if unemployment reaches 10%;
7) Summers and Emanuel have prevented Obama from re-instituting the executive ban on off-shore oil drilling;
The next Republican target Democrats and the Drive-bys will use to divert attention from Obama’s radical agenda and the recession will be Glenn Beck or Clarence Thomas;
9) Jeff Sessions may challenge Mitch McConnell for Minority Leader if he refuses to demand party unity on the budget vote;
10) Condi Rice will soon travel to Georgia, Poland and the Czech Republic to remind Obama that America promised solidarity with them against Russian intimidation;
11) Jim Webb (D-VA) will denounce Obama for proposed budget cuts for the Navy; and
12) Bill Clinton will publicly criticize Obama for ending welfare reform and for violating NAFTA with respect to Mexican trucking.

More later when Cricket battery re-charges

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Obama democrats don’t care about the poor and middle class

The only kind of parties the poor and middle class can afford under Obama-Democratic Party rule are those serving items from fast food dollar menus.

Think Hoovervilles-light as unemployment in the Palmetto and Tar Heel states approaches 11% headed toward 15%. But at least in Dixie, God serves tea sweetened, as he intended, and at a religiously low price.

As a former Democratic Party activist and official for 18 years, I should clarify the lack of caring I declare. The caring only starts when they reduce you to a dependent victim entitled to a subsistence existence as part of a class envy grievance group.

Yes, they will feed you, shelter you and indoctrinate the children you don’t abort within minutes after the God-made umbilical cord is cut and replaced by the Government cord they tie you to for the rest of your so-called life.

But forget about those trips to see Grandma 30 miles away, much less the annual trek to Myrtle Beach. Wouldn’t want to risk destroying the planet with less than $4/gallon gas. Want a stress relief Winston or a formerly politically correct Virginia Slim? Forget it. Taxes have made it the equivalent of a caviar-like luxury item only affordable by Democrat approved executives on Sabbatical at Fannie Mae.

Tough luck Freddie, but don’t worry. We did mention that you get to eat out of the rain? Such caring.

You get to live till you die waiting for weeks for a government doctor to remove an infected hang nail. Did I mention the doctor visit is free? We have pamphlets to read while you wait. Pay special attention to the motor-voter registration card and the support group for recession fatigue (The one with President Obama’s face on it. He’s smiling.)

The Big Lie

The biggest lie advanced as conventional wisdom during most of my life by the Drive-by media and the Democratic Party is that Democrats and liberals care about the poor and that Republicans and conservatives are racists, bigots and homophobes that will take starve the poor and take away the social security checks of the old.

Yet, despite the Democrats’ war on poverty since 1965, the same percentage remain in poverty. And, despite Republican presidential dominance and 12 years of GOP congressional majorities, no checks went un-delivered and starvation remained an Asian thing.

Despite the indisputable proof that Reagan supply side conservative Republican policies worked to fix the failures of the liberal Democrats and lift all boats, the world’s oldest political party continued to advocate the same proven failed policies of class envy, higher taxes, burdensome regulation of business, energy suicide, despite the success of their own President’s success in the 90s from continuing conservative policies.

They refused to end the Fannie and Freddie bubble despite pleas from Republicans at the dawn of the 21st Century and since 2006 have forced Atlas Shrugging investors on strike with the promise of higher taxes.

And now, they justify a reckless destruction of the dollar and free market capitalism by reminding that George Bush’s policies were 20% as bad.

They care so much about the poor that they pass out pitchforks to poke banking executives with and call for rallies to bankrupt the coal industry. Wood burns, I hear.

But when the rally ends and all I got was this lousy blue blood tipped pitchfork, the sweet tea parties will sour and the caring donkeys will bray as they are thrown overboard.

Republicans must find their voice to express moral outrage at the policies of Obama and his allies in the Democratic Party. It is not enough to respectfully disagree with honorable friends.

I am confident that they will finally do this. Why? Not because they will lead. No.

We the sweet and non-sweet tea drinking People alike, democrats and republicans, will light the fire in the long hot high unemployment and high inflation summer to come and lead a revolt against the assault on prosperity being directed by the Community Organizer in Chief.

He is now, unwittingly organizing the largest community of his career. It will come to be known as the community of his landslide defeat.

I left Obama’s party 8 years ago because I did and still do care about the poor and middle class.

I was right to do so.

My party now, never forgets what works and what doesn’t.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

The main purpose of this blog is to initiate debate on a number of issues Gamecock has been unable to address over the past two weeks due to an increase in legal work in my day job. I want to get some ideas out there and get reactions and input from my fellow bloggers. I provide links and my propositions and/or questions on several issues, that I have not seen addressed on specific points, after the immediate introductory remarks below.

Introductory remarks

(Some may want to skip these semi-biographical and explanatory remarks and go immediately to the issues section below):

I have never done a blog like this before for several reasons. I am shamelessly into self promotion (I am a lifelong free market capitalist, self-employed entrepreneur) and have been pursuing a goal of a second career (writing) since 2003 that would pay all my bills by 2013. I am progressing nicely. And it is hard to use a potpourri semi-open thread to advance same in the way one can market a regular column.

But, I am also an issues/substance/ideas guy and also crave input on many issues, and simply must clear the palate now given how busy my day job legal carer has gotten lately thanks to re-fis and investor business law.

Why call this set of issues “Susannahs”?

I name this intended ongoing series (Other column DeVine-Gamecock categories: “Foghorn Leghorns” that call out the drive-bys for their fog and planting the truth with legs on the ground) and “Cockstradamas” forecasts) after TMR frontpager and regular Redstate blogger since Gamecock discovered her, Susannah as a tribute to her good will, hard work, insightfulness and since she likes open threads. (I have never done an open thread because I am a serial, hit-and-run thread-jacker and have never called threadjack on my columns. I am very tolerant).

Moreover, I also share a major characteristic with Susannah. She is a former? democrat that appears to have had a conservative epiphany. Now to the

Issues (aka Susannahs):

1) Federal and State (NC) cigarette tax hikes break Obama’s promise that the bottom 95% of taxpayers would not have taxes raised

These taxes make one of the main affordable pleasures of the poor and lower income essentially a luxury item. These folks are already unable to take vacations and afford many things most of us take for granted. Now they are being targeted to fund government subsidies for middle class and corporate welfare.

