America Voted to Expand the Nanny State, But Who is Paying the Nanny?

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Last night’s elections’ results didn’t change the balance of power much in Washington. It is still headed in the direction of runaway spending, expanding entitlements with more and larger government services. Of course, this costs tremendous amounts of money.

Bill O’Reilly summed up the election results yesterday:

“There are fifty percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. Who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it and ran on it. … Twenty years ago, President Obama would have been roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney.”

As I wrote in my October 21 piece, the left has capitalized on being the party of the government dependent entitlement society. This population has been mobilized to vote and has tipped the balance of power. They are immune from the effects of a bad economy the private sector is mired in. Why should they care if taxes are raised?

The national debt of 16 trillion doesn’t affect them either, future generations will be saddled with this burden. We ran out of our own money long ago and are now spending our children’s/grandchildren’s money to afford today’s entitlements.

But what is important to this base, is getting stuff today… President Obama and his party have done the best job of promising that. But nothing is free, everything comes with some sort of price tag. That price is monetary and a loss of freedom from more intrusive big government protecting you from yourself by imposing its policies on you.

Britain’s Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

America had an opportunity yesterday to change that direction, but failed to grasp it when an alternative for fiscal responsibility was offered by the Romney candidacy.

Many Americans will now get what they voted for: A bigger and more intrusive nanny state…paid for by someone else, until they run out of money.
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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Welcome to the Divided States of America

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The GOP increased their majority in the House of Representatives. The “progressive” Democrats held on to a slim Senate majority. Barack Obama still occupies the White House.

With fifty three House members demanding that Obama answer questions about the lethal, ham handed disaster in Benghazi and the equally bungled cover-up, do not expect a sudden flowering of bipartisan harmony.

Especially since the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin have expressed happiness at Obama’s reelection. America will now find out what “more flexibility” means.

In the wake of Obama’s re-election, stocks nosedived across the board Wednesday morning, plunging over three hundred points. Worries about the pending “fiscal cliff” and fears that America will follow Europe over the precipice chilled investments. The Dow traded under 13,000. For the first time since early September the S&P 500 fell below 1,400.

Fears that Obama will introduce a carbon tax as a way to cut the U.S. budget deficit also frosted Wall Street. With the continuation of Obama’s hostile energy policies, perceptions that such a tax will have a major impact on America’s deficit are largely based on European style speculative wishful thinking.

Obama will attempt to reinstate Clinton-era tax rates on Americans who run small businesses; those described by Obama as “not paying their fair share”. Without the development of America’s domestic energy, a move that would create millions of jobs that could not possibly be shipped overseas, there is no reason to anticipate an economic boom in the United States. Without such a boom, Clinton-era tax rates will simply dampen investment, destroy small businesses and further damage the American economy.

The government’s $16 trillion debt and the looming $600 billion tax increase scheduled, along with mandatory spending cuts, otherwise known as the “fiscal cliff” further complicate the economic outlook.

Americans can fully expect that Obama’s second-term will lead to increased federal spending. As he did in his first term, Obama will expand government. Because he remains in the White House and “progressives” retain control of the Senate, obamacare will be fully implemented, yet another wet blanket on the economy, as well as a death sentence for aging Americans.

Welcome to the divided States of America.

While “progressives” celebrate a continuation of the downhill fundamental transformation of America from a Constitutional Republic into a run of the mill low growth high unemployment European style cradle to grave nanny state, half of the American population remain fully opposed to such plans.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Coming Age of Austerity

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photo credit: KTL Shutterbug“Are the good times really over for good?” asked Merle Haggard in his 1982 lament. Then, the good times weren’t over. In fact, they were coming back, with the Reagan recovery, the renewal of the American spirit and the end of a Cold War that had consumed so much of our lives.Yet whoever wins today, it is hard to be sanguine about the future. The demographic and economic realities do not permit it.

Consider. Between 1946 and 1964, 79 million babies were born — the largest, best-educated and most successful generation in our history. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both born in 1946, were in that first class of baby boomers.

