1. Term Limits: 12 years only, one of the possible options below.

A. Two Six year Senate terms
B. Six Two year House terms
C. One Six year Senate term and three Two Year House terms

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

2. No Tenure / No Pension:

A congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security:

All funds in the Congressional retirement fund moves to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, Congress participates with the American people.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, server your term(s), then go home and back to work.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan just as all Americans.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

6. Congress looses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

7. Congress must equally abide in all laws they impose on the American people.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

8. All contracts with past and present congressmen are void effective 1/1/11 .

The American people did not make this contract with congressmen, congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.  

So far this year you have taken away my favorite dancer Michael Jackson, my favorite actor Patrick Swayze and my favorite singer Stephen Gately and my favorite actress Farah Fawcett.

Just so you know, my favorite politicians are Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Charlie Rangel and Barney Frank !!

So you’re a senior citizen and the government says no health care for you, what do you do?

Our plan gives anyone 65 years or older a gun and 4 bullets. Your are allowed to shoot 2 senators and 2 representatives. Of Course, this means you will be sent to prison.

There you will get 3 meals a day, a roof over your head, and all the health care you need! New teeth, no problem. Need glasses, great. New hip, knees, kidney, lungs, heart? All covered.

And who will be paying for all of this? The same government that just told you that you are too old for health care. Plus, because you are a prisoner, you don’t have to pay any income taxes anymore.

I am honored by the invitation to address you on this august occasion. It’s about time. Be warned, however, that I am not here to impress you; you’ll have enough smoke blown your way today. And you can bet your tassels I’m not here to impress the faculty and administration.

You may not like much of what I have to say, and that’s fine. This isn’t the first time you’re not going to like what someone has to say … your bosses, for instance. Things change today. There will be a lot less pandering to your every whim, and a lot more demands for performance. You will remember what I had to say though. Especially after about 10 years out there in the real world. This, of course, does not apply to those of you who will seek your careers and your fortunes as government employees … or as college professors.

You’ve heard the old saying that those who can – do. Those who can’t – teach. That sounds deliciously insensitive. But there is often raw truth in insensitivity, just as you often find feel-good falsehoods and lies in compassion. Say good-bye to your faculty because now you are getting ready to go out there and do. These folks behind me are going to stay right here and teach.

By the way, just because you are leaving this place with a diploma doesn’t mean the learning is over. When an FAA flight examiner handed me my private pilot’s license many years ago, he said, ‘Here, this is your ticket to learn.’ The same can be said for your diploma. Believe me, the learning has just begun.

OK .. it’s time for you to hear something – to learn something – that may, but should not, come as a complete surprise.

You are the victims of a terrible fraud. You have just completed your travels through an educational system that had no real intention of educating you … at least not too much.

You’re pretty hot at research right now, aren’t you? While those skills are still with you, perhaps you would like to put them to work studying the start of compulsory government education in the early part of the last century. Do you really think that the goal of our compulsory government education system has been to actually educate you?

Did you study H. L. Mencken? In 1924 he wrote an article for the American Mercury where he defined the true aim of our then-fledgling system of education. Listen carefully:

The aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is the aim in the United States and that is its aim everywhere else.

Think about this. Who owns the schools? The government. Who mandates attendance? The government. Who staffs the schools? The government … with government workers. Who directs the work of the schools? The government. Can you see where it is in the best interests of government to suppress dissent and originality? Can you understand why government would want a standardized citizenry? Those who dissent; those who produce originality of thought; those who exceed the standards are a threat to what? The status quo, that’s what … and government likes the calming influence of the status quo.

There’s an amazing book that you need to put at the top of your reading list … now that you don’t have to focus on college texts any more. The book is by John Taylor Gatto, and it’s called “The Underground History of American Education.” Gatto was the teacher of the year in New York City. He wrote an extraordinary letter to the Wall Street Journal in 2001. Let me share the first part of that letter with you:

I’ve taught public school for 26 years but I just can’t do it anymore. For years I asked the local school board and superintendent to let me teach a curriculum that doesn’t hurt kids, but they had other fish to fry. So I’m going to quit, I think.

I’ve come slowly to understand what it is I really teach: A curriculum of confusion, class position, arbitrary justice, vulgarity, rudeness, disrespect for privacy, indifference to quality, and utter dependency. I teach how to fit into a world I don’t want to live in.

I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t train children to wait to be told what to do; I can’t train people to drop what they are doing when a bell sounds; I can’t persuade children to feel some justice in their class placement when there isn’t any, and I can’t persuade children to believe teachers have valuable secrets they can acquire by becoming our disciples. That isn’t true.

Just google “I quit, I think” and you can read the rest of Gatto’s letter to the Wall Street Journal. You’ve been had .. big time. Read the letter. You’ll see how —- and how bad.

Can you see why government would want to keep you dumbed down and placated? Gatto’s book explains it all. He talks about the effort to bring the Prussian style of education to the United States in the early 1900s. He describes his shock that Americans were to eager to adopt what he calls “one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture … an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens in order to render the populace “manageable.”

So … do you think you know enough to be a threat to the ruling class?

