By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

Why is President Obama suing to invalidate the Arizona law on illegal immigration? Why is he incurring the enmity of even his own Democratic Congressmen from the Phoenix and Tucson areas by trying to kill a law that two-thirds of Arizona and a similar proportion of America as a whole supports?

The answer: It is a desperate, last ditch attempt to rebuild his sagging popularity with America’s Hispanic voters.

Furious at Obama for failing to keep his election year promise to promote comprehensive immigration reform when he had a super-majority at his disposal, they are deserting the president and his party in droves. Unemployment, a sagging economy, and their sharp disagreement with Obama over social issues don’t help the president’s cause any.

So Obama has seized on the Arizona immigration law as a symbolic target, hoping to accomplish in a lawsuit the political task of rebuilding his base.

Remember that in 2008, Obama won precisely the same share of the white vote that Kerry won in 2004. There was a shift among whites as the Obama won more young whites and lost more older ones, but the white vote ratios as a whole remained constant. His entire margin of victory was based on two factors:

a) The African-American vote rose from 11% of the total in 2004 to 14% in 2008 and virtually all voted for Obama; and

b) Latinos, who had backed Kerry by only 10 points, supported Obama by fifty points.

For Obama to have a shot at keeping Democrats in control of Congress, he must replicate the enthusiasm of 2008 among minorities. But his Hispanic flank is definitely weakened. Hence the lawsuit to shore it up.

The answer on immigration reform is to adopt a three part program to dry up the jobs that attract illegal migrants in the first place. When there are no jobs, they will not come and those who are here will go back home without deportations or roundups.

We need to:

1. Strengthen penalties and enforcement of laws barring people and companies from hiring illegal immigrants. Those who do so should face prison time.

2. We need a fool proof national bio-metric ID card so employers can tell who is legal and who is not.

3. We should implement a broad guest worker program to bring upscale and manual workers into the US to fill our labor force needs. They must get at least the minimum wage and have health benefits. But, when the job is over, they must go home.

Democrats won’t embrace this program because the unions won’t let them and because they want illegals to stay here and become Democratic voters. Republican agri-businesses won’t go for it because they want to exploit illegal workers with low pay and bad work conditions.

But this is the solution. Trying to seal the border is good rhetoric but is a hopeless task. Drying up the jobs that bring illegal immigrants here is something we can and must do.

Source: Dick Morris

Published May 30, 2010 | FOXNews.com

Friday: Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa. speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill. (AP)

A California congressman who called it an “impeachable” offense for the administration to offer Rep. Joe Sestak a job in exchange for his quitting a Senate bid said Sunday the cover-up, as usual, appears worse than the crime.

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa said the explanation for the Sestak affair — that former President Bill Clinton offered the Democratic congressman an unpaid position on an advisory board if he would drop his challenge against party-switching Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter — is not plausible because as a sitting congressman Sestak couldn’t have served on a presidential commission.

“It’s a crime because they’ve admitted that they offered this position … So that begs the real question. Do we believe this is a further cover-up because he’s — they’re now talking about a job that President Clinton himself should have known Sestak couldn’t take? ” he said.

“They’re now coming up with a nonplausible answer,” Issa said.

On Friday, the White House revealed that Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had asked Clinton to talk to Sestak about a presidential appointment if Sestak would suspend his bid for the Democratic Senate nomination.

Sestak has said repeatedly since February that he was offered a job to drop out of the race, but he declined. He would not reveal the nature of the conversation until after the White House issued its report on Friday.

“If it’s not a crime — and I believe it is — it certainly is business as usual, politics of corruption. The fact is once you’re in power, if you can use our appointments, you can corrupt the process,” Issa said.

Appearing with Issa on Sunday, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said Obama has cleaned up Washington, but he didn’t say “he was going to change every aspect of everything we’ve done.”

“I think Barack Obama has brought a new level of ethical standards to Washington. Has he changed some basic hard-knuckle politics? No. You need hard-knuckle politics to succeed,” Rendell said. “But he’s not perfect. And there are certain things that have to go on to make things work, and this is one of them.”

Rendell said offers of jobs for political cooperation have happened “for time immemorial.”

