Are you struggling?

"A good and devout man arranges in his mind the things he has to do, not according to the whims of evil inclination but according to the dictates of right reason. Who is forced to struggle more than he who tries to master himself? This ought to be our purpose, then: to conquer self, to become stronger each day, to advance in virtue." - from "The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas A Kempis

My pastor recommended that I read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis.  It was written sometime around 1400 AD.  So far, it is one of the most thought-provoking devotionals that I have ever read.  I'm taking a slow, meditative approach to reading it, and I am really enjoying it.  I try to read a section each day and then meditate on it.  That's meditate, as in think deeply about, not "ooohhmmmm" meditate.  I thought that I'd share some of it with you as I go.

Enjoy! and God Bless

God Bless You and Merry Christmas

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and I pray that God will bring you and your family, and our nation, many blessings in the new year.  Please take a moment to pray for our service men and women who are overseas fighting to defend our freedoms.  Pray for their families, too.  There are a lot of folks out there who aren't able to celebrate Christmas with their families.  Don't take their sacrifice for granted.

In God We Trust


Scott A. Baker

Tomball Illegal Immigration Protest 09-10

Property Rights and Free Markets: Economic Principles of America's Founders

Property Rights and Free Markets: Economic Principles of America's Founders: "Although there are many scholarly treatments of the Founders’ understanding of property and economics, few of them present an overview of the complete package of the principles and policies upon which they agreed. Even the fact that there was a consensus among the Founders is often denied. Government today has strayed far from the Founders’ approach to economics, but the older policies have not been altogether replaced. Some of the Founders’ complex set of policies to protect property rights are still in force. America has abandoned the Founders’ views on the gold and silver standard, the prohibition of monopolies, the presumption of freedom to use property as one likes, freedom of contract, and restricting regulation to the protection of health, safety, and morals. But in other respects, America continues to offer a surprising degree of protection to property rights in the Founders’ sense of that term"

Charles Krauthammer - Those troublesome Jews

Tongue in cheek title, but brilliant analysis.

Those troublesome Jews: "The world is outraged at Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.

Sins of Omission in Obama's National Security Strategy -- By: Clifford D. May

Sins of Omission in Obama's National Security Strategy -- By: Clifford D. May: "Is it possible to defeat an enemy we don’t understand? That is only one of the questions that ought to occur to anyone reading President Obama’s new National Security Strategy (NSS).

Administration officials and loyalists have been trying to put the best possible face on the congressionally mandated 52-page document. But anyone who glances at so much as a page will see that it is rife with platitudes, wishful thinking, and self-delusion. It requires a bit more effort to see how unserious and self-contradictory it is. But let me give that a go.

Start with this: Who do you think is to blame for the most deadly terrorist attack ever on American soil? According to the NSS, the answer is “globalization,” the current buzzword for integrated economies, networked transnational communications, and the outrage of selling McDonald’s hamburgers to Parisians. The NSS states: “The dark side of this globalized world came to the forefront for the American people on September 11, 2001.” Is it possible that policymakers in the White House sincerely believe that’s what happened?

The NSS asserts: “To succeed, we must face the world as it is.” It then immediately goes on to claim: “Wars over ideology have given way to wars over religious, ethnic, and tribal identity.”

Are we to believe that al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Khomeinists, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood are without ideologies? And if the fight is over “religious, ethnic, and tribal identity,” which religious, ethnic, and tribal identity might that be? Presbyterianism, perhaps?

The NSS insists: “We are at war with a specific network, al-Qa’ida, and its terrorist affiliates who support efforts to attack the United States, our allies, and partners.” But what do members of the al-Qaeda network believe? What are their goals? Who are their affiliates? And, since this is a strategy document, what strategy will be used to defeat them? The authors of the NSS steer clear of such questions. They think they have said all that needs to be said by labeling self-declared enemies of the West “violent extremists.”

The NSS rejects “the notion that al-Qa’ida represents any religious author­ity. They are not religious leaders, they are killers; and neither Islam nor any other religion condones the slaughter of innocents.” Osama bin Laden probably would agree with that last premise. He’d add, however, that Americans, Israelis, and other infidels are, by definition, not innocents.