How many of you can name your two US Senators? How about the Vice President? Who is your congressman? How often is he elected? Can you give me the gist of the 10th Amendment?

Am I trying to insult you here? No, I’m trying to illustrate something.

What are the three branches of government? Who officially represents the government of this state – not the people, the government — in Washington?

How strong is your economic knowledge? Do you believe that the rich should pay their fair share? If so, can you tell me what percentage of total income the hated top 1% earns and what percentage of income taxes they pay? If you can’t, don’t worry too much. I’ve interviewed presidential candidates who can’t tell you.

Here’s a toughie …. What is the difference between a profit and a profit margin? Do corporations pay taxes? If so, where do they get the money?

A person who cannot answer virtually all of these questions is a person who is going to present absolutely no threat at all to current political thought. This is a person who will repeat government feel-good slogans and political mantras .. and then turn to a discussion of the last episode of “Lost.”

Feeling pretty good about your education now, aren’t you?

Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals. In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views. You care so much. You feel so much. You want to help so much. After all, you’re a compassionate and caring person, aren’t you now? Well, isn’t that just so extraordinarily special. Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a Liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in. Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast .. including your own assessment of just how much you really know.

So here are the first assignments for your initial class in post-graduate reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers – as long as we have newspapers — and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear “I feel.” From the Right you will hear “I think.” From the Liberals you will hear references to groups –The Blacks, The Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics and the principal of looting. Conservatives and Libertarians think — and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual – individual worth and achievement.

Liberals feel that their favored groups, have enforceable rights to the property and services of productive individuals. Conservatives (and Libertarians, myself among them I might add) think that individuals have the right to protect their lives and their property from the plunder of the masses.

In college you developed a group mentality, but if you look closely at your diplomas you will see that they have your individual names on them. Not the name of your school mascot, or of your fraternity or sorority, but your name. This group identity nonsense needs to go away … now. Your recognition and appreciation of your individual identity should begin immediately.

There’s a chance that, over the next eight to ten years, the lessons of life will not have brought you to the rational thinking processes of a libertarian or a conservative. If you find that to be your reality when you reach the age of 30 … 35 tops … then you need to rush right back here as quickly as you can and apply for a faculty position. These people will welcome you with open arms. They will welcome you, that is, so long as you haven’t developed an individual identity. Once again you will have to be willing to sign on to the group mentality you embraced during the past four years.

Something is going to happen soon that is going to really open your eyes. You’re going to actually get a full time job! You’re also going to find that you have a partner. This partner isn’t going to help you do your job. This partner is just going to sit back and wait for payday. This partner doesn’t want to share in your effort — just your earnings.

Your new lifelong partner is actually an agent; an agent representing a strange and diverse group of people. An agent for every single mother raising an illegitimate child. An agent for a research scientist who wanted to make some cash answering the age-old question of why monkeys grind their teeth. An agent for some poor aging hippie who considers herself to be a meaningful and talented artist … but who just can’t manage to sell any of her artwork on the open market.

Your new partner is an agent for every person with limited, if any, job skills; for every person who ignored all proffered educational opportunities, for every loser dreaming of nothing more than a job at City Hall. Your partner will be an agent for tin-horn dictators in fancy military uniforms grasping for American foreign aid. An agent for multi-million-dollar companies who want someone else to pay for their overseas advertising. An agent for everybody who wants to use the unimaginable power of this agent’s for their personal enrichment and benefit.

That agent is our wonderful, caring, compassionate, oppressive Imperial Federal Government. Believe me, you will be awed by the unimaginable power this agent has. Power that you do not have. A power that no individual has, will have or should have. This agent has the legal power to use force – deadly force – to accomplish its goals.

You have no choice here. Your new friend is just going to walk up to you, introduce itself rather gruffly, hand you a few forms to fill out, and move right on in. Say hello to your own personal one ton gorilla with a gun. It will sleep anywhere it wants to.

Now, let me tell you, this agent is not cheap. As you become successful it will seize about 40% of everything you earn. And no, I’m sorry, there just isn’t any way you can fire this agent of plunder, this looter, and you can’t decrease it’s share of your income. That power rests with him, not you.

Does it bother you that I’m not particularly fond of our government? Well, be clear on this: It is not wrong to distrust government. It is not wrong to fear government. In certain cases it is not even wrong to despise government for government is inherently evil. Oh yes, I know it’s a necessary evil, but it is dangerous nonetheless … somewhat like a drug. Just as a drug that in the proper dosage can save your life, an overdose of government can be fatal.

Now – let’s address a few things that have been crammed into your minds at this university. There are some ideas you need to expunge as soon as possible. These ideas may work well in academic environment, but they fail miserably out there in the real world.

First – that favorite buzz word of the media, government and academia: Diversity!

You have been taught that the real value of any group of people – be it a social group, an employee group, a management group, whatever – is based on diversity. This is a favored liberal ideal because diversity is based not on an individual’s abilities or character, but on a person’s identity and status as a member of a group. Yes – it’s that liberal group identity thing again.

Within the great diversity movement group identification – be it racial, gender based, one of the fourteen different classifications of sexual proclivities, or some other minority status – means more than the individual’s integrity, character or other qualifications.

