Pelosi and Carpet Bombing Washington

Nancy Pelosi, as quoted on ABCNews's The Note:

“I think it’s very clear that we want a strong public option in the legislation. Insurance companies are out there in full force carpet bombing, shock and awe, against a public option,” Pelosi said.

It would be easy just to laugh at this fool were she not the third most powerful politician in Washington. But, sadly, she is, and that's not a good reflection on us at all. I could tell you what I really think of this woman, but my mother may read this and she would not be proud of me for my honest criticism, I can tell you. So I will leave it at that.

As for her stupid ad hominem attempt at deflection and classic leftist creation of a big corporation bogeyman (how original . . . rolls eyes), let me just say that . . . would that it were so, Nancy, babe. Would that it were so.

[Disclaimer for anyone at the Department of Homeland Security who may be reading this: The River does not promote violence of any kind against anyone. Far from inciting violence, we wholeheartedly preach civil disobedience in manners of conscience. God bless you and have a nice day.]

Rick Perry: Repentance or Expedience?

I made note of Texas Governor Rick Perry's verbal assault on Obama Care in my last post. In that post I wholeheartedly applauded him and endorsed him for re-election in the governor's race of 2010 in which he will face Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in the primary. I made my endorsement based on Governor Perry's recent swagger and bravado concerning the 10th amendment and states' rights. I firmly believe in de-centralized power, as did the founders, and the 10th amendment is integral to this. While the federal government has been steadily encroaching on the rights of the states since Lincoln obliterated them, the administration of Generalissimo Obama has been acting as if they never existed.

So naturally my ears perked up when I heard my governor broaching the subject.

To be honest with you, however (and here is my caveat), I have never really paid that much attention to Governor Perry prior to now. He was simply the successor to GWB and got my vote because he was certainly going to be better than anything the Dems managed to throw up against him. So, heretofore, he has received my vote, pretty much, by default.

Which brings me to the topic of this post. A very astute pundit I have recently made the acquaintance of, Allen Lewis, who posts at The Texas Conservative, wrote an interesting piece about Rick Perry here.

And it begs the question. Has Governor Perry had a come-to-Jesus experience concerning the Constitution and individual liberty? Or is he merely trying to grab the conservative base of the Texas Republican party before KBH can--by latching onto the grass-roots tea party movement? Is this new-found conviction or is it pre-election posturing?

What do you think? I'm hoping it's the former and fearful its the latter. Should I write him directly and ask him?

Rick Perry to Defy Obama Administration

Check out this article in the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

"I think you’ll hear states and governors standing up and saying 'no’ to this type of encroachment on the states with their healthcare," Perry said. "So my hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I’m certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats." - Rick Perry

Rick Perry is the man and, consequently, has earned The River's early endorsement in the 2010 Texas Governor's race. More on this later.

Texas Conservative

I'm adding a new blog to my Blog List in the sidebar. It's called the Texas Conservative. I just discovered it and wanted to share. After reading four or five posts I feel an instant kinship with this guy and his thinking. By way of example of what I am talking about check out this blog post from a week or so ago: Laffer Curve

Dick Morris, Barack Obama, and George Orwell

Dick Morris nails Obama once again, this time in the New York Post.

From an op-ed piece published today in the New York Post:

"President Obama's rhetoric last night summoned the memory of 1984, George Orwell's novel of a nightmarish future--where the slogan of the rulers is 'War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.'

The president assures us that he will cut health-care spending. . .by adding $1 trillion to health-care spending.

He says that 'health-care decisions will not be made by government'. . .while he sets up a new Federal Health Board to tell doctors what treatments they can offer and to whom and under what circumstances.

Obama told the media, 'I will free doctors to make good health-care decisions'. . .by telling the physicians what to do. . . ." - Dick Morris

Free Our Health Care Now Petition

If you haven't been here to sign your name, be sure to do so. Maybe we can stop this debacle before it happens.

Free Our Health Care Now Petition.

The Crisis in Health Care

Let me tell you how the conservatives have lost the debate on health care and most of them don't even know it.

I listen to talk radio every day. Talk radio is dominated by the right in this country because the audience for talk radio is naturally on the right--traditional working people who keep up with the world. Lefties have other media that they use to get out their opinions, chiefly traditional news sources and government sponsored media such as National Public Radio.

As an aside, the content of NPR is so dreadfully inane and boring that it would never survive if it had to depend on things like listeners and sponsors--you know, actually make it in the real world.

Dennis Miller says that lefties do not do well getting a radio audience because no one wants to tune in and listen to how bad they are and how they are to blame for all of the world's problems. I'm not sure how accurate Miller's assessment is, but I find it amusing.

