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Information for people contemplating
a career in emergency medicine and
other medical specialties

By Kevin Pezzi, MD

 

1. A new reason to choose a career in medicine
2. What the #@&*% is wrong with our country? After years of searching for an answer, Kevin The Doctor knows exactly what is causing our decline. The answer will surprise you.
3. A doctor with experience looking into people looks into Barack Obama

A long introduction to the most important topic that I've ever written about:

Do you have sound judgment and enough intelligence to be a doctor or other professional? Here's a pop quiz to determine if you have what it takes:

While shopping in a store, you see an elderly woman collapse. Two men, John and George, rush to assist her. They find that she is unresponsive, not breathing, and has no pulse, so they begin CPR. Three other people, Barney, Chris, and Nancy, begin kicking John and George, and otherwise doing their best to hinder the code. "She's fine," they insist. "Stop the code."

However, it's obvious that this blue patient isn't OK.

Seconds later, two paramedics arrive along with a police officer. The paramedics continue the code while the cop sorts through what happened. A bystander, Katie, claims that John and George caused her to collapse, while Barney, Chris, and Nancy were just trying to be helpful. Katie implores the officer to arrest John and George while recommending that Barney, Chris, and Nancy receive a public service award for their actions.

The police officer notices you and asks for your opinion, because he's seen you working in the ER and respects your opinion. What do you tell him?

(a) Katie is correct.
(b) Katie either deliberately distorted the truth, or isn't tuned into reality.

You won't get any questions this easy in medical school, or even sixth grade for that matter, because the answer is obviously (b). So why did I ask it? To illustrate how absurd it is that half of the people in the United States have a similarly distorted perception of reality. That assertion may seem preposterous now, but you'll likely agree with me by the end of this page. This misperception is inflicting a staggering cost upon US citizens, so everyone—not just doctors—needs to understand it. As I slowly reveal it, like peeling layers off an onion, some of this will be familiar to you, but some will be shocking. At some point in this discussion, you will figuratively slap your head and exclaim, "This is it! I finally understand what the #@&*% is wrong with our country!"

Reading this topic will not only increase your chances of having a great career, but a great life—or any life, as you'll later see. If you become a doctor, somewhere along the line you will learn that intelligence evolved because of its adaptive value. Simply put, people who are smarter are more likely to make better decisions and prosper in school, business, and life. However, even smart people sometimes succumb to the mind's Achilles' heel: its tendency to let emotions overrule rational thought. Consequently, some of what people know, or think they know, is flat-out wrong. Those biases and preconceptions are so prevalent, and so damaging, that a perfect storm of stupidity is metaphorically casting a dark cloud above our heads that will linger for many decades. I will help you find one of the few remaining areas of sunshine, explain what created this disaster, and touch upon some solutions. I must warn you, though: you may love what you're about to read, or you may hate it. If I precipitate the latter emotion, bear in mind that I will discuss one of the subjects that elicits emotional reaction, not objective thought. If you find yourself getting mad, it's because some of the facts I present don't mesh with your preconceptions. I challenge you to rise above your Achilles' heel and reevaluate the validity of what you think you know. Times are tough and bound to get much tougher. The need to correctly interpret reality and intelligently make decisions just became much more important to your career and your life, regardless of what you do for a living. Ignore this advice at your peril. If you think smoking, speeding, overeating, or unsafe sex are hazardous to your health, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Incidentally, if you read all of this topic, more than half of you will emerge from it somewhat smarter. Many people are begging me to reveal more of my secrets that propelled me from sixth-grade dunce to a doctor who graduated in the top 1% of my class in medical school. Here's one: By correcting one of your misconceptions, you not only learn the truth but give yourself the opportunity to analyze what mental errors led you to previously believe something that isn't true. Intelligence is essentially a set of rules for processing information. Amend those rules and you'll emerge with a higher IQ. In this purposely wide-ranging discussion, I will pass along something that is one of the greatest insights ever. The minute I read it, I knew that it wasn't just philosophically profound, but essentially a way to peer into the future. Everyone, from paperboy to President, needs to learn that lesson.

Medical careers just became considerably more appealing. I'll explain why in a minute, but I'll preface that discussion by explaining why a career in medicine was once something that I advised against.

In some of my web sites and books, I discussed many of the drawbacks to careers in medicine. It was important to mention those disadvantages because anyone who glosses over them wasn't doing you a favor. Few things in life are wholly positive or negative; most have associated pros and cons. Most authors overemphasize the plusses of medicine while minimizing its negative aspects. I believe that it is unconscionable to sugarcoat anything in this way. People should be apprised of the plusses and minuses and left to make their own informed decisions. However, it's tough to make an intelligent choice when you hear only half of the story. More about that later.

Emergency medicine, in particular, has some extraordinary pros, but also some alarming drawbacks. One minute, you might have a gorgeous woman thrust a note into your hand expressing gratitude for what you did for her in the ER, giving you her phone number and the world's biggest green light. The next minute, you might be dealing with a family so kooky and out of control that before the night is over, the Mom is in jail and an ER worker is in a cast.

Incidentally, both of those examples are true. You can read about them by downloading my free e-books (none of which contain any viruses, spyware, or adware). The first example is found in Love & Lust in the ER (it's on page 138 of the 4th edition; if you have another edition, search for Kari’s grandmother). If you'd rather read just that one story, it is online here. The latter story is in True Emergency Room Stories (it's on page 104 of the 4th edition; if you have another edition, search for a family so bizarre).

So why are medical careers now much more attractive? At the time of this writing, the United States is teetering on the edge of a recession. Some financially savvy people, including some mainstream economists, have warned that we may plunge into a depression, especially if Barack Obama is elected President and he implements his grand plans for changing America. Whenever the economy turns sour, medical careers become more attractive because most of them are recession-proof. Healthcare is a need, not a want. People may want a large home, second SUV, boat, or vacation, but they don't need any of that. However, if a child is seizing and turning blue, his parents need a doctor. In short, you'll always have a job. That's a plus at any time, but it is especially important in these tumultuous times—and if you think it's bad now, just wait! It's going to be a nightmare. Why am I convinced this is true, despite the fact that I am usually optimistic?

The recent stock market plunge and Washington's reaction to it manifested that our government doesn't really know what it's doing, fumbling like a first-year medical student trying to control the bleeding as a patient with a gunshot wound to the chest is hemorrhaging to death. Most upper echelon federal politicians are not nearly as intelligent as they should be. Unfortunately, their effective brainpower is further diluted when they purposely twist the truth to suit their partisan ends, such as when the Democrats succeeded in duping the public by laying most of the blame for the Fannie Mae collapse on Republicans when it should have been obvious to everyone who studied this issue that this financial disaster was rooted in an incredibly stupid idea spawned by Democrats: Let's pressure banks into giving mortgages to people who can't afford homes, then close our eyes, cross our fingers, and hope for the best when those folks default on their loans. Brilliant!

Winston Churchill is reputed to have said something such as, "Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains." Another variation of this quote (there weren't many tape recorders in those days!) is, "If you aren't a liberal by the time you're 20, you don't have a heart. If you aren't a conservative by the time you're 40, you don't have a brain."

If you have a brain, you'll realize that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and anyone who falls for her malarkey is functionally anencephalic or tuned into too much music, not reality. On the October 18, 2008 Mike Huckabee television show, an intelligent woman from Canada posed a great question: Why do so many Americans blame Republicans for the mortgage disaster when Democrats obviously caused it? Governor Huckabee responded that Presidents generally get the blame when things go wrong because Americans view the President as the symbol of US government. It's much easier to point to him than to sort out what 535 members of Congress did. While it is indeed easier, it shows an appalling lack of fairness and suggests that many Americans are too intellectually lazy to spend a minute researching this issue. The mainstream media isn't doing their job, so if you don't want to fall hook, line, and sinker for blatant lies by Democrats, you must investigate what they say. If you do this, you will likely see that Democrats lie with impunity because they know the mainstream media won't take them to task. The mainstream media won't ridicule Joe Biden when he illustrates his shocking ignorance (such as not knowing when Roosevelt was President, when television came into use, or even how many letters are in the word "jobs"), but they carefully probe Republicans for the slightest weakness and make a mountain out of a molehill if they find anything.

Joe Biden's near-fatal brain aneurysm
Biden had surgery in 1988 to repair two brain aneurysms. His condition was so grave at one point that a priest read him his last rites in a Wilmington hospital. As a doctor, I can't help but wonder if some of the daffy things Biden says (and does, such as his groping of women and girls) result from associated brain damage. One of the conservative radio talk show hosts likes to say that Biden is the "dumbest guy in the Senate." That's ridiculous; Biden is obviously not the low man on the Senate IQ totem pole. However, Biden's mind seems to be a strange amalgamation of islands of SMART mixed in with islands of IDIOCY. All smart people do dumb things now and then, but Biden sometimes does things that are conspicuously odd for someone who is generally smart. Biden also seems to have difficulty censoring himself before he speaks, leading him to say things that even he probably wishes he'd never said. This problem can result from damage to a specific part of the brain (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), or it can result as a side effect of certain drugs and herbs. Biden's reputation for being occasionally cantankerous may also result from brain damage. Bottom line: Biden's intelligence and magnetic charm would likely be even greater without those aneurysms.

I realize that most of my readers are young and hence more inclined to be impressed by economic liberalism, ignoring the fact that it is just a euphemism for socialism, Marxism, or plain ol' pickpocketing as money made by productive members of society is stolen and given to people who want others to pay for their food, education, medical care, clothes, cars, utilities, and homes. (Here are two humorous stories that really drive that point home.) However, I am delighted to hear that many young people switched their votes after realizing the huge price they'll pay for an Obama presidency. Obama thinks that people who want to keep their own money are selfish. Is it really selfish for you to keep what you've earned? I don't think so. However, many Obama supporters who think they will benefit from Obama's redistributionist ("spreading the wealth around") policies are thrilled about the things they will get without having to pay for. They are the selfish ones: they want to take what you have earned. Obama has indicated that he nominate future Supreme Court justices who do not strictly interpret the Constitution. This isn't surprising, because nothing in the Constitution permits this form of theft.

History has shown that giving people money isn't an effective antidote to poverty. Before Washington spent $850 billion of our money trying to stabilize the stock market gyrations following the Fannie Mae calamity, American taxpayers already had six TRILLION dollars (that's 6000 billion!) taken from them and given to people who weren't fond of working, yet found the energy every four years to ride an ACORN-supported bus on Election Day to vote for politicians who would give them stuff. In True Emergency Room Stories, I predicted years ago that Americans might fight a second civil war when one of two virtually inevitable disasters occurs:

• People my age or older begin retiring and find that they'd be lucky to receive 25 cents for every dollar they paid into Social Security, leaving them impoverished OR
• Younger folks at that time face astronomical taxes so those retirees can receive benefits comparable to what today's senior citizens receive.

If you analyze the demographics of this brewing catastrophe, you will come to the conclusion that many eminent economists have: It's a huge and unprecedented problem, but no one has any good idea about how to avert it without causing widespread economic suffering.

You may scoff when I suggest that a civil war could erupt again in the United States, but the recent fiscal crisis stemming from the subprime mortgage collapse revealed that our economy is far more fragile than we thought. Throw in tens of millions more retirees expecting to not be cheated out of their Social Security money, add a clueless government that spent their money buying votes years ago, and top it off with workers who would rather fill an IRS agent with lead than fork over three-quarters or more of their pay.

By the way, if you think that taxes would never rise that high, welcome to the year 2008 and Dr. Pezzi's Amazing Lecture on Taxes: some of you are already paying 75% or more of your income in taxes. The most astonishing thing about the US government is how successful it has been in pulling the wool over taxpayers' eyes to shield them from realizing how much they actually pay. Many Americans already lose half their income in taxes! I'm not talking about "rich" doctors, lawyers, and plumbers (such as "Joe The Plumber" Joe Wurzelbacher, who scowled at Barack Obama when The Messiah explained why he wanted to raise his taxes to "spread the wealth around")—I'm talking about average Americans. Perhaps you, your siblings, or parents.

Two days later, Obama and Biden haughtily attacked Joe The Plumber, thereby erasing any doubt that they are condescending elitists and devoid of common sense. Joe The Plumber isn't some fat cat Wall Street robber baron, but a symbol for hard-working middle class people who are fed up with money-grubbing politicians stealing more of their money and terming that theft "fair" or "patriotic." Joe resonated with the American public because he wants to earn more in the future, as most of us do, but his ability to get ahead is hampered by punitive taxation. Obama is hell-bent on snatching money from people like Joe, yet Barack won't give a penny of his millions to his half-brother, who lives in a hut in Africa on less than $1 per month. Here's some change for you, Barack: how about opening your own fat wallet first? And while you're at it, stop mocking people like Joe. Picking on middle class folks is very petty and unpresidential. (Update: Later in the campaign, Obama was seen scornfully laughing at Joe The Plumber. Now I know why Rush Limbaugh calls Obama a man-child: Barack acts likes a snotty juvenile.)

Speaking of Obama's brother . . . and Palin's IQ
During an interview with The Early Show's Harry Smith, Obama said,". . . if you're not, um, carin' for your family, uh, then, ah, you, you're probably not, uh, the kind of person who's gonna be carin' for other people."

First, isn't it odd how Sarah Palin is ridiculed for sounding like a hayseed hick because she sometimes does not pronounce the terminal "g" of certain words? Obama is equally guilty of this, yet he is lauded for his supposedly grand rhetorical ability even though he says um, uh, or ah ten times more in one day than she has in the entire campaign. Doctors use speech fluency as one way to assess a patient's mentation, and whether that may be affected by disease, drugs, or trauma. After years of doing this in the ER, it is obvious to me that Governor Palin's speech fluency is clearly superior, while Barack's ranges from very good to subnormal. When liberals don't have any substantive basis for attacking someone's reputation, character, or intelligence, their characteristically cavalier disregard for the truth often leads them to concoct wacky ways to slam their opponents. The supposedly enlightened press (ha!) delighted in disparaging Palin's intelligence, but in doing that they merely manifested their bias against conservatives and women in general. In her first national debate, Palin performed better than Joe Biden, a man with decades of debating experience. (Her relative margin of victory was more apparent to people who researched whether the candidates gave factual statements; some of the more impressive Biden moments in that debate were made possible because he fabricated lies that sounded better than the truth.)

Camille Paglia, a longtime Democrat who is an author, teacher, social critic and feminist with an awe-inspiring intellect, said this about Palin: "I can see how smart she is—and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma."

Second, if Obama is truly caring, how could he let his half-brother live in abject poverty while he lives better than most kings? Third, isn't it odd how liberal Democrats are always eager to seize more of our money to give to others, yet they are so tightfisted with their own? Joe Biden donated only $3600 to charity in the past 9 years. That's about $1 per day—hardly generous for a millionaire. Fourth, Obama has an aunt who is an illegal immigrant now living in a Boston slum. Mr. Moneybags Obama isn't very carin', is he?

Obama might honestly believe that his Robin Hood philosophy of robbing from the rich to give to the poor is somehow not criminal because that theft is perpetrated with good intentions, but come on, is T-shirt-wearing Joe The Plumber really rich? Hardly. Democrats are so eager to steal money from people that they adopt an absurdly low threshold for defining who is rich, and hence who is fair game for plundering based on their wacky old class warfare ideas.

You knew that politicians are screwing you. You just didn't know how much.

If you added up all of the taxes you pay, you'd be stunned. I discussed some of those taxes in one of my blog postings, and questioned the value of what we receive in return for those taxes in another entry. I illustrated what a farce it is when politicians claim they need even more of your money. The big tax that almost everyone neglects to consider is the business or corporate tax. This tax is embedded into the price of what you buy and is ultimately paid by you. Corporations do NOT truly pay taxes; they merely pass them along in the form of higher costs of goods and services to consumers. On average, 22% of the base price of your purchases is that corporate tax. If you live in Michigan, where the sales tax rate is 6%, you don't pay $6 for every $100 you spend. You actually spend $28 (6% sales tax + 22% embedded corporate tax = 28% combined tax). If you think about this, you'll realize that you're being taxed on taxes! This 28% is a starting point that even poor people pay. When you add in income taxes, Social Security taxes, state income taxes, property taxes, and hundreds of other taxes or fees, it is easy to see how even average folks can work over half the year to pay those insatiable thieves in government who incessantly hunger for even more of your paycheck.