The document recognizes that it is imperative to defeat al-Qaeda, adding that the “frontline of this fight is Afghanistan and Pakistan.” That ignores the fact that the country in which American troops have killed more al-Qaeda combatants than anywhere else is Iraq. Though al-Qaeda in Iraq has been decimated, it has not yet been eliminated. In particular, its cells in and around Mosul have been responsible for most of the recent suicide bombings in Iraq. Would it not be useful for U.S. forces to finish them off before shipping out? And, conceptually, does it make sense to continue to assert, as the NSS does, that the U.S. is “fighting two wars,” one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, rather than a single war with frontlines in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia, as well as Times Square, Fort Hood, and Northwest Flight 253?

To strategize is to prioritize and to bet on a correlation between actions to be taken and outcomes to be expected. This NSS makes no attempt to do either. Promising to “deter aggression and prevent the proliferation of the world’s most dangerous weapons” is one thing; formulating a strategy for achieving those goals is another.

Nor does the NSS demonstrate strategic thinking when it states that the U.S will pursue its “interests within multilateral forums like the United Nations -- not outside of them.” The fact is the U.N. General Assembly is now largely under the control of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, while Russia and China routinely use their veto power to thwart U.S. interests in the U.N. Security Council. If there’s a strategy to change that, it’s not in the NSS.

I suppose the White House advisers who produced this document would say that the roadmap for getting from where we are to where we want to be can be found in the “commitment to renew our economy, which serves as the wellspring of American power.” But if that were the case, would the administration be increasing the U.S. debt by trillions of dollars -- more than the total debt accumulated since 1776? Does anyone seriously believe that Obama’s health-care plan is about economic power rather than its proponents’ conception of fairness? Surely no one can argue that “cap-and-trade” and similar measures intended to combat “global warming” will speed rather than slow economic growth.

Since coming to office a year and a half ago, President Obama has attempted to “engage” Iran. Oblivious to the outcome of that experiment, the NSS pledges to “pursue engagement with hostile nations to test their intentions, give their governments the opportunity to change course, reach out to their people, and mobilize international coalitions.”

Actually, Iran has mobilized an international coalition, one that includes Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil, and Turkey -- all of which have shown themselves eager to undercut the United States. Our strategy to turn this around? Who knows? Certainly not the authors of the NSS, who say: “Nations must have incentives to behave responsibly, or be isolated when they do not.#...#Credible and effective alternatives to military action -- from sanctions to isolation -- must be strong enough to change behavior.” Agreed. So when will there be a serious effort to isolate Iran? Why isn’t Obama at least asking Congress to give him tough sanctions legislation as quickly as possible?

Commendably, the NSS does recognize that “the United States must now be prepared for asymmetric threats, such as those that target our reliance on space.” But the best way to prevent missiles from moving through space to reach their targets would be to deploy a space-based missile-defense system -- a project the Obama administration rejects.

Perhaps what is most troubling about the NSS is what it omits. The seminal role played by Iran since its 1979 revolution is never mentioned, much less explored. Such words as “Islamism,” “Jihadism,” “radical Islam,” and “Salafism” never appear.

Instead, we are warned that the “danger from climate change is real, urgent, and severe” even as it has become apparent that the science supporting those assertions is shaky -- and that’s leaving aside whether “climate change” is a national-security issue. There are frequent evocations of “our most cherished values” with no attempt to say what those values are or what to do when they conflict. Such traditional values as freedom, democracy, and human rights get short shrift.

“Renewing American leadership,” we are instructed, will require “calling upon what is best about America -- our innovation and capacity; our openness and moral imagination.” Moral imagination? What does that even mean?

And, of course, there is this: “To deny violent extremists one of their most potent recruitment tools, we will close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.” Remind me: How is that strategy progressing?

-- Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism.

---

"

An Islam of Their Very Own -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy

An Islam of Their Very Own -- By: Andrew C. McCarthy: "Well, at least he had it half right. For John Brennan, President Obama’s al-Quds lovin’ counterterrorism guru, that’s a significant improvement.

Last week, Brennan interrupted his search for the “moderate elements” of Hezbollah, and from his finger-wagging at Americans for their “ignorant feelings” about Muslim-man-caused disasters, to offer some signature insights about Islam at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In a pleasantly surprising start, he conceded that the United States has an “enemy,” which he further admitted was neither “terrorism”—a “tactic”—nor “terror” —“a state of mind.”

