Newt Gingrich has come under fire recently for his statement that Barack Obama is the “Food Stamp President.” In response to Gingrich, the left makes three claims:

1. Racist!
2. It’s Bush’s fault.
3. Well yes, but the population has increased too so Obama can’t be blamed.

It is this last claim that I wanted to take a look at and see if population growth could account for the increase of people on food stamps.

The U.S. civilian population estimate on the first day of *FY2010 was 307,518,237. SNAP participation for FY2010 was 40,302,000. The percentage of people on food stamps was 13%.

The U.S. civilian population on the last day of FY2011 was 310,800,403. FY2011 saw  44,709,000 people receiving SNAP benefits. This represents 14.3% of the population. So while the population did increase, so did the percentage of people on food stamps!

There’s more.

The population increased by 1% during this time. However, food stamp particitpation increased by almost 11%! Increases in the population does not account for the increase in food stamp usage.

Lastly, the stimulus changed the SNAP program. First, it increased funding by almost $20 billion by increasing monthly benefit levels. It also changed restrictions that were placed on able-bodied adults without dependents. The restrictions placed on benefits by the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 were rescinded.

Seems like Obama is much more culpable for the increase in SNAP than I thought.

*The reason why I chose FY2010 is because that is the first fiscal year in which Obama was the president throughout

Cross-posted at Rampart Media

The state of Tennessee recently passed a voter ID law that would require voters to present a photograph ID before voting. At first, if the voter did not have a legal ID, they would have to purchase one. Naturally, the Democrats opposed the measure, saying that it would impose a poll tax on those Tennesseans that had to purchase an ID.

On the floor of the Tennessee General Assembly, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner opposed the bill because it did not pay for the ID. He cited an Indiana Supreme Court case in which the court upheld an ID law because the state paid for the ID’s. He said:

“Ladies and gentlemen I have said four times..five times..that I will vote for this bill as long as it’s funded and not a poll tax…”

In a committee hearing on the bill he said:

“I don’t have a problem with this bill at all as long as we pay for it.”

How quickly things change.

Through the legislative process, the state decided to fully fund the law and pay for the ID’s (PDF) instead of having the citizen pay for it. So Mike Turner’s argument against this law was addressed. That should have been the end of it, right? Well, no.

You see, Turner filed legislation to repeal this law. He decided he is against the voter ID law after all. He even went on  Al Sharpton’s BSNBC program to discuss the matter.

Turner was against this law from the start. His insistence that he would support it if it was funded was a lie. Democrats can’t have people actually proving who they say they are can they? I guess they can’t. Their support among the dead drops dramatically.

I’ll be brief. It’s a long weekend and I am ready for some vacation time but I really think this needs to be known.

I wrote a post highlighting the left-wing philosophy of the United Methodist Church here. Here is another example of such thinking.

Today, the UMC posted a blog on its website describing how United Methodists should (or shouldn’t) remember 9/11. I have to say, they really outdid themselves.

Here is the main question they seek to answer: “Where is the line between appropriate remembrance in the context of worship of our Triune God and inappropriate focus on mere patriotism?” You can see where they are going with this….

We should not design worship on this Sunday primarily in praise of America or its “ideals.” That turns into idolatry of the nation. We should not take this as an opportunity to support fears about or raise new fears of Muslim people in our midst, as the recent terrorist attacker in Norway has sought to do. This diverts worship that should glorify the God of all creation into a kind of “my people only” solidarity rally.

How does praising America and talking about her ideals turn into idolatry? I see nothing wrong with this. How is this different than me saying that a UMC pastor should never design a worship service around praising the ideals of John Wesley because this might lead to idolizing John Wesley?

Secondly, I am so glad the UMC tells me I shouldn’t fear “Muslims.” I feel so much better now. How can they say this on the 10 year anniversary of a day when 3,000 Americans were killed at the hands of Islamic extremists? Ah, I guess answered my own question. They don’t consider the extremists “Muslim.”

