Common Sense University

            For several weeks if not months now, President Barack Obama and some of his administration members have been making statements in regards to investigating crimes committed by members of the Bush administration. The one particular item of contention is supposedly Torture and Water boarding of terrorists. Liberals and their fanatical cohorts have been railing for years against these brutal treatments of terrorists held in the Guantanamo prison and expect now from President Obama that he pursue criminal actions against his predecessor and several members of the Bush administration. Incidentally, members of America’s Special Forces Units (Navy Seals etc) are being water boarded as part of their training. Is it not funny that this is perfectly ok with the liberal establishment to do this to our troops who are there to defend us, yet it is not allowed and ‘criminal’ when we apply some of these procedures (known as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, or EIT’s for short) on terrorists, people that are out to harm (kill) us? The double standard of liberals never ceases to amaze us here at Common Sense University.

            Not willing to pursue such a radical course to have President Bush indicted on criminal charges for ordering water boarding on a few terrorists, Obama has apparently been wavering as to what action to take, if any. On the one hand, his liberal support base put some heavy demands on him on this particular issue in order to satisfy their hatred of George W. Bush, on the other hand, Obama Continue Reading »

            Spending about ten days on the island of Kauai during the middle to latter part of April, the so called Garden Isle of the Hawaiian island chain, we obviously spent little time following the political activities in the United States and worldwide. After all, we did not fly to Hawaii to monitor the President’s trips to Mexico and Trinidad-Tobego and other events. We wanted to relax and enjoy the warm climate and slower lifestyle on Hawaii which we had experienced many times before. Our favorite locale on the island has been for a long time the Poipu Beach area on the Southern shore of the island, and we found it pretty well unchanged since our last visit six years earlier.

            Well, that’s actually not quite true: Global warming has apparently avoided Hawaii, the temperatures were considerably lower than normal and the ‘locals’ told us that this had been the case for the past several months. It was windy and rainy (unusual for the Poipu region), the weather changed from day to day with highs in the lower 70’s. There were maybe two or three days with full sunshine. This we had not expected.

            We were prepared to witness the fallout from the current bad economic conditions but to our pleasant surprise, this was not the case. While the top of the line hotels were not filled with tourists from the mainland and other countries, the hotel prices were still very high (up to $800.00/room/nite) and the beaches were still filled with sunbathers and visitors. The Marriott chain was still ‘pushing’ time share units starting from nearly $50,000/week and the restaurants filled up and required reservations. This was, considering that this was not high tourist season, a pleasant surprise. Meal prices at the restaurants were by no means reduced, there were no bargains (’two for one’ etc) to be had. In fact, we were amused to see that the Subway $5.00 foot long sandwich cost $7.29. Gasoline prices were around $2.53 to $2.60/gallon for regular, not unexpected actually since all oil is being transported to the islands. All in all, Hawaii’s tourism industry appeared not to be suffering any major setbacks. Interesting to say the least, when this is an industry that is one of the first ones to feel the pinch when an economic recessions starts or exists.

            The Hawaiian motto (and sign) of ‘Hanging Loose’ is still very much visible everywhere. Even the younger people are not driving fast in their trucks, they observe the speed limits (sometimes to the frustration of us mainlander tourists) and one evening we witnessed a young man on a skateboard with a twelve pack of beer on it being pulled by his dog. It was a funny site and we soon found out what he was looking for: Girls! Needless to say, he found some. The Hawaiians also appeared to be very proud of their ‘native son’ and current President Barack Obama. It was reflected in the vast number of Obama paraphernalia being offered from T-shirts to hats, pictures, books, ceramics and many other things.

            Anyway, these were some of our impressions. All in all, Hawaii is still a wonderful place to visit and relax and enjoy life. The one thing that has in our opinion remained the same over the many years of our visits was the friendliness of the local population, they were polite, offered to help and always did it with a smile. We think that living in Hawaii year-round makes people be that way and they are to be envied for that.

We do not know precisely when America’s news media - both print and television -  started the ‘100 - Day - benchmark’ measurement of newly inaugurated Presidents. It probably started out as a parlor game among journalists who met on the Washington D.C. cocktail party circuit and who compared notes. From there it became most likely more formal and after a while it was a given that newly minted Presidents were to be evaluated after their first one hundred days in office. And so it was no different with our current President.

Being adored and admired by the overwhelmingly liberal news media membership, it was no wonder that this year’s event was spectacular. Before this date, for more than a week, the media went crazy with their analyses of President Obama’s accomplishments and the entire “historical event” was highlighted when the President himself participated by granting the nation (and the world) a prime-time one-hour news conference on April 29. He answered 13 ’softball’ questions from pre-selected White House correspondents, the silliest one asking him ‘what enchanted him (Obama) most in being President’. This from a New York Times journalist. We will not go into real specifics here but have to simply say, it was nothing special. The President praised himself and his administration for all the accomplishments so far and promised to keep it up for the next one hundred, two hundred days and even beyond.

Now you tell me, what President would not do that? We do not mean praising himself but to go before the country and call himself a failure? To our best recollection, no President before him has ever taken part in this ‘One-Hundred-Day Hype as Obama did, but then, it is his narcissistic nature to take any opportunity to take credit for things that either did or did not happen during his brief time in office. Coupled with this for him is his, what we designate - His Four Letter Word excuse - for all the things that have gone wrong. You wonder what this four letter word is? It’s simple: B-U-S-H, Yes, Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush!

