Showing posts with label Reid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reid. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Is that a Hockey Stick in your graph, or you just happy to see me?

Legacy media has relentlessly marketed the incipient recovery, the end of the recession and the successful culmination of Democrat austerity measures. That last part was a joke. No better evidence of these campaigns are today's headlines highlighting "stable" housing prices:

WaPo: ...U.S. home prices were unchanged in October, according to the widely watched Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller indexes released on Tuesday, indicating stabilization in the hard-hit housing sector...

LAT: "On a month-to-month bases, we are certainly slowing down in terms of the numbers we had seen previously," said Michael D. Larson, a housing analyst with Weiss Research. But "the story remains the same: Housing is not in some huge epic rebound, but nor is it falling apart anymore -- stabilization is clear."

Of course, it takes a special kind of journalistic prowess to omit and ignore the real story of the day.

Fannie Mae: Delinquencies Increase Sharply in October

Fannie Mae reported today that the rate of serious delinquencies - at least 90 days behind - for conventional loans in its single-family guarantee business increased to 4.98% in October, up from 4.72% in September - and up from 1.89% in October 2008.


Now that right there is whatcha call a real hockey stick.
...Just more evidence of the growing delinquency problem, although it is important to note these stats do include Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) loans in trial modifications (and the trial modification periods have been extended again).

What this really means is that the various central-planning efforts of the big government Democrats -- from Fannie Mae, to the FHA, to HAMP -- represent a stunning series of increasingly costly failures that our children and grandchildren will have to somehow pay off. With interest.

As for analysis, you need not wait for legacy media to catch up. In short, the biggest predictor of mortgage defaults is negative equity. The more underwater you are on your loan, the better chance you have of walking away from the home. The fact that more loans (even in HAMP) are going late indicates a deflationary housing spiral is still underway. Foreclosures hurt home values; lower valuations lead to more folks underwater; which leads to more foreclosures... ad infinitum.

And despite all of these many and varied failures, legacy media looks askance while helping to sell the same big government, Politburo-style plans to nationalize one-sixth of the economy. I can't wait for the Harvard Case Study on the death of the liberal media. At this rate, it could be ready by the fall semester of 2011.


Friday, December 25, 2009

The Illustrated Obamaconomy

Marla at Zero Hedge relays photographs of the bustling holiday shopping season at Los Angeles' tony Beverly Center and Westfield Century City.

Beverly Center is located smack dab in the middle of Beverly Hills while WCC is a few miles west in, well, Westwood.

Let's check out the parking lot for the Beverly Center the day before Christmas: hopefully we can find a spot!

Neat! Plenty o' spots left!

Behold: the power of Schwarzenomics!


You could should a pellet gun in random directions and only wound mannequins.

Nothing spells "bargain" like a going-out-of-business sale!

If we could only find the Beverly Center's Dollar Store, I'll bet we could spot the crowds!

Fortunately lots more folks showed up while we were shopping!

Let's head over to Westwood's Westfield mall!

Jam-packed with shoppers enjoying the immense value creation of the Obamaconomy!

You can barely wedge yourself into Macy's.

Ditto the Apple Store.

Thank heavens the $787 billion Stimulus package kicked in when it did. We could have been suffering from a real malaise without the astute economic stewardship of Obama, Pelosi and Reid.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Precipice

I want you to think about the Revolutionary War.

I want you to think about the Civil War.

I want you to think about World War II.

I want you to think about the Korean War.

I want you to think about the Vietnam War.

I want you to think about all the wars.

What if we had a Commander-in-Chief like this, who doesn't desire victory?

A President who is kneecapping our soldiers with confused dictates like granting Miranda rights to terrorists captured on the battlefield; who is kneecapping our soldiers while they try to defeat this enemy; who is kneecapping our soldiers who have a dangerous, complicated and difficult enough task as it is.

I want you to think about how this President has dumbed-down the War on Terror by calling it other things, giving it bureaucratic titles.

I want you to think about how this President has traveled to Europe, Latin America and the Middle East -- and condemned his own country, apologized for it, and laid blame for all sorts of calamities at its feet.