Brace yourself. You are about to move from this academic atmosphere where diversity rules, to a workplace and a culture where individual achievement and excellence actually count. No matter what your professors have taught you over the last four years, you are about to learn that diversity is absolutely no replacement for excellence, ability, and individual hard work. Unless, of course, you are working for the government or academia.

From this day on every single time you hear the word “diversity” you can rest assured that there is someone close by who is determined to rob you of every vestige of individuality you possess.

We also need to address this thing you seem to have about “rights.” We have witnessed an obscene explosion of so-called “rights” in the last few decades, usually emanating from college campuses.

You know the mantra: You have the right to a job. The right to a place to live. The right to a living wage. The right to health care. The right to an education. You probably even have your own pet right – the right to a Beemer, for instance, or the right to have someone else provide for that child you plan on downloading in a year or so.

Forget it. Forget those rights! I’ll tell you what your rights are! You have a right to live free, and you have a right to whatever wealth you are able to produce with your labor. You’ll be disappointed to learn that you have no right to any portion of the life or labor of another.

You may think, for instance, that you have a right to health care. After all, the president said so, didn’t he? But you cannot receive health care unless some doctor or health practitioner surrenders some of his time – his life – to you. He may be willing to do this for compensation, but that’s his choice. You have no “right” to his time or property. You have no right to any portion of his or any other person’s life.

You may also think you have some “right” to a job; a job with a living wage, whatever that is. Do you mean to tell me that you have a right to force your services on another person, and then the right to demand that this person compensate you with their money? What if he doesn’t need your services? I can’t wait for you to point that one out for me in our Constitution. I sure would like to be a fly on the wall when some urban outdoorsmen (that would be “homeless person” for those of you who don’t want to give these less fortunate people a romantic and adventurous title) came to you and demanded his job and your money.

And while I’m on the subject of jobs … let’s straighten out a bit of a misconception you may have. Jobs belong to the employer, not to the employee. You will go “look” for a job. Well, if the job belonged to you wouldn’t have to look very far would you? Businessmen create those jobs. The jobs belong to them, not you. They will, with conditions, offer you that job if they believe them to be capable. And guess what? They’re not going to pay you what you’re worth. They’re going to pay you less. Know why? Because if every employer out there paid every employee exactly what that employee was worth, where is the profit for the employer? You are there to make money for the person who gave you the job. To do that you have to produce wealth. You get a good portion of it … but some must go to the employer. There is simply no other reason to hire you. And another thing … there is no “shipping OUR jobs overseas.” They are the employer’s jobs, not yours. They can do with them what they wish. Get used to it.

The people who have been telling you about all the rights you have are simply exercising one of theirs – the right to be imbeciles. Their being imbeciles didn’t cost anyone else either property or time. It’s their right, and they exercise it brilliantly.

By the way, did you catch my use of the phrase “less fortunate” a bit ago when I was talking about the urban outdoorsmen and the poor, poor, pitiful, pathetic poor? That phrase is a favorite of the Left. Think about it, and you’ll understand why.

To imply that one person is homeless, destitute, dirty, drunk, spaced out on drugs, unemployable, and generally miserable because he is “less fortunate” is to imply that a successful person – one with a job, a home and a future – is in that position because he or she was “fortunate.” The dictionary says that fortunate means “having derived good from an unexpected place.” There is nothing unexpected about deriving good from hard work. There is also nothing unexpected about deriving misery from choosing drugs, alcohol, and the street instead of education and personal responsibility.

If the Left can create the common perception that success and failure are simple matters of “fortune” or “luck,” then it is easy to promote and justify their various income seizure and redistribution schemes. After all, you didn’t work for the money, did you? You were just lucky, and here we are just evening out the odds a little bit, aren’t we?

This “success equals luck” idea the liberals like to push is seen everywhere. One time Democrat presidential candidate Richard Gephardt liked to refer to high-achievers as “people who have won life’s lottery.” He wanted you to believe they are making the big bucks because they are lucky; all they did was buy the right lottery ticket. What an insult this is to the man or woman who works that 60 hour week to provide for a family.

It’s not luck, my friends. It’s choice. One of the greatest lessons I ever learned was in a book by Og Mandino, entitled “The Greatest Secret in the World.” The lesson? Very simple: “Use wisely your power of choice.”

That bum sitting on a heating grate, smelling like a wharf rat? He’s there by choice. He is there because of the sum total of the choices he has made in his life. This truism is absolutely the hardest thing for some people to accept, especially those who consider themselves to be victims of something or other – victims of discrimination, bad luck, the system, capitalism, whatever. After all, nobody really wants to accept the blame for his or her position in life. Not when it is so much easier to point and say, “Look! He did this to me!” than it is to look into a mirror and say, “You S.O.B.! You did this to me!”

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

Some of the choices are obvious: Whether or not to stay in school. Whether or not to get pregnant. Whether or not to hit the bottle. Whether or not to keep this job you hate until you get another better-paying job. Whether or not to save some of your money, or saddle yourself with huge payments for that new car.