Yes, the fact that approximately 600,000 people have been losing their jobs every months so far this year (over 2.5 million people from January through April 2009) can be placed squarely on BUSH, at least according to Obama’s explanations. The reason that we do not see any true results from the nearly 800 billion stimulus bill is clearly because it took the previous eight years (BUSH) to get us into this mess and it will take some time to get us out of it. But he (Obama) is confident he can do it! And don’t you question him, you hear?

If this were true, the job of President could be considered one of the easiest one in the country. No true achievements are required as long as you have a scapegoat like the previous White House occupant. This is of course total nonsense but the sad truth is: A majority of the people in America believe this, at least according to the polls. It is well known that the citizens of our country are patient when it comes to their leaders and so, we will just wait and see if things will change in the public’s perception of President Obama and his administration. Maybe a national unemployment rate climbing to double digits (between 10 and 14 percent) will make people rethink their current opinion of the new President. And once, the people will find out that universal healthcare and the new energy bill coupled with the federal take-over of education (from pre-school through college) is not free but will cost huge sums of money in new taxes for everybody, maybe the vast majority of people will wake up and realize that they have been fooled badly. But only time will tell.

However, this recent event called ‘One Hundred Days’ in office, was nothing but a meaningless affair, hyped by the Obama-loving liberal media as important and Common Sense University totally disagrees!

42 days separate Arlen’s definite stances.

We have just witnessed in politics what Common Sense University like to call a very strong reason for term limits for all elected officials! Specifically, in this instance, for the members of the United States Congress. Case in point, Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania who served as a so called “moderate Republican” in the Senate since 1981. He was a liberal in disguise, he exemplified what is referred to as ‘RINO’s’ (acronym for Republican In Name Only). On April 28, he switched his party affiliation and he is now serving as a Democrat the remainder of his current term which will expire in January 2011 and he plans to run for re-election next year as a Democrat.

His rationale for switching parties was that results of recent polls in Pennsylvania, where he trailed another Republican by nearly twenty percent, indicated that he had only a very small chance of re-election as a Republican and “he was not ready to give up 29 years of hard work and achievements for the American people”. The man is 79 years old and will be at least 80 when his current term expires. Below is a video where he as recently as seven weeks ago proudly announced that he would not consider switching parties (from ‘R’ to ‘D’) and that a strong two-party system had to be retained in the Senate. Now he claims that the Republican party had moved too far to the right and he felt more comfortable among Democrats. Can you say “Flip-Flop”?

In light of this, how hypocritical and self-serving is his party-switch? He is essentially now the 60^th member of the Democrat caucus and will give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. He has in all these years totally forgotten that he is there to represent the people of Pennsylvania, now it’s all about him and hanging to power no matter what it takes. There is really no stronger case to be made for term limits for members of Congress! If Arlen Specter’s despicable selfish and hypocritical action are not reason enough for people to see this for what it is, then we have to accept the consequences of not being well represented in Congress. Only term limits could fix this problem once and for all. Unless the people of Pennsylvania decide to teach him a lesson and not re-elect him in November of 2010.

Putting President Obama’s efforts in an understandable perspective certainly clarifies that his goal of trimming $100M from our budget, doesn’t it?

          As we have done in the past, we are re-printing here an article published in Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College with the following credit line: “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.” We will post this article in two parts due to its length, yet we found it so complete in its analysis of the troubles involving the domestic automobile industry. Here is part Two:

How Detroit’s Automakers Went from Kings of the Road to Roadkill

JOSEPH B. WHITE is a senior editor in the Washington, D.C., bureau of The Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Harvard University, he has worked for the Journal since 1987, and for most of that time he covered the auto industry, serving as Detroit bureau chief from 1998-2007. He writes a weekly column on the car business and the regulatory and social issues that surround it for the Journal’s online and print editions, and contributes new-car reviews to SmartMoney magazine. Mr. White is co-author (with Paul Ingrassia) of Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry, and won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1993.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on January 26, 2009, at a seminar on the topic, “Cars and Trucks, Markets and Governments,” co-sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.

I’D LIKE to start by congratulating all of you. You are all now in the auto business, the Sport of Kings-or in our case, presidents and members of Congress. Without your support-and I assume that most of you are fortunate enough to pay taxes-General Motors and Chrysler would very likely be getting measured by the undertakers of the bankruptcy courts. But make no mistake. Continue Reading »

If it’s good for the goose, it must not be good for the gander, right?

            For purposes of full disclosure - and we say this tongue-in-cheek - we did not lose a penny as a result of the ‘Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme tragedy’. As a matter of fact, we did not even know anything about Bernie Madoff until he made the news late last year when it became public knowledge that he had swindled thousands of trusting investors out of approximately 65 billion dollars. The 70-year old businessman and former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange pled guilty on March 12 to having operated the largest investor fraud ever committed by a single person.

            Madoff founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960 and remained its chairman until his arrest on December 11, 2008. Over these many years he had built up a golden reputation among investors, he had their trust and he had returned enormous returns on their investments. Reportedly, Madoff told his two sons on December 10 of last year that the asset management arm of his firm was a giant Ponzi scheme, “it was all one big lie”, he told them. The term “Ponzi scheme” originated with an Italian immigrant Charles Ponzi who came to this country in 1903 and ripped off his ‘investors’ to the tune of millions of dollars for over twenty years. By definition, a Ponzi scheme is ‘a fraudulent operation that involves promising or paying abnormally high returns to investors our of the money paid in by subsequent investors rather than from net revenues generated by real business.’