I want you to think about the massive spending spree this President has unleashed; the greatest amount of spending of any country, ever. A President who has incurred more debt in one year than all the prior 233 years combined.

And yet when it comes to defense -- including missile defense, he slashes it.

Yes, we have a force in the Oval Office. A force for danger.

The question is whether all the good works done by all the Presidents before him, all the Commanders-in-Chief, all the excellent Attorneys General, all the excellent CIA Directors, all the troops and intelligence and law enforcement personnel, all the people who have worked so long and so hard, over the many decades...

...the question is whether what they have built will last under this President. Consider the massive debt, the crushing despotism of Iran's insane leaders, or the rise of radical extremism through the world -- this president is AWOL, other than to lobby Congress for more debt, more taxes, more government regulation, more government oversight of the economy.

Despite an unblemished series of failures -- the Post Office, Social Security, the "War on Poverty", Fannie Mae, Medicare, Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve, Medicaid... all bankrupt, all catastrophic failures -- the Democrats now want to nationalize one-sixth of the economy. To take over the entire health care system, when the country is headed for bankruptcy.

The liberals like to say they care about humanity. About the children. I have yet to see them prove it.



Based upon: Mark Levin, 6/10/2009.

A Merry Christmas for Congress from Victor the Contractor

By Victor the Contractor

The United States Senate will have a very Merry Christmas this year as it gifts itself around eighteen percent of the economy. The Health Care Reform Act will effectively nationalize a sixth of the economy while offering fines and imprisonment for violators.

No one really understands what the bill in its entirety means because every time an item is revealed it creates a firestorm of controversy and resistance by one faction or another. Suffice to say this unconstitutional exercise will create a cabal of governmental institutions designed to take a fledgling medical bureaucracy and metastasize in into a 'Health Care Command and Control Administration' that progressively plans larger and larger parts of the economy.

It is not that far-reaching to imagine the FDA controlling and regulating food as drugs because consumption -- or lack thereof -- has some demonstrable effect on health. Certain foods and drink will invariably be banned as poisonous and anything seen as 'not green enough' will be rationed. The cross enforcement of anti-pollution laws and green technologies will bring the EPA to the party as an enforcement arm tailored to regulating all manner of pollution producers. Think of banning riding mowers as creating pollution and a sedentary lifestyle, thus running afoul of the 'Green AND Obesity Police.' Want to smoke a cigar with your goombahs at the local pizzeria? Fuggedaboudit!

Pizza will, of course, be banned or regulated as a major cause of obesity. Those ovens that pump out CO2 by the cubic yard have got to go, too. And cigars? Not only do they cause cancer, global warming and spew aroma pollutants, but the second hand smoke is a weapon used to assault other peoples' health. Now fur-wearing can be rightfully banned as the glorification of sport hunting among otherwise 'civilized' people. The practical implications of amassing policy-making power in one central administration is almost endless as more and more regulatory commissions join forces for the synergies each affords.

While my examples could be viewed as farcical there are many who are chomping at the bit to do away with the pastimes I have noted and this legislation is a backdoor method for doing so. I can for see a world where citizen behavior will be controlled, "To provide for the general welfare." Hell, if Congress can push Health Care through, then a Cap-and-Trade bill is small change and "Card Check" should be passed almost unnoticed. Nobody mention a $20 minimum wage, please...

Of course the American people are screaming at their televisions every night and swamping their respective legislators with opposition but the Government seems to be on a Communist autopilot of late. Our democratic form of Government is morphing into a Politburo with a Central Planning Committee right before our very eyes. And and all the press can do is applaud Michelle Obama's choice of evening-wear and those 'cute as a button' daughters who don't know which fork to use with salad but eat with their hands so gracefully.

I'm so sick of watching the mainstream media dally on about 'The New Kennedy Family' while our Constitution succumbs to the 'Second Bill of Rights,' first proposed by FDR and is in the process of being made into law as we speak. Its a blessing that the founders of this great nation did not linger long enough to see this sad turn of events.