We probably should not show footage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers or the Pentagon, or even the wreckage in the field near Shanksville, PA. We’ve all seen those images hundreds if not thousands of times. No doubt the media will be replaying them frequently in the lead-up to this day. Such images now probably do more to harm than to heal, if they ever did much to heal in the first place.

I could not disagree more. We need to be reminded that there are demented barbarians out there that seek to do us harm. Nothing will make this more evident than actually seeing the images from that fateful day.

One more point. This one just happens to be my favorite. Here is the last suggestion from the UMC:

Finally, something you may rarely hear me suggesting: If you follow the Revised Common Lectionary, as the vast majority of our congregations in the United States do, either heavily edit the selection for the Old Testament reading (the crossing of the Red Sea) or do not read it at all. Why? A good number of the verses included in this reading extol the deaths of the Egyptian soldiers, mired in the mud and then drowned in the Red Sea. Egypt today is a primarily Muslim nation. Rejoicing in the deaths of ancient Egyptians on this day is a bit too close to wishing harm or worse to our Muslim neighbors and Muslims around the world, and would easily be read and understood that way by many Muslims, even if that may not in any way be the intent (conscious or otherwise) of Christian congregations. If your congregation has been focusing on the Exodus narrative prior to this day, and so there is a reason to continue doing so, strongly consider reading and preaching from only these verses: Exodus 14:19-22, 27a, and 29-30a.

This is just so idiotic. I can’t believe I even am reading this. The author is saying to not read parts of the Bible because it might be misunderstood by Muslims! Unreal!

“Oh, I’m sorry Lord, I’m not going to read from your Book because it might offend someone.” This is downright shameful. Editing the Word so as to not offend anyone. What is wrong with these people?

Before I begin, I would like to make one thing clear. My criticism of the UMC is leveled directly at the elites in the UMC and not at local pastors, congregation members, etc. I fully understand that United Methodists can have differing opinions on issues. This isn’t really the purpose of this post.

I have three points: One being that the ideology espoused by the UMC is left-wing, two, they promote left-wing causes and three, they don’t practice what they preach (haha).

Ideology
The “Social Principles” of the United Methodist Church can be found in the UMC Book of Discipline. These principles “serve as a guide to official church action and our individual witness.” I would like to highlight a few of these principles.

From the heading of Economic Community, we find the following:
“Therefore, we recognize the responsibility of governments to develop and implement sound fiscal and monetary policies that provide for the economic life of individuals and corporate entities and that ensure full employment and adequate incomes with a minimum of inflation.”

Right off the bat the UMC claims that the government should be responsible for ensuring “adequate incomes.” How exactly can the government do this? Wealth redistribution. Taking the property that one earns and giving it to another.

“We support measures that would reduce the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few..”
This sounds like something straight out of Marx, and I’m not talking about Groucho. I guess the UMC doesn’t realize that the  top 1% of income earners pay 40% of the income tax but only earn 20% of the adjusted gross income. Remember this Social Principle. It will come in handy later.

Now, I believe that the protection of private property rights is one of the most important things a government should do. There can be no liberty in a society that does not value private property rights. Unsurprisingly, the UMC sees it differently:

“We believe private ownership of property is a trusteeship under God, both in those societies where it is encouraged and where it is discouraged, but is limited by the overriding needs of society.”
And who exactly determines what the needs of society are? Politicians? Church leaders? Me? You? Should the government enforce this?

“We support the right of all public and private employees and employers to organize for collective bargaining into unions and other groups of their own choosing.”
Two things to notice about this statement. First, there is no “right” to collectively bargain, especially in the public sector. Second, they mention nothing about the “right” not to be in a union. Right to Work laws anyone?

“Every person has the right to a job at a living wage. Where the private sector cannot or does not provide jobs for all who seek and need them, it is the responsibility of government to provide for the creation of such jobs.”
This is such nonsense. Have any of these people ever had an economics lesson? So many things wrong here. First, the  “living wage” aka the minimum wage is such a destructive economic policy (which of course means it is favored by liberals.) The minimum wage  ensures that people whose skills do not justify being paid whatever the government says they must be remain unemployed. In fact, “Each 10% increase in the minimum wage [since 2007] was accompanied by a decrease in employment of 1.2% for Hispanic males, 2.5% for white males and 6.5% for black males.” This policy leads exactly to the next statement about the private sector not being able to provide jobs. The living wage they want causes the problem that they condemn.  I wonder if they realize how incoherent this is.