            Without going into details or specifics in this scandalous case, by his own admission, this is apparently what trusted investment guru Bernie Madoff  did with the billions and billions of dollars of people who trusted him, turned their savings over to him in the hope of benefiting greatly financially. And apparently, they did so over many years but eventually, the bubble burst and the scheme was no longer sustainable and as a result of this, many investors are plain broke, they have lost everything and now of course are mad as hell and deservedly so.

            We here at Common Sense University have only two question:

The first one is: How could one person do all this without anybody else knowing about it? Moving monies in these huge amounts around and fraudulently making them look profitable while reporting quarterly (as is required by Federal Law) to the Security and Exchange Commission - SEC - over many years, he must have had a lot of help among family members or staff and did they not see what was going on and should have reported this earlier? We do not believe that!

Our second question is: Did the investors truly believe that Mr. Madoff was such a genius that he could pay out huge returns on their investments or did their personal greed blind them? We think so!

            While we have compassion for older investors who have no way to earn the ‘lost’ money back on their own, we can only hope that younger people will remember this scandal for many years to come and apply some common sense,  prudence and skepticism where they will put their money in the future. It might behoove everybody to never forget the eternal wisdom that if it looks too good to be true, it might be too good to be true. And then temper and control your greed and play it a little safer with your hard-earned money. Now you know why we call this a “Greed Tragedy”.

Wow!  Is this the type of logic coming from our administration now?

            Your initial reaction is probably short and simple: Of course, it still matters! And then you rightfully wonder why we even ask this question. Alright then, let’s delve into it and we have to start with the definition of integrity and its application. What is it?

            The word integrity has actually more than one meaning. It is used in connection with nouns such honesty, principle, honor, virtue, morality, purity, righteousness, probity, rectitude, truthfulness, trustworthiness, incorruptibility, scrupulousness and reputability but it is also used describing unity, unification, cohesion, coherence, wholeness, soundness, completeness, character, fiber, and the state of being whole. That is quite a list of applications for a single nine-letter word.

            Back to the title of this article: Does Integrity still matter? We are asking the question simply as a result of seeing what is and has been going on in America. On the surface at least, there appears to be an erosion of true integrity everywhere we look. We are generally too willing to excuse shortcomings for ourselves and others, it is a slow-moving yet steady decline in a value system that should be guiding us all and which we should adhere to at all times in a civilized country as we consider America to be. And yet, we seem to accept this trend willingly by saying: So what? Whether it is cheating in tests in school, making shortcuts in the workplace by coming a few minutes late, taking longer breaks and leaving slightly earlier to get a head start on traffic going home. Those are the little infractions that happen daily millions of times and we do not want to exclusively focus on them but elevate it to higher levels when integrity is obviously thrown out the window by corporations and specifically financial institutions.

            In all seriousness, how could major banks and similar companies agree to relax or ignore long proven lending practices and approve mortgages for homeowners definitely NOT qualified to afford these homes and without an ability to make the monthly mortgage payments? The same holds true for other equally risky money borrowing schemes where people could finance their houses beyond the appraised market value in order to get cash for other investments or purchases (buying other properties etc). Let’s be realistic, why are there currently millions of homes in foreclosure across this country? The answer is crystal clear, people simply walked away from their homes when they could no longer make the payments and since many had no money invested as down payments, they really did not lose anything. There are actually many uncounted varieties of individual cases but in summation, there were enough of them that we are finding ourselves in the current bank bailout mode contributing heavily to the financial mess we are in. Loan officers did not do this on their own - this risky lending - they worked in accordance with directions from upper (corporate) management. Did the big bankers simply vacate adherence to any integrity? Was it their personal greed that drove them to do this (getting larger bonuses for greater lending amounts or other greed-driven reasons)?

            The same holds true in politics. The individuals who get elected by voters should be held to the highest levels of integrity, after all, they represent us and have promised during campaigns to conduct themselves at such high levels. And it appears that the higher the office to which they were elected, the higher the degree of true integrity is promised. Yet, the sad reality is that they are no sooner sworn into office, all promises are thrown out the window and they do what they want to do or for all we know always planned on doing. We could write a book about all the politicians who acted this way including some of them whose corruption landed them in prison but we shall not. But what is exceptionally disappointing is the fact that President Barack Obama made more promises to voters than other candidates over a period of twenty months and yet he is no different than all the other elected officials. He promised very specific changes of transparency in government, the highest level of integrity for cabinet members and other administrative positions, the end of all earmarks in funding bills and responsible spending by the federal government and on and on.

            But the reality is sadly totally the opposite: Since Barack Obama has been sworn in as President some nine weeks ago, he has signed nearly two trillion dollars worth of spending bills - called stimulus and other such things - and has proposed a 3.6 trillion dollar budget for fiscal year 2010, beginning this coming October. While he had promised that all bills would be posted on a government website for the American public to see for five days before he would sign the legislature, guess what, he signed the bills immediately! In other words: Screw that campaign promise on this one. And what are we to think that he wanted and got (approved) a person as Treasury Secretary who cheated on his taxes for four recent years? Imagine this reality, we have now in Timothy Geithner a tax cheat in charge of the Internal Revenue Service.  Is this not similar to putting a convicted child molester in charge of a Day Care Center?  Several other appointees withdrew their respective nominations when it became public knowledge that they had also cheated on their taxes in the past or had other legal problems.