The Charlotte Observer has been on a mission for years to make smoking tobacco illegal but recently published an editorial opposing blue laws that restrict sales of bottles of spirits on Sunday because they “limit personal freedom.” Yet, they support President Obama’s Big Brother government that massively limit liberty 24/7, seven days a week.

2) Ever heard of “iPS” (”induced pluripotent stem cells”)?

We must make iPS a household word. Of all unlikely columnists, Kathleen Parker wrote a monumental column on the subject recently that reinforces my long advanced contention that the purpose of the proponents of ECS (Embryonic stem cell research) is the legitimization of abortion and not saving lives given that iPS produces pluripotent (able to become any other type of stem cell) stem cells from adult skin cells.

iPS makes ECS obsolete.

Moreover, to-date, only adult stem cells have produced any useful treatments for disease, after decades of research.

3) Teachable moment via School system layoffs of non-teachers

I have long contended that education budgets are bloated due to the salaries of administrative personnel. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System (CMS) recently announced recession related layoffs of 500+ employees, none of whom are classroom teachers.

We have a chance to provide proof that these paper pushers are not necessary.

4) Newt shamelessly echos Hillary’s unpatriotic Blame America First exoneration of Mexican Drug gang violence

Just saw Newt on O’Reilly. Had already planned column against Hillary’s cloaked attack on the Second Amendment by blaming American gun laws for border violence by Mexican drug gangs.

Just for the record I recently announced that I lean toward ending the drug war in the US and have found the William F. Buckley libertarian argument more persuasive after so long a war. But that does not translate into making it a point of foreign policy to blame the source of the guns and drug users for murder by the gun users.

4) The new American Frontier that will determine America’s fate

Two quotes.

First quote:

Geithner on MTP:

Geithner said Washington alone was equipped to salvage the economy.

“The market will not solve this. And the great risk for us is we do too little, not that we do too much,” he said.

TIME and the market are the ONLY things that can solve the economic crisis. Yes, given the debt the government and We the People ran up the past 25, but especially the past 10 years, we were going to be in for a hard time until people could save enough money to risk money again. But Obama is making Hoover/FDR mistakes that prolonged the Great Depression by causing investors to go on strike, in addition to much more draconian “mistakes) (they intend them to use the crisis as an opportunity to impose their leftist vision, i.e. government directed economy - see tyranny) with their breach of NAFTA re Mexican trucks; tax hikes; massive deficit spending; and takeovers of private businesses.

The Americans that created the Shining City on the Hill carved it out of a rough, no bailout frontier. If we are to preserve it, we will have to be very strong.

Second quote:

[Mark] Levin quotes Ronald Reagan: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Rush asked Levin on his show Monday, (paraphrase) “Why, if the yearning of the human heart is for God given liberty, do people tend toward socialism/statism”?

My answer: Sin

Yes, man yearns for that liberty, but as CS Lewis and Whittaker Chambers, especially points out in “Witness”, the tendency toward tyranny began in the Garden of Eden when the serpent offered Adam and Eve the apple so “Ye shall be as Gods.”

Man rejected God as his director and chose to be his own God.

more later

Discuss

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Even if that means on America soil

Many things make me proud of America, many of which make possible what I am most proud of.

Before we could make liberty possible outside the borders of the United States, we had to reap the benefits of what made prosperity possible inside the United States.

Judeo-Christian values, brilliant Founding fathers, and the courage of millions to press toward the mark of those values and the ideals expressed in the Declaration made us the greatest nation in the history of mankind.

What we accomplished for Liberty in the Lower Forty-Eight would be what makes me second most proud of these United States.

But what we have sacrificed for Liberty for non-Americans is what makes me most proud (see Europe, The Philippines, Japan, Korea, Grenada, Nicaragua, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan).

And the occasion for my expression of this pride at this moment in time relates to a particular and very small minority of non-Americans to whom we must now confer the liberty we have so selflessly conferred on others in the past.

But first, I would direct your attention to the millions of Japanese and Germans we defeated in WWII. All those of Soviet, Chinese, East European, Cuban, Iranian and Vietnamese descent we have liberated and granted asylum.

Now, we come to a few Afghans that were captured after 911 that were in the wrong place in Afghanistan at the wrong time that we admit have no connection to al Qaida, five to seven years after their capture.

As a point of reference, the author of this column is a neo-con, pro-executive war powers hawk that favors wide commander-in-chief powers to identify and KILL the enemy, understanding that innocents will be killed.

So, here we are, seven years on, with innocents captured, that we now are satisfied are innocents but that no country will repatriate.

What are we to do?

It is obvious. We must set them free in the Land of Liberty.

That the liberation is being done by a President that doesn’t understand Liberty is of no consequence on the bottom line issue of what America MUST do.

This is not about appeasing the opinion of any foreign power. This is about what we are.

Time matters, and even the Bush administration admitted that certain individuals were innocent but that they could not get their home nations to agree to repatriate them.

We must set them free among us, even if by the Obama Administration. The fact is that just as we obviously kill innocents in justifiable acts of war, we also capture innocents, and when we are satisfed that they are innocent, and when no other nation will accept them, then we must grant them asylum.

And if the Reagan-defined “safety net for the truly needy” finds them engulfed thereby, then we must feed them.

We are the United States of America.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

The Dawn of Blue Dawg Democrat Power?

Cockstradamus, Gamecock’s erstwhile prognosticating alter ego, read the usually eternal optimist DeVine’s Winter of Discontent survives Vernal Equinox gloom and doom entry over the weekend and immediately ended Sabbatical II in Cancun to crow at the Dawn of Reality Bites meets Huckleberry Hound, and a few I told you so’s given that PBS and the History Channel still prefer Medieval Nostradami.

Last year, before the optimistic cocknosticator’s Sabbatical I was necessitated by fairness due to his call for an end to pessimistic, self-defeating conservative polls and predictions as Election Day approached, the poultry oracle was ridiculed for suggesting that the global warming religion was on the $4/gallon gasoline fast track to becoming a national joke and that even Democratic Party majorities would not be able to enact carbon taxes or cap and trade legislation.