Make a list of everything government does for you, and then ask if that is worth half or more of your income every year. Everyone's list will include national defense, police protection, and roads. Your list might include education if you have children, but my education was already paid by myself and the taxes my parents paid decades ago. Come to think of it, weren't most roads built decades ago, too?

I have a question for you? What's too much? Should the government take what you earn by working six months of the year? Seven? Eight? Nine? Ten? Eleven? At some point, we have to call it what it really is: part-time slavery.

100% of what slaves produced was taken from them, but slave owners had to pay for slave's food, clothes, and housing. I've never seen an economist attempt to quantitate the value of those expenses, but I wouldn't be surprised (given the inefficiencies of that era) to learn that it was 50% or more of their output. Hence, a good case could be made that the US government is now seizing a greater percentage of income from taxpayers than what slave owners took from slaves after deducting what they paid to support them.

People tend to think in quantal terms and hence may have difficulty appreciating the concept of partial slavery. If the government takes everything you earn, who could argue that you aren't a slave to the government? If they take half, in economic terms you are half free and half slave. Slavery—including economic slavery, a.k.a., exorbitant taxation—is so repugnant to most people that they will fight to abolish that abomination.

Democrats have a long history of favoring higher taxes not just on rich people, but even the middle class. By taking more of what you earn, they aren't just stealing your money, but something that is even more important: your time. If you work half or more of the year to pay your taxes (most of which are so cleverly hidden that you never recognize them), the government is taking several months of your time that could be put to better use. Wouldn't you love to spend more time with your family and friends? More time traveling or enjoying a hobby? More time to put your feet up and relax instead of frenetically rushing all week long?

In the not too distant future, I think that Americans will finally wake up and realize how the US government has been robbing us blind. Nancy Pelosi can shake her bony little hand at us all she likes, but all of her histrionics won't camouflage the fact that she and others of her ilk are nothing more than rapacious tyrants who lust for absolute power and control. They sit on their high horse in Washington and decide how much of your paycheck they will take, and they enact laws (such as limiting access to American energy resources) that inflate what you pay at the pump, in the grocery store, and virtually every time you buy something. Then they lie through their teeth about taxing corporations, knowing that those taxes will ultimately be paid by you and other consumers.

Democrats profess to advocate for poor people and the middle class, but they actually kowtow to special interests who profit from making you pay more. Current Democratic economic policies are designed to reduce your economic freedom and reduce your power to control your life. Politicians know that whoever controls how money is spent has economic power, so they want to take more of your money so they can spend it, increasing their power, and decreasing yours. The control freaks in Washington have an unquenchable thirst for money because they have an insatiable hunger for power. They won't stop until they control virtually everything. One of the least gifted members of Congress, Maxine Waters, was stupid enough to reveal that Democrats might nationalize American oil companies; that is, to seize them, converting them from private to governmental ownership and control. They are now nationalizing banks and insurance companies, and have already nationalized much of our healthcare system. What's next? Auto companies? Kids with lemonade stands? Bizarrely, the government insisted on "bailing out" banks whose chief executives insisted they didn't need or want a bailout; in fact, they wanted nothing to do with a bailout.

Taxes are inversely proportional to economic freedom. When taxes rise, your economic freedom is curtailed. Liberal Democrats try every shenanigan they can think of to raise your taxes. They want—no, they demand—that you slave away to pay the taxes they impose, or they will sic the IRS on you. That form of cowering has worked well for them, but . . . .

But what? Did you see how enraged Americans became when legislators in Washington discussed the $700 billion dollar bailout that grew to $850 billion when cash-strapped politicians decided to saddle us with even more debt? Almost every American, not just conservative Republicans, was seething mad. I previously thought that I wouldn't see such rage for decades, when the Social Security mess threatens to starve senior citizens or enslave workers to pay decent benefits to retirees. However, the fury is here, now, and it is bound to grow as politicians hike taxes and mismanage the government. More financial disasters are looming, which will test the patience of Americans of every political stripe (here's one). The US national debt is usually quoted as being around 10 trillion dollars. While that staggering figure is very alarming, the truth is far worse. An article in the September 29, 2008 issue of Forbes ("Is the U.S. Going Broke?") said the government uses deceptive accounting methods to camouflage the true debt, which is actually over $70 trillion dollars. Politicians deliberately hide the truth because it is too painful to bear (and would doom their political careers): the United States is doomed. We cannot tax our way out of this mess, and politicians won't do what they should: radically cut the size of government. They use every crisis—real and fabricated—as an excuse to expand government. Expanding the government increases the national debt even more. This vicious circle will snowball until the Crash of 2008 seems like the good ol' days and everything comes crashing down.

You're angry about the bailout. You'll be even more angry when you find out where much of that money went.
In addition to reimbursing billionaire foreign investors such as Saudi oil sheiks, billions of your dollars will be given as bonuses for executives of the corporations that were bailed out. Aren't bonuses supposed to reward executives for a job well done? And now they're being rewarded for performing so poorly that our lovely politicians in Washington had to steal YOUR money to keep them in business? Nuts.

Must-read excerpts from the October 30, 2008 Lou Dobbs Tonight:

LOU DOBBS: Half of the money spent so far on these banks [$200 billion; mentioned later in the interview] will go over the next three years to dividends to their shareholders . . . That is unconscionable, is it not, Professor Morici?

PROFESSOR PETER MORICI (University of Maryland): Absolutely. We haven't seen hubris on the part of aristocrats like those in New York since just before the French Revolution.

DOBBS: As a matter of fact, we heard from the treasury secretary, we've heard from the Democratic leadership of this Congress, that they were dealing with the issue of CEO compensation. They're going to constrain it.

DAVID SMICK (Author, The World is Curved): Yes.

DOBBS: There will be no golden parachutes. Now we find out that they're lying through their teeth.

MORICI: These executives have quite simply purchased the United States Senate. Folks like Dodd and Schumer from New York [both Democrats]. They've collected enormous campaign contributions from these guys. So now they're willing to turn a blind eye.

DOBBS: I thought the Democrats were going to actually be serious about constraining excess compensation to CEOs and executives. Both of these parties are frauds, are they not?

BRUCE BARTLETT (former Treasury Department economist): Yes, absolutely. What we're doing to the entire financial sector is turning it into Fannie Mae. We're making -- we're going to have a kind of public-private kind of partnership deal, where the risks are all borne by the government and all the profits go to private executives, as was the case with Fannie Mae.

DOBBS: I suppose both of these parties, the House, the Senate, the White House -- they all think that they fooled someone. And of course, they took care of their contributors, both of these parties, on Wall Street.

Think about what Lou Dobbs said: "Both of these parties are frauds." How could anyone disagree with him? The evidence is overwhelming. The US government is the largest corrupt organization ever. Politicians have been screwing taxpayers in so many ways for so many years that their misdeeds inevitably lead to one conclusion: their crimes are intentional. Isn't it time that we did something about it?

As part of the bailout, taxpayer money was given to banks so they would give loans to get the economy moving again. But did they? No, they're largely hoarding it. Predictably, the stock market nose-dived after the bailout, so the US taxpayers received very little in return for such a massive amount of money. Don't look at what politicians say, look at what they do. Democrat or Republican, the one thing they do is screw us. When will we wise up?

The US government is so relentlessly inept and corrupt that it will increasingly leech off taxpayers until "the straw that broke the camel's back" point is reached and they revolt. Recent history has shown that even strong governments can collapse, usually by an implosion, not after losing a war to another country. The US government recently considered imposing martial law, but they stand no chance of subjugating an enraged American populace. Nuclear weapons are the primary strength of the US military, but they are useless in a civil war. Our Navy can't float into Topeka, and I can't imagine that any Air Force pilot would climb into his jet and drop bombs on Americans. What's left? Most Army soldiers are busy fighting terrorists overseas, and would feel like members of the Gestapo or KGB if they had to return to fight US citizens. Even if they tried, there are far more citizens than soldiers; any GI who pointed a gun at a civilian would see a dozen barrels pointing at him. Who, then, will be The Enforcers? Nancy Pelosi? Barack Obama? Hardly.

Even politicians who once were wildly popular can become targets of rage. During World War II, my Dad photographed Benito Mussolini and his mistress after Italians, furious with how he had destroyed their country by allying with Hitler, killed them and strung their bodies upside down so people could vent their rage by spitting on them, then beating their bodies beyond recognition.

Democrats are so obsessed with punishing people with above-average incomes, including many members of the middle class, that they insist upon increasing tax rates even though they should know that this will decrease overall revenue and increase unemployment. However, most of their political posturing is done to benefit them and their special interests, not the people they ostensibly serve. Obama is reputed to embody stepping away from the old and ineffectual ways of the past, yet even he is hidebound. The policies he proposes are hardly new and innovative. SOS: Same Old . . . Stuff. He should look at new ways to increase revenue to the government while reducing tax rates, but why do that? Just send the federal agents out to shake down Americans for more money. If they object, put 'em in jail, take their homes, and seize their bank accounts. Who cares about "change" when the old way of doing things works so well?

Interestingly, while writing this, I took a break and turned on my radio to hear Lou Dobbs discuss the bailout, saying that BOTH parties have effectively denied representation to the middle class. In short, the government is screwing us. You know it, I know it, and the military knows it, too. Barack Obama is so unpopular with the military that he couldn't get them to slap an American teenager, let alone have tanks knock down US homes, schools, or businesses. If Obama thinks otherwise, he can go ahead and try. Then he'll see real change. So will his vituperative wife, who loves to get on her high horse and lecture us about our imperfections—one of Barack's favorite themes, not surprisingly.

Michelle reportedly received a $316,000 salary working for the University of Chicago Hospitals. That's about twice what most doctors earn, and they work longer hours with more stress and responsibility. Perhaps not coincidentally, Michelle's pay increased by $195,000 soon after her husband was sworn in as a United States Senator . . . oh, and that million-dollar grant he requested for the hospital? We're told that it's just a coincidence. Yeah, right.

Affirmative action as a flimsy justification for academic fraud

Personally, I don't care that Michelle loves to wallow in the woman-as-perpetual-victim rhetoric, or that she repels people by walking around with a monumental chip on her shoulder. Nor do I care that her undergraduate thesis reveals an odd fixation about racial views that isn't supported even by her own data. That's all predictable, and fairly harmless. As her husband would say, they're "just words." Not very impressive ones, because several people who read her paper were surprised that someone could obtain a degree from a prestigious university (Princeton) by writing a thesis with such poor sentence structure and numerous errors of spelling and grammar. One reviewer, disgusted by her "childish view of race relations" and semi-literate discussion of it, lamented that Princeton's faculty was condescending to black people by lowering their standards for black students.

This academic farce is nothing new. As an undergraduate at Michigan State University (MSU), I worked for their Office of Supportive Services (OSS) tutoring primarily minority students. This gave me the opportunity to discover something that most MSU students didn't know: MSU had certain class sections hidden from other students—and hence inaccessible—because they were not listed in the course catalog. Certain sections were reserved for athletes, and others were reserved for minority students. Students in those classes were guaranteed a passing grade if they merely showed up for the exam and signed their name. If the students attempted to answer any question, they were given a B, and if they got any question correct (even by random chance guessing), they were awarded an A.

On his December 12, 2008 show, Rush Limbaugh read from a news report revealing that this idiotic idea isn't confined to MSU: "Pittsburgh Public Schools officials may change a policy that makes 50% the lowest grade students can receive—even if they do zero work."

In talking with my students, I learned that they also received free tuition, room & board, books, miscellaneous expenses, and even a surprising amount of spending money. When I asked those students what their parents did for a living, it was obvious to me those generous scholarships were awarded on the basis of skin color, not financial need or brainpower. I knew their parents earned more than my Mom, who was working as a supermarket cashier many years after my Dad abandoned us for good after making a few child support payments a decade earlier. With three kids to support, it isn't surprising that I had to pay for most of my education, which I did by mowing lawns, weeding, painting homes, tutoring, building roof and floor trusses, building large industrial transformers, delivering newspapers, working as a security guard, working in a bottle recycling plant, serving as an aide to a handicapped man, helping to put on auto shows, and basically serving as a human mule to carry boards up a steep hill to a building site that no truck could reach. I struggled to live on the money I had, and even starved at times, subsisting only on free sugar packets and coffee creamer from the school cafeteria. Some friends suggested that I apply for public assistance, but I preferred starvation to taking money from someone else. That is the fundamental economic difference between conservatives and liberals: Conservatives want what they have earned, while liberals want what others have earned.

After becoming a doctor, I lived modestly in an apartment and drove an economy car so I could repay all of my student loans before I began saving to buy my first home. Had others exhibited this degree of financial restraint, the Fannie Mae meltdown never would have occurred. A lack of handouts didn't hurt me or keep me from achieving my goals; having to bootstrap my way to a doctorate degree simply made me stronger. Democrats need to learn that this hard work and boundless determination recipe for success works for anyone, regardless of their skin color. Forcibly transferring money from the productive members of society to the unproductive ones merely reduces their initiative to succeed, and hence does not benefit them.

When I was young, my Mom sometimes fed us by serving food that she found on the side of the road, and I saw my older brother moaning in pain for days because my Mom couldn't afford to take him to a hospital. Long before I became a real physician and surgeon, I performed minor surgery on myself several times without anesthesia (ouch!) because I couldn't afford to pay a doctor. Consequently, I know what poverty is, and I know that people can easily escape from it without help from the screwballs in Washington. I didn't need Obama spreading the wealth around to support me. My Mom helped me as much as she could, and I did the rest myself, working from the time I was in 7th grade. People saw that I was very conscientious, so I could always earn money. If poor people spent less time committing voter fraud and looking for handouts, and more time looking for work, they wouldn't need partners-in-crime like Barack Obama to shake down taxpayers. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to find a job. When I was too young for any of the jobs in the Help Wanted classifieds, I found older folks who needed help around the house, and I did it.

Why liberals haven't been more successful in fighting poverty

When will poor people finally realize that Democrats don't want to end poverty? Instead, they want to perpetuate it so they have a ready pool of people eager to vote more money for themselves. In To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert Heinlein gave his readers a virtual time machine for looking into the future to see how America will end.

"The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens . . . which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it . . . which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’ ‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—[such as] the barbarians enter[ing] Rome."

This observation is profoundly important and is so vital to our future that it should be read by everyone, from producer to parasite. Some parasites might be smart enough to take a lesson from nature and see how various parasitic organisms improve their odds of long-term survival by limiting how much blood or nutrients they sap from their host. If they took more, they could live high on the hog for a while, but the depleted host might die, leaving them with nothing to leech off. By taking less, they can continue to drain resources indefinitely. If a nematode such as a pinworm can figure this out, why can't the pinhead parasites in the US realize that it isn't wise to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? If Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, and other leaders were half as wise as they think they are, they would realize how shortsighted they are in greedily sapping the producers. The parasites they so vigorously represent are dangerously close to slitting their own throats.

Despite what they say, Democrats don't want the poor to ascend financially and really make it, because the minute they did that, they'd rebel against the taxes taken from them. Which party is jeopardized by black success? The Democrats, of course, so they intentionally hinder black advancement. All that Democrat rhetoric about helping the little guy is pure BS, intended to deceive people who don't look beyond the surface (watch this YouTube video by a black man who is remarkably more insightful than Obama, Oprah, and the entire mainstream media combined). Democrats love black votes, not black people. The Democrats, and even most Republicans, don't care about the rich, middle class, or poor; they care about using their ideological platforms to hide the fact that they're out for themselves and their special interests. I'll never forget the looked of shattered disappointment in my brother's face when he was an intern for a state legislator who dashed his idealistic dreams by saying something such as, "Hey, kid, I'm here for the pay and the pension, not the taxpayers."

