Proud Reagan Conservative

Festival of Facts

2010-09-22T13:45:00.001-06:00

I've begun a new blog called "Festival of Facts" intended to be used as a place of reference, a collection of facts, supporting Conservative positions.

The first two posts are up: (1) Reaganomics Works, and (2) Government CAUSED the Great Depression.

Join me and be sure to pass along any links that will add to the collection!

Obama, Terrorism, and Why WE'RE IN TROUBLE

2010-03-11T17:39:00.003-07:00

Obama proved throughout 2009 that he does not have the will nor the ability to protect us against attacks by radical Islamic terrorists.

In January, 2010, Obama proved that he not only is clueless, but also desperate to sound relevant, leader-like, and intelligent (he failed).

Watch this 2-minute video. You'll laugh some and cry some.

Obama, Terrorism, and Why WE'RE IN TROUBLE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtU-3rxlL9M

UNBELIEVABLE OBAMA GAFFES, Mistakes, Lies, and Confusion

2009-10-14T21:28:00.005-06:00

~~~I GUARANTEE you haven't see ALL of these gaffes! ~~~

Liberals have a bizarre reverential awe for Barack Obama. Have you noticed? As a result, they are blind to his many little blunders, gaffes, and mistakes. This, of course, is the polar opposite of their super-human focus on every misstep by George W. Bush.

I think we can start chipping away at Liberals' willful blindness toward Obama's larger and much more destructive mistakes and misjudgements by showing them that he is not above the ridiculous. He's knee deep in it.

UNBELIEVABLE OBAMA GAFFES, Mistakes, Lies, and Confusion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4-AKcH3eC8

Enjoy (laugh, cry) then pass it on!

We Demand True Conservative Leadership

2008-11-15T14:07:00.027-07:00

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/we-demand-true-conservative-leadership.html

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Either Conservative principles work or they don't. We know they do. So why have so many Republican leaders compromised on these principles? For political expediency? To "get things done"? To be liked by the mainstream liberal media? It's all of the above, but I actually don't care why. The fact is, our Republican party members of Congress have compromised to the detriment of the nation.

I, for one, am sick of it. All the ills of our economy right now, today, were caused by liberalism:
--The mortgage crisis? Caused by Democrat politicians forcing banks to give loans to people unable to pay them back. Exacerbated by liberal-conceived and liberal-operated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who encouraged more risky lending and whose democrat board members were fraudulently giving themselves massive multi-million dollar paychecks. Protected by democrats in Congress who refused to reform the entire industry.
--High fuel costs? All liberalism, baby: Democrat politicians and liberal environmental groups have for 30 years waged war against expanded domestic oil drilling, new oil refineries and new nuclear plants. Any effort at coal and oil production has been met with costly roadblocks by liberals.
--The failing American auto industry and failing public schools? Caused by liberal union leaders and their Democrat politician cohorts. American car companies are being financially crushed by years of ridiculously expensive union contracts. The public schools are suffering not from inadequate funding, but from lack of competition and a bloated bureaucracy. Foreign owned non-union car companies in the U.S. and private schools (even inexpensive ones) are succeeding just fine while next door their unionized counterparts are failing. The only difference is liberalism.
--etc. etc.

Our elected Republican politicians LET all this happen. Some of them enabled it by their unwillingness to stand up to it; some of them were fully on board with the liberal "solutions." And a whole bunch of them just love to get laws passed with their names on them (cough john mccain cough).

It is time to reject all those Republican politicians who have rejected Conservatism.

It is time to demand that Republican politicians no longer compromise effective principles in favor of liberalism which ALWAYS fails, ALWAYS ends up hurting those it intends to help, and ALWAYS results in the loss of liberty.

It's also time to stand with Ronald Reagan who, in 1977, called for a renewal of the Republican Party, one that adheres to Conservative values:

The New Republican Party I envision is one that will energetically seek out the best candidates for every elective office, candidates who not only agree with, but understand, and are willing to fight for a sound, honest economy, for the interests of American families and neighborhoods and communities and a strong national defense. And these candidates must be able to communicate those principles to the American people in language they understand.

Let our voices be heard. This petition will be sent to the Republicans in Congress and the Republican National Committee:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/we-demand-true-conservative-leadership.html

Sign it and pass it on!

Obama's Policies: Already Causing Problems

2008-11-10T18:10:00.011-07:00

The markets are understandably reacting to the upcoming Obama tax increases which will place a massive burden on our society's producers and employers.

Lest anyone try to blame today's post-election market on the bad economy, look at a comparison of the economy a couple months before the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan and this election of Barack Obama:

(click chart to enlarge)

By the way, Obama just said in his first post-election press conference that we are facing the 'greatest economic challenge of our lifetime'. Actually, no, Mr. Obama, we aren't. But he's saying this so that we will all go along with the massive government expansion he's planning.

Barack Obama’s Fight Against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act

2008-10-19T21:43:00.013-06:00

For the best overview on this issue, see:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28189
http://www.jillstanek.com/archives/2008/02/links_to_barack.html
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_and_infanticide.html

Must-See Video:
September 29 2000 O'Reilly Factor interview with Nurse Jill Stanek:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9duXeLahkV4

TIMELINE

1999
Nurse Jill Stanek was a registered nurse in the Labor & Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, when she discovered that babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die in the soiled utility room.

