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 Talk about missing the mark! 

Granted, some polls are far better than others and many of them you simply cannot trust because they are skewed to make a person appear to be ahead or behind.  Such an example would be one of CBS fame that printed “0% of African Americans disapprove of Obama.”  The flaws are obvious given the very person alone currently writing this.  On the flip side of the coin are polls that just simply show what is on people’s minds and allow you to make what you want of them.  One such poll revealed some startling concerns of the American people in terms of their priorities.   As Obama Bashing becomes as much as a leisurely past time for many as does Bush Blaming for others, it becomes apparently clear that the Obama Bashing opportunities have been handed forth on a silver platter trimmed ornate gold.

The top three priorities for Americans this year are; strengthening the economy, improving the job situation and defending the US against terrorism.  Clearly the administration has done too little and many will even argue that they have failed because so much attention has paid to three other areas; the stimulus, health care reform and cap and trade legislature.  It is here is where they have missed the mark.

A year after the stimulus, the president is passing words on a spending freeze; something many of the best economists argue should have been done a year ago.  Blow after blow suffered by health care reform was met by steadfast Democratic determination to get it passed.  The ever echoing words of the president in regards to whether or not people want it have come to fruition.  In fact, the people “who want it” has dropped steadily since 2005!  (60, 59, 56, 54, 52 to 49% each year respectively ending in the 2010 survey of “providing health ins to the uninsured”).  Not only does the word “mandatory” begin to make sense since fewer each year were actually listing this as a top priority, it makes sense why the arguments and rhetoric behind it have become so intense.  The administration has insisted on an issue that was actually dead in the water before it started.  Because of this, they used everything from race baiting to emotive desires like “broken” and the “American Holocaust” to incite and interest that clearly was not there to begin with!

Picking up the tail end of American issues of priority was “dealing with global warming” at 28%.  As with its issue predecessor of wasted time and effort of providing insurance, it too dropped markedly over the course of the last several of years.  In 2007 38% of Americans identified this as a top issue and it steadily declined to 35, 30 and to 28 percent this year.  Perhaps this is because we suffered a severe winter making it difficult to support such allegations that man is warming the planet by driving too much, or even because Obama said his plan would “cause electricity prices to skyrocket.”  Then again it may be that people have been brought to remember a not so recent attempt of such cap and trade style taxation with the ever thinning ozone layer at the hands of our gluttonous ways only to discover it was mere cow farts.  Who knows and who cares?  The bottom line is that the Obama administration has sorely missed the mark of the concerns of the people despite the fact that the people’s interests in their (the administration’s) agenda has been decreasing over the past years.  Imagine if you would, where would we be today if the administration’s priorities were that of the people they are representatives of?

Of the bashings befallen Obama, the most consistent is that he is too self-centered to put the people’s agenda before that of his own.  An ego maniacal narcissist or not, at least half the accusation is completely true.   You simply cannot hit the mark if you are aiming at the wrong target!

If the stimulus were replaced with fiscal conservatism then instead of now, and the efforts on health care reform and cap and trade legislation would have been focused on the top the American issues of concern, Obama may not have hit the bull’s eye, but he would have at least been within the mark.

As we listen to rhetoric coming out of DC, it is not clear whether or not Obama actually gets it.  The mixed signals are everywhere from Obama stating on his radio address that health care pushes in the future will be harder and more focused, to him saying he has lost touch with his base.  Of concern is the fact that he feels he must get in front of the people more.  441 speeches in 2009 and he thinks getting in front of a teleprompter more frequently will aid this problem is only a testimony to narcissistic tendencies.  T he American people want the rubber to actually meet the road, not be told the rubber is going to.  We have heard that four hundred and forty one times with far too little to show for it.  Speaking about it 500 times in 2010 will literally be more of the same.

The spark is gone, the honeymoon long since over, and the president’s influence has proven to do more damage than good.  It’s not just the polls we are talking about, it is expectations.  The American people expected much because he told them much was to be delivered.  Then he kept telling and telling while the whole time the delivery van was going in a direction the American people felt was on an unneeded route to nowhere.

The Obama Promises Delivery Van is now stopped on the side of the road on a rural route with no American homes on it.  He has the map with the target destination on it; the question is… can he read it not?

