America: In Search of a King?

By Tim Connolly
November 22, 2008


Consider this:

1 Samuel 8:7,10-20

7 And the Lord said to Samuel, "Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.......
10 So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who asked him for a king. 11 And he said, "This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariots.
12 He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.
13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers.
14 And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants.
15 He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and servants.
16 And he will take your male servants, your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work.
17 He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants.
18 And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the Lord will not hear you in that day."
19 Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, "No, but we will have a king over us,
20 that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles."

There are many things to learn from the Bible. And considering the bizarre behavior we saw from millions of Obama supporters this past election, this particular story holds tremendous relevance as history continues to repeat itself.

Please watch this video. Pay close attention the written narrative and words of the song being played.



And this one....



When did we start looking to ONE man to fix all of our problems? When did we stop looking to God, ourselves, and each other to find the solutions to our challenges, great or small?

Well, we've all heard the saying, "be careful what you wish for".
With the current state of things and the similarly clichéd "the grass is always greener" being a very convenient mind set to consider in times like these, I'd like to offer a few important reminders.

No matter what might come our way in next few years; no matter what challenges we may face, if we will remember who we are and what it is that made this country great to begin with, such as: our faith in God, love of family and country, our pursuit of justice, equality, and freedom for every American. If we can find a way to remember these simple things; if we will hold on to them as if our way of life depends on it, we will weather any storm. And America will be a stronger and more united Nation for having gone through it.

But if not. If we allow a group of men, driven by greed and the thirst for power, to convince us that we need THEM to tell us how to make things right; if we will not stand up and fight for ourselves, our freedom, and for what we know is true, then I know without any doubt that America will not survive the coming storm. And the freedoms we cherish will be the first to die.

I can only speak for myself and we all must do our part; but I would rather die a free man than live a long life as a slave.

Now is the time for us to stand up, get involved, and speak out.

Its OUR Country.....and WE can fix it.



"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."

-Samuel Adams

Find A Happy Place (Part Deux)

A Message From The Editor


Well, I think its about that time again. With Thanksgiving next week and Christmas around the corner, both the political and economic systems have continued to spiral out of control right on cue and reality is starting to settle in for millions that we are in for a long and bumpy ride.

So, its time for a little pick me-up! Something small yet therapeutic; distractingly shiny and hypnotic; something that, if for but a moment, carries me away to a happy place with prancing Unicorns and chocolate rivers. (Hey, you have your happy place and I have mine, OK. So.....back off.)

I'm gonna be honest with you, this one might be more for me than for you.
But I'm quite sure it'll do you some good as well.

Quote of the Day

“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, everything, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare. … I venture to declare it as my opinion, that, were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America …”

- President James Madison

Don't Drink the Kool-Aid on Jonestown

Thirty years ago today more than 900 followers of Jim Jones committed "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid.

"I just want to say something to everyone that I see that is standing around and are crying. This is nothing to cry about. This is something we should all rejoice about. We can be happy about this. They always told us that we should cry when you're coming into this world, but when we're leaving and we're leaving it peaceful ... I tell you, you should be happy about this. I was just thinking about Jim Jones. He just has suffered and suffered and suffered. He is the only god and he don't even have a chance to enjoy his death here. (clapping and voices in background)... I wanted to say one more thing. This is one thing I want to say. That you that've gone and there's many more here. He's still--the way, that's not all of us, that's not all yet. There's just a few that have died. A chance to get ... to the one that they could tell ... their lies to. So and I say I'm looking at so many people crying, I wish you would not cry, and just thank Father, just thank him. I tell you about ... (clapping and shouting) ... I've been here, uh, one year and nine months and I never felt better in my life. Not in San Francisco, but until I came to Jonestown. I enjoy this life. I had a beautiful life. I don't see nothing that I should be crying about. We should be happy. At least I am. Let's all be the same."

This comes from an unidentified woman on the FBI death recording from Jonestown, Guyana. Within minutes, she would be dead. For anyone familiar with the National Socialists' "night of the long knives" or the Soviet Socialists' show trials, replete as they were with a socialist dictator's victims professing their love and allegiance for that dictator in the moment of death, the pathetic hosannas to Jim Jones by the people of Peoples Temple plays as a disturbing socialist deja vu.