Second, notice how they phrase part of the second sentence: “where the private sector cannot or does not provide jobs..” Is it really the position of the UMC that business owners actually need to hire people but they do not simply as a means to screw people over?  These people have no clue how/why jobs are created. I know this might come as a shock to the UMC elites, but here it goes: Businesses have no obligation to hire anyone. Period. Businesses hire people because they need them. Not because some elite do-gooder thinks they should.

Lastly, exactly where is the government going to get the money to pay for all of these jobs that the government “creates?” The only three places where they can get the money: tax, borrow, or print. All three have negative economic outcomes. Haven’t we had enough “government created jobs” to know that it never works?

“We call upon governments and all employers to ensure for foreign workers the same economic, educational, and social benefits enjoyed by other citizens.”
And of course by “foreign workers” they mean illegal aliens. More on this later.

Promote left-wing causes
After just a quick visit to the UMC homepage, it is obvious that they promote left-wing viewpoints. Consider the following headlines:

Church leaders defend collective bargaining
Clergy fear Alabama [immigration] law imperils ministry
Deportations leave teen alone
Religious tolerance urged in 9/11 discourse
Faithful urged to contact Congress about debt
Here is a quote from Jim Winkler, top executive of the United Methodist Church’s social action agency. “Some people were saying everything needs to be on the table. We said ‘No, that is not the case at all.’ Tax cuts for the wealthy need to be on the table, reduction in bloated military apparatus needs to be on the table, but we don’t need to put programs that assist those in need on the table.”

Why can’t the UMC and other churches join together and take care of these people? Why must the government do it?
By the way, Mr. Winkler was arrested for “demonstrating within a U.S. Capitol building.”

Left-wing causes aren’t the only thing that the UMC actively promotes but also left-wing bloggers. The UMC has a link to a Huffington Post (of all places) piece by self-described “progressive Christian” Bruce Reyes-Chow. (You can find the link under blogs and commentaries on the homepage.)

On the homepage, the title of the piece looks like it is “Faith vs Action.” However, if you read it on the Huffington Post, it is entitled, “Jesus Christ, Michelle Bachmann and Other Lunatics.” Chow says that “Far too often in day-to-day and political conversations, well-meaning people dismiss the arguments of the other by calling their belief system, whatever that may be, radical, fringe or extreme…… When we do this and/or allow it to happen, not only do we fail to see the complexities of the larger Body of Christ, but we advocate a litmus testing of what it means to be a “real” Christian, a tact used often by those with whom I would love to label as “right-wing zealots.”

He accuses the “right-wing zealots” of using this tactic when in fact the right suffers from this tactic all the time.  Has he never listened to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden or any of the blowhards on BSNBC? Just add racist and terrorist in there and you have all the adjectives the left uses to describe the Tea Party day in and day out. Yet, Chow just calls out the “ring-wing zealots.”

Chow goes on, adding, “Locking people into one-dimensional caricatures, liberal or conservative, or vilifying people who hold different beliefs is no more Christlike or faithful if it comes from a friend with whom I find great ideological affinity or from someone that I would rather eat glass than share a meal with.” This comes right after he admits that it would “feel really good” to call people he disagrees with “right-wing zealots.”

To cap it all off, he closes his piece by vilifying people he disagrees with by saying, “So, if my treatment of and response to Bachman [sic], Perry and all the other fundamentalist, fringe, nut-job, radical politicians out there causes the same words to be spoken my way, I will not feel vindicated or persecuted, but I will know that I have been faithful and I have genuinely tried to see and treat my bother or sister with dignity and care.”

Let’s not forget that this blog post was linked to from the UMC homepage. Unbelievable.