This is a HUGE problem. Michael Barone has written an excellent in-depth article on this increasingly important issue and you can read it on Townhall.com, Mon Feb 8, 2010. I don’t wish to duplicate his work but I don’t think it can be stated strongly enough. These unions have to be brought under control before it is too late – and it is very late indeed. Public service is an exercise in searching for oxymorons. They serve not the public but themselves, and are in place only to perpetuate their own power and existence. They flourish at the expense of the private sector. Mr. Barone said very succinctly that the public sector unions are a PARASITE sucking the life out of the private sector.

Let me reprise: GOVERNMENT PRODUCES NOTHING! Fully seventy percent of all new jobs in this country come from small business. By and large, small businesses do not use private sector unions, though are not necessarily anti-union. Unions in this day and age accomplish little and obstruct much. Unions have destroyed productivity in this country. With their intransigent attitudes towards management they have forced development and manufacturing off-shore to more business friendly environments, leaving the unions to complain bitterly at the dearth of jobs. It’s akin to circling the wagons and firing inwards. They have forced prices higher, made the very companies that were feeding them unprofitable and forced many out of business.

The unholy alliance between the public service sector unions and the CROOKED and UNPRINCIPLED politicians who prop them up must be broken. Like the politicians, these unions have forgotten whom they serve and why.

Here in the ONCE magnificent state of California we have unions and union thuggery run amok. This State is a model for exactly what will happen at the federal government level. Unions have a death grip on the state. The unfunded liability for pension funds alone in the state of California is ONE HUNDRED THIRTY BILLION DOLLARS. To bring that figure into proportion, the State at present faces a budget shortfall of FORTY BILLION dollars.

In a sad parody of the Washington Democrat binge-spending, the insane and out of control California State Assembly is pushing a ridiculously unsustainable ’single payer’ health care system of their own, to the tune of TWO BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR. Is it any wonder that the citizens of this country are up in arms? The measure of our discontent is palpable in Washington, Sacramento and rest of the country. The people are on the march they are being heard… and they will be COUNTED next November.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

The Midas Touch. Very few people have it. Off the top of my head I think of: Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, and Phil Jackson. Wherever they go, and whatever they do, they succeed. Most people don’t. The first person I think of: Barack Obama. Following his meteoric climb to the presidency he has become political poison to nearly everything he has come into contact with.

The “Obama Touch” begain with the New Jersey Gubernatorial race. The President campaigned heavily for the Democratic incumbent John Corzine in a state that should have been a lock regardless of his cameo.  A deep-pocketed incumbent in a blue state that Obama won by 16% up against an underfunded Republican who didn’t even run a great campaign. But five appearances and a slew of quotes like “[Corzine] is one of the best partners I have in the White House” later, Democrats had lost the governor’s mansion.

Same story, same result in Massachusetts where Martha Coakley fell from a 17% lead in the polls to be defeated by an upstart Republican candidate. Obama was there as well, campaigning for Coakley when the race was a statistical dead heat, hoping his popularity would save the day in the land of Kennedy’s. It didn’t. By the time Obama left, Scott Brown had established a firm 9% lead over the Democrat.

He called the 19-0 Kentucky basketball team to congratulate them on their “Hoops for Haiti” program. They promptly lost. He made countless speeches and appearances to spread the word about health care reform. It’s looking more dead by the day. He wanted to pass a comprehensive energy and environmental reform bill. Then came “Climategate” and an ongoing investigation into the science of global warming. Tough year.

A new Gallup poll shows the depth of the Obama Touch,

Obama’s lowest job approval ratings come in the areas of healthcare policy, the economy, and the federal budget deficit, which coincidentally are the three issues he has devoted the most face-time to. To some degree, this is exactly as you would expect it. The President can be seen as devoting his popularity in an attempt to rally support for unpopular portions of his agenda. It wouldn’t make sense for him to expend all of his political capital to hammer home issues that people already agree with. But this would overlook a key point behind these latest poll numbers – almost all of them represent Obama’s lowest popularity on the issue since he became President.

The more he tries to sell health care, the more people refuse to buy into it:

The more he says he’s going to work to fix the economy, the less people believe him:

What the President and Congressional Democrats must understand is that it’s nothing personal. Although it certainly cannot be said that he has the Midas Touch, it is not Obama’s mere association that is dragging candidates and policies into the abyss. It’s that Obama’s attempts to emphasize an issue are acting to highlight the flaws in the Democrats plans. People learned that although health care reform sounds great, any attempt that fails to bend the cost-curve is kinda pointless. People figured out that Obama’s plan to fix the economy, well…wait, what is Obama’s plan to fix the economy?

