ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS, MR. PRESIDENT

"Actions speak louder than words." An old tried & true proverb said to me by my Mother over an entire childhood, and passed on by many common sense thinking families. Obama's State of the Union (SOTU) pep rally was so full of hyperbole, I lost count.

Watching the State of the Union address was as painful as last year's, and I kept hoping for another "You Lie!" outburst, because his speech was full of contradictions. Time after time we have heard: (h/t Mark Levin)

APRIL 9, 2009 – "And we will not rest until we reach a day when not one single veteran falls into homelessness"

MAY 11, 2009 – "I will not rest until the dream of health care reform is finally achieved in the United States of America"

NOVEMBER 2, 2009 – "We will not rest until we are succeeding in generating the jobs that this economy needs"

NOVEMBER 23, 2009 – "I will not rest until business are investing again, and businesses are hiring again"

JANUARY 28, 2010 - "We will not rest until we build an economy that's ready for America's future"

MARCH 5 2010 – "I’m not gonna rest & my administration is not gonna rest in our efforts to help people who are looking to find a job"

MAY 26, 2010 – "We will not rest until this well is shut, the environment is repaired and the clean up is complete"

JULY 8, 2010 – "My administration will not rest until every American who is able and ready and willing to work can find a job"

... and all the while, the only things Obama focused on like a laser was advancing his 'redistribution of wealth' agenda: Obamacare, Financial Control, Cap & Trade, Internet and Talk Radio control, a failed Stimulus, empowering the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), growth of government, and ever increasing deficit spending.

It took some 35 minutes before Obama ever mentioned our looming deficit, albiet briefly with embarrassingly low-ball resolutions, while in the same speech stating a broken economy must "invest" more. His reference to a "Sputnik Moment" is laughable, when it was himself who put the kibosh on NASA.  More empty Obama speak, as he attempts to hide the truth.

We have a man in the White House who clearly does not know what he is doing, or how to fix a country on the brink of disaster. We have a man in the White House who is more comfortable on a soap box campaigning, as he has done for the last two years, dining out, vacationing, playing sports while 'Rome is burning'.

As Charles Krauthammer said in his great piece "Deaf on debt: Returning to old liberal ideas, President Obama ignores the American people":

From the moon landing to solar shingles. Is there a better example of American decline?

So much for our "Sputnik moment".

The only way we can save our great country is to stay on top of our elected representatives, hold their feet to the fire, get rid of the weak-kneed moderates, and "Focus Like a Laser" in getting a constitutional conservative in the White House in 2012!

Senator Jim DeMint has some excellent suggestions in a recent email:

Actions Speak Louder Than Words, Mr. President
by Senator Jim DeMint - January 26, 2011

Dear Fellow Conservative:

The President used his State of the Union Address last night to disguise his liberal agenda in free-market, conservative rhetoric. Yet the specific policies he promoted are part of a deliberate strategy to grow the government at the expense of our personal freedoms and jobs.

For all of the talk in the media about how the President is moving to the center, he asked Congress last night to increase the role of the federal government in almost every area of our lives.

Rather than acknowledging the failure of his stimulus program to create jobs, the President claimed it saved our economy. Even worse, he called for more stimulus spending to "win the future".

You and I know that winning the future requires less government and more freedom, not the other way around.

Our Constitution is not indifferent toward liberal and conservative policies. It enumerates the very limited powers of the federal government and reserves everything else for the states.

Instead of calling for more federal intervention in our schools, the President should have called for reforms to allow states to opt-out of the ineffective and burdensome No Child Left Behind law.

Instead of calling for more federal intervention in our nation's highway system, he should have called on Congress to devolve these decisions to the states, which can build their own roads and bridges.

Instead of calling for a freeze in spending, the President should have called for a dramatic cut in spending to limit the size of government and balance the budget.

In nearly every area, the President is pushing America in the wrong direction. Unless Americans see through the rhetoric and stop his policies, we will lose our future. It's that simple.

Americans overwhelmingly elected Republicans this past election so they would put the brakes on the President's liberal agenda. I take that mandate very seriously and will do everything I can to stop the massive spending, takeovers, and debt that are destroying our country.

That is why I am introducing legislation in the Senate today to repeal the President's unconstitutional takeover of our nation's health care system.

