As Einstein said, doing things the same way and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.
~ Bill Johnson, CEO Heinz Foods, on re-electing President Obama.
By Gary P Jackson
Tuesday afternoon on, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Neil talked with Heinz CEO Bill Johnson about the effects of Hurricane Sandy. During the interview Neil asks Johnson about President Obama’s performance during this crisis.
Johnson is diplomatic, saying most presidents rise to the occasion, and Obama is no different, but then goes on to say the President’s actions now have little do do with his poor performance during the last four years. Johnson goes on to quote Einstein’s definition of insanity regarding the notion of Obama’s re-election.
Cook County hit a $100 million jackpot over the weekend.
In a little noticed but crucial decision announced Friday night, the federal government signed off on a request by county board President Toni Preckwinkle to enroll 114,000 low-income people a year early in the Medicaid program.
For the county, the decision is worth as much as $100 million a year, since its network of hospitals and health clinics already is serving most of the patients free of charge. The tab now will be picked up by federal taxpayers under a provision of Obamacare, rather than by Cook County taxpayers alone.
Ms. Preckwinkle isn’t only the Cook County board President (and Lady Liberty in the picture above). She is also an Obama mentor who infamously said that President Reagan could “rot in hell” for making “drug use political”, as Tony Lee reported at Breitbart.com this past summer:
Preckwinkle was discussing drug policy and how she felt drug treatment should not be a part of the criminal justice system. She was defending the decision by Chicago city officials to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. And her comments were in reference to Reagan’s “war on drugs,” which President Richard Nixon started. During Reagan’s tenure, First Lady Nancy Reagan started the “Just Say No” campaign against drugs.
Preckwinkle made those comments in downstate Illinois. Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois.
Preckwinkle helped Obama challenge the signatures of his primary opponents to run unopposed in his 1996 state senate race. Obama often reminisces about this race as a heroic, Rudy-esque foray into politics in which he overcame all odds to win.
Preckwinkle also supported Barack Obama in his failed primary run against sitting Congressman Bobby Rush in 2000, his 2004 US Senate run and his 2008 presidential run. As The New Yorker stated in a 2008 article, Preckwinkle was the one who suggested Obama begin attending Jeremiah Wright’s church:
On issue after issue, Preckwinkle presented Obama as someone who thrived in the world of Chicago politics. She suggested that Obama joined Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ for political reasons. “It’s a church that would provide you with lots of social connections and prominent parishioners,” she said. “It’s a good place for a politician to be a member.” Preckwinkle was unsparing on the subject of the Chicago real-estate developer Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a friend of Obama’s and one of his top fund-raisers, who was recently convicted of fraud, bribery, and money laundering: “Who you take money from is a reflection of your knowledge at the time and your principles.” As we talked, it became increasingly clear that loyalty was the issue that drove Preckwinkle’s current view of her onetime protégé. “I don’t think you should forget who your friends are,” she said.
Beyond the cronyism, this “waiver” only serves to place the people of the greater Chicago area and Illinois further underwater fiscally. Most businesses, states, and areas who have sought an Obamacare waiver had done so to delay the implementation of Obamacare. Preckwinkle’s request for a waiver was to begin Medicaid expansion in Cook County early, and subsequently fill a budget gap for Cook County. This is normal for Illinois politicians who often seek federal dollars to cover their own budgetary failures.With Medicaid’s hybrid of federal and state funding, the solicitation of federal dollars has also led to state and local budgetary increases,and, of course, fiscal problems A recent report on state budgets in crisis notes that one of the things that has put Illinois in such great financial peril is Medicaid:
Illinois’ other structural problem is Medicaid. In FY 2010, Medicaid accounted for 23 percent of the state’s budget and that figure is going to grow under the Affordable Care Act. Under the best case scenario Obamacare will only raise spending 3.3 percent above the current baseline by 2019. However other scenarios suggest the increase could be as much as 20 percent by 2020.
Rather than address these structural problems, Illinois has resorted to heavy borrowing to cover its obligations. As a result, per capita debt in Illinois is the second highest in the nation at nearly $10,000 (NY is number one). And largely because of this high level of debt, Illinois’ bond rating is the worst in the nation. Moody’s downgraded the state most recently in January of 2012.