“I did the same thing in 2006 to ask a former congressman, Joe Hoeffel, to drop out of the race against Bob Casey in the primary,” Rendell said. “I said come back and see me if you do it. He came back and saw me, and he was out of public service. I appointed him as a deputy secretary of commerce. He did a great job.”

Issa said the difference between Rendell’s scenario and the White House action is that Rendell didn’t have a specific offer in exchange in the deal, so therefore did not violate the U.S. law signed by then-President Clinton.

“Ed Rendell is saying this happens all the time. Sure, it happens all the time, things like this. But it’s usually carefully crafted so it doesn’t fall under this kind of quid pro quo,” Issa said.

Issa said Sunday candidate Obama pledged to conduct a transparent administration so he should submit to an FBI review.

“The question is, has this been transparent? No. Has there been stalling? Yes. Is there a possibility that what we’re being told now is not true because it’s not so plausible? Yes. Should there be independent investigation so we can move on? Yes,” Issa told “Fox News Sunday.”

“I don’t want to be investigating this. I don’t want the White House investigating itself. The FBI or the attorney general should see that it’s investigated so the American people can feel they can put this behind them,” he said.

Issa added he would accept the result if an FBI investigation exonerates the White House of an illegal bribe.

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Recently Rush Limbaugh took President Obama at his word, telling him, thank you, Mr. President, for many of the things President Obama has done since he took office. This was in response to the president’s deriding of the American Tea Party patriots at a Democrat fund raiser in the home of Gloria Estefan when he said they should be thanking him for the tax cuts he gave us rather than complaining about too many taxes.

Here is a video of Rush thanking the president for all he has done for us so far. You’ll notice that kindly ole Rush thanks him for a lot.

The last few days I have been reading Sean Hannity’s excellent new book Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda. In it, Sean details a list of some things President Obama could be thanked for or, perhaps better said, driven out of office for. Here’s a top 10 list of a few of some of the more easily recognizable gifts Obama has perpetrated on the American people whom he so despises:

1. David Axelrod—chief adviser, a radical leftist publisher
2. Anita Dunn—White House communications director, whose favorite philosopher is Mao
3. Van Jones—“green czar,” a self-identified communist.
4. Kathleen Sebelius—Health and Human Services secretary, this former governor of Kansas enjoyed a close personal and financial relationship with later-term abortionist, Dr. George Tiller.
5. Mortgage Bailout Plan—cost $75 billion.
6. The Stimulus Bust—cost $787 billion.
7. ObamaCare (RomneyCare 2.0?)—cost untold trillions of dollars and the American spirit of freedom. As Reagan said, “One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people. . . .”
8. Obama’s World Apology Tour—self-explanatory name for Obama’s international tour confessing America’s flaws and the sins we have committed against the rest of the world.
9. The Death of the Three-legged Stool—strong defense, strong economy and strong social values.
10. And the list goes on and it growing minute by minute. Obama will just keep on giving unless we stop him.

The time to stop Obama’s gift-giving campaign for the American people is, first, the 2010 elections, then in 2012 we can get him off our backs completely, if we constitutional conservatives stick together and vote en masse.

Hint: Electing Mit Romney as president in 2012 is not the answer. There are probably several good answers but he is not one of them. The man is a RINO. Of the really good answers out there, to me the most electable right now is Newt Gingrich.

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I recently came across the following article, Dismantling America, written by Thomas Sowell and published in October of 2009. Those who love the America they were born and raised in will do well to read this article and take to heart the evidence Mr. Sowell so succinctly lays out for the dismantling of what is left of that America.

Thomas Sowell is a full-blooded America who happens to be black. I believe he considers the appellation African-American beneath his dignity. He is widely known and respected for his academic achievements and his knowledge of Economics, Education, Politics, History, Race relations, and Child development. He is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.

After reading this post, you might find it interesting to read these posts, Will the United States of America Fall Apart in July 2010? and Will the United States of America Become a Socialist Country in 2010?.

Unfortunately, what seemed too outlandish to even consider a few months ago, doesn’t seem quite so outlandish today. Mind you, I am not suggesting America will fall apart this year, but the coming November elections may well decide if America will survive or not as a free country.