The health care law was rammed through Congress despite widespread opposition from the American people. Yet the President told us last night to give up on repealing it, make only minor changes, and leave this experiment in socialism in place so it can strangle the greatest health care system in the world.

Not on my watch.

I'm not going to tell my children and grandchildren that I was around for this and failed to do everything I could to stop it.

Please contact your senators and encourage them to support the full repeal of the President's health care takeover.

Listening to the President last night reminded me of how much work we have to do to save the country we love. Even though we won many victories in the past election, the world's greatest salesman of socialism remains in the White House.

Fortunately, many Americans like you are alarmed by the direction of country and are taking positive action to send new leaders to Washington who will fight to save our country.

Thank you for your continued support and encouragement. Together, we can and we will secure America's future.

Respectfully,

Jim DeMint
United States Senator
Chairman, Senate Conservatives Fund

THE ELECTORATE vs. OBAMA'S AGENDA

Webster's New World Dictionary: ideologue

n.

[[Fr idéologue, back-form. idéologie: see fol.]]

1 a zealous exponent or advocate of a specified ideology

If the shoe fits........ Since Obama's State of the Union address is almost identical to his Joint Session of Congress speech a year ago, after astounding defeats in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, of course he's not an ideologue. Wonder why he felt compelled to profess this in another speech before the recent Republican Conference. Straw man! Jeeze, when does this man 'preside'?

All signs point to his continuing with his unpopular agenda, talking down to us as though he knows better, and counseling us to turn off our TVs and stop reading unfavorable blogs. They are going to make the decision for us, because 'Father knows best'.

But there is hope, as shown in Virginia, New Jersey, and, miraculously, Massachusetts. Common sense will level the playing field -- better than Obama and his ilk.
The magnificent Charles Krauthammer writes a brilliant piece on this in Real Clear Politics:


The Electorate vs. Obama's Agenda

by Charles Krauthammer, February 5, 2010

WASHINGTON -- "I am not an ideologue," protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.

Compare his 2010 State of the Union to his first address to Congress a year earlier. The consistency is remarkable. In 2009, after passing a $787 billion (now $862 billion) stimulus package, the largest spending bill in galactic history, he unveiled a manifesto for fundamentally restructuring the commanding heights of American society -- health care, education and energy.

A year later, after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a "jobs bill."

This being a democracy, don't the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don't they understand Massachusetts?

Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking "in the plain words of plain folks," because the people are "suspicious of complexity." Counseled Blow: "The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, 'Mr. President, we're down here.'"

A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive."

Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself "for not explaining it (health care) more clearly to the American people." The subject, he noted, was "complex." The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.

Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people's anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.

That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good. A 2002 New York Times obituary for philosopher Robert Nozick explained that the strongly libertarian implications of Nozick's masterwork, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia," "proved comforting to the right, which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical justification." The right, you see, is grateful when a bright intellectual can graft some philosophical rationalization onto its thoroughly base and self-regarding politics.

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda -- which couldn't get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts -- is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.

By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush -- from Iraq to Social Security reform -- constituted dissent. And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is "one of the truest expressions of patriotism."

No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. "They made a decision," explained David Axelrod, "they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed" -- a perfect expression of liberals' conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country's, that their idea of the public good is the public's, that their failure is therefore the nation's.

Then comes Massachusetts, an election Obama himself helped nationalize, to shatter this most self-congratulatory of illusions.

For liberals, the observation that "the peasants are revolting" is a pun. For conservatives, it is cause for uncharacteristic optimism. No matter how far the ideological pendulum swings in the short term, in the end the bedrock common sense of the American people will prevail.

The ankle-dwelling populace pushes back. It re-centers. It renormalizes. Even in Massachusetts.

Copyright 2010, Washington Post Writers Group

THE STATE OF THE UNION: A HOLLOW SPEECH

In a weak attempt to keep a campaign promise about transparency, notice that Obama said he would put entitlements online for all to see, not that he would cut them (another broken campaign promise). This is supposed to be the new Reaganesque fiscally responsible Obama? His State of the Union address was truly historic -- full of contradictions, condescension, pouting, anger and lies, not to mention a historic attack on the Supreme Court. His audacity is only upstaged by his narcissism and conceit.