            So much for integrity and promises made - promises kept! And this at the highest level of our federal government. It is a truly very disappointing fact as this happens so quickly after this candidate for the highest office in the land demonstrates that his idea of integrity vastly deviates from the words meaning and definition. Common Sense University is extremely upset over this and can only wonder why these things are so generally accepted by the people of this great country. If we do not care any longer about upholding integrity, we are heading for genuinely bad times in America. Hopefully, you understand now why we asked the question in the title of this article.

Wow!  Just to the left of the screen is Michelle showing Queen Elizabeth how to use her new iPod.

            At the time of this posting, we are two days away from a very important annual event worldwide for two groups of people: The Pranksters and the Gullibles! Yes, we are talking about April First, also known as April Fools Day. The Pranksters can hardly wait for this day to come as it represents their change to have some fun with people who fall easily prey to them, we call them here the Gullibles since they keep on falling for almost anything while believing the most outrageous things that are being printed or said on this one day. The Gullibles obviously dread this day and cannot wait for April the Second in the hope that they are being spared any embarrassing moment.

            We researched and found some of the most memorable April Fools pranks ever exercised and we just want to share two of them here:

             1. In 1985, Sports Illustrated published an article by George Plimpton that described an incredible rookie baseball pitcher who was training at the New York Mets camp in St. Petersburg, Florida. The player was named Sidd Finch who could throw a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy. This was 65 mph faster than the previous record. Surprisingly, Sidd had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the “art of the pitch” in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the “great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa”. Mets fans celebrated their team’s amazing luck at having found such a gifted player and Sports Illustrated was flooded with nearly 2000 letters asking for more information about this legendary player. In reality this player only existed in the imagination of the author of the article, George Plimpton.

             2. In 1998, Burger King published a full-page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a “Left-Handed Whopper” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.). However, the left-handed whopper had “all condiments rotated 180 degrees, thereby redistributing the weight of the sandwich so that the bulk of the condiments will skew to the left, thereby reducing the amount of lettuce and other toppings from spilling out the right side of the burger.” Jim Watkins, senior vice president for marketing was quoted as saying that “the new sandwich was the ultimate ‘HAVE IT YOUR WAY’ for our left-handed customers.” The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, “many others requested their own ‘right-handed’ version.”

             This is just a very small sample of April Fools Day pranks that have been executed in years past and many more could be found HERE. We here at CSU will most likely not participate in any such pranks ourselves this year but we would like to hear from you if you have a funny story to share with us. We cannot believe that on college campuses across the country, pranksters have not already planned out their attacks on their gullible victims and cannot wait to see how it plays out. Even though times are tough all over, we should never lose our sense of humor and continue to celebrate April Fools Day.

            We are slowly approaching a point in time when former President George W. Bush cannot be blamed anymore for the turbulence taking place in our Nation’s Capitol these days. For the first two months into his Presidency, Barack Obama took every opportunity to tell the world that he had inherited from the previous administration the biggest mess (deficit, debt, economy etc) since the ‘Great Depression’ in 1933 and was just working very hard to correct course and straighten out the terrible situation and turn the economy around. That’s why he needed very quickly a nearly 800 billion dollar stimulus bill passed by Congress which he signed into law upon passage and why he signed a pork-laden omnibus bill of $410 billion for the current fiscal year which ends on September 30.

            But the latest ’scandal’ in Washington D.C. which has enraged most Americans involves a company called AIG (American International Group) that paid retention bonuses to employees/executives to the tune of 210 million dollars out of a total of over 170 billion dollars of bail-out funds paid to AIG. From President Obama to the Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner and most members of Congress, they are collectively angry and outraged and use every opportunity to express their emotions over this: How dare AIG make bonus payments to some of their employees who worked in those divisions who lost these vast sums of monies? The American public is equally outraged and there already have been death threats made to AIG employees. In spite of this, Congressman Barney Frank, a Democrat from Massachusetts has asked the Chairman/CEO of AIG, Mr. Edward Liddy for the names of those employees who have received these bonuses for whatever devious reasons. Is he attempting to call these individuals before his Committee to publicly shame them into returning the bonuses?

            But now let us take a look behind the curtain and find the truth in all this: These  so called retention bonuses paid to some AIG employees were anchored in contracts signed over a year ago (between AIG and employees), they were not performance bonuses; meaning that they did not receive these monies for outstanding performances. These contracts (signed last year) specifically stated that payments had to be made by March 15, 2009. And now comes the clincher: These bonuses were specifically mentioned in the Obama stimulus bill and directed to be paid if these retention bonus contracts were dated prior to February 12, 2009. This bill was hurriedly approved by Congress and signed by the President shortly thereafter which leads us to this question: With this kind of money involved - nearly 800 billion dollars - should they not have taken the time and read the bill before voting for it (Congress) and signing it (President Obama)? We absolutely, positively think so and find it outrageous that they did not do their jobs!