(On a side note, I noticed that there are several pictures on the UMC website that has been used with permission from Common Cause. Common Cause is a left-wing advocacy group that is funded partly by none other than George Soros. I’m not exactly sure what the connection is between the UMC and Common Cause except that the president of Common Cause, Rev. Bob Edgar, is …get ready for this…a UMC elder.)

Anyway, back to the subject. The UMC is also very involved with getting youth on board with their leftist dogma. The International Association of Methodist-related Schools, Colleges, & Universities and the National Association of Schools, Colleges, and Universities of The United Methodist Church, held a conference in Washington, D.C.,  for international students and faculty from 25 different Methodist schools. And what was discussed at this conference you ask? Well, the attendees had the opportunity to attend a program on “social justice.” This is, of course, a liberal code word for wealth redistribution. Who would have guessed….

This conference also featured a 1960′s Freedom Rider and John Seigenthaler, special assistant to the Kennedy administration, to discuss the civil right’s movement. Here is the angle that the UMC took on this: “For several Latino students, these presentations hit close to home.” Here we go….

“There are a lot of similarities to our struggle as Latinos in the United States talking about discrimination when it comes to immigration issues and race issues in general,” said Jorge Granados, a 24-year-old student at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth.”

Are you kidding me? Black Americans were attacked with hoses and dogs. They were abused by their governments. The “Latinos,” aka illegal aliens, come here illegally, are given in-state tuition, protected by sanctuary cities, attend school and use every other government service. If these people are so concerned about “immigration issues,” why don’t they criticize Mexico’s immigration policies which are stricter than ours? Or better yet, if they are so oppressed, why not just go back to their home country where they can be free from all of the xenophobic policies?

As an added bonus, “Seigenthaler compared the 1960s civil rights movement to modern-day struggles like gay rights and Muslim relations. “

Don’t practice what they preach
After reading all of the class warfare rhetoric in the Book of Discipline, you would think that the UMC would have the most equitable payment system on earth for pastors, bishops, etc. No one would make more than anyone else. Men and women, whites and minorities would all earn the same salary. You would think that they would be a role model for the type of governmental  system they so steadfastly support….

In a report called “Salaries for United Methodist Clergy in the US Context,” the UMC’s General Board of Higher Education and Ministry studied the salaries of UM clergy from 1997-2008.  What did they find? Perfect equality I bet. I mean, they even said in the second sentence of the publication that “they strive to create a culture of equity for all.” So how’d they do?

In 2008, the average salary for a full-time pastor not living in a parsonage was $55,000.

“Without taking other factors into account, there are substantial differences between male
and female pastors (13%), and white and non-white pastors (9–15%).”

And what are these “other factors?”
“The gender gap is due largely to differences in seniority between male and female pastors, and can be expected to decrease over time as female pastors gain seniority.
The race gap results from the assignment of non-white pastors to congregations that pay lower salaries.”

If we are striving for a culture of equity, why should someone’s salary be tied to how long someone has been a pastor? What difference does that make? Why should someone who has been a pastor for 20 years receive more money than a person who has been a pastor for 2 years? This isn’t very equitable.

The second factor is a jaw dropper. It appears that the UMC sends non-white pastors to congregations that pay lower salaries. This doesn’t seem very equitable either. Minorities should have the same access to high paying congregations as whites. How could the UMC let such an injustice happen?

Imagine if a company did this. Let’s suppose that it was leaked to the public that a McDonald’s chose a non-white person to manage a store because that store didn’t make that much money so the new manager would be paid less. (This is of course assuming that the manager’s salary is tied to the dollar amount that the store brings in but you get the point.) How would people react to this? How would the UMC react to this? Mr. Winkler might bet a blue light special with his Big Mac.

Honestly, why would they even have to strive for equity? Just figure out what the total dollar amount that will be paid  for salaries, divide by the number of pastors, and bingo! Instant equality!

The fun doesn’t end here. Now, let’s look at the 50 bishops of the UMC. A bishop is one of the highest positions in the church and is a “general superintendent of the church for a geographical area.”