In fact, during FY2012, Medicaid was underfunded by $2.1 billion. With the growing pool of patients and a shrinking number of doctors, Obamacare has only proven itself to be nothing more than a politician promising the entire country a new car, but only giving them a set of keys. Real healthcare reform is not expanding insurance while shrinking care and paying back your cronies. Real fiscal reform is not seeking federal dollars as a stopgap measure for a county and state budget drowning in debt.
Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, and having survived the 1980s, it’s hard not to be a fan of great music, particularly Rock and Roll. When I was a kid, and then a young adult, you kinda took great Rock and Roll for granted. You turned on the AM radio and were bombarded by non-stop kick ass music. FM was for the cats who wanted to listen to entire albums at a time, while the disc jockey chilled out with a big fat one!
Selective memory tells us there was no such thing as a bad song back in the day. [though obviously, there was] The thirst for decent new music has us remembering turning on the radio and never hearing anything bad. Today finding something an old Rock and Roller can relate to, something fresh and new, is as rare as finding a sane person at an Obama campaign rally!
Oh sure, there’s great new music being made. If you like blues, and man I love it, look no further than Austin’s Carolyn Wonderland. She may be one of the most talented all around musicians performing today, as her Judgement Day Blues and a live appearance last year on the Don Imus morning show, on Fox Business News, prove. She basically took over the show and played her heart out! She’s a favorite in the Live Music Capitol of the World [Austin] and everywhere else great blues is appreciated.
We’re also happy that Basia, who had multiple hits in the 1980s and 1990s is recording again and still has that great, smooth sound as shown in this live performance in Warsaw, Poland from 1994.
But where is the Rock we crave? When are we gonna Roll!?! I mean powerful, knock you socks off, make you wanna get off your ass and get down Rock and Roll!
Well I tell you where some of it is, it’s coming from Sidney, Austrailia, via Auckland, New Zealand. You’ve heard Gin Wigmore [born Virginia Claire Wigmore] before. It’s her voice and song [Don’t Stop] in this Lowes commercial urging customers to never stop renovating:
She also serenades James Bond in the latest Heineken commercial, a send up of the soon to be released Skyfall. Bond celebrates his 50th year on screen with Skyfall which Heineken honors by including a reconstituted Joseph Wiseman, Dr No, from the movie of the same name, the first of the series, as well as Daniel Craig, today’s Bond. Gin appears in the commercial and sings A Man Like That.
Gin Wigmore, A Man Like That:
Gin has an interesting story. The kind you might not expect. From the Max Foundation For New Zealand Women’s bio on her:
Gin Wigmore really gets it. She gets what it is to think you have it all, and lose what you loved the most. She gets what it feels like to be heartbroken, far from your family, in a self-imposed exile. The 26 year old singer-songwriter has taken her life’s ups and downs, held them up to the light, and crafted songs which speak to an almost universal experience of fear, hope, love and joy.
Gin, whose sound is something of a mash up of Neil Young, Blondie and Macy Gray, spent a reasonably carefree adolescence teaching herself the guitar and scribbling down notebooks full of lyrics. Growing up in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand, she raided her big sister’s wardrobe and kitted herself out in the most rock star threads she could scrounge up. Gin lived, slept, and breathed music. She knew who she wanted to be, just not yet how she wanted to sound.
When Gin’s sister returned home from London, a copy of David Gray’s White Ladder in tow, the pieces started to come together. Gin describes the experience of hearing the record: ”It was a revelation. I just suddenly saw that you could get your emotions and inner world across through your music and lyrics.”
Inspired, the then 14-year-old penned her first song, “Angelfire.” Before her 15th birthday, Gin had written an album’s worth of songs. She started playing small live gigs, landing a weekly residency at a local Auckland pub. She loved the interplay with the crowd, though she remembers being so nervous that she felt sick before every show. When she got onstage it all melted away: “I loved it – no one else I knew was playing live gigs; you got to get out of the house on a Wednesday and go try and be a big kid.”
Gin borrowed enough money to pay for only one hour at a local recording studio, so she just whacked 12 songs down, mistakes included. Everyone present was stunned by the uniqueness of her voice and the maturity of her songwriting.
Soon after this first recording session in 2002, the Wigmore family was dealt a tragic blow: Gin’s father, Peter, died of cancer. Gin stopped writing and playing altogether.