The economic decline of the United States was precipitated by (possibly) well-meaning but hopelessly naive ideas, such as putting people into homes they couldn't afford. The $850 billion bailout that followed was just another down payment** on the penalty we will ultimately pay for our collective stupidity in failing to heed one of the greatest lessons of history: socialism is the fertilizer of mediocrity and poverty, not excellence and wealth. People who think that socialistic wealth redistribution is good, like Barack Obama, should listen to people who left socialistic countries and moved to America. They detest socialism, and think that any politician who leans that way has rocks in his head. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "America cannot afford the economic proposals of Senator Obama. I left Europe four decades ago because socialism has killed opportunities there, and many, many, many entrepreneurs and business leaders all left and have taken jobs with them. And I tell you, in recent years Europe has realized its mistakes and begun rolling back some of its spread-the-wealth policies."

(** A few days after I wrote this, the giant AIG insurance company had already spent most of the $122.8 billion it originally received from the bailout, and it wanted more. Welfare doesn't work for people or corporations; they always want more; enough is never enough.)

Recipe for making a liberal politician
Take someone who avidly desires power yet isn't smart enough to think of ways to help the poor without robbing from the rich and middle class. Add enough hypocrisy to please their special interests, and remove any traces of compunction about lying through their teeth. Presto! Another lib who can do no wrong in the eyes of The New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and the rest of the hopelessly biased mainstream media.

The Federal government attempted to mollify taxpayers by claiming their $850 billion bailout was really to help Main Street, not Wall Street. What they didn't tell you was that Main Street could have been bailed out for much less money. They also conveniently neglected to admit that much of the money supposedly going to Wall Street was going straight out of the USA, headed for foreign banks, such as those owned by the rich oil sheiks from Saudi Arabia. Did you notice how eager Nancy Pelosi was to have that bailout bill passed? She and other liberal Democrats give lip service to helping the little guy in America while really helping oil companies and oil producers inflate their prices. She isn't working for us, but against us. The #1 mistake that people make about politics is looking at what politicians say, not what they do. Democrats want to help the little man. Republicans want to reduce the size of government. Hogwash!

The role the press is supposed to play, but isn't

Freedom of the press isn't constitutionally protected because our Forefathers thought it was important for lunatics to speculate about whether Sarah Palin actually delivered her baby or whether her husband is sleeping with their daughters, as some Martians have suggested. Instead, the men who framed the Constitution realized that a free press performed a vital function by serving as a watchdog over the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. An impartial press helps to keep government in check, curbing its tendency for excesses, fraud, waste, and abuse of power.

Just one problem: the mainstream press is no longer impartial, or anything close to it. Everyone with common sense knows they are enthusiastic cheerleaders for Democrats and pit bulls who loathe conservatives (this is why I refused to date Katie Couric, as I discussed in my blog). This lack of oversight emboldened Democrats, giving them an almost unfettered ability to stray ever further left. In their zeal to destroy conservatism, they've forced Republicans to follow their zany ideas in a last-ditch attempt to have the press find them semi-palatable.

Result? Many Republicans are further left than Democrats were a few decades ago, and most Democrats have now adopted core tenets of socialism and Marxism. The big loser is the American public, ranging from paupers to the ever-shrinking middle class, and even most rich people. The current American system of government is great for the thieves who masquerade as politicians, and great for the special interests who pull their puppet strings. The rest of us are being screwed day and night, year in and year out. Most of us never realize it, though, because the press favors Democrats and glosses over (or totally ignores) their faults while hyperfocusing on even irrelevant imperfections in Republicans, such as Todd Palin's DUI arrest years ago. That can't possibly influence how a McCain-Palin administration might govern, so who but a busybody with the brainpower of a gnat would care about it?

The mainstream media put Sarah Palin's family under the microscope and didn't waste a minute investigating Joe The Plumber. In less than 24 hours, hundreds of media personnel camped outside his home as thousands more dug into every facet of his life, searching for even trivial things to discredit him. The message was clear: How dare you question Barack Obama! We need to quickly divert focus from your question, so we'll ignore that and shift the spotlight to you and your past. Official Ohio government computers were used to search for dirt on Joe The Plumber, which is clearly an abuse of power.

Strangely, the mainstream media all but ignored the connection between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, an avowed anarchist and Marxist. This link is so troubling that it alone would guarantee that Obama would never receive security clearance from our government for any other job. Obama flippantly dismisses that connection by saying he was 8 years old when Ayers was a co-founder of the Weather Underground, a radical left organization hell-bent on domestic terrorism. What Obama conveniently omits is that Ayers is one of the most dangerous maniacs in American history. Chicago Magazine quoted him saying, "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents—that's where it's really at." They also pictured him stomping on an American flag in 2001. Great timing. Rather than apologizing for his prior savagery, he expressed regret that he did not do more. Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder a judge and his family at home. And he wanted to do more? After learning that he escaped justice by getting off on a technicality, Ayers gloated, "Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country." We're also a generous country. I would like to do my part by offering Ayers a free lobotomy.

Obama has often attempted to make Ayers seem more mainstream by pointing out that he is now a professor of education. Conveniently, he never bothered to mention that Ayers is helping future teachers turn our nation’s schools into left-wing indoctrination centers. Ayers has never gotten over the fact that his kooky idea of bombing people to spur social change flopped, so he turned to propaganda to achieve his objectives.

Even if you've heard about Ayers a hundred times, you likely have no idea of just how evil and depraved he is. On the October 26, 2008 Monica Crowley Show (which I highly recommend), the brilliant and captivating Dr. Crowley had me glued to my radio as she played a recording of the testimony of FBI informant Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the Weather Underground as an undercover operative to see what those wackos were contemplating. A few bombs here and there at the Pentagon or police headquarters? Nah, those were just baby steps. What they had in mind was far more chilling. In the 1982 documentary No Place to Hide, Grathwohl said:

"I brought up the subject of what's going to happen after we take over the government. You know, we become responsible then for administrating, you know, 250 million people. And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics. How are you going to clothe and feed these people?

The only thing that I could get was that they expected that the Cubans, and the North Vietnamese, and the Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States. They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the Southwest where we would take all of the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them how things were going to be.

I asked, 'Well, what is going to happen to those people that we can't re-educate, that are die-hard capitalists?' And the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they'd have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill 25 million people. I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well-known educational centers and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious."

Re-education centers? Killing 25 million Americans whose sole crime was capitalism? These savage genocidal plans reveal a psychotic desire to either brainwash or exterminate more people than Adolph Hitler did during World War II. Ayers is so disgustingly notorious that when Obama claims he didn't really know about Ayers' past, that Ayers was just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood," it is almost as preposterous as saying that Hitler lives in your neighborhood, but you don't know much about his past. This is especially difficult to swallow, considering Obama's fascination with extreme left-wing radicals from the 1960s. Imagine that you're an avid baseball fan and you lived in the same neighborhood as Babe Ruth, yet claimed that you didn't know much about what he'd done to earn his fame. This doesn't pass the laugh test. Many people strongly suspect that Ayers wrote much of Obama's book, Dreams From My Father (read Jack Cashill's impressive analysis). Just “a guy who lives in my neighborhood." Yeah, right.

When the full truth eventually comes out, I think it will show that Obama was intimately familiar with Ayers and it was their shared ideology that fueled their relationship. I saw Ayers on television yesterday wearing a shirt with a large red star on the chest that looked exactly like the red star on USSR military vehicles. Hardly subtle. Obama defended Ayers, calling him "respectable" and "mainstream." Thank you for this remarkably candid insight into your morality, Barack.

In a July 2, 2008 speech in Colorado Springs, Obama said, "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." Some people excused that chilling comment as merely being a bland reference to expanding community service opportunities. If that is true, it's difficult to imagine how a Harvard-trained lawyer would be careless enough to use the words "civilian national security force" in that context because anyone who knows even a smidgen of history can't help but think of Hitler's civilian national security forces that used force to subjugate German citizens.

Don't they teach this in Chicago?
In one of my college classes, the professor taught that ostracizing deviant members of a society was the ultimate tool it had to punish those who violated laws or customs. Unfortunately, people in Chicago allowed Ayers to integrate into society instead of banishing him. Redemption has its place, but not for those who are unrepentant and incorrigible. I've seen many mug shots, but the one taken of Ayers after his arrest shows an unusually reprehensible countenance that appears to be intentionally provocative, defiant, immature, and flippant. How on Earth could Obama have thought so highly of this man that he wrote a glowing review of Ayers' A Kind and Just Parent in 1997? Hasn't Obama tried to suggest that he barely knew Ayers? Then why did Ayers mention him on page 82 of his book?

Have you heard about Ayers' first book?
Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism was written by Ayers and other members of the Weather Underground. One of the people to whom the book was dedicated is Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian who assassinated Robert Kennedy. Ted Kennedy should have investigated Obama more thoroughly before endorsing him. If the mainstream media were as tough on Democrats as they are on Republicans, Ted Kennedy would surely have been asked, "Bill Ayers dedicated his first book to the man who killed your brother, Robert. Barack Obama said that Ayers is "respectable" and "mainstream." Senator Kennedy, how can you endorse a man who exhibits such poor judgment?"

Ayers: "Innocent people have to die"
On the October 30, 2008 O'Reilly Factor, FBI informant Larry Grathwohl said this about Bill Ayers: "I was in meetings with him when we were planning to put bombs at the Detroit police officer's association building in the 13th Precinct, and he specified that the bomb should contain fence staples in order to have an anti-personnel effect, in other words to kill people. I also pointed out the fact that the restaurant next door to the Detroit Police Officers Association would sustain more damage from the bomb than the DPOA building would. And his response was, 'In a revolution, innocent people have to die.'"

In a documentary about the Weather Underground, an interviewee said, "What we wanted to do here was deliver the most horrific hit that the United States government had ever suffered on its territory. We wanted to light it up. Our slogan was 'bring the war home,' and we really wanted to give the United States and the rest of the world a sense that this country was going to be completely unlivable if the United States continued in Vietnam, and that was the goal of this group."

The mainstream media is too busy drooling over Obama to explore why Ayers and other extreme radicals helped launch Obama's political career but didn't lift a finger to help other Democrats. Isn't the answer obvious? Barack Obama isn't just a Democrat, but an extreme liberal whose ideology appeals to those radicals. Obama's longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a hatemonger with a twisted view of history who is nuttier than some people I've involuntarily committed for psychiatric reasons. Wright says that blacks should sing "God damn America," not "God bless America." He also refers to the United States as the "US of KKK A." Wright suggested that the 9/11 attacks were justifiable payback for terrorism that we committed. When confronted with these manifestations of mental illness, Obama said, "I don't think that, uh, my church is actually particularly controversial."

Just something to think about:
What kind of people would take their children to such a church? Is it good for kids to see a Reverend boiling with so much rage and acting more like a political rabble-rouser than a man of God?

Barack Obama is a veritable magnet for attracting the most extreme radicals in America, including nut jobs who would be shunned by most liberal Democrats. This isn't a coincidence, but proof that birds of a feather flock together. No Presidential nominee in history has had such radical associations, yet the mainstream media is too busy fawning over Obama to explore his myriad danger signs. If you read everything Obama wrote in his books, it is easy to see that his attractive facade may just be a clever way to disguise who he really is and what he stands for. Personally, I don't think that he is essentially a sleeper cell, just biding his time, as some have suggested, until he becomes President and can accelerate the destruction of the United States. While I don't think that even he is that radical, I don't know it, thanks to nitwits like Katie Couric and Charles Gibson, who delight in posing gotcha questions to Republicans while Democrats get softball queries.

While I don't think that he intends to destroy the United States, I am convinced that he will try to warp it to fit his socialistic dreams of wealth redistribution, which is almost certainly his way of sugarcoating racial reparations. While an Illinois State Senator in 2001, Obama was clearly already considering how to best achieve that goal, as he revealed in this Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ-FM) interview (note: all of the ums, uhs, ahs, and repeated words are just the usual Obama stammering and stuttering, not typos on my part):

"If, if, if you look at, um, the, the victories and failures of the civil rights movement, um, and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights, uh, in uh, previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote. I would now be able to uh, sit at (sic) lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK. Uh, but the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, uh, and [unintelligible, but he was likely slurring together the words sort of] more basic issues such as political and and economic justice in this society. And, uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, uh, it wasn't that radical. It, it didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by uh, the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the Federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, uh, and that hasn't shifted and one of the, uh, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused, uh, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and ah, activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. And, uh, in some ways we still suffer from that . . . I think that, uh, although you can craft theoretical justifications for it [redistributing wealth] legally, um, you know, I think you can, any, any three of us sitting here could, could come up with uh, a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts."

Obama wasn't just thinking of ways to expand redistribution of wealth, but in 2001 he was already plotting ways to achieve that objective. Unfortunately, Obama's plans for redistributing wealth are not limited to the United States. He clearly wants to transfer wealth from the US to foreign countries to elevate their economies while depressing ours.

Obama has too many radical associations for them to be explained away on the basis of chance. It's like flipping a coin and getting 50 tails in a row; it might happen, but it is so improbable as to be beyond reasonable doubt. Either:

• Obama sought them out OR
• They sought him out—which they obviously wouldn't do unless he were equally radical.

In either case, this says a lot about the character and mindset of Barack Obama. His political career was launched in the living room of a man who founded an organization that wanted to brainwash Americans and exterminate the 25 million or so folks who still believed in capitalism, not socialism—and we're supposed to believe that this is just a coincidence?

Some of Obama's other radical associations include:

• Frank Marshall Davis, a radical activist and journalist who was suspected of being a Communist Party member in the 1950s. Davis, much older than Obama, had a close personal relationship with Barack, and gave him career advice.
• Rashid Khalidi, who is alleged to have served as a PLO spokesman, has long-standing ties to Obama. The Los Angeles Times reportedly has (but is refusing to release) an incriminating video showing Obama and Khalidi together.
• Father Michael Pfleger, a racially divisive Roman Catholic priest who strikes me as being another rabid hatemonger. According to Hannity’s America, Pfleger contributed thousands of dollars to Obama's state Senate campaign in 1999. In 2000, Obama steered a $100,000 state grant into Pfleger-affiliated programs. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Cardinal George ordered Pfleger to take a disciplinary leave of absence in response to his unprofessional rants about Senator Hillary Clinton. Obama claimed that he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric." This I didn't know excuse is SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for Obama, who has a long history of associating with nutjobs or people who engage in criminal behavior (e.g., Tony Rezko) and then claiming that he had no idea what they were like. Obama is either remarkably obtuse or a liar.
• Bernadine Dohrn, a leader of the radical Weather Underground terrorist organization, and wife of Bill Ayers. During a speech at the December 1969 "War Council" meeting organized by the Weathermen, she commented about what followers of Charles Manson did when they slaughtered actress Sharon Tate (then 8½ months pregnant) and the LaBianca family. Dohrn rejoiced, "Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in their bellies. Wild!"

The fact that Dohrn, a cheerleader in high school, would later cheer such a horrific murder of innocent people seems to indicate ideological support for Charles Manson, who dreamed of (and tried to incite) a racial rebellion in which blacks would triumph.

Ayers and Dohrn were proud of their past and did nothing to conceal it. How could Barack Obama not have known how sick they are? He knew, and he is no doubt laughing at people who are gullible enough to believe his explanation for why it was OK to pal around with them.

On the October 30, 2008 Charlie Rose Show, Rose and guest Tom Brokaw admitted that they really don't know much about Obama's worldview, foreign policy, advisors, heroes, books he's read, or him in general. These are professional journalists who look at Obama and see a giant question mark! The mystery of just who Obama is was made possible only through the utter incompetence of the mainstream media, who bent over backwards to not examine him. After the election, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas appeared on the Charlie Rose Show and said that Obama is "a deeply manipulative guy" and that "there is a slightly creepy cult of personality about all this." History has clearly shown that national leaders who manipulate their citizens via a cult of personality often use such manipulation to hide their malicious goals. Obama's pre-election speeches sound statesmanlike but are often so devoid of substance that even professional journalists are puzzled about what he said and how it might translate into practical policy. In short: Obama is manipulating us, but no one knows exactly what his ultimate objectives are. Creepy indeed.

Giving a radical Mystery Man control of our armed forces and economy is the greatest risk our country has ever faced. This gamble could never have occurred if the press scrutinized Obama's many glaring warning signs, as wary Americans would have rejected him as quickly as a man with common sense would shun a beauty queen with multiple incurable STDs. Hence, the next four years will be a gamble in which we must hold our breath, waiting to find out if Obama is just a very liberal Democrat with good but misguided intentions, or whether he possesses a dark side that might plunge America into civil war, or otherwise ruin us.

