Nothing to Lose

With very little more than one week left in his term of office, I am still among the thirty percent of voters who trust President George W. Bush.

I can speak only for myself. We are a nation of individuals, and for myself I can only say my support has been nearly “Good to the Last Drop.”

This trust began to waver, finally, only during these past months,.

As hated as Richard Nixon was by the Left before 1969 The Washington Post's legendary political cartoonist Herbert Block, famous since 1952 for highlighting the new president’s “Five O’clock shadow” before Inaugural Day that year drew an empty barber’s chair with a note attached that read, “the proprietor gladly offers every new President a clean shave.”

So it is with Barack Obama, who could not support last November because of his honesty, oddly enough, his clearly stated intention to swell the federal government further into the lives of every American. It was easy for me to vote for John McCain though I was denied a choice in his nomination because I live in North Carolina- because Senator McCain said he supported policies that would make Washington less of the parasite that it has become.

I now admit John McCain spoke less honestly about his intentions than Barack Obama. I have to admit, Barack Obama was honest during the campaign about his belief in a greater role for Washington in our lives. So his honesty cost him my vote.

As often as President Bush spoke of reducing government, the result was different.

Both the Hard Left and Soft Statists have had their candidates, but, as it turns out, Conservatives have really had no one to support for president since 1984, the first year I voted for a Republican president. This year the True Believer-Leftist had an honest candidate, one unashamed to be perceived as a Crypto-Socialist, perhaps for the first such nominee of one of the competitive political Partys in American history. Whether this honesty about his political philosophy aided his victory we can't yet tell.

Nevertheless, The rise of Barack Obama to the presidency has the folks in my community very apprehensive, perhaps more than is proper, I will allow. Personally, I am very apprehensive about the beginning his presidency for some starkly simple reasons that are very easy to understand.

Going into a recession that was a direct result of a spike in gasoline prices and an earlier outright refusal by Congress (both Democrat and Republican) to reign in federally-subsidized mortgage lending has been met with insanity, disturbingly encouraged by President Bush. After at least three strong warnings, in the end he decided to help the Democrat Majority in Congress in co-signing a $700 Billion “bailout” of a home lending industry made cash poor by federal policy; a bailout paid by a promise of future performance of the American Economy and we the taxpayers.

Lately, frozen in my mind, is that astounding remembrance of President Bush standing in the Rose Garden telling us that Republican efforts to block this stunning and deliberate weakening of the American economy (with the Treasury Secretary as an Unchallengeable Trustee) would mean the end of the world.

With mere weeks left in his term of office, it meant my trust in the character of George W. Bush was finally really shaken to the core. I’m still stunned by that event, which has also become the grandest possible set-up for the practicing socialist elected president in November. Barack Obama begins his own presidency with the opportunity presented this “crisis.”

Those in Congress who most effectively and stubbornly defended this interference, in a market dominated by the very government institutions that created this crisis, institutions who also organized to buy their congressional defenders off with personal and campaign briberies, are not just at-large but are free roam about and to blame the situation on an “unregulated free market” in banking that simply does not exist.

And they will apparently continue to very gleefully use the "opportunity" presented by the crisis to further choke the life out American enterprise and socialize our society.

(Thanks a lot, George.)

Republicans are still chatting among themselves about what their proper role should be, though, regardless of what they say or do, the Democrats in charge of Congress will find a way to phrase every shortcoming as the fault of Republicans.

While Republicans chat, and lick their wounds, they evade a clear responsibility to oppose and hold the present Majority accountable for what might become a permanent harm to a free society and people. Those who know socialist policies must fail are mistaken and irresponsible in deciding to wait for failure because the Democrats will continue to make certain Republicans share or even carry the entire blame for whatever goes wrong, and whenever it goes wrong.

I’m enough of a past-supporter of President Bush to wonder if there was or is something unseen going on, when he encouraged what he had to know is very likely to become "Trillion Dollar federal deficits for year to come," paid for by the sweat of hard working taxpayers, year after year ahead.

Because we have endured and thrived after recessions, without any effort to make them permanent, the reaction by our supposed Conservative president to this situation has had me wondering if there were not some massive Black Budget defense project underway, perhaps a need for hundreds of billions to build a defense against a pending invasion by Martians.

I’m still wondering, because something does not add up.

The very past performance of government policy that actually works in stimulating free economic activity, and thus the precise thing Barack Obama asked to hear about few days ago, is so obvious that Obama have to ask for such a suggestion had me looking around each corner half expecting Rod Serling to pop up, second-hand smoke and all, to announce our arrival at “The Twilight Zone.”

President Kennedy knew what would work back in 1961 and President Reagan spoke honestly and implemented what should be done back in 1981. George W. Bush, back in 2001, (the original President Bush) knew what the answer was to the President-elect's question also. It's not a Democrat or a Republican answer, it's a proven, objective reality.

The answer to President-elect Obama’s apparently honest search for a "better solution" is across the board tax cuts, plain and simple.

Given the percentage of our national wealth consumed by government, it is the only policy known to work. The answer is to take the federal government’s heel off the neck of what is supposed to be a free people engaged in honest enterprise.

If anyone needs a bailout it is the American people themselves, and such a bailout would not require the printing Trillions of inflationary dollars. It would cost the government nothing except a little power the Constitution says it probably should not have.

Why do we continue hearing, day after day, of a “hope” that Trillion Dollar deficits, for years to come, will stimulate the economy?

I entertain no such hope. Instead, I am apprehensive because such a course must make the situation far worse, and it also makes the intentions of the Democrat Majority in Washington suspect.

The only shortcoming from a lower tax policy, one favoring less punishment and more reward for real job creation has always been to reign in Congress from spending the surplus tax revenue, the real money that always pours into government from taxes on activities that would otherwise not occur.

Why guess about what works, and why ignore tax policy that is known to work every single time, often even in time of war?

Democrats who know history, recent history, also know tax cuts work. Therefore I can’t help wondering why Americans tolerate their determination to cause an incredible new expansion of the same government activities that caused this present recession.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the White House who know these things and still advocate a expansion of government, I have to conclude, must have something else in mind, and something that requires nothing less than a crippling of our freedoms to engage in business and to improve our lives by our own labor, making a majority of voters dependent on “a prior claim on the charity of their neighbors” policed by government, also.

Whether this stubborn hope of government parasites comes from a real ignorance, a deliberate ignorance, or deceit makes little difference. The result must be the same. For all the excitement many Americans obviously have about the future of the nation with Barack Obama in the White House, the recent trong support of George W. Bush for similar policies scares the crap out of me.

Ours is the greatest nation on Earth, but anyone with a vested interest in keeping American civilization great should also be apprehensive.

If we want to keep America great, the time has arrived for us to ignore the Amen Corner and the bleating herd blindly following a manufactured conventional wisdom. And if Barack Obama is truly honest when asking for policy suggestions history has proved will work (and he wants to be re-elected) then he will hear if Republicans speak loudly against more impending take overs of the management of our lives - by the same folks who run the Post Office.

Then again, if he is dishonest in asking such for those suggestions, then everyone can all learn now how he really feels about individual freedom.

There is nothing to lose.

For the moment, you still have a Republic, “if you can keep it.”