How Obama's Stimulus Driven Road To Recovery Affects Japan's Recovery

Disasters always call for charity. Whether it's a hurricane in Louisiana or Florida, fires in California, terrorist attacks in New York, or disasters in Haiti and Japan. Every time some form of a major tragedy strikes we are all called upon to assist in the relief efforts. While there has been much reaching out with aid to Japan due to the recent earthquake and tsunami there has been criticism to a point as how it's not as much as it should be. Not even matching the relief efforts in Haiti despite the fact that the devastation is far worse. I'd like to address that by tying together a few things.

We often hear about the road to recovery that we are supposedly on by this administration and it's supporters. We hear talk about this "jobless recovery" and the excuse that jobs are a lagging indicator that come later. The economy always affects charity on a personal level. If you feel confident and secure in the economy, if you have a stable job and are making enough money to have a decent amount of disposable income than you are more likely to give to charity. The lack of charity towards Japan as compared to disasters of recent years is telling not of what we think of the Japanese disasters scope but rather how we think about our own economy and personal security economically.

Our own families have to come first and there's nothing surprising about that. So many Americans have found themselves struggling to get by and provide for their own families that it is in many cases impossible to be very charitable. Maybe this will shine a light on the fact that we need more jobs and more confidence in order to be more charitable. No more talk about extended unemployment, denial of a failed stimulus, or a trillion dollar health care program that is guaranteed to worsen our health care system at a greater cost to each of us.

Many of us have been consistent in our refusal to support failed economic policies such as the Bush TARP bank bailouts, and the Bush and Obama failed stimulus spending policies but I'd like you to think about this.

Stimulus, Bush's was over $700 billion dollars and the TARP, (Troubled Asset Relief Program), bank bailout added to it made an easy trillion. Then we get Obama who passes his own stimulus, ($787 billion tied to an additional $410 billion earmark filled omnibus bill), that's over a trillion dollars again. Hundreds of billions to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac while doing little for the homeowners who pay their mortgages to those two government entities. Next comes the socialist health care program, that could be another trillion when all is said and done.

Auto maker bailouts, union bailouts, extended unemployment, and on and on and on. Our debt has now exploded to over $14 trillion dollars and increases to the tune of billions of dollars a day. Now, what does that have to do with the disaster in Japan?

Most of us are aware that stimulus only made things worse and did jack in terms of fixing the economy. Imagine if we hadn't spent all of that money and think of how much more money that would have given us for disaster relief in Japan. To date we've given I believe roughly $65 billion in aid to Japan......that's nothing. Look at the figures I provided you regarding all of the bailouts. $65 billion is a pathetic joke considering how much our government has been willing to waste, (oops I mean spend), on dismal failing Keynesian economic policies.

Our failing economic policies and wasteful government spending, as well as our high unemployment have caused us to be unable to assist with charitable donation as must as we usually do. I do, however, want to give you something to ponder. Taking the kids to a fast food restaurant can easily cost $30. Buying a new DVD movie is an easy $20. A new video game tends to run $60. Going to the movies, grabbing a coffee or muffin every day is a good $10 to $20 a week. How many of these things do you regularly do?

There are over 300 million people in this country. If a measly $10 per person were donated, (a family of 5 gives $50 for example), to the Red Cross for efforts in Japan, that would be an additional $3 billion dollars for relief. If you can give more, and many of us probably can, then we would generate a massive amount of money very quickly. Even if Obama doesn't realize how tough this economy is for many of us we do realize it. Hopefully everyone who reads this will think about it the next time they order a pizza or grab a coffee.

It's easy to criticize other people, especially the rich, about how they spend their money but perhaps it's time for each of us to take a quick look in the mirror and ask ourselves what we're doing to help other than running our mouths.

Even my own charitable donations have been scaled back in comparison to recent years yet I still sponsor a few feed the children kids, donate to the DAV (Disabled American Veterans), and the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars). As well as give a little money to the church each week, (and the church is regularly helping shelter the homeless). I tell you this not to make myself look good, simply to prove a point that there are those on the left who would consider me evil and selfish because I'm a Conservative. Maybe instead of criticizing others it's time to look in that mirror and sincerely ask yourself:

What am I really doing to help others?

I hope I've got you thinking about that with this post.

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What STRATEGIC Means and the Next Test Of The UN, (Useless Nations)

Tragedy seems to come at us through the news fast and furious these days. The most recent of course being the earthquake that just rocked Japan, 5th largest ever recorded, and my thoughts and prayers are with the Japanese people as they work to overcome this tragedy. It's amazing how nature can instantly create a tragedy that dwarfs things like 9/11. While as of yet we aren't sure how many people have died in this tragedy you can bet it'll be much more than the 3,000 lost on 9/11. Not to mention the damage to infrastructure and the potential for nuclear meltdown at several nuclear power plants in Japan.

