What have we done?

Do you remember when you were a little kid and you made a big mistake and got in real trouble? You just wanted to wake up from the nightmare but you can't because this is real life. That is how I feel now that Obama is president.

How can we ever reverse the mess this country is in?

President Obama signed five executive orders in the first three days of his presidency. That alone is scary considering no other president in modern history has come close to that. Let's see what was done.

<LINK>
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing_room/executive_orders/

EXECUTIVE ORDER -- REVIEW AND DISPOSITION OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT THE GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE AND CLOSURE OF DETENTION FACILITIES

Sec. 2. Findings.

(c) The individuals currently detained at Guantánamo have the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Most of those individuals have filed petitions for a writ of habeas corpus in Federal court challenging the lawfulness of their detention.

Really?

These terrorist have constitutional privilege?

They are unlawful enemy combatants found on the battlefield and are not Americans which have NO right to our constitution. They are not part of a national state run army and therefore not covered by Geneva Convention either.

Maybe B.O. needs to look at what FDR did to those Germans that tried to land on Long Island during WW2.

What do we do with these animals? Maybe send them to Alcatraz so Nancy Pelosi can watch them...



 Closing Gitmo isn't enough.

EXECUTIVE ORDER -- ENSURING LAWFUL INTERROGATIONS

So , now we are restricted to the methods used to interrogate the same people that have killed Americans already or would like to.

One should be aware that actions similar to water boarding occur everyday in our military training units.  The Navy Seals typically use large amounts of water targeted at a candidates face, causing him/her to have similar if not equal effects that water boarding produces.

If our military soldiers are routinely exposed to similar stimuli, how can water boarding be considered torture?



Well , George Bush made mistakes as president but he did keep us safe from Islamo-fascist since 9/11/01. I believe part of that is due to the info we obtained from the Gitmo detainees.

Maybe, President Obama can just charm Ahmenidijad, Nasrallah, Osama, and all that feel good nice talk and understanding will just make it all go away.

...Not likely

When asked if he still planned on raising taxes on the top tier he gave a no-answer canned response straight out of the campaign talking points... "95% of Americans are getting a tax cut" yada yada blah blah. I wonder how the market would react if he said he wouldn't hike capitol gains or increase the taxes on the top 5% ?

So then the tough questions about his puppy pick. OK I get it, give the guy his honeymoon right?

I don't think the rest of the world is willing to give him a honeymoon considering Russia is threatening to point missiles at Poland if we continue with our missile defense plans. Then Israel warned Obama that his claim that he was ready to open talks with Iran could be seen in the Middle East as a sign of weakness. To further increase Israel's anxiety about Obama, Tehran announced that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had broken a 29-year tradition and sent his congratulations to the President-elect - the first time an Iranian leader has offered such wishes since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The love letter included demands about U.S. policies including limiting intervention to our own borders. Sure we'll just let him keep making that nuke...

Who got to ask questions at the Obama presser?

Nedra Pickler (AP), Lee Cowan (NBC), Jake Tapper (ABC), Chip Reid (CBS), Karen Bohan (Reuters), John McCormick (Chicago Tribune), Lynn Sweet (Chicago Sun-Times), Candy Crowley (CNN), Jeff Zeleny (New York Times).

Which network didn't get a question? Fox News.

But that's not all!

He decides to take a shot at Nancy Reagan of all people. He was asked if he had spoken with all the living Presidents. "I have spoken to all of them who are living," he says. "I didn’t want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any séances," he says. He was apparently referring to the reports in the 1980s that Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer while in the White House. The President-elect called Nancy Reagan to apologize for his "careless" joke. Not very Presidential Barry!                            

Lastly - What's with the goofy sign on the podium? The office of the President elect ? Oh boy this is gonna be an eventful four years. Good luck with that President-elect Barack Obama.

Never before have I felt tension for being Republican when I voted. Today I was sized up, and then after presenting my info to the person issuing my ballot the REP appeared, and you could cut the tension in the room. I felt uneasy to say the least and a bit surrounded. I thought after I left (and told the exit poller outside I was not interested in participating in their poll) that maybe it was all in my head... till I spoke with my wife. She voted after me about an hour later and told me she experienced the same thing. I am frankly appalled. Are all polling precincts equal? Considering the obvious Obama force in the room I would say not anymore.

Flashback 2000 - The Main Stream Media called the Florida election for Gore before the panhandle finished voting. Many believe this caused many to not vote in the central time zone of Florida. Let's not allow that to happen this election! Pay no attention to early calls from the likes of NBC. Don't be intimidated or discouraged. VOTE!

1. Historically, exit polls have tended to overstate the Democratic vote.

2. The exit polls are likely to overstate the Obama vote because Obama voters are more likely to participate in the exit poll.

3. The exit polls have tended to skew most Democratic in years where there is high turnout and high vote interest like in 1992 and 2004.

4. It is not just the national exit poll that skews Democratic, but each of the state exit polls also suffers from the same Democratic leanings.

Jay served on the U.S. Supreme Court as the first Chief Justice of the United States from 1789 to 1795. In 1794 he negotiated the Jay Treaty with the British. A leader of the new Federalist party, Jay was governor of New York from 1795 to 1801. He was the leading opponent of slavery and the slave trade in New York. His first attempt to pass emancipation legislation failed in 1777 and failed again in 1785, but he succeeded in 1799, signing the law that eventually emancipated the slaves of New York; the last were freed before his death.