Update: We may not have to wait for long. On October 19, 2008, Joe Biden admitted that foreign leaders will take advantage of Obama's inexperience by creating a crisis soon after Barack takes office. Biden admitted that Obama's response will be so dopey that even staunch Obama supporters will wonder if he has his head screwed on straight. Biden said, "Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don't know about that decision." He then pleaded with people to be patient as Obama stumbles through the crisis. Before Obama picked him to be his running mate, Biden said he didn't think Obama was ready to be President, saying the job doesn't "lend itself to on-the-job training."

I appreciate Biden's candor about admitting that his running mate is so weak that he is bound to precipitate an attack, and his response will leave voters questioning Obama's intelligence—and their own, for having voted for him. If Joe The Plumber were there, he would have asked a question that none of the media posed: If electing Obama is bound to throw us into yet another major crisis, why don't we just save a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives by electing John McCain? Things are bad enough now. Why make them worse? Oh, yeah, I forgot: Half the country is desperate for change. Any change. If that's the change you want, vote for Obama. He'll give it to you.

The first lesson that kids learn during elementary school recess is that the big, strong kids aren't the ones who are picked on. There were numerous terrorist attacks against Americans at home and abroad during Clinton's presidency. Clinton either did not respond to them, or did so weakly, which emboldened terrorists and encouraged future attacks. Figuring that America was weak, the terrorists attacked again on 9/11. Bush responded forcefully, and we haven't been attacked since. That's not a coincidence. One of the most common questions reverberating through our nation after 9/11 was, "When are we going to be attacked next? Tomorrow? Next week? Every September 11th?" Who would have thought that President Bush would be able to keep terrorists at bay for so long? Shouldn't we give credit where credit is due? Pseudo-intellectuals despise Bush because he often doesn't sound very intelligent. Isn't it remarkable that someone who is supposedly that stupid was so successful in keeping us safe at home?

Many people speak favorably of Biden's extensive foreign policy experience, neglecting the fact that he has a long track record of advocating things that would have been disastrous for the United States. For example, Biden opposed the first Gulf War. Had Saddam Hussein been allowed to keep Kuwait, our inaction would have emboldened him and led to him ruling every oil-producing nation in the Middle East. Biden loves to brag about his intelligence, but for all of his supposed smarts, he says and does some amazingly stupid things. Brit Hume, managing editor of the Fox News Channel and a panelist on Fox News Sunday, said that Biden "acts like a man living in a fantasy world."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that Obama's ideas on how to deal with Iran are naive and "utterly immature." We're going to pay a high price for his naiveté.

Pop quiz #2
Why did President Bush want to attack Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime? Hint: It wasn't WMD; that was the justification for the war, not the ultimate factor that made Bush determined to depose Hussein. It wasn't oil, either, because we haven't stolen a single drop from Iraq. It wasn't even the war on terrorism. So what was it?

Pop quiz #3
What was the single greatest benefit of winning the war in Iraq? Hint: The mainstream media never mentions this benefit. Even conservative talk show hosts haven't grasped it. Your answer is:_________?

If the mainstream media weren't so busy yapping about how much Sarah Palin's clothes cost, they may have had the time to explore these and other critical matters. However, they're so busy trying to get you to react that they never spur you to think.

Barack Obama is obviously following Saul Alinsky's advice in Rules for Radicals, his step-by-step guide on how to overthrow the American democracy by organizing, agitating, and deceiving your way into power. Most Americans are too engrossed in the incessant antics of the oddballs in Hollywood to spend time researching more important matters, such as how kooky Alinsky was, and how anyone who subscribes to his radical ideas for change is similarly nuts. However, like a snake charmer, Obama has mesmerized half of our population as they mindlessly echo his "change, change, change" message without comprehending where that change will lead us. Probably to hell.

In News of the Day In Perspective on the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons web site, the author suggests that Obama may be deliberately using the techniques of neurolinguistic programming (NLP), a covert form of hypnosis.

During his Presidential campaign, Obama said, ". . . if you want real change, if you want an economy that rewards work, and the work's not just for Wall Street but for Main Street . . . then I need you to go out and talk to your friends, and talk to your neighbors . . . I want you to argue with them, and get in their face . . ."

Get in their face? Does that sound presidential, or like a street thug?

In any case, I made a concerted effort to speak about the Presidential race with everyone I could over the past few months, and found so many Obama supporters that I knew he would win the election. Courteously quizzing those devotees on why they supported Obama, I found only one person who gave an intellectually coherent justification. The rest stammered and stuttered as they struggled to formulate a reply. The most common response was, "Uh, he's for change." When I asked what he wanted to change and how that would benefit them, no one could answer that simple question.

On the October 20, 2008 Sean Hannity radio program, Joe The Plumber said that he will sometimes ask customers with an Obama-Biden sign in their yards why they're pro-Obama. Joe said he gets the same simple "he's for change" responses. He offered to not charge one customer for the $200 of work he'd just performed if that customer could give him an intelligent answer as to why he wants Obama to be President. Even with that incentive, the customer couldn't think of anything after 5 minutes.

99% of Americans obtain their sketchy knowledge of politics from the mainstream media, who purposely filter what they present to favor their chosen candidate. In this election, it's obviously Barack Obama. The mainstream media is therefore no longer serving its vital watchdog function, but instead acting as a giant propaganda machine in cahoots with far-left Democrats.

Today's Democrats are nothing like Hubert Humphrey or Harry Truman, who despised the Stalinist left. Today's Democrats think so little of the American public that they brazenly lie to them, such as in explaining what caused our current fiscal crisis without uttering a peep about how Democrats were the ones whose transfer of wealth ideas engendered this mess. The lapdog press parroted their explanation without mentioned some key facts, such as how President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, signed the Community Reinvestment Act into law in 1977. If you follow how that law was subsequently amended, you will see that Democrats worked to expand it, while Republicans—including perennial piñatas such as President Bush and Senator John McCain—advocated more regulations to halt the ticking time bomb they knew would eventually explode. Now that it has, Democrats and their accomplices, the mainstream media, have duped the public into believing that Republicans were responsible for the problem. Absurd!

The anger is justified, but its direction is not
On February 24, 2004, Alan Greenspan, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States, warned, "If we fail to strengthen GSE regulation, we increase the possibility of insolvency and crisis. We put at risk our ability to preserve safe and sound financial markets in the United States."

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were defended by influential politicians. On April 7, 2005, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said, "Things are good in the housing market. Why are people entertaining radical change?" Instead of doing the right thing, Schumer used his influence to encourage more Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac loans.

Representative Barney Frank, D-MA, had an affair with Herb Moses, a Fannie Mae executive who sought to relax lending restrictions when Frank served on the House Banking Committee that had jurisdiction over Fannie Mae. Frank received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored enterprise that employed his erstwhile boyfriend. With corrupting influences like sex and money involved, is it any wonder that Frank manifested his bias (or lack of judgment) when he said, ''These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'' Frank was quoted by The New York Times in a September 11, 2003 article, when he was the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. Incidentally, if you read that article, you will realize that the Bush administration, which is currently less popular than a cold sore, recommended that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should be subjected to what the Times termed “significant regulatory overhaul.” According to U.S. News & World Report columnist Michael Barone, the Bush administration tried 17 times to increase regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Two months before they crashed, Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said, "Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound; that (sic) they are not in danger of going under." He also reassured worried investors by saying, "I think they are in good shape going forward . . . I do think their prospects going forward are very solid." When warned that giving homes to people who could not afford them might result in massive defaults, this genius said, "The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn't bail them out. But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing."

Bill O'Reilly said that Barney Frank ". . . epitomizes everything that is wrong with the federal government. He was incompetent in his oversight of the federal mortgage agencies, and when they folded, causing a chain reaction of financial disasters for honest investors, he blamed other people."

O'Reilly also explained why McCain and Obama behaved like automatons in response to the Fannie/Freddie collapse instead of becoming angry as other Americans did. He explained, ". . . in the land of conventional politics, anyone showing anger and passion is deemed to be 'out of control.'" O'Reilly suggested that anger is sometimes appropriate. Clearly, it is now. Any politician who wasn't angry about this matter is out of touch with reality.

Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd is the #1 recipient of money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Barack Obama is #2, despite having been in the Senate for only a few years. Dodd and another Democratic Senator, Kent Conrad, Chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee, are alleged to have received sweetheart mortgage deals through a company (Countrywide) that offered them rates not available to ordinary borrowers—in other words, people who did not regulate them. Both Democrats denied any wrongdoing, evidently because lax Senate ethical rules do not require disclosure of home mortgages. However, to many citizens, these sweetheart deals stink to high heaven and smell like graft. Is graft received in the form of a home mortgage any less corrupting than other forms of graft?

In 2005, the Bush administration renewed its call to increase regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On April 7, 2005, the Senate Banking Committee considered legislation to prohibit Fannie and Freddie from acquiring bad mortgages. All of the Republicans on that committee voted for it, while all Democrats opposed it—including Christopher Dodd, who is now Committee Chairman and doing his best to run a sham "investigation" of what precipitated the subprime mortgage collapse. This isn't a mystery, Senator Dodd: it resulted from half-wits like you who opposed regulation that could have averted or minimized the crisis! (Isn't it odd how the government permits politicians to investigate themselves?** What's next? Allowing criminals to serve on their own juries? Sheesh!) Democrats then blocked a vote by the entire Senate. And we're actually paying you nitwits for your idiotic incompetence?

** When speaking of governmental reforms, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "You can't get a hog to butcher itself." When politicians can screw up year after year and still keep their jobs, what incentive do they have to change? None. If doctors are held personally accountable for their errors, why shouldn't politicians also be held accountable? Politicians want far more power than doctors, yet they want zero responsibility. It's time to change that. Being held personally accountable might force them to serve the citizens, not the special interests. If you agree, contact me and I'll describe what we can do to make politicians work for us, not against us.

In 2006, Senate Republicans introduced another bill to deal with the mounting mortgage problem. Senator John McCain was one of the sponsors of that bill. Republicans voted for the bill, while Democrats, now in the majority, killed it. In a May 26, 2006, press release, Senator John McCain said, “If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”

Although there are plenty of valid reasons to criticize Bush and McCain, only partisans with a compulsion to distort the truth to fit their agenda would fail to acknowledge that Bush and McCain tried to fix the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae mess years before it mushroomed out of control. Inexplicably, Bush and McCain are bearing the brunt of the wrath for this debacle, while voters increasingly favor Senator Barack Obama and other Democrats, such as Rep. Maxine Waters, who insisted in late 2004 that, "We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines.” Yes, that is the same Frank Raines who is now alleged to have cooked the books to inflate his bonuses.

On September 25, 2008, Bill Clinton said, "I think that the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans . . . to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

If Democrats could have found a Republican on which to pin the blame for this crisis, you can bet they would have made a spectacle of grilling that person in Congressional hearings. But it didn't happen. If there is Republican blame in this debacle, and I'm sure there is, it is trivial compared with the instrumental role that Democrats played in initiating it, ignoring warning signs, and even fighting Republicans who sought to fix the problem before it blew up.

By the way, I am not a Republican or Bush supporter; I am a fiscally conservative populist who believes in the rights and power of the people. I strongly believe that most of the elitists who rule us are ruining our country for their benefit—and if you disagree, may I ask what planet you are on? Mars? What more evidence could you possibly want? Bush could have, and should have, done much more than he did, and he should not have signed the bailout bill, but one thing is clear: a couple of years before our economy collapsed, he and McCain tried to stop the brewing disaster but Democrats stood in their way.

When a lie is the truth, and the truth is a lie (or perceived to be one), then we live in a world where wrong is right, and right is wrong. However, reality can be suppressed for only so long. Americans will eventually wise up and overwhelmingly reject the myths they've been fed by the Democrats and the mainstream media. When the next major crisis hits, Americans will not be so ready to pay for the mistakes of others. We're already at the "enough is enough" point, and won't tolerate the many looming disasters that Washington politicians will use as excuses to steal more of your money, and hence limit your freedom.

ACORN: More than just a nut

Despite his protestations, Obama is indelibly linked to ACORN, a group that is unquestionably linked to the mortgage disaster and so many election scandals, present and past, that they've been likened to an organized crime ring, triggering an FBI investigation under the RICO statutes—the ones designed to combat the Mafia and other mobs. Interestingly, computers mysteriously disappeared from an ACORN office under investigation. Might they be trying to hide something?

The October 18, 2008 Mike Huckabee television show featured two guests who said that ACORN reps induced them, sometimes with bribes, to register over 100 times. Another guest, the Rev. Al Sharpton, said that such activities "makes people more cynical and distrustful of the voting system." Ya think?

On the October 26, 2008 Monica Crowley Show, former prosecuting attorney and New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said, "ACORN is a radical organization. It is a self-righteous organization that believes because it is serving the poor, it can violate anything or do anything, which is why their people are constantly putting in these phony registrations. They may say they think there is something wrong with it, but they actually encourage it. They encourage it because they want to bring the system down. They believe in destroying the system from within, and that anything is justified in doing that—and they're taught that. And that is what they're doing, and you're seeing it playing out not just in one place, but in a lot of places. This is not a Republican plot of some kind. Democratic states with Democratic Secretaries of State have them under investigation. There are people who've been convicted in a number of states. This is for real, and this is on the largest scale I've ever seen. Plus, they have endorsed Obama, and this is what I don't get at all, Monica; I'll have to really do more research on this, but I really don't understand: they get federal money—ACORN has gotten $30 million at least from the federal government—they are a charitable organization, meaning they don't have to pay taxes—they are 501(c)(3)—yet they are endorsing a candidate . . . that just stinks, doesn't it?"

Yes, it does. 501(c)(3) organizations are supposed to be nonpartisan; they are prohibited from conducting political campaign activities to influence elections to public office. But what does ACORN do? Brazenly flaunt the law.

The rule of law, my foot
One of the central principles of the rule of law is that laws apply equally to everyone. Obviously, it does not. In the United States, liberals and blacks can get away with much more than conservatives and whites. If ACORN were a conservative organization, it would have been dissolved years ago and no taxpayer funds would continue to support it. The real ACORN group, liberal as it is, with a strong focus on black people, can effectively steal votes from others, and yet they're allowed to get away with that, year after year. The government swats flies without cleaning up the manure pile, and taxpayers must pay to sustain that manure pile.

Another example of a double standard in regard to race was manifested when the FBI investigated two nuts in California who put a noose around the neck of a Sarah Palin effigy and hung that outside their home. The FBI concluded that it was in poor taste, but no crime was committed. Others who hung an effigy of Barack Obama may be charged with a hate crime.

People in power who permit this black/white double standard to continue are probably not aware of research showing that even some animals possess a sense of fair play and react in anger when the rules are more stringent for them and more lax for others.

With ACORN and affiliated groups working overtime to commit the most massive voter fraud in US history, they are conspiring to effectively nullify my vote, and the votes of other conservatives, thereby denying us our most precious and essential Constitutional right. The federal government is investigating this election crime, but their slow and halfhearted response ensures that a few people may get a slap on the wrist a few years from now, but those criminals will succeed in neutralizing my vote. If Obama wins, no one can honestly say with certainty that his victory was legitimate. Instead, it may have been a direct result of that voter fraud. This seriously undermines the legitimacy of our government. Here is a relevant excerpt from the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Although the US government has taken great pains to physically preserve the Declaration of Independence, many current politicians don't seem to comprehend the words in it, especially the words I emphasized by putting them in red. Our forefathers basically said that when any government abuses its citizens, they have a right to eliminate that government and form a new one. The only legitimacy that elected officials have stems from the fact that we gave them power by voting for them.