            But here is where it gets almost comical: Nobody in Congress or in the Obama Administration saw it or knew about it. This is what we find impossible to believe and we can only come up with one explanation:

It is total incompetence, plain and simple! It is chaos and what we see now in Washington D.C. is called CYA (Cover Your A..) They are now all running around and claim not having had any knowledge of this outrage before and as details surface, we find out that they collectively are not telling the truth. Imagine the hypocrisy: Someone in Congress puts a specific provision into the stimulus bill to pay these bonuses,  the majority of the members vote for it, the President signed the bill and now they are all outraged. What a bunch of hypocrites! There are definitely signs of growing incompetence in the executive and legislative branches of the Federal government from top to bottom.

            We here at CSU do not want to take pleasure in this but we think there are many millions of American voters who did not vote for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress who feel good about their votes. They did not see what they wanted to see in those candidates, had doubts and did not buy the campaign hyperbole about Change and Hope.

            It would be truly funny if it were not so serious. The economy is going downhill fast, millions are losing their jobs, unemployment, foreclosures, federal spending is all going up, way up and the new Obama administration is trying very hard to get a hold of the executive branch. They work long hours at getting organized to be fully functioning and take over the constitutional role of America. And yet, what have they been talking about for the past two weeks? Surprise, surprise, the main topic is….. are you ready?  Rush Limbaugh!  Yes, it’s a conservative radio talk show host who the White House and the Democrat Party have targeted to be the number One focal point, in essence, The Enemy! Does that make sense to you? To us it does not and so, let’s take a closer look and investigate this apparent ‘phenomenon’.

            Rush Limbaugh has been a radio talk show host since 1988 and a very successful one at that. He has the most listeners (close to twenty million people) during his broadcasts - three hours Monday through Friday - on over 600 radio stations nationwide. He issues a monthly newsletter and he has published two books, each one selling millions of copies in the past seventeen years. He earns over thirty million dollars a year and has been doing so for some time.  Being conservative, he has been a thorn in the side of liberals for twenty years. Yet even his critics admit, be it begrudgingly that he is good at what he is doing or he would not have succeeded for all these many years. They have tried to diminish and ridicule him but to no avail.

            Having read this so far, is anyone surprised that he opposed candidate Barack Obama throughout the last election campaign and tried to dissuade voters to pull the lever for Obama. Once elected though and articulating his agenda and making cabinet appointments, Limbaugh continued to critique President-elect and now President Obama by identifying and calling his (Obama’s) plans socialism and following that conclusion by openly wanting Obama to fail in his efforts to change the country and implementing these changes. This was immediately taking up by liberals out of context: They now trumpeted that ‘Limbaugh wants the President to fail and therefore also the country’. Clearly a false statement when they excluded the connection to the prior analytical comments made by Limbaugh which lead him to the I want him to fail in his attempts towards socialism conclusion.

            From February 26 to 28, the Conservative Political Action Conference - CPAC - took place in Washington D.C. and Rush Limbaugh was the keynote speaker at this three-day event. He spoke for nearly ninety minutes (full speech here, broken up into nine minute segments) to an overflow crowd of Republicans. It is not easy to summarize his speech in a sentence or two. He spoke on a great variety of things ranging from the constitution to past and current events and tried to differentiate between Democrats and Conservatives. Needless to say, he was critical of the newly-elected President and the Democrats running Congress, but he also criticized Republicans who in his opinion deviated from conservative principles. He also praised the President and lauded him as one of the most gifted politicians he had ever known, that Obama had extraordinary talents and immense communication skills. Yet Limbaugh bemoaned the fact that Obama did not use these extraordinary skills to inspire and motivate the American people. That he (Obama) instead pursued a path that punished achievers and earners (by taxing the ‘rich’). Limbaugh also spoke at length as to what it means to be a Conservative and we like to quote here:

            Let me tell you who we conservatives are: We love people. When we look out over the United States of America, when we are anywhere, when we see a group of people, we see Americans. We see human beings. We don’t see groups. We don’t see victims. We don’t see people we want to exploit. What we see is potential. We want every American to be the best he or she chooses to be. We recognize that we are all individuals. We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

            This is but a very small sample of his comments and we suggest - should you so desire - to find the speech and read it or watch it on youtube in full. Limbaugh was given several standing ovations during and at the end of his speech.

            The very next day, Democrats and their ideological allies went on the offense by taking this address to CPAC as the launching point against not just Limbaugh but the entire Republican Party. They declared Rush Limbaugh now to be the official head of the Republican Party and railed against his comments where he was critical of liberals in general and several Democrats and the President in particular. The objective was twofold: They wanted to paint the Republican Party as being led by a right-wing fanatic (Limbaugh) while deflecting the nation’s focus away from the economy with all its elements. Their liberal partners and friends in the main-stream media played along wonderfully and that is why so much was said and heard about Rush Limbaugh during the past few weeks. But we think it did not work: The people in general are not interested in this type of stuff when their own lives are effected by economically worsening conditions with respect to losing ones job or trying to make ends meet financially. In fact, it sort of backfired when people began to wonder why the White House was spending so much time on this when they should instead be dealing exclusively with major current or potential disasters in the housing and job markets.

