I just watched one of the most frightening videos I have seen yet on You-Tube. I watched children singing hymns to Obama, the Leader. Parents sat dumb in admiration of the miracle of this music. To me, it was terrifying.

It made me think of the children in China who worshipped Chairman Mao and learned scripture from his little red book of sayings. It reminded me that Obama has already said that we have a lot to learn from China. If we are not careful, if we don’t stand up and vote in droves for constitutional government, then this is our future. Hymns to Obama. State banks holding all the money which is doled out to us and then ripped away in taxes to feed the socialist programs that are shared among us.

And don’t forget lines. A long line in front of the only store in town to receive toilet paper from the government distribution center. Five year plans which will lead to ever more equal distribution of the poverty in which all of us will live. Cooperative farms that won’t grow anything, because who cares. Cooperative factories that will produce nothing or junk, and it won’t much matter which.

I can’t tell you how horrifying it was to see that little choir of children in blue t-shirts with the word “Hope” on the front. I love children, and I hope in God. I don’t like to see children exploited for political purposes, and I know that Obama is not God. I’m not so sure the people in that room know it. I saw a lot of indication that Obama is truly regarded by those people as a Messiah, just as Chairman Mao was regarded by the Red Chinese. Ask the people on Taiwan, however, how they felt about him.

Do we want China here? Do we want the Soviet Union? Do we even want Scandinavia, a socialist paradise which is just discovering that people who don’t work produce nothing to support the economy that is supposed to give them everything? If we believe in a government that operates the way our Constitution is written, we had better speak up. We had better get busy and vote for McCain. He may not be a perfect president, but he is not a socialist. We have two choices, and one of them is a complete socialist. Obama is committed to socialist principles. Read his own issue statements, and you can verify it for yourself. So, if you don’t want a socialist country, you need to vote for McCain.

I believe that McCain will be a great president. I believe that Sarah Palin will be an exceptionally good vice president. I believe we will be really glad if we elect them. I guarantee we will rue the day if we elect Obama president, and if we do that, it might be the last election in which we ever have a choice. The Democrats have predicted Armageddon, and they may be right. If you want to win the battle of Armageddon, you need to vote for McCain.

In the mix of all the issues in this election, one stands out: individual liberty. Both candidates state that they will fervently support the Constitution, but one of them is making proposals that will hamper or even entirely eliminate individual liberty. The difference hinges on each candidate’s definition of the purpose of the state.

The Constitution of the United States of America is a model for a system of government designed to enable the prosperity of the nation without directing it. It provides a framework for a federal government that promotes the cooperation of the states on those functions that transcend the governance of any single state, such as national defense and interstate commerce. The Constitution names the powers the federal government has, and the Bill of Rights says that if a power is not ceded to the federal government, then it remains with the states and the citizens.

One of the hottest issues in the current campaign comes under the heading of the economy. With regard to the economy, the federal government mints the money and assures the free flow of goods and services through all the several states. The role of the federal government in the economy is to enable free enterprise. This is the way the Constitution is written.

It is interesting to note that one of the most revered thinkers in history, Moses Maimonides, said that the highest form of charity is to do the things that enable a man to earn money and stand on his own two feet. The role of performing that high level of charity is written into the Constitution. It maintains order within the republic and assures safety from outside attack. It enables the states to cooperate so that goods and services flow freely through the republic. It maintains a safe money supply. Otherwise, it leaves the citizens free to pursue their dreams and create wealth for themselves.

Barack Obama does not support this model for the country. He believes that the federal government is more important than the dignity and freedom of individuals. He has the vision that the state has more value than individual dignity. He wants to give people money and things, but he plans to acquire the means for these gifts with high taxes that rob the individual of the reward for hard work and ingenuity. If you want to check what Obama really stands for, take a look at his endorsement from the Communist Party USA. If anything should make you doubt Obama’s goals, this should be it.

John McCain stands for our Constitution. Constitutional government provides citizens with the greatest opportunity for freedom and prosperity. This is what we all want, even when handouts look good to us. We know in our heart of hearts that the economic stimulus checks we received last spring are just a forerunner of new taxes that will be required to replace that money in the national treasury.

When you vote, choose a candidate that will get out of your way and let you pursue your dreams, not one that will mandate what work you can do, what food you can eat and what doctor you can see. Vote for freedom. Vote for prosperity. Vote for the Constitution. Vote for John McCain.

 Winston Churchill knew a few things about elections. In 1945, during an election campaign, he faced opponents who espoused a socialist agenda, just as John McCain’s opponent does. Churchill said of his opponent’s plans for Britain, “Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state.” John McCain needs to speak to the American people about this same problem.

Voters in the US have been lured gradually into an acceptance of socialism. The camel of socialism first sneaked his nose into the tent of US free enterprise during the New Deal. People suffered during the Great Depression, and Franklin Roosevelt announce he had come to help. He rolled out bank holidays and WPA and Social Security. Perhaps, if Hitler had not sent his tanks rolling into Poland, the American people would have seen clearly that the New Deal was picking their pockets with the hand not occupied with flashing the smoke and mirrors of socialism before their eyes.

In Election 2008, B. Hussein Obama is busy with his own road show, trying to convince us all that we need socialism in many forms. His proposals clearly demonstrate the truth of Churchill’s words. Churchill associated socialism with “worship” of government and totalitarian oppression. If Obama is elected, we will see exactly what Churchill was talking about.

Obama’s web site lists his positions and objectives for many issues. Take healthcare, for example. Obama proposes a national health care plan coupled with a watchdog agency to hover over the private insurance companies. Obama plans to assure that nobody can be rejected by an insurance company for any medical reason. He will demand record-keeping and guarantees from insurance plans and healthcare providers. The government’s tentacles will creep into every healthcare visit and transaction.