The problem. Assume that 75 million of these 79 million boomers survive to age 66. This means that from this year through 2030, an average of nearly 4 million boomers will be retiring every year. This translates into some 11,000 boomers becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security every single day for the next 18 years.

Add in immigrants in that same age category and the fact that baby boomers live longer than the Greatest Generation or Silent Generation seniors, and you have an immense and unavoidable increase coming in expenditures for our largest entitlement programs.

Benefits will have to be curbed or cut and payroll taxes will have to rise, especially for Medicare, to make good on our promises to seniors.

Read more from this piece HERE.

If Romney Supporters Don’t Vote in Record Numbers, Obama Will Win

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It’s all a matter of perspective.

All along most of my fellow conservative pundits have been framing the 2012 election as a replay of 1980, with a former Republican governor earning a landslide mandate from an American people languishing under the failures of an unprepared liberal incumbent. While my ideology may put the fun in fundamentalist, all along I have disagreed with that narrative.

While Obama’s amateurish escapades may resemble Carter’s futility, Romney is not another Reagan. In fact, until the first debate in Denver when he routed Obama, Romney was on pace to be the most disliked major party challenger for president in the history of modern polling.

In addition, an entire generation that still believed in rugged individualism and Judeo-Christian morality has left us since Reagan’s era. They have been replaced by a generation far more conditioned to see government as the solution to our problems rather than an impediment to them.

For example, my home state of Iowa is a socially conservative state but since Reagan it’s only gone Republican in a presidential election once, and that was by fewer than 10,000 votes. Why? Because my home state is one of the oldest in the country (which means lots of folks on entitlement programs), and its biggest industry is agriculture (which is essentially a complete subsidy of the welfare state). Thus, Iowa has been voting Democrat out of personal financial vested interest for decades.

Furthermore, the nation is far more Balkanized culturally than it was in 1980. No Republican presidential candidate – let alone a conservative – could still win California. Now the Electoral College is essentially down to just a handful of states every four years, with most of the country entrenched as red or blue no matter whom the nominee of each party is or where the country is at. That makes obtaining the kind of national mandate Reagan twice received more difficult. Nowadays a Democrat has 200 Electoral College votes in the bank just by showing up on the ballot come Election Day, and that wasn’t true in Reagan’s time.

Because of this, since January I have been analyzing this election with 2004 as its predecessor for three reasons:

1. Obama’s approval ratings are roughly where Bush’s were then. Though the Obama economy is worse than Bush’s (and not as bad as Carter’s), Bush was also saddled with an unpopular war in Iraq that makes that a wash.

2. As a challenger Romney was saddled with many of the same negatives as Kerry. He didn’t excite his base, which is why Kerry and Romney each set the record for earliest to name a running mate, and each selected a younger more charismatic vice presidential nominee. Also the attempt by Obama to make the election a referendum on Romney instead of himself, by characterizing Romney as a wealthy socialite elitist out-of-touch with mainstream values, is exactly what Karl Rove successfully did to Kerry for Bush in 2004. And do you remember the flip-flops on display at the 2004 Republican Convention to remind voters of Kerry’s penchant for taking each side of each issue? Apparently there’s something in the water in Massachusetts because that has been a problem for Romney as well. Romney’s own campaign confidant perpetuated the label with his infamous “etch-a-sketch” remarks.

3. The framework of the Electoral College is virtually the same as it was in 2004, except for GOP states Indiana and North Carolina that were surprise pick-ups for Obama in 2008.

The metric of this race, with Obama getting a big post-convention bounce just like Bush did, Romney then getting a big post-debate bounce just like Kerry did, and the election essentially coming down to Ohio, is eerily similar to 2004 as well.

Polling

For the purpose of my analysis, I’m going to rely on the Real Clear Politics polling average for my polling information because it’s been proven to be the most accurate tool for public consumption out there. The final RCP polling average flat out nailed the last two presidential elections (and I urge you to go back and read this link to find out why it did so).

That doesn’t mean RCP is right this time. In fact, we won’t know who is right until after the people (or the lawyers) have their ultimate say. But in the past two election cycles no one has been more accurate than RCP.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pennsylvania and Ohio will become rich states if they vote for Romney

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Voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio have a unique opportunity to make themselves energy producing giants this Tuesday, if they vote for the right candidate.

