My Personal Introspections » John McCain

Constitutional Conservatives Must Join the Fight Now!

Lawrence — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 17:17:02 +0000

What fight? Constitutional conservatives must join the fight now to unseat President Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. or his Democrat replacement.

I was hoping against hope Obama would win

During the last presidential election I was hoping against hope Obama would win. Yes, I was a constitutional-conservative Republican then, as I am now, and have been since soon after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As soon as it dawned on me that Lyndon Johnson would assume the presidency, I knew I could no longer be a Democrat.

The first and last time I voted for a Democrat

That election, which saw John F. Kennedy become our nation’s president, was the first election I was old enough to vote in and the last in which I voted for a Democrat. I was unable to vote in the last election; the one in which an unknown nobody, Barack Hussein Obama, become our president. The reason I was unable to vote is that I was living in the Philippines at the time and, even though I was properly registered in Orange County California as a Republican and had requested an absentee ballot in a timely manner, I did not receive a ballot for that election. And, no, it was not for lack of a good mailing address.

I used to think Georgia and some of the other states in the South—I was born and raised the South—were the best at working bureaucratic miracles. Not so. But that is a story for another time. Putting the best of all faces on the reason I did not receive an absentee ballot to vote in the last presidential election would be to say it was a California-style, bureaucratic miracle.

They took my right to vote away

In a way, I am glad someone in the Orange County election commission office saw fit not to send me a ballot for that election, because I fear I would have vote for McCain, even though I was sure that if he were elected, that would be the end of the Republican and, hence, conservative chances for national or state public office for many years to come, if not forever.

Looking back to that election and beyond, I am not so sure anymore that I want to see another Republican elected to public office.

Bill “I didn’t have sex with the girl” Clinton was the most conservative since Ronald Reagan

As disturbing and distasteful as the thought is, I believe Bill “I didn’t have sex with the girl” Clinton was the most conservative president we have had since Ronald Reagan, the all-time greatest constitutional-conservative Republican, and second greatest president ever, was in office. To simply call the other two Republicans, George “Read my lips” H. W. Bush and George “Dubya” W. Bush, economic liberals is to stretch the credulity to the breaking point. Ole “Read my lips” was an economic liberal, his son, “Dubya,” was an economic ultraliberal, and I don’t recall either of them vetoing many of the spending bills that came to their desks. Neither man cared much for constitutional niceties either, plus they were both entitlement enthusiasts. Put together, they gave us 12-years of economic liberal hell.

McCain would have been worse than the Bushes

No, the Bushes, as likeable, patriotic, and just in many of their decisions, as they were, they were not by any stretch constitutional conservatives. Sorry to say, I voted for both of them, because I saw them as the lesser of two evils.

Could John McCain be any worse than either of the Bushes? The answer is: yes. John McCain suffers from some of the same diseases that afflicts liberals. While he appears to be a cultural conservative, he appears insipid and a namby-pamby in the face of hard political and economic decisions and, like the Bushes, he is an F.D.R. New Deal-style spendthrift. And, to my knowledge, he, like Obama, has never run even the smallest business or had a job in the private sector.

Still Namby-Pamby McCain was and is a patriot

In his favor I will say John McCain service to his country as a naval aviator during the Vietnam War does recommend him and he certainly deserves our everlasting gratitude. His military service and heroism shows that at one time the man had a fire burning in his belly, but time has all but smothered that fire. Still, military service, of however much heroism, does not a president make, much less a constitutional-conservative president.

All of his experiences brought John McCain to a point in life that, had he been elected president, he might well have destroyed the Republican Party as the party of political conservatism.

We must stand up for what is right; we must join the fight now!

So where does that put us today? As I see it, unless the old guard Republicans in the House and Senate bow to the reality of the truths it has been shown by the modern-day Tea Party, the Republican Party will not win the coming presidential election. To counter that possibility, constitutional conservatives in the House and Senate must join with the Tea Party in supporting a common presidential candidate. Otherwise Obama will get his chance to finish bringing about the revolution his mentors: his father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.; Saul Alinsky, the community organizer, author of Rules for Radicals; and Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s United Church of Christ pastor for 12-years; and his other Marxist-socialists associates like Van Jones, the avowed communist; and Bill Ayers, the radical of the Weather Underground Organization faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, and professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education, have been working to bring to fruition for many years.

The time is now to join the fight for freedom and the American way

It is time. Let us join the fight now: today. We must elect a true constitutional-conservative, God-fearing president this time around, as this may be our last chance to save our God-given inalienable rights, our freedom, and the American way.

Agree or disagree?

Please favor the rest of us with your considered thoughts on this matter in comments.

Ed Harris Cast As John McCain In ‘Game Change’ (huffingtonpost.com)
National Journal: McCain Tops List of Most Conservative Senators (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)
McCain: U.S. should continue active role in Libya (thehill.com)
So this is John McCain’s reward (salon.com)

Fat City

Lawrence — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:08:10 +0000

December 15th, 2009

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

Tax hikes loom in the post-crisis world (financialpost.com)
Eroding the debt (economist.com)