If anyone wants to know how well that will work, the first place to look is Medicare. This medical program operated, funded and guaranteed by the government has been a boondoggle from day one. Before Medicare, patients and doctors decided what medical treatment was appropriate for a diagnosis. After Medicare, the government runs that show. When a small rural hospital in Missouri wanted to provide dialysis in a location convenient for rural patients, the doctors eventually gave up trying to meet the regulations. Among the problems – Medicare will not pay for a lab test to determine if a patient has the right levels of medication in his system. According to Medicare, the test is only justified if the patient’s medication is outside the boundaries of acceptable levels. Unfortunately, the doctors were not able determine without a test the actual level of the medication in the patients’ systems. Medicare regulations like these make it very difficult for a doctor to provide good care for a patient.

In case you think that Medicare’s limitation to geriatric patients makes any difference, you could look at universal healthcare that the British have enjoyed now for many years. The British government pays for that system, and the British government makes the rules for that system, just as our government makes the silly rules for Medicare. Hence, even though Aricept has been demonstrated to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s in many patients, no British patients in the national healthcare system can use it. The cost was determined by the government administrators of the NHS to be prohibitive.

Obama calls his plan national health insurance, not national healthcare. Do not be deceived. The restrictions and regulations he is proposing would only be the first step. In fact, Medicare is still called insurance, too, but the regulations and reporting associated with it result in severe government involvement in the actual care of patients. True socialized medicine would not be far behind. I can hear now the call to end all the different programs – Medicare, Medicaid, national health insurance, private health insurance – to cut costs and eliminate waste. I can hear now the call to end the pretense that it is health insurance, and simply call it national health care. After all, the government is paying all the bills.

Concern about the cost of healthcare in general will only escalate if the government pays all the bills. After all, the most powerful impetus in the war against smoking has been the cost of medical treatment for smokers who develop lung cancer, heart disease and stroke. A loudly vocal movement has developed to make smokers into social outcasts, and the biggest reason is that treating lung cancer, heart disease and stroke is expensive. We hear constantly that huge sums of money are paid annually for the treatment of diseases of smokers. Employers and insurance companies put a lot of pressure on smokers to quit, because they do not want the cost of medical treatment for smokers.

If Obama were successful in bringing about socialized medicine in the USA, we would see a great many other campaigns just like the campaign against smokers. In fact, the government can bypass a campaign altogether and simply say, if you smoke, we refuse to pay for your medical care. Period. Is this what Americans want?

I can imagine another campaign that would become a regulation, too. New York passed a law against trans fats in restaurants. California has outlawed trans fats in the whole state. It is all about obesity, and the concern for the obese is all about the costs of health care. If the federal government runs health care, what is to keep the federal government from telling people what they can eat?

It all boils down to exactly what Churchill observed. Socialism in any form is tyranny. Socialism sounds so kind at the first. In Russia in 1917 poor people were deceived into believing that socialism would take care of them. By 1991 their eyes had opened. They had learned that the government only takes. They could not count on the government to do anything but push them around. They were still poor. They stood in line for toilet paper and soap, and the government could not even be counted on to pay them for their work. US citizens need to look with great skepticism at Obama’s suggestion that government health care will be better than free enterprise healthcare. Then they need to look with the same skepticism at all his other proposals to take care of them.

In a socialist country the government takes care of itself. People receive what the government is willing to give them, but the government gets all the good stuff. Citizens unite! Do not let Obama deceive you into giving away your freedom. Do not let him lure you into worship of government. Stand up for the Constitution, personal freedom and free enterprise. These are the forces that have made our country great and strong for more than 200 years. Do not give away your freedom for the false promises of a government caretaker.

Yesterday John McCain gave credit to President Bush for the recent drop in the oil futures price. He reminded us all that as soon as the president lifted the offshore drilling moratorium, the price of crude began to drop. Today, that price is about $10 less than it was the day of the announcement. It is a small, but critical, change in the variables that affect the price everyone pays for gasoline.

Some critics of McCain’s statement have suggested that the futures price and the end of the moratorium are not actually related. They point to a drop in demand, which finally impacted the price. They could have a point. Airplanes have been parked. People have curtailed personal travel. There has been a change in demand. However, that change has been evolving over several months while prices continued to skyrocket. That change may have had a part in the reduction of crude oil prices we see today, but it is worth noting that the reduction coincided very neatly with the president’s announcement.

I join in John McCain’s question: if this small price reduction occurred when the president simply removed the moratorium on offshore drilling, what might we see if someone actually drilled a well out there?

Our famous Congress led by Queen Nancy and Prince Harry has ignored and scorned the impact of the president’s decision. Further, they have risen up and proclaimed that they will refuse to bow to Big Oil. They say they will only support research and development in alternative fuels.

This madness must stop. The only thing that will stop it is citizen outrage. We citizens must remind Congress of two facts:

First – No alternative fuel solution exists now for citizens who need to use the cars they own to get to work, to school, to vacation.

Second – We all vote in the fall for all the representatives and one-third of the Senators.

The electorate owns gasoline-powered cars and trucks. Even if there were enough hybrids and all-electric cars to go around, most people could not afford to scrap the cars they own and buy new ones. Congress is acting with typical disdain of the real needs of real people.

Congress also acts as if the American oil companies are the problem, not the solution, in the current crisis. It wants to increase taxes on those companies and demand that they drill on land that has not proved to be productive. Congress screams at those companies calling their profits obscene. Considering the fact that 70% of the oil we buy and pay for comes from sources outside America, one wonders what Congress thinks of the profits the foreign companies are making. Where exactly does Congress think anyone got the money to build a rotating skyscraper in Dubai? Why does Congress think it is better to buy our oil from foreigners and let them make whatever profit they make? Why shouldn’t we buy from our American companies drilling in American land? And by the way, who classified the profits of American oil companies as “obscene?” Profits in a corporation belong to the stockholders. Who do they think the stockholders are? Martians, perhaps? The stockholders who profit when an American oil company is successful are mostly American citizens.