On national television, addressing a joint session of Congress, a State of the Union address, Obama openly ripped apart the Supreme Court justices for their recent decision to uphold freedom of speech. Who in blue blazes does this man think he is? The cameras were focused on the stone-faced Justices as Obama called them out, and Alito (just like Wilson) could not hold back his emotion. He quietly mouthed "Not true". The media, in its usual fashion, lambasted Justice Alito (as they did Joe Wilson) and not the man who lied about the ramifications of this court decision. Even the New York Times knew it was a lie, and called him out. Wow, the NYT!

In his majority opinion in the case, Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, Justice Anthony Kennedy specifically wrote that the opinion did not address the question of foreign companies. “We need not reach the question of whether the government has a compelling interesting in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation’s political process,” he wrote. The court held that the First Amendment protected the right of American corporations to spend money on independent political commercials for or against candidates. Some analysts or observers have warned that the principle could open the door to foreign corporations as well. President Obama called for new legislation to prohibit foreign companies from taking advantage of the ruling to spend money to influence American elections. But he’s too late; Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act in 1996, which already prohibits independent political commercials by foreign nationals or foreign companies.

The media attacks Justice Alito and Congressman Joe Wilson rather than the real culprit, Barack Hussein Obama. What is wrong with this picture? Dick Morris has an excellent review of this debacle from the New York Post:


THE STATE OF THE UNION: A HOLLOW SPEECH
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, January 28, 2010

When President Bill Clinton faced Congress in 1995, after first losing any hope of health-care reform and then control of Congress, he used his State of the Union speech to declare, "The era of big government is over." President Obama's State of the Union speech last night only served to remind us that the era of big speeches is over.

As America struggles with a 10 percent unemployment rate, stubbornly refusing to go down even as other economic numbers seem to rise, the public will no longer believe in speeches -- only in results. As Cuba Gooding Jr. says to Tom Cruise in "Jerry Maguire," Americans are saying, "show me the money."

In this sense, the Obama administration is remarkably similar to that of George W. Bush: There's no hope of overcoming the president's political problems by speeches, spin or posturing. It'll take results.

As long as the body count rose in Iraq, nothing Bush said mattered much. And as long as the "body count" of un- and under-employed workers remains hovering over 20 percent, the American people won't be moved by presidential speeches or even actions. Only results will matter.

Obama's proposals to address the deficit, which is what is prolonging the recession, were ludicrous. None take effect until next year. And, even when they do, they will only trim the deficit by 3 percent.

The very notion of a "jobs package" that underpins Obama's newly announced program is oxymoronic. The president still seems not to have grasped the essential point that borrowing money to spend it to create jobs in fact costs jobs. Or that increasing the deficit de creases the opportunities for businesses and consumers to borrow and cuts the number of jobs.

Ultimately, the fate of the Obama presidency depends on whether he is right or his conservative critics are. If he's correct, more spending will bring down unemployment and put people to work. If he's wrong, the deficit that results from his spending will keep joblessness high.

A lot of last night's speech was, in effect, an apology for his own policies. His lamentation of partisanship and division; his appeals for unity -- it all seemed almost to disregard his own record of polarization.

His allusion to the deficit "in which we find ourselves" was disingenuousness -- at best. He has to hope that nobody was reading the newspaper as he proposed a stimulus package costing nearly $800 billion.

When he seemed at a loss, he lapsed into easy, populist applause lines -- almost a parody of partisanship. His campaign speech, dressed up as a State of the Union, seemed irrelevant to the economic experience of our past year.

Even his forays into patriotism ("I do not accept second place for the United States of America") sounded like a return to his rhetoric of the campaign -- irrelevant to our current situation.

His threat to "send back" to Congress any regulatory reform which does not meet his specifications was reminiscent of Clinton's threat -- as he brandished a pen -- to veto any health-care reform that didn't seem sufficient. The fact is that Congress isn't about to vote to give him the power to seize any corporation that he deems is "too big to fail" and "potentially insolvent." His threat to veto is irrelevant.

The most attractive of his proposals -- and the one with the greatest potential political payoff -- was his proposal to offer a $10,000-a-year tax credit for college tuition. His accompanying suggestion that student-loan payments be capped at 10 percent of a graduate's income and that the debt be extinguished after 20 years (10 if he or she works in public service) also does him proud.