As geologists and energy experts probe what’s under the ground in these two states, it is becoming apparent they are sitting on huge reserves of natural gas. In addition to gas, they already have huge reserves of other forms of fossil fuels.

But in particular, the gas is near the surface and easy to obtain. If there is willing government cooperation from Washington DC, these states will be booming due to energy production. State treasuries would be overflowing with royalties from the billions in energy sold.

Thousands of jobs would be created on exploration, recovery, pipelines, transportation and infrastructure. Long-term employment would necessarily increase as companies look for qualified employees to help in recovering & marketing these resources.

North Dakota is a prime example of what a state can do when they pursue their energy resources. With a 3% unemployment rate, they are the lowest rate in the nation.

Under the last four years of the Obama administration, there has been a concerted effort to wage war on our energy sector. One of the key Obama EPA administrators was caught saying he wanted to crucify the energy industry. One of the biggest foes of Americas fossil fuel reserves, Bill McKibben, has the Presidents ear and was said to play a key role in his rejection of the Keystone Pipeline.

See McKibben Epstein ultimate energy debate November 5, at Duke University.

For the last 4 years, the Obama administration has been quietly crucifying andhamstringing our energy sector.

The stark, easy to see result of this policy, is to pull into the gas station and fill up your car for $100.00, when it only cost $50.00 four years ago.

Governor Romney has already promised he will encourage responsible recovery of our energy resources the first day he takes control of the reins of government.

We have already seen what 4 years of Obama policies have done to our energy sector. Energy plant shut downs-Coal mine bankruptcies-Huge tracts of federally controlled land barred from energy exploration-Billions in losses on taxpayer funded green energy schemes. The next 4 years will be all of the above, but on steroids, as he will not have to answer to the voters again.

The choice is clear for the voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania. With Romney you have the opportunity to become energy rich and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. At the same time you can help our country become energy self sufficient.

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Ed is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Tuesday: Don’t Vote for Revenge, Vote for Love of Country

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Speaking in Springfield Ohio, Barack Obama mentioned Mitt Romney. As soon as he mentioned Romney’s name, the crowd began to boo. Obama told the crowd:

“No, no, no. Don’t boo, vote. Voting is the best revenge.”

Speaking in New Hampshire, Romney told supporters how Obama had said that voting would be their “best revenge” against Romney:

“Vote for revenge? Let me tell you what I’d like to tell you: Vote for love of country. It is time we lead America to a better place.”

This is but one snapshot highlighting the difference between Americans and “progressives”.

The choices Americans have on Tuesday November 6, 2012 fall into two distinct categories. The difference between these two philosophies is so clearly defined that it should be easy for Americans to decide where their sentiments lie.

The Declaration of Independence was a radical document because for millennia mankind had been ruled by monarchs, Caesars, Czars, or similar forms of dynastic oligarchies determined by bloodline.
The universally accepted school of thought was that Kings, Queens, Emperors or Caesars were anointed by God, or were even gods themselves. Only monarchs or nobilities appointed by monarchs owned anything. They “allowed” the “common people” to work the land as serfs, indentured servants or as slaves. But “common people” were never “allowed” to own property. All they produced belonged to the monarch and was the monarch’s for the taking.

America’s Founding Fathers disavowed this view of society.

They declared that all men are created equal, that in effect, all men are kings. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They declared that people could govern themselves without a monarch or an oligarchy ruling over them.

This was a radical departure from centuries old norms. They envisioned a system which allowed “common people” to own property without first obtaining permission from a “divine” ruler. Anyone could come to America, work hard, earn money, save it and buy property.

Those who rebelled against the Royal British Crown knew that if they failed in their endeavor, they would all hang. Yet, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence” they pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor.

The Declaration of Independence was the mission statement for the United States Constitution.

Yes, the Constitution established an imperfect government, which among other flaws still allowed slavery. Yet at that point in history, the original 13 colonies could not have formed one nation capable of maintaining a semblance of unity had they not reached the 3/5ths compromise. But the Founding Fathers were wise when they wrote the Constitution. They ensured that the Constitution could be amended, so that in time slavery and other injustices could be altered through an orderly process which provided change that enjoyed overwhelming bi-partisan support.