Congress has tried to ignore common sense and the electorate before. The electorate has had to remind them that they are elected to serve the people, not to serve themselves. When they were ready to sell our country out to illegal immigrants, we had to crash their e-mail system and their phone system in order to set them straight. We may have to do it again. Congress in its high-handed determination to focus on alternative fuels is doing nothing that will produce more oil and bring a long-term reduction in the price of gasoline that we need now. There is no substitute today for the gasoline people need to operate the cars they own now. It is certainly wise to be discovering and developing alternatives, but people cannot simply put their current vehicles up on blocks and walk wherever they need to go.

We voters must do two things immediately.

First – We must call and write and completely pester and wear down our Representatives and Senators telling them to open up drilling offshore, drilling in ANWR and shale production. These acts will assure that we have fuel for cars, airplanes, trucks, trains, and power plants into the future. We need this fuel now, and we need it until alternative solutions mature and proliferate at a level that actually meets our needs. We should not reduce, diminish and slow down our productivity, our lives, and our dreams because someday there will be alternatives to oil.

Second – On Election Day, we must vote for the candidate who actually knows what people need. John McCain recognizes that people need oil right now. The research and development of alternatives to oil must proceed, but it is not ready to meet the needs of a productive and prosperous nation yet. We must support the candidate who will support us. We don’t need a candidate who tells us to do without and stop growing while we wait for the alternative solutions. The USA is a beacon to the whole world, a living laboratory for productivity and prosperity. Someday that beacon will run on alternative fuels, but right now it runs on oil.

We must join with John McCain and demand that Congress do what it takes to provide the oil our country needs. Offshore. ANWR. Oil shale. We need all these sources opened up for our use. There are proven reserves in all these locations that will provide for us while alternatives come of age.

Then we must get out and vote for John McCain on election day. Make sure our president and our Congress know that the American people need domestic sources of petroleum, and we need them now.

DRILL HERE! DRILL NOW! VOTE MCCAIN FOR PRESIDENT!

When James Dobson criticized Barack Obama’s hermeneutics and theological analysis, Obama was quick to respond with a political barrage. Obama has the notion that Christians will like him if he talks about the Bible. Yet he knows that he cannot really adopt any particular interpretation, because that would immediately alienate those who follow some other. Therefore, he has attempted say nothing in a lot of words. Dobson has called his hand, by pointing out that his words don’t have any real meaning. Like the glib politician he is, Obama accuses Dobson of perverting the truth.

If anyone is perverting truth, it is Obama. I am not a follower of James Dobson, but I agree with his statements that Obama distorts the Bible and offers up an equally distorted interpretation of the Constitution. Obama has a reputation for promoting change and hope in his exalted speeches, but when you dig deep into his words, you find nothing. Empty words. His biblical interpretation and his Constitutional interpretation are empty words. They may come across as distortions, but if you read closely, they simply a cover-up for Obama’s unwillingness to tell us what he really thinks.

One of my dearest friends is a Democrat. She grew up Democrat, and in her adult life, she has always voted Democrat. She is a true believer in the liberal interpretation of the Constitution. However, even she observes that Obama is an empty suit. His speeches are full of words put together in a meaningless combination. Since her Ph.D. is in literature, I think I can rely on her ability to interpret words. Before she talked with me about Obama, I already thought his speeches were full of fluff, but I would have been willing to hear from her that I had missed something. Without any help from me, she volunteered that she will not vote for Obama, even though he is the Democrat candidate, because she has no idea what he stands for. She plans to vote for McCain. She said to me that she could not vote for Obama because, “I don’t know what kind of change he wants me to hope for.”

One of the problems with listening to Obama talk about religion, the Bible, or any other topic is that, if he is challenged, he changes his words. No matter what words he says today, if anybody really fights his words, he simply changes them. He told us that Jeremiah Wright was his spiritual mentor, but when people learned the kind of mentor Reverend Wright was, then Obama told us he never meant to imply that he actually learned anything from Reverend Wright. In other words, we were dumb to think that the word “mentor” meant “mentor.”

Likewise, when Obama talks about abortion, he cleverly calls it a “divisive” issue. Obama is nothing if not inclusive, so anything divisive is anathema. In his “landmark” speech about religion in 2006, he admonished religious leaders not to be “divisive.” The body of the speech implies that standing firm on any principle is the same thing as being “divisive.” Therefore, when I read his comments about abortion on his website, I interpret him to mean that any principle rejecting abortion as immoral is “divisive.” Apparently, condoning and maybe even encouraging the murder of babies still in the womb wisely avoids “divisive” speech. Furthermore, he classifies real human embryos wanted for stem cell research as “excess,” thereby excluding them from the human race rather than divisively advocating for their right to live. This language certainly avoids the stain of being “divisive.” It also avoids standing for any real principle.

James Dobson accused Obama of distorting the Bible to fit his own worldview. Obama is not alone in doing that. Lots of people quote or misquote the Bible for their own purposes. However, most of them are not running for president of the United States; their interpretations do not have the potential to affect our lives in any major way. If Obama were elected president, his interpretation, or misinterpretation, of the Bible would be important. He wants us to believe that his faith informs his acts. What little we can see of his faith makes me fear his acts. Among other things, I expect we would hear that his socialist agenda is an outgrowth of his interpretation of the Bible. Socialism is a dangerous political disease that hides behind the mask of kindness to others. A slick talker like Obama will surely try to make us believe that the gospel according to Karl Marx is simply a deep interpretation of the Golden Rule.

When election day comes, I will join my Democrat friend in voting for McCain. The continued strength and security of the United States is too important to take a chance on Obama. I don’t want any of the changes he hints at, even though it is extremely hard to guess what they might really be. I hope that many voters will see through his facade. I will vote for McCain. I hope you will join me.

I read an article today about an employer who not only refuses to hire any employees who smoke, but he also goes after their spouses. He is encouraged in this endeavor by a public attitude and a few huge court settlements that have made tobacco a four-letter word. Smokers are discriminated against in ways we would not tolerate if the discrimination were about age, gender or religion. To date, our increasingly socialist government has never made it illegal to grow, sell or buy tobacco or any of its products. The only thing illegal about tobacco is using it.