Dismantling America

Will the country wake up before it’s too late?

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many “czars” appointed by the president, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another “czar” would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government’s liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called “experts” deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life-and-death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brownshirts of dictators than like anything American.

How far the president will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.

Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to “change the United States of America,” the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles, and the people of this country.

Jeremiah Wright said it with words: “G** damn America!” Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community-activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans to a captive audience of children.

Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn’t know what such people were like, when he had associated with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?

Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government — people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, and resent America’s influence in the world.

Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed. Fox News is now high on the administration’s enemies list.

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama’s own contempt for American values and traditions as trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2009 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

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The one recent event that grabbed everyone’s attention was the stunning upset victory by Republican Scott Brown in the race for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts long held by Ted Kennedy. That victory is being hailed across this land as a national victory for political conservatives. It appears some of the first fallout from that Republican victory is the refocusing of President Obama’s view on what America says is job one: the U.S. economy.

It took a cataclysmic event to do it, but if you choose to believe him this time, President Obama is signaling a change in his economic policy.

Here is what the president said in his announcement of his economic policy change.

I’m proposing a simple and common-sense reform, which we’re calling the “Volcker Rule”–after this tall guy behind me. Banks will no longer be allowed to own, invest, or sponsor hedge funds, private equity funds, or proprietary trading operations for their own profit, unrelated to serving their customers. If financial firms want to trade for profit, that’s something they’re free to do. Indeed, doing so–responsibly–is a good thing for the markets and the economy. But these firms should not be allowed to run these hedge funds and private equities funds while running a bank backed by the American people.”

Sounds good, doesn’t it. Now let’s look at who this Paul Volcker fellow is. He is a brilliant economist. I remember Paul Volcker from when he was the Fed Chairman in the Jimmy Carter administration. Making him the Fed Chairman is just about the only good thing I can remember Jimmy Carter doing during his presidency. I remember how Mr. Volcker showed his willingness to do the difficult things that had to be done to change the economic direction the country was headed in when he came into office. He swiftly moved to put a stop to the raging inflation that was threatening at the time. You may recall if you are old enough that Mr. Volcker was successful in stopping that inflationary trend. It took a recession to do it, but he stuck to his guns and got the job done.

So, at first blink, it would appear from that scenario we should expect tough times ahead—as if we haven’t had enough tough economic times already. Assuming Mr. Volker can walk on the economic hot waters we find ourselves in presently, I don’t expect he’ll see much need for making things get much worse before they get better, although that may well be in the offing rather we like it or not.

What I do foresee is that, since this man knows his job, we can expect he will see to it that what needs to be done is done, if, that is, the president gives him the power to do the job by appointing him his Fed Chairman. There are rumblings around Democratville that the present Fed Chairman, Mr. Bernanke, may be on the way out but that does not assure that Mr. Volker will get the job in his stead. So that is the big question, will the president give Paul Volcker the power to do the job or is he just kidding us again.

I say we can hope the president will keep his word this one time, but I won’t count on it. The man is an ideologue and the latest wind out of his mouth indicates he is not going to step back from what he sees as the best socialistic policies yet devised to turn America into just another failed European-style socialist country.

Gosh, I hope I am wrong about that. I hope he got a call from President Clinton telling him it is time to change course if he wants to be a two term president and that he took that advice to heart. I hope but not that much that he got the call and that he listened and understood, and took to heart that sage advice from the savviest political mind to live in the Whitehouse since President Ronald Reagan.

Still, I will be one happy fellow and a strong supporter of the president on this one issue, if he does keep his promise this one time to strengthen our republic by being tougher on banks and other financials, but only if he does it for all the right reasons.

We need a true believer in the Whitehouse; a true believer in the republican way the founding fathers of our republic gave us in the Constitution of these United States. When he is not spewing hate, Mr. Obama appears to be a nice American gentleman. We need to see more of that nice American gentleman and less of the hatemonger we have so often seen in the past.

If I could speak with the president, I would tell him to join in with us in our victory celebration. I would say that he has said more than once that what is good for America is good for him. I would tell him now is the time to show the truth of that statement before his time has run its course.