The Obama Touch, anything he touches suffers an immediate drop in approval ratings. But it’s a curable disease. Step 1: under-promise and over-deliver. Step 2: consult with Republicans – they have ideas that will surprise you. Step 3: align your policy goals with the public – i.e. GET MOVING ON THE ECONOMY!

- Brandon Greife, Political Director of the College Republican National Committee

Be wary… be very wary. There are a number of gutless Republicans who would like nothing better than to be thought of as ‘reaching across the aisle’ to find some sort of accommodation with the White House, so as not to be seen as the ‘party of no’. Any Republican who thinks that this may be a good idea has missed the entire message of the Conservative Republican revolution and the Tea Party movement.

Obama’s sudden ‘willingness’ to work with Republicans in a bi-partisan effort to resurrect health care from the legislative trash pile where it resides now, and deservedly so, should be viewed with extreme caution. An old Texas cowboy I was once with on a mining venture  told me, “Son, when you’ve got a rattler in the high grass around camp, you’d best know where it is and that it bites”.

The message we sent to the administration, both the Democrats AND Republicans in Congress, was NOT that we wished that benighted health care legislation to be repaired, ‘fixed’ or otherwise incremented into law. The message we sent, are sending, and will continue to send, is that we want nothing to do with Obama’s monstrosity at all. The Republicans who have been insisting that the entire stinking mess be scrapped and that we need to start over from scratch need to stick to their guns. What is wrong with health care is not our medical health system. American medicine is the finest in the world.

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams - Pleased To Receive Treatment In The United States.

Single payer disconnect: What does a Prime Minister of Newfoundland, a province of Canada, one of the left’s oft-lauded examples of the glories of single-payer health care, do when he is in need of heart surgery? Does he turn to the Canadian Health Service? NOT ON YOUR LIFE! Rather not on HIS life. He came here to the United States for his medical care as do people from all over the world. Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams is very glad it was here for him. Can anyone guess why he didn’t trust his life to the CHS? Could it be the SIX MONTHS TO A YEAR wait for a surgeon or the inadequate care? You bet it was! This is what Obama the radical ideologue and his cronies want for you.

What’s wrong with our health care system can be summed up in one word… GOVERNMENT. It’s government interference on every level. It’s lawmakers who have permitted and abetted the trial lawyers who have driven the cost of practicing medicine through the roof. Added to the government mandated and price fixed medical entitlements, it is a recipe for disaster. The straw men that the left loves to throw out there are the big bad insurance companies. Insurance companies have their issues but they are for-profit companies responsible to their shareholders. By and large they serve their policy holders well. They are also victims of the runaway trial lawyers and the MASSIVE interference of the government.

The Republicans in Congress would be well advised to stand firm. BE the party of NO. That’s exactly what we are calling on you to do. Take the message of the Tea Party Convention to heart. There can be no accommodation or deal making with a radical ideologically driven government. You can’t stand for it… WE WON’T stand for it.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

How far would Barack Obama and his administration go in order to gin up support/panic for his signature health care legislation? If you’ll remember, the grandstanding and informational blitz for the ‘UPCOMING’ H1N1 started back around January and February of last year. The Democrats were shouting from the roof tops that “THE PANDEMIC IS COMING, THE PANDEMIC IS COMING”. We HAD to have health care passed right now! Sounded an awful lot like the bleating that was going on with the ’stimulus’ didn’t it? We absolutely, positively had to have it or the banks would collapse. Wall Street would fold up and go home and the economy would collapse.

As such things usually do in the light of sober reflection, it is apparent that we would have been SO much better off had we simply allowed the banks, the investment houses and the auto manufacturers to fail and go into bankruptcy, which is precisely why the bankruptcy laws had been written into the Constitution in the first place. The market place would have adjusted, reorganizations and bankruptcy courts would have adjudicated and the void would have been filled, because nature abhors a vacuum.

As it was, we allowed the ‘leaders’ who had us dead in their sights, with SAP written all over us, to panic the country into the MASSIVE PORK FEED that is the stimulus and every single ancillary piece of paper that has come out of Washington remotely associated with it. Keep in mind that many of these so called leaders are the very ones who knowingly fostered and promoted the very factors that created the situation to start with.