You may recall Obama’s much publicized comments on small-town Americans while speaking to a group of wealthy California donors in San Francisco on April 6, 2008:

“…they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Well, as Mayhill Fowler wrote on huffingtonpost.com, “Obama made a problematic judgment call in trying to explain working class culture to a much wealthier audience.”

A problematic judgment call.  Hmm...  Doesn’t sound like someone who’s ready to lead the free world to me, seeing as how he can’t even relate to large segments of the very population he claims to want to unify. 

The media and right wing supporters alike had a bloody field day with the “guns or religion” part, but even Fowler makes no stink about the “antipathy to people who aren’t like them” statement, which--if we're all honest with ourselves--is simply a not-so-veiled way of calling small town Americans racists.

But wait! There’s more!

Equally disturbing were other parts of Barack Obama’s April 6th speech that never made waves on the national news circuit…  To wit:

“I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to ‘white working-class don’t wanna work — don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.”

And, 26 minutes into that very same speech, Barack Obama says:

"When people tell me they've all stressed about racial discord, well, you know, try slavery for a while."

Excuse me?  Slavery?  Yes, I can agree that slavery sucks, but… What the…? How can one "try slavery" in this day and age in America?  Didn’t a Republican named Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery in America in 1862? Or was my history teacher smoking crack when he told me that? 

And, how is the long-dead issue of slavery in America relevant in the 2008 election, anyway? 

Oh, right… I forgot. To win this election, Barack Obama has to take every available opportunity to pull out that race card, which is just dripping with white guilt over an issue that’s well past its sell date--by over 140 years. 

When hard work is encouraged, it breeds success. When success punished, it breeds poverty.

I‘ve worked hard to get where I am in life, and it has not been easy. When I left home as a teenager, I took little but my clothes and a few knickknacks and photographs (the sum total of my possessions fit easily in the trunk of a mid-sized car). There were times in my early adulthood that I struggled and on occasion went a few days without a meal or a roof over my head.  

Still, I draw deep fulfillment from the fact that what I have today has come from my own hard work, with no help or handouts. Today I have a decent job. I own a home and two cars. Other than my mortgage, I have managed to stay debt-free for several years. I support two dogs, and we all eat well.

You see, I was raised by depression era parents whose values included honesty, hard work, and fiscal responsibility. Not a day goes by that I don’t remember those values and use them as the yardstick for all my decisions.

Eventually--through his hard work, common sense, and persistence--my father was able to rise above his meager beginnings and become a successful man. With no college education, he supported a wife and three children on his sole income, and he always kept his bills paid. He always believed that “your first bill is yourself,” so long before any Section 401(k) legislation was passed, my father faithfully saved 10% of every paycheck for the twilight years of his life so he wouldn’t be a burden to another generation.   He only borrowed what he knew he could afford to promptly pay back. He never lived beyond his means, nor did he concern himself with status symbols. He worked hard, made himself an expert in his chosen field, educated himself on fiscal matters, and made a series of thoughtful decisions that enabled his family to live the kind of upper middle class life many Americans dream about.

The heartbreaking part of that story is how much punishment I watched my father endure at the hands of his own government for his success. Prior to his retirement, the last time my father got a big raise at work, I had just turned seventeen and I remember how depressed he and my mother seemed after he received that pay increase. When I asked my mother why they weren’t excited about it, she said, “He’s in a new tax bracket now, and that means he’s bringing home less than he did before.”

I was stunned and disillusioned. How could someone work so hard, sacrifice so much, be so honest, and end up with less as a result? The raise for which my father worked so hard suddenly seemed like a hollow reward. And, at the time, poorly regulated government handouts had reached an all-time peak, and many of the people who chose to accept those handouts no longer had to live by the sweat of their own brows.

In a democratic society, it hardly seems fair or just that our government has seen fit to make itself the largest charitable organization in history. Is it reasonable that 10% of our country’s citizens are already paying 80% of its taxes, and yet liberal legislators and their supporters insist that is still not enough? Is it fair to give tax refunds and handouts to people who never pay into the system themselves? That’s not democracy. It’s socialism. And if history has taught us anything, it’s that socialism doesn’t work.

Hello? Does anyone remember the USSR?

And what happened to our Constitution? I thought it was our government’s Constitutional responsibility to protect its people, not to take from Peter to give to Paul. That is the role of charitable organizations, ministries, and churches.

While we’re at it, what happened to parents actively teaching their children the values of personal accountability, hard work, and fiscal frugality? The media now overloads us with sensationalist images of those who cheat the system through sleazy lawyers, exploit outdated beliefs to leech money they haven’t worked for, spend money like drunken sailors on things they can’t afford, and evade responsibility to support their lifestyles.

At the same time, these very people are celebrated with media attention, and the cult of celebrity brainwashes the uninformed into believing that such behavior is not only acceptable, but worthy of emulation. And these people are voting!?! I can’t help but think that all those lazy parents who use the TV as a babysitter have left the rest of us to suffer the consequences.

I’ve worked hard to get where I am in life, and it has not been easy. So I ask you… If I achieve a modicum of success through my hard work, personal accountability, and persistence--should I be punished for it?