Thousands of ineligible voters are now flooding the system, ranging from 7-year-old kids to Mickey Mouse. If the voting process is corrupted, as the current one definitely is, thanks to a nationwide (and even worldwide) conspiracy to put Obama in office, millions of Americans will reject the legitimacy of his election and look to the courts to order a new election that scrupulously adheres to the law. I hope the court isn't shortsighted enough to say, "We agree that 'President' Obama might not have been elected had ACORN's workers not engaged in fraudulent voter activities throughout the United States, but gee whiz, he's in office now, so can't you folks please go home and forget that your most basic civil right was violated? While the Declaration of Independence might now give you the right to kick us all out, won't you please let us stay? I mean, we've been Your Government for so long that it seems we're destined to exist forever, even if we screw you right and left. Especially left. Now go home and pay your taxes to help spread the wealth around."

Philosopher and author Robert A. Heinlein said, "There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him." Like millions of other taxpayers, I don't want to be forced to pay taxes that ultimately go to ACORN and groups like it that use that money to undermine my vote, and the votes of others. ACORN is supposed to be nonpartisan, and is in fact REQUIRED to be nonpartisan, but it clearly is not. When the US government forces taxpayers to fund ACORN, it is just as infuriating as it would be if the Mafia could force you to pay for the gasoline they use in driving to your business to extort money from you. It's sheer tyranny, and sensible taxpayers are sick of it.

On the November 1, 2008 Mike Huckabee show, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said this about Obama: "I think he is a charlatan . . . I think he is a phony. I am sorry but I do. I've got all sorts of evidence for it starting with the way he raises money without any responsibility, spends it and then has the ACORN running around trying to keep show that the right voters vote."

In regard to "the way he raises money without any responsibility," Secretary Eagleburger was referring to how the Obama campaign is allowing donors to use prepaid credit cards that are largely untraceable and therefore can be used to evade donation limits or to mask a contributor's identity or even country of residence. The latter permits Obama to illegally accept donations from foreigners. The Obama campaign also removed many of the credit card security features on its online donor page, thereby allowing anyone with a valid credit card number to donate using any name or address. A standard online security practice is to ensure that a cardholder's name matches personal information, such as an address. The Obama campaign accepted donations from Bart Simpson, Family Guy, King Kong, and Daffy Duck, who listed his address as "124 Wacky Way, Beverly Hills, Calif.” Wacky, indeed. Another name for it is "donor fraud." By going out of his way to facilitate these fraudulent donations, Obama has shown that he is a fraud and an unprincipled thug who will violate any law he thinks he can get away with to be elected President—the chief law enforcement officer in the United States. If he were more prudent, he would realize that his multiple scams ensure that his presidency will not be legitimate. The man who envisions himself as The Great Unifier will instead be The Great Divider, because no one with an ounce of common sense will accept the legitimacy of the chief law enforcement officer in the US when that person broke multiple laws during his campaign.

Near the beginning of this topic, I said, "It's tough to make an intelligent choice when you hear only half of the story." That applies to many decisions, from career choices to voting. However, it's difficult to formulate an informed decision in this election when the mainstream media has abandoned their vital role as journalists and functions as an army of press secretaries working for Obama and other liberals, presenting a stunningly brazen distortion of the truth. Like other contemplative voters, I've done my best to make informed voting choices, but the hundreds of hours that I've spent researching the candidates and their positions may effectively be thrown out the window by fraudulent voter activities linked to ACORN. After leaving office, Bill Clinton and especially Jimmy Carter have jetted around the world to combat fraud in foreign elections. Predictably, they haven't uttered a peep about the voter fraud in America. This proves that their foremost allegiance is to their fellow Democrats, not their fellow Americans.

In a FOX News special (Barack Obama: Ties that Bind?), Stanley Kurtz said, "ACORN made a practice in the late '80s and early '90s of forcing banks to make these high-risk loans to low-credit customers. They would run a kind of intimidation campaign where they'd pour into the lobby of a bank, scare away the customers, and make the bankers capitulate. [...] They went to their lobbyists on Capitol Hill and forced their lobbyists to work on the Democratic Congress. And it was this alliance of ACORN and their Democratic friends in Congress that forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to loosen up credit standards in the whole banking system."

Kurtz continued, "When Barack Obama was a wet-behind-the-ears community organizer in Chicago in the late 1980s, he ran into a woman named Madeline Talbott," a longtime ACORN director, who asked Obama to begin training her staff. After law school, he began training ACORN leaders. Obama's FightTheSmears.com web site initially said that claim was false. When Kurtz pointed to news reports and articles from the 1990s that discussed Obama conducting "classes for future leaders" of ACORN, FightTheSmears.com then changed its story by instead saying that ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee. In other words, Fight The Truth with Clinton-type obfuscation.

In the New York Post, Kurtz wrote, "The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN's Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards."

On December 1, 2007, Obama said, ". . . let me even say before I even get inaugurated, during the transition we're gonna be calling all of you [community organizers] in to help us shape the agenda."

In the final Presidential debate, John McCain said, "We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, and may be destroying the fabric of democracy."

Unfortunately, the damage that ACORN inflicted upon the fabric of democracy by voter fraud is trivial compared to the harm caused by the pressure they exerted upon banks and Congress that contributed to the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That housing collapse triggered a domino effect of financial failures that is devastating our economy now and for decades into the future. In From Bailout to Bliss, I mentioned that a leading Russian political analyst, Professor Igor Panarin, is predicting that our economic crisis "could well lead to the breakup of the United States." Before I began researching this crisis two months ago, my reaction to such a statement would have been something along the lines of, "Yeah, right. He's nuts." Now that I have a much better understanding of the mess we're in, and how it will be all but impossible to dig our way out of this hole, and how things are bound to get even worse in the future, I think that Professor Panarin is a prescient genius who has good reason to think that the USA's days are numbered. Considering his ties to ACORN, it is ironic that Barack Obama, a man who said he'd bring us together, will likely be judged by history as one of the pivotal players in triggering the destruction of our country.

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, McCain said that Obama's "campaign paid $832,000 in the primary to a front group for ACORN, and you know what it was described as? 'Lighting and site preparation.'" In view of how ACORN has wounded the United States, it is no wonder that Obama has used deception to hide his ties to ACORN.

The next civil right to go: free speech

Democrats have threatened to further warp the political landscape by reinstituting and expanding the Fairness Doctrine. Like many pieces of legislation, its name is misleading. Democrats salivate at the opportunity to use the Fairness Doctrine to nullify the last great bastion of conservatism: talk radio. Other than that, FOX News, and a smattering of newspapers, almost every other media outlet in the United States is overwhelmingly liberal. Nancy Pelosi and other extreme liberals don't care that liberals already dominate almost all media, except for the few aforementioned exceptions. Like other tyrants, she wants total control. If she gets her way, making an informed choice will be increasingly difficult as journalism further morphs into lopsided propaganda. She and Obama will be jumping with joy as America is changed from a great nation to one that is socialistic. However, it is no accident that the most prosperous nations are capitalistic democracies. Socialistic countries inevitably have second-rate economies, at best.

Harry Reid, who is currently the Senate Majority Leader and perhaps the most passive-aggressive politician ever, will undoubtedly rejoice along with Pelosi, Obama, and Ayers as the United States is changed to fit Obama's vision of a country in which the government—and its heavily armed federal agents, of course—gets to tell you how much of your paycheck you can keep. Joe The Plumber wisely realized that Obama's $250,000 threshold of higher taxation is subject to whimsical reduction, especially after the election when Obama, Reid, and Pelosi can unleash their pent-up longing to take even more of your money. Joe said, "I mean, $250,000 now. What if he decides, well you know $150,000, you're pretty rich, too. Let's go ahead and lower it again. You know it's a slippery slope. When's it going to stop?"

Never. That $250,000 figure has already fallen to $200,000 before the election. (Update: On October 27, 2008, Biden spoke of a $150,000 threshold. Two days later, the Obama-Biden team finally made clear that those figures apply to couples and will be lower still for individuals. Earlier in the campaign, they said, "If you make less than $250,000, you won't pay a penny more tax." You means you, not you and your spouse. This is so obvious that only one conclusion can be drawn from it: they were lying through their teeth to deceive voters. On October 31, 2008, an Obama spokesperson (Governor Bill Richardson) suggested that $120,000 may be their threshold—remember, Obama previously voted to increase taxes on people making $42,000 per year.) Don't breathe a sigh of relief if you make less than that, because Obama will let the Bush tax cuts expire, so everyone will pay higher taxes. Low-income taxpayers will be especially hard hit; their tax rate will increase by 50% (from 10% to 15%). Didn't Obama say low- and middle-income taxpayers would pay less? Yes. He lied. And half of you believed him, because the mainstream media let him get away with that deception. What's truly odd about Obama's insistence on higher taxes is that countless economists have warned that raising taxes during a recession may lead to a depression. Obama has shown no signs of heeding that advice from people who clearly know much more about economics than he does. Biden attempted to justify the higher taxes by calling them "patriotic." Since when is it patriotic to ruin your country and destroy the American dream for people who are willing to work hard?

Obama is a clever man with a slick ability to camouflage his intentions, but based on his voting record and veiled threats (such as saying that "words are not enough," suggesting that whites will be forced to pay cash reparations to all black people in America), almost everyone will pay higher taxes. That includes doctors, teachers, plumbers, and other blue-collar workers. Even struggling single moms will struggle more to survive as more of their paycheck is looted by the government. If you're white, you may pay even more, although a good case could be made that whites have already atoned for slavery with the blood of Union soldiers during the Civil War, and with trillions of dollars subsequently transferred to blacks via countless welfare programs.

Let's also not forget that innumerable whites had their civil rights curtailed via affirmative action that enabled blacks who were less qualified, or simply didn't want to work as hard, step ahead of others. Even whites who weren't directly victimized by affirmative action have paid a price for it. I had to work multiple jobs in college to pay my way, while I knew blacks with richer parents who had their education handed to them on a silver platter, courtesy of Michigan taxpayers, including my Mom. During those college years, I lived in perpetual fear that I would not be accepted into medical school despite my high grades. In those days, the competition for med school acceptance was fierce, and many highly qualified white applicants were rejected in favor of blacks with much less impressive grades and MCAT scores. Between working and studying enough so that I obtained a perfect grade in almost every class I took, I had so little free time that I didn't go on my first date until my last year of college.

That's a trivial matter, though. What is far from trivial are the academic scams that allow blacks to obtain college degrees by merely going through the pretense of college, such as the one I uncovered by happenstance at Michigan State University. This academic fraud is yet another example of how bleeding-heart liberals poison society with their cockamamie ideas. Even the supposed beneficiaries, black people, are victimized because affirmative action automatically makes any black person's achievement suspect. Whites sometimes wonder and seethe, "Did you really earn that college degree? Do you really deserve that job?" Consumers are victimized when blacks who did not truly deserve their degrees or jobs perform poorly. I recently ran smack-dab into this incompetence when two black employees of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (one representative and her supervisor) effectively denied me coverage for an eye problem necessitating surgery (not LASIK; I'd already paid for that myself years ago) that my policy OBVIOUSLY should have covered. I was shocked when they asserted that the surgery required to correct my problem was not "medically necessary." This was so absurd that I knew those BCBS reps were either fighting a race war and hence depriving me of my civil rights, or were so stupid that they should be summarily fired.

Obama's talk of making whites pay reparations for slavery intentionally overlooks the fact that we already have paid for it in many ways, and we continue to do so every day. In addition to being penalized by affirmative action, academic fraud, and welfare, some black leaders such as Jesse Jackson have used race as a weapon to shake down corporations for staggering amounts of money that is simply passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices. Ultimately, the crux of this and other racial issues isn't skin color, but ideology, so it isn't just whites who are incensed by Jackson and others like him (see Jamaal Michaels' review of Shakedown: Exposing The Real Jesse Jackson).

Liberals pushing for the Fairness Doctrine intend to use it to attack only conservatives, not fellow libs such as Charles Karel Bouley, a gay activist and Obama supporter who is a KGO radio Host. Bouley is notorious for childishly rejoicing in the death of former President Ronald Reagan and maliciously suggesting that former White House spokesman Tony Snow's cancer may be payback for serving President Bush and FOX News. On November 2, 2008, Bouley blew a fuse and screamed into his microphone, "Fuck, God damn, Joe the God damn motha fuckin' plumber! I want mother fuckin' Joe the Plumber dead!" If a conservative said anything even half that reprehensible, he would be taken off the air permanently and referred to a psychiatrist. Liberals are allowed to get away with virtually anything: wanting to kill people who respectfully ask questions of politicians, threatening Sarah Palin with rape, or hanging her in effigy.

Update: The latest tack in the liberal plan to silence conservative talk radio is to push the FCC to enforce localism rules requiring a minimum amount of local programming, and therefore less national programming (such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Monica Crowley). Local programming usually isn't as captivating as national shows (except when I am being interviewed :-), so many people would rather turn off their radios than listen to people discuss the PTA or fee increases for dog licenses. Why not continue to let audiences decide what's on the radio? Popular shows will survive; unpopular ones will not. This system represents true democracy; the people decide what is on the air. There is no need for government to step in; any attempt to do so is clearly a violation of our First Amendment rights. Isn't it odd how the government is constantly assaulting our rights? The only thing that keeps them at least partially in check is our Constitution.

Obama was right. And wrong.

When a child asked Obama why he wanted to be President, he replied, "America is — is no longer what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don't want that future for my children. I want — I want America to be better, to be stronger, to be more unified, to be more prosperous, to be kinder, to be more tolerant."

Point #1: He wants America to be kinder and more tolerant? And he's mocking Joe The Plumber and laughing at him behind his back?

Point #2: Barack "Senator Government" Obama is already a multimillionaire. And that's not the future he wants for his kids? He wants them to be even more prosperous? In Dreams from My Father, Obama says that he was moved to tears during a sermon by Reverend Wright that included an assertion that "white folks’ greed runs a world in need." Who is greedy, Barack? (Also, isn't it revealing that Obama claims he never heard Wright utter racist sentiments, yet he obviously knew of this one?)

However, Obama is correct when he said that America is not what it once was. The government used to be an ally to its citizens, but it is now a serious impediment to many Americans because of its excessive taxation and onerous regulation. Unfortunately, Obama is an extraordinarily divisive figure obsessed with race and "spreading the wealth around" who will only compound this problem.

Like other bullies, the US government's basic operational guideline is that might makes right. Like a 220-pound man beating the hell out of his 110-pound wife, the one who prevails in a dispute is not necessarily the one who should, based on common sense rules of fairness. A county government booted an elderly woman out of her home because she owed them a couple of hundred dollars in back property taxes. They sold her home and collected the overdue money. What did they do with the rest of it? They kept it, leaving the evicted woman in her eighties homeless and penniless.

The most alarming thing about this true case is that it is hardly unique; countless other instances prove beyond any reasonable doubt that our government is not the kindly, avuncular good ol' Uncle Sam it once was, but instead a petulant tyrant that uses its immense force to get its way. However, it is difficult to loathe the government as much as we should, because some elements of it have done a superb job. For example, our military defended us from countries that would have loved to conquer us, such as Germany and Japan during World War II, and the USSR during the Cold War. The US armed forces are filled with people with noble intentions, contrary to what you may hear from left-wing nuts who rail against our military while remaining strangely silent when the Russian or Chinese armies commit atrocities. Unfortunately, some forms of mental illness cannot be treated.

The only downside to our military and law enforcement might is that US politicians and bureaucrats use the tacit but ever-present threat of force to ride roughshod over our rights in an arrogant and brutally cold manner because they have the SWAT team and we don't. Sure, the big, burly sheriff can throw an elderly woman out of her home and take from her a thousand times more than she owed them, but is that truly justice? A good case could be made that the county government owed her a heck of a lot more money than that for inefficiently wasting the money that she and other people paid in taxes over the years. Governments need not concern themselves with efficiency, because whenever they need more money, they just say "ha-ha" and pull more out of your wallet. Governmental efficiency is an oxymoron.

Governments also need not worry about committing errors, because they can always shoulder YOU with the responsibility for THEIR errors. We saw a monumental example of this with the $850 billion bailout, and I saw a much smaller but still exasperating instance of it years ago when I received a nastygram from the county government, threatening me to stop using an incorrect home address. I drove to the county office building and walked past dozens of rooms occupied by people twiddling their thumbs. After finally finding the correct room, a worker said that she had assigned the wrong address to my builder, which was, of course, subsequently transferred to my mortgage papers, bank, countless other business and government documents (e.g., my medical license), and about 50 magazine subscriptions . . . thankfully, less than the 200+ I once had. "But I didn't make the mistake," I protested, "so why should I be the one to clean up this mess?"