The president should appoint Paul Volcker Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank.

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By Patrick J. Buchanan

“It’s time to stop worrying about the deficit — and start panicking about the debt,” the Washington Post editorial began. “The fiscal situation was serious before the recession. It is now dire.”

The editorial continued:

“In the space of a single fiscal year, 2009, the debt soared from 41 percent of the gross domestic product to 53 percent. This sum, which does not include what the government has borrowed from its own trust funds, is on track to rise to a crushing 85 percent of the economy by 2018.”

What are the risks of an exploding U.S. public debt?

The Chinese, Japanese and Arabs still buying that debt will begin to suspect they are holding onto paper on which the United States will default, or will cheapen by inflating its currency — as the Germans did in 1923 to avoid paying war reparations.

When they do, they will stop buying U.S. debt and start dumping. The Fed will then have to raise interest rates to attract borrowers, throwing the economy into a tailspin.

Is Congress even aware of what is happening?

Harry Reid is talking about doubling Medicare rolls to include folks 55 to 64. Facing a second straight $1.4 trillion deficit, Congress is moving to raise the debt ceiling by another $1.8 trillion.

And the lead story in the Post Monday began:

“The Senate cleared for President Obama’s signature on Sunday a $447 billion omnibus spending bill that contains thousands of earmarks and double-digit increases for several Cabinet agencies.”

Total cost of the Senate bill passed Sunday was “$1.1 trillion, including average spending increases of 10 percent for dozens of federal agencies.”

Ten percent hikes for federal agencies? What is going on?

Democrats say the money is needed to make up for the neglect of the George W. Bush years. But the Bush years were the fattest years for federal social spending since the Great Society.

Sen. Dick Durbin says the spending is necessary “to keep cops on the street … so that families feel secure. … Money spent to help our first responders, firefighters and policemen is a critical investment.”

But aren’t cops and firemen a state and local responsibility?

“It is business as usual, spending money like a drunken sailor, ” said Sen. John McCain. “And the bar is still open.”

But when sailors get drunk and spend crazily, they are on shore leave and spending their own money. When they get back aboard ship, they sober up and shape up, and do the vital work they enlisted to do.

These congressmen never stop bingeing. They are addicts. They are alcoholics. And they are spending our money. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, there are 5,200 earmarks in that one Senate bill, which averages out to 12 pork projects for every House member — and 52 for every senator.

What is going on in Washington?

Democrats are following the Rahm Rule of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. “Don’t allow a crisis to go to waste. … There are opportunities to do big things.”

The Party of Government is exploiting the economic crisis to grow the government. And from the standpoint of self interest, this makes sense. Most government employees are Democratic voters, as are most beneficiaries of government programs.

Moreover, Democrats have to get the money out the door before the midterms, where the party is going to take a bath and lose power.

How else to explain this lead story last week in USA Today:

“The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession. …

“Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months — and that is before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

“Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.”

When the recession started, the Defense Department had 1,868 civilian employees earning $150,000. Defense now has 10,100. The Transportation Department had one person earning $170,000 when the recession began. Transportation now has 1,690 employees earning above $170,000. Recession in America means boom times in D.C.

The financial crisis that almost sank the capitalist system was the work of Washington and Wall Street. The Fed created the bubble. The White House and Congress goaded banks into making all those subprime mortgages. Fannie and Freddie bought up the lousy paper and turned it into securities. Wall Street banks bought them up and put them on their books as Triple A assets. Federal regulators looked the other way.

Yet happy days are here again on Wall Street. And Washington never saw better times, with federal workers now earning, on average, $31,000 a year more than workers in the gutted private sector.

Is this the government the Founding Fathers dreamed of — or is this the kind of arrogant government they took up arms against?

Source: Patrick J. Buchanan

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With a lot of journalists, plus delegates and advocates heading for the big meet up there, Copenhagen is being billed as the Earth’s last chance to curb the carbon footprint we humans are accused of exacerbating everyday by using of common everyday conveniences and conveyances like cheap coal-generated electricity and gasoline- and diesel-fueled cars and trucks.