2000
Illinois State Attorney General and the Illinois Department of Public Health found no law was being broken by Christ Hospital.

2001
Illinois State Senate Bill 1095, Born Alive Infant Protection Act
(This bill did not become law)
Obama voted NO in committee.
Obama voted PRESENT on the IL Senate floor.

2002
Illinois State Senate Bill 1662, Born Alive Infant Protection Act
(This bill did not become law)
Obama voted NO in committee.
Obama voted NO on the IL Senate floor.

2003
Illinois State Senate Bill 1082, Born Alive Infant Protection Act
(This bill did not become law)
Obama voted in committee to add additional language specifically protecting abortion. It was successfully added to the bill.
Obama then voted NO in committee to the updated bill.

Barack Obama has put forth several lies about his repeated votes against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA).

OBAMA’S LIE #1

OBAMA’S CLAIM: There was no need for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA) because there were already laws on the books to protect these infants.

FACT: The Illinois State Attorney General and the Illinois Department of Public Health investigated and found that Christ Hospital violated no current law when they left born-alive aborted babies to die in closets. It was for this reason that law makers wrote the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

EVIDENCE: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200104/ai_n8933816
At the request of Jill Stanek and Karen Hayes (the Illinois state director for Concerned Women of America) the office of Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan conducted an investigation of the practices at Christ Hospital. In a July 17, 2000 letter to Hayes, Chief Deputy Attorney General Carole Doris wrote, "We have concluded that there is no basis for legal action by this office against the hospital or its employees, agents or staff at this time."

http://www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=1437&department=CWA&categoryid=life
The office of Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan sent a letter to Mrs. Hayes in July 2000, responding to her request for investigation of Christ Hospital. Since the issue addressed medical practice, the attorney general referred it to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH). The IDPH sent investigators to the hospital in late September 1999, soon after Mrs. Hayes’ original correspondence (attorney general letter, 7/17/00).

On December 6, IDPH gave its report to the attorney general office. IDPH indicated that it found no “violation of the Hospital Licensing Act or the Vital Records Act.” Further, “no other allegations or medical evidence to support any statutory violation (including the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act about which [Mrs. Hayes] inquired) were referred to our office by the Department for prosecution” (attorney general letter, 7/17/00).

FACT: Obama (1) heard Nurse Jill Stanek’s testimony that babies were being left to die at Christ Hospital; (2) He was presented the investigation results showing other abortion providers in the state were leaving born-alive aborted babies to die; and (3) Obama was given the Attorney General’s findings showing these hospitals were doing nothing wrong legally under current law.

FACT: Obama refused to concede this was happening, despite the testimony presented to him of infants being left to die after failed abortions. Instead, he said this on the floor of the Senate (pages 32-34 of the April 4, 2002 session transcript): http://www.ilga.gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST040402.pdf

[T]he only plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor, the attending physician, who has made the assessment that this is a nonviable fetus and that, let’s say for the purposes of the mother’s health, is being — that — that labor is being induced, that that physician (a) is going to make the wrong assessment and (b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, and in fact this was not a nonviable fetus but, in fact, a live child, that the physician, of his own accord or her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical procedures and practices that would be involved in saving that child.

Now, if — if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense, but I — I suspect and my impression is, is that the Medical Society suspects that doctors feel that they would already be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations, and that essentially adding a — an additional doctor who the has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.

Now, if that’s the case –and — and I know some of us feel very strongly one way or the other on that issue — that’s fine, but I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if these children are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure they’re looked after.

During the third presidential debate, Barack Obama again told the lie that there was no need for this law so he voted against it. He’s blatantly lying.

OBAMA’S LIE #2

OBAMA’S CLAIM: Obama has claimed many times that he voted against this bill because it did not contain the kind of protections to abortion that an earlier national bill contained.

FACT: There was specific language in the bill which limited the scope of the bill to born-alive infants. In fact, for the 2003 bill, Obama in committee voted to include additional language which specifically protected abortion, but once the new language was in there, he then voted against the entire bill anyway. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28189

This is the specific language that Obama voted to include in the 2003 bill, but
which apparently still wasn’t enough for him:

"Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive as defined in this section."

THE CHILLING TRUTH

Barack Obama is so intent on protecting abortion, he doesn’t want infants born alive during botched abortions to be protected under the law.

On March 30, 2001, Obama spoke against the Born Alive Infant legislation:
http://www.ilga.gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST033001.pdf (page 86)

“Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a – a child, a nine-month-old – child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it – it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute.”

Here is April 2002 audio of Obama defending his position against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act:
Listen the audio:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/mp3/2007-04/29383467.MP3
Text:

“I suspect that doctors feel that they would be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations, and that essentially adding an additional doctor, who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come
in and make these assessments, is really designed simply to burden the original
decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an
abortion.”

Obama didn’t want the original decision by the mother to abort her baby second-guessed to the point where if the baby were born alive, he wanted the original decision to have the baby terminated honored.

This man, Barack Obama, is so extreme in his pro-abortion activism, that even when an aborted baby is born living outside the mother, he does not want this new life to get equal protection under the law, but he does want the original decision to terminate the life respected and carried out.

I pray we are not the kind of country that would elect this kind of man as our leader.