On November 17, 1978, Jim Jones was a hero to American leftists. On November 18, 1978, Jones orchestrated the killings of 918 people and strangely morphed in the eyes of American leftists into an evangelical Christian fanatic. An unfortunately well-worn narrative, playing out contemporaneously in Pol Pot's Cambodia, of socialist dreams ending in ghoulish nightmares, then, conveniently shifted to one about the dangers of organized religion. But as The Nation magazine reported at the time, "The temple was as much a left-wing political crusade as a church. In the course of the 1970s, its social program grew steadily more disaffiliated from what Jim Jones came to regard as 'Fascist America' and drifted rapidly toward outspoken Communist sympathies." So much so that the last will and testament of the Peoples Temple, and its individual members who left notes, bequeathed millions of dollars in assets to the Soviet Union. As Jones expressed to a Soviet diplomat upon upon his visit to Jonestown the month before the smiling suicides took place, "For many years, we have let our sympathies be quite publicly known, that the United States government was not our mother, but that the Soviet Union was our spiritual motherland."

Jim Jones was an evangelical communist who became a minister to infiltrate the church with the gospel according to Marx and Lenin. He was an atheist missionary bringing his message of socialist redemption to the Christian heathen. "I decided, how can I demonstrate my Marxism?," remembered Jones of his days in 1950s Indiana. "The thought was, infiltrate the church." So in the forms of Pentecostal ritual, Jones smuggled socialism into the minds of true believers--who gradually became true believers of a different sort. Unless one counts his drug-induced bouts with self-messianism, Jones didn't believe in God. Get it--a Peoples Temple. He shocked his parishioners, many of whom certainly did believe in God, by dramatically tossing the Bible onto the ground during a sermon. "Nobody's going to come out of the sky!," an excited Jones had once informed his flock. "There's no heaven up there! We'll have to have heaven down here!" Like so many efforts to usher in the millenium before it, Jones's Guyanese road to heaven on earth detoured to a hotter afterlife destination.

The horrific scene in a Guyanese jungle clearing could have been avoided. Thousands of miles north, for years leading up to Jonestown, San Francisco officials and journalists had looked the other way while Jones acted as a law unto himself. So what if he abused children, sodomized a follower, tortured and held temple members at gun point, and defrauded the government and people of welfare and social security checks? He believes in socialism and so do we. That was the ends-justifies-the-means attitude that enabled Jim Jones to commit criminal acts in San Francisco with impunity. The people who should have stopped him instead encouraged him.

Mayor George Moscone, who would be assassinated days after the Jonestown tragedy, appointed Jones to the city's Housing Authority in 1975. Jones quickly became chairman, which proved beneficial to the enlargement of the pastor's flock--and his coffers, as Jones seized welfare checks from new members. One of the Peoples Temple's top officials becoming an assistant district attorney, a man so thoroughly indoctrinated in the cult that he falsely signed an affidavit (ultimately his child's death warrant) disavowing paternity to his own son and ascribed paternity to Jones, similarly enhanced the cult's power base within the city. How, one wonders, did victimized Peoples Temple members feel about going to the law in a city where Jones's henchman was the law?

Going to the Fourth Estate was also a fruitless endeavor, as San Francisco media institutions, such as columnist Herb Caen, were boosters of Jones and his Peoples Temple. When veteran journalist Les Kinsolving penned an eight-part investigative report on Peoples Temple for the San Francisco Examiner in 1972, his editors buckled under pressure from Jones and killed the report halfway through. Kinsolving quipped that the Peoples Temple was the "the best-armed house of God in the land," detailed the kidnapping and possible murder of disgruntled members, exposed Jones's phony faith healing, highlighted Jones's vile school-sanctioned sex talk with children, and directed attention toward the Peoples Temple's massive welfare fraud that funded its operations. "But in the Mendocino County Welfare Dept. there is the key to Prophet Jones' plans to expand the already massive influx of his followers--and have it supported by tax money," Kinsolving wrote more than six years before the tragedy in the Guyanese jungle. "The Examiner has learned that at least five of the disciples of The Ukiah Messiah are employees of this Welfare Department, and are therefore of invaluable assistance in implementing his primary manner of influx: the adoption of large numbers of children of minority races." Unfortunately, four of the series' eight articles were jettisoned after Jones unleashed hundreds of protestors to the San Francisco Examiner, a programmed letter-writing campaign, and a threatened lawsuit against the paper. The Examiner promptly issued a laudatory article on Jones. A few years later, after Jones had moved operations from Ukiah to San Francisco, California, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle penned an expose on the Peoples Temple. A Chronicle editor sympathetic to Jones spiked that piece, which ultimately made its way to New West magazine and so alarmed Jones that he hastily departed San Francisco for his agricultural experiment in Guyana.