One wonders how such a thing could happen in a free country. Supposedly in the USA, if a product is legal, we are free to use it. When the product is tobacco, that freedom is daily being compressed. How did this happen?

The root of the problem is healthcare. Back in the days when people managed and paid for their own healthcare, the use of tobacco was every individual’s own choice. The government paid subsidies to tobacco farmers under certain circumstances, just the same as it did for corn and cotton. Some people smoked; some didn’t. Some smokers got sick and died; some didn’t. A few very elderly people attributed their longevity to a daily cigar. If a smoker, or anybody else, became ill, treatment was provided by means of interaction between a doctor and a patient. That was it.

Today, things are quite different. Today, hardly anyone pays for his own healthcare, and most people think that nobody should pay for his own healthcare. Healthcare has become a political issue. Furthermore, computers, computers everywhere pump out more statistics than anyone can absorb, and the data is interpreted in scientific papers as well as op-eds and personal blogs. Long ago when I was first exposed to the mathematical maze of statistics, I concluded that if someone wants to make people think they have discovered truth, all he needs to do is feed them numbers. People are so impressed by numbers, and most people cannot do the math or the logic to confirm the accuracy of either the data or the interpretation.

Today, we are bombarded with numbers. One set of numbers tells us how many people smoke cigarettes. Another set tells us how many people die of lung cancer. Yet another set purports to tell us that there is a high correlation between smoking and dying of lung cancer. That is how it started. We are all exposed to statistics like this every day, and we are so accustomed to the mathematical stew that we don’t even question it. We don’t ask how the data was collected. We don’t ask how data was selected for analysis. We don’t ask why a particular analytical algorithm was chosen. Moreover, we don’t ask if the graph displayed as a result means anything at all. We assume that the graph is a true picture of something, and we believe what the reporters tell us it means.

For many years, as computers grew larger and more powerful, and as databases of statistics became more readily available and as we moved into the world of receiving what passes for news on a twenty-four-hour schedule, we have been fed statistics and analysis on two subjects: healthcare and tobacco. The statistics have told us that healthcare costs are spiraling out of control, and they have told us that large numbers of smokers become expensive patients during treatment for lung cancer and other conditions. The statistics that correlate smoking with lung cancer, and the statistics that correlate lung cancer with healthcare costs have met on the field of political discourse.

It all happened after the signing of the first Medicare bill in 1965. Prior to that time, wise heads in Congress rejected numerous attempts to involve the government in the provision of healthcare. The Constitution provides no hint that providing healthcare is a defined role for the federal government. Until 1965, the Constitutional standard prevailed, and healthcare was a matter to be managed by patients and their doctors. The passage of the Medicare Act of 1965 changed all that.

Without weighing the reader down with a history of Medicare, I will sum up its impact briefly. After Medicare came into existence, it immediately became clear that the government had no idea how to administer health insurance. When people realized that it was an inefficient mess, members of Congress put their heads together and made the situation worse, by crafting legislation which inserted the federal government into the administration of hospitals and clinics. The insurance industry watched what was happening and began to model its delivery and administration on what wasn’t working at all well for Medicare, because the insurance industry actually knew how to milk the healthcare cow. Today, Medicare is a complete scandal, and so is private insurance. Between Medicare and the insurance industry, healthcare costs have climbed to unbelievable numbers.

Enter the smoker. And the statistics that purport to correlate smoking and lung cancer. And the statistics for healthcare costs associated with lung cancer. And political discourse which says that a) healthcare is a fundamental human right, just like “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and b) if healthcare is a human right, then the government should provide it, and c) if the government provides it, then the government should be able to require people to be healthy. I have greatly oversimplified the progression of thought, but it is actually the case today that US citizens believe that the government has a right to prevent citizens from making unhealthy life choices, the government has a right to legislate the healthy choices people must make, and all this happens because people actually believe that they have a right to scorn people whose health costs society a lot of money.

The USA is becoming more and more socialist every day. It is truly bizarre that citizens who believe costs of anything are too high for them to pay believe that the government should provide that thing for them at no charge. Where do they think the government will get the money to provide the free service? Government is not like a business. Government does not produce a product or service which it can sell at a profit. The only way government can acquire money to give me something is to take money away from me in the form of taxes.

The socialist agenda is leading us toward a socialist state, and it is accomplishing this objective without changing the Constitution. A thinking person will ask how that can happen, and the answer is that people simply don’t question the idea of a caretaker government any more. When FDR introduced the New Deal during the Great Depression, most families had been hurt so badly that they welcomed anything that seemed like help. It sounded good – a chicken in every pot. FDR increased the size of the Supreme Court and then packed the court with socialist judges, and ever thereafter we contend with an interpretation of the Constitution which fundamentally changes it. Today, a very loose construction of the Constitution allows the government to intrude in our lives to a degree that John Adams and George Washington would have completely rejected. Today, a loose construction of the Constitution mandates social programs which a reasonable level of taxation cannot possibly pay for. Today, a loose construction of the Constitution has been translated into a social notion that it is okay for an employer to demonize an employee’s spouse for smoking.

This situation will only get worse if Obama is elected president. How ironic that he is a smoker! Maybe John McCain should run an ad that calculates the cost to taxpayers if a smoker is elected president and then gets lung cancer. I plan to vote for John McCain in the hope that his affiliation with the Republican party will eventually translate into an aversion to socialism. For now, he looks less like a socialist than Obama, and we can hope that if conservatives unite to elect McCain, they will be able to influence him to more conservative political choices.

 The US is currently at the mercy of a totally stupid policy regarding petroleum drilling. The right solution is DRILL HERE! DRILL NOW!

John McCain has announced his support for offshore drilling to tap petroleum sources which have been known for years. In 1981 the federal government prohibited states from allowing petroleum extraction offshore due to environmental concerns. In light of today’s technology which can reassure us that the environment is safe, even with oil wells in the sea, this moratorium looks silly. In light of the need for the US to be free of dependence on foreign sources of oil, this moratorium looks completely ridiculous.