So far so good. For a guy who figures “20 percent isn’t that bad” a recidivism rate for released mass murderers, this was pretty good stuff.

Then he got to jihad.

Brennan admonished that we must not “describe our enemy as ‘jihadists.’” Why not? “Because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam.” Right again. There is no gainsaying that jihad is deemed to be a divine injunction in Islam. If one regards all forms of Islam as “legitimate,” then jihad, too, must be legitimate. Yet “legitimate” is a slippery concept. It could mean that something is good. Or it could just mean that something is authentic -- something that it really exists, for good or ill.

Islam falls into the latter category. It exists. In many of its iterations -- not just al-Qaeda’s ideology but Islamist ideology, which is quite mainstream -- Islam means the West existential harm. This is why we are supportive of reformist Muslims, however pessimistic some of us may be about their prospects. The point, though, is that Islam is not going away. It is part of the hand we are dealt, like it or not. We don’t need to trash-talk it gratuitously, but neither should we pretend that it is an asset on our security ledger. It’s not.

Alas, the Hope administration doesn’t see it that way. For Brennan, as for Obama, Islam is immovably in the first category: “legitimate” as in “good” -- end of discussion. To sculpt this alternative reality, two things are required. First, we must ignore Islam’s many troublesome elements -- e.g., its supremacism, inequality, intolerance, denial of freedom of conscience, endorsement of violence, etc. Second, to the extent that the resulting atrocities can’t be ignored, we must pretend that what ails the Islamic world is our fault, not Islam’s.

Thus we get the priceless Brennan on jihad. According our counterterrorism czar (or is it now counter-tactic czar?), the “holy struggle” is wholly anodyne. Jihad, he insists, merely “mean[s] to purify oneself or one’s community.” Therefore, there can be “nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women, and children.” If innocent men, women, and children are being killed, don’t blame jihad. There must be some other explanation: Israel, cartoons, Gitmo, South Park, teddy bears named Mohammed, dismay over the health-care bill -- anything but jihad.

In his never-to-be-missed Saturday column, Mark Steyn observes the fictional scenes imprinted on euro currency, a perfect emblem for the pie-in-the-sky vision of a united Europe. It’s as if Hope could make Change if you just pretended hard enough: “If you invent a currency for a united Europe,” Mark writes of the EU fantasists, “a united Europe is sure to follow.” So, too, do Brennan, Obama, and the rest set about dreaming up an Islam of their very own. They are far from alone in this. For years, the project has consumed progressive solons in America and Europe -- from Pres. George W. Bush’s “religion of peace” sermon, delivered while thousands of limbs were being removed from the rubble of the World Trade Center, to British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s Brennanesque insistence that terrorism had to be “un-Islamic activity” simply because it was terrorism.



Like Brennan, the Right Honorable Ms. Smith occupied a national-security position calling for clear-eyed realism, for counseling the government to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it were. Instead, we get Judy Garland singing “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” except Garland at least knew she was dreaming.

While our top officials imagine an Islam that isn’t, jihad is something the rest of us needn’t imagine, because it is all too real. And it is simple. Jihad is, always and everywhere, the mission to implement, spread, or defend sharia, the Islamic legal code. It is not exclusively violent; an army doesn’t need to be violent if its enemies are willing to give ground. But jihad only “means to purify oneself or one’s community” in a very narrow sense. It is not the syrupy quest to become a better person but the command to become a better Muslim; it is not the smiley-face mission to “purify” one’s community of crime but the command to cleanse one’s community of non-Islamic influences.

The inextricable bond between jihad and sharia is also easily explained. In Muslim doctrine, sharia is deemed the necessary precondition for Islamicizing a society. Islam’s designs are hegemonic: Even in its less threatening iterations, it is taken as a given that believers must call all of humanity to the faith. What separates the true moderates from the faux moderates and the terrorists are the lengths to which one is willing to go in carrying out that injunction. That it is an injunction, however, is not open to debate.

Our political leaders can continue to trivialize jihad as if it were some benign struggle to brush after every meal. They can continue to ignore the core tenets that make sharia antithetical to a free, self-determining society. But they can’t do that and do the only job we need them to do: protect our lives and our liberties.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

---

"

More signs of trouble - Fears Intensify That Euro Crisis Could Snowball

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/business/global/17fear.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Continuing signs of a global sovereign debt crisis reveal that this recession is far from over, and that our founders were wise to warn against problems like this.

