Obama Wants To Tax Everyone Just For Driving. By The Mile.

We all know that rich people are bad by definition according to the tenets of liberalism.

What also needs to be realized is that people who drive – no matter how poor they are or how much they need to drive – are also bad people by the same tenets of liberalism.

And bad people should be punished.

Obama administration floats draft plan to tax cars by the mile
By Pete Kasperowicz – 05/05/11 07:45 AM ET

The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.

The plan is a part of the administration’s Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.

The White House, however, said the bill is only an early draft that was not formally circulated within the administration.

“This is not an administration proposal,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. “This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”

March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven.

Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.

The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues.

The proposal seems to follow up on that idea in section 2218 of the draft bill. That section would create, within the Federal Highway Administration, a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office. It would be tasked with creating a “study framework that defines the functionality of a mileage-based user fee system and other systems.”

The department seemed to be aware of the need to prepare the public for what would likely be a controversial change to the way highway funds are collected. For example, the office is called on to serve a public-relations function, as the draft says it should “increase public awareness regarding the need for an alternative funding source for surface transportation programs and provide information on possible approaches.”

The draft bill says the “study framework” for the project and a public awareness communications plan should be established within two years of creating the office, and that field tests should begin within four years.

The office would be required to consider four factors in field trials: the capability of states to enforce payment, the reliability of technology, administrative costs and “user acceptance.” The draft does not specify where field trials should begin.

The new office would be funded a total of $300 million through fiscal 2017 for the project.

This story was updated at 10:17 a.m.

The obvious reason liberals give for thinking that people who drive are bad is environmentalism.  If you drive, you are guilty of helping to murder the planet.  And – as the utterly looney-leftist United Nations wants you to understand – the planet should have more rights than you.

What the left doesn’t say is that the above is a pretense, not their real reason (although it clearly is the primary reason for the useful idiots who make up much of the environmentalist movement).  The real reason is control: the left wants to have near total control of how you live your life.  And the freedom to drive where you want to is a major obstacle to the type of control the left wants.

To quote one Democrat John Dingell regarding socialized health care –

Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 million American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

– is pretty much to quote them all on pretty much anything.  What they really want is “to control the people.”

Right now, you can buy a car, fill it with gas, and drive wherever you want to go.  That’s just wrong to Democrats.  You shouldn’t be able to do that.  You should have to travel the way they want you to travel.  To the extent you should even be allowed to drive at all, you should only be able to drive the type of vehicle THEY want you to drive.  And there should be a tracking device so they can track where you’ve been.  And, of course, ultimately, you shouldn’t BE allowed to drive.  It’s too much freedom.  You should have to use public transportation.

It’s really not an accusation; it is simply a FACT that fascist Democrats want to take away your freedom, take away your car, monitor where you’ve been by installing tracking equipment and tax you into extinction.

And the easiest way for totalitarians – I mean liberals – to do that is to make gas so expensive that the unwashed masses simply can’t afford it.  Which goes along with making the sacred “green” cars too expensive for most families to be able to afford.

So you’ve got Obama on the record telling a journalist that he doesn’t care if the price of gas goes way up; he just doesn’t want it to happen too quickly and make us angry.

You’ve got the man Obama handpicked for his energy secretary on the record saying, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”  When of course gas prices in Europe are easily double ours in Amerca.

And you’ve got Obama doing everything he can to keep America from being able to drill for its own oil.

Meanwhile, Obama’s response to shockingly high gas prices has been to demonize oil companies and decry their profits.  When what’s funny about that is that 1) oil companies make about 7 cents per gallon in profit, versus Obama’s government which makes about 44 cents in “profit” per gallon (with state governments gouging for even more “profit”).  And 2) by taking away tax breaks that ALL U.S. companies get, what Obama is really demanding is that Americans pay even MORE for their gasoline – because ALL TAXES ON CORPORATIONS SIMPLY GET PASSED ON TO CUSTOMERS IN THE FORM OF HIGHER PRICES.