Predictably, Obama has made fun of the whole idea. He continues to chant the mantra that development of additional resources only enriches evil oil companies. Obama would like to see all free enterprise ended, so any enterprise, be it oil or sliced bread, is anathema to him. He has no idea that additional oil in the marketplace would benefit all Americans for three big reasons: 1) developing the offshore oil resources available to the US would reduce our need to buy oil from other countries, always recognized as a good thing; 2) additional oil in the marketplace will work within the economic law of supply and demand to reduce the price of crude oil and ultimately the price of a gallon of gasoline, a beneficial outcome for every US citizen; and 3) any new profit for oil companies will enrich the retirement funds of millions of US citizens who are stockholders in oil companies, a very beneficial outcome. Obama also doesn’t care if this action would work with the law of supply and demand, or if stockholders would make money to support themselves in retirement. Obama is a socialist, so he has no regard for free enterprise or the freedom of citizens.

Support for offshore drilling is only halfway to a fully sane energy policy. McCain still needs to support drilling in ANWR as well. And while he is at it, he needs to support exploration and development in the Arctic, because if we don’t take action in that area soon, we will find ourselves forever shut out of mineral rights there. Many other countries, such as Russia, have already started looking for any minerals which might be found in that remote, frozen seafloor. It is completely short-sighted and stupid for the US to miss out on the benefits of exploration there.

And, oh, by the way. If we don’t drill offshore, that does not mean that there will not be offshore drilling. In collaboration with Cuba, the Chinese are preparing to drill off Florida’s coast right now. If the US wants the petroleum in the reserves under the sea off our coasts, the US needs to drill and recover it. It will not be allowed to sit there until we are good and ready. While we are dithering about the possibility of some environmental disaster if US companies drill, countries who could not care less about an environmental disaster off the coast of the US are going to drill and extract that oil. We can either get busy and get in on the action, or we can let other people do it, which means that we will need to buy that oil from other countries instead of buying it from our own domestic companies. Does this make sense? No. Absolutely not. It is a complete boondoggle.

Enabling US companies to drill for oil off the coast of the US is only half of the right solution to our oil problems. But hurray for half way. I am happy to see even a hint of progress in the right direction. I intend to let John McCain know how happy I am to see him take this position, and I hope you will do the same.

We citizens need to speak up, speak out, and shout in the ears of everybody in the federal government: Drill here. Drill now. Achieve energy independence for the USA.

Drill Here! Drill Now!

 

Back in the era of the Great Depression, our newly-elected liberal Democrat President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, proposed and persuaded Congress to pass the Social Security act. He thought that old people should have something to live on in retirement. All the speeches people heard at the time made them believe that if this act passed in Congress, each worker in the US would have his own retirement account where his withholding tax plus his employer’s match would be saved to fund his very own retirement. What a boondoggling lie that turned out to be.

In fact, the payroll tax is plopped regularly into the budget money of the US to prop up activities that might otherwise not get done. The payroll tax is simply one of many sources of money which the Congress slurps up to fund whatever it darn well feels like.

Only in recent years, with the predicted failure of the Social Security promise, have we taxpayers fully realized what a lie it was that Roosevelt told. When I first learned about Social Security in high school history, I truly and actually carried away the image of a little savings account somewhere with my name on it. Oh, I had never even held a job at age 15 when this image hit my consciousness, but I looked forward to it. I wasn’t alone. Lots of people my age thought we had something to look forward to. We were faithfully paying that payroll tax. Our employers were faithfully paying their part. Congress wouldn’t lie to us, would it? Ha. Of course it would.

During George Bush’s first term, he proposed that we start fixing this problem. Bush proposed that a small percentage of the withholding tax be invested in a private account that actually did have the worker’s name on it. President Bush suggested that a small amount of money invested in a well-managed mutual fund would grow over a worker’s lifetime to an amount that would belong to the worker, be a real benefit during his retirement, and be an asset that could be passed on to his heirs. What a great idea! Instead of 7.3% of every paycheck going to Washington to be used who knew how, some of that money would go into an account with the worker’s name on it, and that money would belong to the worker until the day he died. Liberal politicians opposed this idea with the argument that it was simply a ploy to enrich Wall Street investment counselors.

Today, if you log on the Obama website and go to http://www.barackobama.com/issues/family/#strengthen-retirement you can see Obama’s proposal to help people prepare for retirement. You will see that he proposes that every employee have a retirement account that he funds by depositing something every payday. Obama includes a provision that allows the employee to opt out, but whether the employee opts in or out, one thing is sure: his entire 7.3% payroll withholding tax still goes to the government for whatever purpose the government chooses. The employee pays just as much as if the promise of Social Security were real. All Obama is doing is creating yet another government requirement. The employee is still out 7.3% of his gross pay. Obama only offers more pressure to save money over and above that 7.3% that supposedly goes to Social Security. In other words, the government currently steals from employees and employers at the rate of 7.3% for each paycheck, but that has resulted in no money for people to live on in retirement. So now we will compel people by law to save for retirement, and we will set up a bureaucracy that will monitor and supervise this requirement and it will produce a neat form the employee can sign if he chooses not to participate.

Obama is clearly a liberal politician. If we had some doubts before, we have no doubts now. He has come up with yet another way to reduce the amount of money a worker takes home after working hard all week.

Please do not think that I oppose the idea of a worker saving for retirement. I believe it is a wise move for anyone. I just don’t think the government has any authorization in the Constitution to require people to do it. The Constitution envisioned a voting population who were all adults who took responsibility for themselves. If they wanted to save for retirement, they could do so. Even in the benighted days of yore, before Social Security, the employee who wished to accept the discipline of saving for retirement could do so. Even without the government requirement, any employee today who wants to save for retirement can do so. It is a free choice anybody can make.

Liberal politicians seem to believe that nobody will accept the self-discipline of saving for retirement unless the government requires it. In fact, liberal politicians don’t believe the voting public has the sense to make any decisions without government instruction. We can’t decide to take care of our medical needs. We don’t know what to eat or how much to weigh without the government to tell us. In addition, we can’t and won’t plan for retirement unless the government pushes us to put some money into a real retirement account even though the government has been taking 7.3% of every paycheck for as long as any of us has been working ostensibly for our retirement.