Unable to deal with her grief at home, Gin found a way to escape by joining an exchange program to Argentina. She worked teaching 3-5 year-olds at a bilingual kindergarten. Gin loved the wealth of culture and history in Argentina, “and the sexy boys!” she laughs. In the evenings Gin took tango lessons, which had a fairytale quality, taught by a courtly 75-year old gentleman, on a city street, by lamplight.
Living and working in Argentina worked its magic on Gin, and her desire to communicate through her music returned. By the time she moved back home to Auckland, she was writing songs again. “I grew up a lot in Argentina – I got an outside perspective for the first time. I had also had time to grieve, so I could finally tell my stories again.”
Back in New Zealand, Gin wrote a tribute song to her father called “Hallelujah.” Her sister, on a whim, entered Gin’s song in the US-based International Songwriting Competition. She won both the Teen and Grand Prizes. Gin was stunned, “I wanted to sum up what Dad meant in my life, to say all the things I’d never been able to say to him. I never thought anyone outside my family would hear it.”
When she heard she had won she didn’t really know what to make of it all. “I’d never won anything, from a bloody lottery ticket to a scratchy. I just took it like the post – like anything else.”
The prestigious award, judged by music industry professionals and artists Sean Combs , Bo Diddley, Tom Waits and Branford Marsalis, had chosen “Hallelujah” over 11,000 other entries, from around the world, making Gin the youngest and only unsigned Grand Prize winner in the history of the competition.
As part of the ISC prize, Gin was awarded a trip to the US, and a semester of study at one of the world’s top music institutions, Berklee College of Music, in Boston, Massachusetts.
Once again the distinctiveness of Gin’s voice and her captivating songwriting (with influences now ranging from Neil Young, David Gray and Jeff Buckley through to Edith Piaf and de la Soul) won her new friends in both the USA and UK.
In 2007 Gin relocated to Sydney, Australia where she lives near the beach with her puppy, Duke. When she’s not writing and playing, she can be found indulging in her favourite pastimes of lying on the couch with a gossip mag and a glass of red wine or partying with her mates. Gin is managed by Vicky Blood, and is the first artist signed to Island Records Australia.
When you can win over greats like Bo Diddley, Tom Waits and Branford Marsalis, you’re the real deal! While in the United States Gin spent some time in the Deep South no doubt soaking up some of that Delta soul, something Gin gives us in this great song Oh My:
Oh My really shows off Gin’s strong vocals, and her powerful presence well. If that ain’t kick ass Rock and Roll I just don’t know what is! It too, is used as a theme song. Oh My is the theme for the New Zealand comedy-drama The Almighty Johnsons. An interesting show worth checking out.
Check out Gin’s website too. Lots of great music coming from this woman.
I have to say, whoever handles the marketing for Heineken knows music, and how to put together great visuals for their commercials. The last three seasons have brought us inventive ads with great bands. One in particular is from two campaigns ago [2010] called The Entrance which features the Danish band Asteroids Galaxy Tour. Here’s the extended version which opens with lead singer Mette Lindberg and the song Golden Age:
Before you think I’m just here promoting Heineken, I have to say, I’m definitely not. Years back, in the Bahamas, our hosts, the Nissan Motor Corporation, supplied the beer: Heineken. I almost swore off beer after that. Too much of a thing, or not enough, you decide. Credit where credit’s due though, nowadays commercials are often more entertaining and clever than movies and TV shows, and Heineken’s people have a knack for finding great talent!
Golden Age is as much Pop as Rock, but has a good sound. Their new album ‘Out Of Frequency is a little more hard core, including this song, Major a cautionary tale for those who seek power and fame. Stunning visuals, the band was filmed at Nalepa Studios Berlin, the old broadcasting house of former East Germany:
Growing up when Rock and Roll was dominated by male acts, powerful lyrics, and hard charging beats, I find it interesting that this time around it’s the women who are bringing home the goods. Not sure what to make of it. It could be like in my sport of drag racing, where all the great racers had little girls instead of little boys, thus a generation of up and coming female racing stars, or it could be like Conservative politics, where it’s the women who have all the balls and are the most powerful leaders. I Really don’t know!
I do know is this, Rock and Roll ain’t dead, you just have to look for it!
If you have a great new band that you want to share with readers, please feel free to post it below!
Music feeds the soul, and in these turbulent times, we’re starving!