God & Liberty

2008-08-24T22:19:00.008-06:00

I recently received an email that a family member sent out to friends and family alerting us to an NBC online poll asking if we think "In God We Trust" should be kept on U.S. currency. Shortly after this email, all on the email list received a reply from someone on the list with this curt reply: "In my opinion, there are more important things in the world to focus on than if a boastful public declaration of God is made on a piece of money, the symbol of materialism."

My blood pressure immediately went through the roof. This statement reveals two major clues that the emailer is a far-left liberal: (1) A criticism of the expression of God; (2) A Marxist criticism of materialism.

I wrote the following in response:

As we know, a key and meaningful difference between our country and Communist countries is the freedom of the citizenry to worship how, where, and what they please. In Communist regimes (which are expressions of Marxist ideology), citizens are not allowed to worship God because the State is considered all powerful and the granter of rights. Acknowledging a being greater than the government undermines the power of that government, according to Communism. Individual human rights are subjugated to the will and purposes of the State.

Over 100 million people in the 20th century were murdered under Communist regimes. Millions simply disappeared in the middle of the night, their families never seeing them again. Millions starved because of the Marxist ideology put into practice. And millions were sent to Russian gulags, the Communist version of concentration camps. All because Marxist Communists decided they, as government leaders, were all powerful.

Compare that to the United States of America. Our founding fathers knew that human rights will always be trampled upon if those rights are given or denied by other people. Therefore, the most powerful difference between our country and every other country is the idea that God, not man, has endowed us with rights. This means that the whims of men cannot take away our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

All people, whether black, white, gay, straight, young, old, atheist, Muslim, or Christian, have the exact same individual rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thanks to the principle of God as our Creator and Giver of rights, we don't live in a place with a government like that of Communist China that has it's own version of concentration camps called "re-education camps" where hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens are currently being tortured and kept against their will simply because of their political and religious beliefs. In Communist China, it's citizens do not have the right to worship, to their own lives, to liberty, or to pursue happiness how they please. Even the youth who performed in the opening Olympic ceremonies did not have the right to liberty, being housed for months in cramped living quarters preparing for the Olympics, being fed not much else than rice and often not being fed at all. For two days prior to the opening ceremonies, the participants, many children, were made to practice outside in the rain and cold, not allowed to leave the stadium, and given on a couple of bathroom breaks and very little food and sleep.

In Communist Cuba, we know that anyone with political beliefs conflicting with the government are in danger. Homosexuals are killed because the Communist government has decided they do not have the right to life. This last week, the great "anti-materialist" Cuba announced that for the first time, rice cookers would be made available to its citizens. Rice cookers. It's hard to believe that there exists within just a few miles of the United States a people who have not been allowed something as simple a a rice cooker.

The God-given freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has opened the doors for millions of U.S. men and women to achieve whatever success and endeavor they want AND to enjoy the monetary and other rewards for doing so. This system has worked so well, that the poorest in our country have TVs and cell phones. This materialist society has worked so well that private citizens give MILLIONS and MILLIONS of dollars in aid each year to countries who do not allow their citizens their God-given rights to life and liberty, where human achievement is squelched and punished. So much money flows in to our government by ways of taxes and that additionally, the U.S. government gives BILLIONS of dollars in aid to other needy countries.

Our "materialist" (aka free) society works so well that millions of people each year flee their countries just to work in this country and BILLIONS of resulting dollars are sent back to these countries that do not give their citizens rights to even private property.

So, "In God We Trust" is a symbol of that which has kept us a free people, where no citizen lives in fear of the government taking away their life, the lives of their family members, confiscating their property, or confiscating most of one's earned income.

Because of "In God We Trust", we as citizens have a light and life in our eyes not seen in the eyes of citizens in formerly Communist controlled regions. These people have been so brutalized by their anti-religious Communist governments that they still live with lingering effects like fear and a wariness of others, even though these people no longer have to worry that their own children will turn them into the government police.

"In God We Trust" means that those who don't believe in God have the same INDIVIDUAL rights as those who do. Straight, gay, black, white, Christian, atheist, etc. all have the same individual human rights to live, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the person standing next to them. We don't know what fear is of government in this country thanks to "In God We Trust".

Every piece of American currency is a symbol of individuals exercising their God-given rights to achieve and receive the rewards for doing so. Each American dollar is the tangible evidence of free people willfully and freely exchanging goods. Every piece of American currency stands for an American citizen's choice to achieve and of a government which respects and protects that citizen's right to their resulting income.

America's capitalist spirit has motivated people to invent, invest, create, risk, and discover. I'm extremely grateful for people, motivated by the prospect of great riches, who took the enormous time, money, brain power, and especially the risk, to give me goods like medicines, vaccines, computers, televisions, air conditioners, cars, clean water systems, etc etc etc. Every modern convenience I live with was a result of someone exercising their freedom to innovate and keep the rewards for doing so.

I'm grateful for our motto "In God We Trust" for all it stands for and for all it has given me.

ORIGIN OF OBAMA’S POLITICAL VALUES

2008-08-03T23:11:00.007-06:00

"Communism is a failed philosophy, a theory that creates only misery, deprivation, and oppression wherever it's put into practice."
Ronald Reagan,
July 24, 1987

--The following entry is authored by Robert Yates, contributing blogger.--

BARACK’S MOTHER. Barack Obama has called his mother, Ann Dunham, “the dominant figure in my formative years…. The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics.”