But even as Obama stumbled in embracing spending as the cure for joblessness, he failed even more in his comments about the War on Terror. Accumulating evidence is leading independents to demand that terror trials be handled by the military, not the civilian, justice system -- and without Miranda warnings.

Getting intelligence about the next attack has a priority over criminal prosecution in the minds of all Americans . . . except perhaps those of the attorney general and the president.

Go to DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!

PRESIDENT OBAMA IS RIGHT, WE HAVE A SPENDING PROBLEM

STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

In light of the spin we will inevitably be subject to tonight, let's get some real figures down. Firstly, a freeze is not a cut, and in order to get a grip on reducing our deficit, you have to reduce spending, Mr. President, but you already know that. That's just going to be Spin No. 1, and the most critical to our existance. Everything else takes a second seat, because if this county goes backrupt, the rest cannot be dealt with.

The freeze is "not a hatchet, it's not a scalpel, it's a Q Tip", and insults our intelligence. With the trillions and trillions being thrown around by this administration, Obama's "freeze" affects less than one-seventh, while on the other hand it freezes all the outrageous salary increases Obama made earlier this year by no less than 25%. When did any one of us got that kind of raise? And it's tax payer money!!

The Heritage Foundation has some earth shattering numbers:


President Obama Is Right, We Have A Spending Problem
The Heritage Foundation, January 27, 2010

Tonight in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama is expected to propose a "freeze" on government spending. Obama's spending "freeze" will only last three years, will not start until 2011, will only apply to a $447 billion slice of the federal government's $3.5 trillion budget, and will not apply to any of the unspent $862 billion stimulus plan, his health care plan or the House of Representatives' additional $156 billion stimulus plan. Despite all the loopholes, time limits and procrastination, the President should still be commended for beginning to acknowledge reality. And as a new report issued yesterday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows, the reality is this: the U.S. government has an insatiable spending problem.

The CBO's summary of the report is bad enough: "Under current law, the federal fiscal outlook beyond this year is daunting ... accumulating deficits will push federal debt held by the public to significantly higher levels. At the end of 2009, debt held by the public was $7.5 trillion, or 54% of GDP; by the end of 2020, debt is projected to climb to $15 trillion, or 67% of GDP." But as bad as those numbers are, our fiscal health is actually worse. The CBO is forced by Congress to make a number of unrealistic assumptions about future revenue and spending changes. But their report makes up for this by including alternative projections that make more realistic assumptions. Heritage fellow Brian Riedl crunched those numbers and found:

The public debt -- $7.5 trillion at the end of 2009 -- is projected to triple to $22.1 trillion by 2020.

Over what would be President Obama's eight years in office if re-elected, baseline budget deficits are projected to total $9.7 trillion -- nearly triple the $3.3 trillion in deficits accumulated by President George W. Bush.

By 2020, the budget forecasts a $1.9 trillion annual budget deficit, a public debt of 98 percent of GDP and annual net interest spending surpassing $1 trillion.

Our country simply cannot afford to be spending $1 trillion in net interest in 2020. So what is the driving force behind these unsustainable deficits? Unprecedented rises in government spending. More Riedl numbers:

Since World War II, federal spending has generally remained between 18 and 22 percent of GDP. During the Bush Administration, spending increased from 18.4 to 20.9 percent of GDP.

Discretionary spending has increased 25 percent in three years -- not even counting the $311 billion in discretionary stimulus spending and approximately $150 billion in annual spending on the global war against terrorists.

In 2009, federal spending reached 24.7 percent of GDP -- the highest level in American history outside of World War II. Non-defense spending reached an all-time record of 20.1 percent of GDP.

Comparing our government's prolific spending habits with the decline in revenues from the recession, Riedl concludes: "Between 2010 and 2020, recession-depleted revenues are projected to gradually rebound to 17.6 percent of GDP (slightly below the 18.3 historical average). Spending is projected expand to 25.9 percent of GDP -- well above 20.7 historical average. Compared to those averages, 88 percent of all additional deficits by 2020 come from additional spending (5.2 percent of GDP above average), and only 12 percent comes from low revenues (0.7 percent of GDP below average)."