By virtue of producing rent-free rent-a-rallies for liberal politicians and causes, Jim Jones engendered enormous amounts of good will from Democratic politicians and activists. They allowed their political ambitions to derail their governing responsibilities. Frisco pols like Harvey Milk never seemed to care how Jones could, at the snap of his fingers, direct hundreds of people to stack a public meeting or volunteer for a campaign. City Councilman Milk just knew that he benefitted from that control, and therefore never bothered to do anything to inhibit the dangerous cult operating in his city. Instead, he actively aided and abetted a homicidal maniac. It wasn't just local hacks Jones commanded respect from. He held court with future First Lady Rosalyn Carter, vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale, and California Governor Jerry Brown.

A man who killed more African Americans than the Ku Klux Klan was awarded a local Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award and won the plaudits of California lieutenant governor Mervyn Dymally, state assemblyman Willie Brown, radical academic Angela Davis, preacher/politician Jesse Jackson, Black Panther leader Huey Newton, and other African American activists. From Newton, whom Jones had visited in Cuban exhile in 1977, Jones got his lawyer and received support, such as a phone-to-megaphone address to Jonestown during a "white night" dry run of mass suicide. This was appropriate, as it was from Newton whom Jones appropriated the phrase "revolutionary suicide"--the title of a 1973 Newton book--that he used as a moniker for the murder-suicides of more than 900 people on November 18, 1978. "We didn't commit suicide," Jones announced during the administering of cyanide-laced Flavoraid to his flock, "we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world." Newton's comically idiotic slogan boomeranged on him, as several of his relatives perished in the Kool-Aid carnage.

It's worth remembering that before the people of Peoples Temple drank Jim Jones's Kool-Aid, the leftist political establishment of San Francisco gulped it down. And without the latter, the former would have never happened.

The Waxman Democrats

What the coup against Dingell means for business.


John Dingell's fall from power yesterday is an important inflection point in the history of the modern Democratic Party. The House purge marks the final triumph of the Congressional generation that came of political age during the 1970s over the last lion of New Deal liberalism, and it is symbolic of the party's change in culture and policy priorities in the Barack Obama era.

Sitting chairmen are nearly impossible to depose, never mind one with the seniority and record of Mr. Dingell, who has served longer than anyone else in the House. The Democratic caucus nonetheless stripped him of his 28-year position atop the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has great power over the climate change and health-care bills that Mr. Obama hopes to pass next year. Instead, California's Henry Waxman, who was elected by a reported 137 to 122, will do the honors. (We say "reported" because the vote was by secret ballot, which in a rich irony Democrats want to prevent for union organizing votes.)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed to be neutral, though it was clear all along that she was twisting arms on Mr. Waxman's behalf. "I assume that not playing a role is playing a role," as Charlie Rangel, another venerable committee chairman, put it yesterday. Ms. Pelosi loathes Mr. Dingell's independence -- especially on environmental matters.

That fissure neatly separates the Waxman Democrats from the old vanguard that Mr. Dingell represents. He was first elected in 1955 and has always tried to protect his hometown Detroit auto makers from the eco-mandates that ultimately helped to land them in their present predicament. Mr. Dingell's rough-hewn candor about the realities of "doing something" about climate change also helped to make him a green pariah. He knows that carbon regulation and taxes will fall most heavily on domestic manufacturing and Midwest states that rely on coal-fired power. His sympathies lie with the people who work near (or in) factories and drive Fords or Chevys.

Mr. Waxman, speaking for the upscale precincts of Beverly Hills, wants to phase out coal and cars that use gasoline. The coastal elites who now dominate Democratic politics will happily trade the blue collar for the green collar.
In today's Opinion Journal

Barney Frank and the other liberals produced by Vietnam and Watergate, Mr. Waxman belongs to a cohort whose power has been checked -- one way or the other -- by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton's New Democrat tendencies, the Republican sweep of 1994 and George W. Bush. Now with a new Democratic President and a crisis to use as a lever for a sweeping expansion of government, they aren't about to let an old warhorse with scruples about the costs of regulation interfere with their moment to govern.

We should add that Mr. Dingell is hardly some business apologist. At Energy and Commerce in the 1980s and early 1990s, Mr. Dingell would burn the paint off the committee room walls with his interrogations of energy, insurance and drug company executives. The irony is that Democrats have found, in Mr. Waxman, an even more extreme antibusiness tribune, who will no doubt use his new powers to go after any concern that turns a profit but refuses to pay his party the obeisance of campaign cash and regulatory submission. In short, the Democrats have ousted the dean of the House for the spleen of the House.