As I was saying, I listen to talk radio and by far the dominant theme this week has been Obama-Care. I listen to the conservative pundits denounce and expose the evils of socialized medicine and I listen to leftist callers as they argue the Democrat talking points on the matter. I know both sides of the issue and am adamantly opposed to socialized medicine both on principle and for pragmatic reasons.

But the conservatives have lost this debate and the Republicans, typically, are back on their heels trying to stop the Obama/Pelosi juggernaut and offering their own alternative plans to fix the health care crisis.


And that is exactly where conservatives have lost this debate. They have conceded the premise of the opposition, a premise which is false.

There is no health care crisis in America.

I'm sorry, but there just isn't, and anybody with any sense of reality should know that. Are there problems with our health care system? Certainly. Are people dying in the streets? Certainly not. But you wouldn't know that by listening to the left.

We have the best, most effective, most innovative health care system in the world. We have the best hospitals, doctors, nurses, and research facilities. We are the healthiest people who have ever lived in the history of mankind.

And we have a health care crisis?

The typical leftist response to my assertions would be to point out the problems we have. But I don't deny there are problems. I only deny that a crisis exists. But to listen to Washington and the main-stream media you would think the whole thing is about to collapse and we had better act now, right now, before it is eternally too late to save it.

Horse manure.

But conservatives have lost the debate on health care reform because they have conceded the premise beneath which it lies. And, thus, we are poised to destroy the best health care system in the world.

Steyn on Cap and Trade

"If George III had put the tea clause 247 pages into a 300-page amendment to a 1,000-page bill, he might still have the colonies. Wherever he is now, he must be laughing his head off. Republican government is impossible in an age where not only are the bills too long for a reasonably engaged citizen to read, not only are they too long for a legislator to read, but they’re too long to write down before they’re passed into law. We just have to trust our rulers, and they just have to trust whichever aides negotiated whichever boondoggles with whichever lobbyists. . . ." - from Mark Steyn's 'Jacksonian America'

It's true. Congress passed Cap and Trade before stenographers had even completed typing it. Welcome, again, to the era of more open and honest government. This Congress and this administration are a disgrace. My question is, how long do we put up with this corrupt, bloated, narcissistic band of criminals that populate Washington and feign to represent us?

Global Warming Petition Project

Pop Quiz Time!

Who said the following?

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

Was it (a) Rush Limbaugh, (b) Bill O'Reilly, (c) Glenn Beck, (d) Sean Hannity, or (e) some wacko creationist?

Click here for the answer.

Remember When Liberals Dreamed?

Remember when liberals dreamed and talked of achievement? Remember when they were optimistic about the future? Remember when Democrats sent us on a quest for the moon? Remember when they dreamed and achieved like this?

Krauthammer Slams Obama on Nukes

Some of the "nicer" pundits are becoming more blunt in their criticisms of Generalissimo Obama.


Krauthammer:

"Obama says that his START will be a great boon, setting an example to enable us to better pressure North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear programs. That a man of Obama's intelligence can believe such nonsense is beyond comprehension. There is not a shred of evidence that cuts by the great powers -- the INF treaty, START I, the Treaty of Moscow (2002) -- induced the curtailment of anyone's programs. Moammar Gaddafi gave up his nukes the week we pulled Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole. No treaty involved. The very notion that Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will suddenly abjure nukes because of yet another U.S.-Russian treaty is comical."

To read the entire column click here.

A Solution -- Healthcare Reform

I have a solution for the "healthcare crisis." It struck me, earlier today, as a relatively simple solution to a complex problem. I know that this crisis is on everyone's mind right now, what with 48 gazillion uninsured serfs dying daily in the streets of America for lack of good coverage. Never fear, dear proletariat, your dear friend and comrade Tom has the solution.

Ready?

Let's put a revolver--check that--a good, solid semi-auto (perhaps a Glock .40 caliber S&W) to the head of every evil rich guy we can find. Let's tell him (them) that if he makes over one million a year that he has to give at least an additional 5.4% of his income to us so we can give it to the underprivileged so that they can have government insurance. In fact, let's tell him that if he doesn't give up this additional income we are going to throw his sorry, rich ass in the slammer with Big Bubba for a cellmate.


Hear that, rich guys? You're gonna give us your money or we're going to throw your butts in jail.

Then, when we have their money, let's create a whole new government bureaucracy (something like the post office, for example) and put it in charge of everyone's health care and then let's put those evil private insurance companies out of business. Then, we'll tell those greedy doctors what they can and cannot charge and if they try to go around our system we'll throw their butts in jail too.

Then, after all the evil corporations and sinister small businesses drop health insurance coverage for their employees in favor of putting them on the government plan, we'll make it illegal for any of them to seek out their own private plan.

What an idea!

This way everyone has the same great coverage and everything is fair. It works so well with the VA and on the Indian Reservations . . .

