The Steadfast Patriot

My name is John and I am a 28-year-old copywriter from Milwaukee, WI. I lived in the Milwaukee area pretty much my entire life, besides the four and a half years I spent at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater (the Harvard of Walworth County), where I earned a degree in Advertising with a Marketing minor.

Besides the obvious passion I possess for politics, I am a huge fan of the NBA, NFL, MLB and the PGA Tour. I love live music, a fine scotch or bourbon and really good beer…often all of them at the same time. My main goal in writing is to help the Conservative Movement get up from the pounding it has received in the previous two elections to lead this country into an era of self-reliance, small government and personal responsibility.

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Yesterday, I touched on the likelihood of the average Americans'  insurance coverage changing [see part one below]. And actually, for those of you that do not like your current healthcare options, you may have found yesterday’s post a hopeful and encouraging sign of things to come.

I highly doubt that will be the case today.

Say what you want about the U.S. healthcare system, but no one can fairly question the high level of care available to American citizens.

For decades, the U.S. has been home to the finest hospitals in the world, served as the birthplace of limitless, medical innovation and provided its citizens with healthcare most people around the world could only dream of receiving.

If Obama and the Democrats get their way with healthcare reform, all of this will be a thing of the past.

When you hear liberals describe the virtues of socialized healthcare, you will hear them wax poetic about how wonderful it is to receive “free” healthcare (even though we all know that this is not the case) and how “everyone” has access to a myriad of medical procedures.

One thing they conveniently leave out is the quality of this “free” healthcare. They leave it out for good reason, as any discussion of the quality of socialized medicine should scare the hell out of any rational individual.

“Ration” and “Scarcity” are a couple of words you all should become rather familiar with as the nation’s healthcare discussion continues because medical options are going to be rationed due to the scarcity of healthcare resources.

The Obama administration has already been quite upfront that it is going to try to ration the use of new technology to control costs. Under the guise of "cost effectiveness" policies, the government will issue rules on when new health care treatments can be used. If your situation does not meet bureaucratic guidelines, then the newest test or treatment will not be available to you or your loved ones.

Would you like a sneak preview of this rationing? Take the “virtual colonoscopy”. The virtual colonoscopy is a newer, better version that works faster, is far cheaper and is more comfortable than its predecessor. With colon cancer being the second leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths (and one of the most preventable and treatable), you would think that this procedure would be a godsend for Medicare. Well, it was until budgetary issues arose. Back in May, Medicare (a program that will no doubt mirror the public option Obama is pushing) trustees reported a dramatic shortfall in budgetary resources. As a result, the program’s managers decided to deny payment for the virtual colonoscopy to those on Medicare.

From a budgetary standpoint, this may be the correct move, but from a care standpoint it clearly is not. I realize that those considerations need to be made at times, but it should be the decision of you, your family and your doctor, not the federal government.

Still don’t believe me? Think these are all a bunch of crazy conservative scare tactics?

Fine.

Let’s take a look at some stats from Great Britain and Canada, two nations that have socialized healthcare.

In Great Britain, at any one time, over 500,000 people are waiting to get into a British hospital. 38% of Brits have to wait four months or more for surgery (compared to 5% in the U.S.). British patients also wait months longer than their American counterparts for knee and hip replacement surgery, cataract surgery and radiation treatment. Additionally, cancer patients are regularly denied life saving drugs due to budget shortfalls in Merry Old England.

Even British officials hate their healthcare! The Chairman of the British Medical Association described the British government-controlled healthcare system as “the stifling of innovation by excessive, intrusive audits, the shackling of doctors by prescribing guidelines, referral guidelines and protocols, the suffocation of professional responsibility by target-setting and production line values that leave little room for the professional judgment of individual doctors or the needs of individual patients.”

How about Canada? Want to see a neurologist for a headache? Better sign up now as the wait is six months. Alright, how about an MRI? That’ll be another three and a half months, with a one-month wait for an ultrasound. Gotta go to the emergency room? Better bring your pajamas, as the average wait to get in is 23 hours.

More than 1.5 million Canadians say they cannot find a family doctor (this from a country with five million people less than California). Some towns even have sunk to lotteries to determine who gets to see a doctor. In Canada, 27% of people that have surgery wait four months or more.