Soon after his New Year’s Eve predictions for 2009, Cockstradamus launched Sabbatical II in the safer for chickens environment south of the border (USA eats less beef during recessions and Mexican poultry workers dominate US factories), yours truly suggested, to some conservative scorn, that the reality of the worsening recession would make it possible, not only to re-brand the GOP apart from failed liberal policies in time for massive gains in 2010, to actually prevent portions of the Obama agenda from being enacted into law.

Reality’s first bites into that agenda over the weekend was much like that of pooches into Postmen, with Obama, Pelosi and Reid in the role of mail carriers:

Senate Democrats forced Barack Obama to choose between two break-the-bank policies for this year. The White House apparently surrendered on cap-and-trade in order to get started on a massive overhaul of the nation’s health-care delivery system.

Obama thinks he can get a few moderate Republicans to go along on health care reform, probably more than just the Porkulus 3, if he steers a centrist course. Cap-and-trade has problems even among Democrats, especially in the Rust Belt and in coal-producing areas, and its impact on the economy makes it a non-starter in this session of Congress.

Even the health-care effort will get curtailed, likely as a result of the massive government spending already undertaken by Democrats this year. Instead of moving forward with a comprehensive plan to socialize the health sector, Obama wants to work around the edges this year. Obama has apparently learned that lesson from Hillary Clinton’s abortive attempt to nationalize the health sector in 1993-4.

That may put off the rest of his reforms until 2011, though. Obama will not want to impose a nationalized system in an election year, especially if he’s performing as badly then as he has in the last two months. Republicans are already licking their chops for the midterms, and a major socialist initiative will be exactly what they need to compete for control of the House. That probably pushes cap-and-trade to 2011, too.

It is instructive that the realization by Generation X, defined by the 1994 film Reality Bites, that their generation’s present and future prosperity is under the greatest threat from failed liberal policies, has driven many of their democratic party congressmen and congresswomen to take huge bites out of the Obama agenda so early.

Yes, in his first 60 days he ended welfare reform as we know it; mortgaged the future to the tune of a $750B non-stimulus bill; $450B omnibus pork bill; crashed the stock market by 25% by demonizing capitalists; and insulted Britain and France.

But the overreach is now obvious, especially given the other signs of Dawn and the realities causing the light to shine on the disaster Obama’s agenda would portend:

The reality that Obama’s budget would explode the deficit from a Bush worse $400B to a whopping $1.8 TRILLION.

That in less than three weeks after the rushed passage of the Stimulus Bill, Democrats have been bitten by unread except by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) Amendment protecting AIG bonuses, prompting fears of being shot by future smoking guns in the Massive Budget.

Obama indicates opposition to 90% Bill of Attainder tax on AIG and some innocent bystanders given reality that they need private partners that wouldn’t want pre-nups thrown out.

Federal Reserve, unhappy with the non-stimulus bill, desperately prints a trillion dollars last week to try and save America from a lazy, incompetent Obama Treasury.

Generic congressional preference poll numbers show the GOP leads the Democrats for the first time in years

Four weeks ago, it was conventional wisdom that Obama would get his cap and trade and socialized medicine containing budget within weeks. Now, cap and trade is dead and health care reform goals are delayed and scaled back.

Evan Bayh formed a gang of more than ten democrat senators to oppose cap and trade. You don’t have to be a blue dawg to eschew higher gas, oil, heating costs and the bankrupting of the coal industry. Blue Dawg dems in the house are flexing their muscle as well, armed with CBO budget estimates that predict the bankrupting of America.

Obama hoped to put off the trillion dollar remedies for what ails the housing and credit markets so he could rush through his vague “fundamental change” campaign promises that turn out to be a European style government directed economy with a glass ceiling on prosperity.

Reality bit last week and global warming in general, much less the man breathing variety became a joke (poll confirmed by the poll obcessed) sometime between Day 46 and Day 47 of the most ground days covered by snow winter just passed.

Even CBS News is spewing less fog for Foghorn Leghorn to translate, as Steve Croft accuses the President of being punch drunk on 60 Minutes.

At that moment on Sunday night, Sabbatical II ended for Cockstradamus; Foghorn Leghorn announced Croft’s failure to ask Obama about signing the AIG bonuses into law and left for Cancun to use up the rest of the pre-paid previous hotel site of the Sabbatical and Huckleberry Hound went back into syndication for the first time since The Great Communicator reasoned with Huck’s Boll Weevil cousins to save American capitalism in the 70s and defeat an evil empire.

Reality based conservatism wins every time it is contrasted with failed liberal policies. Been a long time since Americans got the 1970s-80s lesson of contrasts.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

It happens every Spring. I speak of God-made global warming when Earth’s axis aligns with God’s warming agent, The Sun.

Six weeks ago Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of Winter, and sure enough, last week’s High Pressure system centered on the Potomac River produced a westward moving cold front that survives to impede, not only round bats striking round balls in the Grapefruit League (Exception: unimpeded Atlanta Braves 16-4, but I digress), but also, and more significantly, the survival of Free market American capitalism and Liberty itself.

Was last week one of the most chilling in American history?

Let’s look at the voluminous meteor-illogical readings:

AIG millions used as scapegoat for Democratic Party controlled Congressional trillions
AIG found to be conduit for funneling billions to foreign banks
President Obama fakes outrage over AIG bonuses he exempted when he signed Stimulus Bill
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) lies twice before admitting he inserted AIG exemption at Obama’s behest
White House denies knowledge of exemptions despite signing of Stimulus Bill

House passes redundant (Treasury already re-couped) Bill of Attainder confiscating AIG bonuses with 90% tax

Barney Frank (D-MA) demands names of AIG execs after ginning up populist death threat producing anger

President Obama seeks to ram through fundamental energy price raising and socialized medicine changes via budget reconciliation process to avoid hearings

Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) declares enforcement of immigration laws “un-American”
President Obama declares that 20 million illegals must be made legal so they can join labor unions
President seeks to apply CEO pay restrictions to companies not receiving TARP funds
Attorney General suggests some Gitmo detainees be released inside the United States
Obama fiscal 2009 deficit to top $1.8 trillion (Bush worst was $400B)

Fed prints over $950B via bond market/Treasury bill buys (seen as last ditch effort to stimulate economy since Obama/Dems refuse to pass real stimulus bill of supply side tax and reg cuts)

Obama still refuses to suspend mark-to-market accounting rules
Pelosi seeks newspaper industry exemption from anti-trust laws
Democrat Congress and President play innocent bystander role as they demonize corporate officers

Whew!