I'm not going to criticize President Obama on his response to this as of yet because there was no warning of this tragedy and we have yet to see how our response will play out. I am, in fact, going to be watching with much more criticism the United Nations, (useless nations as I regularly refer to them).

After all, the UN owes Japan. Did you know that Japan is the #2 funder of the United Nations overall budget behind only the U.S? In light of the tragedy currently facing Japan the UN is expected to spring into action with relief. I'm not going to be overly critical as of yet being that it's still to early to judge results. That will take some time.

The UN's blind-eye pacifism isn't all that successful with preventing human rights violations or armed conflict but perhaps disaster relief is one area where they can step up and actually salvage some pride with success. We'll find out soon enough.

Putting all that aside I'd like to discuss another issue, oil prices and the U.S. strategic oil reserve. Oil prices fell due to the tragedy in Japan for the moment only because the country isn't in dire need of oil at the moment, it's in need of humanitarian and disaster relief at the moment. The situation is rather awkward but it does reflect a short term decline in demand and thus a decline in the price. It won't matter to most of us as the price at the pump isn't going to go down since this is a short term market fluctuation based on the rare circumstances of a large scale natural disaster.

President Obama has begun talking about tapping the strategic oil reserve if needed in order to help with gas prices. That isn't an energy policy and it would do little to help with gas prices. I criticized it when President Bush proposed it as well back in 2008. It seems that in light of rising prices presidents are so quick to start talking about the strategic oil reserve as some magic energy fix.

Perhaps you should look at the name. It's called the STRATEGIC Oil Reserve, keyword being strategic. It's not intended to save you .10 a gallon at the pumps when gas is $4.00. It's an emergency backup supply in the event that we are cut off from Mideast oil. It's a resource that we could tap into in the event of a worldwide supply crisis while we transition into vastly more domestic supply that would be necessary in the event of being cut off from mid-east oil.

President Obama used a typical left-wing energy lie in his talking points and American Solutions exposed it. Obama said:

“We can’t place our long-term bets on a finite resource that we only control 2 percent of,” Obama added, referring to the U.S. share of global oil reserves. The U.S. consumes more than a quarter of worldwide production, he said.

Let's look at the facts about energy for once. Since the left-wing of the political spectrum are so dedicated to a policy of proven failure in "green energy" and green jobs.

More and more Americans are no longer falling for the lies from the left when it comes to energy. The higher gas prices climb, the more devastating the economy feels to individuals on a personal level. You can't talk recovery to someone bringing home $400 a week and spending $100 a week on gas.

Relying on the strategic reserve is anything but a sound strategy. Relying on domestic energy production as opposed to reserves is a real energy plan. It's time for plan D....drill, baby, drill.

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The Constitution Matters To President Obama....Sometimes and Can The Socialists Handle Socialism?

So a lot has been going on in the time since my last post sometimes it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with this. President Obama has decided to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act.

"Holder wrote that the president has instructed government lawyers to no longer defend the law in those two lawsuits.

However, administration officials pledged to continue to enforce the law, which remains in effect unless Congress repeals it or a court strikes it down."

So, a lower court decides that the Defense of Marriage Act, (signed into law by that evil Conservative President Bill Clinton), is unconstitutional and Obama agrees so he decides to stop defending the law. Wait a minute.......

Didn't a lower court also declare that the individual mandate in the President's health care law unconstitutional? Look, it's simple, questions about the constitutionality of laws should head straight to the U.S. Supreme Court. Why waste countless hours and millions of dollars watching decisions like these float through various courts when we know that regardless of the outcome it will be appealed by the losing side only leading to a lengthier and more expensive process?

The U.S. Constitution serves as the blueprint for how our government should act. The problem is that we have so many lawmakers who try and twist and spin various "interpretations" of the U.S. Constitution in order to pretend that somehow the agenda they are pushing is backed by the Constitution. The various expanses of government authority and power, especially under President Obama, have absolutely no basis with the U.S. Constitution. For the most part lawmakers know this so they have to convince the public that it's a necessary step for government to act in our interest.

Whether it's stimulus or health care, housing or education, it seems the more government involvement there is the worse the situation becomes. Yet the answer being constantly fed to us by government officials, unions, professors, and many others is that more government is necessary. In fact, it's more government that has expanded most of these problems and it's the more government answer that is causing these problems to get worse instead of better. It's hard to get more government involvement than you get with Socialism and that's where we head next.

We have all of these left-wing groups pushing for socialism in America, sometimes they decide to call it other things like social justice or state capitalism but policies are socialist nonetheless. We have kids in school, from grade school to college being taught that socialism is great and works out fairly for everyone. No greedy heads of corporations making money on the backs of the people etc. It's funny that we have so many people who've never actually lived under socialism talking about how great it is. If you ask them to name one socialist nation that has had more prosperous people than the U.S. throughout history and none of them can do it. Yet they still blindly believe that somehow socialism will yield different results if we adopt it here.