It’s fair to ask what those values are. To present his family in a positive light, Obama stated in a campaign ad that “I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. We didn’t have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up.”

The Kansas heartland? Actually, the record shows that the values of Barack Obama’s family are secular and socialist, rather far out of the American mainstream.

When Stanley Ann Dunham (her father wanted a son and gave her his first name) was 13, her family moved from Kansas to the State of Washington where she attended Mercer High School, a hotbed of leftist sentiment.

Ann Dunham’s politics and values are thoroughly examined by Chicago Tribune reporter Tim Jones in a March 27, 2007, article, Obama’s mom: Not just a girl from Kansas.

Below are some interesting sections from Jones’s article about Ann Dunham’s friends and high school teachers:

· “She touted herself as an atheist, and it was something she’d read about and could argue,” said Maxine Box, who was Dunham’s best friend in high school.

· But consistent with the 1950s, there were undercurrents of turmoil. In 1955, the chairman of the Mercer Island school board, John Stenhouse, testified before the House Un-American Activities Subcommittee that he had been a member of the Communist Party. Other teachers at the school taught from The Communist Manifesto and encouraged anti-authoritarianism.

· Madelyn and Stanley [Ann’s parents] shed their Methodist and Baptist upbringing and began attending Sunday services at a church known in the 1950s as “the little Red church on the hill.” Skepticism, the kind that Stanley, Sr. embraced and passed on to his daughter, was welcomed here.

· Childhood friend, Chip Wall, described young Ann as “a fellow traveler.” According to Webster’s dictionary, a fellow traveler is translated from the Russian poputchik, “a person who espouses the cause of the party, especially, a Communist Party, without being a member.”

Yep, this all sounds like standard fare from America’s heartland. Perhaps as she matured, Ann mellowed from her days as a “fellow traveler.” However, once again, the record shows otherwise. While at the University of Hawaii, Ann continued to gravitate toward leftist friends and associates and there met a Kenyan student, Barack H. Obama, in a Russian language class. Obama’s socialist politics meshed nicely with Dunham’s.

BARACK’S FATHER. A window to Obama, Sr.’s politics is an article he wrote for the July 1965 issue of the East Africa Journal. For those who would argue that this author has selectively taken bits and pieces out of context (as Obama, Jr. did in countering the critics of Jeremiah Wright), here is the link to the complete article, Problems Facing our Socialism.

In this unbelievably boring, disjointed, and rambling article, Obama, Sr. provided several gems of socialist knowledge. “True there are cases in which nationalization is bad, but there are, likewise, quite a few benefits derived from it.”

Showing off his support of Marxist ideology, Obama, Sr. argued that “It is true that mismanagement can occur both in private as well as public ownership, but we ought to look at the matter within the social context. Looked at this way, we can avoid economic power concentration and bring standardized use and control of resources through public ownership…”

Obama, Sr. called for reverse discrimination and the seizure of the property of Asians and Europeans in Kenya. “One need not be a Kenyan to note that nearly all commercial enterprises... are mostly owned by Asians and Europeans. . . . We have to give the African his place in his own country and we have to give him this economic power if he is going to develop.”

What attracted Ann Dunham, the supposed daughter of the vast American prairie heartland, to this committed African socialist? More telling was the fact that they met in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii in 1960. Did they want to read Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy in the original Russian or were they sympathetic to the Soviet Union?

THE APPLE DIDN’T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE. Barack Obama, Jr. embraced his parents’ radicalism as evidenced by the company he chose to keep since leaving home.
Obama embraced as his mentor Frank Marshall Davis, a man introduced to him by his mother. A far left poet and philosopher, Davis was described as someone “certainly in the orbit of the communist party—if not a member…” by Dr. Gerald Horne, a contributing editor of Political Affairs Magazine, a publication of the Communist Party USA.

In his best selling memoir, Dreams of my Father, Barack Obama speaks warmly of his mentor as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American.

When Obama, Jr. left Hawaii to attend Occidental College in Los Angeles, he continued to gravitate toward leftist friends and organizations. In his autobiography, Obama said that “I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.”

Upon arriving in Chicago, Obama once again chose to cultivate leftist friends such as William Ayers, a member of the Weathermen whose stated goal is to achieve world communism.

In making one of the most personal choices anyone can, an adult Barack Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ and embraced its radical pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who espoused Black Liberation Theology which has Marxism as its theoretical foundation.

At each stage of his political development, Barack Obama has been guided by leftist mentors—his mother apparently being the foremost influence. Most fair-minded observers will have to conclude that Stanley Ann Dunham’s Marxist and socialist views left their imprint on her son and have, as Obama says, helped shaped how “I go about the world of politics.”
----------------
Written by contributing blogger, Robert Yates.

FABRICATED CONSENSUS: A House Built on Sand

2008-06-25T22:03:00.007-06:00

They say that the first step to overcoming a problem is to admit there is one. Al Gore and his fellow global warming fear-mongers have a problem with the truth. It’s time they admit it.

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s blockbuster slideshow about catastrophic man-made global warming, Al Gore asserts that there is “as strong a consensus on this issue as science has ever had.” That’s quite a claim. If one doesn’t have much use for facts, then his statement is worth something. But, the reality is that his claim of consensus is based on substandard science and dishonest findings.