Is their average salary the same as the average salary for pastors? Hardly. The salary for a bishop in 2008 was $120,942. They are also provided with an “episcopal residence.” This means that in 2008, 50 people were paid $6,047,100 by the UMC. Hmmm. I seem to recall something about wealth being concentrated in the hands of a few or something like that.

Just think of how many more jobs could be created in the church if the bishops made the same as the average full-time pastor. If my calculations are correct, if bishops made $55,000 a year, the church could pay 60 more people $55,000 a year! Wow! Talk about a job creating machine…

Or if they didn’t want to do this, the bishops could give a large majority of their salary to female and minority pastors who do not make as much as their white male counterparts. This would go a long way in creating a culture of equity.

The motto of the United Methodist Church is “Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors.” They should change it to “Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors. Open hands of government to take and redistribute other people’s wealth to reduce income inequality while we promote income inequality.”

Cross-posted at Rampart Media

Throughout Obama’s one term in office, many comparisons have been made between him and other U.S. Presidents. Some say he is like Ronald Reagan (haha). Others claim he is Jimmy Carter, Jr. He is even compared to George W. Bush by liberal critics of his.

The most accurate comparison has got to be between Obama and another spendthrift president: Franklin Roosevelt. Consider the following two passages that were written in 1948 about the presidential election of 1936:

“Their [Republican Party] chief reliance was upon the charge that the President [Roosevelt] had usurped the powers of Congress, attacked the integrity of the courts, invaded the constitutional prerogatives of the states, attempted to substitute regulated monopoly for free enterprise, forced through Congress unconstitutional laws, filled a vast array of bureaus with swarms of bureaucrats to harass the people and breed fear in commerce and industry, discouraged new enterprises and thus prolonged the depression, had used relief [government payments] to corrupt and intimidate the voters and made appeals to class prejudice to inflame the masses and create dangerous divisions.”

-The Roosevelt Myth, pg 87,  John Flynn

This reads like it could have been written today about Barack Obama and the Democrats doesn’t it? This is the Democrats’ history. It is who they are; they are big government, Marxist class warriors.  They don’t care about the Constitution, separation of powers, free markets or private sector job growth. They never have.

The similarities do not end here.  Their political strategy has been the same for decades as well.

“When Alf Landon talked about Roosevelt’s invasions of the Constitution, the man on relief and the farmer fingering his subsidy check replied ‘You can’t eat the Constitution.’”

Translation: Who cares about the constitutionality of our lifeline? Democrats get people hooked on government as a means of getting votes. Does the phrase “Republicans want to take away Medicare” ring a bell? It’s the same argument. They want people dependent on government. Period.

The 2012 election is shaping up to be a repeat of the 1936 election. We have an incumbent president who believes that more government is the answer to government-caused failures. This philosophy won in 1936. It won’t in 2012.

Cross-posted at Rampart Media

It never fails.

Whenever discussions of the massive increase in the federal debt under Obama, Pelosi, and Reid come up, you can always count on a liberal to say, “Oh yeah? Well Bush (insert wildly exaggerated, or flat out erroneous, claim here).”

Liberals seem to forget (or choose to ignore) who controlled congress during Bush’s terms in office. This ignorance was on full display when Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) said the following:

“Democrats are willing to do whatever is necessary to raise the debt ceiling, not for future borrowing but to pay the debts that we racked up in the past. Which, mostly was racked up by a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican President in the last 8 years.…”

Newsbusters’ Tom Blumer did a great job of debunking this statement. Blumer showed that President Bush and the GOP House and Senate from 2003-2007, ran up around a 1/3 less than “all other situations” in which party control of the presidency and congress varied.

What about the other years of the Bush presidency in which the Democrats’ controlled the House and Senate and when the congress was split? Using the U.S. Treasury data from Blumer’s report gives us the following graph:

So, almost half of the debt accumulated under President Bush came from a House and Senate controlled by the Democrats. And the Democrats controlled both houses for a less amount of time than the Republicans.

That old saying sure is true; when you point a finger, you have three more pointing back at you.

Cross-posted at Rampart Media

The debt ceiling debate has exposed Social Security as the biggest con job ever perpetuated on the American people.