It is also troubling and a sign of the times that Americans don't know what is 'Constitutional' and what is not. That politicians can appear in the media and even suggest that 'health care is a human right' is an affront to all who know The Bill of Rights. And for anyone to claim compassion on the poor is doomed to be poor someday. For we are spending our childrens' prosperity so that one party may be re-elected by the masses for whom they have purchased new welfare programs.

The next generation will be in the unenviable position of saying 'No' to the entitlements as the Treasury is depleted and China loses its taste for American bonds and the avarice which accompanies it. The rich will always have health care and the average American citizen will have dirty clinics with alcoholic 'pseudo-docs' to provide substandard services. Ask anyone who's actually had to go to a clinic: They'll tell you horror stories.

Yes, boys and girls, there is a Santa. And he has given himself the best Christmas present ever. Control. 'Santa Congress' has engineered a plan to nationalize the entire economy and the first step is the health care industry. They did a dry-run with the finance industry and a few car companies, and seeing little protest from its citizens, the government has upped the ante. The Senate voted for cloture on Christmas Eve. Such irony is not lost on me as the Government has finally grasped the spirit of Christmas! But woe to all that this is a selfish spirit; filled with avarice, self-dealing and hypocrisy. Congress will rue the day that it opted to declare a dictator in President Obama, even as it denies the fact.

For even with a change in leadership in both Houses next November, the fix is in. The infrastructure will be in place for a 'Democratic Dictatorship' and the new members will yield to the temptation of pork for prurience. Elections have less and less impact as Democrats are increasingly corrupt and Republicans apologetic for having just a hint of morality.

If I hear about shivers running up a leg at the mention of someone's name again my head will rend the tattered duct tape that hold its contents in and I'll have to wipe my laptop down once more. For the press is now the gossipy sophomore at the high school dance; spreading rumors about what she just heard, as if it was fact, while not understanding the full impact of her words. And woe unto all of those who mistakenly believe that there is any dignity in forcing the productive to support the lazy, or unlucky. That just creates more lazy and unlucky people.

I wonder if the people in Rome started investing in villas in the countryside with high walls towards the end of the empire. Or maybe just a few got out before the treasury was empty and the hoards invaded for the crumbs. There have been ten great empires the earth has been graced with or has suffered, depending on your outlook. And they all started crumbling from within when more people sat and held their hands out while fewer people got up at three AM to make the donuts. Just saying...

Have a Holy Christmas and Happy new Year,

Victor The Contractor


Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Transcript: Calling the DemCare Emergency Help Line

Welcome to the National Health Care Emergency Help Line!

For Espanol, press 1.
For Urdu, press 2
For Arabic, press 3
For Farsi, press 4
For Hmong, press 5
For all other languages, press 6

6

Thank you! Did you press 6? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2.

1

Thank you. To speed processing of your call, please key in your 9-digit social security number, whether it was illegally obtained or not.

5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 3

Thank you. Did you enter five five five four four three three three three? If yes, press 7, if no, press 3.

7

Thank you. Please enter the nature of your ailment, condition or problem.

For Achondroplasia, press 1-0-0-0. For Acne, press 1-0-0-1. For Acrodysostosis, press 1-0-0-2. For Acromegaly, press 1-0-0-3. For Adenoids, press 1-0-0-4. For Adrenoleukodystrophy, press 1-0-0-5. For Age-related macular degeneration, press 1-0-0-6. For Agoraphobia, press 1-0-0-7. For Albinism, press 1-0-0-8. For AIDS, press 1-0-0-8. For Alcohol poisoning, press 1-0-0-9. For Alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency, press 1-0-1-0. For Alport syndrome, press 1-0-1-1. For Altitude sickness, press 1-0-1-2. For Alzheimer's disease, press 1-0-1-3. For Amyloidosis, press 1-0-1-4. For Anaemia, press 1-0-1-5. For --

*

Thank you. To enter the nature of your ailment, condition or problem by name, use the touch-tone keypad to spell the name, then press the pound sign.

