Churchill was right!

Churchill said (and I paraphrase) "If you're not liberal as a youth, then you have no heart; if you're not conservative when you're older, then you have no brain!"

How many brainless youths do we have in Congress, anyway?

It seems that the endless cadre of idiots in Congress are going to yield to White House pressure and vote for this idiotic health care reform legislation DESPITE overwhelming public opinion against it and despite election results that would make anyone not named Kennedy quiver! Voting for this thing is electoral suicide, but Obama seems to have convinced them otherwise.

He's a one-term wonder (well...they DO call people with an IQ of 60 "exceptional" these days, don't they?) and anyone who votes with him on this is doomed much earlier than that!

What's worse is the VERY troubling news coming from the financial sector! People who are much wiser and more informed than I on such matters are predicting that if we don't get a handle on our deficit and STOP borrowing to pay for all of this garbage, we are in SEVERE danger of losing our AAA credit rating as a nation! If we lose our triple A rating, it's all over, folks! The dollar will be practically worthless and nothing that has no intrinsic value (gold, silver, manufactured goods, food, etc) will have any value whatsoever! We're talking a financial meltdown that would make the Great Depression look like a cakewalk! Yet, despite the dire warnings of those in the know, Nero Obama keeps fiddling and doing everything he can to ruin this nation.

People, wake up!

That apple in the Garden looked pretty good, too, but the serpent offering it up KNEW what taking it meant to Eve!

Don't take that apple, America! There's no free lunch and our nation can't afford to buy lunch for the rest of the world AND our own Ne're-do-wells here at home any more!

Here's what needs to happen to restore faith in our economy:

1. Eliminate (over several years, of course) any program of our government that is not mandated by the Constitution. The examples are endless, but Space, Education, Welfare, Public Housing, the Arts, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are a few of the programs that come to mind. Sorry, Grandma! We can't afford it anymore! (Oh, and I don't want to hear all of your whining right about now, either! I have over $200,000 in Social Security that I would never see but, with all of the fiscal mismanagement in Washington, I really don't EXPECT to ever see it anyway!). Look, I know that there will be a HUGE uproar about the whole Social Security thing. The whole thing is going to come crashing down in a couple of years anyway, but here's how you fix it. As the debt is being paid off (see #5 below), make payments to people as part of paying off the debt for whatever they're owed. After all, the government borrowed THAT money as well, so it can be paid BACK just as the other creditors are being paid back! Oh, and I know what comes next. "Space?! You can't let all of those people go just like that!" Really? If there's a market for it (and I've been led to believe that there IS a market for the things that have been generated by the Space Program), then those folks will have jobs; mark my word!
2. Change hiring/firing guidelines for Federal employment YESTERDAY!!! A government job is not supposed to be a lifelong entitlement, but that's exactly what it's become! When someone's job becomes obsolete or superfluous, offer them retraining. If they refuse, fire them! That's what would happen in a private sector job! That's what needs to happen in public employment as well!
3. Completely eliminate the IRS and replace it with a simple government accounting office. Eliminate our unGodly tax code and make everyone pay a flat 10% of their income. Period! Yes, all corporations, businesses, and individuals. Period!
4. Make it ILLEGAL for the government to borrow money to pay for anything. If the money is not in the treasury, it can't be spent.

Look, when I get overextended, I have to tighten my belt and say "no" to things I might like to have. I might have to make an old car last a little longer. I may have to live with hamburger instead of steak. I might even have to sew up the holes in my socks instead of buying new ones, all in the name of saving money so I can pay off my debt. Now is the time to do that on a national level! We cannot afford to continue borrowing and spending money that we don't have! We have to tighten our belt, STOP borrowing our children's money, and pay for what's already been spent!

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, we worked together as a nation to fight a common enemy. With national resolve, we worked together to defeat them and we came out on the other side bloodied, but victorious! We can and we MUST do it again! Only, this time, our common enemy is an attitude, not a nation. We have become lazy and slothful as a nation. We have come to believe that we are entitled to things that we have not earned; that we have coming to us those things that politicians promised but could not deliver! We must come to realize that "the Great Society" was the pipe dream of a clever politician who knew that he'd be long gone before that check ever came due! We must know that the "New Deal" was never new and it was never a deal, not for Americans then, and not for us now! We must wake up before it's too late, because it is very nearly too late RIGHT NOW!

5. Start paying down the national debt. Oh, and I don't mean start paying on the interest. If we don't start working on the principle, the interest is going to eat up all of the GDP is less than 5 years! I mean pay the interest AND make a substantial payment on the principle and do that each year until it's all paid off. Then, when we're debt free, we can start thinking about what we'd like to do with the money in the treasury that's been going towards the debt. We may even be able to lower tax rates at that point! Woo-hoo! ME keeping MY money!? What a concept!
6. Let market forces do what they do! If a car company has been mismanaged, LET it go out of business! If people stop riding passenger trains, LET them go out of business! Believe me, if there's a demand for commuter rail sometime in the future, some enterprising entrepreneur will finance their come-back and do it much more efficiently than Uncle Sam ever did!
7. Enact term limits for every public office. Congress was never supposed to be a career! Civic-minded people who care about their country were to go to Washington for a limited time to work for the public good! The Federal government was supposed to do ONLY what was granted to it by our Constitution and EVERYTHING ELSE that was not SPECIFICALLY granted to the federal government was supposed to be taken care of by the states. They managed to work around that by taking money in taxes from the people and then giving that money back to the states but ONLY if they work within the boundaries of whatever social framework was deemed appropriate by the Fed. THAT, my friends, is unConstitutional and the whole practice needs to be abolished YESTERDAY!
8. Allow people to save for their own retirements! Since we're doing away with Social Security, people need incentive to save on their own! Let them save as much as they're able BEFORE taxes are taken out. In other words, whatever they save will reduce their taxable income. Let them put it into whatever vehicle they choose. Let employers match employee contributions to reduce THEIR taxable income as well! It's a win-win and now the government is completely out of the social engineering business! Woo-hoo!
9. Make it a criminal offense to live here illegally. Oh...nevermind! It already IS a crime to live here illegally! So, here' how to do it. If someone is caught trying to live here illegally, return them to their country of origin (well, take them to their nation's Consulate and let that nation foot the bill for their return!). If they're caught here a second time, put them in prison for 5 years and then return them to their nation's Consulate. If they come back after that, put them in prison for life! Obviously, after three times, they're too stupid to do anything here that's legal anyway and, last time I checked, "illegal" meant AGAINST THE LAW!!!! If they have family here and that's why they want to live here; fine! Go through the proper channels, become a resident alien and then become a naturalized citizen of the country. What's so hard about that?

Well, it's a start, but it's certainly not the end of it. As I said, the first thing that needs to change is attitude. As soon as we realize that the emperor's naked, we'll be on the road to recovery!