http://action.afa.net/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147491395Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1806 what many of us were thinking a week ago when Scott Brown won the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts: "I sincerely congratulate you on the triumph of republicanism in Massachusetts. The hydra (or many-headed monster) of federalism has now lost all its heads but two."
Of course, Jefferson was referring to the remaining two heads of Connecticut and Delaware, yielding to the overarching federalist powers. A great battle was won – but the war was not over. And such is our struggle today from the overreaching power of the federal government.
Remember when Washington powerbrokers, as well as mainstream media like CNN and MSNBC, gave little press to the tea-party rallies? Remember when they mocked cross-country town-hall meetings last summer as pockets of resistance and labeled us patriots, constitutionalists and independents as extremists or radicals who had little sway?
That has all changed with the election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate seat long held by the late Ted Kennedy. Whether you agree with him or not, Brown's election was a real turning point in our country. It truly is a repudiation of all that Washington is fighting for and forcing like a ramrod down our country's throat. It serves as a reminder that patriots can indeed rally across the country and change the flow of Washington.
But does Washington get it? President Obama?
For a moment, I thought they might (how temporarily naïve or overly optimistic of me). But then I listened to President Obama being interviewed by ABC's George Stephanopoulos the morning after the Massachusetts election. The president's exact words were: "And here's my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country. The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they're frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."
Wrong, Mr. President. What swept Scott Brown into office was a national disdain for what your administration is doing and has done to our country. It's no longer an anger or frustration with Bush's presidency, but yours. It's not what's happened in the preceding eight years, but the past year since you've become president. (Are you really still blaming President Bush?)
Mr. President, it's time to face the music, and help America to do the same.
This Wednesday evening, you will give your State of the Union address. And millions upon millions of us are even now wondering if you will again sugarcoat the truth – if you will pad your performance over this past year or confess that the path Washington is taking is plummeting our country deeper into the abyss.
If you convey the real status of the union, then you must confess that we are truly no better off (and much worse off in many respects) than when you first took seat in the Oval Office.
About this I'll give you credit: that you have indeed fulfilled your promise to "fundamentally transform the United States of America." And you've done so in record-breaking speed – one year, to be exact.
You've added a record $1.6 trillion national debt in a single year – unprecedented in the first year among all preceding presidents (including G. W. Bush).
You've increased the national debt to more than $12 trillion, with 2010 White House end-of-fiscal-year projections topping $14 trillion and end-of-the-decade projections topping $24.5 trillion, even exceeding the Gross Domestic Product projection for 2019 of $22.8 trillion.
You've borrowed and bailed out more than any president in the first year in office, despite admitting to global leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that "debt-driven growth cannot fuel America's long-term prosperity."
You've compromised America's sovereignty by pushing for global governance (through acts like Interpol immunities, U.N. and other countries' concessions, willingness to ratify overreaching Copenhagen Conference treaties, etc.) and literally selling America via increasing our international indebtedness to $3.5 trillion – $800 billion in U.S. government securities to China, followed by Japan with $731 billion and including other smaller nations like Luxembourg, Taiwan, Singapore and Ireland.
Despite your campaign promise to cap unemployment at 8 percent, it has climbed to 10.2 percent and shows no sign of decreasing. And right now a record 14 percent of homeowners are either in foreclosure or behind at least one mortgage payment.
You've purchased and controlled enormous segments of the banking, automobile and (hopefully soon for you) health industries with taxpayers' money, but refuse to call it socialism. At very least, you've begun to turn America into a European-style country where the government sector dominates the private sector. And now, despite a recent quarterly Bloomberg global poll that revealed 77 percent of investors now see you as anti-business, you are proposing a fee or tax on 50 large financial firms and calling to limit their size and trading activity. Is that your way to inspire free-market growth?
Contrary to your promise to do otherwise, studies have shown that you will increase all of our federal or state taxes and simultaneously reduce our medical choices or freedoms by mandating a government option upon all of us.
You are also going around the back door to provide illegals with universal health care by seeking their amnesty. That means not only will Americans eventually pay for another 14 million people's government health care, but amnesty will also reduce the number of jobs available to the unemployed by adding more to the legal work force and simultaneously slow down the rate of the unemployed being re-employed.
You've categorically disrespected and disregarded federal governmental constraints and fiscally prudent principles of our Founding Fathers and Constitution. You've bloated the federal government, budget and debt into a gargantuan hydra whose mere existence mocks any constitutional limitations of its power or Tenth Amendment rights "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
You've further enabled America's freedom from religion (secular state), not the First Amendment rights to freedom of religion, by denying America's Judeo-Christian heritage before other countries of the world, espousing "the promise of a secular nation" during an age in which religious revisionism is already on the rise.
You've reduced our speech freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment by signing a hate-crimes bill that was amended to the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, potentially criminalizing free speech if it can be proven to have contributed to assaults based upon sexual orientations.
You've reduced our Second Amendment firearm freedoms by appointing anti-gun advocates like Justice Sotomayor or OSHA's David Michaels, by seeking to micromanage gun ownership via proposed legislation like H.R. 45 and by political correctness like blaming guns rather than Islamic extremism for the murder spree at Fort Hood.
You've granted immunity to groups like Interpol from search and seizure regulations in the Fourth Amendment of our Bill of Rights.
Despite the Declaration of Independence's mandate that government shall be used to secure Americans' rights for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," you've denied them to human being in the womb by enacting more pro-abortion laws, policies and regulations than all former presidents combined.
You've promised that you would provide "the most sweeping ethics reform in history," yet your administration has been riddled with questionable cabinet appointees and a host of suspect czars.
You promised that you would be "committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government." In fact, on July 23 you said your administration was more transparent than those of previous presidencies: "I think that we have provided much greater transparency than existed prior to our administration coming in." Yet you've had more exclusive meetings, back-room negotiations and clandestine sweetheart deals than any previous administration. You've broken your promise to lead from the center and instead drive hard and fast to the left.
Despite your oath of office to defend the U.S. against all potential enemies, foreign and domestic, and your increase in U.S. forces in Afghanistan, you have pacified those who harbor terrorists, fought for the rights of combative detainees, allowed Gitmo detainees and terrorists to come to the U.S., enabled the enemies of Israel, and contributed via your tolerance and political correctness to homegrown terrorists like the Fort Hood murderer, Maj. Nidal Hasan. You've become the head cheerleader for the "blame America" crowd and painted America before other countries as arrogant, intolerant and non-religious (or non-Christian).
You've perfected Chicago-style politics in Washington to get your way and demonize anyone who dare stands in opposition. Despite how many tea parties, protest rallies, town-hall meetings, Washington marches, Internet inquisitions or Scott Brown-type elections, etc., you continue to deny that any opposition represents any viable resistance or consensus against your presidency.
And what scares me most is that, despite all the preceding, you've still got such a mesmerizing stronghold over this country that encumbers even mainstream media from addressing let alone questioning your presidential progress and failures. To the contrary, there are still too many self-confessed objective reporters like the editor of Newsweek who stated on MSNBC's Chris Matthews' show, "I mean, in a way Obama's standing above the country, above the world. He's sort of God." (How much scarier can it get than representative statements like that in a republic that once stood for equity among political powers and a government "by the people and for the people"?)
Mr. President, your presidency is flailing. Your plan is failing. Your popularity is faltering. Our union is falling apart. We are not better off than we were a year ago, and it's time to quit pretending we are. It isn't helping our country to present false hope. It is an audacity of denial. The truth isn't "Yes, we can," but "No, you haven't."
State of the Union grade: "F."
Topic: State of the Union grade: 'F' (Read 1061 times)