The Marxist school of thought is in direct opposition to the uniquely American concept that everyone has the right to own private property. How would Americans react if, after years of struggle, they finally owned their own home, then government “informed” them that it did not belong to them, that it belonged to “all the people” and Americans had to let strangers live on their property whether they liked it or not?

If an all-powerful, big government oligarchy is allowed to seize private property in this manner, as in the concept of “social justice” or “economic justice”, America is dead.

The real philosophical divide in the United States lies between the intent of America’s Founding Fathers and the intent of “progressives”, who favor the Marxist view.

The American idea, the shot heard round the world, is that We the People can govern ourselves. By the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God we are entitled, by virtue of our humanity, to the maximum amount of Individual Liberties consistent with law and order, and to the Right of private ownership, not the least of which is the Right to own and decide for ourselves. These Liberties and Rights are to be equally protected by a constitutionally limited, representative government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.

This is a distinctly exceptional American idea.

The “progressive” idea is that an all-powerful centrally planned government, with extreme hostility towards private ownership, forces redistribution of wealth in the name of social or economic “justice”. In order to ensure “fairness”, an oligarchy of self-imagined, self-appointed “intellectual elites” will control businesses, industries and people who are incapable of governing themselves. This was the position of a fringe minority who called themselves “progressives” until early twentieth century Americans saw for themselves exactly how bad “progressive” ideas were.

The “progressive” idea came to America from Britain’s Fabian Socialists, who advocate socialistic democracy, and from Germany’s Frankfurt School, who came to America after fleeing Adolph Hitler because they knew Hitler would kill them for being Communists.

These ideas are European, not American.

The settlers who founded America rejected European ideas in fleeing Europe searching for a better future. America has been a success and a beacon to freedom seeking people for over two centuries because the American idea is the better idea.

Among Americans unpolluted by “progressive” ideas, there is little debate that the United States of America is the most inventive, productive, prosperous and charitable nation in the history of the planet. There has yet to be put forth one rational, logical argument to support abandoning the highly successful American idea in favor of a European idea that is currently failing in Europe itself.

Before voting on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, decide which fate America deserves.

Then vote not for revenge, but for love of country.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

Mark Steyn: A Vote For Obama-Biden Is A Vote For National Collapse

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photo credit: nmhschoolIn political terms, Hurricane Sandy and the Benghazi consulate debacle exemplify at home and abroad the fundamental unseriousness of the United States in the Obama era.

In the days after Sandy hit, Barack Obama was generally agreed to have performed well. He had himself photographed in the White House Situation Room nodding thoughtfully to bureaucrats (“John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; David Agnew, Director for Intergovernmental Affairs”) and Tweeted it to his 3.2 million followers.

He appeared in New Jersey wearing a bomber jacket rather than a suit to demonstrate that when the going gets tough the tough get out a monogrammed Air Force One bomber jacket.

He announced that he’d instructed his officials to answer all calls within 15 minutes because in America “we leave nobody behind.”

By doing all this, the president “shows” he “cares” — which is true in the sense that in Benghazi he was willing to leave the entire consulate staff behind, and nobody had their calls answered within seven hours, because presumably he didn’t care. So Brennan, the counterterrorism guy, and Blinken, the national security honcho, briefed the president on the stiff breeze, but on Sept. 11, 2012, when a little counterterrorism was called for, nobody bothered calling the Counterterrorism Security Group, the senior U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy.

Read more from this story HERE.

7 Questions That Will Determine the Outcome of the 2012 Election

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Photo credit: DonkeyHoteyThe debates are over, and although most of my fellow pundits were quick to tell us before they started that historically they don’t impact the eventual outcome, this time they certainly have.

This race hasn’t been the same since the first debate. Mitt Romney’s rout of a beleaguered and bored-looking Barack Obama dramatically altered the trajectory of the race from leaning strongly to the president to a toss-up/leaning Romney. The president bounced back somewhat in the second debate, and was much stronger in the final debate Monday night, but he’s still not been able to regain the momentum he lost in the first debate in Denver.