Advocates for socialism in America believe that a few greedy, rich businessmen in America control all of the money and get that way by screwing over the people who work under them. Yet, these same socialists believe that giving almost total control of our economy and country to a few high ranking politicians will yield better results. I find that manner of thinking not only ignorant, but irrational. Do you really think that the businesses that we work and shop at are more disconnected from the average person than the politicians?

They show up at campaign rallies, (paid for by special interests), make promises they know they can't keep in order to make us feel good, and then when it doesn't work out they point fingers and make excuses as to why it's not their fault that it didn't work out how they planned. It's no longer about why you should elect them so much as why you shouldn't elect the other guy.

Take President Obama for example. He got elected promising hope and change. He was giving great speeches. He inspired people with his great campaign speeches. He did have a gift for giving people hope. The problem is that hope entails believing in something before actual results. For example, you hope something will work out, but hoping means that you aren't sure if it will actually work out. Therefore, the other side of hope means facing the realities of results.

We already have plenty of socialist programs and we've had many of them for a long time. Subsidized housing, food stamps, welfare, even social security. They could all be considered socialist policies. Guaranteed housing, guaranteed food, guaranteed income, (that applies to both welfare and social security). How are those programs working out? The housing market crashed, more people are now on food stamps than ever before in the programs history, welfare is treated like a lifestyle, and social security is headed for complete financial collapse.

I'd like to know what evidence the socialist propagandists are pointing to that gives them the belief that socialism will work in America. Every socialist-type program America has ever adopted has only led to an increase in the problem the program was intended to fix. Isn't the saying, "good intentions pave the way to hell". Every single one of these socialist programs was sold to us with good intentions, whether it's taking care of the poor, or the sick (as in health care), or the old, etc. Yet every one of those programs have only left the people it was intended to help worse of and left everyone else with the burden of supporting those programs financially.

Deny it if you want to but I'd really like to know how it's even debatable. Why do you think the socialist and communist groups are so interested in teaching the youth? Young people are the easiest to influence. If you've spent your entire life learning how great something is, like socialism, then it's incredibly difficult to get you to realize the lie you've been led to believe. That is why they need the young in America, who've never lived under full blown socialism, to believe that it's so great. The unions are largely socialist in the way they work and negotiate yet they are falling apart and dragging entire states and therefore the entire country down with them. Yet they are still trying to convince you that socialism would be wonderful for the U.S.

We are now in the 3rd year of President Obama's presidency and what has he got to show for it? The re-election campaign will be in full gear very soon and what can he say to justify another term? Hope? Change? Do you still think of that when you see him speak? Do you still feel hopeful with the course we are taking as a nation? Do you really think we've changed for the better?

If you think life is so unfair in this country, (life isn't fair....deal with it), how can you expect to make it under socialism? Maybe it's time for the young socialist in this country to ask themselves that question. You won't have money or prosperity under Socialism. Life would be a lot less fair for you as well as everyone else. Political leaders rarely make good on campaign political promises, how can you expect them to make socialism into a prosperous model for growth within this country. We've tried tidbits of socialism plenty of times in this country, from FDR, to Bush, to Obama and where has it taken us. The lie has been exposed and the game is over. It's time to wake up.

I've said it before, socialism will leave us all equal in poverty, not prosperity. Those who we've given all of the power to and who are well connected to those people will poorly micromanage our entire lives. The rest of us who don't have a seat at that table will be forced to take whatever scraps they are willing to throw us. That is the reality of socialism. That is not freedom. That is most certainly not the American dream. Socialism for most of us will instead be the American nightmare.

Never forget the fact that Socialism is also very difficult to get rid of once you have it. Just look at how hard it is to reform the various social programs we already have. Social security, welfare, housing, food stamps, look what happens when you push for reforming these broken systems despite the fact that everyone knows they are broken. If we adopted total socialism and it didn't exactly work out how those who embrace it say it will how difficult do you think it would be to get rid of?

The saying goes that you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Maybe it's time for people to take a serious look at what so many, from the teachers to the students, from the politicians to the public, are willing to trade our system for. It's easy to sell socialism to a bunch of people who've never lived under it before. It's not so easy to get rid of socialism when it doesn't work and you live under it.

I'd like to return to America: land of the free, before we fully become Socialist America: land of the freeloader. We must take these points seriously and really think about it. By all means debate your beliefs and stand for something. Just make sure you know what you stand for and why. If you claim to want socialism in America then make sure you understand the realities of socialism and what it has historically led to in the past. Don't be a socialist because you think it's "cool" or fair. After all, as we grow up we learn that most of the cool things we did as kids proved to be some of our biggest mistakes. Most people know that to be true.

The difference is that most mistakes we make set us back as individuals. Whether it's drugs or alcohol, laziness or craziness. Many adults know that the mistakes taught us valuable life lessons and led us to better decisions in the future. The mistakes being made by the socialists in this country will set us all back as a country rather than being held back individually due to your own choices. How can you call that a system that's more fair?

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