            Common Sense University concludes that freedom of speech is still a constitutionally guaranteed right for everyone living in this country! What Rush Limbaugh did was exactly that: He exercised this right! He presented a powerful argument that conservatism is generally good and that he wanted to keep America the way it is instead of being changed into what he considers a transformation into a country of European socialisms. And we agree: Socialism did not built and make this country of ours what it was and is, Capitalism did!

Representative Tom McClintock addressing contradictions to the Green Policy at the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change on March 9, 2009.  This is well worth your nine minutes to hear.  I only hope that those in attendance listen.

            Newly installed United States Attorney General Eric Holder, the first ever African-American in this position spoke recently at an event at the Justice Department celebrating Black History month and said among other things: “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

            Hold on, Mr. Attorney General, you are not even a month in your current position and you have managed to insult a vast majority of Americans, including me! I came to this country nearly 45 years ago and I was not burdened with any prejudicial thought or feelings towards blacks or other people of color, to the contrary, I eagerly sought contacts with blacks be it in the workplace or in private. Never ever did I have a problem communicating or getting along with any black person and for you, Mr. Attorney General, to come out and make such a sweeping generalization by calling us cowards is not only an insult but a disgrace and no apology is accepted. You have shown us in your statement your insensitivity and arrogance and you are to me, totally unqualified to be heading the Justice Department of this country.

            There are millions of solid race-relations between blacks and whites in this country. Every successful  professional athlete maintains strong relationships with current and former coaches who are white from high school to college to the pros. Thousands of non-black coaches and teachers throughout the land have helped young black kids to develop their potential in whatever sport or other fields. We have previously shown a video of USC football coach Pete Carroll who goes regularly at night into black neighborhoods in South-Central Los Angeles to talk to gang members there and to convey to them the uselessness of gang fighting and killings. How dare you, Mr. Holder to include such a man in your generalization of ‘cowards’. Shame on you!

            Unfortunately, the flip side of the coin is fact. If I were to call you out, Mr. Holder, and suggest to you that you should spend a few nights in South-Central Los Angeles with gang members since they might be more inclined to listen to you since you are black, I run the risk of being branded a racist! The same would hold true if I were to ask other black leaders, politicians, civil rights leaders or the like to do such things. So then, it looks like that it is a matter of ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’. It is a reality, every time, a white person even utters any kind of criticism of a black person, it’s defined as racism. And by whom? None other than the black leadership in this country. Yes, Civil rights leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton have made careers (and millions of dollars) out of filing lawsuits against American companies for alleged discriminations in the workplace against blacks. These types of actions have led those and other companies to hold race-sensitivity classes and seminars for employees and especially management personnel with the result that everybody is very careful what he or she says. We also believe that the only people referring to blacks by using the “N” word are black people and it is apparently not offensive when that happens.

            To my way of thinking, that first major step that could be taken to improve race-relations should be made by the black community, there needs to be an attitude adjustment on their part and if it is only to look forward instead of continuously living in the past. When black politicians and civil rights leaders continue to pursue Federal legislation for so called ’slavery reparations’, it does not at all help to heal or improve any race-relations. Get yourself out of the ‘victimhood’ mentality, become positive in your attitudes and make your distrusts of whites in this country a thing of the past. But until there is such a change, a vast majority of whites in America will be left with the choice of being cowards or racists. And since it does not cost anything to be a coward in this matter (while being a racist could potentially be very expensive), many people will just remain what they are and where they are and go on with their lives.

            It is my opinion that it did not help at all for the United States Attorney General to make such a stupid and totally uncalled for statement and we would have all been better off to let race-relations develop and improve on an individual level rather than trying to calling us whites cowards. I do not think that this will challenge anybody to do his or her part to improve race relations. We expect that readers of this article have different opinions on this matter and we urge you to respond to us and give us your take on this issue. Let’s have a dialogue on this.

            Not being psychologists, Common Sense University does not understand, yet we are frequently fascinated by people’s desire for change from whatever current situations there are in. Some desires for change are understandable, of course. If you are not well financially, you would like to see a change for more wealth. If you are working in a job for many, many years, doing the same thing year- and year-out, you would like to see a change by either being promoted or transferred to do something different.

            All this makes perfect sense! So, then what do we not understand about people wanting change? The answer is simple: When people want change just for the sake of change! When change is desired no matter what it will change into, in essence, change without specific objectives. Let us look at an example that might be easy to understand: Professional basketball. The game has been played for a very long time under basically the same rules: 5 players on each team, four quarters at 12 minutes each, a certain number of time-outs for each team, six fouls for a player to be ejected and so on. Now then, we are tired of it and asked the people of America if it time for a change or even a number of changes without going into the specifics. Let’s just use Barack Obama’s campaign slogan: Change we can believe in! And a majority of the people vote in the affirmative and as a result: Change is coming to professional basketball in America without knowing the specifics but as promised by the proponents of change under the heading: Trust us!

            Are you ready? Here comes one version of the change as promised: The baskets will be lowered to six feet so that smaller people can play in the professional league. Goal tending will become legal and each team can have eight players on the floor and there is no three second rule in the lane and each player is allowed up to twelve fouls. Ok, this is change, right? And that’s what a majority voted for to change the game of basketball, right? What do you think will happen as a result of these changes, can you tell? We suggest that we could have results like Lakers 31 and Celtics 29; in other words, much lower scores than before. But it is a change from before and that is what a majority wanted, so that we have to accept now and live with.