It’s cold and I tremble for my country, but its not due to the weather.

Republicans and right thinking Democrats must stop the cold front by putting heat on those that would fundamentally change the greatest nation on Earth into something less.

Liberty itself depends on it.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Soon after we learned of the AIG bonuses last weekend, we were told that taxpayer money must not be used to fund them. Late Tuesday that prospect was remedied:

In an effort to quell a mounting furor, the Treasury Department said late Tuesday that it would require AIG to repay the government more than $165 million in bonuses doled out last week to the executives blamed for driving the firm to insolvency.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (pictured) said the money would be deducted from the government’s latest $30 billion infusion of bailout funds to the insurance company at the center of the nation’s deepening financial crisis.

Problem solved?

If one deemed the problem as one of the fiscal variety, yes. But the real problems were political, as in Barack Obama’s increasing disapproval rating; Congressional Democrats’ falling approval numbers and Obama/Geithner/Dodd duplicity in inserting an Amendment into the stimulus bill exempting the AIG bonuses from TARP guidelines.

Hence, the slobbering McCarthy-ite demands of Barney Frank that AIG name names of bonus recipients (as opposed to real communist spy enemies of the state) under death threats and the House passage of an ex post facto Bill of Attainder to impose 90% confiscatory taxes on the bonuses.

The former smacks of a dangerous, third world like vigilantism against invented demons while the latter would have the government make a 90% profit on the bonuses given that Treasury is already recouping the amount of the bonuses by deducting $165M in spit from the latest $30B ocean bailout installment.

The Brothers House of Representatives, (with only 87 Republicans outside the patricide conspiracy) with no Grand Inquisitors in sight, set about to kill Daddy, i.e. the goose of free market capitalism that lays the golden eggs.

All to the tune of a non-Dostoevsky (pictured) like pied piper with contempt for the disabled whose first 60 days have been spent disabling the American economy and improving his bowling score from 37 to 129.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine @ Examiner.com, where all verification links may be accessed.

Timeline reveals Presidential and Democratic party undue dilligence, incompetence and/or duplicity worthy of a Gate-like scandal

Senator Barack Obama’s campaign contributions from AIG prior to Election Day 2008 may be irrelevant to his subsequent actions and inactions as President and President-Elect.

But it would seem a passing strange coincidence that the Illinois Democrat’s $101,332 “bonus” from AIG was second only to the $103,100 received by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), whose eponymous Amendment to the stimulus bill exempted corporate retention bonuses from Congressional bailout restrictions that were vested in 2008.

Given the outrage over the, just announced to the public over the weekend, AIG bonuses and subsequent revelations of Treasury dealings with AIG since the initial bailout last year and especially Dodd’s Amendment protecting the bonuses, President Obama obviously sensed the need to refute the obvious implication that he must have known about them. But, in trying to pass the buck, the following attempted exoneration actually indicts President Obama as even more responsible for the outrage:

On March 9, 2009, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sent full details and supporting documentation to the Treasury Department about the Financial Products retention program.

One day later, Geithner was told about the $165 million in bonuses.

“Everyone knew that there were retention bonuses on the books,” an Obama administration source said, “but no one (in the Obama administration) knew about the $165 million for the Financial Products division” until March 5.

A look at the AIG timeline reveals the above as what what my fellow criminal defense lawyers call an “admission against interest”, and while many may find the payment of millions to AIG employees as outrageous in a civil sense, the trillions committed by Obama and the Democrats to non-stimulative bailouts and fundamental changes to America while delaying action to fix the credit crunch can only be regarded as criminally outrageous.

The timeline:

September 16, 2008 $85B to AIG - first bailout installment
November 2008 Treasury learns of existence of retention contracts but not details
February 2009 Dodd Amendment exempting AIG bonuses from restrictions inserted in
Stimulus bill
February 11, 2009 Obama signs Stimulus bill
March 2, 2009 Obama grants latest $30B bailout installment to AIG
March 5, 2009 Obama learns bonuses are $165B
March 9, 2009 Treasury learns full details of bonuses

We assume President Obama read the stimulus bill before signing? He either knew of the Dodd Amendment or he didn’t.

If he didn’t know of the Amendment, then he didn’t do his due diligence and is guilty of mass incompetence.

If he did know of the Amendment, and signed the bill anyway, knowing of the ongoing investigations by Treasury and the Fed of AIG into the details of the retention contract bonuses, then he did not do his due dilligence and is gulity of massive incompetence.

The bottom line is that President Barack Obama is responsible for the AIG retention contract bonuses since he signed the Stimulus Bill that made exempting the AIG bonuses matter of U.S. Law!

Add to this fact, that given that the United States owns 80% of AIG stock, President Obama is the de facto CEO of AIG.

Add to that fact, his prior bonuses from AIG when he was a candidate, and we may soon be referring to this matter as a Nixonian ObamAIG-gate, with Chris Dodd as John Dean.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

I used to find it a bit odd that a nation founded primarily by Anglo-Saxon Brits, reserves its greatest ethnic celebration for the Irish (apologies to Columbus and his progeny). That was before I channeled my inner-Irish roots, thanks primarily to the book, “Born Fighting” by Senator Jim Webb (D-VA).

I had long known, thanks to my Decatur, Alabama uncle’s post-”Roots” mid-70s TV mini-series family tree investigations, that we DeVines were Irish. The biggest pub in Dublin used to be named DeVine’s and legend has it that DeVines were Normans that fought with William the Conqueror (of the British Isles in 1066), discovered whiskey and became Irish. We are not shocked that the first and best (only?) French that could fight became Irish!, but I digress…

But it was only after Webb’s 2004 book, sub-titled “How the Scots-Irish Shaped America” did I come to fully appreciate my heritage, this despite my long admiration for my first great ethnic brother from my home state of South Carolina, Andrew Jackson. Growing up in the South, race and region were more of a defining reference than ethnicity, and when asked about my name or herirage, I usually gave a famous Archie Bunker response that I was just “a regular American” which I still consider the greatest privilege this side of Paradise (more on that later from the Saint we celebrate today).