I applaud retirement planning, but I don’t applaud a government requirement on that subject. If the government begins to tell us we should save and we must sign a paper to say we don’t want to, then the next step is to tell us we don’t have the option not to. Then we must save a certain amount. Then we must save more. Then we must pay a fee to some government inspector whose job is to make sure that we save what we are supposed to save. When the camel of government sticks its nose under the tent, it does not stop until it is sitting in our laps eating bonbons that we have been required to provide.

I will not be voting for Obama in the fall. I will vote for John McCain. I am not sold on John McCain’s commitment to personal freedom for all, but I intend to make sure he knows that is what I expect. I hope a lot of other people will give him the same message. We cannot afford a socialist in the White House. We must not elect Obama.

We don't have the best choice, but we do have a choice. I will vote for John McCain.

In a New York Times article, “Unlike Others, US Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech,”[1] Adam Liptak hints that it might be time for the US to re-evaluate our first amendment rights. He discusses a case in Canada in which Muslims took issue with opinions of Islam expressed in a magazine. This case arose after the magazine published a “mocking and biting” article which argued “that the rise of Islam threatened Western values.” Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress took the matter to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal where their complaint that it violated provincial laws against hate speech is currently being reviewed.

It might be a good time to look at the First Amendment to the Constitution again. What does it say? Why is it there? What ever made us think we needed this amendment anyway?

The First Amendment reads as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

When the Constitution was written in 1787, the delegates to the convention believed that the concept of the document included the right of citizens to engage in debate over issues. Such debate had enabled and empowered the Revolution and it continued to be important to citizens of all the states in the new country. However, as the proposed Constitution circulated among the states for ratification, many states expressed deep apprehension over the absence of specific protection for speech. There was such a ground swell of concern over this issue and several others that ratification of the Constitution was only achieved by virtue of an agreement that the first Congress would quickly provide protection for speech as part of a group of amendments popularly referred to as the Bill of Rights. Wise leaders rightly discerned that rights not specifically protected might well disappear in the muddle of history. The First Amendment provided that Congress could not pass any law abridging freedom of speech.

Currently, one of the most visible expressions of our right to free speech is talk radio. Around the country, AM radio stations offer many opportunities for people to talk about all sorts of things. The writers of the Constitution would be proud if they could see this phenomenon in action. Benjamin Franklin fervently advocated for mail service in this nation in order to achieve precisely what talk radio does so well. Franklin wanted the citizens to be able to talk with each other about their concerns and to communicate with the various officials and representatives they had elected to their government. He would have been ecstatic if he even imagined that one day private citizens would have the opportunity to speak to huge audiences using the power of talk radio.

I hear that there are people in Congress who don’t like talk radio. They think that people might have too much freedom of speech unless someone “reins in” talk radio. We must not let Congress institute restrictions on our freedom of speech by making rules for talk radio. As it exists today, talk radio owes nothing to anybody. No political force runs it, no political force limits it. We, the people, talk about everything, and sometimes we even talk about Congress. We need that freedom, and it is our Constitutional right. We, the people, must tell Congress to forget writing any laws that restrict our right to free speech. Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and George Washington are watching. We must stand strong and tell Congress our message: Don’t even think of trying to restrict our freedom of speech.

During the campaigns leading up to an election, candidates spend a lot of time and effort telling voters what they can expect after the election. Right now, John McCain and Barack Obama are busy explaining what they will do if elected. Sometimes they address problems we all agree on and sometimes they try to persuade us that we should recognize a problem they want to solve. At the most basic level, they want us to believe that in any situation they will do the right thing for the country. As voters, this is what most of us want. The trick is to know what the right thing is.

I recently learned two fifty-dollar words for some common-sense ideas. I came across them in an article about ethics.

The first word is teleological. In ethical situations, a teleological thinker will ask, what is the expected outcome of this choice? This person judges whether a decision is right or wrong entirely on the basis of the fallout. To do that requires that the person believe he knows what the fallout will be, which is a different problem. Teleological thinkers usually feel pretty certain that “if A” they can predict “then B.” This is a very common way of approaching ethical choices in political discourse.

The second word is deontological. Given an ethical choice, a deontological thinker will not worry about the outcome, because that person believes that morality is a choice among absolutes. Deontological thinkers believe that murder is wrong. Absolutely, unequivocally wrong. They may dispute the definition of the word murder in order to get around problems with situations such as self-defense and protection of innocent bystanders, but for true deontologists, if the question is the morality of murder, then the answer is that murder is wrong. Political discussions are pretty scornful of the idea of absolutes, especially moral absolutes.

One hot topic in politics that touches many people’s lives is abortion. Teleologists approach the question of abortion by asking whether the outcome of an abortion is good. They will ask if it is right to compel a woman to give birth to a baby when the woman does not want the baby. They wonder if a baby should even be born into a family that cannot or will not take care of it. The moral questions associated with conception do not enter into the discussion, because teleologists only concern themselves with the outcome. They won’t judge the wisdom of a person who carelessly or ignorantly or willfully becomes pregnant without a commitment to protect and care for the baby. A teleologist simply says that the decision to abort or not abort the pregnancy should be based entirely on the morality of the outcome. The proponents of “a woman’s right to choose” believe that a woman has a right to evaluate the impact of a birth and make her choice to continue or end the pregnancy on that basis. The position that there is a natural right to choose abortion is based on a teleological approach to the ethical choices associated with abortion.

There is an opposing viewpoint that asserts that from the moment of conception, a baby has the right to life. This point of view asserts that the absolute right to life trumps any evaluation of the outcome of a birth. A deontological thinker disregards the impact of a birth in a family that does not want the child. From the deontological point of view, a woman who is pregnant does not have a right to ask if she wants the baby; the baby’s life absolutely trumps any consideration of the impact of a baby in her life. In fact, because life has absolute priority, the life of the mother may not even be considered. As with teleological thinkers, some deontological thinkers define their terms in order to consider unique situations, but a strictly deontological viewpoint considers that life is an absolute value that transcends the worth of any other consideration.

