The Lessons of History

In some recent research, I've begun looking back at historical context...because as we all should know, if we're ignorant of our past..we're destined to repeat it.

Oop's ....too late.

Jimmah Carter was a peanut farmer from Georgia who became the 39th President back in 1976. His term in office was a tradgedy on so many levels, that Republicans experienced a surge just 4 years later due to his incompetence. This guy just couldn't get anything right.

Jan 21, 1977: Carter issues a pardon to most of those who evaded the draft in order to avoid going to Vietnam.

June 30: President Carter stops the B-1 bomber program, angering defense conservatives.

September 7: Carter and Panamanian president Omar Torrijos Herrera sign the Panama Canal treaties. They provide for control of the canal to be handed over to Panama in 1999, and guarantee the canal's neutrality.

September 15: Carter's budget director, friend and adviser Bert Lance appears before a Senate committee to defend himself against charges that he has improperly used his position for personal gain. Since July, the Lance scandal has grown into a major headache for Carter, as it calls into question the high moral integrity he campaigned on. Lance will resign six days later.

December: Carter signs a Social Security measure that would keep the system solvent until 2030, resulting in a huge increase in payroll taxes.

December 31: Carter visits Tehran on New Years' Eve. He toasts the Shah, reiterating American support and calling him "an island of stability" in the troubled region.

February, 1978: A nationwide NBC/AP poll reveals that only 34% of Americans think Carter is doing an excellent or good job -- a 21% decline in six months.

July, 1978: Senator Kennedy visits Carter at the White House in a last-ditch effort to resolve their differences over national health insurance. Carter wants to phase the program in and make it contingent on the budget. The meeting goes badly and Kennedy accuses the president of a "failure of leadership."

January 16, 1979: The Shah flees Iran after a year of growing public unrest. Conservative Muslim cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, who had led the popular movement against the Shah, will return triumphantly from exile two weeks later.

July,1979: Truckers blockade expressways and set off the nation's first energy riot in Levittown, Pennsylvania, resulting in two nights of violence. One hundred people are injured and more than 170 arrested.

July 3-12: Carter holds a "domestic summit" at Camp David to address the energy crisis and figure out how to rescue his presidency from record low approval ratings.

July 17: President Carter asks his entire cabinet to resign, eventually accepting five.

August 15: U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young resigns after a private meeting with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the latest in a series of controversies.

September 2: Carter welcomes Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega and other Sandinista leaders, who have just toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza, to the White House. He provides them with $118 million in aid.

September 15: Carter collapses during a road race near Camp David, contributing to a growing public perception that he is weak.

October 22: Carter allows the ailing Shah of Iran to enter the U.S. for medical treatment.

November 4: Outraged by the Shah's welcome in America, militant students overrun the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seizing 66 hostages. The 444-day Iranian hostage crisis begins.

April 24, 1980: A hostage rescue mission, called "Desert One," ends in disaster when two helicopters fail, and a third crashes into a plane during takeoff. Several days earlier, Secretary of State Vance had resigned over the decision to proceed with the mission.

August 4: Carter holds a news conference on "Billygate," the controversy over his brother Billy Carter's dealings with the Libyan government.

October 28: The one and only debate between Carter and Reagan takes place in Cleveland. Reagan effectively brushes aside Carter's attacks by saying, "There you go again," and seals his dominance of the evening with his closing question to voters: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

November 2: The Iranian parliament issues a statement making it clear the hostages will not be released before the election.

November 4: Reagan defeats Carter 51% to 41% in the popular vote, and in a landslide of 489 electoral votes to 49.

Now, as we come back to 2009, I'm finding Obama is racking up blunders at an alarmingly faster rate than Carter did. I think that immaturity and his arrogance are the two factors that are driving this overdeveloped rate of foul-ups....
He's nominated 5 to 7 folks for offices when their tax information hadn't been vetted. He lacks the cultural knowledge of other regions, or the protocol that would inform him that he was never to bow to Saudi Kings and allows his wife to drape herself on top of the Monarchy in Merry Old England. He appoints someone so dumb, that they fly Air Force One over the City of NY at low altitude...ignoring the fact that these people might get a little rattled, because the last plane they saw flying that low...well, you understand.
The kid has shown that he doesn't have a clue....and doesn't want one.
If history does indeed repeat itself, there'll be three times as many folks looking forward to a Republican to straighten this country back out.
Where can you find another Ronald Reagan when you need him?