I am thrilled that I now appreciate that the contributions of the Irish have not only shaped America, but saved the world. The Irish have been preservers of Judeo-Christian values and the greatest volunteers for military service, especially evn those that lost the War between the States. Without the Irish, it is likely that America would not have remained the Shining City on a Hill, as possibly the greatest Irish-American, Ronald Reagan so often referred to her. And certainly, the Light of Liberty from that City would not have shone on those the Kaiser, Nazis and Communists sought to enslave.

But the Patron Saint of Ireland (pictured holding a shamrock), did more than just drive snakes from his country and inspire the people that would later fight against earthly powers. No, the real snakes driven away by the former Roman slave, were serpents of Satan.

The real reason there is a Saint Patrick’s Day, is because of all the days he spent preaching the gospel of Christ to convert a nation to the Lord:

On Easter Day the missionary band having at their head the youth Benignus bearing aloft a copy of the Gospels, and followed by St. Patrick who with mitre and crozier was arrayed in full episcopal attire, proceeded in processional order to Tara. The druids and magicians put forth all their strength and employed all their incantations to maintain their sway over the Irish race, but the prayer and faith of Patrick achieved a glorious triumph. The druids by their incantations overspread the hill and surrounding plain with a cloud of worse than Egyptian darkness.

Patrick defied them to remove that cloud, and when all their efforts were made in vain, at his prayer the sun sent forth its rays and the brightest sunshine lit up the scene. Again by demoniac power the Arch-Druid Lochru, like Simon Magus of old, was lifted up high in the air, but when Patrick knelt in prayer the druid from his flight was dashed to pieces upon a rock.

Thus was the final blow given to paganism in the presence of all the assembled chieftains. It was, indeed, a momentous day for the Irish race.

Read the link above for the full life story of the man turned on the light of civilization among pagans and transformed a nation that helped save a world, but more importantly, as a Christian, saved souls for the next world, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (the three leaves of the shamrock is his symbol for the Holy Trinity).

And before ye begin the celebration, I am sure Saint Patrick would admonish moderation in all things (incl whiskey)!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Or, the continuing revenge of the eggheads for the conviction of Alger Hiss (pictured)

The primary responsibility for the current economic crisis lies with elected Democrats in the White House in the late 90s and in Congress in the late 90s through today that coerced lenders to make mortgage loans to borrowers that couldn’t afford the loans and then guaranteed the loans with taxpayer dollars.

Since the crisis began last September, Democrats in Congress, with the aid of their propagandists in the Drive-by media, have avoided responsibility for their outrageous destruction, measured in the trillions of dollars, by diverting the public’s gaze toward puny outrages of bit players in the private sector, measured in the millions.

Not that million dollar outrages can’t be worthy of reporting. We just think that its more outrageous when President Obama, of the $3.4 trillion budget to fundamentally change America, due to the crisis that is no longer a crisis, seeks to save $500 million+ by requiring wounded war veterans to pay for their medical care via their own insurance (including deductibles) than for millions to be paid under private insurance company contracts.

But I digress.

What of the trillion dollar outrages perpetrated by the President and the Democrats in Congress that conduct more hectoring CEO show trials than shows worthy of being nominated for Oscars produced in Hollywood?

The liberal domination of the press gives cover to Democrats no matter the dollar denomination of their outrages nor the level of depravity of their behavior. Most press accounts reporting misconduct of elected Democrats don’t even mention the party affiliation of the “Mayor of Detroit”, “Senator of Connecticut” or “Senator of Massachusetts”.

William Bennett’s “Death of Outrage” recounted the complicity of the press with elected Democrats in down playing the crime of perjury by; and the seduction of a young intern in the fiduciary custody of, a Democrat President of the United States. That same press and party perpetrated the Big Lie that Bill Clinton’s successor lied to take us to war when the same intel relied upon by Clinton in Operation Desert Fox turned out to be wrong after our post-911 invasion of Iraq.

That same press and Democratic Party had more outrage against a rogue guard shift at Abu Ghraib than for the slaughterer of millions by a man named Saddam Hussein; more outrage for 30 seconds of fake drowning of KSM than for KSM’s killing of thousands in NYC, DC and PA. More outrage for the possibility of library record perusals than gratitude for peace in the Lower Forty Eight for seven years.

Surprised? Don’t be.

This is the same party that abandoned the South Vietnamese to slaughter; is bought and paid for by the abortion lobby; favored the Communists over the Contras; and whose President wants to bankrupt the coal industry.

Finally, this is the same liberal press that vilified Whittaker Chambers for daring to be a witness against convicted of perjury communist Hiss; demonized Nixon for discrediting the egg head appeasers they revered; and who to this day deny Hiss’s guilt despite Soviet records that confirm same beyond a reasonable doubt.

Outrages are legion.

Conservatives need to re-direct attention to the outrages more worthy of out attention and most of them have “D” after their names. Conservatives must eschew the nomenclature of “honorable friend” from the dishonorable whose outrages hurt the poor and middle class; dishonor the troops and imperil the health of the nation.

It was dishonorable for Democrats to kill welfare reform in the stimulus. It is dishonorable to quadruple the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP in one year. It is dishonorable to cut defense spending while we are at war.

And if the contact bonuses at AIG are outrageous, wasn’t it outrageous for Obama and Geithner not to condition the latest installment of bailout aid on eliminating them? But then we learn that Obama and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) knew of the bonus contracts and actually put a provision in the Stimulus bill to protect those bonuses. Guess which two senators got more campaign money from AIG over the past several years? Obama and Dodd.

So, elected Republicans, quit being nice. Passivity in the face of outrage is, well outrageous.

Act like it.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Or will he insist on O’Hare?

The supposed second coming of JFK, too tired for classy diplomacy with our closest ally and too busy planning a fundamentally changed America four years from now to address the present banking and credit crisis, will soon be confronted with his very own Cuban Missile Crisis:

Russia could use bases for its strategic bombers on the doorstep of the United States in Cuba and Venezuela to underpin long-distance patrols in the region, a senior air force officer said Saturday.