Her answer was basically, "I made the mistake, but you still have to fix it." Tough luck. End of story. Not even the usual perfunctory "sorry."

People with tremendous power should always have tremendous responsibility. As a doctor, I have the power to determine who lives, and who dies. I can determine who is free to leave the ER, and who is sufficiently dangerous to themselves or others that I can have them taken off the streets. However, it is a rare doctor who uses his power for his personal betterment; we do the best we can with the resources available to us to produce the best possible outcomes for our patients.

For example, after years of working in a busy ER in a large city, I moved to a small tourist town and began working in its ER, staffed by myself and just one nurse. Soon afterward, I asked him, "Don't you ever get any codes in here?" Perhaps predictably, a few hours later, three people in cardiac arrest simultaneously arrived in the ER. It takes at least two people to run a code, so I had to quickly decide who I'd save and who I'd leave to die. It was a tough choice and I had only a few seconds to collect information to help me make that decision. I made my best guess, successfully coded him, and the other two died. Sad but predictable, considering how society would rather shower untold billions of dollars upon sports stars, do-nothing-for-anybody-except-themselves celebrities, and simpletons in Hollywood than increase funding for medical care.

Heck, forget the increase funding. Just appoint a doctor to be the benevolent dictator ruling our healthcare system, slash the budget by 25%, holding him personally accountable, demanding that he provide measurably better care. I could do it, and so could plenty of other doctors. We know healthcare and healthcare systems. We know how they could be made to run better and more efficiently, at less cost.

The perennial Democratic Party solution: more money
During the third 2008 Presidential debate, moderator Bob Schieffer asked, "The U.S. spends more per capita than any other country on education. Yet, by every international measurement, in math and science competence, from kindergarten through the 12th grade, we trail most of the countries of the world. The implications of this are clearly obvious. Some even say it poses a threat to our national security. Do you feel that way and what do you intend to do about it?"

Obama answered that we need reform, but also more money. However, Obama doesn't have a good track record of success on obtaining results from increased educational funding. He led a foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) from 1995 to 1999, and served on its board until 2001. CAC spent over $100 million dollars, but even their own evaluators found no evidence of educational improvement.

This is the quintessential Democratic response: Let's throw money at a problem. If it doesn't work, let's throw even more. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing while expecting different results. As a physician who is legally entitled to determine insanity, I hereby declare that Democrats who don't learn from their mistakes (that is, most of them) are insane. And, frankly, so are people who vote for them.

However, who really runs healthcare? Politicians, who are generally lawyers. They're doing a darn good job of running healthcare into the ground and making it so exorbitantly expensive that it has become one of the central issues in every Presidential election. There's always talk of fixing it, but no one ever does, because the wrong people are in charge. They have the power, but not the responsibility.

Proof that politicians don't know the first thing about healthcare or economics:
Both McCain and Obama (and everyone who runs for President as a Republican or Democrat) have proposed plans that would use tax dollars to subsidize healthcare and expand access to it. Just one problem: who is going to provide it? There is already a shortage of doctors and nurses. So who will provide that care? Certainly not me. Although I am still fully licensed and do consultations for people exasperated by the inability of their doctors to figure out what's wrong with them, I am essentially on strike for better pay and working conditions. Yes, I know the myth: doctors are rich. I conclusively refuted this myth by documenting how everyone from truck drivers to strippers can make more money than doctors. Incredulous? Read that posting. Plenty of other doctors have joined me and transitioned to other careers. So who will diagnose you? A nurse practitioner? A Physicians Assistant? You might want to read what I have to say about nurse practitioners and Physicians Assistants; look for the third topic down from the top of the page: Are PAs and Nurse Practitioners (NPs) as competent as MDs?

This lack of accountability makes politicians so cavalier about performance that they don't ever feel the need to try an outside-the-box solution every now and then. Both McCain and Obama have simplistic ideas for reforming the healthcare system. They think that we should pat them on the back for putting a Band-Aid on a cancer. As a doctor, I KNOW that they and other members of the government are clueless about healthcare, and I, along with countless other Americans, suspect that they are equally clueless about how to run the economy. The primary difference between politicians and the public isn't knowledge, intelligence, or judgment; it's EGO. Politicians are suffused with the conviction that they are the high-and-mighty bright ones who were born to lead us lesser beings.

Politicians love to rest on their laurels and brag about about how our system is best because it has produced the most prosperous nation in history. That's true, but we could have been substantially more prosperous if we weren't shackled by the US government, who callously fritters away our tax dollars in innumerable ways while burdening us with oppressive and needlessly intrusive regulation.

The big secret about healthcare is that politicians don't want to fix it. They want that and other perennial problems to fester, so that we, in desperation, willingly give them more money and more power. Our paychecks are being eroded along with our liberties, but no fix is in sight. Things are generally getting worse, not better. Americans are expected to take this on the chin. We can't do a darn thing about it except vote. At the risk of stating the obvious, that isn't working. We let rich male lawyers rule our government, and we're shocked to find they're working for themselves and their special interests, not us. We vote, expecting change, and get more of the same. If you don't want acorns on the floor of your home, don't invite a different squirrel in, thinking that will solve the problem. Rodents can't help what they do. Neither can politicians, evidently.

Every few years, we have the chance to vent our bottled-up frustrations by voting, but we're not really given a choice. We're just substituting Squirrel A for Squirrel B. Hence, voting gives us the illusion of choice, not real choice. Nothing underscores this more than the fact that we now have two candidates—McCain and Obama—who both think that it is right to make people pay not just for their own mortgages, but also the mortgages of folks who generally acted irresponsibly in "buying" a home they couldn't afford. Notably, McCain and Obama aren't asking you to help those folks; they are forcing you to do it. If you don't pay that money, they will seize money from your bank account, confiscate your home, or put you in jail. Governments cannot give to anyone without taking from others, and when they take, they're not nice about it. They're brutal and won't take no for an answer.

As if inside-the-box candidates serving their special interests weren't bad enough, in this Presidential election we have groups like ACORN conspiring to commit massive voter fraud and put Obama in the White House. By doing this, ACORN and Obama—who is inextricably linked to that taxpayer-supported group—are usurping the liberty of conservatives. It's important to note that our forefathers declared their independence from Great Britain after less provocation. Hence, what ACORN and Obama are doing is an act of war, perpetrated against their mortal enemy: conservatism and anyone who holds conservative viewpoints.

It is often interesting and sometimes helpful to analyze not just what people say and do, but what motivates them. I've done this with Obama. The superficial explanation is that he is using his seductive charm to ruthlessly advance his career. For politicians, that is par for the course. In Obama's case, however, I suspect that he may have a couple more incentives. One is the fact that he grew up without a father. Kids raised this way sometimes go through life feeling as if there is something wrong with them, or that they are somehow never good enough. In compensation, they may adopt a huge ego to blare "Yes, I am good enough!" to the world. They still don't believe it themselves, so they use overachievement as a salve for their festering emotional wounds. I know what I am talking about, because I grew up for the most part without a father. I didn't just want to be a doctor, but the best one. I didn't want to be satisfied with the abysmally low success rate of codes, I wanted to save every patient in every code—and I did that for 18 months in a row, which just might be a world's record for ER docs working in busy emergency departments with a high level of medical and surgical acuity. See what I mean by ego? :-)

Mending a bruised ago in this way can benefit society. Was anyone harmed because I worked extra hard in medical school and graduated in the top 1% of my class? No. However, Obama impresses me as a man with a lot of latent anger. Perhaps because of my ER experience, when I have just seconds to get to the bottom of a situation, I've developed an uncanny ability to size up people and separate the truth from the bullshit (read my free True Emergency Room Stories book for several examples). I remember the first time I saw Bill Clinton on television. I didn't know if he were a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, but in a split-second I knew that he was a duplicitous liar—which history has clearly shown that he is, justifying his Slick Willy nickname that he shares with Willie Brown, another Democrat politician, and Willie Sutton, a prolific bank robber.

I think that Barack Obama also exhibits signs of disinhibited Reactive Attachment Disorder, which can manifest as:

• Indiscriminate sociability
• Inappropriately familiar or selective in the choice of attachment figures

This could explain why he was drawn to so many nuts, especially older ones.

I've sized up Barack Obama and I don't like what I see. The pollyannaish side of me retains a glimmer of hope that Barack just used his many radical associations to advance his career and, after achieving his objective, he might cast off the nutty ideas he used as bait to lure voters eager for something new, becoming the outside-the-box President that we desperately need. But will he use his power with intelligent discretion? The perceptive side of me that rang alarm bells when something didn't add up in the ER is now screaming "DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!" about Obama. It's not that he is black. I know of several blacks who, in my opinion, are smarter than John McCain and much better suited to be President (I named them in my blog). Only Neanderthals dislike people who possess a different skin color. I want everyone to succeed because that would put liberal Democrats where they ought to be: permanently out of power, and perhaps even in jail, for ruining our economy as they did.

Although Republicans are usually a better choice, most aren't a great choice. McCain is an elitist who, despite his generally good intentions and maverick image, still does not adequately respect how hard taxpayers work for their money. Yes, he had a tough life during his POW years, but his life before and after that was hardly tough. He went from being the son of an admiral to marrying a stunningly beautiful woman who looks young enough to be his daughter and has a boatload of money. I had drunks punching me in the ER while he was being treated like royalty in the Senate. As a doc, I sometimes wonder if he has incipient Alzheimer's disease. I saw that in Reagan while he was in office, so it is possible to be a great President while the ol' neurons are slowly turning off for the last time, one by one.

Unlike McCain, Barack cannot blame his shortcomings on senior moments. Obama is clearly intelligent, but probably not as brilliant as many think. Other than stuttering or saying things that defy explanation (such as his gaffe about him visiting 57 states with one more to go), Barack almost always seems bright. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. That sounds very impressive—so impressive that I am skeptical that affirmative action didn't boost his grades. That goes on at Michigan State University, as I discovered, and I'm sure there is a greater percentage of far-left liberal professors at Harvard who are eager to further the careers of the next generation of liberal leaders by giving them high grades that might impress the 99.9999% of the population who don't know about this scam.

How did Obama get into Harvard Law School?
Obama attended Columbia University at a time when affirmative action and grade inflation should have made it easy to graduate with at least minimal honors, especially considering that he chose one of the easiest majors: political science. In spite of these advantages, Obama's performance there was decidedly unimpressive. Obama refuses to release his LSAT scores, probably because they indicate that he isn't nearly as intelligent as the mainstream media wants us to believe.

His academic record was clearly far below average for students entering Harvard Law School, so how did he get in? His connections.

Khalid al-Mansour, a black Muslim and adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, persuaded Percy Sutton (Malcolm X's lawyer) to write a letter on Obama's behalf, encouraging his connections inside Harvard to accept him. His letter didn't say it, but it could be boiled down to: Please don't laugh when you see his grades and LSAT scores; this man shows great promise as a radical; we need a man like this in a position of power to further our radical agenda.

According to several sources, Khalid al-Mansour is a radical racist who also helped finance Obama's Harvard education. Considering his Middle Eastern ties, and how OPEC doesn't want us to fully utilize our energy resources, don't be surprised to find out that Obama will do things as President to ensure that you pay more at the pump. Obama must show gratitude to the people who helped him get where he is: fellow radicals, not you and me.

I am never very impressed by the intelligence of people who espouse economic liberalism and wealth redistribution. It is impossible to favor wealth redistribution without tacitly admitting that you aren't smart enough to create ways to help poor people without having a federal agent rob from the rich and middle class to give to the poor. With this approach, you aren't creating any wealth, but merely utilizing the threat of force to transfer it. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." He might also have said that people with little minds are more apt to resort to using force to get what they want because they cannot conceive of better ways to achieve their objectives. In other words, might makes right is Plan A. Plan B is . . . um . . . uh . . . hell if they know, so they resort to Plan A: force or the threat of it. A thug dressed in a suit is still a thug.

There are better ways, but politicians with second-rate minds are usually so enamored with the effectiveness of force that they never stop to consider how the government, without abandoning wealth redistribution, could make it more palatable and even enjoyable. An even better solution would reduce people's need for money while giving them a better and more enjoyable life than they likely ever dreamed of. (Want to know what it is? Contact me and I'll send a free e-book to you describing it.)

Yet another remedy for poverty is to reinvigorate the capitalistic system. The myth is that the desire to earn more spurs people and corporations to excel and innovate. That is true to a certain point, but I've found that once corporations achieve a certain level of success and run out of good ideas for innovation, most would rather stagnate and continue producing mediocre products than look to outside inventors for bright new ideas. Most corporations are run by men, whose fragile egos can sometimes be maintained only by putting their blinders on and patting themselves on the back for producing products that may have been state-of-the-art decades ago, but are now hopelessly outdated.

While there are many inventions, most of them are trivial. For example, consider how many patents that GM owns but Ford does not. Or Toyota versus Honda, or vice-versa. 99% of their inventions don't amount to a hill of beans because what truly separates their vehicles is styling, not grand innovations that remarkably improve your driving experience. American automakers are now faced with the prospect of going out of business, merging (which might only delay their collapse), or having taxpayers give them another multi-billion dollar bailout. If GM, Ford, and Chrysler were smart, they would look at some of my inventions that would enable them to produce cars so clearly superior in so many ways that they could quickly dominate the industry again. Whether it's safety, convenience, comfort, or gee-whiz features that would make your eyes pop out in amazement, I have many ways to improve cars that consumers would love. I've considered submitting my ideas, but was put off by statements that essentially say, "We'll consider your idea, but we won't pay you for it." I may never profit from my automotive inventions, but I will have a good laugh when they go out of business. There is a price to pay for close-mindedness, and they're paying it. Fools.

Most people are impressed by today's technology, but I am far more amazed by what we should have, but don't. For example, how about a dishwasher so effective it eliminates the need for prewashing? Or a dryer that uses less energy than anything now available? Or a robot that would save you time, increase your health, and literally transform your life? Or how about a simple new way to curb the AIDS epidemic? I've invented these things and a thousand more, but found that even when I am willing to give ideas away or sell them for $1, it can still be virtually impossible to get those ideas into the hands of people with the means to implement them.

In a discussion of missed opportunities during a televised program (Buffett & Gates Go Back to School) in which Bill Gates and Warren Buffett responded to questions from students at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln School of Business Administration, Gates said, “In Microsoft's case, the biggest mistake is where we miss something that's coming along that's going to be huge. We don't want to have anything that comes along, some breakthrough . . . that we haven't gotten the best people in and are putting that together with the work we're doing, so it would be missing something like that that would be our worst mistake.” One of my inventions is a huge breakthrough, potentially more popular than the Internet, and something that more people will find an indispensable part of their lives. It can be used alone or in conjunction with computers and the Internet. Everyone can use it, from young children to old folks, including the myriads of technological Luddites who can't, or won't, program a VCR. Gates is ostensibly interested in not missing the opportunity to capitalize on new ideas, but is he? I have good reason to doubt that. If they knew what they were missing and could avail themselves of those innovations, Microsoft shareholders would jump for joy. So would millions of people who otherwise will be infected with HIV.

Of course, Gates is not the only one who isn't receptive to new ideas. Many other corporate executives are equally guilty. As a result, our economy was sputtering before the subprime mortgage crisis hit because Americans don't adequately appreciate what it will take for us to maintain our standard of living. In today's world market, in which millions of manufacturing jobs have been irreversibly lost to China and other nations, we can't compete by producing products for less. Now more than ever, innovation is the engine that drives the American economy, but our innovation is only a fraction of what it should be. Why?

Well, when was the last time you saw a job posting for an inventor? I've never seen or heard of one. Corporations overwhelmingly rely upon their engineers to innovate, assuming that the ability to pass engineering classes in college somehow magically confers creativity. It doesn't. A few engineers are very creative, but so are a few teachers, doctors, plumbers, and homemakers. Most of the good ideas in this country are wasted because there is no efficient way to transfer those ideas into tangible goods and services.

What am I supposed to do with my thousand inventions? Form a thousand corporations to produce them? There just isn't enough time to do that, or even to market 5% of them. It can take months to market just one invention. In that time, I can generate a dozen or more new ideas, guaranteeing that my pace of marketing inventions could never keep up with my pace of creating and developing them. This is particularly frustrating when I develop a successful prototype, but I am the only one who benefits from that idea. Millions of others would love to buy it, which would create new jobs and hence more money for our government. Politicians could increase tax revenue while keeping tax rates low. Joe The Plumber would be very happy, and so would you and just about everyone else. John McCain would be happy. But Obama? Perhaps, but he's said too much to make me think that he will use higher taxes not just as a way to generate revenue, but as a way to inflict suffering and pain as retributions and reparations. The desire to get even can produce tragic consequences, and I think that Obama is going to show us just how tragic it can be.

When you're scared, you think with another part of your brain. You tend to think more emotionally and less rationally. You're probably frightened now about the Crash of 2008 that will cost all of us money and increase unemployment. Most people feel powerless in the face of such an immense crisis that leaves even economists puzzled about how to optimally deal with it. Many people look to our leaders in Washington, but they're equally clueless. In fact, many of their "solutions" will only magnify and prolong the problem. For example, Obama is just itching to raise taxes. After the election, almost everyone will pay more in taxes. His $250,000 threshold for extra taxation is bound to be drastically lowered because even rich people don't have enough money to pay for his spending proposals. A modern analysis of the 1929 stock market crash revealed that government intervention, including higher taxation, did not solve the problem, but actually prolonged it. The market didn't rebound until 1954. If it takes another quarter century for this crisis to resolve, it won't be until 2033 that we get back to where we once were. Do you want to wait that long? I certainly don't. Wouldn't it be better to kick Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Harry Reid out of office?

In addition to implementing the measures I synopsized above, I think that we should immediately:

• Pass a Constitutional amendment prohibiting the government from compelling taxpayers to pay for the homes, healthcare, food, utilities, and children of other people, except in cases of absolute necessity (not politicians wanting to seize money from Taxpayer A to give to Taxpayer B to buy B's vote). Remember, they're not only taking your money, but also your time, and part of your life—in fact, over half of it. You have better things to do with your time than working so that someone else can benefit from it.
• Reduce the size of government. For example, what on Earth did the Department of Education do with the $68.6 billion it spent this year? Like other Federal bureaucracies, it is massively bloated and burns money without anyone caring whether the little good they do couldn't have been done locally and for much less.
• Insist that legislators cannot vote on a proposed law until they read it in its entirety, which few do. Buried in many bills are lots of pork. Presidents should also be given line-item veto power.
• Eliminate all federal pork barrel spending (a.k.a., pork or earmarks), not just some of it, unless there is a compelling national need to appropriate money for a specific project. Obama isn't very concerned about earmarks, saying that we're only spending $18 billion per year on them. That figure is likely far lower than the true amount, but it would take over 11,000 people working their entire lives to make that much money.
• Prohibit the federal government from using our money against us, such as funding groups like ACORN that have a long track record of using tax dollars to screw taxpayers via election fraud and some actions that contributed to the subprime mortgage collapse, such as pressuring banks into issuing loans to people who did not meet traditional requirements, including over 5 million illegal aliens.
• Insist that high schools have a mandatory "Intro to Reality" course in which students transitioning from adolescence to adulthood learn basic lessons such as money doesn't grow on trees and it isn't "compassionate" for government to give money to people because that money must first be confiscated from someone else.
• Demand that no politician or bureaucrat has power without responsibility or accountability. Politicians wield tremendous power over our lives, yet they have no commensurate responsibility. They can take payoffs from special interest groups, screw the taxpayers, ruin our futures and the futures of our children, and still keep their jobs because they can investigate themselves and never need to worry about the mainstream media exposing their incompetence and corruption—if they're Democrats, of course.

Obama's perennial obsession: race . . . the war he can't seem to get enough of

Many blacks, including the Obamas, possess a sense of entitlement they justify by thinking that white people are somehow still suppressing black achievement. This is nonsense. Like other consumers, I vote every day with my dollars. You write a superior book, make a better mousetrap, or build a better home, and I'll buy it. I'd love to say that I care about your skin color, but I don't. Like other consumers, I care about what your products or services can do for me. Frankly, I don't know who produces 99.99% of what I use, so I could not possibly discriminate against your success even if I were mean and dumb enough to do that. You give me the products and services I want, and I'll give you the money you want so you can purchase the products and services you want from others. In a nutshell, this is the quid pro quo that drives our economy. Smart, conscientious blacks know this, and are equally tired of hearing excuses for why blacks still need a helping hand from government. They don't.

Almost anyone could be a success if they worked even half as hard as I did; when I worked 110 hours per week, you could have worked 55 and still prospered. The most lucrative job my Mom ever had was working as a Kroger cashier, yet her net worth eventually rose far above what I ever had as a doctor, although she was a single mother with only a high school education and working in the days before women achieved anything close to wage parity with men. My Mom read books about managing money and investing instead of watching TV or reading People magazine. She achieved more than many two-income families with college degrees because she'd lived during the Depression and preferred saving to spending.

If racial discrimination is truly so effective in hampering success, then why can Arabs (and people who are often mistaken for them) immigrate to the United States and rapidly run rings around many people who were born here? I've met a grand total of one person in my life who didn't like people born with black skin: one of my grandfathers. Years before it was hip to lambaste racists, while I was still in elementary school, my brother and I would ridicule our grandfather's prejudice because his hatred seemed so silly and unjustifiable.

But Arabs? I couldn't begin to count how many people I've met who detest them. As a doctor who used to work for the hospital system that treated the greatest number of Arabs in the United States, I learned what they are really like. Most were very nice people. Most. Some were not, such as the father of one of my pregnant single patients, because he murdered her single older sister when she became pregnant. (To see how that case ended, download my free True Emergency Room Stories book.) An enormous cultural chasm separates Arabs—or more precisely, people who are simplistically assumed to be Arabs—from other people of all colors in the United States. We can't understand how they justify suppressing and brutalizing women, and they think that much of what we do is nuts or downright evil. Therefore, it isn't just skin color that separates Arab-Americans from the rest of the US population. I know many Arabs who feel tremendously discriminated against, yet I can't recall meeting one who was poor and needed welfare. The Arab doctors that I trained with never complained about how hard we had to work; they simply did it. Just like my Mom.

If white people in America are restricting black success, then why aren't blacks in Africa wildly successful? Even Obama was forced to admit in a 1995 interview that the wretched poverty in Africa cannot be blamed on American colonialism. When my brother was in elementary school, he commented that people who were once suppressed by whites (blacks and American Indians) are now much better off for being dragged into our culture. Without that forced introduction, they would still be living in poverty and crying when their children died of appendicitis. Their technology was still in the Stone Age and going nowhere fast. Yet do whites ever get even a shred of gratitude for what they do? Never. Without whites to suppress them, they would have been so much better off. Yeah, right.

Obama loathes George Bush and denounces him every chance he gets, yet Bush has done more for Africa than any other US President. Obama ostensibly wants to help people around the world and especially in Africa, so couldn't he have the common decency to give Bush credit for doing that? Of course not, because Chairman Obama needs to indoctrinate his supporters with the notion that Bush is bad; I am great. Sure you are, Barack. And if we don't agree with you after the election, I bet that you'd like to send us to re-education centers like the ones planned by the Weather Underground that your friend Bill Ayers co-founded.

With this as a preface, I have good reason for wondering what sort of mental aberration causes blacks like Barack Obama to be stuck in the 1960s, stewing about racial inequalities and prejudice long past the time when just about everyone except Neanderthals fully accepted blacks as equal to whites. The remaining vestiges of racism aren't due to some secret white collusion to suppress blacks (an impression I get from reading about the nutty proclamations of Rev. Wright and his disciple, Barack Obama), but white exasperation over the fact that blacks disproportionately burden the welfare and criminal justice systems. That's a fact, not an opinion.

I spent years training in Detroit, an exceedingly violent and predominantly black city. Virtually all of the crime I saw was utterly senseless and shockingly brutal. Even if you've seen every crime show on television, you haven't seen half the things I have. Blacks punched, strangled, slashed, stabbed, shot, mutilated, run over, and otherwise butchered their victims—most of whom were black—so frequently and with such trivial provocation that one needn't be a sociologist or psychiatrist to know there is something seriously wrong with the way too many black families raise their kids. I've never seen a white child use a gun to turn a peer into hamburger because he wanted the peer's jacket, shoes, or cool gadget, yet I've seen that happen with blacks so many times that I couldn't begin to remember 5% of the cases. I've had black professional athletes as patients who visited their hometown and got the shit kicked out of them, to put it colloquially, by even larger black men who just hated it when people did nasty things, like playing basketball. I've seen 2- and 3-year-old girls raped by black men who evidently weren't put off by all of the screaming and blood. (I'm sure that some whites do that, too, but I've never seen such a case after years of working in predominantly white areas.) I've seen women raped by both white and black men, but what some of the blacks did was so shockingly horrible that it made the white rapists seem almost cordial.

For these and 1001 other reasons, my years in the ER taught me that too many blacks are seething with anger, walking around with a chip on their shoulder, just looking for an excuse to vent their rage. Yet I've met other blacks, usually elderly ones, who were so sweet and kind that I wanted to adopt them as grandparents. I don't know any white person who currently harbors some racial grudge against the majority of blacks who are good people; they aren't the problem. Interestingly, one of my friends told me about three of her black friends from Africa who attended college here. Over lunch one day, they told her that they did not like being around most blacks in America, because they felt that too many of them were "filled with rage," had "a bad attitude," and exhibited "a sense of entitlement." One of the African students commented that they "don't act that way in Africa." She added that her father, a minister who'd also moved here while she was in college, didn't like giving sermons to Americans blacks and was eager to return to Africa.

When Reverend Jeremiah Wright screamed, "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no. Not 'God Bless America'; God Damn America!" he seemed to blame the government for putting black men in prison. Wouldn't it make more sense to blame the black men for the crimes they committed? They chose to rape, rob, and murder; no one made them do it. Nor did the government shove drugs in their noses, throats, and veins; they chose to abuse drugs, and the government spent umpteen billions of dollars trying to stop them. If he is going to point the finger of blame at anyone, it should be directed at the criminals or perhaps their parents, not the government. Their tired old excuses for why they use drugs or can't get a job are pure BS. For example, I taught myself computer programming in a few weeks by reading books on that subject. Anyone who can program computers, design web sites, and create databases can always find a job. If he wanted to work for himself, most of his clients would never need to know the color of his skin, thus eliminating that as an excuse for choosing a life of crime and drugs instead of a productive life. Reverend Wright won't harp on that, because he's Wrong, not Wright.

The fact that some blacks in the US are too inclined to scream "racism!" was made clear to me one night in the ER when I called the on-call plastic surgeon, who was black, because I had a patient with a mangled hand who needed surgery. He grumbled, "You're just calling me because I am black." What? No, I thought to myself, I'm calling you because you're on-call tonight and you're the appropriate specialist for this type of injury. I knew that doc because we did our residencies at the same hospital, and I had always liked him. What on Earth did he think: that I called only black doctors who were on-call when I worked the night shift? Sheesh!

Many whites are practically tripping over themselves in their eagerness to quash all traces of racism, but other whites want to hold off on the "End of Racism" victory party until blacks have done their part to rein in things that fracture society, such as violence, drug use, and illegitimacy. Many black men told me that they slept around every chance they got, and with whomever they could; many of the black children I delivered were fathered by men the mothers couldn't name because there were too many possible ones. Some of my very attractive professional female friends say they were often approached by black men in Detroit and Flint who, despite being unkempt and permanently unemployed, figured that a small percentage would respond favorably; from what they told her, about 1 in 200 did just that. Blacks are their own worst enemy in having a culture that often penalizes black kids for being studious; they're often mocked by others who accuse them of "trying to be like whitey." I've even had black patients who confided in me that their parents ridiculed them in this way; they felt so cowered that they had to hide somewhere to study. And last but not least, whites want blacks to support their own families instead of burdening us with this obligation. There are many white people on the welfare roles, of course, but a disproportionate share of blacks have their homes, healthcare, food, transportation, clothing, utilities, education, and other needs paid for by other taxpayers. This tax money is doing nothing to solve poverty, as liberal Democrats often try to delude us into thinking. Instead, that money is being frittered away, reinforcing laziness and irresponsibility. People who make a career out of sponging off the welfare system (and are not handicapped) are people who've never grown up and learned what it means to be an adult. Liberal Democrats are all too happy to continue their dependency because they need a ready pool of uneducated people to vote for politicians like them who enable the parasites in society to endlessly leech off others.

If community organizers like Barack Obama truly wanted to help black people instead of perpetuating their dependency, they would spend their time addressing the truth of the matter, which is simple: in many ways, blacks are their own worst enemies. Whites don't force them to drop out of school (or graduate with a degree they never earned; see the MSU scam, discussed above), use drugs, kill or rape one another, or make a career out of screwing instead of working. We don't force them to buy homes they can't pay for; I don't believe that malarkey about them being tricked into signing a home mortgage they couldn't afford. This isn't rocket science: if you flip burgers for a living or don't have a job, you can't afford a house that some doctors can't afford. No one is that dumb, but many are that greedy.

We're now paying for that greed. Your children and grandchildren will be paying for it, too. ACORN is a group disproportionately composed of blacks (compared with their percentage of the population) disproportionately working for blacks. Since ACORN is one of the main roots of the subprime mortgage collapse, the economic meltdown of the US economy is traceable to blacks wanting what they haven't earned, with liberal Democrats all too eager to give it to them. Plenty of whites did the same, but not to the same degree, relative to their percentage in the population.

Blacks are so eager to get even more free stuff that 95% of them will vote for Obama, whose massive new spending proposals will disproportionately enrich blacks while impoverishing whites. By saying that "words are not enough" to atone for slavery, Obama is implying that our past apologies and trillions of dollars transferred to blacks via myriad social welfare programs are not punitive enough. He clearly wants more reparations, yet likely knows that any overt call for them might trigger a civil war. So what does a crafty man like Obama do? Camouflage this massive transfer of wealth by not calling it what it really is: reparations. I suspected this months ago, and discovered in late October 2008 that the brilliant radio talk host Mark Levin is thinking the same thing. Dr. Levin played a recording of Obama saying, ". . . and recognizing that my fate remained tied up with, uh, their fates that, uh, uh, that my individual salvation, uh, is not gonna, uh, come about without a collective salvation for the country. Um, unfortunately, I think that recognition, uh, requires that we make sacrifices, and this country is (sic) not always been willing to make the sacrifices that are necessary to bring about a new day and a new age."

It's easy to boil down this Obama gobbledygook:

"Sacrifices" = more taxes = less money in your paycheck

When he says that we're not "willing to make the sacrifices" and "requires that we make sacrifices," what he means is that people need to be forced into those changes because, in his mind, we're too stupid to know what is best. Might makes right. His game plan is simple: acquire power by any means possible, and then force people to change.

You want change? Obama will give it to you. If you think that Obama is a centrist Democrat, you're living in a dream world. He dreams of redistributing not just wealth, but also power. In a recent survey, 83% of Americans opposed redistribution, yet many of those people will vote for Obama because the mainstream media has purposely hidden just how far he intends to go in socialistically "spreading the wealth around." For Obama, Inauguration Day doesn't just mark the beginning of his presidency, but the beginning of payback. Obama intends to use redistribution not just to enrich the parasites in society, but to further strengthen the power of the government, giving it more power to confiscate more money through higher taxation. This problem will snowball:

 

If libs want to give money to buy homes, healthcare, or food for people, all they have to do is write a check and give it to someone. However, liberals aren't fond of spending their money to achieve their socialistic dreams; they want to use their votes to force you to pay for what they want. As a conservative, I don't want to dictate to Matt Damon, Barbara Walters, and other rich liberals what they can do with their fortunes. They can use their money to live lavishly in their mansions, drive luxury cars, and pollute the atmosphere flying around in private jets. They could live comfortably after giving away 98% of their money to help poor people, but do they? Of course not. If helping the poor were truly their goal, they could do much more than they have—which is primarily giving us a haughty lecture on what we should do. What delights them isn't helping the poor, but controlling others. Their need for ego gratification is so immense that merely being in the spotlight isn't sufficient for them; they don't just want to be in our lives, but to control them. That, my friends, is the aberrancy that drives liberals. Well, one of them.