USA Today - Tax code grows like kudzu as another April 15 approaches

Tax code grows like kudzu as another April 15 approaches - USATODAY.com

The Flat Tax is really simple and it can be written in one paragraph. Everybody pays 15%, no exceptions. If the government would stop wasting our money, we could probably get it down to 10% very easily.

Payback Time: States’ Debt Woes Grow Too Big to Camouflage

Payback Time: States’ Debt Woes Grow Too Big to Camouflage: "High debt levels are causing states to take desperate measures to make their finances appear healthy."

Charles Krauthammer - Obamacare's next trick: the VAT

As the night follows the day, VAT follows health-care reform.
With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.
Read the rest here: Obamacare's next trick: the VAT
Get ready to feel the pain. If you liked the Jimmy Carter years, you’ll love Barack Obama’s historic decimation of our rights, our freedoms and our wealth.

The Bond Market and ObamaCare

The Bond Market and ObamaCare: "Michael Barone, Washington Examiner
Not many people noticed amid the Democrats' struggle to jam their health care bill through the House, but in recent weeks U.S. Treasury bonds have lost their status as the world's safest investment.The numbers are pretty clear. In February, Bloomberg News reports, Berkshire Hathaway sold two-year bonds with an interest rate lower than that on two-year Treasuries. A company run by a 79-year-old investor is a better credit risk, the markets are telling us, than the U.S. government. Buffett's firm isn't the only one. Procter & Gamble, Johnson &..."

Keynes was wrong, we need to get back to Adam Smith economics.

CNBC - Social Security to See Payout Exceed Pay-In This Year

“This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.” - Social Security to See Payout Exceed Pay-In This Year - CNBC

We are definitely not out of the woods yet.

Dems Won This Battle, But They've Lost the War

Dems Won This Battle, But They've Lost the War: "Mike Flynn, Big Govt
Over the last several days, old friends and family around the country have contacted me with the same questions: 'Do they have the votes? What is going to happen?' Maybe they think that, living inside the Beltway, I get some secret newsletter that can divine what Congress will do. To all of them and you, let me be clear: I have no idea what is going to happen tonight. We have slipped well beyond any rational political thought or calculation. By any traditional analysis, this bill would have been buried long ago. So, while I don't know what is going to happen, it is worth..."

Iranians train Taliban to use roadside bombs - Times Online

Iranians train Taliban to use roadside bombs - Times Online

Obama insists on reaching out to the psychotic Iranian dictator, while ignoring the people of Iran who are being brutally repressed. This is the response that we get for his refusal to live in reality. Appeasement never works, and the longer Obama pretends that it does, the more American and other lives will be lost.

Welcome to Deemocracy -- By: Mark Steyn

Welcome to Deemocracy -- By: Mark Steyn: "On Thursday, the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted to set up a committee to examine whether condoms should be required on all pornographic film shoots within the Golden State.

California has run out of money, but it hasn’t yet run out of things to regulate.

For a government regulatory hearing, the testimony was livelier than usual. The porn star Madelyne Hernandez recalled an especially grueling scene in which she had been obliged to have sex with 75 men. The bureaucrats nodded thoughtfully, no doubt contemplating another languorous 18-month committee assignment looking into capping the number of group-sex participants at 60 per scene. In future, if a porn actress finds 75 men waiting for her on the set, they’ll be bureaucrats from Sacramento’s Condom Enforcement Squad.

The committee will also make recommendations on whether the “adult” movie industry should be subject to the same regulatory regime and hygiene procedures as hospitals and doctors’ surgeries. You mean with everyone in surgical masks? Kinky. If you’ve ever been in the filthy, C. difficile- and MRSA-infected wards of Britain’s National Health Service, it may make more sense after the passage of Obamacare to require hospitals to bring themselves up to the same hygiene standards as the average Bangkok porn shoot.

One can make arguments for permitting porn and for banning porn, but there isn’t a lot to be said for the bureaucratization of porn. Hard to believe there will be dull, bespoke California bureaucrats looking forward to early retirement on gold-plated pensions who’ll be getting home, sinking into the La-Z-Boy and complaining to the missus about a tough day at the office working on the permits for Debbie Does the Fresno OSHA Office.

