Response for Twitter

@fjnNugent - I'm tired of trying to think in 140 characters.

Here's my issue with O's speech.

1 - Grandstanding. Submit a plan with all the facts & figures so it can be scored. Stop with the speeches and actually work.

2- Pass the Bill Now. Stop telling Congress to pass something that they haven't seen. They don't even know the facts/figures regarding the cost.

3- Small Business Hiring Credit - Do Liberals think Small Business Owners are idiots? Small Biz Owners aren't looking for hiring credits they are looking for long-term commitments on tax rates, which is something Obama is currently talking about raising. Say the hiring credit is $6k per new hire - the small business owner incurs roughly 20% burden on top of the salary for each employee they have on their payroll. That means if you are an employee making $50k annually it costs the business the $50k in salary to you and another $10k in burden (taxes, benefits, SS, etc.). Even with Obama's $6k credit the employer is still out $4k that year and will continue to have to pay that employees salary going forward. Not to mention the additional cost of Obamacare that will cripple small to mid-sized organizations. Then Liberals wonder why businesses are sitting on cash. They have to pay for all your tax increases and OBAMACARE!

4- Raising Taxes: Because of Sub-chapter S Corporations, Small Business owners are impacted by these 'tax increases on the wealthy'. When Liberals talk about raising taxes, it is actually on the very people they want to give a break to. How does that make sense? It simply doesn't make any sense, at all. It is nothing but preying on the fact that the Liberal base refuses to wake up and learn how business works.

5- Warren Buffet Reference: Warren Buffet is comparing what he pays in Capital Gains tax to what his secretary pays in Income Tax. Apples & Oranges. It is a shame that Obama and Liberals choose to mis-inform the public.

6- Infrastructure: Have you forgotten about the $1 TRILLION stimulus that did NOTHING to Stimulate the economy? It just added $1 Trillion to the debt + interest. And you Liberals want more?

7- Constitution: Obama shouldn't be allowed to mention the Constitution because he has done nothing but ignore it!

8- More Jobs stamped with MADE IN USA: Yet the CEO of GE is seated by the 1st Lady as a special guest of the administration, all the while, GE just outsourced two divisions of manufacturing to China. Not to mention, GE made BILLIONS in profits and paid ZERO in taxes. ZERO! And he's a guest of the administration. Then the FBI raided Gibson Guitar in Nashville, TN. Gibson just happens to a Republican leaning Corporations that is 100% Made in America. Get all the details about that here: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=45785

So I find it beyond condescending to have Obama tell businesses how to run their operations when he's never worked in the real world, met a payroll, or had the weight of keeping a business open to support his family. He preaches utter nonsense and speaks down to everyday Americans. Obama demands that Congress pass another bill without reading it, but there is no talk of ever producing a Budget.

I'm done. In my mind, he has been nothing but an absolute failure and Liberals are kidding themselves if they think otherwise.

Greed

Milton Friedman speaking with Phil Donahue. This clip focuses on greed. With all the talk of shared sacrifice and tax hikes, this interview is fitting.

Francisco's Money Speech - Atlas Shrugged

Francisco's Money Speech is my favorite section from Atlas Shrugged. With Liberals calling for taxing the rich and their so called idea of shared sacrifice, Francisco's Money Speech is an amazing dialogue to remember.

Liberals I hope you read the speech because you need to hear it more now than ever!

Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil –and he's the typical product of money."

Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."

Hold strong Conservatives!

Leadership Wanted

As I sit in Starbucks, and look around, I wonder if any of my fellow coffee enthusiasts are contemplating the $14 Trillion National Deficit that clouds our future like I am. Have you ever looked at the person sitting next to you and wondered what they are thinking? As I'm about to lean over and ask the college student her thoughts, she packs up her North Face backpack, smiles, and walks out the door back into the world. Alas, to ask another day.

We're broke. It's a fact. And the beauty of a fact is there's truth behind it, and to hide from the truth is difficult. With a $14 Trillion dollar National Debt and a Government that refuses to stop spending, the outlook for America is grim. Tough choices have to be made. Choices that should have been made years, maybe even decades, ago to correct the spending habits of both parties.