4 (h) ... 3 (e) ... 2 (a) ... 7 (r) ... 8 (t) ... 2 (a) ... 8 (t) ... 8 (t) ... 2 (a) ... 2 (c) ... 5 (k) ... #

Did you select HEART ATTACK? If yes, press 2, if no, press 9.

2

On a scale of 1 to 9, with 9 being excruciating pain, how much pain are you in?

9

Enter your age, followed by the pound sign.

7 4 #

I'm sorry, the maximum age of treatment for this condition, as determined by Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research is Seventy-three. Thank you for calling.

Good-bye.

7 2 # ... 7 2 # ... 72 #

*** Click ***

[Call recording terminated]


Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Tyranny: The Reid WelfCare™ Bill Installs Itself Permanently

Red State's Erick Erickson observes that the Senate's health care bill includes language to guarantee its own permanency, an outrageous violation of the Senate's own rules.

Democrats... ignored 200 years of Senate precedents to rule that Senator Sanders could withdraw his amendment while it was being read.

It was Reid leading the Democrats who has determined again and again over the past few days that hundreds of years of accumulated Senate parliamentary rulings have no bearing on the health care vote... [but o]n December 21, 2009... Harry Reid sold out the Republic in toto.

Upon examination of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment to the health care legislation, Senators discovered section 3403. That section changes the rules of the United States Senate.

To change the rules of the United States Senate, there must be sixty-seven votes.

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment requires that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The good news is that this only applies to one section of the Obamacare legislation. The bad news is that it applies to regulations imposed on doctors and patients by the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels... [and] Section 3403 of Senator Reid’s legislation also... sets up a rule to ignore another Senate rule.

In truth -- it's all bad news. What prevents these megalomaniacs from installing similar language in any future "law" to ensure its permanency?

This Democrat Congress has set the Constitution afire. Its has spit upon the Declaration of Independence and urinated on the founder's graves. Could anyone imagine what the framers -- James Madison, specifically -- might say if they were alive today?

Did the states really throw off the yolk of the British crown and its authoritarian, centralized government only to become enslaved to an all-powerful, centralized federal government?

To watch Senators sell their votes for hundreds of millions of dollars of our money, which our children must repay with interest?

To watch an utterly corrupt Democrat leadership pass legislation on Christmas Eve in the hopes that no one will figure out what's actually in a bill that no one's read?

To claim that the bill must be slammed into place because "people are dying every day" -- and then not implement it until 2014 to disguise its true costs?

We are witnessing the rise of, in the words of Mark Levin, a "Soft Tyranny". A Congress hell-bent on ignoring the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself.

The list of usurpations seemingly grows by the day. If I may be sold bold as to paraphrase the Declaration:

The history of this Congress is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

They have refused their Assent to the Highest Law, the Constitution, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

They have called together legislative bodies at times unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the traditions of American government, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with their measures.

They have erected a multitude of New Offices and Agencies, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

They have combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For willfully quartering foreign terrorists among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

We are not yet suffering under an absolute tyranny. But this Congress is completely out of control, willing to engage in the most underhanded and unconstitutional machinations ever seen.

These would-be despots must be politically punished in 2010. Every Democrat must be defeated.

And if there's any climate change occurring, it's because the Earth was thrown off its axis by the gyroscopic energy of the founders spinning in their graves.


Sunday, December 20, 2009

Since you asked...

Here is a reprint of the Congressional Research Service's Recall of Legislators and the Removal of Members of Congress from Office (PDF). The summary reads:

Under the United States Constitution and congressional practice, Members of Congress may have their services ended prior to the normal expiration of their constitutionally established terms of office by their resignation or death, or by action of the House of Congress in which they are a Member by way of an “expulsion,” or by a finding that in accepting a subsequent public office deemed to be “incompatible” with congressional office, the Member has vacated his congressional seat.