“If the will of the two states is there, the political will, then we are prepared to fly there” to the bases in Cuba, the agency quoted Zhikharev as saying.

Russia is a foreign, European power. Venezuela and Cuba are in the Western Hemisphere. Strategic bombers carry powerful nuclear missiles.

President John F. Kennedy on the 1823 Monroe Doctrine:

At an Aug. 29, 1962, press conference, President Kennedy warned Moscow: “The Monroe Doctrine means what it has meant since President Monroe (pictured) and John Quincy Adams enunciated it, and that is that we would oppose a foreign power extending its power to the Western Hemisphere, and that is why we oppose what is happening in Cuba today.”

Will a President that can’t a bide a bust of Winston Churchill gift from our oldest ally, as a sign of post-911 solidarity, occupying space in the White House enforce a doctrine enunciated 180 years before 911? Especially when he has already offered to sell out two of its former slave states in Poland and the Czech Republic that were promised SDI installations in exchange for Russia’s help in trying to persuade Iran to stay non-nuclear? The same Russia that helped Iran go nuclear?

Russia complains that the presence of American ships in the ports of the Georgia Republic justify consideration of the “offers” from Chavez and Castro. Georgia is another former slave state of the USSR that was invaded by Russia last year. As President Bush squelched Putin’s hopes to take over the whole nation, Senator Obama suggested moral equivalence between the invader and the invaded.

The new liberal Democrat President is being tested even earlier than Vice-President Joe Biden predicted last year and given the President’s disdain for old allies and apologies for American fault for the existence of enemies, is it really beyond the realm of possibility that Obama’s answer to the test could be allowing Russian bombers to land in Tilbisi and Atlanta, Georgia?

And if he wants to re-create Camelot, it would be easier to blockade an airport than a nation.

Obama is a post-Berlin Citizen of the World whose stimulus funds also go to illegal aliens. He opposed the border fence and would allow Venezuelans to drive to Chicago’s O’Hare with NY drivers licenses after all.

And the greatest attempt to make the Marxist dreams of his father a reality was tried in Russia.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Jimmy Carter never lied, Bill Clinton was re-elected and most Americans like bar-be-que pork and think an earmark is what is revealed when earrings are removed.

President Barack Obama seeks to spend trillions to fundamentally change America and borrow more money in the next four years than was borrowed by all 42 of his predecessors over the last 233 years with a 40-year old Democratic majority liberal wish list. Yet, is the most prominent argument heard against the Obama agenda from elected Republicans in Congress and even from some of our best conservative critics? Peter Wehner provides a “striking” example in today’s Commentary:

In the matter of just 50 days, a fissure has widened into a split; the split has become a gap; and the gap is becoming a gulf. I have in mind the extraordinary contradiction between what President Obama says and what he does.

Consider a partial list, starting with earmarks. During the campaign, Obama said, “the truth is, our earmark system — what’s called pork-barrel spending in Washington — is fraught with abuse. It badly needs reform — which is why I didn’t request a single earmark last year, why I’ve released all my previous requests for the public to see, why I’ve pledged to slash earmarks by more than half when I am President of the United States…”

Yet yesterday, Obama signed rather than vetoed a massive, $410 billion omnibus spending bill — which contained more than 8,500 earmarks.

This has led, sooner than anyone could have imagined, to a serious credibility gap. It would be unfair to say that Obama is unique in this regard; many times public officials make claims they cannot keep or find that governing requires them to make amendments to what they said during the campaign.

What is striking about Obama, though, is how antithetical his acts are compared to his words, his unwillingness to admit he is not practicing what he preached, and the sheer audacity of his hypocrisy and moral conceit.

Wehner makes great points (including about Obama’s broken promises of bi-partisanship and ethics reform) and I don’t doubt that a durable loss of credibility would be a major obstacle to his and his party’s continued political fortunes, but only tangentially so.

Did enough Americans care enough that Bill Clinton committed perjury and broke his promise to be the most ethical administration in history? Did Americans reward Jimmy Carter for keeping his promise to give us a government as good as the American people?

No. They cared about peace and prosperity and dispensed rewards accordingly. They cared about big issues.

Senator McCain made pork and earmarks his signature issues during his congressional career and during his presidential campaign but he will never put his signature on a bill from the White House. Republicans put 40% of the over 8000 earmarks in the Omnibus bill just signed by the man that beat McCain. Moreover, McCain probably lost the Presidency due to his support for the Paulson bank bailout bill, despite the fact that it was opposed by most conservatives and was loaded with earmarks.

But McCain didn’t lose the election because of the puny pork in the bailout. He lost because he supported the billions to bailout banks.

And now, as Obama uses the economic crisis to spend trillions to make America into Europe, we think that what is “striking” is his position on the less than 1% of the budget devoted to pork?

And by the way, the TVA and the Interstate Highway system is pork.

Some pork is good.

But no amount of ending welfare reform; putting government in charge of health care; making carbon a pollutant so as to direct the American economy from Washington; nor bankrupting the coal industry is good.

Rather, the big things Obama seeks to do are quite strikingly bad.

Another “bad” thing is limited time on broadcast and cable television, and every minute we spend decrying pork and arcane parliamentary procedures used to make pork, is time not spent sounding the alarm of the loss of liberty and prosperity that Obama’s fundamental changes would bring.

Let’s start being “struck” by the substance of what the liberal democrats are up to, before the clock strikes midnight on American exceptionalism.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

For the first time since his election, President Obama is showing signs of compromise on conservative means of economic stimulus as well as his ambitious agenda of “fundamental change.”

Despite the worst decline in the stock market in the first 50 days of a new presidency, Barack Obama had been exhibit A echoing Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton’s crisis as opportunity mantra in pursuing longtime Democratic Party domestic legislative goals in energy, education and health care; rather than focusing on the worsening recession and banking and credit crises he inherited.

Until Thursday, we were told that the “worst economic crisis since the Great Depression” (Harvard must not cover the double digit inflation, interest rate, and unemployment of the early 80s in their required curricula.)required that we borrow more money in the next four years than we have since the founding and that we fundamentally change America by growing government large enough to usurp the free market as the director of the nation’s economy. We were told that “only government” spending $3.4 trillion dollars or more could save us.