Obama is not only basically saying, “Screw you, America!”  He’s saying that Americans are simply too stupid to even understand that they are getting screwed.

Obama Actually Blames Massachusetts Voting Republican ON GEORGE BUSH

It turns out that there is absolutely nothing that Obama won’t blame on George Bush.

During an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Barack Obama said the following:

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 are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.

“Here’s my assessment of why Camelot just flung out the Kennedy legacy and voted Republican for a seat that had been in Democrat hands since 1952: it’s Bush’s fault.  People are angry at the failure of George Bush, and so they punished him by voting for the party of George Bush.  Don’t blame me; I just work here.”

That’s right.  George Bush is so evil, and did such a terrible job, that the voters of the most liberal state in the nation voted for a Republican.  That’s your failure-in-chief’s “assessment.”

Kind of explains why everything the guy does has failed.  He’s a rigid ideologue who thinks purely in terms of demagoguery.  He lives in a little tiny black box and nothing gets in or out of that box.

In a way Obama is insulting his own campaign.  Why did he win?  Because people were angry.  And the same sort of inchoate, unthinking, unreasoning anger that propelled him to victory is now propelling Republicans to victory.

It also ties into the historical narrative often played by the lamestream media: when Republicans do well, there has to be some dark reason for their success.  The Republican Revolution was re-cast as “the year of the angry white male.”  It’s hate.  It’s anger.  It’s racism.

What about the other liberal narrative, that Bush destroyed the economy, and even now, a year later, Obama is just being blamed for Bush’s failed policies?

When Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took control of the House and the Senate back in 2006, unemployment was only 4.7%.   Democrats demagogued their way to power in 2005 on the basis of screaming about Iraq and Hurricane Katrina; the economy was humming along.  But once they took the House and the Senate, they got right to work destroying the economy with the same socialist big government garbage that they’re playing now.  And then again after the economic meltdown of 2008, Democrats and their propaganda allies in the lamestream media pitched the demagogic narrative that the economic disaster had to have been George Bush’s fault because it happened during his watch.  But didn’t it happen on Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s watch, too?

What’s the unemployment rate now exactly three years after Democrats took over Congress?

And since Barack Obama took over from Bush, we have lost more jobs under Obama than ANY president has lost in ANY year since 1940.

Believe you me — there’s all kinds of reasons to hold Democrats responsible for the economic meltdown.  Maybe it’s long past time you began to reconsider who really exploded the economy, Republicans or Democrats?

But as long as there is one slack-jawed, drooling imbecile in the country dumb enough to believe the Democrats’ demonizations, George Bush will keep getting blamed.

Hey, Obama, are you hoping for a little reverse psychology in November, that people will be so angry at the total failure otherwise known as Barack Hussein that they’ll vote for Democrats?

It is long past time that ordinary people realized that every single time Democrats try to blame Bush they are acknowledging their own failure to lead.  They are openly admitting, “Don’t ask us to solve any problems.  We’re just demagogues.  All we can do is blame someone else.”

Obama Lowballs His Budget By $2 TRILLION, And You Trust Him On Health Care?

Hats off to the Gateway Pundit for punditry.  Following the Obama remark about people getting wee-weed up, GP pointed out that “It looks like Dear Leader was a wee bit off” with his budget.  To the tune of $2 trillion.  Which, clearly, really is something to get wee-weed up about.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to approximately $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.

The higher deficit figure, based on updated economic data, brings the White House budget office into line with outside estimates and gives further fuel to President Barack Obama’s opponents, who say his spending plans are too expensive in light of budget shortfalls.

The White House took heat for sticking with its $7.108 trillion forecast earlier this year after the Congressional Budget Office forecast that deficits between 2010 and 2019 would total $9.1 trillion.

“The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year,” said the administration official, who is familiar with the budget mid-session review that is slated to be released next week.