When Obama said that he couldn’t guarantee that Social Security checks would be sent out if the debt ceiling wasn’t raised, he tacitly discredited something that proponents of Social Security have been saying literally every since FDR instituted SS: Social Security is a type of insurance program. You pay a payroll tax into the Social Security Trust Fund. This fund accrues interest on your behalf and when you retire, you get it back.

If this was true, then it would make no difference whether the country could borrow more money or not. The trust fund has enough money to be self-sustaining. So how could the president make such a statement? For awhile now, many people, including myself, believed that the answer to this question was that Congress simply took the money out of the trust fund. I’m not so sure this is 100% accurate. Why? The best way to answer this is to begin at the beginning.

The seeds were planted in the early 1900′s when Columbia University professor Henry Rogers Seager released a work entitled “Social Insurance: A Program of Social Reform.” Seager’s work, unsurprisingly, was inspired European socialism. In it, he claims that “we need not freedom from governmental interference, but clear appreciation of the conditions that make for the common welfare, as contrasted with individual success, and an aggressive program of governmental control and regulation to maintain these conditions.”

Enter the Great Depression. FDR’s Committee on Economic Security recommended that the country establish a system of “old-age” benefits similar to what Seager proposed. A program like this would dramatically change the relationship between the individual and the federal government. It was being billed to the American people as an insurance program.

This is an important point. FDR was making the argument to the American people that his Social Security plan was an insurance program and not a tax. When the Social Security Act made it to the Supreme Court, FDR’s Justice Department argued exactly the opposite. They made the argument that it wasn’t an insurance program but a tax.

Now we get the to crux of the Social Security swindle. The Supreme Court ruled the Social Security Act constitutional in Helvering v. Davis. In it, the Court revealed the true nature of Social Security. From the majority opinion: “The proceeds of both taxes [income tax on employees and the excise tax on employers] are to be paid into the Treasury like internal revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way.” This should put to rest any argument that there is or ever was a trust fund. There hasn’t been one since day one! The revenue from the taxes go right into the treasury just like any other tax and are not reserved specifically for Social Security!

Now this seems to me to be pretty cut and dry but the authors of the Social Security Act (SSA) were very sneaky in their wording. Again from the Court’s opinion: “The first section of this title [Title II] creates an account in the United States Treasury to be known as the “Old-Age [p*636] Reserve Account.” ‘ 201. No present appropriation, however, is made to that account. All that the statute does is to authorize appropriations annually thereafter…” Now wait a minute. Since this account was created, why wouldn’t the revenue from the Social Security taxes go directly into it? Why would it go into the general treasury? The SSA does allow for appropriation to be made from the general treasury into the Old-Age Reserve Account but why do it that way? For the answer, we go back to the opinion: “Not a dollar goes into the Account by force of the challenged act alone, unaided by acts to follow.” So the SSA doesn’t even have a means to put money into the account! It’s completely useless. It’s an AINO (Account In Name Only). This is why it technically isn’t accurate to say that Congress took money out of the trust fund. There never was an actual, real, legitimate trust fund in the first place! It’s been one giant shell game since literally day one.

Unbelievable

Crossposted at rampartmedia.weebly.com

Vice President Joe “jobs is a three letter word” Biden recently spoke to the Teamsters. The Great Uniter’s VP had some harsh words from them. Apparently, if they vote for Republicans, they are “on their own.” Got that Teamsters? Vote Republican and you can’t count on ole Joey Biden to help. However, I don’t really think that Biden has anything to worry about on that front.

Biden wasn’t finished there. He then took a shot at the GOP when he said that the GOP’s logo should be the rear end of a horse. Such civility, huh?

After I thought about his comment for a moment, I came to the conclusion that he is right. The GOP’s logo should be a horse’s rear end. So, I took the liberty of creating the new and improved logo myself. I would now like to present it to you for the first time.

Without further ado, the new GOP logo complete with a horse’s rear:

Background

For the majority of my life I have been a quiet, shy, and reserved person. I was never one to rock-the-boat or to start up conversations about controversial issues. I liked politics but it never seemed like a good fit for me. I was too deep in my shell.

