“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has [...]]]>

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” –George Washington

“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.” –Thomas Jefferson

Our founding fathers were trying to warn us, their words echoing into our present.  But are we listening?  We would be wise to heed what they said lest we be doomed to repeat the history of those that came before us.

The liberals in power today proselytize about minorities and the under-privileged.  They seek to resolve all of the wrongs of yesterday and today by creating government programs that, like Superman swooping in to save us all, will make everyone have the same opportunities.

In fact, their record shows just the opposite.  They are, in fact, more aligned with big banks and the upper echelons of the labor unions, and have no interest in really helping the underlings on whose shoulders they stride.  Their programs of welfare and handouts serve only to create a far larger group of people who will be more incentivized to suckle the government’s teats, whose milk comes from our hard work.  The more who are unemployed, the more who are benefiting from government programs, the more that will vote for liberals to institute new government programs.  All of this ensures that liberals will receive more and more votes.

They wish to eradicate the idea of “individual responsibility”, and along with it, “individual liberty”.  That is what is behind the health care bill, the cap and trade bill, the stimulus bill, and more to come.  They are trying to change our country as quickly as possible before they lose their majority, because they know that once a bill is passed into law, it is far harder, if not impossible, to undo it.  And the sooner this country becomes one large mass who is dependent on the government for everything from breakfast to dinner, diapers to coffins, the more entrenched their party will become, until we are a single party government.  A politburo, to be exact.

Allow me to show you, remembering all the while that it is small business that has been the backbone for our free market, introducing new ideas, new inventions, innovating past obstacles, and employing our workers:

• Health Insurance Bill.  Let’s start by making sure we are using the right terms.  This is not about health care reform.  All Americans have access to health care, some of the best health care in the world!  If the liberals were serious about this, they would ignore the money that was being jammed into their wallets by lobbyists working for the lawyers, and begin with something that really matters.  Talk to your doctor the next time you go in for a visit and say these two words: “tort reform.”  When you are done ducking, you will understand their pain.  Nor have the liberals addressed competition of insurance companies across all 50 states.  This bill will raise taxes on everyone, threaten fines and jail for those that do not pay into the system, and force small companies to lay off people, increasing unemployment.  Remember, small businesses will be the most hurt by this bill.  And the major piece, the real sticking point, is that it will put a bureaucrat between you and your own freedom of choice.  And yes, Wilson was right.  Obama lied.  The liberals want the illegal immigrants to be covered by this new health insurance bill.  Why?  That’s another piece to the puzzle, because by having this in the bill, illegals will continue to vote for liberals.
• Allowing Felons to vote.  Speaking of voting, several states, including Washington, are considering legislation that will let convicted felons vote.  Why?  Because these folks generally vote for liberals.
• Maxine Waters.  In 2008, Maxine Waters let slip what she is all about: socializing the oil companies (go to 1 minute into the video).  Taking over the energy companies is crucial to the liberals’ plans.  If we have to be dependent on the government for our own personal health and access to energy, we become slaves to the government.
• Pelosi.  Pelosi has become rather brazen lately.  She has openly attacked Americans, you and me, for exercising our right to question those that serve us in elected office, and our right to protest decisions we don’t like.  She might need to be reminded of what when on during Bush’s 8 years in office.  When she became Speaker, she committed to have an open House of Representatives, and to ending slimy politics and corruption.  Under her watch, sleazy deals have been negotiated for the health insurance bill.  And it has been anything but open, isolating Republicans, even changing the locks on doors.  Have you seen President Obama go to closed door meetings with the liberals.  Are any Republicans allowed in?  Any cameras?  And with Rangel as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, she looks silly.  After all, he is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars.  How ironic?!  If he were a Republican, the press would be having a field day with this one.
• President Obama.  Where to begin?  He has endangered the security of this country.  When the Christmas Day Bomber incident broke, it took him three days before he addressed the nation.  Three days?!  And it took him 3 or 4 speeches before he found the right tone.  Closing Guantanamo Bay sends a strong signal to our enemies that we are weak.  Mirandizing them sends an even stronger message that we aren’t willing to fight.  Calling these attacks the work of ‘lone nuts’ and saying that we are not in a War against Terrorism defeats us before we even begin to fight.  But the absolute worst thing Obama is doing now, the thing that will weaken us the most, is giving Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others a criminal trial in New York City, costing that city hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, insulting the innocent people that were killed on 9/11 and the families that survive them, and giving KSM a platform to voice his ridiculous propaganda.  Clearly, as Cheney says in this interview, we have a precedent for a military trial.  But no, instead we afford this horrible man, who admits to being the architect of 9/11, the rights reserved for our citizens, the very ones he plotted to kill.  And all the while a Navy SEAL, who was charged with allegedly punching a terrorist he captured, basically a national hero, is being sent to Iraq for a trial there.  How does this make any sense?  And no, there are zero witnesses to corroborate the terrorist’s claim he was punched, but his claim is however, straight out of Al-Qaeda’s playbook.
• President Obama Redux.  It doesn’t end with national security.  President Obama wants to pass a Cap and Trade Bill that will once again hit small businesses the hardest, and send millions of manufacturing jobs over to countries like India, Mexico and China, who have already said they will not follow Obama’s strict regulations on pollution.  So, we lose jobs to other countries creating more unemployment, Goldman Sachs and other ‘fat cats’ make money off of companies trading off their excess pollution, and the overall pollution of the earth is not changed one iota.  Hooray for Obama.