Under Article I, Section 5, clause 2, of the Constitution, a Member of Congress may be removed from office before the normal expiration of his or her constitutional term by an “expulsion” from the Senate (if a Senator) or from the House of Representatives (if a Representative) upon a formal vote on a resolution agreed to by two-thirds of the Members of the respective body present and voting. While there are no specific grounds for an expulsion expressed in the Constitution, expulsion actions in both the House and the Senate have generally concerned cases of perceived disloyalty to the United States, or the conviction of a criminal statutory offense which involved abuse of one’s official position. Each House has broad authority as to the grounds, nature, timing, and procedure for an expulsion of a Member. However, policy considerations, as opposed to questions of authority, have appeared to restrain the Senate and House in the exercise of expulsion when it might be considered as infringing on the electoral process, such as when the electorate knew of the past misconduct under consideration and still elected or re-elected the Member.

As to removal by recall, the United States Constitution does not provide for nor authorize the recall of United States officers such as Senators, Representatives, or the President or Vice President, and thus no Member of Congress has ever been recalled in the history of the United States. The recall of Members was considered during the time of the drafting of the federal Constitution in 1787, but no such provisions were included in the final version sent to the States for ratification, and the specific drafting and ratifying debates indicate an express understanding of the Framers and ratifiers that no right or power to recall a Senator or Representative from the United States Congress exists under the Constitution. Although the Supreme Court has not needed to directly address the subject of recall of Members of Congress, other Supreme Court decisions, as well as the weight of other judicial and administrative decisions, rulings and opinions, indicate that: (1) the right to remove a Member of Congress before the expiration of his or her constitutionally established term of office is one which resides exclusively in each House of Congress as established in the expulsion clause of the United States Constitution, and (2) the length and number of the terms of office for federal officials, established and agreed upon by the States in the Constitution creating that Federal Government, may not be unilaterally changed by an individual State, such as through the enactment of a recall provision or a term limitation for a United States Senator or Representative. Under Supreme Court constitutional interpretation, since individual States never had the original sovereign authority to unilaterally change the terms and conditions of service of federal officials agreed to and established in the Constitution, such a power could not be “reserved” under the 10th Amendment.

Damn.


'Health care for all' is not a right; it is slavery

For Americans, the Declaration of Independence codifies man's unalienable, individual rights.

These rights are life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. And that is the complete list of rights to which citizens are entitled.

There is no right to a Whopper with Cheese at the local Burger King; no right to a free month of rent at the Lakeview Luxury Apartments; or even free Chemotherapy treatments should you need them.

Why did the Declaration limit our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness? Because legitimate rights provide freedom for citizens to act, not to receive free shelter, food, medical treatment or big-screen televisions.

The American system guarantees you the right to work for what you want -- not for goods or services to be 'given' to you, without effort on your part, by some mysterious "others".

Consider a system in which your neighbors are compelled to feed, clothe and house you. In other words, your neighbors are ordered, whether they like it or not, to give up their freedoms (their private property, their liberty) to pay for your existence.

In such a system, you would be granted the rights to the goods or services produced by others, whether they voluntarily agree to such a system or not.

In such a system, the right to the pursuit of happiness is misconstrued to mean something else entirely: the right for other people to please you, whether they want to do so or not. Your "right" to happiness comes at the expense of others. They lose their liberties because they have now become your slaves. They are compelled to try to make you happy at their own expense and have no choice in the matter.

But our system defines rights in the form of freedom to act, not guarantees that citizens will receive free goods or services. It was this freedom to act that was unique among nations and made the United States the envy of the world, the richest and most powerful country ever seen on the face of the Earth. It did so by defining individual rights only as freedom of action.

With the passage of Democrat health care, however, the individual rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence have been trampled upon. It is as if the Declaration had never been written as politicians invent new "rights" from whole cloth. These "rights" require only your mere existence: by existing, you will be granted gift-wrapped goods and services from "others" who somehow will provide them to you.

You are now entitled to something simply because it exists and you want or need it. You are entitled to receive it from the government, because the government will take as much labor, as much private property, as much as it needs from the citizenry to give it to you.

Of course, Democrat health care truly wipes away our rights. The people who manufacture the goods or provide the services are now beholden to the state. If you attempt to make the delivery of any good or service a right, you thereby enslave the providers.