It begins.

Rabid denial on day 100. Wait for the crash.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009
WASHINGTON - "That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.

It actually was partly him - and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years - who shaped the latest in a string of precipitously out-of-balance budgets.

And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.

Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead.

At various times, he brought an air of certainty to ambitions that are far from cast in stone.

His assertion that his proposed budget "will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term" is an eyeball-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating.

He promised vast savings from increased spending on preventive health care in the face of doubts that such an effort, however laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings.

A look at some of his claims Wednesday:

OBAMA: "We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs." - from news conference.

THE FACTS: This assertion is flawed on several levels. For starters, the U.S. has lost more than 1.2 million jobs since Obama took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even if Obama's stimulus bill saved or created as many jobs as he says, that number is dwarfed by the number of recent job losses.

But Obama's number is murky, at best. The White House has not yet announced how it intends to count jobs created by the stimulus bill. Obama's number is based on a job-counting formula that his economists have developed but have not made public. Until that formula is announced - probably in the coming week or so - there's no way to assess its accuracy.

Whatever the formula, economists who study job creation say it will require some creative math. That's because Obama has lumped "jobs saved" in with "jobs created." Even economists for organizations that stand to benefit from the stimulus concede it probably is impossible to estimate saved jobs because that would require calculating a hypothetical: how many people would have lost their jobs without the stimulus.

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OBAMA: "We must lay a new foundation for growth, a foundation that will strengthen our economy and help us compete in the 21st century. And that's exactly what this budget begins to do. It contains new investments in education that will equip our workers with the right skills and training; new investments in renewable energy that will create millions of jobs and new industries; new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses; and new savings that will bring down our deficit." - news conference.

THE FACTS: While the budget does set a roadmap for achieving the president's goals, it says nothing about how to pay for his health plan, expected to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. And while the deficit, under the plan, would drop to $523 billion in 2014, it achieves it with unrealistic assumptions, such as projections that spending in Iraq and Afghanistan will amount to only $50 billion a year.

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OBAMA: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. ... That wasn't me. Number two, there is almost uniform consensus among economists that in the middle of the biggest crisis, financial crisis, since the Great Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you've got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they're big, and they'll make our deficits go up over the next two years." - in Missouri.

THE FACTS:

Congress, under Democratic control in 2007 and 2008, controlled the purse strings that led to the deficit Obama inherited. A Republican president, George W. Bush, had a role, too: He signed the legislation.

Obama supported the emergency bailout package in Bush's final months - a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.

To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.

The economy has worsened under Obama, though from forces surely in play before he became president, and he can credibly claim to have inherited a grim situation.

Still, his response to the crisis goes well beyond "one-time charges."

He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion.

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OBAMA: "I think one basic principle that we know is that the more we do on the (disease) prevention side, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road. ... If we're making those investments, we will save huge amounts of money in the long term." - in Missouri.

THE FACTS: It sounds believable that preventing illness should be cheaper than treating it, and indeed that's the case with steps like preventing smoking and improving diets and exercise. But during the 2008 campaign, when Obama and other presidential candidates were touting a focus on preventive care, the New England Journal of Medicine cautioned that "sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching." It said that "although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not."

And a study released in December by the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing preventive care "could improve people's health but would probably generate either modest reductions in the overall costs of health care or increases in such spending within a 10-year budgetary time frame."

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OBAMA: "You could cut (Social Security) benefits. You could raise the tax on everybody so everybody's payroll tax goes up a little bit. Or you can do what I think is probably the best solution, which is you can raise the cap on the payroll tax." - in Missouri.