There’s more.  Lots more.  Tonight, I am hopeful that Scott Brown will be elected to Massachusetts’s open Senatorial seat, breaking the super-majority that the liberals have in the Congress.  That may be enough to stop this monstrous health insurance bill, and maybe even the cap and trade disaster too.

Obama, Pelosi, Reid, they want to create a country where a small political elite lives well off the backs of everyone else.  There will be no innovators.  No awe-inspiring agendas like going to the moon.  The U.S. dollar will descend into oblivion.  We will no longer be a super power.  With equal opportunity for everyone, comes equal results from all of us.  Equal results.  Nothing extraordinary.

We, all of us, need to take back this country.  I see artists, musicians and actors wearing “Che” t-shirts, and now even “Mao” t-shirts.  They clearly don’t know their history because both men would have these very same artists, musicians and actors be the first people executed if they were in power today.  What’s a few more to the slaughter when you have killed 10 times the number of men, women and children that Hitler did?

If we do not study history, if we do not learn from those before us, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

There’s a breaking story now [...]]]> If you’re not familiar with Michael Yon, you should check him out immediately.  He is an independent photojournalist who has been embedded with our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, delivering gripping stories and photos of our amazing men and women putting their lives on the line to protect us.

There’s a breaking story now where Michael Yon was detained at Seattle’s SeaTac airport by the TSA because he was unwilling to answer their questions.  What did they want to know?  How much money he earns.  What in the world does that have to do with national security?  When he refused to answer their inappropriate and unnecessary question, he was handcuffed and detained.  From Michael Yon’s Facebook page:

When they handcuffed me, I said that no country has ever treated me so badly. Not China. Not Vietnam. Not Afghanistan. Definitely not Singapore or India or Nepal or Germany, not Brunei, not Indonesia, or Malaysia, or Kuwait or Qatar or United Arab Emirates. No county has treated me with the disrespect can that can be expected from our border bullies. –Michael Yon

Perhaps Obama and Napolitano should consider asking for help, because clearly, they are out of their depth on securing the borders of this country.  What are we doing with the Christmas Day Bomber?  We’ve put him in the criminal justice system, affording him the full rights of a U.S. citizen, and talking about giving him a plea bargain.  Really?!

We are quickly becoming the laughing stock of the world, and our enemies are becoming more and more emboldened by Obama’s tactics.  Not only does asking someone about their yearly earnings have nothing to do with national security, but it tramples on our constitutional rights and freedoms.  In response to the Christmas Bomber, our “leaders“ have implemented mostly useless and reactive measures.  In contrast, the terrorists who, despite Obama’s words to the contrary, are clearly at war with us, and continue to plan new ways to hurt innocent Americans.