Well, at least they didn’t say, “Because of George Bush…” or “Due to the evilness of the Republicans’…”  So maybe they’re growing in maturity to match their skyrocketing deficits over at the White House.

Barack Obama is going to quadruple George Bush’s highest deficit ever – and that is if his other incredibly rosy projections (which continue chugging merrily along like a magic-powered choo-choo train) pan out.  Obama has demagogued and demonized Bush at every turn, but he can’t blame the boogeyman for his deficits.

It is simply a fact: Obama’s first-year deficit, the largest in history, is over four times bigger than George Bush’s last deficit of 2008, which HAD been the largest in history until Obama blew that record away as though it had never existed.  An American Thinker article demonstrates the massive cognitive dissonance of Democrats; they want to demonize Bush for his government spending even as they defend Obama’s FAR more massive government spending.  The Washington Examiner’s Byron York headline says it all: “Obama’s trillions dwarf Bush’s ‘dangerous spending.'”

Barack Obama underestimated his own spending deficit by $2 trillion; nearly 29% off in just six months.  That aint exactly good budgeting.  Rather, it is unprecedented BAD budgeting.  Obama had all kinds of bogus assumptions, fuzzy math, and rosy scenarios.  And the new $9-plus trillion figure doesn’t take into account all the other stuff that Obama is intending to do, such as spend well over a trillion more on his government health care takeover.

It’s frankly even worse than your very worst fears: Barack Obama’s 2009 deficit exceeds all 8 years of Bush red ink.

Let me put it this way: I have believed that Barack Obama would be the downfall of this country from the day I heard his reverend for 23 years shout, “No, no, no! Not God bless America — God damn America!!!” while Barack Obama’s fellow congregants leaped to their feet and cheered wildly.  I thought he would be a complete and unmitigated disaster – and I never dreamed he would do this much damage this quickly.

Speaking of terrible budget nightmares, Obama’s somehow transforming his “half” of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Plan into $23.7 Trillion isn’t exactly great budgeting either.  Did somebody say we were supposed to stop spending after we got to $350 billion?  Oops.

Giving Obama’s liberals control of health care will be rather like giving Stalin’s Red Army control of Berlin; it just aint going to end well.

The CBO also has revised its figures from just five months ago upward by $2.7 trillion, pointing out that its earlier number didn’t include legislation since passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress.  The math is a mess; we literally cannot keep up with the frenzied pace of our own spending.

So when Democrats and liberals talk about the projected costs of health care, just realize that neither they, or the CBO – which at least usually TRIES to be accurate in its projections – have any credibility whatsoever.

Bob Franken hits it right on the money: The $9 trillion is the central figure in the health care debate.  You can watch the debt clock spiral up moment by terrifying moment for hours.

In another issue, Democrats have been mocking the word “death panel,” but…

… The whole damn SYSTEM is one great big giant death panel.  As well as being a gigantically expensive one.

If Democrats get control of health care, they will explode it with massive bureaucracy, they will have no choice but to ration health care, and people will die.

Partisan Political Hack Leon Panetta Demonizes Dick Cheney

Leon Panetta is proving what a partisan political hack Americans always should have known he is and always has been.  I first called Panetta a “partisan political hack” back in January when he was first nominated.  And Panetta’s outrageous cheap-shot at Dick Cheney is nothing short than the tactics of a partisan political hack.

The difference between the CIA and the KGB has always been that the one was geared toward intelligence, while the latter was geared toward enforcing political ideology.  At least until Barack Obama came along, that is.  Now we’ve got our first “communist show trials” since the days of McCarthy and the latter days of the USSR in the works.

And now we’ve got Obama’s Homeland Security defining “rightwing extremists” in terms of Obama’s conservative political opponents (not to mention returning combat veterans), and we’ve also got Leon Panetta demonizing political disagreement by personally attacking the motives of conservatives.