It appeared that Obama was in a hurry to use the economic crisis to advance every liberal dream (whether from his father or not) of the past 40 years; but seemed laissez faire with respect to the current crisis. But yesterday we were told that the crisis is “not as bad as we think“.

It now appears that some of the grown-ups around a President that recently dismissed the ups and downs of Wall Street, the downs of which have wiped out much of the savings of most Americans, have finally gotten his ear. The body of free market capitalism champion as Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers (pictured) had seemed to have been occupied by the ghost of Carter past until he went on a confidence tour this week.

But the most hopeful sign of change we have seen since the Inauguration of Barack HopeChange Obama, came from the lips of the Messiah himself:

President Barack Obama says he is willing to cut a deal with corporate America, telling business leaders he’d consider cutting the corporate tax rate if they cooperate with his overall agenda.

“Obama said he would be willing to consider lowering the 35 percent corporate tax rate as he closes other business-tax loopholes,” The Journal reported.

Also at the meeting on Thursday, one Business Roundtable member questioned Obama on his proposal to cap carbon emissions, and he suggested he could compromise on his plan to combat global warming.

At first blush, the first quote may seem insignificant or quite troubling to conservatives given that even a total elimination of the corporate tax (much less a mere 5% cut) would be a poor trade off for Obama’s energy and health care agenda.

But when coupled with the second suggestion of compromise on the religious tenets of global warming and other recent events, I see opportunities for conservatives and a crisis they must not let go waste.

For the last several weeks, Republican opposition to Obama’s agenda has galvanized. More importantly, many democrats (and not just Southerners and Blue Dogs) have expressed alarm over the President’s inaction on the banking crisis and proposed actions that would raise gasoline and coal prices. Democrats in the Midwest have come out against his war on the coal industry and in favor of corporate tax cuts as well as an end to the mark-to-market accounting rule.

But one might be surprised to see cracks in Obama’s until now impregnable positions on his Big Government agenda and war on capitalists given uptick in the stock market this week. But one shouldn’t be surprised if one understands the kind of crisis that truly concentrates the Obama mind:

Polling data show that Mr. Obama’s approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama’s net presidential approval rating — which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve — is just six, his lowest rating to date.

Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president’s performance. This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.

A detailed examination of presidential popularity after 50 days on the job similarly demonstrates a substantial drop in presidential approval relative to other elected presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries. The reason for this decline most likely has to do with doubts about the administration’s policies and their impact on peoples’ lives.

I expected that the economic crisis would eventually force Obama to turn to supply side stimulus given my expectation that we were in for a long recession even if the administration had acted decisively on the banking crisis. The gargantuan incompetence on Obama has accelerated the time table.

It turns out that even with near filibuster proof majorities in Congress, the Democrats can’t act fast enough to fundamentally change America. Thanks to the Founding Fathers for a system that frustrates would be Kings. Thanks also to the center-right majority of Americans, many of whom are democrats, that House members must face every two years. Thanks finally to the fact that many liberal commentators in the media aren’t so rich that they will abide even a popular Democrat President that ignores the drop in value of their 401ks.

One moment last week galvanized my optimism that Obama had overreached and would have his agenda interrupted. It was when he answered a question about the plight of the currently unemployed with a pitch that his health care plan would provide coverage in two years.

That’s right, Mr. Unemployed. Apply for unemployment compensation for 26-52 weeks. Get medicaid under the new law. Get on his new un-reformed welfare after that and in 52 more weeks we will change the name on your Medicaid card to ObamaCare. Want a job? Why? We still have the wealth of others to spread to you.

It appears that while Obama dreams of an America fundamentally changed, his ears are picking up the voices of Americans that haven’t thru the vehicle most fundamental in shaping the hopes of and changes sought by most nationally elected Democratic politicians: popularity polls.

The GOP must be careful not to give in to Obama’s first baby steps away from his agenda. They must not let weak Big Business CEOs seeking corporate welfare cause them to sell out the rest of America in the Carbon War on American prosperity. Bide your time. Obama is hearing from coal country Democrats in flyover country that don’t take the subway to work.

Who knows, after Obama’s agenda is broken, we could make him a successful president.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

The latest misleading (Foghorn) headline and story from the Drive-by media begging for DeVine Gamecock correction (Leghorn):

Survey: We’re losing our religion
Poll on faith in U.S. shows more claim no religion; percentage of Christians down overall.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, up from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Technically, “-ing” words describe only live events, but let’s accept the misleading definition the press uses to spew fog and consider they mean a “recent and ongoing phenomenon.

The real story is that American religion has been stable since at least 2001. That they would trumpet a statistically insignificant ZERO POINT EIGHT (0.8) percent drop as evidence to justify their agenda driven headline tells us all we need to know about the smoke-blowing machines passing as dead tree “reporters.”

But even if we accept the 15% figure, even it is foggy:

About 12 percent of Americans believe in a higher power, but not the personal God at the core of monotheistic faiths.

Notice the use the “personal” qualifier for God? This is an obvious device (requiring that one assume most Americans are trained theologians) to fog up the fact that only 3% of Americans are atheists. the same number reported for decades.

Then we have the inevitable fog seeking to gin up a new Great Schism within the Christian world:

Christians who aren’t Catholic also are a declining segment of the U.S.

In 2008, Christians comprised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001 and about 86 percent in 1990. Researchers said the dwindling ranks of mainline Protestants largely explains the shift.

Earth (and Heaven) to the Drive-by Media: Catholics and Protestants worship the same risen from the dead Savior and are Christians.

Again, the real story here is that after significant declines in organized religious devotion in the 1990s, there was none in the “Bush War” 2000s.

But we have seen a continuing (since Walter Cronkite’s Vietnam is lost lies of the late 1960s) decline of devotion to accurate reporting in the media. The Program on Public Values at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., AP and the Charlotte Observer apparently need to discover public values, especially one that is regularly taught via the Ten Commandments in the stable for the last eight years, Jewish synagogues and Christian churches: Thall shalt not bear false witness.

Have you no shame un-mainstream media? Your job is to bear truthful witness.

Let me help you understand what a true significant decline looks like.