I became a conservative during my last semester of high school. After high school I went to college and my shell went with me. However, during this time, my shell started to crack.

When I was a freshman, I had a very liberal roommate who was all about Bush-conservative-Republican-bashing. I defended conservatism to the best of my ability but my ability wasn’t that great. I was a neophyte when it came to debating politics and conservative philosophy. I would get flustered and my arguments would suffer. Often times I would forget vital points and information that would have strengthened my case only to remember them after the argument was over.

Fast forward to the summer of 2010.

I was given the opportunity to intern for a Congressional campaign in my county. When I found out I would be calling people on the phone and knocking on doors I panicked. I didn’t think I could do it. It just wasn’t me. I really wanted to be a part of the campaign so I sucked it up and did it. After I got passed the first few slammed doors and the first few cussings on the phone it got easier. With each phone call and each door knocked my shell cracked a little. By the end of the summer, it was almost gone.

I thought it would be important to give this background now that I am getting to the point of this post.

The country is being spent into oblivion. The future of my children and grand children are at stake and the big spending Democratic party could not care less. I have to act. Whatever shell I am still in must be broken through. It’s no longer a matter of how I feel or if I’m comfortable. It’s a matter of freedom and liberty. However, my coming out of my shell might have some negative aspects…

Friendship

Mark Levin tells us to be “Paul and Paulette Reveres” by alerting and informing our friends and family about what is going on in this country. It is by doing this that the negative aspects of my breaking through my shell appear. I have discovered something during my “Paul Revering;” I am having a hard time remaining friends and being pleasant to people who refuse to recognize the danger that the Democratic Party presents. How am I supposed to remain friends with people who refuse to acknowledge and debate facts, repeat Democrat platitudes, and who next year will vote for Obama and every Democrat on the ballot? How do you remain friends with someone who continues to vote and support some of the most destructive politicians this country has ever known? How do you balance being friends with people like this with your belief that their votes adversely affect you and the country?

Politics

Several things became apparent while I was “Paul Revering.” These things I have heard before but never experienced first hand and I sure all of you probably have dealt with as well. First, Democrats can not, and I repeat, can NOT debate anything regarding Barack Obama’s record as President without mentioning George Bush. Second, when confronted with an issue they can’t debate, they change the subject. Consider a conversation I recently had. I questioned a Democrat on Obama’s recent comments on Israel. Mr. Democrat’s response? “Oh yeah well, Democrats support the working man.” That was it. Lastly, and this relates to the second point, Democrats like to speak in broad generalities but fail miserably once you try to dig deeper and get specific. Again back to Mr. Democrat. I asked him specifically which policies Democrats support that help the “working man.” He responded that “times are better when Democrats are in office.” I pressed further by asking what specific policies that Democrats support makes “times better.” Mr. Democrat replied that he “doesn’t follow policy.” At least he was honest.

Have you heard how many jobs Obama’s Stimulus has created? Well, according to Ohio State University economists  Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor, it has created/saved 450,000! No joke! Wow…I guess we were wrong all along! Oh… wait… those jobs weren’t private sector jobs; they were government jobs. These jobs were saved because the stimulus money was used to “offset state revenue shortfalls.”

So what about private sector jobs? How many has the stimulus added? Get ready…1 million jobs! Well, actually that’s -1 million jobs. You see, according to the study, the stimulus actually destroyed/forestalled 1 million private sector jobs.

Even with this study, the liberals will still tout the stimulus as this wonderful job creating program. I’m sure it will be used in 2012 to show how Obama pulled us from the brink of a depression and saved the economy. Not surprisingly they will be able to get away with it.

Instead of the President calling this a “shovel-ready” stimulus (which he later said wasn’t true), he should have called it what it really was: a pencil ready stimulus. Say…I wonder whatever happened to all those “ready” shovels? We need to go out and find all them and pass them around. Whenever talk of the stimulus comes up, it’s bound to start getting a little deep.