Cheney: I Hope Panetta Was ‘Misquoted’ in Claiming My Wish for Attack
After the CIA director apparently told The New Yorker that he thinks the former vice president is crossing his fingers for another attack on America, Dick Cheney says he hopes his “old friend” didn’t really say those words.

FOXNews.com
Monday, June 15, 2009

Dick Cheney says he wants to know if he heard Leon Panetta correctly.

After the CIA director apparently told The New Yorker that he thinks the former vice president is crossing his fingers for another attack on America, Cheney said Monday he hopes his “old friend” didn’t really say those words.

“I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted,” Cheney said, in a written statement to FOX News. “The important thing is whether the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the past eight years.”

Others were not quite willing to give Panetta the benefit of the doubt, as his politically charged quote stirred controversy on Capitol Hill.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called on Panetta to “retract immediately” his statement, arguing that the director crossed the line.

“I disagreed with the Cheney policy on interrogation techniques, but never did it cross my mind that Dick Cheney would ever want an attack on the United States of America,” the former GOP presidential candidate told FOX News Monday. “And it’s unfair, and I think that Mr. Panetta should retract, and retract immediately.

“By the way, I hear morale is not at an all-time high over at the CIA under Mr. Panetta’s leadership,” he said.

Panetta, a long-time Washington insider with scant intelligence experience, has been caught in the middle of a political war during his first few months on the job. First, he had to deal with morale issues as President Obama cracked down on the rules for detainee interrogations. Then he stepped up to dispute House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s allegation that the CIA misled Congress about the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques.

This time, he’s firing back against Cheney’s frequent media appearances in which he’s accused Obama of making America less safe.

According to The New Yorker, Panetta said Cheney “smells some blood in the water” on the security issue.

“It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics,” he said, according to the piece.

Asked about the statement, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs ducked.

“I’m not going to get into motivations. That’s not what our business is. The president’s concern is keeping the American people safe,” Gibbs said Monday.

FOX News’ Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

Maybe Gibbs isn’t “going to get into motivations.”  But his fellow liberal hack – CIA Director Leon Panetta – sure will.

Maybe the CIA has some kind of “motive analyzer” that Panetta zapped Dick Cheney with.  In the liberal tradition, I must ask, “Doesn’t Panetta need some kind of warrant to zap private citizen Cheney with his spook motive-detector gizmo?  Liberals and the ACLU should be crawling out of the woodwork.  Don’t forget, that’s what they did when they found out that the government was listening in to calls made to or from people on the terrorist watch list to or from this country.

This is classic liberal politics of demonization and demagoguery.  This is classic Nancy Pelosi.  This is classic Barack Obama.

A quote from an earlier article about the LAST TIME liberals hatefully and viciously teed-off on Dick Cheney should serve to show just how often Obama has demagogued – and hypocritically demagogued at that – Bush-era policies:

Right now, liberals like Keith Olbermann are teeing off on conservatives for waterboarding when we now learn that liberals like Nancy Pelosi and many other Democrats were fully briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques that had been employed,” and neither said or did anything to prevent such techniques.  And even the very liberal new CIA Director under Obam0, Leon Panetta, essentially says Pelosi is lying.  How are their attacks now anything but partisan demagoguery?

And right now, liberals including Barack Obama himself are deceitfully claiming the moral high ground even as the new liberal administration takes many of the same positions that it hypocritically and demagogically found so hateful on the campaign trail.  As many policies as Obama has undone that will make this country less safe, there have been almost as many that he once demonized, only to follow himself once in office.

For instance, President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate.  Given that President Bush used the technique against only three individuals shortly after the worst disaster in US history, how is Obama any different?  In fact he’s worse, because Bush and Cheney never demagogued the issue as Obama has repeatedly done.