CLAIM OF CONSENSUS IS BASED ON SHODDY SCIENCE

FLAWED SURVEY. As proof catastrophic man-made global warming, Gore cites a comprehensive review of scientific articles on global warming done by Naomi Oreskes published in Science, December 3, 2004. Her results showed overwhelming agreement among peer-reviewed papers about the existence of catastrophic man-made global warming.

The problem is that this study turned out to be fraught with problems. Chris Horner in “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming,” page 90, details its flaws:
(1) Ms. Oreskes left out over 11,000 articles in her “exhaustive” search for consensus. She claimed to have used a broad search term (“climate change”) to find all relevant papers, but in actuality used a narrower parameter (“global climate change”) resulting in only 928 articles. Science had to print a correction. Oopsy.
(2) Of the 928 articles she did review, most dealt with other topics and only mentioned climate change in passing without any analysis or conclusions. Turns out only 13 of the 928 articles supported Oreskes’ review findings.
The non-profit research group Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) detailed all of Oreskes’ shoddy scientific methods and the lengths Science magazine went to further Oreskes’ lie of consensus, including refusing to publish dissenting opinions.

FAKED GRAPH. A primary factor in today’s widespread belief in man-made global warming is a study by Michael Mann first published in 1998. The study found stable global temperatures for a 1,000 years followed by a radical increase in global temperature the past 100 years. The study is commonly known as the “hockey stick” because Mann’s research, as summarized in graph form, looks like a horizontal hockey stick.

Al Gore has leaned heavily on this study to persuade the masses that the modern world, specifically the U.S., is ruining the earth. However, Mann’s study has been effectively debunked (check out these four articles: here, here, here, and here).

Despite the facts, Gore still cites it as proof. Mann, himself, stands by his work. And many other people of science haven’t lost faith in the religion of global warming, nor in its central tenant, the hockey stick graph. One must conclude that either Mann and his fellow true believers are either inept scientists who aren’t that bright, or they are outright liars.

I find most interesting the phenomenon of scientists discarding their role as skeptics who rely on evidence to form conclusions. These scientists, who mock Christians for their faith in an “unprovable God”, now themselves profess faith in catastrophic man-made global warming despite what the science has or hasn’t proven. Like the Christians they mock, these scientists believe without proof. So ruled are they by their ideology, these scientists stand by the conclusions of fraudulent research like that of Mann’s hockey stick graph and Oreskes’ “exhaustive” survey and justify their faith with phrases unbecoming of scientists like “the research was faked, but the conclusions are still true,” and “flawed methods don’t mean wrong conclusions.” The four articles I linked to in the previous paragraph detail the sad state of science which has become politicized to a ridiculous degree.

When it comes to the belief in man-made global warming, there are “the faithful” who will believe despite facts that disprove it. What the rest of us can do is get a handle on the truth and fight those who will use the fraud of catastrophic man-made global warming to harm the U.S. economy and restrict our liberty.

Know Obama = No Obama

2008-04-20T22:21:00.031-06:00

-----

1. Barack Obama is an extremist’s extremist on the abortion issue.

As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama fought three times to deny the right of a baby to live who survived an abortion. He defended his position this way (page 86 of the senate transcript available online--click here):

“We're saying they [aborted babies born alive] are persons entitled to the kinds of protections provided to a child, a 9-month child delivered to term. I mean, it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal-protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child.”

So what he’s saying is, let’s not call it a child so when we kill it, we’re not killing a child. Not even Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, or the extreme pro-abortion National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) opposed a similar bill passed by the U.S. Congress the previous year.

What kind of person fights for the killing of living, breathing, fully birthed babies?

-----

2. Barack Obama is a radical leftist and surrounds himself with rabid America-haters.

Despite his best efforts, the truth is out that Barack Obama is an extreme leftist.

A. During the April 16^th Democrat debate, Obama stated that even though decreasing capital gains taxes increases revenues to the government, he intends to raise this tax out to promote taxation fairness. He said it just isn’t right that some people make so much more than others. His explanations are, of course, good old fashioned Marxism. Consider his intentions: Obama would rather retain the power to control the private property of citizens, even when it means the government will get less revenue. This is why in practice, Marxism has little to do with raising the standard of living for the poor and everything to do with bringing down the standard of living of the wealthy.

B. Barack can’t keep hiding from his voting record. The non-partisan group, National Journal, rated Barack the most liberal senator in 2007 based on his Senate votes. This means that Barack Obama is to the political LEFT of Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.

C. Further, for his entire adult life, Barack has chosen to surround himself with people who are radical liberals, not just Democrats, mind you, but activist leftist who don’t much care for this country.

IN COLLEGE: Barack wrote in his autobiography that he sought out and associated with radicals and Marxists in college, both fellow students and professors.

AFTER COLLEGE: For four years right out of college, Obama joined with other liberals to follow in the footsteps of radical activist, Saul Alinsky, to become “community organizers” which is a benign description of activist groups who used Marxist class warfare to pit segments of communities against their local governments to force liberal social changes. Obama characterized these years as rich learning experiences. And indeed they must have been because he is still using these Marxist tactics in his campaigning today.

IN POLITICS: Early in his political life, Obama sought out and associated over several years with admitted terrorist, William Ayres, who is proud he bombed the Pentagon in the 1970’s. Ayres is unrepentant today and has recently expressed regret that he didn’t do more as a terrorist. Barack has also associated himself with Rashid Khalidi, a vocal anti-Israeli activist who worked for the PLO terrorist group.

