The fix is In

Falling like the staccato drumbeat of a pouring rain, the day-by-day assault by the ruling Progressives on the traditions and sensibilities of America has the no-longer-silent majority reeling. We were warned. The watchmen on the walls Buchanan, Limbaugh, Beck and others told us what was coming. They tried to alert those willing to vote for an untried community organizer because they wanted change that the change would change once the organizer got organized, so none of these transformative changes should surprise anyone. Obama the candidate told us what Obama the president would do. He said he wanted to be a transformative president. He told us his administration would be all about fundamentally transforming America. But it seems not many of the people who hoped for change were listening except to the hope and change part.
Today many of these erstwhile supporters, the casual voters who tune in for the last week of the race and then decide who to vote for based on emotion and those who even vote for the same party their father voted for, are beginning to wake up. They’re beginning to see the sheer drop of the cliff we’re being driven over. Suddenly the scales are falling off eyes and they see the emperor has no clothes. The Progressives are being exposed for the corporatists and statists they’ve always been. These Rip Van Winkle voters are now saying, “We were fooled” and “We didn’t know.” But they were warned. They just didn’t listen. Which makes one wonder, when they’re warned now about how bad this transformation is going to get, what are they hearing?
The Progressives long pursued dream of having the power and authority to implement their cherished Cloward-Piven Strategy to collapse the economy is coming into focus as America watches in stunned horror. It’s so hard to believe anyone really wants to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. The free American economy has created more wealth and spread it farther and faster than anything else in history. A key to the Progressive’s plan to re-boot the system and impose their command economy is the destruction of our capitalist system. When General Cornwallis marched out of Yorktown his regimental band played “The World Turned Upside Down.” Perhaps this should be the dirge of the mourners for Mom, apple pie, and the American Way?
The 60s radicals who marched in the streets waving Viet Cong flags, burning draft cards and calling licentious living free love have become the establishment. The silent majority has become the peaceful protesters who want their country back. Political correctness censors free speech in the name of free speech. Government mandated racial quotas enforce the most rigid racism since Jim Crow in the name of fairness. We apologize for our past, bow to foreign leaders of the present and look forward to a future where China not the United States is the engine that drives the world economy. Is that the change we were hoping for?
George the Second abandoned free market principles to save the free market throwing a TARP over the biggest boondoggle in history starting the serial hand-out binge the shills now call the Government Bailout Era. The bursting of the housing bubble caused the economy to almost come to a halt. Listening to his Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel to “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” President Obama set about fixing everything that was broken, or was that breaking everything he thought needed fixing?
First he fixed the economy as a whole with what he and his Progressive cohorts call the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Subsequently many others call this bill the bailout for Democrat campaign contributors. Then President Obama fixed the health care system assuring us there would be no rationing, costs would go down, and the federal government would never fund abortion. Once again the bill was thousands of pages long, and no-one had a chance to read it before it passed since as Speaker Pelosi told us “We have to pass it so you can learn what’s in it.” Or Representative John Conyers who laughingly said, "I love these members that get up and say, 'Read the bill!' Well, what good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you've read the bill?" Now we learn it must of course include rationing, of course it means costs will go up and it will fund abortions. But at least now it’s fixed. The Dodd-Frank team of congressional slight-of-hand artists handed President Obama the Financial Reform bill, which we are assured will fix the Banking system except for Fannie and Freddie which are exempt. This bill too is thousands of pages long. No one has had a chance to read it. Senator Dodd has had his chance at the microphone to tell us, “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.” How could this go wrong? This sets up thousands of bureaucrats to stand on the throat of the financial industry, but at least it’s fixed.
And that’s not all. We’re told every day the energy industry is broken. That fix is on the way. Representative Waxman, the chairman of the committee writing the coming cap-n-trade tax bill, admitted he didn’t know what was in the bill. As an in-your-face demonstration of power, he hired a speed reader to read his bill for those upset, because he wants to pass a bill that would make energy costs sky-rocket without reading it. Be assured more fixes are coming. If we get one more free election the Democrat party will pay for what they’ve done. But before the door closes on these fixers they will fix America until it’s so broken all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put America back together again.
The never-ending crises haven’t been wasted and everything is being fixed or, as we used to say in Chicago the fix is in.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College and History for the American Public University System. http://drrobertowens.com © 2010 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net