THE FACTS: Obama's proposal would reduce the Social Security trust fund's deficit by less than half, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

That means he would still have to cut benefits, raise the payroll tax rate, raise the retirement age or some combination to deal with the program's long-term imbalance.

Workers currently pay 6.2 percent and their employers pay an equal rate - for a total of 12.4 percent - on annual wages of up to $106,800, after which no more payroll tax is collected.

Obama wants workers making more than $250,000 to pay payroll tax on their income over that amount. That would still protect workers making under $250,000 from an additional burden. But it would raise much less money than removing the cap completely.

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OBAMA: "My hope is that working in a bipartisan fashion we are going to be able to get a health care reform bill on my desk before the end of the year that we'll start seeing in the kinds of investments that will make everybody healthier."

THE FACTS: Obama has indeed expressed hope for a health care plan that has support from Democrats and Republicans. But his Democratic allies in Congress have just made that harder. The budget plan written by the Democrats gives them the option of denying Republicans the normal right to block health care with a Senate filibuster. The filibuster tactic requires 60 votes to overcome, making it the GOP's main weapon to ensure a bipartisan outcome. The rules set by the budget mean that majority Democrats could potentially pass health care legislation without any Republican votes, sacrificing bipartisanship to achieve their goals.

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Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo, Kevin Freking and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

Brownlee moves toward E-verify...

Cuccinelli backpedals.

A new, somewhat surprising contrast between the Republican candidates for Attorney General came to light at Saturday's debate sponsored by the Virginia Federation of Republican Women.

In response to a question regarding illegal aliens and undocumented workers, John Brownlee said he strongly supports "the use of the U.S. government's E-Verify system." Brownlee supports making the use of E-Verify mandatory for all employers in the Commonwealth, including the state government, in an effort to reduce the number of illegal aliens in Virginia. E-Verify is a proven and effective resource for employers to verify citizenship / residency status and screen out illegals who are seeking employment.

In a response to the same question, State Senator Ken Cuccinelli said he opposed requiring private employers to use E-Verify, suggesting the system was too flawed to be reliable.
As one conservative analyst put it, "Our political leaders cannot hide behind the '[E-Verify] needs further improvement' mantra forever, because doing so is the functional equivalent of not enforcing the prohi­bition against hiring illegals in the first place."

Brownlee also stated "As Attorney General, I will encourage our General Assembly to mandate the use of instant verification methods by our state agencies and all private employers. The mandatory use of such measures by all employers will be a major step forward in Virginia's fight against illegal immigration.

"As the only candidate for Attorney General who has worked first-hand on the problem of illegal immigration, I know the effect this problem has on our communities and the budgets of our cities and counties. Requiring the use of E-Verify would send a strong message to those who may come here illegally that Virginia takes our immigration laws seriously."

Brownlee noted studies that estimate as much as four percent of Virginia's current population are illegal immigrants.

Phyllis Schlafly wrote, "E-Verify has been proven to successfully verify employees queried through the system within five seconds. Opponents of this program, to date, have been unable to find a single instance in which legal U.S. citizens have lost their jobs due to an E-Verify error."

Former Reagan White House Communications Director Patrick J. Buchanan recently wrote, "E-Verify is a smashing success with an accuracy rate of over 99 percent that holds out promise of a day when every employer in America will be able to ensure that every employee is an American or someone authorized to work here....Isn't this what we all want, what we have all sought -- an easy, verifiable, non-intrusive, inexpensive way for businesses to assure that those they hire are in our country legally?"

Brownlee added that by implementing E-Verify and reducing the number of illegals coming to Virginia, both businesses and taxpayers will save money and reduce costs.

Brownlee also applauded the efforts by Republicans in Congress requiring that firms receiving "stimulus bill" monies use E-Verify for all employees on stimulus projects. Efforts to do so were thwarted by liberal Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

"It is absolutely appalling that the Congress will not require the beneficiaries of this new spending to be either citizens or legal residents of this country," said Brownlee.