The organizers of this extravagant outing to Copenhagen hope to produce binding caps on emissions, global taxation to redistribute trillions of dollars, and micromanage everyone’s choices of almost everything; and what they forget to micromanage this time, they will surely not overlook at next opportunity.

Just to give you a hint of how the players are lining up to help, here is what the top two players on the world stage have in mind. China will give a tiny bit by promising to reduce its carbon footprint, which means in effect its emissions will continue to rise; while, on the other hand, our lord-high, ultraliberal ruler, B. Hussein Obama, understanding well the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If that happens, it will mean 2050 emissions will be equal to those of 1910, when there were about 92 million Americans. But there will be closer to 420 million American in 2050, which means that for Obama’s promise to be fulfilled per capita emissions then will have to be about what they were in 1875. Folks. That. Ain’t. Gonna. Happen. So why will B. Hussein promise that? Well, that’s just the measure of man; that’s why

Newly discovered emails and documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in Britain—a collaborator with the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—reveals some scientists’ willingness to deliberately exclude or knead data and manipulate the peer-review process and publication of scholarly work. The CRU materials reveal how their paranoid scientists believe that in trying to engineer a consensus about global warming, they are a brave and persecuted minority. This is without a doubt the first time in peacetime history that the government-media-academic complex has been in such an enduring propaganda-mongering lockstep about any subject.

An odd lesson is to be found in the CRU materials: Climate scientists should not let themselves be goaded by the irresponsibility of deniers into overstating the certainties of complex science or, worse, censoring discussion of them.” Do you think these scientists overstated and censored because they were “goaded” by skepticism?

If their science as undisputable as they insist it is, and if the consensus among scientists is as broad as they say it is, and if they were brave as they claim to be, they would not be “goaded” into such intellectual depravity. Nor would they gaudily bandy the word “deniers” to decry skepticism that shocks communicants in the faith-based global warming community.

Skeptics about the shrill certitudes concerning catastrophic man-made warming are skeptical because climate change is constant: From time immemorial down to the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300), through the Little Ice Age (1500 to 1850), and ever since, climate change has always been a certainty. Skeptics doubt that scientists’ models, which cannot explain the present, can infallibly map the distant future.

In a peculiar response to the CRU materials, The Financial Times wrote: The scientific case for alarm about global warming “is growing more rather than less compelling.” Meanwhile the CRU wrote in an email that: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment”—this “moment” is in its second decade—”and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

The travesty is the intellectual arrogance of the authors of climate-change models that are partially based on the problematic practice of reconstructing long-term prior climate changes. It is on such models they want us to wager trillions of dollars—and a substantially diminished freedom.

Some climate scientists compound their delusions of intellectual adequacy with messiah complexes; supposing themselves a small intelligentsia entrusted with the most urgent truth ever discovered. That being the case, some of them consider it virtuous to embellish facts, exaggerate certainties, suppress inconvenient data, and manipulate the peer-review process to suppress scholarly dissent and, above all, to declare that the debate is over.

Consider the sociology of science, the push and pull of interests, incentives, appetites and passions. Governments’ attempts to manipulate Earth’s temperature now comprise one of the world’s largest industries. Tens of billions of dollars are being dispensed by the U.S. Energy Department, which has suddenly become, in effect, a huge venture capital operation, speculating in green technologies. Political, commercial, academic, and journalistic prestige and advancement can be contingent on not disrupting the (claimed) consensus that is driving the gigantic and fabulously lucrative industry of repelling global warming.

Copenhagen is the culmination of all the prior maneuvering by people determined to fix the world’s climate by breaking the world’s—and especially America’s—resistance to the ever-more-minute supervision by governments. It is not as if Copenhagen will be the last chance of the climate-change crowd; Copenhagen is meant to be a prologue for the 2010 climate change summit in Mexico City, which will be planet Earth’s last chance, until the next one.

Folk, do you suspect a one-world collectivist government is the real endgame being played out by the liberals in this government-media-academic complex, which hopes to deliver binding caps on emissions, global taxation to redistribute trillions of dollars, and micromanage everyone’s choices of almost everything? All of a sudden there appears to be an international consensus gaining momentum that believes this is the endgame of all this climate-change hysteria that has been espoused by such liberals as, former V.P. Albert Gore.