If Romney goes on to win this election that first presidential debate will go down as the biggest debate game changer in modern American political history.

So with the debates concluded, the campaign has now entered its final phase. The popular vote is trending Romney, but the Electoral College remains razor close and the president still has more routes to 270 than Romney does—although Romney’s path is much easier than it was at the beginning of October.

Heading down the stretch, the answers to these seven questions could determine the eventual outcome:

1) Will there be an October surprise? For example, the president clearly has a foreign policy edge over Romney, so could there be an unforeseen circumstance on the global stage that gives Obama one last chance to appear as a strong leader? Something like a rogue nation such as Iran doing something to insert itself into the election if it thinks it can handle an Obama second term more easily than a President Romney? Another potential October surprise could be the final two economic forecasts before the election, which will be on the rate of growth and unemployment. Will there be much more robust or negative numbers there when par for the course is expected? Or could it be something totally unforeseen, like George W. Bush’s revealed long-ago DUI on the eve of the 2000 election, which nearly cost him enough votes to give Al Gore the presidency?

2) Will the automobile industry bailout be the marriage amendment of 2012? In 2004, an instate fight for an amendment protecting marriage on the ballot in Ohio helped George W. Bush massively turn out the evangelical vote in that state, catapulting him to the win there and thus re-election. This time the Democrats are hoping an important but under-the-radar issue like the automobile industry bailout can do the same for Obama. The bailout wasn’t popular for Republicans, which is why Romney opposed it during the primaries, but it remains popular in Ohio. The Buckeye State is Obama’s firewall. With Ohio he stands a decent chance of denying Romney’s path to 270 Electoral College votes, and no Republican has ever won the White House without Ohio. On the other hand, if Romney wins Ohio it’s probably game, set, and match for the Obama Regime. This issue gives Obama his best chance of accomplishing that task, because he has no other record of economic achievement to run on.

3. Which base is more energized come Election Day? For much of this election cycle Democrats have been more energized than Republicans, who have been disappointed in the lack of leadership they’ve seen from many of the folks they just voted for in the Tea Party uprising of 2010. However, Romney’s rout in the first debate energized Republicans more than Democrats for the first time in 2012. Democrats have been trying to reignite that spark. Will Obama’s win in the final debate do it? Will something happen in the final two weeks that will do it? With so few undecided voters in this election, an energized base is even more vital. Obama is going to dominate traditional Democrat groups like blacks and Latinos, and Romney will dominate traditional Republican groups like evangelicals. Neither candidate has much cross-over appeal to the other’s base, which Obama was able to peel off some from John McCain in 2008. Without that cross-over appeal base turnout is even more important. Therefore, it won’t be the percentage each candidate gets of that group that matters as much as it will be the actual turnout of those groups.

4. What kind of coat-tails will each candidate have? For example, could a strong Romney win in Missouri ironically carry the embattled Todd Akin across the finish line there? Republican Linda McMahon has run a good campaign in Connecticut, but could she get swept up in Obama’s win in that state? Currently, Real Clear Politics is forecasting 10 U.S. Senate seats as toss-ups. Four of those are in states that Romney will likely win, two of them are in states Obama will likely win, and the rest are in true battleground states that could go either way. To get to 51 in the U.S. Senate, and thus repeal Obamacare, the Republicans need to win 8 of those 10 toss-up Senate seats. That is a tall order, and more than likely not possible without Akin’s seat in Missouri, which the party establishment still refuses to assist with.

5. No one else wants to say it, but since I’ve made a career out of saying stuff others don’t want to openly talk about I will. Between ACORN, the Secretary of State project, lack of Voter I.D. laws and lack of enforcement of voter fraud laws already on the books, and recent elections featuring districts and towns with more registered voters than the census says lives there, there is widespread anticipation from conservatives the Democrats are prepared to cheat if necessary. The progressive mantra seems to be “if you’re not cheating you’re not trying.” We know a multitude of attorneys were poised to invade Wisconsin for the Scott Walker recall, but he won “outside the margin of cheating” so it was a moot point. If we’re right to be paranoid about this, then Romney will need to win a state like Ohio by more than 2 points, or outside the margin of cheating. If it’s closer than that zany high jinks are sure to ensue.

6. Obama clearly won the third and final debate, albeit not in the same dominant fashion that Romney won the first one. The third debate also had the fewest viewers, and many polls showed folks’ minds weren’t changed by the debate either way. After the debate, I talked to Republicans I know around the country whose job it is to get Republicans elected. Two schools of thought emerged:

Optimism—The race is trending Romney’s direction, therefore he was wise to play it safe and say nothing that risked changing the subject from a referendum on Obama, which it has been since the first debate. Foreign policy debates always favor the incumbent, so all the challenger has to do is come across as a credible commander-in-chief. All the polls show that Romney did that.

Pessimism—Romney is playing prevent defense with the game still in doubt, and he may have peaked too soon in the polls. Remember in the primaries when a candidate surged as the “flavor of the month” only to be dropped by the voters later? The same thing could happen to Romney if he keeps playing it safe and let’s Obama off the hook on issues like Libya.

We won’t know which one of these schools of thought is correct until a winner is declared on November 6th.

7. Will any of the three wildcards play spoiler in the election?

Wildcard #1—Battleground states Nevada and Iowa each have strong libertarian/Ron Paul factions that aren’t enamored with Romney. Could Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson siphon enough votes from Romney to alter the outcome there?

Wildcard #2—The battleground state of Virginia features a rare third party candidate that has actually won multiple major elections there. Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode has been elected as a U.S. Congressman in Virginia as a Democrat, Republican, and an Independent. Goode received more than 157,000 votes in his last Congressional campaign in 2008. Obama won the state by 6 points four years ago, which was about 236,000 votes. Thus, you can see how much of an impact Goode can have on a razor close race there.

Wildcard #3—More than 30 states began early voting before the first presidential debate. How many of those voters were independents that couldn’t be swayed by that debate because they had already voted? We won’t know until Election Day.

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You can friend “Steve Deace” on Facebook and follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow. To learn more about his nationally-syndicated radio show, go to www.stevedeace.com.

Mayberry No More: The US is “Coming Apart”

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Photo Credit: Javier Rojas/Zuma PressAs we anticipate Mitt Romney’s (hopefully delicious) victory next Tuesday, we shouldn’t be fooled to think that all will be right in America if he wins. His victory, which is in no way assured, would only give us a bit of breathing room to buckle down for the long haul, because a Romney victory will only make the left mad (well, madder than they are already. Remember, they have been berserk since Bush “stole” the 2000 election).

Charles Murray, of the American Enterprise Institute, writes in “Coming Apart” that today’s leaders lack bravery and perspective. While many readers can hang on to the memories of the Greatest Generation and of Chuck Yeager in “The Right Stuff”, what exemplifies America to a large extent is 56,000 square foot houses such as Aaron Spelling’s 123 room villa. I would have been happy to have raised my family with four bedrooms. Ok, five, to be honest.

“Unseemly” is how Murray puts this decadence, which in large part describes contemporary American government, with “Washington [being] in a new gilded age of influence peddling that dwarfs anything that has come before.”

Can the U.S. recover from this unseemliness? In Marvin Olasky’s book review, he points out the courage and perseverance of one man, William Wilberforce, who led England to abolish slavery in the early 1800’s. Olasky reminds us too that the American Revolution was fueled in part by the patriot’s aversion to the decadence of London.

Murray, like all of us, hopes for “a civic Great Awakening among the new upper class” where the wealthy can lead a more balanced and rewarding life as they focus more on society and less on their Maseratis.

With Mayberry RFD (and Leave it to Beaver) long gone, America has reached a point of “Coming Apart”. But we are not finished by any stretch of the imagination, as we shall see next Tuesday.

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Bill Peck is a software developer, Christian, conservative, West Point grad ’81, and part-time blogger. He is also a graduate of Johns Hopkins University with a masters degree in administrative science, with a concentration in Information Technology. He helped Joe Miller become the Republican nominee for Senate in Alaska in 2010, fell in love with the Alaska people and the grandeur of the 49th state, and is now Joe Miller’s spokesman.