Looking at the question of abortion this way may help us to imagine how these two distinct approaches to ethical questions will make it difficult for any candidate to assume that he knows the “right” solution to any of our national problems. Most political solutions to problems are quite obviously teleological. They deal with outcomes. Nothing is absolute. Both sides of an issue may be accommodated to some degree, but in a political solution, nobody gets to be completely whole. It is teleology that allows us to make any progress at all in political solutions.

The reason for that is that while there are many people who think of ethical problems as if there were an absolute right answer, there are usually many different perceptions of the absolute right answer. Using the subject of abortion as a sample of this problem, we can all recall more than one point of view on the side of “right to life” and more than one on the side of “a woman’s right to choose.” Some who believe in preserving “life” at all costs recognize that two lives are at risk in some pregnancies; they acknowledge that it is not always possible to save both the mother and the baby, and in their accommodations of this truth, they temporarily allow themselves to think teleologically. In such a case, even the most fervent absolutists will concede that someone must decide whether the outcome is better if the mother survives or if the baby survives. As for those who advocate freedom of choice, most of them recognize that repeated abortion is detrimental to a woman’s health and will advocate for the woman to make a choice about the desired outcome long before conception takes place. They won’t say that it is absolutely wrong for a woman to refuse to plan, but the whole push for sex education in schools grows out of their recognition that there really is a better outcome when conception is prevented than when it is aborted. In the public forum on the topic of abortion, it would be tough to strictly classify the people in the various camps as teleological or deontological, but understanding those terms helps to understand the way adherents participate in the discussion.

To recap, in a discussion of a national problem which must be resolved by government leaders, people picture solutions largely based on their own perception either that there is an absolute right thing to do or that the right thing to do depends on how we get to the right outcome. This is the reason that everyone can agree that a person sick with leukemia “needs” medical treatment, but there is a huge question and disagreement about whether that person has a “right” to medical treatment. Is healthcare a fundamental human right? Any individual will see the answer to that question within a personal frame of reference that decides right and wrong as either a teleological problem or a deontological problem.

There are other pressing questions in the public forum.

On the subject of petroleum:

Why is the price of gasoline rising so fast? Has something evil happened that produced this result or is it the natural consequence of market processes? Should government take some action to prevent gasoline prices from rising so high? Should oil companies be allowed to drill in ANWR? Would drilling in ANWR have a bad outcome for wildlife there? Should the outcomes for wildlife trump the outcomes for people? Is there any absolute right and wrong in the petroleum market?

On the war in Iraq:

Was the US right to invade Iraq? Does it any longer matter whether the US was right to invade Iraq? Was there an absolute moral imperative to invade Iraq? Does the outcome that eliminated Saddam Hussein as a threat to world peace have greater value than the perceptions of some Iraqis that we invaded and occupied their country for no reason? How is Iraq related to worldwide terrorism? Does it matter if Iraq harbored and supported terrorism? Is there a number of military casualties that is one too many? If so, have we passed that number? Does the number of casualties have any bearing on the moral rectitude of our campaign in Iraq? Is our campaign right for Iraq? For the US? For the world?

On the subject of the economy:

Is it true that the US is on the verge of a recession? Already in a recession? Headed for a disastrous depression? What is a recession? A depression? Should the government rescue homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages? Should the government rescue lenders who made loans to people who can’t pay? Is it good for the citizens if the government takes action to stimulate and manage the economy? Is the outcome good? Is there a morally absolute right thing for the government to do here?

All this conversation about the issues is completely disconnected from the Constitutional considerations. When we consider the Constitution as we consider the moral issues, the discussion becomes even more complex.

I have said all of this in order to say one more thing. People need to have sorted out their own thoughts on these subjects before they begin to evaluate the candidates. People need to know how they themselves approach moral, ethical and Constitutional questions before they try to evaluate the candidates. If a voter has no position on an issue, then the candidates run the conversation. That should not happen. When a candidate speaks, voters should already have a foundation on which to determine if the candidate is proposing solutions that are acceptable within moral, ethical and Constitutional boundaries. The voter must think before asking what the candidate thinks.

I have done this homework, and I will be voting for John McCain. I have concluded that even though I don’t agree with him on all the absolutes, his personal history and public life give me some hope that I will agree with his leadership more often than not. There is no other candidate who meets that standard. I consider that Obama has demonstrated profound emptiness of moral standards. He has repeatedly dropped positions and dumped associations as they became unpopular, not as he made reasoned moral choices. He advocates a completely socialist agenda for his actions if he is elected, an agenda in direct conflict with the concept of government written into our Constitution. I reject Obama completely. I will vote for John McCain. I recommend that you do the same.

In Ontario, the government decrees that cigarettes for sale in stores must be kept out of sight of customers. The product is legal, no one will be arrested if the product is sold, but whoever wants it must request it without needing to see it first. Ostensibly, the real target of the rule is children, because the government does not want children to be lured into smoking by seeing the product. Some people point out that the same government which enforces this oppressive rule runs liquor stores where a wide variety of attractive alcohol products are in plain sight, inviting children to observe adult shoppers and be enticed to want the same. Critics also point out that the government has no objection to magazine displays that include pornographic material easily seen by children. One Reuters reporter said that “advocates say the seemingly draconian measure will eventually work, and is too important to get bogged down by morality.”[1]

Morality is a word seldom spoken with respect in contemporary discourse. It is mentioned with scorn and distaste as something inconvenient and oppressive. The subject of abortion used to be a question of morality, but after abortion was reclassified as a fundamental human right, then we could talk about it endlessly without getting bogged down by morality. That change must surely be documented as a huge forward step for civilization.