Meanwhile, Obamacare will result in the creation of at least 16,500 new jobs. Doctors? Nurses? Ha! Dream on, suckers. That’s 16,500 new IRS agents, who’ll be needed to check whether you -- yes, you, Mr. and Mrs. Hopendope of 27 Hopeychangey Gardens -- are in compliance with the 15 tax increases and dozens of new federal mandates the Deemocrats are about to “deem” into existence. This will be the biggest expansion of the IRS since World War II -- and that’s change you can believe in. This is what “health” “care” “reform” boils down to: fewer doctors, longer wait times, but more bureaucrats. And, when you walk into the Health Care Enforcement Division of the IRS, the staffing levels will make Madelyne Hernandez’s group-sex scene look like an Equity-minimum one-man play off-off-off Broadway.

Barack Obama, a man who not so long ago had time to jet across the world to make dreary Olympics-losing speeches about how his kind of town Chicago is, has now postponed his presidential visits to Indonesia and Australia in order to make sure “health care” passes this week -- or, at any rate, is “deemed” to have passed, which is apparently the way a quarter-millennium-old constitutional republic does things.

The president, his press secretary informs us, regrets having to postpone his trip for three months, but “passage of the health-insurance reform is of paramount importance.” Whereas Australia isn’t.

The visit had already been pared back to the bare minimum -- a quick refueling stop in Canberra, with a speech to Parliament and a grip’n’greet with the governor-general and the prime minister. Maybe the administration could simply “deem” the visit to have occurred, photoshop a souvenir snapshot, and stick it in the mail to their eminences. In much the same way, the Deemocrats are deeming their health bill to control costs rather than actually controlling them. Medicare doesn’t reimburse doctors the cost of treating the patient; it reimburses what the bureaucracy “deems” it to have cost. In a deemocracy, this works. In real life, it’s more problematic.

Investor’s Business Daily argues that the “health” debate is really a proxy fight on the size and role of government. According to their poll, 64 percent of people think the federal government has “too much power.” Correct. But a big chunk of that 64 percent voted less than 18 months ago for a man and a party explicitly committed to more government with more power, and they’re now living with the consequences. Obama is government, and government is Obama. That’s all he knows and all he’s ever known. You elected to the highest office in the land a man who’s never run a business or created wealth or made a payroll, and for his entire adult life has hung out with guys who’ve demonized (deemonized?) such grubby activities. Many of which associates he appointed to high office: Obama’s cabinet has less experience of private business than any in the last century. What it knows is government, and government’s default mode is to grow, and grow.

California is bankrupt: The dependent class and the government class that issues the checks to the dependent class have squeezed out the poor boobs in the middle who have to pay for it all. Everybody knows this. But a state that already has a Bureau of Home Furnishings cannot restrain itself from setting up a Bureau of Motion Picture Condom Regulation -- or, anyway, an impact study to study whether the Bureau of Impact Studies should study the impact of a Bureau of Motion Picture Condom Regulation.

Look around you, and take it all in. From now on, it gets worse. If you have kids, they’ll live in smaller homes, drive smaller cars, live smaller lives. If you don’t have kids, you better hope your neighbors do, because someone needs to spawn a working population large enough to pay for the unsustainable entitlements the Obama party has suckered you into thinking you’re entitled to. The unfunded liabilities of current entitlements are $100 trillion. Try typing that onto your pocket calculator. You can’t. There isn’t enough room for all the zeroes, and, even if they made a pocket calculator large enough, and a pocket large enough, you’d be walking with a limp. To these existing entitlements, Obama and his enforcers in Congress propose to add the grandest of all: health care, on a scale no advanced democracy has ever attempted.

Whatever is “deemed” to have passed in the next few days doesn’t end the debate but begins it. If you’re sick of talking about health care, move to Tahiti, because in the U.S. we’re going to be talking about it until the end of time, or at least until the Iranians nuke Cleveland.

It isn’t difficult. We need less government, with smaller budgets, fewer agencies, and vastly reduced numbers of public-sector union employees on less lavish remuneration. I’m confident the California Bureau of Condom Regulators can be retrained as porn-movie bit-players and once again make a useful contribution to society. But, if you’re not in favor of shrinking government, you’re voting for national decline, remorseless and ever accelerating.