Some of the choices are seemingly insignificant: Whom to go to the movies with. Whose car to ride home in. Whether to watch the tube tonight, or read a book on investing. But, and you can be sure of this, each choice counts. Each choice is a building block – some large, some small. But each one is a part of the structure of your life. If you make the right choices, or if you make more right choices than wrong ones, something absolutely terrible may happen to you. Something unthinkable. You, my friend, could become one of the hated, the evil, the ugly, the feared, the filthy, the successful, the rich.

Quite a few people have followed that tragic path.

The rich basically serve two purposes in this country. First, they provide the investments, the investment capital, and the brains for the formation of new businesses. Businesses that hire people. Businesses that send millions of paychecks home each week to the un-rich.

Second, the rich are a wonderful object of ridicule, distrust, and hatred. Few things are more valuable to a politician than the envy most Americans feel for the evil rich.

Envy is a powerful emotion. Politicians use envy to get votes and power. And they keep that power by promising the envious that the envied will be punished: “The rich will pay their fair share of taxes if I have anything to do with it.’

The truth is that the top 10% of income earners in this country pays almost 50% of all income taxes collected. I shudder to think what these job producers would be paying if our tax system were any more “fair.”

You have heard, no doubt, that in America the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Interestingly enough, our government’s own numbers show that many of the poor actually get richer, and that quite a few of the rich actually get poorer. But for the rich who do actually get richer, and the poor who remain poor … there’s an explanation — a reason. The rich, you see, keep doing the things that make them rich; while the poor keep doing the things that make them poor.

Speaking of the poor, during your adult life you are going to hear an endless string of politicians bemoaning the plight of the poor in America. So, you need to know that under our government’s definition of “poor” you can have a $5 million net worth, a $900,000 paid-for home and a new $160,000 Bentley, all completely paid for. You can also have a maid, cook, and valet, and $10 million in a checking account, and you can still be officially defined by our government as “living in poverty.” Now there’s something you haven’t seen on the evening news.

How does the government pull this one off? Very simple, really. To determine whether or not some poor soul is “living in poverty,” the government measures one thing — just one thing. Income. It doesn’t matter one bit how much you have, how much you own, how many cars you drive or how big they are, whether or not your pool is heated, whether you winter in Aspen and spend the summers in the Bahamas, or how much is in your savings account. It only matters how much income you claim in that particular year. This means that if you take a one-year leave of absence from your high-paying job and decide to live off the money in your savings and checking accounts while you write the next great American novel, the government says you are ‘living in poverty.”

This isn’t exactly what you had in mind when you heard these gloomy statistics, is it?

Do you need more convincing? Try this. The government’s own statistics show that people who are said to be “living in poverty” spend more than $1.50 for each dollar of income they claim. Something is a bit fishy here. just remember all this the next time Katie Couric puffs up and tells you about some hideous new poverty statistics.

And please remember this: The average person in this country described as “poor” has a higher standard of living than the average European. Not the average “poor” European, the average European.

Why has the government concocted this phony poverty scam? Because the government needs an excuse to grow and to expand its social welfare programs, which translates into an expansion of its power. If the government can convince you, in all your compassion, that the number of “poor” is increasing, it will have all the excuse it needs to sway an electorate suffering from the advanced stages of Obsessive-Compulsive Compassion Disorder.

Well, it looks like I’m about to be given the hook. The faculty looks a little angry. Come to think of it … some of you look a little ticked off too. Are you starting to get it? The fun times are fading … it’s time to get down to business, and the people you will be working for have a much tighter grip on reality than these people who have been teaching you for the past years have. Why don’t you try occupying the boss’s office the next time something doesn’t go your way. Let us all know how that works out for you.

Well … I’m guessing that they’ve already changed their minds about that honorary degree I was going to get. That’s OK, though. I still have my Ph.D. in Insensitivity from the Neal Boortz Institute for Insensitivity Training. You’re about to start studying for yours. I learned that, in short, sensitivity sucks. It’s a trap. Think about it – the truth knows no sensitivity. Life can be insensitive. Wallow too much in sensitivity and you’ll be unable to deal with life, or the truth. So, get over it.

Now, before the dean has me shackled and hauled off, I have a few random thoughts.

You need to register to vote, unless you’re part of the moocher class. If you are living off the efforts of others, please do us the favor of sitting down and shutting up until you are on your own again. While we’re paying the bills you can keep your gripes to yourself. As long as we’re taking care of you we would appreciate it if you would just sit down, shut up and get a skill. Or have the decency to just stay out of our way so we can get the job done.

When you do vote, your votes for the House and the Senate are more important than your vote for president. The House controls the purse strings, so concentrate your awareness there. Try to put as much importance on learning your congressman’s name as you do remembering the name of your aerobics or yoga instructor.

Don’t bow to the temptation to use the government as an instrument of plunder. If it is wrong for you to take money from someone else who earned it — to take their money by force for your own needs — then it is certainly just as wrong for you to demand that the government step forward and do this dirty work for you.

Don’t look in other people’s pockets. You have no business there. What they earn is theirs. What you manage to earn is yours. Keep it that way. Nobody owes you anything, except to respect your privacy and your rights, and leave you the hell alone.