Brownlee recognized the efforts of the Republican members of Congress who are fighting for a strengthened, improved E-Verify system. "It is an outrage that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are thwarting efforts to sustain and improve the E-Verify system. I will do whatever I can to support our Congressional Republicans in their efforts to strengthen and continue this critical program."

Brownlee noted that Democrat Senator Mark Warner voted recently with the Reid / Pelosi liberals to kill an amendment by Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to expand and extend the E-Verify program for another five years.

Brownlee said the liberal Democrats' control of the federal government - and their refusal to embrace solutions like E-Verify that would help the U.S. get control of our borders - means it is absolutely critical that Virginia act to mandate E-Verify use across the Commonwealth.

"As United States Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, I identified and deported illegal immigrants from Virginia. I also had the great honor, on several occasions, of presenting legal immigrants to a Federal Judge for the purpose of administering the Oath of Citizenship. We do a grave dishonor to those who have come here legally when we fail to enforce our immigration laws. E-Verify is a critical component in that enforcement, and I will urge the General Assembly to mandate its use in Virginia.

"As Virginia's Attorney General, I will never forget that we are a nation of immigrants; but we must also never forget that we are, first and foremost, a nation of laws."

Folks, this blogger is sold on Mr. Brownlee's excellent cotribution to society thruout his magnificent career. And I do believe that John has just begun to sink his heels into his life in public service we can believe in.

Update:

John Brownlee is a solid conservative who understands the danger to our nation posed by illegal immigration. As United States Attorney, John was on the frontlines of the crackdown against illegal workers in Virginia. As Virginia's next Attorney General, John will lead the fight to halt illegal immigration. John will push for a strong, mandatory employment verification system, and he will use his office to insist that the Federal government enforce our nation's immigration laws. I am pleased to endorse his candidacy.

Former Congressman & Presidential Candidate
Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado)

Another Ronald Reagan Lecture Series installment

"Equal Rights, Equal Justice and Equal Opportunity for All"

This series of the lectures will feature Corey Stewart, Chairman Prince William County Board of Supervisors. The subject of this series installment is "Equal Rights, Equal Justice and Equal Opportunity for All". Mr. Stewart will demonstrate how we can enforce our laws and protect individual rights and responsibilities at the same time.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009 7:30 p.m.
Cascades Senior Center Sterling, VA

Are they serious??

Unfortunately, it appears they are going to proceed with this cult-like fascination with a mere mortal. It appears that to the democrats, he can do no wrong. Generation upon generation has now been taught that hand-outs are okay. Numerous generations have been made to believe that anyone who has worked and developed a company and/or product that has made their financial situation better....somehow owes every one of us a bit of that success, despite the fact that those who think that never lifted a finger to help along the path...
Now, they're going off yet another cliff...The same one that a mere thousand or so have gone off before them. Cult worship. Of a mere man, at that. One that readily altered his websites, and scrubbed numerous pieces from places all over the internet when his opponents pointed out his weak policy issues. An endorsement from an American Socialist group was there one day...gone the next. This happened over and over thru-out the election season last year. But this bastardization is what they come up with.



This particular piece is by Michael Dantuono, and it's to be unveiled in NYC on Bam Bam's 100th Day. Kind of premature with the kind of year he's about to have, I'd say.

Wait till around his 2nd year, there Michael. Should be interesting.

But to be fair...I don't think you'd have been paid for it if you waited till no one is left to support the guy...so I grudgingly support your ability to comprehend that you should probably get it while the gettin' was good.

Update:
April 28, 2009
A statement released D'Antuono now claims the artist chose to cancel the event after being flooded with thousands of emails, phone calls, online blogs and other forms of public criticism, all within 48 hours of releasing the controversial image online.

Hear no evil

I picked up my copy of the Purcellville Gazette this week, and once again was treated to the intolerance of the left. In the past 3 months, there have been numerous letters to the Editor that call for the end of Joseph Lafiandra's column, It Seems to Me.

Now, this week, we're bedazzled by the brilliance of one Jim D'Ella from Hamilton.
He decries the It Seems to Me column featuring the book by Mark Levine, as well as a photo of the two men together in a previous issue. He went one better to declare "that there are a lot more people in this country who don't agree with Mr. Levine or you than do".