Return of the Swamp Creature

When the San Francisco über liberal Nancy Pelosi became the Speaker of the House she said she was going to drain the swamp of political corruption they claimed were created by 12 years of Republican control of Congress. Instead of draining anything Speaker Pelosi and her ham-fisted cohorts have brought slime time to prime time as they wallow in what they came to drain.
Representative Charles Rangel who’s been in charge of writing tax policies for the Democratic Congress couldn’t seem to pay his own taxes or even report millions of dollars of income. This of course is everyone else’s fault. He has been forced to resign as chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Then there’s the curious case of the Democrat Representative from New York who eagerly resigned rather than face an ethics investigation and then imploded on national television. Now the question turns to what did the Speaker know and when did she know it. Allegations have surfaced that her office was informed last year about Congressman Massa’s tickle parties and Greco-Roman wrestling matches with male staffers but did not inform the ethics committee.
And the rot goes all the way to the top. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee charges the Obama administration may have broken the law by offering Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) a job if he wouldn’t challenge Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) in a primary. Rep. Sestak admits the administration offered him a high-ranking government job if he’d stay out of the race. Rep. Sestak made the accusation twice on national television. Democrats seem determined to prove Lord Acton’s famous quote, "All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Where will this cavalcade of corruption lead? Detroit is a picture of America’s future. After decades of control by Progressive Democrats what was once one of the greatest manufacturing cities in the world has degenerated to the point where banks are paying people to take abandoned houses and the best idea they have is to downsize the city by converting empty lots into farmland. With a 75% dropout rate in their schools and yes, Virginia, blatant corruption and low morals in high places, a collapsing economy and massive social dislocation Detroit is a vision for the shabby world Progressivism creates.
When Detroiters lined up to collect what they called Obama Money they couldn’t tell interviewers where the money they were waiting to receive came from all they knew was it was free, and someone was handing it out. This is where Nancy and her ethically challenged followers are leading America, a world where some people are bilked so others can receive freebees that never raise them out of poverty but instead encase them in it.
Is this shabby future inevitable? Is there any chance of avoiding the toxic embrace of this corrupt Swamp Creature? One more free election, one without the heavily Democrat illegal immigrant and convicted felon population voting and without His Honor Mayor Daley and Acorn counting the votes and we’ll see America hand the Pelosi-Reid super majority their hat and show them the door. That will be the greatest victory for America since Saratoga and Yorktown. But what about the dreaded ever-living spawn of the Swamp Thing?
The damage that can be done before we show this crowd of Progressives to the back benches may hang on like a summer cold. Health Care Reform with thousands of pages of governmentese double-speak has the potential to become the pile of paper that devoured a nation. No entitlement once established has ever been repealed, and since we aren’t allowed to know what’s in it until it passes who knows what anti-freedom anti-liberty provisions it will foist on us. Cap-N-Tax cobbled together with various bits of legislation, executive orders and bureaucratic regulation may lurch off the table and start pushing us towards seven dollar a gallon gas and the dislocations this would bring all in the name of discredited Al and his band of unethical cheating scientists. Millions of acres of potentially rich energy producing land may be seized and forever locked in the Fed’s clinging claw while NASA is slated to become the eye-in-the-sky for the man-made Global Warming fanatics. There’s the international apology tours and We Are the World/Workers of the World Unite silliness that are daily depreciating the American brand. And the hockey stick curve that represents our national debt will weigh down generations of Americans.
The damage the Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate causes before we drain their swamp will hang like a mill stone around the neck of our nation. It will take more than a stake of holly or a silver bullet to bring these Progressive policies down. It will take a populace educated in the founding documents of our Republic. A people determined to re-establish the last best hope of mankind. A people dedicated to resuscitating a nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. It will take citizens resolved that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College and History for the American Public University System. http://drrobertowens.com © 2010 Robert R. Owens dr.owens@comcast.net