So 88% of all of our crippling debt problems come from our government's inability to control its spending habits. Put in this light, President Obama's spending "freeze" is just a drop in the bucket. A credible commitment to reduce government spending would go much farther. For starters, the remaining TARP and stimulus funds should both be rescinded. Next, instead of the President's fungible "aggregate" spending freeze, tough hard spending caps should be enacted. Finally, Congress should disclose the massive unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; put those programs on long-term budgets; and enact the necessary entitlement and programmatic reforms that can keep government within those limits.

THE STATE OF OUR UNION

Prepare yourselves for the biggest staging event since the styrofoam pillars at the Democratic Party Convention, which had to be moved from the conference hall to a football stadium to handle Obama's ego. I wonder if the 'halls of congress' will be big enough. This is the man who had to stage a [teleprompter] talk before a 6th grade class.

In a word, the state of our Union sucks, Mr. President. Thank you for leading us into deficit oblivion, and promising us more. Make sure you prepare enough, 'cause this should be a two popcorn bowl event, and have enough Pepto Bismol in the medicine cabinet.

The Heritage Foundation lays out what has led up to, and what to expect in this the first of [not too many, we hope] SOTU, and suggestions on what should happen. Odds are he will only sink us deeper in debt, collapse the economy, and render America a weak 3rd world nation, unless we stop this madness:


The State of Our Union
The Heritage Foundation, January 26, 2010

The President of the United States tomorrow will inform the Congress on the State of our Union, as he is constitutionally mandated to do. The past 12 months have seen our country head down a dangerous course, and The Heritage Foundation can only hope that the President will use this time of reflection, coming on the heels of a stunning electoral loss, to change direction.

You must recognize, Mr. President, that the State of the Union is not good. You need a new approach and fresh domestic and foreign policies. The caps on spending which reports last night said you were considering are but an exceedingly modest first step, and the devil is in the details. The caps will do virtually nothing to improve the nation’s fiscal health unless you tackle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Shifting tactics and stoking populism will be both cynical and condescending to the voters, who will see through this strategy. Mr. President, it’s the policies you need to change, not the spin.

In 2008, you promised economic recovery and sound financing. You promised to keep our country safe. You also promised bipartisanship.

Instead, our nation is enduring high unemployment and slow growth, due to surging spending and government borrowing. Bailouts and a pork-ridden “stimulus” bill will not get our country back on track. High unemployment comes primarily from the lack of job creation, rather than job destruction. Our research shows that your Administration’s policies have created uncertainties that have hindered risk-taking by entrepreneurs.

And now, faced with difficulties, instead of changing course you are doubling down and promising increased regulation. The challenges you have faced in one year in office—tea parties, town halls, three tough electoral losses—should have made you rethink your policies. Americans have always preferred limited government over the expansionist kind, lower—not higher—taxes, rational policies, not punitive ones. Your advisors are misreading the public, and economic reality, if they think increased red tape and government control will cure any of our ills.

The Index of Economic Freedom, which The Heritage Foundation publishes annually alongside The Wall Street Journal, tells the story. This year, for the first time since we started publication of the Index, the United States has fallen from the top tier “free” category. Yes, about half of this fall came because of decisions taken by your predecessor, but your policies have dramatically accelerated this descent. And our Index, issued last week on the anniversary of your inauguration, does not even take account of the second half of your year in office.

Your signature health care reform initiative has been a colossal missed opportunity. It is now in free fall, while insurance and health costs continue to climb.

This was a year that should have been spent working on lowering the barriers to jobs creation. But expansionist policies have crowded out investment and are killing the great American job machine.

In foreign policy, your year in office has left the world a more troubled place. A President has to lead in the world as it is, not as he wishes it to be.

Just as creating jobs should get all your attention domestically, battling terrorism should be Job One in foreign policy. The massacre at Fort Hood and the attempted Christmas Day bombing should have been wake-up calls for Washington. Our country is not using all the tools in the tool kit to protect Americans from terrorism. Even worse, your Administration seems ambivalent over the fact that the legal authority for key investigative methods granted under the Patriot Act is about to expire.

Abroad, we simply don’t know when Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon. You seem to have thrown all your chips with an entity that does not exist—the International Community—waiting for it to impose sanctions on Iran and turn the spotlight on its horrific human rights record. This fits with your view that the Berlin Wall fell because “the world came together as one,” but just like that was bad history, your view of the present is also borderline mythical.