Meanwhile, in another sign of the Waxman ascendancy, President-elect Obama has named Philip Schiliro, a Waxman loyalist and his former chief of staff, as the new White House director of Congressional relations. Robert Sussman, who leads the transition's Environmental Protection Agency "review team," has been an astringent critic of Mr. Dingell on carbon regulation. And Carol Browner, Al Gore's protégé turned Clinton EPA administrator turned director of Mr. Obama's "energy working group," is another old Dingell foe.

It's obvious who now pulls the Democratic levers of power, and anyone in the energy or health-care business had better erect the barricades. In the small favors department, Mr. Waxman will allow Mr. Dingell to hold the title "chairman emeritus."

The Auto Bailout is a Shakedown

Friday, November 21, 2008


The U.S. auto industry needs a shakeout, not a bailout. What we are witnessing is an attempted shakedown.

One day before the CEOs of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler told the Senate Banking Committee that their industry faced imminent collapse without an emergency infusion of $25 billion, a new automobile assembly plant opened for business in Greensburg, Indiana. Although the hearing on Capitol Hill received far more media coverage, the unveiling of Honda’s latest facility in the American heartland speaks volumes about the future of the U.S. car industry—and shows why the proposed bailout of Detroit’s Big Three is so misguided.

The intellectual arguments against an auto industry bailout are well established. Taxpayers should never be forced to subsidize any company, let alone a poorly run company. Subsidizing the Big Three would be tantamount to subsidizing failure. That’s bad policy.

Corporate bailouts are clearly unfair to taxpayers, but they are also unfair to the successful firms in a particular industry, who are implicitly taxed and burdened when their competition is subsidized. In a properly functioning market economy, the better firms—the ones that are more innovative, more efficient, and more popular among consumers—gain market share or increase profits, while the lesser firms contract. This process ensures that limited resources are used most productively.

Some iconic U.S. automakers are now in dire straits, but the car industry itself is not in crisis. Even if one or all of the Big Three failed, there would still be plenty of strong auto companies operating throughout the United States. The Big Three currently account for slightly more than half of all light vehicle production and slightly less than half of all light vehicle sales in the United States. The rest of the U.S. auto industry includes Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Kia, Hyundai, BMW, and the other foreign nameplate producers who manufacture vehicles here. These companies employ American workers, pay U.S. taxes, support local businesses, contribute to local charities, have genuine stakes in their communities, and face the same cyclical contraction in demand as do the Big Three. The difference is that they have been making more products that Americans want to buy and will endure this recession without any taxpayer assistance because they have more efficient cost structures.

Even if one or all of the Big Three failed, there would still be plenty of strong auto companies operating throughout the United States.The decline of the Big Three is hardly a recent phenomenon. Detroit has been losing market share for decades. It has not produced a top-five selling passenger car in years. Detroit’s once-popular SUVs and large pickup trucks have fallen out of favor with consumers. The Big Three failed to sufficiently diversify into reliable, efficient, and aesthetic passenger cars when they were earning big profits and had the money to do so. Their bloated cost structures have given non-Detroit competitors a $30-per-hour advantage in labor costs.

Want proof that automobile production remains alive and well in the United States? Just look at the success of Honda’s operations in Ohio, Toyota’s in Kentucky, Nissan’s in Tennessee, BMW’s in South Carolina, and Hyundai’s in Alabama, as well as the proliferation of new plants across the country, such as the new Honda facility in Indiana and the new Kia plant in Georgia.

If one or two of the Big Three went under, people would lose their jobs. That’s what happens in an economic recession, when less competitive firms are forced to contract. But the number of job losses wouldn’t be anywhere near as large as Detroit is telling us. Realistically, the failure of one or two major auto producers would improve prospects for the firms and workers who remain in the industry. If GM fails, the market shares of Ford and Chrysler (not to mention those of the foreign nameplate producers) are likely to increase, as they compete for GM’s former customers and best workers.

The bailout sought by Detroit would interfere with the adjustment process, while doing nothing to make the Big Three more competitive. A $25 billion infusion for companies that are losing $6 billion each month is not a rescue plan; it’s an expensive way of kicking the can down the road.

Funneling $25 billion to the Big Three would amount to a waste of taxpayer dollars and also a tax on the successful auto companies, such as Honda and Toyota. Indeed, bailing out Detroit would discourage the successful companies from opening new facilities in the United States.

To dampen criticism, Congressional Democrats speak of a bailout “with strings attached.” But even a strings-attached bailout poses problems.

First, Congress doesn’t know enough about the auto business to dictate operational conditions. “Strings” that cap executive compensation will chase talent away. Strings that force Detroit to produce high-mileage vehicles when gas prices are plummeting will lead to a repetition of past mistakes.