In any given year in this country there will be approximately 36,000 deaths from influenza (CDC figure). In any given year world-wide there are between 250,000 to 500,000 deaths from influenza. If you add up all the space given to the ‘approaching’ pandemic, in the shameless and cowardly effort to promote the THEFT of our freedoms through these scare tactics, it would come to tens of thousands of column inches.

Pandemic FACT. To this date a total of 14,286 deaths have been attributed to the H1N1 virus WORLD WIDE. There are approximately 43,000 deaths caused by auto accidents every year in this country alone. Seen in this light it’s sort of like the PANDEMIC that wasn’t, promoted by the presidency that ISN’T.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

 Finally found one person that could run the country. Lynn Tilton is a turn around specialist, much like Alan Mulally of Ford. She handles 6 billion dollars of assets.

YouTube - Lynn Tilton at the National Press Club (Oct 15, 2009) Part 1

YouTube - Lynn Tilton at the National Press Club (Oct 15, 2009) Part 2

YouTube - Lynn Tilton at the National Press Club (Oct 15, 2009) Part 3

Like every thing else about this Obama Presidency and administration, nothing is straight forward. It’s always a conjuration of smoke and mirrors. It’s just like Rush Limbaugh used to say about the Clinton administration, “These people get out of bed in the morning saying to themselves, ‘HOW CAN WE FOOL THEM TODAY?’ “

Fact is, it’s getting a lot harder to do. The leftists can no longer depend on calling up the same old reliable chimera time after time to bend issues and opinion to their will. Some of their favorite issues just aren’t playing like they used to and in a strange case of role reversal they just don’t seem to grasp what’s happened to them.

'Seasonally Adjusted' Unemployment Variance.

The unemployment figures are a good example. After shouting to the heavens that if we passed his 787 BILLION DOLLAR stimulus, unemployment rates would not go above 8%. Well, billions and billions of absolutely wasted dollars later we have 10.1% unemployment, which has magically gone down to 9.7% despite the government’s own ‘adjusted’ figures for last year, showing an increase of unemployment from about 7.5 million jobs lost during this recession to EIGHT POINT FOUR MILLION. Jobs lost in December were revised from 85,000 to ONE HUNDRED FIFTY THOUSAND.

Umm, 9.7% ? Ok, if you say so. But then Obama is desperate and grasping for anything that will make his DISASTROUS Presidency just a little less catastrophic. He was forced to admit that his grandiose attempted RIP-OFF of ONE SIXTH of our total economy and the virtual enslavement of the people of this country is a failure. It was the pillar on which the rest of his Marxist dreams resided, ie: CAP and TAX, though we have to somehow prevent the EPA from passing it piecemeal through regulatory fiat. A Republican majority would do well to DEFUND AND DISMANTLE THE EPA!

Then there is that perennial Democrat dream of amnesty for about 20 MILLION ILLEGAL ALIENS residing in this country, burdening our tax systems and our citizens to say nothing of our national security. It’s too bad for Obama that Americans are so stubborn and so wedded to our freedoms that his promised socialist nirvana had no appeal, except to the permanently disaffected ten or so percent that is present in virtually any society.

Add to that the change that was brought about by the information technology revolution of which this column is part and as they say, the rest is/will be history. The battle is not yet won… in point of fact it has barely begun. But there is a clear path we as Conservatives have to follow to ensure that our country never again comes this close to allowing a totalitarian regime to gain power here.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Retard-gate is growing, apparently, and it's coming to the Connecticut Senate race over the mistreatment of a developmentally disabled wrestling character that Senate candidate Linda McMahon's entertainment company created in 2004.

For those of you unaware, wrestling queen Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, is running for the Senate in Connecticut against conservative Rob Simmons.

As it happens, starting in 2004 McMahon's wrestling shows once featured what was presented as a mentally handicapped wrestler who was stage named "Eugene." Through the course of this character’s story arc he was savagely beaten in a "cage match," and was regularly verbally abused by other characters.

For her part, McMahon claims that the character was written as a "hero" that was supposed to inspire "other people with disabilities to strive to achieve their dreams."

However, McMahon's opponent Rob Simmons begs to differ. He thinks that the wrestling show mistreated what was presented as a developmentally disabled adult and used him as the butt of jokes. Simmons is calling for McMahon to be held to account for using the developmentally disabled story line.

Simmons might also have an even stronger case, though, if he focuses on the facts surrounding the "Eugene" character. The truth is, the man that played the character, Nicholas Dinsmore, is not developmentally disabled at all. He is just another actor involved in the wrestling scene.

