Glenn Beck cranks up the culture wars.

Rich Benjamin, in an article on cnn.com (click here) made a series of arguments designed to support the position that Glenn Beck, the wildly popular conservative pseudo-religious radio and talk-show host, has "cranked up" the culture wars.

His first argument is based on the claim that despite Beck's assertions to the contrary, the August 28th rally in on the Washington Mall was a political rally. He points to the presence of a rally participant wearing a t-shirt with the message "If you can't love America, move back to Kenya."  Even though Beck specifically directed the attendees to not bring signs of any kind.  Even though not one speaker mentioned President Obama by name, or the Democratic party. It's reaching way down into the barrel to label this a patriotic rally based on a few t-shirt slogans. 

With regards to the "tea-party" opinion that President Obama is a marxist/socialist, well, it does seem to be that way. The massive expansion of nationalized health care at the same time that 47% of American workers (the majority who are in the poor, lower income and lower middle income brackets) do not pay any income taxes at all is seen by most fiscal conservatives as redistribution of wealth, a fundamental tenet of socialism.  He also rammed cash for clunkers down our throats, encouraging people to buy cars with taxpayer subsidies. Again, money moving from those who pay taxes to many who do not.  This was followed by cash for toasters, encouraging people to buy new appliances with... you guessed it... taxpayer subsidies. 

And for good measure let us not forget the first time homebuyer credit of $8,000 dollars (in 2009) and homebuyer assistance program of $6,500 dollars, again targeting those in the lower income brackets (most of whom pay no or little in income taxes) with money taken from the income tax payers.

There's lots more where that came from, but I think that the citations above are a clear indication of a political motivation on the part of the president and his party to move money from those who can afford to pay taxes to those who cannot. Is, or is that not socialism?

He further claims that the claims on the part of the conservative factions that President Obama is a communist or marxist or socialist is similar to admittedly similar claims against Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in the 1960's  The huge difference is that the attacks against Dr. King where clearly fueled by racist hatred, especially in the South.  But in the case of President Obama, we only have to look at the record of legislation passed during his administration to see what is plainly written.

As an aside, Reverend Al Shaprton claimed that the push by the "tea party" to restore "state's rights" is a direct assault on the civil rights movement and is a conscious effort to rollback those hard won gains.In this case the US federal government through civil-rights legislation signed in the late 60's forced states to accept a federally mandated standard for guaranteeing the protection of the civil liberties and rights of minorities.  There is no question that under the guise of state's rights, many states (again especially in the South) implemented legislation that unarguably were designed to deny or obstruct the rights of minorities, and particularly blacks, to vote, equal access to education and government services. 

But today, the resurgence of state's rights advocacy is couched firmly in the US federal government's failure to uphold its end of the contract that binds the states of our union together.  The federal government continues to spend more and more and yet services seem to decline or fail altogether. Immigration laws, especially with respect to the prosecution and deportation of aliens living here illegally, including border security is one aspect of the federal failure. Another is the inability of the government to respond quickly to natural disasters. The 2005 hurricane Katrina disaster clearly demonstrated the red-tape that obstructs swift response by the federal government as well as the complete and utter lack of coordination between federal, state and local emergency response agencies.  Our national infrastructure is coming apart. Roads, bridges and dams are falling into disrepair before our very eyes, and yet there is no money to fix them!  People who genuinely need government assistance can't get it while shysters and thieves who have studied the system collect "overpayments" from the government with impunity. The US Dept of Education consumes more tax revenue than ever and yet our nation continues its slide into mediocre scholastic performance among industrialized nations.

States are understandably outraged.  They are being forced by federal mandate to spend more money on federal programs and yet they do not have the access to print more money when their budgets are bled dry.  Not to mention that progressive legislation in states like Michigan, California, Arizona and Ohio have literally bankrupted them. States and local communities would very much like to have more say in the standards of education and welfare that they provide to their citizens, but are continually stymied by an outrageous and bloated bureaucracy that is reflected in the HUGE amount of regulatory law that those bureaucracies are expected to enforce. 