Not only will this rationing restrict your access to care, it will also slow the development of new technologies, which need potentially broad new markets to be economically viable. The new technology that gets shelved could be the one that would save your life.

With the government setting prices and dictating what should be developed and for what price, this country will experience a sharp drop in medical breakthroughs. After all, the private sector fuels innovation and experimentation, not the public sector.

Why? It’s simple, profits.

Therefore, we will not only be getting less care, we will be getting outdated care. Would you want 2010 level care in the year 2050? I would wager no more than you would want 1969 level care today.

Columnist Scott Atlas and Nils Wilking from Stockholm's Karolinska Institute explain this point very well. Wilking, an author of a widely reported publication that compares international cancer survivals, recently explained that nearly half the improvement in cancer survival rates in the United States in the 1990s was due to "the introduction of new oncology drugs." He writes: "No country on the globe does as good a job overall as the United States. Thus, the U.S. government should focus on ensuring that all cancer patients receive timely care, rather than radically overhauling the current system."

With all of these innovations and medical miracles, President Obama still sees fit to radically transform our healthcare system, level of care be damned.

Well…I guess that is change, isn’t it? But not too much hope, if you ask me.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

7/15/09

Yesterday, I only brushed on the growing skepticism that the Environmental Left is experiencing regarding global warming and man’s supposed impact on it in Part One of the Great Climate Change Boondoggle (see article below). I would have loved to present more information; however, the post would have run thousands of words long, rather than the hundreds that it did. If you are interested in finding more information regarding scientists and political leaders that refuse to drink the global warming Kool-Aid, check out the following articles:

“No climate debate? Yes there is.” by Jeff Jacoby.
“A Closer Look at Climate Change.” by Mark W. Hendrickson.
“Planet Gore” on NationalReview.com.

Before I continue, let me just say that I am not against protecting the environment. In fact, far from it. I do believe in prohibiting corporations, governments and individuals from needlessly harming the environment through sensible restrictions and laws.

I do not, however, condone radically changing our way of life or seriously undermining our economic prowess based on shoddy scientific evidence… and that is precisely what is being proposed in the Waxman-Markey climate bill that is steamrolling through Congress as we speak.

The main section of this 1,500-page behemoth of a bill is the so-called “Cap-and-Trade” plan. In a nutshell, Cap-and-Trade works like this (from americanprogressive.org):

Each company has a limit on the amount of greenhouse gas that it can emit. The company must have an “emissions permit” for each ton of carbon dioxide it releases into the atmosphere. These permits set an enforceable limit, or cap, on the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that the company is allowed to emit.

It will be relatively cheaper or easier for some companies to reduce their emissions below their required limit than others. These more efficient companies, who emit less than their allowance, can sell their extra permits to companies that are not able to make reductions as easily.

Firms that exceed the carbon cap can also purchase extra permits from the federal government.

Now, the Center for American Progress is a liberal think tank, so I am not surprised that they are toeing the party line in this description. For the most part, they objectively lay out the program in a truthful manner, except they leave out one important word.

That word?

Tax.

“Emission permits” is a politically correct version of “tax” and a word they and the Democrats pushing this bill desperately want to avoid when discussing it.
 
How much tax is the average family going to have to incur as a result of this plan? Well, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, about $1,600 per household, per year, just on extra energy (utilities and gas) costs. So much for not raising taxes on 95% of American, right President Obama? (Do keep in mind that these projections are notoriously low).

A Heritage Foundation analysis finds that Waxman-Markey would, by 2035, raise electricity rates 90%, gasoline prices 74% and residential natural gas prices 55%.

Now, that’s just the direct impact on an average household right now. When you look at the impact this bill would have on the entire economy, this picture becomes more and more frightening.

The Obama administration has estimated the revenue value of these rights, if purchased from the government by private industry, will be as high as $1.8 trillion over 10 years. That’s $1.8 trillion out of the productive private sector and into the inefficient public sector.

Plus, this placement of an artificial cap on carbon emissions is bad enough; but what’s even worse is that the cap lowers every year. That means that year after year, the restrictions placed upon businesses becomes harder and harder to meet, making future economic growth smaller and smaller.

This slower growth will also mean that more and more Americans will lose their jobs, as companies need to find ways to come up with the $1.8 trillion in taxes that has just been dropped in their lap for the next decade. Don’t buy into the “Green Jobs” charade that the Obama Administration is selling right now either. Various researchers are discovering that we most likely would lose more jobs than we would gain and that many of these green jobs would be extremely non-productive and subsidized by the government...another tax.

This bill would also put more emphasis on energy sources that are renewable, but incredibly unreliable like wind and solar power meaning more and more roving blackouts that the good citizens of California currently experience.

By the way, the reductions in carbon emissions made possibly from this bill will essentially mean nothing if China and India don’t pass similar measures.

Guess what, neither of them have any plans to do so.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

7/13/09

This past weekend, the United States’ House of Representatives narrowly passed the Waxman-Markey energy reform legislation with a vote of 219-212. Environmental groups, a number of scientists from around the world and President Obama (who promptly implored the Senate to follow suit and pass the measure as well) lauded this action, while a growing number of global warming skeptics merely sat by and shook their heads.

“Why would those skeptics be shaking their heads, let alone exist”, you may ask. After all, isn’t global warming a fact? Hasn’t it been proven “beyond a reasonable doubt”, as the United Nations suggests? In fact, isn’t the planet’s very survival growing more and more tenuous with every day that passes without radical climate change legislation?

In a word, hardly.

And that is why we are being force-fed this ridiculous “Cap-and-Trade” program: the momentum in the climate change and global warming debate is now slowly shifting to the side of the skeptics.

Here are just a few recent samples of this momentum shift (Thank you, Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal):

     In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming.
     In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role.
     In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted.
     New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.
     700 scientists disagree with the United Nations’ 2007 climate summary (the most influential climate change study)-13 times the number of scientists that authored the summary.
     Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief.
     Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history."
     A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled.
     Australia is currently in the process of retracting their carbon emission laws.

This opinions are just the icing on the cake, as science makes the case for itself.

Despite the Environmental Left and Al Gore’s best efforts to convince us otherwise, the fact of the matter is that the Earth is not get warmer. In fact, the Earth’s temperature has stabilized since 2001, this fact is made even more shocking when you factor in that CO2 levels in that time have steadily increased.

Of course, when we skeptics throw out those numbers we are treated as ignoramuses, as the global warming believers merely state that we don’t understand the science.

In fact, according to them everything is evidence of global warming.

Here’s just one example of this (from an Associated Press story on global warming from late 2008):

“Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it's thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.”

With the presence of an impotent media that refuses to question even glaring inconsistencies like this, the global warming crowd can use, literally, anything as proof that global warming is not only happening, but it is also caused by mankind.

So despite all of these questions and all of this doubt, we are about to pass this economically crippling legislation during the deepest recession in decades. How crippling you ask, well, tune in for Part 2.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

Posted 6/30/09

In their latest round of taunts against the United States, North Korea is planning another long-range ballistic missile test, scheduled for; you guessed it, July 4th.

Not only is this test’s date a symbolic slap in the face to the nation, the test itself has the potential to be a real life threat to the country, as the North Koreans are aiming it at the Hawaiian Islands (the missile’s long-range distance capability is 4,000 miles. Hawaii, being 4,500 miles away form North Korea, is out of its range).  

Combine this incredibly brash move with their reneging on the deal to halt their nuclear weapons program, their rogue partnership with the Iranian government, their nuclear weapon tests, their threats to “wipe out the aggressors (U.S.) off the globe once and for all” and their violation of international law by transporting nuclear weaponry to Myanmar for further testing and the case has clearly been made to strike North Korea.

While I am not suggesting we declare war on North Korea (although that should not be ruled out, as it will be difficult to have any significant progress in the U.S/North Korean relationship while Kim Jong Il is in power), I am suggesting, however, that we execute targeted air-strikes against their facilities to destroy their nuclear weapons program.

This would pacify an ever-increasing problem in the Pacific by eliminating the immediate threat of a nuclear war, show South Korea and Japan, an incredibly important ally, that we will stand by them in ensuring their safety and deal a significant blow to a despotic regime.

This strike would also be the wisest foreign policy move that President Obama could make. It would show the rest of the world, but specifically, Iran, Al Qaeda, The Taliban, the terrorists in Iraq, Columbia, Russia and Pakistan that President Obama, while a thoughtful and pragmatic leader, cannot be pushed around.

This would do wonders for our troubles around the globe. It could potentially drive a death nail into a quickly collapsing Iranian regime. It would show Al Qaeda, Taliban and anti-democratic fighters in Iraq that you can fight all you want, but you will eventually succumb to American military might. This would tell Columbia and Russia to think twice before making outlandish claims about us (Columbia) or attempting to sabotage our international security operations (Russia). It would also show Pakistan that we are capable of cleaning up international messes if need be.

In short, it would make President Obama’s life much, much easier.

I know that Defense Secretary Gates has discussed the possibility of shooting down the test missile, but I simply do not believe that is enough. There is absolutely no guarantee that it would work (imagine how energized North Korea would be if the attempt to shoot down their missile failed) and it is not strong enough of a response, even if it were to work.

As I have said time and time again, I do believe military options should be the last resort in solving any international issue. I also believe that we have reached that critical stage with the North Koreans.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

As anyone that frequently, or even infrequently for that matter, reads my blog, you know where I stand regarding North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear weaponry, so I am going to try to be brief (For any of you that do not know where I stand, please feel free to read here, here, here, here and here).

Benjamin Franklin described “insanity” as doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting different results. Now, I do not wish to put words into the mouth of my favorite Founding Father, but I cannot help believe that if Mr. Franklin were alive today he would have no choice but to call President Obama’s attempts at getting North Korea and Iran to abandon their nuclear weapon aims as insane.

Why wouldn’t he? After all, we are long past seeing a pattern developing here. I am sure all of you have noticed it goes something like this…

An event like a nuclear bomb detonation, a ballistic missile test or the rejection of diplomatic overtures by the U.S. happens and President Obama talks.

He talks about how bad the event was and how the world cannot tolerate such conduct. Then he talks about his nuanced approach to diplomacy and how he plans to talk to the leaders of the offending nations and that he hopes these talks will lead to more talks and how enough talking will take place for all parties involved to finally see eye to eye.

He talks and talks and talks and talks.

Guess what Mr. President, they are not listening as the problems, clearly, still remain.

Yet, in the wake of the latest and incredibly brazen actions by both despotic regimes, we got, you guessed it, more talking from the President.

He said that the world must "stand up to" Pyongyang and demand that it honor a promise to abandon its nuclear ambitions, yet he refused to offer to take the lead to do so.

He stated that North Korea’s test firings of short-range ground to air missiles "pose a grave threat to the peace and security of the world and I strongly condemn their reckless action," although he failed to announce a plan to do anything about it.

If he is so insistent on talking, I wish he had said something like this:

“This weekend, North Korea, a country that has a long history of defying international law and endangering the safety of not only Asia, but also the safety of the entire world, once again repeated its shameful track record by detonating a nuclear weapon and testing additional short range missiles.  As a result, Pyongyang has left me with no choice but to demand that the Republic of North Korea begin a legitimate dismantling of their nuclear weapons program, effective immediately. The have one week to show legitimate progress in this endeavor and if they do not, they will face the full might of the United States Military and I can guarantee that we will do a faster and more comprehensive job than that of our North Korean counterparts.”

If this happened, I can assure you that Tehran would start getting exceptionally cold feet about any further development of nuclear weapons.

I know that there is no chance that President Obama would take this type of stance and that is really a shame as it is probably the only thing that can stop both of these abominable governments from obtaining weapons that can kill, literally, millions of people.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

This current mini, and potentially epic-sized, scandal, does, however, present the Republican Party with the ability to show voters in 2010 yet another stark contrast between them and the Obama/Pelosi/Reid cabal that is currently running things in Washington, this time on an issue where the Democrats are clearly on the wrong side of public opinion.

Posted 5/7/09

So it seems as though we’re back on the whole waterboarding issue once again.

After President Obama released some top-secret Bush-era memos (memos that gave the government's first full account of the CIA's use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods) he has now left the door open to prosecuting the people that devised the legal justifications for allowing such activities to take place. These people would most likely be Justice Department officials, not CIA personnel.

My question is, “Why”?

Why is the President of the United States open to prosecuting people that have succeeded in keeping this country safe from another terrorist attack(s)?

Isn’t he interested in preventing attacks that could kill untold numbers of Americans?

I would imagine that he is, so why would he make it more difficult for our intelligence community to stop such events?

Oh… some of you still do not believe that waterboarding and other “harsh” methods of interrogation work?

Well you would be sadly mistaken, as you have to look no further than the CIA’s comments to CBS News regarding waterboarding for proof of its effectiveness.

According to those comments, waterboarding, in particular, helped stop a 9/11-style attack that was planned for Los Angeles. CIA officials went on to say that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, planned to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into a building in Los Angeles in 2005.

He only gave up this information after he was waterboarded.

Additionally, President Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair stated, “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country”.

But now you have many, including President Obama, claiming that we “lost our moral bearings” in these interrogations, rather than applauding our intelligence community for a job well done.

These people seem to think that our “harsh” interrogation methods that have been used (used in retaliation to a war declared on us, mind you) are somehow the moral equivalent to the deeds of the terrorists themselves.

I am sorry, but they are not and we are not sinking to the level of the terrorists by practicing such methods.

As I have already stated, when a country is at war (which we currently are) there is a level of barbarity that it needs to descend into in order to succeed. Our dissention into barbarity is marked by actions that can kill high numbers of people, treat prisoners cruelly and marginalize the rights of enemies. Those actions, when used to stop a greater amount of death and destruction, however, do not put us on the same moral plane as Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad or The Taliban as they would do far worse if they possessed the resources and opportunities to do so. 

Take the example given above.

Is waterboarding harsh? Unquestionably.

Is it cruel? Most definitely.

Is it torture? You could make a case for it, as Christopher Hitchens once did.

While waterboarding is all of those things… it was also very necessary in this situation, as it was responsible for saving an untold number of American lives.

The expectations and limitations that the Left wants to place on our intelligence community are completely unrealistic. They seem to have this ridiculous post-facto notion that if our intelligence officials aren’t perfect, then they’re not good. That is pretty shabby treatment for the people that keep us safe. It is also rather dangerous, as it places needless barriers in the way of these people gaining valuable information about our enemies and their intentions.

Listen, I wish we could gain information by merely sitting down and reasoning with these people, but that is impossible. These people, the terrorists we are currently at war with, are not a rational group of people, therefore, they do not respond to rational forms of interrogation. They are willing to die for a cause that has been started and led by a number of murderous madmen. What would lead anyone to believe that these terrorists would respond to standard interrogational techniques?

That leads me to another question, what is going to happen when we do have a prisoner that has vital information and simply won’t talk?

That’s a question that President Obama needs to figure out as, literally, thousands of American lives could be riding on his answer.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

Posted 4/10/09

This week some of you experienced a massive tax increase in your cigarette purchases, a move that started at the desk of one, President Obama…the most powerful smoker in the world. The new cigarette tax tripled the amount of money the federal government collects on each pack of cigarettes from $.39 per pack to $1.01 per pack. This taxing measure should bring in around $38 billion in taxes over the next five years.

Not only was this tax increase a flagrant breaking of President Obama’s campaign promise to not raise any taxes on individuals making less than $250,000, but it is a move that will ultimately be bad for the economy.

This move also demonstrates one of two things:

1. President Obama lied about raising taxes on the not so affluent.

2. President Obama views sales taxes differently than regular, personal income taxes.

I can live with option one as many politicians lie or have to sell out some of their campaign rhetoric once they encounter the reality of the situations they face in office.

If it is option two, well then we had better hold onto our pants, as the government may begin to raise taxes, sales taxes mind you, on virtually anything and everything.

But, let’s get back to the cigarette tax that we are currently living with.

There is something that I find particularly interesting when looking at cigarette taxes. That thing is that republicans and conservatives alike, generally, do not throw up nearly the same type of rightfully, hysterical opposition to this type of taxation as they do with increases in other forms of taxation such as property taxes or income taxes.

My question is, why not?

I think many people that don’t smoke, don’t really care about this tax. They figure, “Hell, I don’t smoke, so why should I care if a bunch of people that are slowly killing themselves by smoking have to pay a little bit more to do so?”

It is this very sentiment that makes cigarette taxes so dangerous.

Any tax, whether you think it directly affects you or not, does have a negative impact on you because it has a negative overall impact on the economy as a whole.