Look at the decline of newspaper sales over the past eight years.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

President Barack Obama recently insulted the armed forces of the United States that he “leads” by stating flatly that we are losing the war in Afghanistan and “floated” the idea of negotiating with “moderate” elements of the Taliban:

Mr. Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,” he said.

This is the first known time that the Commander-in-Chief has used the word success with respect to the war in Iraq, ironically though, only in the context of a prelude to surrender in Afghanistan.

Let us review:

Firstly, we have not been attacked since 911. The main purpose of our invasion of Afghanistan was to prevent such attacks. Yet, we are “losing”? Secondly, a major portion of the “hard core” al Qaeda elements in Iraq were trained and harbored under the auspices of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The same Taliban that made Osama bin Laden a free citizen in the terror nation-state they ran before September 11, 2001 an from which the 911 attacks were launched. The same Taliban, many of whom have fled to Pakistan and the same that Senator Obama and most elected Democrats in Washington said President Bush had taken his eye off of to fight an unnecessary war in Iraq. Candidate Obama also famously stated that he reserved the right to go after the Taliban in Pakistan.

But now President Obama wants the new “focus” in the “good war” to be compromising with those that carried out the 911 attacks rather than bringing them to justice?

Who should be surprised? Not anyone that has been watching the new president recently insult or closest ally that has lost over 300 soldiers fighting with us in the war on Terror and appease enemies like Iran in his first press conference by essentially blaming the United States for their turn to terror 30 years ago.

And as to Pakistan, who the President implied wasn’t a strong enough ally against the Taliban and al Qaeda? They recently destroyed a major Taliban stronghold near the Afghan border and their new democratically elected President, Asif Ali Zardari (pictured above) explicitly rejected compromise with oxymoronic “moderate Taliban”:

Pakistan’s fight against terrorism is relentless. Since the election of a democratic government last year, we have successfully conducted military operations in our Federally Administered Tribal Areas and other parts of the country, capturing or killing high officials of al Qaeda and the Taliban, as well as hundreds of their fighters. In the highly volatile Swat Valley, our strategy has been to enter into talks with traditional local clerics to help restore peace to the area, and return the writ of the state.

We have not and will not negotiate with extremist Taliban and terrorists. The clerics with whom we have engaged are not Taliban. Indeed, in our dialogue we’d made it clear that it is their responsibility to rein in and neutralize Taliban and other insurgents. If they do so and lay down their arms, this initiative will have succeeded for the people of Swat Valley. If not, our security forces will act accordingly.

I wish my country had a President that sent such a strong message to our enemies as does Pakistan.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com.

Barack Obama’s offhand approach to Gordon Brown’s Washington visit last week came about because the president was facing exhaustion over America’s economic crisis and is unable to focus on foreign affairs, the Sunday Telegraph has been told.

If he were to focus more on the economic crisis the DOW might reach zero. The man gives non-obesity a bad name. He is too tired to do his job? Maybe we should have chosen Septuagenarian McCain for JFK-like vigor?

Obama is also too tired to craft a plan to stabilize the banking industry; make a two sentence statement demanding that Congress eliminate earmarks from the Omnibus spending bill; or appear on Rush Limbaugh’s program after publicly challenging him.

I just wish he were too tired to demonize potential investors, producers and achievers in public; drive down the DOW with his public utterances; take over industries with socialist control; demonize banks; threaten the coal industry; and generally threaten the poor and lower and middle income families with the promise of drastically increased energy costs.

Maybe the President needs to play basketball twice a day?

He plays a ton of basketball and puts in his 45-60 minute workout day in and day out. He claims it sets the tone for his entire day- that it gives him the energy he needs to grapple with the world’s problems.

Just not with the United Kingdom part of the world.

Silence and inaction from Obama and Congress would do more to instill confidence in the private sector and lessen the risk of offending allies, than anything else.

Let’s insist The Tired One attend March Madness and the NBA playoffs and get back to us after Halloween, when at least we will be expecting a Big Scare.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Since our first documentation of the Queen City’s local dead-tree Drive-by journalism hit job against Bank of America’s CEO, Ken Lewis, The Charlotte Observer has only ramped up the assault.

They have attacked Lewis as “out of touch” for utilizing the Bank’s private jet to attend an Andrew Cuomo, New York Democrat witch hunt against BofA and Merrill Lynch; and ridiculed his 2008 pay cut. And we thought the newspaper recently editorialized about the unseemliness of corporate CEO bonuses amidst a financial crisis.

The confidence score so far? A shareholder group that owns one-tenth of one percent of the bank’s outstanding shares called for Lewis to be fired. Hence: Ken Lewis 99.09 Charlotte Observer 00.01.

The local daily seems to be the one that is out of touch as it pretends that Bank of America is the only bank in America facing troubled times and that all its troubles are due to the actions of Ken Lewis with respect to the purchases of Countrywide and Merrill and their toxic assets.

The Observer persistently buries crucial facts, such as:

1) Lewis was forced to go thru with the ML deal by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke;
2) Lewis was forced to take the first installment of TARP funds by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson;
3) Bank of America made a profit last year;
4) Bank of America’s income in 2009 exceeds its outlays and is expected to do so all year and into the foreseeable future;
5) The drop in the price of the bank’s stock is consistent with price drops of similarly situated banks;
6) BofA has increased lending from a year ago my a significant amount in no small part due to re-fi customers of Countrywide and Merrill Lynch;
7) Lewis has bought millions of shares of stock in the bank since last September; and
Lewis has agreed to reduce his salary to $500,000.

Bank of America is not insolvent. It pays its bills. Yes, its “value” as measured by its stock price is low, but that does not effect its ability to operate. And if the President and the local paper would quit attacking it everyday, its stock price would rise.

Ken Lewis has done a good job first in building a bank strong enough to weather the credit crunch, and in guiding the bank through the past few months.

Do they really want to bring the towers down?

Presidential and Drive-by attacks coupled with Congressional show trials designed to shift attention from the liberal democrats in the House and Senate responsible for the financial mess caused by their Fannie and Freddie friends may accomplish that goal, but they won’t hurt Lewis without also hurting Bank of America employees, the city of Charlotte and America’s banking system itself.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report