Speaking of earning, the revered 40-hour workweek is for losers. Forty hours should be considered the minimum, not the maximum. You don’t see highly successful people clocking out of the office every afternoon at five. The losers are the ones caught up in that afternoon rush hour. The winners drive home in the dark.

Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

Finally (and aren’t you glad to hear that word), as Og Mandino wrote,

1. Proclaim your rarity. Each of you is a rare and unique human being.
2. Use wisely your power of choice.
3. Go the extra mile … drive home in the dark.

Care as much about America’s future as you do about American Idol.

Oh, and put off buying that flat screen as long as you can.

Now, if you have any idea at all what’s good for you, you will get the hell out of here and never come back.

Class dismissed.

– Neal Boortz

Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration.

Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely.

Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.

Let’s say I break into your house.

Let’s say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.

But I say, ‘No! I like it here. It’s better than my house. I’ve made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors. I’ve done all the things you don’t like to do. I’m hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).

According to the protesters:

• You are Required to let me stay in your house
• You are Required to feed me
• You are Required to add me to your family’s insurance plan
• You are Required to Educate my kids
• You are Required to Provide other benefits to me & to my family

My husband will do all of your yard work because he is also hard-working and honest. (except for that breaking in part).

If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my RIGHT to be there.

It’s only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I’m just trying to better myself. I’m a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know, I did break into your house

And what a deal it is for me!!!

I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of cold, uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and bigoted behavior.

Oh yeah, and I DEMAND that you learn MY LANGUAGE!!! so that you can communicate with me.

Why can’t people see how ridiculous this is?!  America is populated and governed by idiots.

– Author Unknown

Doubtless you are well aware of the beer summit that took place. However, I’m not entirely sure if all of you saw a certain photo that speaks volumes as to the character of Sergeant Crowley.

You can find the image at the White Houses official blog here.

The American Thinker had something interesting to say on the subject:

I am stunned that the official White House Blog published this picture and that it is in the public domain. The body language is most revealing.

Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious?

In my own dealings with the wealthy and powerful, I have always found that the way to quickly capture the moral essence of a person is to watch how they treat those who are less powerful. Do they understand that the others are also human beings with feelings? Especially when they think nobody is looking.

Hat tip: Rick Richman

Update from Thomas Lifson:

I think this photo constitutes another major Obama blunder.

As some AT commentators point out, this picture becomes a metaphor for ObamaCare. The elderly are left in the back, with only the kindness of the Crowleys of the world, the stand up guys, to depend on. The government has other priorities.

One of the major subtexts of the health care debate involves the public’s fear of indifferent, powerful bureaucrats ruling their lives. It is one thing to wait in line at the DMV to find out which other line you should wait in, in order to begin the process of waiting for multiple bureaucrats to go through the motions of processing your request. I have spent entire afternoons going through this process.

But when we get to health care, waiting often means enduring pain and dysfunction longer than necessary, sometimes a worsening of the condition, and sometimes death.

That’s why I think this image will have genuine resonance. It captures something that older Americans in particular can relate to. The President presses ahead with a program that will tell them to take painkillers instead of getting that artificial hip.

At every stage of the entire Gates affair, Obama has provided a revealing tell. The “acted stupidly” blunder revealed that he automatically blames the police and thinks they really are stupid to begin with. It didn’t trigger a single alarm bell in his mind as he figured out what to say.

Then, the non-apology apology revealed an arrogant man who cannot do what honest people do: admit it when they make a mistake.

Now at stage three, the beer photo op looked OK. It didn’t turn into a disaster.

But then in a small moment that nobody in the White House had the brains to understand, Obama goes and send a body language message like this.

I think he is going to get deeper and deeper into trouble. He is no longer repeating the familiar scripts dreamed up for the campaign. He was a master performer.

But when he goes improv, as a president must do, he lets his true character show. This helps widen the level of doubt that Obama is the same guy a majority voted for. Those doubts can only grow.

Andrew McCarthy has assembled an overwhelming case that Obama has lied about who he is. I predict that more and more Americans will become open to the argument that they have been had by a sophisticated and ruthless effort to foist a phony on America.

Update from Clarice Feldman

A nice comparison of the character of the two most recent presidents. George Bush with Senator Robert Byrd:

President Bush had no reason to even want to help Senator Byrd, who had spent much of his time in the Senate railing against the Bush administration, particularly on the war in Iraq, yet he helped the old man regardless.

Note the difference between the two Presidents. Furthermore, note how both Bush and Crowley helped men who didnt deserve it, at least not from them.

Character isnt about who you are when you know the spotlight is on you, its about who you are when it isnt, or when you THINK it isn’t.

He told the Cardinal that Nancy Pelosi would be attending the next day’s sermon, and he asked if the Cardinal would kindly point out Pelosi to the congregation and say a few words that would include calling Pelosi a saint.

The Cardinal replied, “No. I don’t really like the woman, and there are issues of conflict with the Catholic Church over certain of Pelosi’s views.” Pelosi’s aide then said, “Look. I’ll write a check here and now for a donation of $100,000 to your church if you’ll just tell the congregation you see Pelosi as a saint.”