Obama demonized Bush over the Bush policy on rendition.  But now this demagogue is quietly continuing to carry out the same rendition policy – abducting terrorist suspects and sending them to countries that will use harsh interrogation methods – even as he congratulates himself in front of a fawning media for his being better than Bush.  But Obama isn’t better than Bush and Cheney; he’s worse.  Because he’s a hypocrite and a demagogue.

In the words of the New York Times, military commissions was “a concept he criticized bitterly as a presidential candidate.”  But now the hypocrite and demagogue is going to quietly use them himself.

And Obama has indicated that he likewise reserves the right to continue to hold some prisoners without trial indefinitely – a position he demonized during the campaign.  How can such a man who so hypocritically employed such demagoguery only to come to the same position as the man he demagogued claim any semblance of moral high ground?  Obama is lower than Bush in his character, not higher.  Bush and Cheney didn’t self-righteously demagogue; only Obama did.

Dick Cheney is often called “Darth Vader” by the left.  But I think in Cheney’s gracious response to Panetta’s vicious, hateful, and evil comment who the REAL “Darth Vaders” are.  Panetta savagely attacked Cheney’s motives; Cheney responded by politely pointing at policy disagreement.

Now that liberals have opened the door wide to attacking people based on their motives and their politics, let me do a little “motive assessment” of my own: Maybe Leon Panetta is aware that the morale of his agency is at a shocking low after the butchery Democrats have done to its credibility.  And maybe he is aware – due to the “depressed, sullen, and enraged” morale at the CIA in the wake of the Obama administration’s and Democrat’s attacks against them – that the United States is now exposed to another massive terrorist attack.

From a Newsweek article on the poor morale of the CIA:

[T]he CIA better change their mission to “CYA,” because our government is not going to stand behind you.”

Those concerns were echoed by a retired undercover operative who still works under contract for the agency (and asked to remain anonymous when discussing internal agency politics). Clandestine Service officers are both demoralized and angry at Obama’s decisions to release the memos and ban future agency use of aggressive interrogation tactics, the former operative said. “It embarrasses our families. You just can’t keep hitting us. Sooner or later we’re going to stop going out and working.” The official added that “a lot of offense was taken” among some Clandestine Service veterans when Obama declared that the interrogation practices the agency employed under Bush were wrong, even though the new Administration would not prosecute operatives for carrying them out.

Just maybe Panetta and his boss realize that the only way to avoid blame for such an upcoming attack will be to try to preemptively blame and scapegoat  conservatives by saying that THEY are somehow more responsible than the Democrats who totally undermined our war on terror at every single turn because conservatives might have somehow hoped for it.

Do Unto Obama As Liberals Did Unto Bush

I wrote an article that pretty much summed up my feelings with the Obama-Democrat victory on Tuesday: Obama Wins!  God Damn America! Two comments represent two very different points of view:

You people are rediculous [sic]. Take a minute and think about what you’re saying. You cannot continue to spew lies and deciet [sic] and expect us to come together peacfully [sic] as a country.

And:

Let’s give Obama the same chance his followers gave Bush in 2000. None.

I have to laugh at the first comment.  Did liberal individual expressing this opinion feel a similar righteous indignation for the over-the-top visceral hatred for President Bush that just seemed to go on and on and on?  I very much doubt it.  He may well be one of the many liberals with “Bush lied, people died” bumper stickers on his car.

He might be one of the “Hamas Liberals” like this [please see the update at the bottom of this article]:

I Hate Bush!
FOUND by Fred Ames in Raleigh, North Carolina
I found this by a middle school / high school bus stop while walking my dog. I know – EVERYONE hates that a*****e Bush – but I haven’t seen it expressed quite so well by a kid before!

All I can say is, “That poor dog.”

I say “Hamas Liberals” because you clearly have a school indoctrination system pumping out the same hatred for Bush that Palestinian schools are teaching their little darlings to have for Jews.  But that stuff was fine.

When I was a middle schooler, I wasn’t doodling about my hatred for President Carter, even though the man was running the country right into the ground on every front imaginable.  There has been an unhinged – and frankly demonic – hatred for President Bush that has been like nothing I have ever seen.