Obama and Pelosi are strong-arming swing-state congressmen into taking one for the deem. It’s appropriate that it should take banana-republic maneuvers to ram this through, because it’s about government so powerful it can make up the rules as it goes along. Maybe regulators should roll a giant condom over the Capitol before it fatally infects the rest of us.

-- Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. © 2010 Mark Steyn.

---

"

Race to the Bottom

Race to the Bottom

Freedom of choice, but only as long as the unions' hegemony isn't threatened. Yet another case of cronyism overriding ideology.

These students deserve this lifeline out of the system, but they'll never get it from the Obama administration because the unions are calling the shots. Our education system is completely broken, but nothing is being done to fix it because of the lock that the teachers unions have on it. We'll never take back our country if we don't take back our schools. I've been saying for a while that our real, long-term challenge is education. We have to reconnect our children to their real heritage and history so that they understand why the principles that America was founded on are so important.

Virginia Politics Blog - Cuccinelli's office confirms Virginia will sue over health care

Virginia will sue... Cuccinelli's office confirms Virginia will sue over health care

It’s time for all of the state Attorneys General to do this, and for the state legislatures to start shutting out the federal government until it gets its act together. Our federal government is out of control, and the cooks in charge are radical ideologues who are determined to “fundamentally transform” America. They should all be removed from office, and many of them belong in jail. America needs to restore our founding principles, not throw them out the window.

"Mark to Fantasy" - Why we're not out of the woods yet.

NOW FASB Wants To Do The Right Thing? - The Market Ticker

It doesn’t matter how you cook the books, the reality is still the same. Our government has continued to waste Trillions of dollars in a vain attempt to protect the people who have destroyed our economy from being held accountable for their actions. These are the crony capitalists. It seems that there are some in our government who would welcome a collapse of our system so that they can replace it and put themselves in power over us. These are the statists. Both groups of people represent a house built on shifting sand that is doomed to fail. A brief review of history would show them that all too quickly. Many of them know the history, but they delude themselves into thinking that somehow they are different. Our Constitution is the house built upon the rock which will never fail us as long as we hold true to it. That is because it is based upon historical precedent and Christian principles. The sooner we realize that, the better off we’ll be.

Neither crony capitalists nor statists believe in the free market system, and both of them tend to demonize it endlessly to justify why we need more government intervention in our lives. More government is the problem, though, not the solution. It is what enables these groups to destroy economies in the name of saving them. Both groups ultimately seek their own power over free men. Our Constitution is designed to keep government in check and to protect free men. The free market is one of the keys to preserving our freedom because it allows all men the opportunity to succeed regardless of their social status.

There will always be men who seek power and control, and it is up to free men to be vigilant for them and to stop them from enslaving us.

How to destroy small businesses 101

AP Source: Health bill to affect part-time workers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Democratic aide says a new provision in the health care bill will require businesses to count part-time workers when calculating penalties for failing to provide coverage....

Yet another reason to kill this bill.

Are public advocates for animal rights needed? Switzerland says no. / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

Are public advocates for animal rights needed? Switzerland says no. / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

I'm proud to report that the Swiss still seem to have retained a little bit of common sense. Maybe they can start spreading some of it around the rest of Europe. Can you believe that anyone even takes Mr. Goestsche seriously? Maybe he's just doing their version of the Red Green Show. Either way, it looks like lots of folks are laughing at him, and that is definitely a good thing in my book.

Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate Economic Growth: Answering the Critics

Despite decades of repeated failure, President Obama and Congress continue to promote the myth that government can spend its way out of recession. Heritage Foundation economic policy expert Brian Riedl dispels the stimulus myth, lays out the evidence that government spending does not end recessions--and presents the evidence for what does end recessions. Hint: It's not another "stimulus package."

Why Government Spending Does Not Stimulate Economic Growth: Answering the Critics

Cash for Closing - Upside down on your house? Obama to the rescue...sort of.

Short-Sale Program to Pay Homeowners to Sell at a Loss

This makes perfect sense if you live in LaLaLand with the people in the Obama administration. To the rest of us here on planet Earth, this is just another in a string of bad policies based on out-dated and disproven theories.