The Cardinal thought about it and said, “Well, the church can use the money, so I’ll work your request into tomorrow’s sermon.” As Pelosi’s aide promised, House Speaker Pelosi appeared for the Sunday sermon and seated herself prominently at the edge of the main aisle.

And, during the sermon, as promised, the Cardinal pointed out that House Speaker Pelosi was present.

Then the Cardinal went on to explain to the congregation — “While Speaker Pelosi’s presence is probably an honor to some, she is not my favorite person. Some of her views are contrary to those of the church, and she tends to flip-flop on many other views. Nancy Pelosi is a petty, self-absorbed hypocrite, a thumb sucker, and a nit-wit. Nancy Pelosi is also a serial liar, a cheat, and a thief.

Nancy Pelosi is the worst example of a Catholic I have ever personally witnessed. She married for money and is using it to lie to the American people. She also has a reputation for shirking her Representative obligations both in Washington, and in California . She simply is not to be trusted.”

The Cardinal completed his view of Pelosi with, “But, when compared to Ted Kennedy, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Henry Waxman and John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi is a saint.”

Not long ago I read a joke… It said all the politicians running for president are promising change to the American people. We send them billions and billions of tax dollars and they send us the change.

Funny? Not really; there is too much truth in it to be funny.

But that got me to thinking… They all promise change. A restoration that would take us back in time to a place where things ran better, smoother and life was more enjoyable.

Change? That, in truth, is what they have been giving us all along.

We used to have a strong dollar… Politicians changed that.

Marriage used to be sacred… Politicians have changed that.

We used to be respected around the world… Politicians changed that.

We used to have a strong manufacturing economy… Politicians changed that.

We used to have lower tax structures… Politicians changed that.

We used to enjoy more freedoms… Politicians changed that.

We used to be a large exporter of American made goods… Politicians changed that.

We used to teach patriotism in schools… Politicians changed that.

We used to educate children in schools… Politicians changed that.

We used to enforce LEGAL citizenship… Politicians changed that.

We used to have affordable food & gas prices… Politicians changed that, too… and one could go on and on with this list.

What hasn’t been changed, politicians are promising to change that as well, if you will elect them.

When, oh when, is America going to sit back with open eyes and look at what we once were and where we have come and say, enough is enough?

The trouble is, America’s youthful voters today don’t know of the great America that existed forty and fifty years ago. They see the world as if it has always existed, as it is now.

When will we wake up? Tomorrow may be too late. When will America realize… Politicians are what is wrong with America? This goes for BOTH parties… Republicans and Democrats, there is no difference anymore… they all do only what they can to be re-elected, not what is best for the citizens!

What is needed is for the constitution to be amended to limit all Senators two term and Representatives to two terms in office like the President. They must take their staffs with them. Please do not leave the residue.

Oh, by the way, no big pension either, social security just like the rest of us. How do they rate bigger and better entitlements than the people THEY WORK FOR… WHICH IS US!

Being a politician shouldn’t be a persons life work but rather a call to public service then back to being an honest hard working citizen. Politicians are no more than housekeepers and janitors… unfortunately they act like they own the building

Our esteemed new President, graduate of Columbia and Harvard, took his little show on the road this week. Thursday, he took $39 million in taxpayer money to Elkhart, Indiana, where of course, he made a little speech about the Crimulus Stimulus, the multi-billion dollar boondoggle that was supposed to save us from the economic conditions, which now persist despite it.

My question, after reading his remarks, was a bit cynical. How is it that a man, hailed from every liberal enclave on the entire planet as brilliant-beyond-brilliant, has utterly failed to master fourth-grade arithmetic? Unless, of course, his mouth, that organ of masterful oratory, is not, in fact, connected to his brain at all.

If the dear folks at the crashed-and-burned RV factory in Elhart, Indiana bought this little spiel from President Big Mouth, then there might be another explanation for their failed business than the horrible economy. Read this, but don’t weep. Just pass it around to your friends and see if they still think this President is a really smart guy:

“And let me just talk about the so-called stimulus package, or the Recovery Act, because there’s been a lot of misinformation out there about the Recovery Act. Let me tell you what it is and what it’s not.”

“The plan was divided into three parts. One-third of the money has gone to tax relief for families and small businesses. One-third of the money is cutting people’s taxes. one-third of the money was tax cuts. Another third of the money in the Recovery Act has been for emergency relief that is helping folks who’ve borne the brunt of this recession. So that’s the second half. First half, tax relief. Second half, support for individuals, small businesses, and states that had fallen on hard times. The last third of the Recovery Act — and that’s what we’re going to talk about here today — is for investments…”

Granted, there were a few other garbled sentences that filled in between the fractions, so that one who was not listening carefully, might have missed the President’s confounded sums.

However, just ask yourself this: If President Bush had delivered such a pitifully flawed summation of an economic package, would it not have led every major network’s primetime newscast?

When the press covers for this President every day, 24/7, I must begin to ask myself whether they are exhibiting condescending racism, the kind that honestly does believe a black man cannot be held as accountable as a white man in the same position, simply because he is racially disadvantaged by lesser intelligence. I have known many racists like this in my life, as have you.