Well, now. That pretty much demands the statistics to back that whopper up. Did he mean that Obama's Election somehow wrapped that deal up for him? Because technically speaking, the election was a freak result of dissatisfaction with the previous administration....not a sweeping endorsement of liberalism.
And in his Blue Ridge District, Mr. D'Ella is outnumbered by folks who do agree with Mr. Levine's issues in that book.
Blue Ridge District, as well as Catoctin District next door are consistently the two most conservative voting Districts in our county. The Gazette has a healthy reader base out here.

In previous issues of the Gazette, I have been amazed at the closed minds in Purcellville. That some would actually stamp out free speech that many readers do in fact enjoy because it causes them to have to devote time to filling their brains with another point of view--distorting their talking points from ABC News ... it must be stressful to have to read the facts and not be able to distort them...so I suppose attacking the vehicle in which those facts are delivered is the lone solution that comes to these folks minds.

Senator Jeff Sessions and Governor Frank Keating endorse Brownlee

Senator Jeff Sessions, R-AL, and former Governor Frank Keating, R-OK, have agreed to host a fundraising event for John Brownlee's Campaign for Attorney General. The event will be held on May 5, 2009, at the Charlie Palmer Steakhouse, located at 1010 Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC. The invitation is attached to this Brownlee Report. Sen. Sessions and Governor Keating are strong social and fiscal conservatives who both served as United States Attorneys for President Ronald Reagan.

Senator Jeff Sessions is one of the great conservative leaders in America. Sen. Sessions served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, Attorney General of Alabama, and is currently in his fourth term as a U.S. Senator from Alabama.

Sen. Sessions grew up in Hybart, Alabama. After attending school in nearby Camden, Sessions, an Eagle Scout, worked his way through Huntingdon College in Montgomery, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969. He received his law degree from the University of Alabama in 1973. Sessions served in the United States Army Reserve from 1973 to 1986, attaining the rank of Captain.

Following a two-year stint as Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama (1975-1977), President Reagan appointed Sen. Sessions in 1981 as the United States Attorney for Alabama's Southern District, a position he held for 12 years. Sessions was elected Alabama Attorney General in 1995, serving as the state's chief law enforcement officer until 1997, when he was elected to the United States Senate.

As a United States Senator, Sessions has focused his energies on maintaining a strong military, upholding the rule of law, limiting the role of government, and providing tax relief to stimulate economic growth and empower Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money.

Governor Frank Keating is one of the most respected conservative leaders in the United States. He served two terms as Governor of Oklahoma from 1995 - 2003 and is the only Republican in Oklahoma's history to serve two terms as Governor. Keating attended Cascia Hall Preparatory School in Tulsa and graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1966. He returned to Oklahoma and received his law degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Law in 1969.

After law school, Gov. Keating began his career in law enforcement. Gov. Keating served as a Special Agent for the FBI. As a FBI agent, Keating was charged with investigating terrorism incidents and other criminal activity. Keating also served as an Assistant District Attorney. In 1973, Keating was elected to the Oklahoma House of Representatives. He would only serve a single term in the House, until 1975, when he was elected to the Oklahoma Senate. He would serve in the Senate from 1975 until 1981, winning reelection in 1978. While in the Senate, Keating rose to become the highest ranking Republican as the Senate Minority Leader.

In 1981, President Reagan appointed Keating to be the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Keating also served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and was later elevated to United States Associate Attorney General, the third ranking official within the United States Department of Justice. These appointments made Keating the highest ranking Oklahoman during the Reagan administration.

In 1995, Keating was elected Governor of Oklahoma. Within three months of taking office, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was destroyed in the Oklahoma City bombing, in which the lives of 168 Oklahomans were lost and over 800 people were injured. The blast destroyed or damaged more than 300 buildings in the surrounding area, leaving several hundred people homeless and shutting down offices in downtown Oklahoma City. Gov. Keating responded with great strength and leadership in the wake of that horrible national tragedy.

John's web page is here.