Think about it; it is true that almost to a man, everyone involved in this government-media-academic complex has a liberal bias, and it is true that liberals—like Obama, Albert Gore, and, don’t forget, Jimmie Carter and Bill Clinton—always think that government is the answer to all our ills, and they are sure we can not survive, much less flourish, without their help and guidance.

It would appear that “Climate-change” or “Global Warming,” as it is frequently known has now been shown for “The Great Mockery” it is and quite possibly the greatest mockery the world has ever known.

I have an idea that this farce is far from over. Let us hope though that its defeat is in the offing.

Background: The climate-change travesty by George F. Will

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Without a doubt, President Obama & Co., including Senator Edward Kennedy, intend to do elective surgery on our health care system and to force national health insurance upon us. This despite the fact that if our health coverage is nationalized, the Canadians will no longer have the benefit of the American health care they have become accustomed to. Why? Because we will soon be in the same boat they are in now; very long waits—up to three years and more for elective surgery and other elective procedures.

Why? How many physicians worth their salt elect to be employed by the U.S. government, if they can help it? The number is minuscule. Actually the number of competent physicians is shrinking daily as it is. That is due in part to government meddling in health care.

The same is true for nurses. It has gotten so bad that we are scouring the earth for nurses. Notice I did not say competent nurses. We will accept a certified—yip; usually they are still requiring that—nurses as long as they are breathing and not so wide that they cannot navigate hospital hallways. (Oh yes, I have seen some in the Philippines that might not be able to pass that test.)

It’s bad enough that we can no longer get enough American nurses, but, while we are getting nurses from other, usually very poor countries, we are taking nurses those countries can ill afford to lose. We are thereby turning America’s problem into a problem for those other countries; countries that cannot afford to put up a diplomatic fight with the American government to keep their nurses; nurses whom they desperately need.

We must stop this socialization of the American economy

There are two things a sensible person can do between now and the next election. One, is pray Obama & Co. don’t succeed in their quest to drive the last nail in the coffin of the best large health care system in the world; and, two, work to unseat all politicians who agree with Obama & Co.’s push to create a socialist system of government in the U.S. A socialist system of government and ruining our health care system will certainly have an adverse affect on your and my pursuit of happiness.

Here’s what Sandy wrote in her post:

Single payer visions

We’re beginning to learn what Senator Edward Kennedy’s secret meetings with key health insurance industry stakeholders have been creating in their vision for universal health coverage.

If you want to keep your health care separate from your job, you will no longer have that choice, according to reports of the plan’s 170-page draft. Employers would be required to provide health care to employees or be penalized. Step #1 to a single-payer government managed national health plan.

(Click here to read the full post.)

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Introduction to the English Language series

This is the third and concluding part of this three part introduction for Stop Confusion; Speak Clear English

We will begin at where else but at the beginning

We will begin our quest for a greater command of the English language with the basics of English grammar, punctuation, usage, etc. From there, we will proceed to delve deeper and deeper into our subject. Uh, don’t worry, deeper and deeper, in this case, does not necessarily mean harder and harder.

There will be concepts offered from time to time in this series that will cause you some consternation. You will get through those little trials though and before you know it, you will be a learned speaker of the English language.

Believe me, if I did it, so can you. All you have to do is apply yourself.

Now to the real beginning, the acknowledgements.

Acknowledgements:

Some free online resource for grammar, style, and usage are Daily Writing Tips and The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL). The last named is a very robust website, the former is less so.

The best free online resources for anything having to do with English vocabulary are: Ask Oxford, which is the online version of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary (COED) and much more. The next is the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD); and the next best is; Merriam-Webster Dictionary (MWD). It remains, however, my go-to resource online because it offers the best interface and it offers audible pronunciation of the words defined. When a little more in-depth knowledge of a word is wanted,Thesaurus.com (a COED based resource) is a good thesaurus and dictionary, and more is good for that. So is The Free Dictionary. And, finally the Online Etymology Dictionary (Online ED), is good for those who already speak English fairly well want more in-depth knowledge of a word. There is no better online tool for the heritage of English words.