IN MARRIAGE: Years after his community activist days, Barack married Michelle who had been expressing her radical views since her own college days. Her early writings reveal her hostility toward America generally and white society specifically. She has been influential in introducing Barack to radicals like Khalidi. She still holds antipathy toward this country as evidenced by what she is saying on the campaign trail: In a February 18^th campaign speech: “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.” During a March 10^thAmerica is “just downright mean” filled with “cynics, sloths, and complacents.” interview with the New Yorker, she said

IN CHURCH: For the past 20 years, Barack has attended Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church. Obama calls Wright his close confidant and sounding board. The thing is, Wright is rabidly anti-American. We know this because many of Wright’s sermons are sold through his church website. From these, we learn just exactly what Wright has been preaching:

--About African-Americans: "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America.”

--The day after 9/11/2001, Wright preached: "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.” He also said “America's chickens are coming home to roost.”

--July 2003: " 'God Damn America.' That's in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating its citizens as less than human.”

Catch his greatest hits on youtube.

ONE MORE PIECE of the Obama puzzle: It has been discovered that Barack’s mother was a lifelong outspoken Marxist. Did Obama follow in his mother’s footsteps? In a recent interview, Barack said this: “The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics.”
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So, who is Barack Obama? The answer: He’s a liberal. But not just any kind of liberal. He’s an extremely left-wing liberal who surrounds himself with radical liberals who hold great disdain for America and all it stands for.

Do we as a country want someone this radically liberal as President? I hope not. Even more importantly, though, do we want someone leading our country who is willing to redefine what a child is so it can legally be allowed to die, or worse, killed? I hope we as a people haven't become the kind of citizenry that would elect this man.

Heading Barackwards

2008-03-23T21:17:00.014-06:00

Mark Steyn, great Conservative writer and commentator, coined the term "Barackwards" for the direction Barack would take this country if elected president. So what direction would that be? What does Barack Obama stand for? To date, he's successfully evaded having to really discuss his ideology and the details of his platform to any great length. A lot of Conservatives who dislike moderate McCain and loathe Hillary, think Obama wouldn't be such a bad president for four years until a better Conservative than McCain could run. All they've heard from the main-stream media about Obama is that he's for change this country needs. That doesn't sound so scary. How bad can he be?

This is dangerous thinking because the truth about Barack Obama is that his U.S. Senate voting record is LEFT of the one declared Socialist in the Senate. Obama is more left-wing than Teddy Kennedy. What little he does give away in his speeches about his proposed policies reveals that this Barack-Fresh-New-Hope for the future-Obama is nothing but a tired tax and spend Liberal. He has no new ideas. His answer to everything is tax the rich to expand the power of government. His ideas are based on the old failed Marxist ideology.

I think we know what Ronald Reagan would say about Obama's ideology and his proposals to move the country "Barackwards" because "Barackwards" is nothing more than a repackaging of the Liberal socialist ideas Reagan battled for years and years. Reagan described these ideas as:

"stale cliches and bogus prophecies" (of Marxism)
"failed and exhausted liberal ideology"
"decaying and crumbling dreams of Marxism"

Reagan highlighted the difference between what would become Obama's tired old socialist-style ideas and the true "power-to-the-people" ideas of our Founding Fathers:

"Marx was wrong. …It is the democratic world that is flexible, vibrant, and growing -- bringing its peoples higher and higher standards of living even as freedom grows and deepens. It is in the collectivist world that economies stagnate, that technology is lagging, and that the people are oppressed and unhappy with their lives."

The true Barack Obama is today's face of the old big-government/freedom-squelching/taxing and spending/socially engineering Liberal.

A Tale of Two Great Communicators

2008-03-02T12:21:00.018-07:00

Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Two great communicators. Two people so different from each other in ideology and experience they fall on opposite sides of any spectrum.

In experience, Obama has had a handful of professional experiences since college, each for a single digit number of years. Reagan had many professional experiences spanning 50 years which included military, private sector, and government employment.

Even more striking is the ideological gulf that separates these two men. While Reagan spent most of his professional life teaching about and fighting against big government in all it's forms at home and abroad, Barack has spent his short political life voting for every conceivable measure to increase the size and control of government.

While named "The Great Communicator," it was Reagan's ideas that made him a great leader. When Reagan taught, he sought to remind us that the power to shape our lives was God-given and in each of us. Government should be limited and what power it did have should serve only to enable the entrepreneurial spirit.

Enter Obama. He is also being hailed as a great communicator. But the ideas he's communicating are of individual and group helplessness and injustice. To Obama, government exists to take from some and give to others. When Obama speaks, Obama is the one that comes away empowered, a savior of sorts, not the individual citizen. This is no great leader in the making.

Two great communicators, two very different men, two very different leaders, and two very different ideologies. One, empowers the individual; the other, makes the individual subservient to a powerful government. The latter ideology has never ended well for it's citizens.

A New Level of Shameless Audacity

2008-02-25T19:11:00.012-07:00

Our tax system has come to be un-American. ...The power to tax is the power to destroy. President Ronald Reagan, Address to the Nation, May 28, 1985

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A significant portion of our population, including elected leaders, have sought successfully to make it U.S. government policy to forcibly take the private property (income) of certain U.S. citizens to give to other U.S. citizens. The redistribution of income through the tax code is unconstitutional because it does not promote the “general welfare,” but only the welfare (and questionably so, at that) of certain citizens at the expense of other citizens.

