The Conservative Soldier

When you find someone who has boiled it down and nailed it on the head, you want to share that rare achievement with the world. Allow me to share a brilliant snippet by economics scholar Bradley Schiller, recently published by The Wall Street Journal:

“(President) Obama’s analogies to the Great Depression (and similarities to the economy in 2009) are not only historically inaccurate, they’re also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren’t likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fear mongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a “recovery” package that delivers a lot less than it promises.”

Talk about rolling a Bradley Tank over the Obama gloom brigade. Thank you, Bradley Schiller.

Why won’t Obama shut up and why does his every word paralyze the brain functions of the smitten mainstream media?

In this post-Watergate America, the left wing media will continue to fixate on the Presidency because it either wants to destroy the President (Nixon, Reagan, Bush) or deify him (Clinton, Obama). But the fact is our nation was not created to revolve around the Oval Office exclusively. The conduct of elected officials at all levels matters greatly (did someone say Gov. Blagojevich, or Sen. Roland Burris?), and, as citizens, we have the power — stimulative power — to control who those elected individuals are and what decisions they make.

(When we fail at this, politicians move up through the ranks unchallenged and untested and become … Barack Obama).

Responsible citizens need to turn our ears from the drumbeat of doom, which is the crack cocaine of the Obama generation, and focus on what we can do to effect actual change, reverse the tide of despair and restore the economic strength that the United States is fully capable of possessing again in the near future and for generations to come.

Bill Clinton, whose bloated 1990s “stimulus package” (Monica) got him into trouble repeatedly, became virtually irrelevant during his second term as President. Obama is just another politician who won the Oval Office lottery due to the perfect alignment of a tanking economy and the success of George W. Bush’s efforts to quell the threat of terrorism (which, sadly, leaves many doubting the threat remains real).

Socialism is about wearing people down. The calculated risk Obama takes by declaring calamity at every turn is that Americans eventually will get tired of being tired. Democracy and Capitalism is about rising up and lifting up. The power of America is not the Presidency. It is you and me.

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On a day when the Dow fell dramatically and is now more than 2,000 points below its close on Election Day, we need the stimulative and healing power of humor.

Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam had a great line on talk radio this morning. Discussing shamed Illinois Senator-of-the-Month Roland Burris, Roskam observed that the “junior Senator” is living up to that label, shrinking in stature by the day.

And now, from the lyrical satire vault of The Conservative Soldier, I humbly offer …

“Strangers From the Right”
A vocal styling by pop culture superstar Barry Hussein Obama, espousing his new love affair with Republican Sens. Collins, Snowe and Specter. Written to the Sinatra classic score for “Strangers In The Night”.

Strangers from the right, exchanging glances
Pledging not to fight
What were the chances, we’d be high on pork
Before the night was through?

Something in your “ayes” when you were voting,
Made me want to sigh, I love emoting
Pitbulls in lipstick,
Who’s stimulating who?

Strangers from the right, three lonely people
They were strangers from the right
Let’s spend a trillion
Specter had me at “hello”,
Maine’s Collins and Ms. Snowe
Threw your futures all away,
As socialists you’re here to stay and …

No more nasty fights, hold on when ever
Your side tries to stop my bold endeavors.
We’ll tax and spend with might,
With strangers from the right.

Many people rushed to judgment when the photo of Olympic champion Michael Phelps inhaling marijuana made the rounds in early February. He must pay, cried the masses. Take away his endorsements. We hope he goes broke.

Upon further consideration, most intelligent folk realize they deeply admire the work ethic and commitment to excellence demonstrated by young Phelps in recent years, and that a lapse in judgment at a private party is just that, a lapse. He remains the greatest swimmer of all time, if not history’s greatest Olympic champion. I for one would not discourage my child from emulating Michael Phelps’ approach to competing. He has been blessed and he has not wasted his physical gifts. How many kids with athletic ability never fulfill their potentials?

This was not a steroids rap on Phelps, after all. Let it go. There are serious ethical and legal breeches happening in a much more consequential arena.

With all eyes currently on our elected leaders in Washington, I think the time has come to apply the Phelps Test to their actions and inaction. If a public servant long ago smoked pot as a teenager or college student (or was nailed for DUI, or disorderly conduct, or unpaid parking tickets, or the like) and today is seriously, legitimately carrying out the duties of a Congressman or Governor or City Councilman, representing his constituents to the best of his ability and adhering to the Constitution, then he passes the Phelps Test. (Many voters overlook drug abuse in elections. Barack Hussein Obama’s well documented use of illegal drugs was scarcely a blip on the election landscape).