This past week the Obama Administration released their FY2012 Budget. O's budget is 216 pages of increases in spending and taxes. The Cato Institute analyzed the impact of O's Budget.

The impacts are almost unimaginable:

- Total Budget = $3.7 Trillion Dollars in spending
- Increasing this year's deficit to $1.65 Trillion
- Adds $13 Trillion to the Deficit over the next decade.
- By 2020 the Debt will be at or above 100% of GDP
- Taxes increases of $1.6 Trillion over the next decade
* Stats taken from the above Cato Institute article

The Republicans aren't offering much better, so don't even get your hopes up.

As difficult as it might be to do, look past the numbers, and look to what this tells us about today's leadership. We don't have any--at least at the Federal level. But there are glimmers of hope and change, pun intended, at the State level with the new and established Governors.

Governors Walker & Christie are new on the scene and focused on their State's fiscal health. Just this past week Walker's budget has caused protests and outrage within the state of Wisconsin. Christie has quickly become the model for tough, honest Republican rhetoric.

Many of us have been ready for this revolution. We've seen the writing on the wall for some time, but are we a majority yet? Are there enough of us to vote for those that will lead?

I guess only time will tell.

Shaping the World for 100 Years to Come

Below was written by Ronald Reagan on September 1st, 1976. He was asked to write a letter for the Los Angeles Bicentennial and the countries tri-centennial. Below is some of what he wrote on a yellow legal pad.

Taken from: Reagan, In His Own Hand - The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America.

Sometimes it's very easy to get glib about how the decisions we are making will shape the world for a hundred years to come. Then a few weeks ago I found myself faced with having to really think about what we are doing today & what people (not history) PEOPLE LIKE OURSELVES will say about us.

I'd been asked to write a letter for a "time capsule" which would be opened 100 yrs. from now. The occasion will be the Los Angeles Bicentennial & of course our countries tri-centennial. It was suggested that I mention some of the problems confronting us in this election year. Since I've been talking about those problems for some 9 months that didn't look like too much of a chore.

So riding down the coast highway from Santa Barbara - yellow tablet on my lap (someone else was driving) I started to write my letter to the future.

It was a beautiful summer afternoon. The Pacific stretched out to the horizon on one side of the highway and on the other the Santa Ynez mountains were etched against a sky as blue as the Ocean.

I found my self wondering if it would look the same 100 yrs. from now. Will there still be a coast highway? Will people still be traveling in automobiles, or will the be looking down at the mountains from aircraft or moving so fast the beauty of all this would be lost?

Suddenly the simple drafting of a letter became a rather complex chore. Think about it for a minute. What do you put in a letter that's going to be read 100 yrs. from now -- in the year 2076? What do you say about our problems when those who read the letter will know what we don't know -- namely how well we did with those problems? In short they will be living in the would we helped to shape.

Will they read the letter with gratitude in their hearts for what we did or will they be bitter because the heritage we left them was one of human misery?

Oh I wrote of the problems we face here in 1976 -- The choice we face between continuing the policies of the last 40 yrs. that have led to bigger & bigger govt, less & less liberty, redistribution of earnings through confiscatory taxation or trying to get back on the original course set for us by the Founding Fathers. Will we choose fiscal responsibility, limited govt, and freedom of choice for all our people? Or will we let an irresponsible Congress set us on the road our English cousins have already taken? The road to economic ruin and state control of our very lives?

On the international scene two great superpowers face each other with nuclear missiles at the ready --poised to bring Armageddon to the world.

Those who read my letter will know whether those missiles were fired or not. Either they will be surrounded by the same beauty we know or they will wonder sadly what it was like when the world was still beautiful. If we here today meet the challenge confronting us, -- those who open that time capsule 100 yrs. from now will do so in beauty, peace, prosperity and the ultimate personal freedom. If we don't keep our rendezvous with destiny, the letter probably will never be read -- because they will live in the world we left them, a world in which no one is allowed to read of individual liberty or freedom of choice.

- Ronald Reagan in his words.

Open Letter to the Left

Below is an open letter to the Left in general. This letter isn't targeted (figuratively speaking) at any one Liberal. So here it goes....