But doctors, as Ayn Rand wrote, are not servants of their patients. They are "traders, like everyone else in a free society, and they should bear that title proudly, considering the crucial importance of the services they offer."

The Democrat Party's assertion that "health care for all" is a right is a notion at complete odds with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is no more a right than the right to free bread, free orange juice at the grocery store, a free condo or free open bowling on Friday nights.

"Health care for all" translates to slavery, plain and simple, and marks the beginning of the end of the American experiment.


Inspired by: Dr. Leonard Peikoff and Dr. Mark Levin.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

The Unconstitutional Gambit

Guest post by Victor the Contractor

This week the Senate has done something I thought I'd never see. They are debating a bill they will never vote on and funding for same they'll never have to implement or answer for. The senators are fighting over details that will soon become moot points in the proposed health care legislation because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is molding his own plan. Mr. Reid is holding closed-door meetings with select Senators and is in constant contact with the OMB on how to bring this bill in under a trillion dollars or so.

This method of crafting legislation, running negotiations in secret and excluding most majority party members as well as the opposition, runs contrary to the spirit of the first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution: "We the People."

This bill is being drafted in secret by 'Harry Reid, the person' and no one else. The Constitution is further defied by the ppirit of the bill. Legislation forcing a person to purchase health insurance is, on its face, unconstitutional and when this bill passes, as I'm convinced it will, there will be challenges by those who face prison sentences for defying the new law.

This bill and many others are crafted for reasons that few people understand and will take this country in a direction that bankrupts and effectively socializes it. Health care Reform is not about rearranging the way we obtain medical care, rather, it marks the government's shift from being limited by the Constitution to instead limiting the Constitution's protection of the citizens of the United States of America.

Waiting in the wings is "Cap-and-Trade" legislation that limits our prosperity by imposing tariffs on economic activity. Add the "Employee Free Choice Act" that eradicates the secret ballot in union votes, which will increase pressure on employers to unionize and intimidate employees who might resist. A mandate to purchase a product at a government-set price gets you closer by several degrees to a totalitarian state.

I never thought I'd live to see the day that our elected officials would have the naked ambition to try to 'Marxize' our economy and actually brag about it. And it is equally disheartening to watch the overwhelming bulk of the mass media trumpet this agenda as something to be proud of or that, somehow, patriotism is exemplified by supporting a muzzling of the common man's will in all of this. Extending failed welfare policy to other industries will only ensure the failure of the other industries. And muzzling the populace will only lead to an eventual revolution.

Does anyone think that prosperity will return to this country by curtailing mortgage foreclosures? Will homes appreciate when the government subsidizes anyone who wants a home and forgives missed payments? Will GM and Chrysler survive the helping hand and substandard products selection the Government is forcing them to offer? Will the American public buy knockoffs of French mini-cars that were unsuccessfully marketed in the U.S. twenty years ago? And will small businesses hire new employees and offer health insurance (at the cost of thousands) when they can pay a fine of a few hundred and force the employee onto the government's plan?

I see a different future coming if we stay on this track. A future where nearly every single person's prosperity is limited not by the profitability of one's labor but by the inefficiency and lack of foresight of the committee that oversees said economy.

We have tried that once before: it was called the Soviet Union under communism, and it failed miserably. Not only was it impossible for a person to succeed by their own vim and vigor, but the very spirit of its citizens lay broken with alcoholism and suicide rampant. They are also immense problems in that paradigm of socialist ideology called Sweden. China only survives as a communist entity politically because it is rabidly capitalist in its economic agenda: at least the Red Chinese learned what works in the marketplace. This is more than our current set of leaders can say.

I fear for our Republic. I fear that the framework for a command-and-control economy will already be set by the midterm elections -- and the Congress will build on it every time they get even the tiniest bit of power from here on out. It is a given that the liberals in the Congress and even the President are at peace with being voted out if it will further their agenda of a socialist nation. What is really enraging is that the Republicans are, for the most part, complacent as passive onlookers in this process.