All of these online resources can easily be found. Simply Google them; that is, search for them through Google. Google is clearly the king of online search.

Some of the most important sources I used for grammar, style, and usage are not available online. The first two of these are both inexpensive. They are the rightly acclaimed The Elements of Style (TES), the original and the third edition and Warriner’s English Composition and Grammar (WECG). This last one is available only as a used book. Used books can be inexpensive, especially when purchased online. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) is in a class by itself as the arbiter of American style compositions.

No English dictionary is equal to The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It is the arbiter of English words definition. Its 20 volume dictionary of the English language is astounding. Bartlett‘s Roget’s Thesaurus (BRT) is the best thesaurus I have found.

And now I wish to acknowledge the best and most important of them all

I wish to take my hat off and bow in praise of a very special group of people: all the elementary, junior high, and high school English teachers who taught me and survived to tell about it. I am sure those teachers won themselves a far greater reward in heaven for having putting up with the insults and the dirty tricks pulled on them by us meanies. We were sometimes unbelievably dumb and we seemingly always had an uncanny meanness about us. How those teachers survived and continued to love us is one of the great mysteries of my life.

Here’s a little anecdote about one of those dirty tricks

I remember one elderly teacher in high school who drove a Model T Ford to school It was a nice, neat black one; a coupe sedan: I never saw a Model T in any color other than black and all those were coupe sedans, as far as I recall. And, yes, that English teacher’s car was even then an old car.

One day some of my fellow students picked up her Model T and sat it back down so that it sat crosswise in the narrow driveway that fed into the school parking area.

Bless her heart; that dear ole soul may have been a little late getting home that night. That driveway was a tight squeeze when you drove on it in the usual manner. I was unhappy then that I missed out on that dirty trick on what we all agreed was a mean, but excellent old teacher. In hindsight, I’m glad I missed out on that particular dirty trick.  That dear old soul wasn’t really mean at all; she was simply a demanding teacher. Demanding because she knew that she had to be demanding if she was to have any hope of getting excellence out of any of us rowdies.

All I can say about those ole time school teachers is I pray to God they got a special reward for enduring us meanies. Their sickeningly paltry pay checks were certainly not much of a reward, so I would say, they had something coming for all the silent suffering they had to endure from us and from those in the educational power structure they work under.

Can you believe it?

Soon after my return home from military service one of my former teachers, Mr. Leigh, who was by then a grammar school principal, offered me a job as a teacher. I turned that offer down on the spot, even though I had no prospects of another job of consequence. To reason immediately came to mind. The job didn’t pay enough and, considering my lack of education, I would have felt like I was stealing had I taken the job.

And now, welcome to the Stop Confusion; Speak Clear English series. Now, dive in and learn English. I did it before you and you can do it now. Believe me; it will be worth the effort.

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Governor Bobby Jindal and Family

by Matt Langford on February 26, 2009

Bobby Jindal, the governor of my state of Louisiana, has gained much respect in political circles in the last few months. His preparedness in dealing with potential Hurricane disasters skyrocketed him to the top of the Republican ranks.

Recently, Governor Jindal was asked to deliver the GOP rebuttal to a Barack Obama speech concerning the economy. His eloquence, charm, style, success, and age have led many to refer to him as the “Republican Version of Barack Obama.” Despite harsh reviews from his first national speech (although some may argue that their minds were made up before the speech), he is still seen as a politician on the rise.

Still, little is known on a national scale about Jindal. One of the foundations on which the Republican party is based is a strong belief in Christianity. Many politicians on both sides of the aisle attempt to hide or explain away any affiliations they may hold with a particular faith.

Jindal, however, proudly penned and published the following words:

I was born in the United States immediately after my parents arrived here from India. I was raised in a strong Hindu culture, attended weekly pujas, or ceremonial rites, and read the Vedic scriptures. Though my prayers were a child’s constant stream of requests and broken promises, Hinduism provided me with moral guidance and spiritual comfort. It never occurred to me that I should consider any other religion; to be a Hindu was an aspect of my Indian identity. A childhood friend, a Southern Baptist intent on converting the world, first introduced me to Christianity by telling me “you and your parents are going to hell.” I was hardly convinced.