Socialist governments seldom permit themselves to be bogged down by mere morality. The socialist government of the Soviet Union regularly arrested people who suffered the mental disease of dissent from the government position and sent them to facilities where they could be re-educated and made well from this disease. The fact that this government did not get bogged down in morality permitted it to avoid any feeling of shame for the fact that many of the “patients” died as a result of the therapy intended to return them to happy, obedient citizenship.

The socialist government of China doesn’t get bogged down by morality, either. Every Chinese family is limited to one legal child, and any other children are illegal. I think it is one of the supremely unfunny comedies of the day. Here is a socialist government telling healthy, productive, loving families that they may have only one legal child, while in our country, the socialists (often hiding behind the name of the Democrat Party) advocate that we permit people who have mental and physical disabilities to have as many children as they would like for the rest of us to support. In fact, our resident socialists are the ones who say that busy professionals should have the right to choose abortion rather than be bogged down with a baby, while people who are unable to support themselves because of mental or physical disability, or even because they don’t want to work, are free to bog down the rest of us with as many babies as they please. Socialists appear to prefer that people who want babies due to the notion that passing puberty is like passing the test to be an adult should have lots of children, while people are equally immature, but already pregnant, should abort healthy ones. Talk about bogged down. I don’t know how the socialists sort out all these policies. To me, they seem like an incredible rat’s nest. I yearn for the light of morality to be shined on this sort of thinking.

This is why I am very disturbed with my choices in this year’s presidential election. Someone told me last week that he could comfortably vote for either candidate, because they are so much alike. I fear that I cannot comfortably voter for either candidate, precisely because they are so much alike.

The cigarette situation in Ontario is a microcosm of socialist government we would all do well to study. The Constitution of the USA includes a Bill of Rights in which it is clearly stated that all powers not specifically ceded to the federal government in the Constitution remain with the states and the people. That concept is implicit in the original document, but many people felt that unless it was spelled out, power-hungry politicians would use the federal government as an excuse to oppress and rob the citizens. They thought that this amendment would mean that the federal government could not act outside the powers granted in the Constitution without another amendment that defined and limited that power.

Those who wisely foresaw the necessity of this amendment would be appalled to see how much power the citizens and the states have now ceded to the federal government without benefit of any Constitutional amendment. I’ll share just one example of this problem.

Every car is now manufactured with seat belts. Every state today has a law requiring that at least the driver must wear a seat belt. This is not a federal law; it is a state law. The federal government has no right to pass laws regulating traffic. Only states can do that. How is it that every state now has such a law?

It all started with the idea that it wasn’t fair for some states to receive less money from the government than others. It just wasn’t fair. Revenue had to be shared. A ground-breaking law was passed that pulled money from every state according to a formula that reflected its ability to pay, and all states received “equal” benefits back. It meant that states which could not afford their share of the costs for a federal highway could have that highway anyhow. All the states would contribute to a big pot of money. States with more money than they “needed” would receive less of it back, and states with less would get more of it so they could have their “fair share” of federal highways and other things. I am starting to hate the word “fair,” because every time I hear it, I know that somebody is figuring out a way to take what I have and give it to someone else.

After revenue-sharing was invented and deployed nationwide, it seemed good to some socialists in Congress to worry about the safety of drivers on the highways. They knew that they didn’t have the right to worry about state highways, city streets and back roads with no identity, but that didn’t stop them. They concluded that if everyone wore seat belts, then highway accident fatalities would be vastly reduced. Many states felt that personal safety was a personal matter, and many states felt that citizens had a right to decide for themselves if they wanted to use seat belts. The socialists in Congress resented this individual freedom to take a risk. They wanted every state to require every car to have seat belts and to require every person to use them. They did not believe that anyone had a right to accept this kind of personal risk. They remembered that every federal highway was paid for by funds in the revenue-sharing program. The federal government was paying for those highways, and they saw a way to enforce the behavior they desired by manipulating those funds which were supposed to be shared in a “fair” manner.

Only a confirmed conservative would believe that the strategy they came up with was unfair. After all, weren’t these seat belt advocates completely devoted to protecting all citizens, even if the citizens didn’t ask them to? The strategy was that Congress passed a bill that prohibited the distribution of highway funds to states without seat belt laws. In other words, they were going to go ahead and take money from all the states, but they were not going to give money back to states without a seat belt law. It is no surprise to anyone that the states lined up, saluted and passed seat belt laws.

This same strategy has been used over and over again. Money which never should have left the states is vacuumed up and dumped in the wastebin of Congress. There, the representatives and senators mull over all the ways they can exert power over states and citizens without any amendment to the Constitution, and without getting bogged down in morality, too, I might add. They exert the power by withholding money until they get what they want.

This strategy would not work if people had rejected the concept of revenue-sharing in the first place. That idea was sold as an act of “fairness.” It’s not fair that some states are rich and some are poor. We hear the same thing in the education arena. It’s not fair that some school districts are rich and some are poor. In the name of “fairness” the states and the citizens have been robbed time and time again. In the name of “fairness” our country is burdened with taxes on taxes, and our citizens are defrauded of their rights to liberty and personal freedom.

The two candidates for president in the election of 2008 are much too alike for me to be able to choose between them on the basis of their positions on the Constitution. They both speak the socialist Robin Hood mantra – steal from the rich to care for the poor. Both of them pose a danger to our country in my opinion. I must choose on some other basis.

Therefore, I will choose to vote for McCain. I want him to change, and I hope that wise leaders in the Republican Party will help him do that. I respect his personal history as a POW. Surviving that experience with a will to continue serving his country tells me a lot about the man. Not his politics, just the man. Since I can’t vote for the candidate who is consistent with my politics, I will vote for the candidate I respect. I'm actually looking for someone who has personal experience in the bog of morality. In that regard, I don’t know what to think of Obama. He hasn’t done anything yet. I can’t even guess if he has any character or personal strength. I do know that he disdains the Constitution.

I will vote for McCain. I hope that enough of us do that to elect him. Then I hope that McCain will see that his constituents want him to preserve and protect the Constitution. I don’t know anything else to hope for.