Bailing out Detroit is unnecessary. After all, this is why we have the bankruptcy process.Second, strings will make it easier for the Big Three to come back for more federal aid after they blow through the first $25 billion. Their CEOs will be able to say that they complied with the conditions of the original bailout, which happened to make matters worse for them.

Bailing out Detroit is unnecessary. After all, this is why we have the bankruptcy process. If companies in Chapter 11 can be salvaged, a bankruptcy judge will help them find the way. In the case of the Big Three, a bankruptcy process would almost certainly require them to dissolve their current union contracts. Revamping their labor structures is the single most important change that GM, Ford, and Chrysler could make—and yet it is the one change that many pro-bailout Democrats wish to ignore.

The Big Three, the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Michigan Congressional delegation, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all know that $25 billion is nowhere near enough money to fix the problems ailing Detroit. The politicians must know that bankruptcy is the better course for auto companies and their workers (indeed, it could save 100,000 jobs). But they also know who fills their political coffers, and the UAW leadership is opposed to Chapter 11 because its labor contracts would be deemed toxic and abrogated by a bankruptcy judge.

The U.S. auto industry needs a shakeout, not a bailout. What we are witnessing, unfortunately, is an attempted shakedown. Let’s hope it doesn’t succeed.




Daniel J. Ikenson is associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies.

Bush's Legacy: European Socialism

By Dick Morris
November 19, 2008

The results of the G-20 economic summit amount to nothing less than the seamless integration of the United States into the European economy. In one month of legislation and one diplomatic meeting, the United States has unilaterally abdicated all the gains for the concept of free markets won by the Reagan administration and surrendered, in toto, to the Western European model of socialism, stagnation and excessive government regulation. Sovereignty is out the window. Without a vote, we are suddenly members of the European Union. Given the dismal record of those nations at creating jobs and sustaining growth, merger with the Europeans is like a partnership with death.

At the G-20 meeting, Bush agreed to subject the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and our other regulatory agencies to the supervision of a global entity that would critique its regulatory standards and demand changes if it felt they were necessary. Bush agreed to create a College of Supervisors.

According to The Washington Post, it would "examine the books of major financial institutions that operate across national borders so regulators could begin to have a more complete picture of banks' operations."

Their scrutiny would extend to hedge funds and to various "exotic" financial instruments. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), a European-dominated operation, would conduct "regular vigorous reviews" of American financial institutions and practices. The European-dominated College of Supervisors would also weigh in on issues like executive compensation and investment practices.

There is nothing wrong with the substance of this regulation. Experience is showing it is needed. But it is very wrong to delegate these powers to unelected, international institutions with no political accountability.

We have a Securities and Exchange Commission appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, both of whom are elected by the American people. It is with the SEC, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve that financial accountability must take place.

The European Union achieved this massive subrogation of American sovereignty the way it usually does, by negotiation, gradual bureaucratic encroachment, and without asking the voters if they approve. What's more, Bush appears to have gone down without a fight, saving his debating time for arguing against the protectionism that France's Nicolas Sarkozy was pushing. By giving Bush a seeming victory on a moratorium against protectionism for one year, Sarkozy was able to slip over his massive scheme for taking over the supervision of the U.S. economy.

All kinds of political agendas are advancing under the cover of response to the global financial crisis. Where Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism by regulating it, Bush, to say nothing of Obama, has given the government control over our major financial and insurance institutions. And it isn't even our government! The power has now been transferred to the international community, led by the socialists in the European Union.

Will Obama govern from the left? He doesn't have to. George W. Bush has done all the heavy lifting for him. It was under Bush that the government basically took over as the chief stockholder of our financial institutions and under Bush that we ceded our financial controls to the European Union. In doing so, he has done nothing to preserve what differentiates the vibrant American economy from those dying economies in Europe. Why have 80 percent of the jobs that have been created since 1980 in the industrialized world been created in the United States? How has America managed to retain its leading 24 percent share of global manufacturing even in the face of the Chinese surge? How has the U.S. GDP risen so high that it essentially equals that of the European Union, which has 50 percent more population? It has done so by an absence of stifling regulation, a liberation of capital to flow to innovative businesses, low taxes, and by a low level of unionization that has given business the flexibility to grow and prosper. Europe, stagnated by taxation and regulation, has grown by a pittance while we have roared ahead. But now Bush -- not Obama -- Bush has given that all up and caved in to European socialists.

The Bush legacy? European socialism. Who needs enemies with friends like Bush?


Dick Morris is a former political adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton