Michelle Obama’s Opinion of America

Michelle Obama: What we've learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback, and let me tell you something, for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. And I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment. I've seen people who are hungry to be unified around some basic, common issues, and it's made me proud.

She made this speech twice; it was written down, and the audience cheered and clapped. No matter how you spin this, Michelle is finally proud of her country now that her husband is running for president. She is a lawyer with an ivy League education. This was no slip of the tongue; this was not a matter of not knowing what she was saying. She is a highly educated woman, who, despite her background, and the 45 years she has lived, she is finally, for the first time in her lifetime, proud of this country.

By the way, if it were not for conservative news services, it is likely no one outside of YouTube viewers would know what she said and what Obama supporters cheer.

The Recession

I am at home, listening to talk radio in the background, and the news is on (this is for a fairly conservative radio station). The news reporter is talking about how we are in the midst of a recession (I am assuming that he is quoting someone; I was only half listening) and then says that our national growth rate is lower than expected at 2 point something percent. What is wrong with us? You cannot have economic growth simultaneous to a recession. You can have an economic slowdown, if the growth rate is lower than it has been over past several years, but you CANNOT have a recession while the economy is growing. What is wrong with us? All we have to hear is the word "recession" bandied about over and over again, and that means we are in a recession? What nonsense! We may go into a recession and we may not; but we do not have growth at the same time as having a recession; That is like saying something went up at the same time it went down.

Hillary Clinton and Tom Cruise

This is fantastic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3enFIPvnFg

The 2008 Election is Over

In my opinion, if Obama wins the Democratic candidacy, this election is over. I do not think that conservatives or even moderates stand a chance this time around. What I will do in the next series of articles is outline how this has happened.

For the past 8 years, there has been a concerted effort to both unseat President George Bush and to get a Democrat in the White House. I believe that this has been achieved for the year 2008, although perhaps not as the Clinton’s have expected.

Who is Behind this?

There are some big players out there: George Soros, the Clinton’s, and a very angry Democratic electorate.

We know who the Clinton’s are, and, when all is said and done, Bill Clinton’s presidency is not going to be seen as one of the great presidency’s, from an historical presidency; whereas, Bush’s will. However, if Hillary Clinton became president, this would be an historical event, giving both Clinton’s a prominent place in history.

I know a number of Democrats and their hatred of George Bush is palpable. The only time in my lifetime that I recall such a thing occurring is the emotional response to President Richard Nixon during the time of Watergate. I am not sure how this happened exactly, but I will offer some of the reasons as we go along in this issue.

George Soros

For reasons which I do not understand, but which are possibly related to wealth, George Soros has been behind the scenes, funding a number of liberal organizations. Mr. Soros could also be very misguided as well and his behind-the-scenes involvement may be sincere. However, he has been a major player in this election and in politics over the past decade or so.

George Soros is a key player in the shadow Democratic party, which has taken the Democratic party into a hard-left turn. Other players in this shadow democratic party (which came about in about 2003) are Hillary Clinton and Harold McEwan Ickes.

Soros funds a number of organizations with billions of dollars, and many of these organizations fund other organizations. What appears to be the political philosophy of these organizations is as follows:

♦Promoting the view that America is institutionally an oppressive nation

♦Promoting the election of leftist political candidates throughout the United States

♦Opposing virtually all post-9/11 national security measures enacted by U.S. government, particularly the Patriot Act

♦Depicting American military actions as unjust, unwarranted, and immoral

♦Promoting open borders, mass immigration, and a watering down of current immigration laws

♦Promoting a dramatic expansion of social welfare programs funded by ever-escalating taxes

♦Promoting social welfare benefits and amnesty for illegal aliens

♦Defending suspected anti-American terrorists and their abetters

♦Financing the recruitment and training of future activist leaders of the political Left

♦Advocating America's unilateral disarmament and/or a steep reduction in its military spending

♦Opposing the death penalty in all circumstances

♦Promoting socialized medicine in the United States

♦Promoting the tenets of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is "not clean air and clean water, [but] rather ... the demolition of technological/industrial civilization"

♦                                                                                                                 Bringing American foreign policy under the control of the United Nations

♦                                                                                                                 Promoting racial and ethnic preferences in academia and the business world alike

Source:

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=589

Several months ago, Bill O’Reilly spoke about Soros and presented the following chart:

O’Reilly said: "Soros has set up a complicated political operation designed to do two things -- buy influence among liberal politicians, and smear people with whom he disagrees...If a liberal politician doesn't toe the Soros line, he or she will be denied funding and brutally attacked. Just ask Senator Joseph Lieberman [I-CT] about what MoveOn and Media Matters did to him...[and these organizations] don't stop at you. They'll go for your family."

Of course this is disputed. Soros has enough money to dispute it. Furthermore, no one wants to admit that they are dupes of a man they do not know and know very little about.

Email and Internet Attacks

Awhile after Bush was elected president, I began to receive a vast quantity of email forwards. Bush was ridiculed in every way possible. What I rarely saw were well-reasoned arguments with his policies, but generally attacks which ridiculed his intelligence and any gaff that he made. These attacks were angry, hateful and insulting; although there is some of that from conservatives, I have never seen so much of that type of forwards from a conservative position (for instance, I have received a handful of forwards ridiculing Hillary and none about Kerry or Gore. The total number of angry and hateful email forwards that I have received from conservatives over the past 5 years is approximately equal to the amount I used to receive in a week from liberals.

Stop any liberal on the street and ask them, “What about Bush’s ivy league education?” They will say, “Best education money can buy.” In those words exactly. Mention that Bush is one of the most voracious readers ever to live in the White House, and the liberal will invariably talk about either books with big pictures or pop-up books. Quite frankly, it is a little scary. By the way, I get this response from very intelligent liberals; they may be college educated, but they know the correct response. I think that these robot-like responses are a result of the internet and email forwards.

I got two other sets of email forwards. There are bloggers who would make weird and over-the-top accusations of George Bush and his administration (like funding certain parties during election time in Muslim nations). This type of approach I classified as, if you throw enough crap up against the wall, some of it is going to stick.

The 3^rd type of email forward which I received were all about how those who supported George Bush in either election are a bunch of mind-numbed, uneducated, lock-step political robots and far inferior in every way to those who voted in favor or Gore or Kerry.

The Associated Press and Reuters

The bulk of the news which we receive comes from a limited number of organizations.

The Drive-By Media

The primaries are almost over. Think back about what you remember about the Republican candidates:

Romney: Mormon cult. Flip-flopper. Dog on top of his truck.

Giuliani: Turbulent personal life. One child won’t even vote for him. Incessantly talks about 9/11 to garner support.

Huckabee: Baptist preacher. Doesn’t believe in evolution.

Fred Thompson: Laconic, lazy, no fire in the belly.

McCain: No negative press comes to mind until recently—now that the Republican nomination is all but wrapped up.

I hope that someone does a study of the media reporting on McCain prior to January 2008 and after February 2008. I would guess that 70–80% of McCain’s press during the early primaries was good; and it will become about 70–80% negative now that he essentially has the nomination. He will be called old, wooden, un-animated, the 3^rd Bush term, and, even when he has done nothing wrong, he will be accused of moral lapses. He will be painted as close to lobbyists. He will be portrayed as a war-monger and a man with a temper who uses bad language.

The most recent story by the NY Times is representative of what will be done. Other news organizations with a similar news slant will report on the NY Times story, but without being very objective about it (like the NBC news coverage).

Personal Sob Stories cited by Clinton/Obama

When dealing with illness and medicine, there always be stories about those who were given a raw deal, who were not given a fair shake, and who suffered because of it. Clinton and Obama trot out these stories and the clear implication is, “Elect me, and I will heal their pain.” Go to any country, under any medical system, free enterprise or under some form of socialized medicine, and you can find hundreds of individual stories of people who have been ill, who are still ill, who have died, and the system did not work in their favor; and it is a heart-breaking story. No medical system of any kind will ever change this.

Do not think that some system of full-on or partially socialized medicine will change this.

There are people out there who are working hard, who do not seem to be getting ahead, and who cannot seem to latch onto the American dream. Clinton and Obama talk about these people by name. A single mother working two jobs, or who cannot afford medical insurance. A ghetto child who is smart but probably will not be able to go to a good college because the cost is prohibitive.

Single mothers account for most of the poverty in the US. I don’t care what the reason or what their background is, a single mother is going to struggle for the rest of her life...no matter who gets into office.

What about that family who is struggling to make it, and are either facing foreclosure or they cannot pay for family medical insurance or they are working hard, but they cannot seem to get ahead or to take part in the American dream? Again, this is always going to be a part of our society.

When I was growing up, I recall seeing my own father in two positions: he was either working or collapsed on the sofa from being overworked. Even though we lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, I have since lived in several homes larger than I grew up in; as is the case for almost everyone that I know. In the United States, every generation is better off than the generation which came before.

The idea that someone works hard or works long hours is somehow a bad thing, is simply wrong. Hard work is a good thing. Coming home from work mentally and/or physically exhausted is a good thing. Productivity is a good thing. In almost every case of these people who are named by Clinton or Obama, who cannot seem to get ahead—I can guarantee that they are probably better off than their parents, and that their children will be better off than they will be.

This is the result of free enterprise; this is not the case when someone lives in a socialized society. The further we move toward socialism, the less likely it will be that each generation will do better than the previous generation.

Rush: Exploited Victims of the Dems

Rush: The kind of people that are voting today in the Democrat Party, all this hatred for corporation and profit, corporations and profit that propel the capitalist system. Then there's this little ditty in the story about Mrs. Clinton's economic message. After taking a question from a little girl, who told her that she and her mother were about to lose their home because the mortgage payment had jumped too high, Clinton invited the two on stage and put her arm around them. Clinton said that the woman, a hairdresser whose mortgage payment jumped from $600 to $1,000 a month, was in a similar position to many people she had spoken to who had been pushed into adjustable rate loans by unscrupulous mortgage brokers. It's always the mortgage broker that's the culprit. It's never the borrower. The borrower is clean and pure as the wind-driven snow. The borrower is always a victim of the evil loan shark. But did Mrs. Clinton offer to help this little girl and her mom? Did she? Well, the story doesn't say anything about that. All the story says is that Mrs. Clinton brought the little girl and her mother up there and put her arm around them and the usual, (doing Hillary impression) "I talk to people all the time who tell me similar stories."

It reminded me of an incident that happened -- that has to be last summer? Last fall, perhaps. The Breck Girl, still in the campaign, was in New Hampshire. Was doing a town hall meeting. During the town hall meeting, a young woman, a college student, raised her hand and spoke and complained about her student loans, how they had ballooned and she had no chance and no hope of repaying them. And what was Edwards going to do about this? And she was distressed and highly upset. And she was on the verge of tears about this. You know, Edwards did the typical liberal Democrat thing. He shared her tears and shared her pain and then blamed Bush and blamed Republicans and evil lenders and so forth for this horrible circumstance and then essentially said, I'll fix this for you. And I'm sure that's the last he ever thought of that little girl.

Well, it wasn't the last I thought of her, because I'll tell you what I did. I endeavored to find out who she was. And, by the way, I told Mr. Snerdley, said I'm uncomfortable telling this story. He said you gotta tell it, you gotta tell -- these Democrats get away with this stuff all the time. They don't do diddly-squat. Everybody thinks they're the ones that really care. You gotta tell this story. I said, Mr. Snerdley, it's too self-serving. You gotta tell this story. We endeavored to find out who this little student was, what school she went to, and -- and our office reached her. And the message to her was that I would retire all of her student loans and any future loans that she made or committed to, provided that she endeavored to keep her GPA up, went to school and all this sort of stuff. All of that happened. After I didn't say a word about this to anybody, told her not to tell anybody about it, I don't know if she did or not. The reason that I did it was not to be able to tell you about it someday, because I'm just frosted here watching this, all these Democrats getting all this credit for compassion and caring because these people show up with legitimate problems, and, by the way, college tuition is largely a Democrat problem.

Who the hell runs major institutions of higher learning? Liberals. Who is the majority of people in Congress right now? Liberals. Who is it that's constantly running around and talking about how big business is screwing the little guy? Liberals. And who is it that's running around suggesting we need new student loans and we need deductibility for parents of student loans and so forth and greater tuition deductibility, but who is it that's never talking about how tuition needs to become lower? How come we never hear, like gas prices need to come down, other prices need to -- there needs to be about profit. Mrs. Clinton will never talk about taking the profits of Harvard. Mrs. Clinton will never talk about taking the profits of Yale. Mrs. Clinton will never -- because they're in league. The whole point, liberals hang together, keep those tuitions high so these professors, and professor assistants, and all the faculty and all of the presidents, all the administration of these universities continue to get paid very well on the basis of these exorbitant tuitions, plus the cost of books and rooming and lodging and all these things at these major universities. Nobody on the left ever wants to attack the problem. The rising cost of tuition, which has no bearing in people's ability to pay it, they're relying on federal subsidies, scholarships, and of course other little gimmicks like the deductibility of tuition, which only encourages colleges to raise tuition.