So, not only did McMahon make a character based on a mentally handicapped person, she didn't even hire one to do the job! If someone wants to get outraged at the portrayal of a mentally retarded person as a fool, as a joke, and as someone that gets savagely beaten, I'd think that this "Eugene" character is ripe for causing outrage.

This wrestling character makes the off-the-cuff remark by Rahm Emanuel, the presidential advisor who called the strategy ideas he heard offered by his fellow Democrats a bunch of "f---ing retarded" ideas, seem mild. Compared to the treatment of the mentally disabled that McMahon perpetrated in her wrestling shows, saying something was “f---ing retarded” is nothing.

So, if everyone can get all upset over Emanuel's goofy comment, what will they do when they see that McMahon's shows had a "retard" being regularly beaten to a pulp and laughed at?

This could liven up the Connecticut race, for sure.

This isn't the last time that McMahon has courted controversy in this race, either. She came on strong early in the race claiming to be the prefect example of the conservative candidate. But it soon came to light that during her years as a wrestling magnate she gave lots of political donations to Democrats. In fact, speaking of Rahm Emanuel, he was one of the Democrats to which McMahon donated campaign cash.

I guess those bashers of the "retarded" like to stick together!

For your edification, here is a video of wrestler "Tripple H" beating "Eugene" senseless.

Also in the Connecticut Senate race... and who knows why... is one Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, Inc. and former adviser to Ron Paul. This guy can't get higher than 5% in the polls, though, so it's a wonder that he's not yet quit the race.

One of the many sites on which this column is posted is/was Political Cortex. In the beginning we were on half a dozen or so sites and Political Cortex was one of them. It really sort of surprised me given the decidedly left-leaning bent of most of the articles and comments on their site. Wonderful I thought. A leftie site that is fair enough to accept other points of view and said as much to Dee, who at that time was my helper, as I’m absolutely thick when it comes to IT stuff. The IT staff at work see me coming and they run shrieking from the building.

Since then, Dee’s roll has expanded to encompass everything that makes this site successful. It’s a lot of hard work and she does it very well and with unfailing good cheer and humor. I used to bookmark the sites we are on until they filled the page and obscured the screen. I’m not sure even now exactly how many we are on because we’re being picked up by news outlets and blog sites around the globe.

I have YOU, the reader and lovers of freedom everywhere, to thank for that and am grateful and humbled by it every day. The United States has always represented a beacon of freedom for all peoples and I believe there is a yearning for freedom that exists in the heart of every human being no matter how severely repressed or oppressed they may be.

Today I got a note from Dee that our column for Wednesday 2/3/10 had disappeared from Political Cortex along with every single archived article of ours on the site going back to September 25, 2009. Inquiries to Political Cortex administration by Dee were met by silence… sort of like calling your Democrat member of Congress. A little tongue in cheek there, but I couldn’t resist.

Short Subject

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s their site and they can do with it as they choose. However, articles of mine have been picked up off of their site and FEATURED by news outlets and blogs around the world. It was obviously an asset to their circulation and helped us in getting the message out. Let’s face it, the loss of one site is not going to affect what we do one iota. We add new sites virtually on a daily basis.

What was behind Political Cortex’s action bears a little exploration. My editor has suggested three possibilities: a.The editors or staff at Political Cortex took so much heat from other contributors that they felt they had to cancel us. b.They took heat from outside sources (other left wing blogs or organizations) and felt like they had to respond. c.Interference from the administration.

I’ve stated that I don’t have a lot of patience with conspiracy theory, so I think that administration interference is unlikely. I don’t think their reach is that long yet and they have their hands full with an Obama Presidency that’s falling apart around their ears and a Democrat Congress and agenda that is imploding.

POLITICAL CORTEX’S action is sadly so very typical of the left’s inability to tolerate any views but their own. This column is, and remains, solidly Conservative in its views and opinions. Our mission continues to be to cast the light of truth and freedom in the defense of our Republic. God love you all, and God bless America!

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2010

Many who supported Senator McCain during his presidential run would have liked to see the features now present at the newly revamped John McCain Dot Com present on his old dark presidential candidate version of John McCain Dot Com, but hey, better late than never. Today the new and improved John McCain.com was launched with the following message...

We are proud to announce our brand new website for the 2010 campaign. This is the place to come for everything you want to know about what Senator McCain is doing, what the issues are that matter to you, and what others are saying as well.

JohnMcCain.com Re-Launched