What on earth are we sending them to Washington for, the Cherry Blossom Parade? And what does the Republican leadership do when confronted by a rabidly confrontational Democrat Party with a decidedly Marxist agenda? Offer watered-down versions and claim to be representing our interests. That, my friends, is not leadership. That is capitulation; capitulation to the media, to the Democrats and of their own ideals.

And capitulation is what led us to this sorry state of affairs. What we need is a firebrand of a leader who is not afraid to confront the enemy on their own turf. I say the enemy because those who endeavor to consign our way of life and capitalism to the scrap heap of history I consider enemies of the republic and guilty of treason.

Every Democrat and every Republican who votes in the affirmative for that sham of a "health care reform" bill will, in my opinion, be guilty of treason for contravening the Constitution. The times require a leader who shakes up the establishment and we need to collectively throw out anyone -- anyone -- who thinks big government can solve the world's problems. I'm thinking of a firebrand like Sarah Palin and a whole raft of young, fiscally conservative Republicans!

Sarah Palin is exactly what the system needs to shock us back into reality. That is, if we don't get a depression that wipes out half of the wealth of this country. And if we don't grab this country back from the Marxists soon, that is exactly what we will have. The failed sixties-retreads who burned flags and tore up draft cards are now in office and the those who choose to serve our country are tolerating the hippies' nonsense because the press is overwhelmingly fixated on this new form of communism.

And relying on elections may not be the salve for our problems because the Democrats have been manufacturing voters, both illegal and dead ones, for decades. Acorn is nothing new: the Democrat Party has been cheating at the ballot box for so long that they are surprised when they don't win. Remember Chicago during the 1960 Kennedy election? We need to throw out all who support the communist propagandists and those who tolerate them. When a Republican goes along with a spending program for his share of pork he becomes a hypocrite and undeserving of reelection.

The Democrats and Republicans who 'go along' with this tragic agenda are the problem and will be voted out. We've got to stop spending like drunken sailors (this epithet actually gives drunken sailors a bad name because they stop spending when they run out of money or pass out).

Our vaunted Government is drunk on its own power and passing out money to everybody who will throw support their way. All at the expense of our children. If you are over fifty you will not be the ones who are saddled with the responsibility of paying this debt. At some point the interest alone will be too much of a burden and an economic collapse will follow. And China can keep their cheap products and will suffer along with us. Our children will never forgive us for being 'The Selfish Generation; Children of the Greatest Generation.'

Our future lies in the decisions a few elected officials make on our behalf. Because I believe this to be true we simply must have a 'Midterm Housecleaning.' If we don't succeed, we will end up with a command-and-control economy before we know it. We will suffer the consequences of being a lazy and uninformed electorate. The pillars are in place now for a tyrannical state and we have fiddled with sex scandals and tolerated immoral characters while the Constitution burned -- all under the guise of political correctness. Now we have a society where having values is seen as judgmental and morals as 'hate thought'.

We have almost completely squandered the immense power and goodwill the patriots who served in the First and Second World Wars earned for us with their lives.

Even now their spirits cry out from the hallowed ground in which they rest: they cry for a return to the values that built this great country. We have no choice but to "clean house" in 2010 and send this president into his early retirement in 2012. I'm 'down' for struggle, except now it's time for the hardworking people of this country to say refuse: "No! No, we will not tolerate another trillion-dollar give-away to corporate welfare program and Acorn. No, we will not allow the Constitution to be ignored for the benefit of those who do not work, who do not earn 'enough' or who simply collect unemployment while feeling sorry for themselves. And, no, we will not put up with our elected officials ignoring our will and insulting us when we remind them that they work for us."

That I even have to write this shows how very close we are to losing all of the liberties that prior generations of heroes fought and died for. And we can include the noble Americans who work twelve-hour days for many years to pay their taxes, send their children to college and bury their dead. They too deserve an America that appreciates every drop of sweat, tears and blood spilt for Freedom. And Freedom will bring us home. So fight for it before it is a dim memory.

Victor The Contractor