The loony left is still going nuts because Sarah Palin has been whipping Obama like a rented mule over his treasonous actions concerning the Benghazi massacre. And when she made fun of them, it really set em off. As I discussed here, the left has run out of ideas, run out of solutions, so now they are down to calling anyone who disagrees with Obama in any way, a racist.
In this video Conservative David Webb and Sean Hannity put radical leftist Jacques DeGraff on the spot. DeGraff is still crying “racist” while Webb and Hannity make fun of him.
Webb says that “Shuck and Jive is a Great Cajun Bar in Dallas“. My guess is he is right! If you are in Dallas and want to verify that it is, stop in! For more info click here. Looks like a fun joint.{Tell em we sent ya!]
We are reminded that Chris Matthews, one of the mentally unstable democrats MSNBC has hosting a show [and really, aren’t they all mentally unstable over there] has used the phrase “shuck and jive,” as has socialist Andrew Cuomo, who used it when talking about Obama in 2008, while campaigning for Hillary Clinton.
Evidently it’s only racist when a white person says “shuck and jive” to, or about, a black person if the white person is a Conservative. If they are a democrat …. the democrat party being the party of the KKK, Jim Crow, segregation, etc. …. it doesn’t count. Funny how that works
This is great news, as I mentioned yesterday, both Dan Riehl and Zilla were in the hospital with serious issues. Today comes reports that Dan is out of ICU and sitting up. Zilla is at home and writes about her experience:
I am home. I am still very fragile but my family needed me so I was a bad patient until they finally let me out: all fulla steroids, stuff to (try to) keep me calm, and breathing meds.
This is a great sight to see! Prayers work, so please continue to pray for Dan and Zilla’s rapid recovery. Two warriors who we can’t wait to see back in action!
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
~Ronald Reagan,
40th President of the United States [1911-2004]
By Gary P Jackson
Ronald Reagan had been giving variations of A Time for Choosing for some time to crowds large and small. By 1964 and the final days of the presidential elections, he had perfected his message into one of the most important and iconic speeches in American history.
Reagan wasn’t able to change enough hearts and minds to help Barry Goldwater defeat President Lyndon Johnson, but a Conservative star was born and the rest, as they say, is history.
A Time for Choosing has become an icon in the American experience. So many wonderful Reagan quotes are here. So much important commentary on America’s greatness, as well as the dangers she faces to this very day. So iconic, A Time for Choosing has come to be known simply as The Speech.
In The Speech Reagan warns his audience of the evils of socialism and liberalism, which, of course, are one in the same. Even then, socialist democrats were attempting to destroy the very fabric of American society from within and had been since the era of “The New Deal” and FDR.
Reagan warns of the dangers of a big, inefficient, overreaching government and notes how so many things the government was wanting to do could be done by the private sector better, cheaper, and more efficiently. We hear about lives destroyed by democrat socialists, and runaway government programs that wasted billions of dollars with absolutely no positive effect on mankind. Sounds all too familiar to today and what we are facing now.
If there is one sad thing about The Speech it’s that too few took Reagan’s message to heart. Change a few names, locations mentioned, and increase the amount of dollars mentioned by at least a thousand fold, and if Reagan was still here, he could give this exact speech tonight and still be spot on.
Today we see a democrat party that isn’t merely liberal, but rabidly Anti-American. A democrat party that has sunk into the depths of dangerous socialism. A democrat party that disregards the Constitution, and the Rule of Law. A democrat party whose practitioners have become vile and hateful in their ways, viciously attack those who dare disagree with their views, many of which, are completely incompatible with civilized society, and the American way of life.
Government has grown so large, spending so out of control, debts so mind numbingly high, that not only are Liberty and Freedom in danger of extinction, so is the United States itself. We have an incompetent and dangerous president, and an entire Executive Branch to match. Things must change or we are finished as a nation.
Conservatives have been revisiting The Speech for decades. It is my thought that this should be required teaching to ever school boy and girl. A student should know this speech and have a working knowledge of the concept being presented, before being allowed to graduate high school. No one should be able to get their college degree without having an advanced understanding of the concepts Reagan sets forth here.
If every man woman and child truly understood Reagan’s passion for Liberty and Freedom, America would never find itself staring into the abyss as it is today. All men and women would truly be free, and the powerful American spirit would make the United States truly that Shining City on a Hill that Reagan saw, when he saw America.