Representative Jim Moran (D-VA) said, "We have been guided by a Republican administration who believes in the simplistic notion that people who have wealth are the (sic), are entitled to keep it and they have an antipathy towards the means of redistributing wealth and they may be able to sustain that for a while but it doesn't work in the long run." After reading that statement and similar ones by other Democrats, including Obama, how can anyone seriously claim that Democrats are not enamored with socialism? The government is now boldly pronouncing a cataclysmic erosion of private property rights. Liberal Democrats bristle when others suggest that such confiscation isn't socialism, but it clearly is. Once upon a time in America, you could keep what you earned. Now the government ridicules your right to keep your property as a "simplistic notion." In doing so, liberal Democrats reveal a stunning disregard of the Constitution and basic principles of fairness, in addition to a fundamental misunderstanding of economics.

A caller on the October 27, 2008 Rush Limbaugh Show said, "I recently re-read Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals after about 35 years, and it's the key to Obama. The whole book is about rubbing raw the healing wounds of the society in order to gain power." Precisely what Obama is doing with race.

Sarah Palin: How can anyone so good be so hated?

While I think that John McCain would be a much better President than Obama, he's just not my idea of the perfect President. Politicians seem to emanate from a giant cookie cutter somewhere that produces candidates that few people can get really excited about. When Americans dislike politicians, the primary common denominator seems to be that we sense they went into politics for all the wrong reasons. Most politicians gravitate toward that profession because they are fascinated by power, love the ego boost of being in the spotlight, or enjoy using their offices to enrich themselves and their friends. Sarah Palin impresses me as someone who went into politics for the right reason: she was fed up with the job that politicians were doing, and thought the best way to address their shortcomings was to replace them. So she did.

I found out how naive I was when I assumed that virtually everyone would love Palin. Hardly. She evokes intense hated from many people who adore Obama in spite of his relationship with Bill Ayers, a man who co-founded a terrorist organization that longed of destroying the United States and turning every citizen into either a robot or a corpse.

Fortunately, Palin has many strong supporters. Actress Janine Turner joined TeamSarah.org to help support the Vice-Presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin by encouraging people to vote and to combat the slurs against Palin, which she termed, "Dishonest, disgraceful, and disrespectful." Turner could have also added disgusting, despicable, and deplorable to that list. In their zeal to bash Palin, libs have gone way overboard in demonizing her. I disagree with many of Biden's positions and I often wonder if he is drunk or on drugs when he speaks (or has brain damage; see Joe Biden's near-fatal brain aneurysm), yet I don't dislike him personally. In fact, he strikes me as a charming man who I'd enjoy having as a neighbor.

The fact that Palin has the highest approval rating of any Governor yet receives more condemnation from liberals than Hitler and all modern-day tyrants combined speaks volumes about the twisted yardstick that libs use to gauge people. Palin evokes sheer hatred from libs like Sandra Bernhard, who threatened that Palin would be "gang-raped by my big black brothers" if she enters Manhattan. Wacky liberals revel in such manifestations of mental illness, yet they would be apoplectic if a conservative spoke of hauling Obama from the Oval Office and lynching him on the front lawn of the White House. Any conservative who suggested that would be deemed to be a whack job and permanently ostracized.

In commenting on the anti-Palin orgy, Camille Paglia, a coruscatingly brilliant Democrat, said, "A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology—contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice."

On the October 25, 2008 Huckabee show, Janine Turner said that, "To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." She spoke of Palin, who has the audacity to form her owns opinions, yet she also could have been speaking about people who discuss racial problems. For white people, that topic is so radioactive that most cower away from it. They are so afraid of being labeled a racist that they'll retreat into their cocoons and give themselves a pat on the back for cowardly avoiding that subject. I can't do that, because I know that liberal Democrats threaten the existence of the United States because their moronic policies are bleeding our economy. By doing that, they are moving us ever closer to civil war, which seems almost inevitable—the only question is when.

The US government has been quietly working behind the scenes to prepare for civil unrest, such as by transferring a crack counterinsurgency brigade from Iraq to the United States even though there is a pressing need for such a unit in Afghanistan. Like other conservatives, I dearly want all blacks to ascend into the middle class and beyond because that would be the death knell for the Democratic Party. Hence, all conservatives have a stake in helping blacks, but too many of them aren't doing enough to help themselves. The short-term benefits that blacks receive from Democrats is a huge price to pay for disastrous Democratic policies that harm all Americans. The worst that anyone can truthfully say about what conservatives want for blacks is that we want them to pull their own weight and stop looking for excuses to explain why they haven't been more successful. We've given them a helping hand so many times and in so many ways that it has enfeebled our nation. Yet that's not enough, and never enough, for black leaders like Obama and Jesse Jackson. They always want more, more, more. How about asking more from your folks? The days of the gravy train are almost over. It's time to get on board before the helping hand is withdrawn forever. As Joe Biden would say, "Mark my words."

Obama supporters: Be careful what you wish for. You WILL get it.

Obama's thinly-veiled plans for reparations by "spreading the wealth around" may backfire, undoing decades of progress in race relations.

Hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers lost their lives, and countless more were wounded, fighting to free slaves they never knew during the Civil War . . . but that wasn't enough.

Blacks were given equal rights, and discrimination against them became a federal crime . . . but that wasn't enough.

Trillions of dollars were transferred from taxpayers to welfare recipients; a disproportionate percentage of whom were black . . . but that wasn't enough.

Countless overt affirmative action initiatives allowed less qualified blacks to displace more qualified whites from educational opportunities and jobs . . . but that wasn't enough.

Various covert affirmative action initiatives, such as the academic scam I discovered at Michigan State University, handed blacks college degrees on a silver platter . . . but that wasn't enough.

The political correctness movement made it taboo for whites to comment about blacks in any way that wasn't laudatory. Whites would sometimes writhe in discomfort when they knew that the more politically correct term "African-American" was incorrect, because not all blacks have African roots. Whites became not just sensitive to black issues, but hypersensitive to the possibility of offending someone . . . but that wasn't enough.

Taxpayer-funded groups like ACORN pressured banks into giving loans to low-income blacks, triggering a domino effect that is devastating our economy . . . but that isn't enough. Obama wants more. ACORN is also trying to effectively neutralize the votes of whites, thereby depriving them of their most basic Constitutional right. Obama says and does nothing to stop them, likely thinking that he can use the power of the federal government to quash anyone who objects to the legitimacy of his Presidency. And trust me, Barack, it WILL NOT BE LEGITIMATE; you blew your chance to win fairly and legally.

It is difficult to imagine how anyone with the reputed brainpower of Obama could pick such an inopportune time for wanting Americans to give more. The very poorest Americans will undoubtedly be enriched by Obama's many schemes for redistributing wealth, but everyone else—from lower middle class on up—will suffer as The Messiah implements his redistributionist plans. I think that Obama will go down in history as one of the worst Presidents, abominated by millions of people who now ardently support him. "Hey, you said you were only going to tax the rich! I'm not rich! You lied to me!"

As Obama says, "We must have change."

You're about to get more than you ever bargained for, thanks to the failure of the mainstream media to thoroughly investigate Obama, as they should all Presidential candidates. A few days before the election, we don't even know with certainty if Obama meets all of the Constitutional requirements to be President. Philip J. Berg, a life-long Democrat who is a Pennsylvania attorney and former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit to force Obama to produce a certified copy of his original birth certificate, which Obama has steadfastly refused to do. After months of pressure, he eventually posted an image of a birth certificate on one of his web sites, but many people (including an experienced forensic computer investigator) are convinced that document is fraudulent, based on various technical, legal, historical, and even sociological grounds. The State of Hawaii has a provision for issuing birth "Certificates for children born out of State," so even valid Hawaii birth certificates do not necessarily prove that a child with one was born in Hawaii.

While I originally found it almost impossible to believe that Obama or anyone else would have the nerve to run for President if he weren't Constitutionally eligible, I now believe that Obama was indeed born in Kenya, not the United States, and is therefore ineligible, as many people claim. Interestingly, some of the people claiming that he was born in Kenya include:

• Obama's Kenyan (paternal) grandmother, who said in a recorded audio tape that she was present in the delivery room during his birth in Kenya. (More evidence: Sworn Affidavits of Bishop Ron McRae and Kweli Shuhubia)
• Obama's half-brother and half-sister.

According to Wayne Madsen, a research team went to Mombassa, Kenya, and located a certificate registering the birth of Barack Obama at a Kenyan maternity hospital, to his father, a Kenyan citizen and his mother, a US citizen.

Could it be . . . ?
I wonder if Obama's plan to increase foreign aid isn't a clever way to camouflage a massive bribe to Kenya's leaders as a quid pro quo for them hiding or destroying any evidence that he was born there?

After Obama's mother divorced his father, she remarried and moved to Indonesia, where Barack attended school for years at a time when only Indonesian citizens were allowed in schools. Indonesian records reveal that Obama was registered in school as Barry Soetoro, and his religion was listed as Islam.

Obama says he is now a Christian. Is he telling the truth?
Many US politicians pretend to follow one of the mainstream religions in the United States because that is politically expedient. Obama seemed to be attracted to Reverend Wright's bash-the-white-man "church" because it appealed to his vituperative desire for revenge against whites. For someone who is supposedly a Christian, Obama evidently derives immense satisfaction from mocking and bashing the Bible, as you can see in this video. Wipe that smug smile off your face, Barack, unless you want voters to see how condescending you really are.

Obama's mother relinquished her American citizenship and became a naturalized citizen of Indonesia. At that time:

• Indonesian law prohibited dual citizenships.
• American law disallowed dual citizenships if the other country did not allow dual citizenships.
• Obama was apparently not qualified to be registered as a "natural born" US citizen, but even if he were registered that way, he would have lost his US citizenship when his mother married Lolo Soetoro and moved to Indonesia, becoming a naturalized citizen of that country. (Trivia tidbit: An article in the Chicago Sun-Times said that Lolo means "crazy" in Hawaiian.)

When Obama later returned to Hawaii, a government document affirming his citizenship should have been issued, but none could be found. If he did not go through immigration, as he should have, he is an illegal alien. Berg suspects that Obama's college records may indicate he received aid as a foreigner or is not a natural-born US citizen, explaining why those records have been withheld. Isn't that funny: Barack wants us to give him the most powerful job in the world, and we, as his potential employer, can't even see his college records? What kind of scam is this? Wouldn't YOU love to be able to apply for a job and thumb your nose at your potential employer, saying that he can't see your records but that he'd better hire you anyway? Yes, Rush, you were right: Obama is a man-child. And a spoiled one at that; he must always get his way. The big question is: why are you nincompoops in the mainstream media letting him get away with that?

Perhaps the most damming evidence for Obama is that he is shooting himself in the foot by being so uncooperative in revealing his REAL birth certificate, not one that looks like it was printed two minutes ago. His evasiveness in this matter is consistent with how reluctant he's been on other issues (such as his relationship with kooks like Ayers, and hiding his college records). If he truly was born in Hawaii, what's the big deal about showing his real birth certificate and hospital records to corroborate it? He could immediately put an end to all the challenges by simply producing his original birth certificate and hospital records, which would cause millions of his followers to yell in unison, "See? We told you he was born in the US!" as sheepish skeptics were forced to admit they were correct. It would be a great moment for Obama, and might give him more credibility in fighting other "smears" (or so he says), such as his relationship with Ayers. Yet he hasn't availed himself of this opportunity . . . doesn't that make you at least a bit suspicious?

If this case ends up in the Supreme Court, and its Justices follow the Constitution, I predict that Obama, if elected, will be removed from office. I suppose that Joe Biden will assume the Presidency, but justice would be better served if he were also thrown out of office. That would send a strong signal: Any attempt to seriously cheat will result in forfeiture of the "game." Of course, a good case could be made that the countless ACORN voting scandals make the legitimacy of this election an absolute joke, so his Presidency should be forfeited in any case.

The men who wrote the Constitution had good reason to require that a person must be a "natural born Citizen" to become President because it is more difficult for citizens to unquestionably accept the allegiance of those born in other countries, and their dedication to our ideals as embodied in the Constitution. This is precisely the problem we're having with Obama! People with a bumper-sticker level of knowledge about the candidates are more likely to support Obama, while the producers and thinkers in America are more likely to support McCain or Libertarian/Constitutionalist candidates. Anyone who knows even half the facts on this page has good reason for wondering if Obama, a man who socializes with blood-thirsty socialists who dream of destroying America, is fit to become President. I am willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but his reluctance to release information and forthrightly address his many red flags is alarming in itself. He's trying to brush us off with superficial, dismissive replies. Obama should have come clean long ago. If he truly has nothing to hide, he would have even more supporters; if he is hiding some damaging facts, he would lose support. This is Logic 101 stuff, so it is obvious that he is purposely concealing information.

Attorney Debbie Schlussel extensively researched Barack Obama's Selective Service Registration, which appears to be fraudulent for the reasons exhaustively documented in this analysis. The foregoing evidence suggests that Obama may be willing to commit crimes and lie to achieve his political goals. Haven't we been down this road before? And didn't we absorb that lesson of history? If this were Nixon, the mainstream media would have hundreds of investigators on this case, but it is clear that they purposely avoid anything that might prove damaging to their chosen candidate.

All of this tumult could have been averted if the mainstream media did the job it is supposed to do in keeping the government and the political parties (especially the Democrats) honest. Few people have enough free time to do as much research as I have over the past few weeks. Most folks depend on the media to keep them informed on important issues, but those critical facts are often deliberately ignored or purposely suppressed. This biased reporting has enabled Obama to seem charming instead of dangerous. Imagine how relentless the press would be in hounding McCain if he hung around people who led an organization that dreamed of killing 25 million Americans and brainwashing the rest, then letting foreign countries invade and occupy the country. "McCain is a kook!" they'd scream. "He needs to be in a mental institution, not the White House!" McCain wouldn't stand a chance, and the reputation of the Republican Party will be permanently tarnished. Yet isn't it odd that this same level of scrutiny isn't applied to Obama? The mainstream media's failure to investigate Obama before the election and finally resolve this festering issue may precipitate a Constitutional crisis at a very inopportune time in the future when we are facing other serious problems. Having a weakened President is not in our best interests, so we should resolve this matter before he takes office.

At the very beginning of this long topic, did you guess who John and George were? How about Barney, Chris, and Nancy? As I mentioned earlier, the anger is justified, but its direction is not. Put yourselves in the shoes of John and George: John McCain and George Bush. If you'd tried to ward off the subprime mortgage collapse, but the very people who stood in your way were viewed by the public as the good guys, how would you feel? You'd probably be steaming mad, and rightfully so. You'd probably wonder how so many people could be so stupid in arriving at such a horrendously distorted version of the truth. The mainstream media is one of the primary culprits in this unprecedented fabrication, but any American duped by the mainstream media must share some of the blame. Media bias is so blatantly obvious that one must be incredibly obtuse to not perceive it.

Oh, by the way, in case you think I'm just bashing liberals: there is something medically wrong with McCain, and it's not his history of cancer. Do you know what it is? And why it might be important to voters?

If you're a liberal, don't smile just yet. Psychiatrist Lyle Rossiter, MD, wrote a book entitled, The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness, in which he claims that the ideology motivating liberals is actually a mental disorder characterized by strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions. "Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave."

When a psychologist friend of mine told me about the book, my first reaction was, "Oh, come on, he can't possibly be serious!" I wondered if this were a joke, but it isn't. I remained highly skeptical until I began reading what he had to say, and then I realized that it meshed with what I learned about arrested development in medical school as part of my training in psychiatry. From what I've read so far about his premise, he appears to have hit the nail on the head in explaining how even bright liberals can believe what they do.

Now that we know what the diagnosis is, it's time for therapy to begin.

---

For more insight into my political philosophy, see items 1, 1a, 1b, and the comments following them at the top of my brain teasers page. If you enjoy thinking, you'll love that discussion. You'll also enjoy my free e-book, From Bailout to Bliss:

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