One of my all-time favorite political writers (and radio host fill-in for Rush Limbaugh), Professor Walter Williams explains it this way:

We have to decide what is a right. The way our Constitution's framers used the term, a right is something that exists simultaneously among people and imposes no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech, or freedom to travel, is something we all simultaneously possess. My right to free speech or freedom to travel imposes no obligation upon another except that of non-interference. In other words, my exercising my right to speech or travel requires absolutely nothing from you and in no way diminishes any of your rights.

So-called “rights” like free healthcare and affordable housing, when other people’s property is required to provide those rights, aren’t Constitutional rights at all.

The treatment of groups differently (some better, some worse) by the government is what the Democrat party specializes in. Class warfare fuels the party’s power and keeps the masses subservient by thinking they need government to come in and save them from perceived exploitation by “bad” groups like the rich, or Christians, or men, etc. These mistaken masses don’t seem to realize that they have all the rights they need given them by God to fulfill the potential they have. And they live in a country which instituted protection of individual rights thereby creating equal opportunity for each individual citizen.

The unconstitutionality of the Democrats’ political platform is dangerous; the exploitation of their own followers is ironic and abominable, but unfortunately nothing new. (The Democrats have been buying votes since FDR.) But I find it obnoxious to a new extreme for Barack Obama to be accepting what has become a unique worshipful adulation by promising to save his followers from every conceivable societal ill through government programs which will be funded by confiscating other citizens’ property. He, who has not created one job in the private sector, is accepting god-like status for promises that can only be kept on the backs of working citizens.

Again, the Dems have been doing this for years, but rock-star Barack, savior Obama, takes it to a whole new level of perverse audacity.

Bush Derangement Syndrome (Part 2)

2008-02-13T21:28:00.012-07:00

Too many members of the media approach issues like Federal spending from a superficial perspective. Our positions are reported in caricature. Special interest charges are reported uncritically, and the public's understanding suffers. Shouldn't we expect better of those who act in the name of the public's right to know?
President Reagan, Remarks to Administration Officials on Domestic Policy, 12/13/1988

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Liberals have tried persistently over the years to prove their theory that President Bush lied in order to go to war in Iraq. As I wrote about in my last blog, the latest of these embarrassingly pathetic and desperate attempts is a so-called study that claims to document all of Bush’s Iraq lies. The “study” was quickly exposed as propaganda which used the kind of reasoned arguments one might find coming from a three year old.

These childish fits against the President would be mere annoyances if they weren’t taken so seriously by a complicit mainstream media (or as Michelle Malkin aptly calls them, the Lamestream Media). The Associated Press and New York Times both reported the study, but neither article mentioned that it was funded by radical Liberal activist George Soros. In fact, both portrayed the study as a definitive scholarly work. The New York Time article read more like an advertisement than a report. One can safely conclude that either these media outlets employ reporters who aren’t very good at reporting, or, they share the bias of the study and purposefully hid the Liberal agenda.

The bad news is that this kind of deceitful (or, at best, shockingly inept) reporting is commonplace in the mainstream media. Furthermore, the major TV news agencies (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC) get their roster of news stories directly from the New York Times and propagate the misinformation with the same disregard for the truth.

Once false information is out there, it’s nearly impossible to correct and very often is not. Once established, the misinformation becomes the foundation for more falsehoods and flawed conclusions. Which, I believe, is the reason the media does what it does.

It’s these layers and layers of false ideas that Ronald Reagan cut through. He didn’t even have the benefit of FoxNews or Conservative talk radio to help him. His unique mixture of confidence, humility, humor, and (most importantly) powerful ideas inspired us and dispelled the haze of constant media distortion and inaccuracy.

Logic Deficiency: A Symptom of Bush Derangement Syndrome (Part 1)

2008-02-03T22:31:00.002-07:00

With a great deal of first-hand interaction with Liberalism during his presidency, Ronald Reagan often described Liberal ideas as “scrambled thinking,” and “fatally flawed.” He called their logic “twisted” and “bizarre.”

I suspect the Gipper would agree that Liberal logic hasn’t improved much over the years. Since the election of 2000, no one has brought out Liberalism’s scrambled and bizarre logic better than one George W. Bush, particularly after we invaded Iraq under his leadership.

Rational, clear-thinking people understand the following:

(1) When a person advocates a position based on information they believe is true which later turns out to be false, this person was not lying--they were mistaken.

(2) When two people advocate a position based on the same information which later turns out to be false, either both people were lying or both people were simply mistaken.

Yet this kind of rational logic evades Liberals who insist that Bush lied about the facts in order to get the U.S. to invade Iraq. But they willfully and quite effectively ignore the obvious:

From 1998 to 2003, leading Democrats, including President Clinton himself, laid out the same rationale for action in Iraq as did Bush. Yet, Liberals accuse only President Bush of lying. Two different Presidents recommended the same course of action based on the same information, but curiously only one is a liar. I think this is the very definition of a logic deficiency.

The deficiency is made even more apparent when one considers that while nearly every intelligence agency in the western world agreed with Bush’s assessment, our Liberal friends still insisted quite fervently that George Bush was the one who was lying.