We ought to care less about what our lawmakers and political leaders smoked in another life. We ought to care deeply when they act as if they are smoking something mind altering in the here and now.

Such as? Sens. Charles Schumer, Patrick Leahy and Harry Reid. Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Rep. and Finance Chair Barney Frank. And, of course, the Inhaler in Chief, B. Hussein Obama. Clearly, these individuals do not pass the Phelps Test. Ask the central questions: Do they make you feel proud to be an American? Do they elevate America’s stature in the world? No and hell no.

They do not push themselves to honor their countrymen. They do not strain to “touch the wall” to proudly represent America. They barely keep their heads above the deepening economic and ethical waters in which they now furiously tread, and into which they seek to cast each of us. They are our Constitutional lifeguards, but they can’t swim.

If Schumer and Frank want to go out and enjoy a few cocktails at Billy Martin’s Tavern in Georgetown, and stagger up and down M Street with a couple of party girls on their arms (or party boys, in Frank’s case), I would not deny them those few hours of frivolity if … the if is the deal breaker, of course … if, they’d heeded the warnings during the Bush Years and stemmed the home mortgage tide through proper oversight and regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the governmental lending institutions.

They did not. Instead they cheered from the sidelines like pot addled college kids as millions of Americans and, in some cases, illegal immigrants were signing lethal no-doc mortgage agreements. They essentially doomed the economy.

Sen. Leahy meanwhile is threatening hearings to discredit and humiliate President Bush and members of his cabinet, to get to the “truth” behind the intelligence reports that prompted Bush to send troops into Iraq. Though Iraq today is a stable, fledgling democracy populated by hopeful people, Leahy wants to scandalize the gallant effort of the U.S. military and dishonor those who gave their lives in defense of freedom and democracy.

Clearly, Leahy already flunks the Phelps Test.

Reid and Pelosi, who would forsake a genuine strategy to stimulate the U.S. economy in favor of a pork-laden $800 billion spending bill unprecedented in scope and waste? They are Phelps Test rejects, too.

We only wish young Tim Geithner had merely forgotten that marijuana possession is illegal when he was coming up through the ranks of the world of high finance. But he committed a far more sinister act. He “forgot” to pay taxes on income paid in U.S. dollars earned while he worked abroad. You won’t find a salacious photo of Geithner not paying taxes floating around the Internet, but it’s fairly certain that some sort of impairment was involved among those who vetted his record and declared Geithner fit to be Secretary of the United States Treasury. A bong was bubbling somewhere.

Who was on that vetting panel, Cheech and Chong? Willie Nelson? Snoop Dogg?

The bottom line is this: Let’s not rush to ruin an individual’s life until such time as it becomes obvious that individual is determined to ruin ours. A lapse in judgment and a lack of judgment are different things entirely.

I think I smell something …

Rahmbo Seizes the Census
(FoxNews.com) Utah’s congressional delegation is calling President (Barack Hussein) Obama’s decision to move the U.S. census into the White House a purely partisan move and potentially dangerous to congressional redistricting around the country.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah: “This is nothing more than a political land grab.”

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah: “It takes something that is supposedly apolitical like the census, and gives it to a guy (WH Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) who is infamously political.”

The U.S. census is conducted every 10 years by the Commerce Department. Its results determine the decennial redrawing of congressional districts. Read more.

Did Somebody Hire a Publicist?
I was so impressed by the heroic US Airways pilot who shunned publicity in the days immediately following his textbook water landing of an Airbus 320 passenger jet in the Hudson River after giant geese were sucked into the plane’s engines.

For once, I thought, a guy who says he derives satisfaction from just doing his job and actually means it.

Then he showed up at the Super Bowl. Then on TODAY. Then on 60 Minutes. Then with David Letterman. And on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox New Channel tabloid show. What’s next? Jerry Springer?

Capt. “Sully” showed incredible courage and skill. Then he demonstrated class by resisting the urge to exploit his unwelcome fame. But now I fear the worst. I fear someone got to him, talked him into the publicity blitz and promised a big book deal.

Captain, just fly the plane.

Medical Malpractice
Read today’s reports on massive job cuts within the University of Chicago Medical Center, then try to convince me that this is not a clear case of an organization exploiting a struggling economy to justify huge cost cuts merely to prop up its bottom line. I challenge anyone to find a valid explanation for the elimination of 450 jobs, other than, “Well, everybody else is doing it.”

Makes you wonder how many other organizations are killing jobs under the guise of “the economy.”

Read more.