As a Wall Street Journal article put it, “The treatment of Bush has been a disgrace.”  It begins:

“Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.”

Bush hatred didn’t take very long to manifest itself.  People went nuts screaming that Bush stole the election in an assult against democracy.  It didn’t matter that the Palm Beach, Florida debacle occurred in a Democratic County under Democratic leadership, or that the same flawed ballot design had cost Republican Bob Dole 14,000 votes only four years earlier.  No, it was because Bush was the devil.  The outgoing Clinton administration trashed the White House to set the official Democratic tone regarding the incoming Bush administration.

Now, I’m not saying that Republican parents should indoctrinate their children at home to despise and hate Barack Obama (presumably, the public schools will continue to teach children to hate Republicans).  Nor am I suggesting that the Bush administration demonstrate its loathing of the incoming Obama adminstration like the Clinton adminstration did.

But I AM saying that Republicans should realize that Democrats have set the bar for political discourse, and we would have to be world class limbo dancers in order to set the bar any lower than Democrats did in demonizing President Bush.

Democrats have been utterly vicious rabid political monsters for years.  They destroyed Robert Bork in a campaign of unwarranted personal demonization to begin the war of the politics of personal destruction.  And when Clarence Thomas’s appointment came up, they said, “We’re going to bork him. We’re going to kill him politically. . . . This little creep, where did he come from?”  The Republican response to this shocking viciousness on the part of Democrats and liberals was to confirm the incredibly liberal (the General Counsel of the ACLU!) Clinton appointee Ruth bader Ginsburg, citing that, whatever her perspective, she was qualified.  Trusting a Democrat to return professional courtesy is like trusting a frothing-at-the-mouth rabid dog not to bite you.  It just won’t happen.  Quit hoping it will, and get with the program.

Barack Hussein Obama and his Democratic lackeys get to wear the bullseyes on their foreheads for the duration of the next election cycle.  It is ALL on them now, and every single failure – and every single event that can be spun into the appearance of a failure – are ALL on them now.  Does Obama lead us into a war for ANY reason?  He’s a murdering warmonger.   Doctor pictures of him with the blood of his victims and fangs like the ugly and evil monster he is! Does Obama NOT lead us into war for any reason?  He’s an appeasing weakling who doesn’t have the will to protect us from tyrants.  Will we see any kind of terrible national disaster?  Then it’s “Obama drinks blood from human skulls!” Does the economy do anything other than spiral ever upward and upward?  It’s a “failed Obama presidency” and “failed Democratic policies.” And – given the fact that yesterday marked the “biggest loss ever on the day after a presidential election,” well, Obama is already “a failed President” faster than anyone’s ever been a failed President.

Don’t let a bunch of appallingly blatant hypocrites try to tell you that you owe Obama one more iota of respect than they gave to Bush.  After what they’ve done, they don’t deserve to talk about graciousness, respect, what’s best for the country, or any of their other smarmy self-serving rhetoric.

It’s time to start burning down their houses and salting their fields.  The Democrats demonstrated the pathway to political success; let us follow the ashes to learn the example of the trail the Democrats blazed.

Update, December 21, 2o11: I had cause to cite this article again, and discovered that the liberal who posted the “I hate Bush!” note had deleted it (like the lying coward that he is). But no fear; I was able to find an archive of that image here. And this time I saved it to my hard drive as well:

For the record, I’ve never purged a single thing after posting more than 1,900 articles. Because unlike liberals, I actually have the courage that comes from the nobility of my ideas to stand up for what I said, and either defend it or at least have the decency to admit I was wrong to say it.

Why Hillary Clinton Needs to Stay In Race To Be Good Democrat

Should Hillary Clinton drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination?

Should she put her own self-interests aside, put her party first, and yield to Barack Obama?