Condescending racists pretend, often even to themselves, that they are genuinely lovely people, who harbor only the kindest thoughts and beliefs about African-Americans. But every time they cover for someone, just because he is black, they exhibit their true beliefs. Every time they fail to use the same standard of judgement for an African-American as the one they use for a European-American, then they demonstrate plainly and simply that they are racists to the core. Racism is the internalized belief that one race is genetically and inherently superior to others. Only if one truly believes that whites are superior to blacks will he use a lower standard to judge the words and actions of black citizens.

Whenever a white commentator covers for the missteps of our African-American president, they display one of the most disgusting forms of racism there is, the kind that portrays themselves as “nice,” while hiding purely vile racial condescension.

Racism, whether dressed in a white hood and burning a cross, or dressed in a suit and tie, and wielding an elite microphone, is just as ugly, just as vile, just as un-Christian as a thing could possibly get.

When our news media finally starts — if they ever do — pointing out, with consistent regularity, the foibles of President #44, then you’ll know they’re trying to be colorblind in the true MLK tradition. Until then, they’re just a bunch of racists with their blinders turned inside out.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s push for a national health care overhaul is providing a financial windfall in the election offseason to Democratic consulting firms that are closely connected to the president and two top advisers.

Coalitions of interest groups running at least $24 million in pro-overhaul ads hired GMMB, which worked for Obama’s 2008 campaign and whose partners include a top Obama campaign strategist. They also hired AKPD Message and Media, which was founded by David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama’s campaign and now to the White House. AKPD did work for Obama’s campaign, and Axelrod’s son Michael and Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe work there.

The firms were hired by Americans for Stable Quality Care and its predecessor, Healthy Economy Now. Each was formed by a coalition of interests with big stakes in health care policy, including the drug maker lobby PhRMA, the American Medical Association, the Service Employees International Union and Families USA, which calls itself “The Voice for Health Care Consumers.”

Their ads press for changes in health care policy. Healthy Economy Now made one of the same arguments that Obama does: that health care costs are delaying the country’s economic recovery and that changes are needed if the economy is to rebound.

There is no evidence that Axelrod directly profited from the group’s ads. Axelrod took steps to separate himself from AKPD when he joined Obama’s White House. AKPD owes him $2 million from his stock sale and will make preset payments over four years, starting with $350,000 on Dec. 31, according to Axelrod’s personal financial disclosure report.

A larger issue is a network of relationships and overlapping interests that resembles some seen in past administrations and could prove a problem as Obama tries to win the public over on health care and fulfill his promise to change the way Washington works, said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a government watchdog group.

“Even if these are obvious bedfellows and kind of standard PR maneuvers, it still stands to undercut Obama’s credibility,” Krumholz said. “The potential takeaway from the public is ‘friends in cahoots to engineer a grass roots result.’”

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that Axelrod has had no communications with Healthy Economy Now or with Americans for Stable Quality Care, and his payments aren’t affected by the ad contracts. Axelrod’s son, a salaried AKPD employee, doesn’t work with either coalition “or stand to benefit from that work,” LaBolt said.

“David Axelrod has fully complied with the toughest-ever ethics rules for administration officials, including divesting from AKPD before the administration began,” LaBolt said.

Ken Johnson, a PhRMA senior vice president, said GMMB and AKPD were the only two firms working on the $24 million in ads. He declined to reveal how much each was paid beyond saying that each received a small percentage of the total. The coalition’s campaign team decided to hire the two firms, he said.

“In a perfect world, it’s a distraction we don’t need right now, but these are very gifted consultants who have done very good work,” Johnson said. “And it’s also important to remember that at the end of the day, the coalition partners determine the message.”

Healthy Economy Now spokesman Jeremy Van Ess said the two firms were hired because “they are the best at what they do. Period.” The coalition didn’t seek approval or direction on any of its activities from the White House, said Van Ess, a partner in a consulting firm that has worked on Democratic Senate election activities and a former speechwriter for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

AKPD and GMMB both proudly proclaim their connections to Obama on their Web sites.

AKPD has a full page on Axelrod that includes pictures of Obama. In one photo, Obama hugs Plouffe on election night.

“We are deeply honored to have been part of Barack Obama’s historic campaign to change America and the world,” GMMB says on its Web site. GMMB’s partners include Jim Margolis, a senior strategist for Obama’s presidential campaign.

Both GMMB and AKPD also have worked for Democrats this year. The Democratic National Committee paid AKPD at least $106,000 for polling, media production, communication consulting and travel costs from February through April. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee paid GMMB roughly $75,000 from February through June for ads. And GMMB took in at least $9,000 this year from Senate leader Reid’s political action committee for communications consulting.

By Jeff Mason

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.

Interesting how the same people who want to control what light bulbs you use, what kind of car you drive, what you do with land you own, how cool you keep your thermostat, where you drive your boat suddenly are so concerned about choice.

What could possibly go wrong?

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

What happens when the middle class feels even more victimized than the nation’s poor? When American middle-class citizens feel that they are being steamrolled by a Changeopoly Blitzkrieg, engineered by the principalities and powers of overreaching government and corporate oligarchs? When the only answer they’re given to their just concerns about unsustainable debt is “We won.”?