Wait a minute, I just noticed something.

Dang it! My plan is the same as Obama's!

Dick Morris: Obama is a one-term President

You know Dick Morris, right? He was the brains behind Bill Clinton. Got him elected several times as governor of Arkansas and then twice as President. Dick Morris is a pure political animal. He eats, sleeps, breathes, and speaks politics. He may not always be right, but he is always worth listening to. Here's what he is saying about Obama's Presidency:

Finally, Obama has laid a trap for himself. Just as the economy is coming out of its recession -- in 2010 and 2011 -- and he begins to run for reelection, he is going to face massive inflation. The money supply has more than tripled since October of 2008 and is going up each week as the Fed buys Treasury bills and other securities to "monetize the debt" (i.e., give other people money so they can lend it back to the government and charge it interest for doing so). With each new infusion of cash, the problem of avoiding inflation becomes particularly severe. Obama could well lose the elections of 2012 because of the inflation his deficit has created.

Of course, we all know that the only way to put the inflation virus back in the test tube is to trigger a new recession, this time caused by massive increases in interest rates, as Fed Chairman Paul Volcker did in 1979. If the recession doesn't doom Obama to a single term, the inflation will. And if the inflation doesn't get him, the subsequent recession will.

The deeper he gets into his term, the more it is apparent that he threw it all away when he first took office and demanded over $1 trillion in stimulus and supplemental appropriation spending. He was doomed to lose the game right after he received the first kickoff.

To read the whole article click here.

No Longer a Republican

Dennis Miller is one cool cat, to use an expression he might use. Miller has an exceptional vocabulary, an encyclopedic memory, a razor wit, and a unequalled command of the art of the metaphor. I love Dennis, absolutely love him.

Today he had Mike Murphy of NBC news and Time magazine as a guest on his radio show. Murphy is one of those northeastern Republican political pundits . . . let's not go there . . . and the topic of discussion was Sarah Palin, her resignation, her impact on the McCain ticket, and her possible political future. Murphy is no Palin fan. Too bad for him.


There were several things I disagreed with Murphy on, but I think the thing that grated on me the most was the apparent lack of understanding he displayed of what is going on with the Republican "base." Rank and file conservatives are fed up with how they have been treated lately by the Republican party and Murphy doesn't get that.

According to Murphy, Palin was a drag on the McCain ticket because she didn't add anything. Admitting that she was a charismatic and engaging figure, Murphy could not see how that was anything McCain really needed. I won't quote him from memory, but the gist of his point was that McCain needed someone who would bring in swing voters and Palin could not do that. All she could do was energize a base that was going to show up for McCain anyway.

Wrong.

Murphy said to Miller something akin to Come on, Dennis, those guys were going to the polls for McCain anyway. Do you think they would vote for Obama?

Wrong again. I wanted to talk to this guy so badly, and they did take some callers but I was not in an area for a good signal, so I didn't try.

Mike Murphy could not be more wrong. I was not going to vote for John McCain. I did not like him. I viewed him as a compromiser. I viewed him as a man who epitomized the problem with the Republican party and I absolutely, positively was not going to vote for John McCain.

And, no, Mike Murphy, I was not going to vote for Generalissimo Obama either.

I had made up my mind to go to the polls, vote in every other race, then for President vote for Ronald Reagan as a write-in candidate. My first Presidential election was 1988 and I never had a chance to pull the lever for the Gipper and I thought that this way I could at least tell my grandchildren that I had.

But John McCain was not getting my vote. Period.

Then McCain picked Sarah Palin as his veep and I decided I would vote for them . . . her. So I did.


So, yes, Mike Murphy, Sarah Palin did add something to McCain's ticket. She added me and along with me a whole lot of other frustrated, disgusted conservatives who had also planned on sitting out. If not for Palin it would have been far uglier than it was.

As for me, after seeing how the McCain campaign treated Palin, and after noting that not one Republican political figure would stand up for her, I dropped out of the ranks of the Republicans. I now consider myself a constitutionalist--a libertarian independent. And I will never vote for a moderate Republican again--for anything.

Palin Quits! Good Riddance!

So many Leftists have peed themselves with joy over Sarah Palin's erstwhile departure from politics and the public scene that even a casual stroll on some of the pathways of American political punditry has become quite hazardous (and smelly!).

Nevertheless, I have taken a stroll down some of those paths and I have noticed some common themes.

Like the little lemmings that they are, the Leftists are all repeating similar things. The themes run along this vein - She's a quitter. She's a loser. She was always a lousy candidate. You see how she would have quit on America? What is she saying to our troops? She can't take a little heat? There must be a scandal about to hit that we don't know about yet. She better not ever run again now! . . . etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Yawn.