I understand the need for regulations, but when the process for getting FDA approval to get a drug to market can cost multiple billions of dollars. And yet, after getting such approval, a drug company is completely unprotected against expensive lawsuits when unknown side-effects not discovered during the FDA approval process inevitably arise. Question: If the FDA won't stand behind its approval process by helping to defend the pharmaceuticals, why in the hell do we force them to seek FDA approval? 

With regard to Mr. Benjamin's concern that a third of the nation thinks that President Obama is a muslim. Well, I don't get that either.  And we further agree that birthers are idiots. 

But I think that the charge of the current administration's movement of the nation to a more socialist government is completely founded and beyond debate.

Alan Simpson Calls It Like He Sees It on Social Security, a Giant Milk Cow

Read the article here on CNNMoney.com

Things have gotten so bad here in the United States that I have just about given up blogging about it.  Why bother? No matter what I say (or I do) it doesn't look like anything's going to change.

Republicans are going to win some seats in the House and Senate. So what? Who cares?  Republicans spend money almost as fast as Democrats do and what's worse.  Americans are learning their lesson. Consumer credit card debt has dropped to it's lowest level in 8 years, and that trend seems to continue. No kidding. I wish Congress and our state legislatures would go to town on that little lesson. When times are tough, you stop or slow spending and you sure as heck don't rack up even more crappy debt.

Speaking of trying to stop or slow spending... our country is in big trouble. We've added 3 trillion (with a "t" folks!) to the national debt in just two years and at the rate we are going, we will be unable to even pay the INTEREST on that debt. At that point, insolvency is just around the corner and then everything will become unhinged.  Whether it's the military, the welfare state, or social and civil engineering, the fact is that the American people are about to face the biggest crisis of this nation's history, and that is that unless we accept some pain (quite a lot actually) RIGHT NOW, we will completely collapse before the end of the decade if not sooner.

Americans expect to receive their Medicare and Medicaid, and WIC, and Food Stamps, and Social Security payments, etc. And any time anybody talks about cutting them, the political discourse turns into a caterwaul of biblical proportion.  Social welfare programs represent about 37% of our nation's total annual expenditure. The other big pole under the tent? The military, which accounts for about 32% of our total annual expenditure. When you include the money we spend annually to service the national debt, only about 20% of our annual budget (budget, ha ha, that's a good one, we aren't running on a budget right now and Pelosi & Co. have informed us that we won't get one this year) is "discretionary spending" on items like... regulation enforcement (FAA, SEC, SCC, HUD, Dept of Education, USDA, USFS, USPS, etc....) all the other services that we like to have.  So... as I've previously stated on this blog.  Not only must taxes go UP, but government spending in ALL areas of the budget has to go down.  Which means a lot more people out of work...  If you cut the military, then all those soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines find themselves without work.  You get the idea.

Finally, Americans themselves are addicted to entitlements.  Former US Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) is in hot water because in an email response directed to an executive of the Older Women's League called it right on the nose when he said in part:
"I've made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Securityy who milk it to the last degree. You know 'em too. It's the same with any system in America. We've a point where it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!"

Yah, it's probably a bit more blunt than the email's recipient (a woman) probably can handle.  But it's right on the nose. We've been getting dire warning and predictions from wizards of smart for more than two decades that the national debt and the entitlement system in this country were going to push us into national insolvency.  And while the sky was falling we continued along as those everything was just fine.


Well, everything is not just fine. Standard and Poors, a premier financial ratings company, has warned the United States just today that it better do something about the ballooning debt right now or our AAA credit rating will be lost.  Once that happens, you can kiss any chance of getting anybody to buy anymore of our debt goodbye. And when that happens, the Federal government will run out of money. Not just to help fund stimulus packages, but to pay out social security checks, pay for interstate highway maintenance, and send out federal inspectors to make sure our eggs don't have salmonella poisoning in them.  Oh wait.... we're paying for that?  Didn't work out so well, did it.

Have a nice day.