Well, those beleaguered middle-class folks might take a look at the tactics which have been working against them for four decades and decide to make use of some of those tactics themselves. Middle-class Americans, myself among them, have watched for 40 years, as one angry group after another has managed to get its way, and more and more entitlements from our purses to theirs, using the tactics designed by the liberal fascist revolutionary, Saul Alinsky.

One would need to be buried under a rock not to understand by now that small groups of angry people can get what they want.

Think ACORN and NINJA home loans.

Think Code Pink and the tarring of GW as a “war criminal.”

Think ANSWER and the closing of Gitmo.

This list could fill a museum on the success of “community organizing” for “change.”

So, what in the world is the legacy media doing going bonkers about it now? Why on earth would media elites not give glowing coverage to this democracy in action, the same kind they’ve been unabashedly heralding for decades now, every time a dozen live bodies show up with signs in a public place?

Why, I do declare, they seem to be saying with a rather concerted effort, “Protest for me, but not for thee.”

What the Democrats and their bullhorns in media are telling us, the folks, is that they are plum scared down to their woolies because they now know they’ve lost their monopoly on information. And the left has lost its monopoly on grievance, too.

For 40 years, this Country has been blackmailed by angry Alinskyite protest into redistributing great chunks of wealth to aggrieved-status mobs under the pretense of charity or entitlement. The scales of grievance have now tilted so far to the left that it is the middle-class, which feels itself most endangered, most unable to make its voice heard in the Halls of Congress.

Saul Alinsky, for his part, told the young radicals of the 1960s that they had to bring the middle-class into the revolution by the mid-1970s or give up altogether. Alinsky understood where the real power in America was held. Alinsky understood that power wasn’t in the board rooms, but in the middle-class consumer’s purse. It wasn’t in the school board, but in the middle-class parent’s expectations. Power wasn’t even in Washington, but in the demands of the most populous group of Americans: the vast middle-class, whom he called the “have-a-little-want-mores,” in keeping with his solely material worldview.

But Saul Alinsky’s vision amounted to making the middle-class so “rubbed raw” with “discontent”, making them feel so downtrodden that they would demand more government handouts for themselves and more government control in the hands of their political masters. Government controlling everything in the whole society was Alinsky’s idea of “freedom” and “liberty.” He disavowed the power of a single individual to affect change in his own life, and always, every single time, looked to collectivist power for strength. Alinsky’s vision was, of course, Marxist, but with fascist elements thrown into the mix.

Alinsky’s first successes, during the 40s and 50s, were in getting the Catholic Church and other fair-weather liberals to sign onto the radical labor agenda, which has now successfully crippled the American auto industry and put it at the mercy of a federal takeover. This corporatist model, of leaving big business in private hands, while a central government calls all the shots, is one of the hallmarks of fascist third-way activity.

But as we’ve learned to our dismay, the left has successfully branded conservative Americans, who continue to believe in limited government and the true separation of powers, as fascist. So, in Nancy Pelosi’s addled imagination, protesters against government control of yet another still-mostly-private American enterprise, are the ones carrying Swastikas.

Doesn’t Nancy Pelosi remind you, dear readers, of the mindless scarecrow in Oz?

With no independent mind of her own, she’s giddily traveled the yellow-brick road and now depends upon her Wizard in Chief to call all the shots for her ninnified illusions.

What we are seeing now in townhalls across this country are middle-class people demanding that their government drop any and every plan to convert America’s healthcare system to one like those failing throughout socialized Europe and Canada. Anyone who honestly believed that a man, who had done nothing whatsoever in his entire life but go to school, shout slogans at rallies, and run for office could be an able president, have now been disabused of that fantasy. Anyone who believed that Barack Obama was a conciliator who could de-polarize a Nation, purposely polarized for 80 years by his own side, has now awakened from the spell.

Honey, even a complete nitwit knows that a president, who hires out his real job to 32 czars, is not CEO material.

And, it is those people mostly, who now are coming out of their homes and businesses in earnest dissent. They oppose the takeover of yet another part, perhaps the most intimate part, of their already over-controlled lives. And middle-class America seems anything but ready to concede and give life-and-death decision making over to the Wizard and his loyal band of Alinskyites.

The American people are anything but mindless dolts, most especially our vibrant and diverse middle-class. We are seeing some of the same Alinsky tactics employed at townhall meetings, but by a group opposed to more government control, not demanding more of it. They are the anti-fascist, anti-socialist, anti-Alinsky folks, who would prefer to keep the liberties they have, even if it means sacrifice and suffering.

This ain’t what the leftists in charge expected to see. The Democrats envisioned the middle-class welcoming, with spread-wide-open arms of gratitude, these new power plays that would put more control into the hands of their beneficent bureaucracy.

Instead, the Alinskyites are being met with 1776 Redux, and all they can do is yell “Fascist” at the top of their lungs, just as they’ve been doing for 40 years.

What a heap of malicious poppycock.

How come it’s only business execs who make jobs for people that are being vilified?