Their obsession over her is borderline neurotic. If what they say is true, why must they try so hard to convince everyone?

Hmm?

You go, Sarah! And if you disappeared from American life and culture and politics completely, you have already done enough to earn your way onto The River's collage. So, up you go, right beneath the Pistol.

I am certain we will hear more from you, though.

New Taxes! Cap and Trade

My friend, James, over at the Manic Eclectic has written a timely piece on the farce of corporate taxes. You can go there and check out what he says on the topic. I'll sum it up for you (though James was much nicer than I am): Corporations don't pay taxes, you idiots, they just raise the prices of goods and services and the consumers are the ones who, in reality, pay the new taxes.

Understand that if the Senate passes the House bill and hands it over to Generalissimo Obama, cap and trade becomes law. It is the largest tax bill in American history and all of us will be paying those taxes. We will be paying them in our utility bills. We will be paying them at the pump. We will be paying for them at the grocery store. We will be paying for them in the price of all goods because it takes energy to produce and transport goods.


Remember when this was a free country? Our liberty is being raped and we are expected just to say "thank-you" for the attention.

Tyranny thy name is Obama.

Truth, Lies, and Democrats

It was my Christian upbringing that gave me my love for truth. Ironically, it was that love for truth that caused me to cast off many of the traditional Christian beliefs I was taught as a child. I am still a Christian, just not the same kind. And I still have a great love for the truth, whatever that truth happens to be.

If you are of Jewish or Christian faith, you may be familiar with a Proverb that often pops into my head and which I have adopted as a maxim for life. Here it is:

Proverbs 23:23 (ESV)
Buy truth, and do not sell it;

I've always pictured an object labeled "truth" sitting on a shelf and I'm looking at it and wondering if it is worth buying or not. Is it? Apparently so. But what if it costs a lot? Doesn't matter, I still should buy it. What if it costs me everything? Doesn't matter, I still should buy it. "Buy truth."

Okay, but now that I have it what if someone offers me money for it? Should I take the money?

No.

What if they offer me a lot of money, more money than I've ever seen? What if by selling it I can achieve everything I've ever dreamed of?

"Buy truth, and do not sell it;"

Pretty simple, isn't it? And plenty wise, too.

But people don't love truth anymore, if they ever did. People don't want the truth. People don't believe the truth. People go out of their way to avoid the truth.

And politicians seemingly can gain anything they want by lying to a populace who loves to be lied to.

Which brings us, of course, to the Democrat party. Democrats lie all the time and their constituents not only expect, but they seem to love, to be lied to. Remember how the press used to admire Bubba Bill Clinton so much for his great gift of lying? He would look at them, smile, lie through his teeth, and they would fawn over him for it, admiring his abilities. Meanwhile, inner-city-public-school-indoctrinated-idiot democrat voters would swallow those lies whole and then spew them out ad nauseum as if they were gospel and end-all arguments.

This isn't an anomaly. This is how Democrats roll in their hood.

Most people tell lies every once in a while. It's a part of our fallenness. It jumps out at us as a cheap avenue of escape. We know it's bad, but we hope it will save us something--maybe embarrassment, or culpability of some kind.

But Democrats lie with impunity. They lie because they know they can. They lie because their constituents are stupid. They lie because they simply cannot tell us the truth. If they did, nobody would vote for them. Their agenda is that un-American.

All of this brings us to Barack Hussein Obama, liar-in-chief. Remember how he was going to have more open and honest government?


Yes, 69 million fools believed that load of horse manure. In these past six months have we seen enough to know better yet? Sadly, I doubt it. You can fool some of the people all of the time.

Obama has presided over a Congress recklessly ramrodding voluminous tomes of horrid, corpulent legislation in the dark of night, without anyone even reading it first. Half the members of Congress voting on any given piece of legislation in the last six months haven't even known what the hell they were voting on.

Obama is a lying . . . (you fill in the blank).

But you already, knew that. He's a Democrat. It's how they roll.

Need more? How about his no-new-taxes pledge. Remember that? Remember how no one earning less than $250,000 a year was going to see a tax increase? Then along came that huge hike in tobacco taxes, as if no one earning less than $250,000 a year ever buys tobacco.

For any idiot Democrat who happens to blindly blunder by here, yes (I'm typing s-l-o-w-l-y so you'll be able to keep up) that's a tax increase for people making less than $250,000 a year.

Anybody making less than $250,000 a year buy gasoline, or diesel, or heating oil, or electricity? You just got punked by Obama, too. Unless the U.S. Senate rises up and saves us, somehow, you're about to get bodyslammed by the biggest tax hike in U.S. history. It's called cap and trade. More on that later.

Obama. Liar.

Liar. Obama.

It's the truth. Buy it.