            By now, we expect you to ask, what is the point in all this? We simply want to demonstrate the absolute absurdity to favoring change for the sake of change. And yet in reality this is what has happened twice in the past two and a half years. You rightfully ask: “Where did this happen?” The simple answer is:  In Federal elections, in the 2006 mid-term congressional elections and in last year’s Presidential and congressional elections! While we expect you to question this, we remain firm: The Democrats in 2006 campaigned on the major theme: It is time for a change! And last year’s election is not that long ago that you should not remember the major slogan by candidate Obama: Change we can believe in! He also promised to change America fundamentally (among other things).

            We can totally understand if you strongly disagree with us here and we would like to hear from you. However, we are still baffled by the myth of ‘change’ that people so willingly accept time and again without any specifics and understanding what the change will bring. This is so mystifying to us, we are looking for answers and yet, it feels more like driving at high speed at night in a complete fog. If you can help us here, we sure would appreciate it.

We deviate from our normal post by placing this letter to the editor that was rejected by the editor of the Orange County California Newspaper.  Common Sense University is surprised that the Editorial Section of this paper has a political agenda, but I guess we shouldn’t be.  Anyway, this is a great letter that should be read by everyone living in America.  It was written by Rosemary LaBonte and is short and to the point.

This is a very good letter to the editor. This woman made some good points. For some reason, people have difficulty structuring their arguments when arguing against supporting the currently proposed immigration revisions. This lady made the argument pretty simple. Not printed in the Orange County Paper. Newspapers simply won’t publish letters to the editor which they either deem politically incorrect (read below) or which does not agree with the philosophy they’re pushing on the public. This woman wrote a great letter to the editor that should have been published; but, with your help it will get published via cyberspace.

From: ‘David LaBonte’

My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the OC Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to ‘print’ it myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined. Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register:

Dear Editor:

So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down t he Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren’t being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.

Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today’s American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.

They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity.

Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France and Japan. None of these first generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people.

When we liberated France, no one in those villages was looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country’s flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bow.

And here we are in 2008 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I’m sorry, that’s not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900’s deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.

 And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty, it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn’t start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.

 (signed) Rosemary LaBonte

KEEP THIS LETTER MOVING. FOR THE WRONG THINGS TO PREVAIL THE RIGHTFUL MAJORITY NEEDS TO REMAIN COMPLACENT AND QUIET. LET THIS NEVER HAPPEN.

These are words that we have all thought, but haven’t heard from network television.  I certainly felt that the reporters had trouble with Rick’s honesty.

            After four weeks in office as President and quite a bit of activity during this time, we find it is time to take a look at President Barack Obama and his ability to govern. In order to do this properly, we have to first refresh our memories as to the themes and promises he campaigned on for well over twenty months since he declared his intentions to run for President in February 2007.

            The two major campaign promises by Barack Obama were Change (in various forms) and Hope. He promised at every event that he would change Washington D.C. and the way things had been done there in the past. He would bring ethics back to the White House, there would be no room for lobbyists in his administration and no lobbyist would have access or influence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He promised total transparency in all his actions, he would not sign one single bill without having it posted on websites so that the American people could see and review its content. He promised a new era of bi-partisanship, all part of his “Change” theme. He would bring ‘Change, we can believe in” and fundamentally change America. He said that he knew he could bring people of all stripes together and therein unite the country after those terrible eight years of the previous administration.          

            And then there was “Hope“. He promised hope for every American who needed help of any kind. He would cut taxes for 95 percent of the people in this country (which is an incredible promise when one considers that about 40 plus percent of the people do not pay any income taxes). He also promised to ’spread the wealth around’ and that meant real hope for the downtrodden. He promised last summer to bring the high prices of gasoline down with his energy policies. (Needless to say, they came down without his help). And so, he got elected, there were enough people who believed him and his messages/promises and they voted for him. In all, about 62 million persons compared to the 56 million who voted for John McCain.

            He utilized the time between November and his inauguration to build his cabinet and he and his team transitioned with the Bush administration very effectively. At first glance, his cabinet selections all appeared capable and experienced individuals and he hailed every one of them as the most qualified ones to serve this country as member of his administration. And on January 20, 2009, he became the 44^th President of the United States of America. He rode a huge wave of popularity not just here but around the world.

            But now came the reality: He had to govern! He asked Congress to expeditiously approve his cabinet nominees and they tried very hard to do so. But, as we found out, a few candidates were not all that squeaky clean. For example, the new Secretary of the Treasury had not paid income taxes for a few recent years! Ooops, the man in charge of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) simply forgot to pay taxes on portions of his income over four years. But he remedied the situation by paying them post haste and since he, Mr. Timothy Geithner was the only man qualified to be in this position, the Senate confirmed him. Then we found out that the candidate to run the Health & Human Service Department, Mr. Tom Daschle, also had not paid his taxes on some income in previous years and he took himself out of contention for this job. The President then appointed a Republican Senator, Judd Gregg from New Hampshire, as Commerce Department Secretary. After initially accepting the appointment, Mr. Gregg took himself out of contention as well. And there were a few others who also rescinded their nominations.