Well, let me ask a parallel question: should Democrats have put aside their own partisan interests aside, put their country first, and stopped undermining the war in Iraq and making false charges about the economy?

The phrase, “chickens coming home to roost” seems to be a popular one these days, so let me allude to it here: the Democratic Party has been selfishly seeking power against the best interests of their country for the past four years, and it is frankly their just desserts that a Democratic candidate should not come to personify total political self-centeredness.

There is no question that Barack Obama must be given the Democratic nomination. It has nothing to do with his wins or with his votes; but everything to do with the fact that his most ardent supporters are the worst kind of people, who would come unglued and destroy the Democratic Party if they don’t get their way. Hillary Clinton’s supporters – the working class, Catholics, and senior citizens – are more likely to roll up their sleeves and support the other candidate.

It is frankly amazing to me that “the candidate of hope and change” is presiding over such a bitter partisan contest without anyone pointing out the massive contradiction, and that his voters are the type of people who have literally threatened riots in Denver if they don’t get their way. It goes to show what a cynical – and completely phony – campaign platform the whole “hope and change” thing is.

But let me get back to the Democrat’s selfish undermining of the best interests of the country they claim to love above all else. I challenge Democrats to tell me when Republicans so bitterly denounced a Democratic President at war, with their troops on the ground. Vietnam? No. Korea? No. World War II? No. World War I? Again, no. You’ve got to go back to the Civil War when the pro-slavery Democratic Party was so upset over a President going to war. We have presented a divided front to the encouragement and emboldening of our enemies. I can’t even begin to imagine what would have happen if the Republican Party had tried to undermine the war effort while FDR was fighting Nazis and Japanese Imperialists.

The United States had a vote on the Iraq War resolution. And it passed by a substantial majority in both branches of Congress (296-133 in the House and 77-23 in the Senate). In the Senate, 29 Democrats supported the resolution, with only 21 voting against it. The Iraq War resolution actually passed by a wider margin in both branches than the Gulf War resolution in 1990.  There is a long record of Democrats acknowledging and affirming the key elements of the Bush White House’ position on Saddam Hussein and Iraq.  Yet, incredibly, Democrats began to turn against the war and use it as a “wedge issue” the moment they began to sense that it was beginning to become unpopular.

It didn’t matter that CIA director George Tenet (whom Democratic President Bill Clinton had appointed) – speaking for the overall military and civilian intelligence community – said that the consensus view was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. It didn’t matter than every major intelligence service in the world held the same view. It didn’t matter that the United Nations was inherently incompetent, or that countries such as France and Russia – opposing every meaningful resolution to enforce insepctions in the UN – had been bought by Saddam Hussein with funds and powers granted by the corrupt oil for food program. None of that mattered. Democrats began to literally undermine their president and routinely call him a liar and a war criminal.

Keep in mind that the first priority of enemy psychological warfare program is to undermine the credibility and character of the enemy’s leader. We attempted to do that with Saddam Hussein before we invaded in Gulf War I. We attempted to do that with Slobodon Milosivitch before we attacked Bosnia under President Clinton. The Democrats tried to do that with President George Bush after we attacked Iraq. Whose side were Democrats on? They were on their side. It is a matter of fact that they were NOT on the American’s side.

When Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said, “This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything,” on 20 April 2007, the story was picked up by al Jazeera and eagerly devoured by our emboldened enemies. In spite of Harry Reid and his Party, history has proven that the surge has been a very successful strategy for the United States. It is a despicable shame that he attempted to undermine it without even giving it a chance to work.

Representative James Clyburn, the House Majority Whip (and the number two Democrat in the House of Representatives) summed it up pretty well when he said that success in Iraq would be bad for Democrats. That’s an incredible statement, which communicated to the whole world that the Democratic Party was so invested in defeat in Iraq as a political strategy to undermine Republicans that good news in Iraq amounted to bad news for Democrats.