My friend’s exhortations did, however, prompt me to investigate my Hindu faith and motivated me to read the Bhagavad-Gita. Although I found the stories fascinating and the writing magnificent, I was uncomfortable when Krishna convinced a reluctant Arjuna to secure his rightful inheritance by making war against his cousins. Though I did not like seeing a deity advocate violence, this feeling was not enough to reject an entire faith. I wanted to examine Hinduism on its own merits and doctrines.

The main tenets of the Hindu faith involve two basic beliefs. The first is that all souls earn their way into nirvana, a state of blessedness, through good deeds. Since this takes many lifetimes, souls are reincarnated until they succeed. One’s material circumstances are based on the past life’s choices; the very worst souls are incorporated into animal bodies…

The second tenet is that all religions are equally valid paths to the same God. This strips one of the right to criticize any set of religious beliefs, including those of cults and other extreme groups. Thus, God is not concerned with having His followers believe in truth. It is sincerity, and not content, that matters. Yet I had had for years a sincere prayer life and still felt a void in my religious faith. Though I was searching for an objectively true faith that would lead me to God, I was beginning to doubt this existed and was ready to accept the “philosophies,” if not the religious beliefs, associated with Hinduism.

My journey from Hinduism to Christianity was a gradual and painful one. I was touched by the love and simplicity of a Christian girl who dreamt of becoming a Supreme Court justice so she could stop her country from “killing unborn babies.” I was also angered by the arrogance of my Southern Baptist friend who claimed his faith was the one true path to God. He seemed to deny the experiences of billions of people who have never seen a copy of the Bible.

I began reading the Bible to disprove the Christian faith I was learning both to admire and despise. I cannot begin to describe my feelings when I first read the New Testament texts. I saw myself in many of the parables and felt as if the Bible had been written especially for me. After reading every book I could find on the historical accuracy of the Bible and Christianity, I was convinced that the Bible had remained unaltered throughout the centuries and that circumstances surrounding Christ’s death led to the conversions of thousands. However, my perspective remained intellectual and not spiritual.

My investigation of Christianity might have remained at this theoretical level had it not been for a short black-and-white film. Though its depiction of the crucifixion was harsher than that of many similar movies, something about this film hit me very hard. For the first time, I actually imagined what it meant for the Son of God to be humiliated and even killed for my sake. Although the movie did not convince me that anything was true, it did force me to wonder if Christians were right. I realized that if the Gospel stories were true, if Christ really was the Son of God, it was arrogant of me to reject Him and question the gift of salvation.

It would require many hours of discussion with a pastor before I was ready to take that leap of faith and accept Christ into my life. It would take another two years for me to be baptized into the Catholic Church. My parents were infuriated by my conversion and have yet fully to forgive me. I tried to prepare myself for the worst; though I was ready when they ended their financial support, I was not as prepared for the emotional battles. My parents went through different phases of anger and disappointment. They blamed themselves for being bad parents, blamed me for being a bad son and blamed evangelists for spreading dissension. There were heated discussions, many of them invoking family loyalty and national identity. My parents have never truly accepted my conversion and still see my faith as a negative that overshadows my accomplishments. They were hurt and felt I was rejecting them by accepting Christianity. I long for the day when my parents understand, respect and possibly accept my faith. For now, I am satisfied that they accept me…

The motivation behind my conversion, however, was my belief in one, objectively true faith. If Christianity is merely one of many equally valid religions, then the sacrifices I made, including the loss of my family’s peace, were senseless. I was comfortable in my Hindu faith and enjoyed an active prayer life; I only gradually felt a void and stubbornly resisted God’s call from within the church. It was Truth and Love that finally forced me to accept Christ as Lord. “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life: No one comes to the Father except through me’” (In. 14:6). Christ’s redemptive sacrifice proved that God loved me and was lifting me up to Him.

I look forward to seeing how Governor Bobby Jindal does in the next round of elections. Will he stick to his faith and convictions or continue the disturbing trend of denial? Personally, I believe it’s the former. I HOPE it’s the former.

original article for America Magazine

Article Source: Matt Langford, writer

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