************************************************

Dear Left-Wing, Liberal, Progressive People:

Are you pissed that a majority of Americans disagree with you, or that we have the audacity to do it with fearless passion?

Using the AZ shooting to assign blame to Sarah Palin, Glen Beck, FoxNews, Rush, and everyday Americans that are members of the Tea Party is outrageous.

When US Army Major, Nida Malik Hasan, committed an act of Terrorism by opening fire on the waiting room at Fort Hood, you refused to call Nida Malik Hasan, a Muslim Terrorist, or call what he did an Act of Terrorism.

Why?

You have no problem calling everyday Americans murders, racists, bigots, plain spoken, and unintelligent, then you even chuckle, as if you are of higher intelligence, but calling Hasan a Muslim Terrorist is offensive? Funny how that works.

You go to great lengths to brand your ideology as pro-individual rights, pro-individualism, and progressive. Yet everything you do is exactly the opposite. Liberalism does nothing to advance Freedom, and freedom is where one finds rights, individualism, and the ability to progress.

Most of your attacks are disguised within some movement or buzz word that evokes emotion. Logic be damned. Take race, for example. You feel like you own everything around race. The same goes for the poor and minorities. Yet your actions keep the poor, poor, and keep minorities down.

Take illegal immigration - this example covers race, the poor, and minorities. FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) estimates that the US is spending $113 billion dollars at the federal, state, and local level on Illegal Immigration. That is over $1000 per native household in the US. Of the $113 Billion tab, $52 billion is within our education system. Click Here to read all the sobering statics on Illegal Immigration.

Border states have felt the impact for years, from hospital emergency rooms along the US/Mexico border closing to the Drug Cartel causing unspeakable violence against innocent Americans. Immigration and border enforcement are Federal issues. Since the Federal Government has turned a blind eye to this issue, in both Republican and Democrat administrations, the state of AZ recently passed legislation in order to enforce Federal law in an attempt to control the border. Instead of this being a wake up call to the Obama Administration, Eric Holder, the Attorney General, sued the State of AZ. The federal government decided to leave the law breaking illegal immigrants alone and go after the State of AZ. Don't you think that causes a hostile environment?
Ironic, isn't it, the very politicians and leftist media that scream that the AZ law is racist, are the 1st to point blame at the Right for the shooting a few weeks ago.

Americans are hostile, we are furious, and we have every right to be. You just don't want to hear it because it wasn't supposed to be this way under the reign of your dear savior, Obama, was it? He was going to unite us, but we are more divided than ever.

You want to convenience the American public that the division isn't over your Socialist agenda, but the words of crazy right wing leaders and talk radio. So much so, that some of the Left supports the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine in hopes to shut up the Right. The Left doesn't oppose the government funding of NPR. Hypocritical are we?

Let me end with this. Following the shooting in AZ, the Left & the Right should have released a joint statement. That joint statement should have simply said,

"Dear Families and Citizens of Arizona that were impacted today by the violent act of one mentally ill individual. Your Country stands beside you. You are all being lifted up in our thoughts and prayers. We will do everything in our power to honor the memory of those you lost, and help you rebuild.
Sincerely, Your Fellow Americans"

Instead within 2 hours the attacks started and have continued. All the evidence proves that Jared Loughner was mentally unstable and acted alone. He isn't the member of any group, a-political, and really lived in own self-made world. The attacks on the Right have grown to include possible legislation that would limit the 1st Amendment. You continually sight the use of metaphors and imagery as reasons for hostility and violence. Do any of you really think a metaphor leads someone to kill? If so then let's be sure to ban Shakespeare from schools, because it is full of violent metaphors and imagery. Didn't Shakespeare first coin the word 'assassination' in Macbeth? With your logic we should destroy all those wonderful words since we dare not use any words except for in their literal meaning.

Freedom of Speech is the 1st Amendment because it is the most important Amendment. Without it we have no voice or outlet for expression.

Thank You,

Bonnie

Summer Hiatus

After a wonderful Summer Hiatus, I am ready to get back to blogging. A break from all the political drama is sometimes nice for the soul. I hope you all had a nice summer and are getting ready for November.

- Bonnie