Why America May Reelect Obama

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1) Cheap Borrowed Money: On an intellectual level, most Americans may be able to comprehend that the country is in deep financial trouble, but they’re not feeling the squeeze. Part of that is because Western Europe is having its own financial troubles and it’s driving cheap borrowed money here, but it’s also because the Fed is playing sleazy financial games to cover up our weakness. Interest rates are being kept artificially low and in 2011, the Fed bought 61% of our debt. So, we have a 16 trillion dollar debt we can’t pay for, we’re running a trillion dollar plus deficit a year, people from both parties say it’s “unsustainable,” and yet the public isn’t being forced to make any hard choices at all. Essentially, the only thing of significance we’ve agreed to cut in the last four years is the military budget and both Obama and Romney agree those cuts will never happen. It’s hard to convince the public that there’s an impending crisis when Republicans are calling for tax cuts, Democrats are calling for more spending and everything seems to be humming along just like it always has.

2) A Style Over Substance Mentality: One of the great ironies of modern American life is that as the number of news sources Americans have access to have proliferated, news organizations have become more and more enamored with covering gaffes and clever put-downs to draw an audience in an increasingly competitive market as opposed to hard news. As a result, increasingly, Americans seem to be less willing or perhaps even less able to comprehend the crucial issues that confront the country. Barack Obama, to his everlasting shame, has taken full advantage of this trend. In 2008, his campaign was about “Change,” “Hope,” “Unity,” and in 2012 it has been “Big Bird,” “Binders,” and Bayonets.” If we become so shallow as a people that elections are primarily decided by trivia instead of the issues that will really determine the fate of our nation, then ultimately we’re doomed to fail.

3) A Left-wing Takeover of Colleges, the Media, and Hollywood: The Left has completed its “long march through the institutions” and now it owns Hollywood, colleges, and the mainstream media. People tend to notice Hollywood stars spouting off, but Hollywood is really effective because it habitually treats far left-wing beliefs as the cultural norm while Christian and conservative beliefs are almost always portrayed as backwards and mean-spirited. In our colleges, Communists, terrorists, and far left-wingers indoctrinate naïve students with a poisonous miasma of liberal beliefs. Meanwhile, most of the mainstream media, from The New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc., etc., etc. act as press flacks for the Democratic Party. Whatever story the Democrats want out there, they push it. Stories that are bad for the Left are either completely ignored or treated as insignificant. When conservative state legislators help fund public colleges that teach kids to hate them and conservatives watch TV shows, movies, and cable news networks that smear their beliefs over a morning paper that mocks God and looks down its nose at people with traditional values, it’s no surprise the Left has a huge advantage. Vladimir Lenin once said, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” and today, conservatives are funding the very people who are hanging our country by the neck until it dies.

4) Racial Polarization: Democrats start every election with 90% of the black vote and roughly 65% of the Hispanic vote as a given. Some of this is based on issues. Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than other Americans to be poor and impoverished Americans are more likely to find the Democrats’ offers of free goodies to be appealing. However, much of it is cultural and the fruit of the liberal strategy of falsely calling Republicans racist. In fact, that’s pretty much the ONLY thing Barack Obama has had to offer to black Americans. They’ve gone backwards economically, illegal aliens have taken jobs that would have gone to black Americans, and Obama has fought against God’s definition of marriage and school choice, both of which are popular with African-Americans. It’s not much better for Latinos. Helping illegal aliens to stay here doesn’t help American Hispanics; to the contrary, it hurts all low income workers and costs the middle class money. The only people who really benefit are corrupt business owners who get below market labor and liberal politicians who eventually want to turn illegals into votes. Yet, as long as the Republicans refuse to do serious outreach and liberals can keep locking up huge percentages of the vote just by crying racism, they’ll keep getting a much larger share of the black and Hispanic vote than they deserve based on their performance in office.

5) Entitlement Culture: Because America has done so well for so long, we’ve started to embrace a “participation trophy” mentality.

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