So right now the world has the impression that America is distracted, unable, or unwilling to lead or vigorously defend its interests. That was painfully apparent in your Administration’s decision to walk away from our missile defense commitments to Poland and the Czech Republic. The time for missile defense is now, not after a threat emerges.

Mr. President, several policy areas cry out for your attention.

Domestically, you need to show the American people the full long-term obligations of the government in your annual budget, just as the government forces private corporations to do. Bring transparency to Washington by showing the long-term debt picture on your budget.

Then you and the leaders of both parties should lay out the options for fixing the deficit crisis and conduct a national conversation on what action to take. Trust the people to help make decisions. And press Congress to put Medicare and Social Security on a 30-year budget, to give seniors certainty while forcing the tough decisions necessary to give our children a financial future.

Get the economy moving again. You need to give main street businesses and banks—our real job creators—some certainty by eliminating the threat of higher taxes, spiraling debt, and suffocating regulation. Make the tax cuts on the books permanent, to encourage more saving and investment.

Urge Congress to reform the bankruptcy laws so that supposedly “too big to fail” companies can be restructured in an orderly way rather than bailed out or regulated to a slow death. Denationalize General Motors. And please, end the TARP bailout slush fund.

On health care, you can get real reform back on track by doing what you should have done on day one: genuinely reach across the aisle as you promised your voters last November. If you proceed in this manner, you will be able to move forward with bipartisan tax reforms that provide adequate tax relief for those who have reasonable coverage today, while extending help to those taxpayers who currently do not have coverage.

Rather that trying to pass a huge health care bill that runs everything from Washington, it is time to downsize the legislation drastically and to give states much greater freedom and encouragement to put into place innovative approaches that will work best for them. The solution for Massachusetts or Vermont will be different than that for Colorado or Texas.

States need to be able to negotiate major changes in statutory programs, like Medicaid, as part of a plan to increase coverage. It should be states that set up insurance exchanges, reinsurance pools or other ways to make affordable insurance available to everyone. And if Americans in one state want to buy health insurance from another state, nothing should stop them.

In foreign policy, please stop giving captured terrorists the same constitutional rights as Americans. We should be turning over captured terrorists to Military Commissions for trial after our intelligence services have interrogated them.

America should be strong in deeds as well as in words. That is not possible without a strong national defense. We must make an irrevocable commitment to recapitalizing the U.S. military, an effort that would require another $50 billion a year to buy the new equipment and maintain the capabilities our men and women under arms need to defend us.

We need a new vision. We need to keep Americans safe. And we need to reverse the decline of American leadership and influence in the world. Our freedom and security are at stake unless we reverse the decline of American fortunes in the world.

Afghanistan is a war that must be won. Winning is more important than any deadline for withdrawal. Announce that the United States won’t quit until the job is done.

Mr. President, let’s recommit to expanding free trade and making America more competitive in the world. We need to make America the freest economy in the world, in order to have more economic growth, prosperity, and jobs. You should recalibrate the top tax rate on U.S. corporate profits so that it is no higher than the average of the top rates that prevail in our 30 largest trading partners.

We also need to recommit ourselves to our friends and allies. You have not done a good job supporting our friends. Instead, we engage our enemies and get a clinched fist in return. We should re-dedicate ourselves to the proposition that America is a beacon of freedom for free peoples of the world, and that being true to that proposition means supporting free peoples, not coddling or giving comfort to dictators.

Be a war President 24-7-365. Commit yourself to helping, rather than hurting, our economy 24-7-365. Every moment of every day you should be working to defend the nation; protect our liberties; and promote American prosperity. Your resolve must not waver. Your commitment should not falter.
If you devote all your attention to letting our private sector create jobs at home and achieving victory overseas, we will enthusiastically support your efforts, and the State of the Union in 2011 will be far better.

By Edwin J. Feulner, President of The Heritage Foundation

HOW STUPID DO THEY THINK WE ARE?

In this whirlwind first year we have just completed, are we ready for the second? Who could have imagined that every day would bring a new debacle, and America would scramble to keep her head above water. But, for every cloud there is a silver lining. America has never been so engaged, united and involved in learning more about how this country works. We have, in essence, gone back to school to learn about government, the law, and the deep roots our heritage.