For every extra dollar that is paid to the government in the form of a cigarette tax is one less dollar that is in the private sector…a dollar that could, theoretically, go towards a business that you either directly run or have invested in. Or in this case, $38 billion.

Additionally (and this goes back to the point I made above about President Obama’s views on sales taxes) this just makes it easier for the government to start taxing other forms of our income.

What this indifferent approach to cigarette taxes shows is that the government can tax all sorts of items and, as long as a large majority of the population doesn’t use said item, there will be little opposition to those increases as well.

This doesn’t even begin to discuss the damage these taxes do to the cigarette companies, companies, last time I checked, that employ many thousands of American workers.

All this tax is just the latest example of the liberal approach to slowly forcing their agenda on the rest of us by punishing certain rights and practices.

So the next time a cigarette law comes up, rally against it, rally against it hard…even if you don’t smoke. You will be helping yourself in the long haul.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

-John

Posted 4/3/09

For months now, we conservatives have been reading our movement’s obituary in publications like the New York Times, the New Republic and the Los Angeles Times.

Let me assure all of you that rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated.

While President Obama will be residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the next three and three-quarters years and the Democrats have extended their majorities in both houses of Congress, the Conservative movement is far from dead.

We have a little less than two years people. A little less than two years to get back to true conservative values, find a suitable candidate that will stick to those values and, most importantly, establish a real message.

The message is the key. No matter how vapid you may have found the “hope” and “change” themes of the Obama campaign, you have to admit they worked. Talk to anyone that voted for Obama and ask them why they support him. The words “hope” and “change” will be uttered in under nine seconds.

Now, I’m not suggesting we adapt an equally empty message to counter this “hope” and “change” rhetoric. (By the way, what the hell is Obama going to say when he runs for reelection? “Change” won’t make too much sense will it? Seriously, I haven’t a clue what he’s going to do. “Change” was every third word out of his mouth. I guess we should prepare ourselves to see a sea of “Hold” and “Persist” banners in Grant Park in 2012.)

But back to my original point, we need a real message. One that will not only resonate with voters, but one that will also adhere to real conservative values and dramatically distance ourselves from the policies and ideologies of liberal Democrats. It doesn’t have to be gimmicky or even catchy, it just has to speak directly to each person in America.

While we have witnessed the insane expansion of government under the Obama Administration and I can only assume that that will undoubtedly continue.

That’s where we need to attack them. We need to show the electorate that the answers to their problems don’t reside inside the White House or the halls of Congress. They reside in their minds, their ideas and their hard work.

I would love to hear our candidate say the following when they announce their bid for the presidency:

“Since the beginning of 2009, we have heard President Obama and his cohorts in Congress tell us what government will do for us and how they will make our lives better. The results of this ideology have been incredibly detrimental to this nation’s most important and unique institution…the individual.

Ladies and gentlemen, when I am elected as the next President of the United States, I will not talk down to you and explain how government will fix all of your problems. I will not provide a laundry list of programs and policies that will sap you of your God-given right to determine the direction of your own life. I am not that arrogant and naïve to believe that us politicians have all of the answers.

Quite the contrary.

I will explain how government will get out of your way and step back to allow you to make the decisions that affect your life and the lives of your family. I will do my best to ensure that you are free to live your life as you see fit, that you earn a living in the manner in which you prefer and that you keep as much of your hard earned money as possible. Because, after all, there is no one more qualified, more able and more willing to help yourself than yourself.  

Of course, we will be here if you need assistance. We will not be an administration that turns its back on our fellow citizens. However, ladies and gentlemen, I can honestly say that I believe those times will be few and far between. I believe this because I have more faith in your intelligence, ingenuity and hard work than the combined “expertise”, programs and policies of every member of our vast bureaucracy.”

Ok, maybe I’m being naïve here, but who couldn’t get behind that message?

It’s positive, uplifting and it speaks to every single voter directly. It will help them believe in themselves and resurrect the good old “can-do” spirit of America.

The spirit that allowed us to turn 13 small colonies into the most powerful, global superpower the world has ever seen.

The spirit that allowed us to construct the strongest, most diverse and innovative economy in the world.

The spirit that has allowed us to build the most successful political model in the history of mankind.

That’s a winning message folks and one that I would love to see someone use to take back the White House.

That’s all for now folks. Until next time, take care and be well.

- John

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