If my math is correct, the government is now proposing to give up to $3,500.00 of our money to pay banks and home owners to agree to sell these houses for less than the current values of the loans on them (short sell). At least some of the TARP bailout was paid back, this is just a handout with no expectation of repayment or remuneration. How exactly does this help the housing industry or market?

According to recent reports Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already own half of the mortgages in the U.S., and that means that those mortgages are effectively owned by the American taxpayer. So, are we paying ourselves to take a loss? On what planet does that make sense?

Is there any rational thought left in Washington, D.C.?

One Year Later: Where's the Energy?

It's almost a year after Newt delivered this message and we're still not drilling. How much longer can we wait?

If anyone doesn't understand why we have to stop 'Health Care' now, read this.

It's About Government, Not Health Care -- By: Mark Steyn

Mark is absolutely right about this. Obamacare is about nothing less than a complete government takeover of our lives. It’s unacceptable, and we had better get some folks in Washington, D.C. who understand what’s at stake.

Charles Krauthammer - Always On Point

Onward with Obamacare, regardless

So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts's devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives...

Obama Flashback: "You Need 60 Votes to Get Something Significant to Happen"

President Obama seems to have a lot of “do as I say, not as I do” moments.

Obama Flashback: "You Need 60 Votes to Get Something Significant to Happen"

These government takeovers (health care) may just go down as the worst legislation in history. Everyday more Americans are standing up and saying “NO”, and yet the president and congress keep trying to shove it down our throats. At this rate, they won’t have the political capital to name a post office by the end of 2010.

FOXNews.com - Unemployment Benefits to Expire Sunday After Senate Stalemates On Extension

FOXNews.com - Unemployment Benefits to Expire Sunday After Senate Stalemates On Extension

Imagine the audacity of a senator insisting that we find the money to pay for something. It’s not as if we are trillions of dollars in the hole, right. Oh wait...

Don’t get me wrong on this, I feel bad for the folks who really need help, but isn’t it time that we live in reality. How many more people are going to lose their jobs when our economy collapses from the continued bad policies of our government? You cannot spend your way out of a recession, and jobs will not be created by companies until the government gets out of the way. Government cannot and should not regulate every aspect of our lives. The more they try to, the further we are away from saving America for future generations.

Secure Communities: A Model for Obama's 2010 Immigration Enforcement Strategy

January 5, 2010 Secure Communities: A Model for Obama's 2010 Immigration Enforcement Strategy by Jena Baker McNeill WebMemo #2746 In 2009, 90 counties across the country became participants in the Secure Communities program. This program provides a modern means for state and local law enforcement to share information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), helping to make immigration processing and removal more efficient. This year alone, the program took 11,000 criminal aliens off the streets and out of the United States. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should find ways to improve...

Here’s a great WebMemo from the Heritage Foundation. I highly recommend that you read it.

Fannie and Freddie - Part of the Problem

Accounting for Fannie and Freddie -- By: Stephen Spruiell

Fannie Mae seeks $15.3B in gov't aid after 4Q loss

How long are we going to continue this?

For that matter, how long can we continue this?

Ronald Reagan said it best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x59wNGHe6iI

“Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”

Rep. Paul Ryan, "Hiding spending doesn't reduce spending"

Here’s Rep. Paul Ryan at the Health Care Summit. Thank you Mr. Ryan!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPxMZ1WdINs

It’s time to scrap the bills.

Welcome to Conservative American!

Thank you for visiting my new blog. I'm new to blogging, so please be patient with me on this. I decided to start a blog for conservatives. It seems like there are plenty out there for everyone else, so I thought that we could use one for conservatives. America is the marketplace of ideas, and we all profit from the healthy discourse and debate that accompanies so many of the issues that we must address as a nation. Conservatism almost always wins when it is articulated well. My goal is to help keep people informed about current news and issues, and to encourage debate and discussion about them. Please refrain from using this blog to spread rumors, unfounded allegations, personal attacks, or violence in any form. I will delete any comments that contain any of these items or inappropriate language. The best way to win an argument is to know what you're talking about and why. I hope that together we can learn something from each other, and help to restore conservative principles to our government. Thank you.

In God We Trust

Scott A. Baker