The same is true of the liberal media, of course, as is demonstrated in a Harvard study and reported under the headline, “Negative U.S. media linked to increased insurgent attacks .” Not that these people care. They would rather see the country in ruins than under the governance of a Republicans.

But we have liberal media reporters like CNN’s Bob Franken saying, “But many experts say that designating this a civil war will undermine U.S. support even more, which might explain why so many Democrats are jumping on the bandwagon.” I can’t help but get stuck on that “undermine U.S.” part.

I will always wonder what would have happened had the United States presented a united face. Would our historic allies begun to come around to our side? Would our enemies have been as emboldened and confident that the United States could be defeated? Would the critics of America have felt as justified in demonizing America had so-called “Americans” not said all the same things that they were saying?

Do Democrats want a good economy? Not right now, they don’t. They want a BAD economy so they can use it as an issue in the upcoming elections.

Apart from the fact that they economy didn’t actually start struggling until Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi took over the Congress – which controls the purse strings – we have extremely negative and downright deceitful comments coming from Democrats to insure the economy remains in the doldrums. The fact of the matter is the economy has not been in recession, and recent economic indicators are pointing that the economy may very well be improving.

Fox News offered a little dose of reality in its story when it revealed the unrelenting bias in the media. “Over 78 percent more negative news stories discussed a recession when the economy under a Republican was soaring than occurred under a Democrat when the economy was shrinking.” According to the report:

During the 2000 election, with Bill Clinton as president, the economy was viewed through rose-colored glasses. According to polls, voters didn’t realize that the country was in a recession. Although the economy started shrinking in July 2000, most Americans through the entire year thought that the economy was fine.

But over the last half-year, the media and politicians have said we were in a recession even while the economy was still growing.

Gas prices are going up. The economy is slowing. Talk of recession is seemingly everywhere. While the majority of people rate their personal finances positively, consumer confidence in the economy has plunged to a 16-year low, well below what it was during the last year of the Clinton administration when we were in a recession…

The media’s focus on the negative side of everything surely helps explain people’s pessimism. In a recent interview Fox’s Neil Cavuto claimed this bias “is all part of the media’s plan to get a Democrat in the White House.”

The report was based on the findings of University of Maryland senior research scientist John Lott, Jr.

It is perfectly appropriate for the party not in power to claim that they have a better solution for the economy. Frankly, such a debate is good for the country. But what is profoundly wrong is to demonize an economy in order to artificially bring down consumer confidence and create a perception of pessimism rather than a perception of confidence. Nothing is more important for the success of a national economy than perception!

The same Democrats who made it illegal for Americans to drill for domestic oil or build refineries now demonize Republicans for the energy crisis. The same politicians who wouldn’t let us drill in the Atlantic, wouldn’t let us drill in the Gulf of Mexico, wouldn’t let us drill in the Pacific, wouldn’t let us drill in Alaska now claim the energy crisis is Bush’s fault! Democrats told us 10 years ago that we shouldn’t drill in Anwar because it wouldn’t do us any good for 10 years. Now, 10 years later, they’re STILL saying that we shouldn’t drill in Anwar because it won’t do us any good for 10 years.

Had we fully developed our own massive domestic energy resources, we could have long-since freed ourselves from having to involve ourselves in what Democrats love to call “war for oil.” Were Democrats to walk or ride their bikes everywhere they went, this position would be slightly less hypocritical. As it is, their refusal to allow for any sensible American energy policy guarantees that we will be fighting in the Middle East for years to come.

Hillary Clinton is the quitessential Democrat – she only cares about her own power, and she is perfectly willing to pander, demagogue, or lie to advance her agenda. Let everything else be damned.

The completely anti-democratic tendency of the Democratic Party – brought to life in the super delegate rule – means that neither candidate can win the necessary number of delegates to secure the nomination on their own. One way or another, the nomination will be decided in some “smoke filled room.”

So you go, girl. Keep on running. Show us what Democrats are really like.