Might we suggest that they focus their attentions on the groups of people who are actually trying to blow people up on planes, and not on returning U.S. citizens?

UPDATE: The BigGovernment Website has picked up this story

What is the one responsibility our federal government should be concerned with the most?  I’m sure left-wing liberals would answer that it’s providing health care to everyone, including illegal aliens.  The rest of us know the federal government has no business getting involved in our health care.  So [...]]]> It’s a simple question: Do you feel safe?

What is the one responsibility our federal government should be concerned with the most?  I’m sure left-wing liberals would answer that it’s providing health care to everyone, including illegal aliens.  The rest of us know the federal government has no business getting involved in our health care.  So of course, the right answer is that the most important role of our federal government is the security and safety of American citizens.

With that in mind, let’s review what happened on Christmas day last week, and see how your government is working to keep you safe:

• Despite being a young male with no strong roots in his own country, 23 year old Umar Abdulmutallab was still given a short-term visa (see State Department visa regulation 214(b) that refuses these type of applicants – thanks to Michelle Malkin and Joel Mowbray)
• Despite Dr. Umaru Mutallab, Abdulmutallab’s father and prominent banking official in Nigeria, alerting officials at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that his son was under the influence of “religious extremists” in Yemen on November 19^th of this year, his short-term visa was not revoked.
• Despite Britain barring him from obtaining a new visa in May of this year, we provided him with one in June.
• Despite paying cash for his airline ticket, he was allowed to board without scrutiny.
• Despite declaring that he would be here for two weeks, he checked no bags, and no one seemed concerned.

Clearly, there were several red flags that should have prompted officials to –at the very least –scrutinize this man before he boarded the flight.  Had people been doing their jobs, the correct action would have been to bar him from boarding the plane entirely.

People can say this was a bureaucratic failure.  A human error.

Nonsense!

This was a failure on the part of President Obama and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.  They failed, epically, and their failure could very well have caused the deaths of some 200 or more innocent people.

Why do I pin the blame solely on them?

• President Obama has insisted that we are not involved in a War against Terrorism.
• He has returned our military and defenses to the same pre-9/11 attitudes that led to 3,000 innocent lives snuffed out in the worst attack on our soil.
• Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jane Napolitano said, when referring to the events on Christmas day, the “system worked.”  Let us remember who saved those people on that plane: It was the actions of passengers and the flight crew that averted disaster, not our federal government.  Remember that.
• Secretary Napolitano claims that her department is working to prevent “man-caused disasters.”  There are so many things wrong with this statement.  Not only does it insult the work of our brave men and women fighting to protect us, it undermines the efforts of our intelligence agencies.  As a euphemism, it makes us forget the innocent lives that were taken from their loved ones.  It dulls our swords, and allows our shield arms to falter.  It is disgraceful.
• Napolitano doesn’t believe crossing our border illegally is a crime.  Without defined and secure borders, we will not be safe.  Have you ever heard of a borderless nation?  It is an oxymoron.  It is the duty of our government to secure our borders to ensure the safety and protection of our citizens.  For someone in her position, with her authority, to say that it is not a crime, is the same as looking the other way as those that wish us harm sneak inside our country.  Isn’t she the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security?
• Granting Miranda rights to terrorists abducted from the battlefield –a right given to citizens of this country, not those from other nations trying to destroy us –sends our enemies a strong message that we are not taking their threat seriously.  And it sends a clear signal to our military that we are not behind them.

I believe all these “lone-nuts”, as Obama and Napolitano refer to them, who train with Al Qaeda and wish to cause “man-caused disasters” here in the U.S., are emboldened by the attitudes of our President and our DHS Secretary.  And I believe that this attempt on Christmas day is just the first of many more to come under their watch.

The economy is in shambles.  The President and the Congress are trying to spend more and more of your money on a Health Care bill and a Cap and Trade bill.  But who’s looking out for our safety?

That just might be up to you…