Liberals’ annoying deficiency in logic quickly turned into full-fledged derangement. Despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary, and with not an ounce of sound reasoning on their side, those with what Michelle Malkin calls Bush Derangement Syndrome continued to insist even louder and with wild-eyed fervor that George Bush lied and people died.

One might think that time, namely five years since the war began, might dim the crazy. A “study” published this month proves otherwise. This “study” supposedly documents hundreds of lies by Bush leading up to the war. Well, like most Liberal literature, a couple thinkers were able to debunk the study with barely a lift of their fingers. See Michelle Malkin’s blog entry and Gabriel Schoenfeld’s article. Both articles are quite enlightening and worth reading.

The fact that the study was funded by the extremely liberal radical activist George Soros rightfully brings the study’s authenticity into question. Even more than it’s questionable beginnings, the study is filled with the kind of illogical reasoning I pointed to at the beginning of this blog entry. The authors of the study use the knowledge our country gained after invading Iraq to judge President Bush on his pre-war conclusions. That’s nuts.

Imagine if you had a roommate that applied liberal illogic to non-political, every day occurrences. It may go something like this:

Friend: “Dude, why did you drink my orange juice?!”
You: “Sorry, I had no idea that was yours.”
Friend (yelling in your face): “You’re obviously trying to sabotage my day by drinking part of my healthy, well-balance breakfast!”
You: “Uh…”
Friend (starting to froth slightly at the mouth): “Saboteur! What else are you trying to do to me? You paid my girlfriend to break up with me, didn’t you?! DIDN’T YOU?!”

How long would you go before wondering if your friend wasn’t a bit flawed in his reasoning and slightly deranged in the intensity in which he applied that reasoning?

But, just like a crazy roommate, you gotta love the Liberals...except maybe from a safe distance as mandated by a court of law.

There Are No Evil Nations . . . Except, Of Course, The U.S.

2008-01-20T22:24:00.005-07:00

In 1967, Ronald Reagan and Robert F. Kennedy participated in a televised debate during which Reagan was asked this question regarding his strong anti-Communism:

“Could you substitute communism for virtue and you see the deadlock which it would produce. You think something is good; he thinks something else is good. You want him to give up some of his hostile views. You are not prepared to move back one inch from yours.”

Reagan's response was firm and unwavering:

“At the end of World War II, one nation in the world had unprecedented power, had not suffered any damage to its industrial complex, had the greatest military force the world had ever seen put together, the United States. The rest of the world was war-weary. The United States also had the only bomb that had been demonstrated. We had the atomic bomb, that great weapon. Now, the United States disarmed, the United States made no effort to impose its will on the rest of the nations. Can you honestly say in your heart that had the Soviet Union been in a comparable position with that bomb, or today's Red Chinese, in a position with that bomb, and with that great military force, that the world would not today have been conquered by that force? But this country did not.”

Reagan cut through the monumental lie (or, at best, an astonishing delusion) that all sides of the Cold War were morally equal, that both sides had valid grievances to bring to the table. The Communists, after all (so the lie goes) were just patriots for their country like we for ours.

This argument was a lie and Ronald Reagan called it: There were no moral similarities between the U.S. and Communist Russia. The United States fights for liberty and respects human life; the Communists lust for power and have murdered well over 50 million people to get it. When we were at the height of power, we used our resources to rebuild our former enemies (Japan and Germany). Anytime Communist regimes have had the chance, they have stolen private property, murdered, and left the remaining populations in poverty. Any moral equivalences there??

The whole discussion is quite relevant today because the very same morally confused arguments are being made about Radical Islam. Rational thinkers know that anyone who sets out to murder and maim women and children to make their point has no place on the moral grid.

Those who are confused should ask themselves a question similar to the one Reagan asked: Is there anyone besides Jimmy Carter who really thinks that if the Islamic Extremists got nukes at noon that at 12:05 pm those nukes wouldn’t be en route for Israel? And that at 12:10 pm those nukes wouldn’t be on their way to the U.S.?

Yet, bring this obvious reality to light today and Liberals will call you the very same things they called Reagan: hateful and bigoted.

Liberals are funny people. They equate things that have no equality: Regimes that starve their own people by the millions or blow up children in markets are said to be morally equivalent to the United States where we, not perfectly, but pretty much take care of our own AND give billions of dollars in aid to other countries each year. But the truly crazy comes out if you try to make the assertion that the old incandescent light bulb is just as good as the new compact fluorescents. Just watch the Libs freak out with indignation at the mere suggestion.

One may wonder why Libs can’t see the obvious. I mean, the fruits of Communism and radical Islam aren’t exactly hard to see. So how can otherwise sane people (for the most part) make these nutty assertions? Because in truth, their arguments are not just about raising the immoral to moral. They are about diminishing the good. Their purpose is to take the United States down a notch or two (or many). If Communism isn’t so bad then the U.S. isn’t so good. For Liberals, it’s not worth reporting the many grotesque murders by Islamic extremists that are happening daily, but it is worth reporting that a United States soldier may or may not have touched bare-handed one of the free Korans we provide the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Evidence is pending, but it’s worth reporting. Where is Amnesty International when you need them?! For the love of all that is moral and decent!

It’s all about denigrating the United States. Ronald Reagan called them on it and they have hated him for it ever since.