There is hope in our young. While dining at my favorite establishment, a steak house here in town [Fire and Ice] and engaged with one of the servers in conversation, I was pleased to learn this young woman, only a few years out of high school, not only knew The Speech but understood it. Though she grew up in liberal California, she was blessed with a Conservative history teacher who thought it important enough to include The Speech in his curriculum. God bless that teacher!
Ronald Reagan was a gift to America. There are few men in our history who have had such a positive impact on so many people. He created generations of Conservatives. Though Conservatism wasn’t something Reagan invented, he was the living, breathing embodiment of it. His ability to inspire others is just as important as his message. This is why, when Americans are polled, Ronald Reagan is consistently at or near the top of the list of those considered our greatest presidents in history.
On this, the 48th anniversary of The Speech let’s all take the time to revisit this icon, and relearn it’s message. Let Reagan renew our spirits and inspire us to defeat the evil that surrounds us.
With that, I give you A Time for Choosing with full transcript below:
A TIME FOR CHOOSING (The Speech – October 27, 1964)
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn’t been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.
I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, “We’ve never had it so good.”
But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector’s share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven’t balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We’ve raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don’t own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we’ve just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.
As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it’s been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.
Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down—[up] man’s old—old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the “Great Society,” or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they’ve been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, “The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism.” Another voice says, “The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state.” Or, “Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century.” Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as “our moral teacher and our leader,” and he says he is “hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document.” He must “be freed,” so that he “can do for us” what he knows “is best.” And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as “meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.”
Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as “the masses.” This is a term we haven’t applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, “the full power of centralized government“—this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.
Now, we have no better example of this than government’s involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85 percent of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21 percent increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming—that’s regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we’ve spent 43 dollars in the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we don’t grow.
Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as President, would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he’ll find out that we’ve had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He’ll also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress [an] extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He’ll find that they’ve also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn’t keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.
At the same time, there’s been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There’s now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can’t tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.
Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but how—who are farmers to know what’s best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.
Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a “more compatible use of the land.” The President tells us he’s now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore we’ve only built them in the hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units they’ve taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For three decades, we’ve sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency.
They’ve just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. And when the government tells you you’re depressed, lie down and be depressed.
We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they’re going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer—and they’ve had almost 30 years of it—shouldn’t we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?
But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we’re told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We’re spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you’ll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we’d be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.
Now—so now we declare “war on poverty,” or “You, too, can be a Bobby Baker.” Now do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion we’re spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have—and remember, this new program doesn’t replace any, it just duplicates existing programs—do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of the new program that isn’t duplicated. This is the youth feature. We’re now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps [Civilian Conservation Corps], and we’re going to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we’re going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.
But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who’d come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. She’s eligible for 330 dollars a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who’d already done that very thing.
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we’re always “against” things—we’re never “for” anything.
Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.
Now—we’re for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we’ve accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.
But we’re against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They’ve called it “insurance” to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term “insurance” to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they’re doing just that.
A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary—his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he’s 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can’t put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they’re due—that the cupboard isn’t bare?
Barry Goldwater thinks we can.
At the same time, can’t we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn’t you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we’re for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we’re against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They’ve come to the end of the road.
In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar’s worth, and not 45 cents worth?
I think we’re for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we’re against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world’s population. I think we’re against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.
I think we’re for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we’re against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We’re helping 107. We’ve spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear.
Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.
Federal employees—federal employees number two and a half million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation’s work force employed by government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man’s property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.
Last February 19th at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, “If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States.” I think that’s exactly what he will do.
But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn’t the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died—because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.
Now it doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the—or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.
Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men—that we’re to choose just between two personalities.
Well what of this man that they would destroy—and in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear? Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well I’ve been privileged to know him “when.” I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I’ve never known a man in my life I believed so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.
This is a man who, in his own business before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent monthly checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn’t work. He provides nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by the floods in the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.
An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas. And he said that [there were] a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. And then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, “Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such,” and they went down there, and there was a fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in those weeks before Christmas, all day long, he’d load up the plane, fly it to Arizona, fly them to their homes, fly back over to get another load.
During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, “There aren’t many left who care what happens to her. I’d like her to know I care.” This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, “There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start.” This is not a man who could carelessly send other people’s sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all the other problems I’ve discussed academic, unless we realize we’re in a war that must be won.