They never do anything to help the people who are in pain and suffering because of these high tuitions, so I decided to move in there, because this young woman was obviously distressed over this. She had, you know, a little job, she was working two jobs, plus going to school, and she was in a sheer panic over not being able to pay back these loans. Now, some people might say, well, she had no business taking out these loans if she couldn't afford to pay 'em back. She's being encouraged to! Everybody in this country is being encouraged to go to college, whether it's for them or not. They're being told they got no hope if they don't go to college. It isn't for everybody. If you want to go, fine, I'm not condemning it, don't misunderstand me here, but people being told they got no chance, no prayer, unless they go to college. Some people go to college because they have nothing else to do and don't know what else they want to do; they hope they'll find what they want to do when they get there. There's all kinds of reasons.

But because the impetus -- you know, we must educate our children. Yes, we must educate the children, but some people go into bigger debt sending kids to college than they go into debt on their personal credit cards or home mortgages or what have you, depending on how many kids they have. All we talk about in fixing it this, well, we got restructure the student loan program, maybe we forgive the loan payments, maybe we'll make it up to the university some other way because liberals hang together. So we got together, we found the woman we paid off her loans and further commitments, and then she had to agree, keep GPA up -- we don't do this for nothing, there was an incentive attached to it. We're not idiots here. And she couldn't believe it. I didn't say a thing, you know, we talked to her, didn't say a thing about Senator Edwards, did you not run anybody else down, we saw the problem, saw her on television, and just -- we were distressed that she found herself in this circumstance, but there was a way out.

And here Mrs. Clinton is dragging people up on the stage, exploiting their personal pain to which she might have had some role, in which she might have had some role, because it was Congress that encouraged these loan shark lenders to start making these kinds of loans to people that were not qualified, on the basis they were being frozen out of the American dream and so forth. And now it's all backfired. I mean there's nobody's innocent in this. And yet we're being told that there's only one set of guilty people, and that's the lenders, the evil moneychangers.

Mrs. Clinton and her husband cannot stop talking about how rich they are. Mrs. Clinton and her husband cannot stop talking about how they don't need a tax cut because they're wealthy now. They talk about it constantly, and yet here comes a hairdresser and her little girl, and they're suffering on stage exploited, with Mrs. Clinton's arms around them doing literally nothing, simply trying to tell the audience, (doing Hillary impression) "I'm going to get even with the people who did this to you." It's sort of the same line of thinking, (doing Hillary impression) "I'm going to raise taxes on the rich, I'm going to make you feel better that the rich are going to be paying more in taxes."

(doing voter impression) "Mrs. Clinton, is it going to help me?" Well, no, but you're going to feel better because you want to hate these people, I'm going to help you get even, you're going to feel revenge and you're going to -- it's going to make you feel good. No, it's not going to help your circumstance. What if Mrs. Clinton had said, you know, this is horrible, I want to help you, my husband and I would like to help you with your mortgage. I know, I know, then people would say but, Rush, then everybody that Mrs. Clinton talks to is going to demand it. No. Maybe they might. But you can deal with it in another way. You can say this is how people work together to help each other out in these situations. Well, Mrs. Clinton doesn't want that. Mrs. Clinton wants government in charge of making these problems and then supposedly solving these problems because government is where all the compassion and where all the concerns are.

The Hollywood pals of the Clintons could donate, they could set up a trust fund for all of these people with these student loans that are out the wazoo, wouldn't cover nearly all of them, I know, but you could have a little sliding scale where the people that made the best effort to keep the GPA up, got the help in getting their student loans paid off. Instead of running off to Darfur to find victims over there, instead of running off to Kosovo, instead of running off to all these half-baked places in the world to find suffering and blame the United States for that. Deal with some of the so-called suffering happening in this country that's been brought on by liberal compassion. And, by the way, Mrs. Clinton, you could also start tipping the waitresses at the diners in Iowa. And if you don't carry cash, you're relying on your staff to do it, and if they forget to do it, take on that responsibility yourself. The waitresses, I'm sure, would appreciate a dime or a quarter if it came from you personally, rather than being told that they're wrong when they report that they did not get a tip.