One of the biggest mistakes the left always makes is underestimating the knowledge and the conservative values of the American people, and they have done it again. Especially after the message of the 2nd Boston Tea Party. Roger Kimball write a great piece on this in Pajamas Media:


How Stupid Do They Think We Are?
by Roger Kimball, January 25, 2010

Just how stupid do Obama and his top advisors think we are? By “we” I mean not only the American people at large but also Obama’s colleagues in the House and Senate, the folks who at the end of the day will determine exactly how much of the administration’s campaign of “shock-and-awe statism” will pass into law.

The phrase “shock-and-awe statism,” by the way, comes to us courtesy of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. He coined it early on in the reign of Obama to describe the blitzkrieg-like way the administration was pushing its socialist agenda in that dim distant past, i.e., last year.

How breathtaking it seemed! The paint was hardly dry on the Obama romper room at the White House when the president unveiled his nearly $800 billion non-stimulating “stimulus bill” that assured the United States would be entering the Guinness Book of World Records as the most profligate nation in history. Then there was the “cash for dunderheads” program that was such a gift to foreign car makers and such a boondoggle for American ones. What about the cap-’n-tax fantasy that would finally have driven the nail in the coffin of American industry if only the business community had shared the administration’s taste for economic suicide? Or just last month the fiasco of Copenhagen and the bitter chilliness that is “global warming”? And of course “health care reform”: always and everywhere health care “reform” — a stupefyingly expensive mechanism for assuring that the federal government would expropriate a sixth of the U.S. economy while eviscerating the medical profession and sharply degrading the quality and timeliness of health care in this country. What bliss it was to be alive, and to be Left was very heaven!

When did it all start going south? It’s hard to say with any exactness. I think the great C-SPAN fiasco was a kind of turning point. Some public-spirited individual — I think it was Andrew Breitbart — assembled a little medley of candidate Obama saying on seven or eight separate occasions that he would broadcast the negotiations over health-care “reform” on CSPAN “so that the American people can see what the choices are.” But in general I think more and more people have come to understand that Obama is not the Moses who was going the lead us through the sea of red ink by which we are surrounded. The victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts last week set the Good Housekeeping Seal of Disapproval on the whole enterprise: notwithstanding the feeble protest from the New York Times that the Massachusetts election was “not remotely a verdict on Mr. Obama’s presidency, nor does it amount to a national referendum on health care reform,” everyone knew it was.

So now what? Well, last week Obama played his populist card by going after Wall Street; result, the stock market promptly tanks by more than 500 points. So long, farewell, adieu, auf wiedersehen! Way to go, Barack: all those old folks nearing retirement or parents approaching a stretch of college tuition: too bad! Thanks for your masterly leadership!

But now comes something really amusing. In an effort to win back the support of “fiscal moderates,” Obama yesterday endorsed the idea of creating a special debt and deficit reducing commission. But guess what, it wouldn’t convene until after next November’s election. In the meantime, he is counting on Democrats to muster enough votes to raise the federal debt ceiling further into the stratosphere of economic irresponsibility.

Politico quotes Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the Senate Budget Committee chairman: “The president is demonstrating exactly the kind of leadership we need to tackle our nation’s long-term fiscal challenges.” Right! And you, Dear Reader, are Marie of Romania. No, Politico was correct when it suggested that Obama’s latest gambit “risks being seen as just a ploy to win over swing Democratic senators.” You bet it does. Any fool can see that. So what about the White House? Do they really think we’re too stupid to see what they are up to?

I wonder. It’s not entirely clear who’s minding the shop. More and more, one hears the criticism that the president is too cool for school: that he is arrogant, disengaged, out of touch. “Narcissistic” is a term many of us used when observing candidate Obama on the hustings. Obama is the time-delay president. Something bad, really bad, happens — a Muslim fanatic guns down forty people at Ft. Hood, say, or an al Qaeda-trained terrorist tries to blow up a commercial jet over Detroit — and what does the president of the United States do? Nada. He “monitors” the situation from afar. He takes several days to respond in public, and when he does it’s all the obfuscation all the time. An “isolated extremist.” Yemen is a poor country. I’m on holiday out here, back soon. Obama’s behavior during a crisis puts me in mind of Harry Graham’s little ditty “The Englishman’s Home”:

I was playing golf the day

That the Germans landed;

All our men had run away,

All our ships were stranded;

And the thought of England’s shame

Very nearly spoiled my game.

No wonder Scott Brown is going to Washington.