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy “accommodation.” And they say if we’ll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he’ll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, “Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we’re willing to make a deal with your slave masters.” Alexander Hamilton said, “A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.” Now let’s set the record straight. There’s no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there’s only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender.
Admittedly, there’s a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then—when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we’re retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he’s heard voices pleading for “peace at any price” or “better Red than dead,” or as one commentator put it, he’d rather “live on his knees than die on his feet.” And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don’t speak for the rest of us.
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it’s a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, “There is a price we will not pay.” “There is a point beyond which they must not advance.” And this—this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater’s “peace through strength.” Winston Churchill said, “The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we’re spirits—not animals.” And he said, “There’s something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.
We know that Ambassador Chris Stevens and his staff requested beefed up security for their mission. We now know that the “consulate” in Benghazi was nothing more than a collection of poorly secured buildings, ripe for attack.
We’ve learned through emails that were leaked that as many as 400 members of the regime, including Barack Obama knew about these attacks in real time, and did nothing. Obama, in fact, went to bed, slept well, and then headed off to Las Vegas to party with the Hollywood crowd.
Now through the hard work of Fox’s Jennifer Griffin, and others, we find out there was not one, not two, but three desperate pleas for help. Calls that would go unanswered by the regime.
Men were allowed to die, when they most certainly could have been saved.
From Friday night’s Special Report:
Tyrone Woods and his fellow comrades, who defied orders and rushed towards the fighting, are the very best of what America is. They showed true bravery and heroism.
This is heartbreaking for me. We have absolute proof the White House knew all of this and watched it live via footage sent by predator drones.
The amount of lies coming from the Obama regime are staggering. The amount of culpability by all involved is mind-blowing.
If this is true, Barack Obama must be forced to resign the presidency immediately. No ifs, ands, or buts.
From The Western Center for Journalism:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered additional security for the U.S. mission in Benghazi ahead of the terrorist attack, but the orders were never carried out, according to “legal counsel” to Clinton who spoke to best-selling author Ed Klein.
With all of the lies from the Obama regime, and the second-by-second breaking stories, it’s hard to know exactly what to think. I know one thing, Obama and the entire regime must go, and this investigation must not stop with Obama’s stinging defeat in November. There are some serious issues and true criminal activities wrapped up in all of this.
There can be no doubt that Barack Obama is far worse than just incompetent.
Sad news to report. Blogger extraordinaire Dan Riehl is in the hospital fighting for his life.
FishbowlDC reports:
Conservative blogger Dan Riehl is fighting for his life and in the ICU at Fairfax County Hospital. Riehl publishes Riehl World View and writes for Breitbart.com. Instapunditis reporting that medical personnel had to do a pulmonary bypass.
Chris Smith, “Smitty” who writes with Stacy McCain reports visiting Dan and that he is in bad shape and desperately needs our prayers. In a heartfelt piece Smitty writes:
Dan has worked harder than most (e.g., me) on the effort to tear down the walls of the mainstream media Jericho over the last few years. You have to drop names like that of the late, lamented Andrew Breitbart to name somebody who was working harder on the restoration of the country. Multitudes of folks echo the current news (and don’t stop; we make an important chorus) but Dan was a maker of news. His contacts and investigative skills (of which I had the merest glimmer of insight) allowed him to dig up crucial facts on a host of stories (go see Hating Breitbart for just one example).
Dan is a true leader, mentoring those who will listen, flogging relentlessly those who will not. I’ve no idea what the medical bill will be like for a few days in the Intensive Care Hotel, but it can’t be cheap.
I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Dan in person, but have had pleasant back and forth with him via Twitter and email. We haven’t always agreed on things, but who does? Dan has always been professional and a man of integrity. The sort of fellow you’d love to call a friend.
Having had a heart attack earlier this year myself [though thankfully no where near as serious as any of this] I can tell you the hospital bills ain’t cheap. If you have an extra buck or two think about hitting the tip jar on Dan’s website.
I know Dan has many friends who can visit in person, but the rest of us can pray for his speedy and full recovery. Dan is the sort of man we need on our side fighting for Liberty and Freedom.
At this time we all need to be on his side cheering him on and praying for him in his fight against this illness.
Please include Dan in your daily prayers.
Smitty also reports blogger “Zilla” another true warrior, is also in the hospital in bad shape, and has a bedside video report here.
Please pray for Dan, Zilla, and all of their friends and families.
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A Time For Choosing 