            We could continue here and write about the “former lobbyists” who are now in high level positions in the Obama administration, even though the President had vigorously campaigned to not appoint any. But the major focus in the past weeks was the Obama stimulus package, called the Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He had asked Congress to get this bill on his desk by President’s Day. He provided some guidelines (not a complete stimulus proposal) but left the drafting on these bills to the members of Congress. The House of Representatives came up initially with an $820 billion proposal that was voted on along party lines (Democrats for, Republicans against), the Senate settled on a bill for slightly less than $800 billion and the consolidation of the two versions settled at $787 billion. This is a thousand-plus page bill that no member of Congress read before voting on it! While nearly all Democrats voted for it, all House Republicans voted against it and only three out of the 41 Republican Senators voted for it with all the Democrats in the Senate.    The President signed the measure on February 17 and hailed it as a major achievement by Congress. It would provide, as he said, the funds necessary to create 3.5 million jobs in America over the next two years. He also said that this bill was just the beginning! To us, this means he will come back for more if the millions of jobs are not created!

            Now then, we asked: Why does it take over $200,000 ($787B/3.5M people) to create a job that might not pay more than $40 to 50,000 per year? We do not have the answer to this question! But our biggest disappointment in Mr. Obama so far is his change in rhetoric. When he campaigned, he promised change and hope and yet for three weeks until the stimulus bill was hastily voted on by Congress, he predicted doom and gloom and catastrophic consequences for America if this bill would not be passed. You are talking about a complete switch from lofty rhetoric (while campaigning) to constant fear-mongering (as new President). He predicted potentially irreversible trends towards permanent recession and even depression! He compared the current times to the “Great Depression” some seventy years ago. To us, having lived through several economic downtowns in the past, this is nothing more than hype and complete nonsense. To be quite honest, we here at CSU are not impressed with that performance by our new President! He sounded at times like a spoiled child wanting to get his wish and throwing temper tantrums when getting it was in doubt.

            Since the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will eventually amount to several trillion dollars (with interest and continuation of inherent Federal programs), you can look at it as having been burdened by Mr. Obama with a ‘nice’ addition to your obligations as future tax payers, probably to the tune of $10,000. And that is just this one bill.

            Today, we are ‘celebrating’ Presidents Day, so designated as the third Monday each February. All Government offices including schools and the U.S. Postal service are closed, commercial businesses have special ‘Presidents Day Sales’ all over the country and for a lot of people it is nothing more than part of a three-day weekend and very few people take off some time to even think about Presidents, past and present.  We think that is just not right and we therefore dedicate this article to those individuals who held this highest office in America. But instead of listing them all here or writing about them, how about a bit of Presidential trivia? Questions and answers to facts and statistics about these men. (Sorry, ladies, but so far they were all men). You might find it interesting to test your memory going back to earlier years in school or you might even learn things out for the first time. Here it goes with the questions; you will see the answers below:

1. Since only 43 men have held the office of President since 1789, starting with George Washington, how come Barack Obama is listed as the 44^th President?
2. Did any Presidents sign the Declaration of Independence and if so, can you name them?
3. Did any Presidents sign the Constitution of the United States and if so, who were they?
4. How many Presidents died in office and can you name them?
5. How many Presidents were assassinated while serving and who were they?
6. Can you name the person who resigned as President and when did that happen?
7. Whose Presidency was the longest and whose was the shortest?
8. Where there any ‘double’ Presidencies in families such as father-son or else?
9. On what day of the year was most Inaugurations held?
10. How many men were elected twice or more times to the office of President?
11. Since when are Inaugurations held on January 20?
12. How many Democrats and Republicans held the office of President?

 Here are the answers:  Continue Reading »

Isn’t it interesting that the person leading the charge against conservative talk radio, under the message of accountability and transparency, is also married to Tom Athans, a past executive vice-president of Air America that later helped found TalkUSA?  Both of these endeavors were strongly progressive and liberal radio stations that couldn’t compete in the free market.  Now Debbie is coming to the rescue by killing the opposition!

Will Debbie Stabenow push to equalize political commentary on television too?  Common Sense University doesn’t thing she will do this either.

            In case you are wondering why you do not know who this woman is, you are not alone. Hardly anybody outside of Washington D.C. knows who Michelle Rhee is. In short, the answer is: She was appointed in the summer of 2007 as the new Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public School system in our nation’s capital consisting of 144 schools. When D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty made this announcement, it stunned the city, Michelle Rhee had no experience at running a school, let alone a district with 46,000 students that ranked last among eleven urban school districts. Just prior to her appointment, she had been running a nonprofit organization called the ‘New Teacher Project’ which helps schools recruit good teachers. Research for several decades has identified ineffective teaching as the biggest problem with U.S. public schools. Picking Ms. Rhee was a bold move, she hailed from Ohio and is Korean American in a majority African-American city with high drop out rates among its students. For example, Anacostia High School has a 24 percent graduation rate and only 21 percent of its students read at grade level. She was on the face of it, the worst possible pick for this job.

            But she went to work with an unusual high volume of energy and a huge bag of ideas how to turn things around in the D.C. school district. In the slightly more than one and a half year since she took over, she has made more changes than most reform-minded school leaders make in five years.  So far, she has shut down 21 schools - a total of 15 percent of city schools - and has fired more than 100 workers from the districts bloated 900 person central bureaucracy. She has dismissed over 270 teachers and last spring, she removed 36 principals, including the head of the elementary school her two daughters attend in an affluent northwest-D.C. neighborhood. She has vowed to make Washington the highest-performing urban school district in the nation, a prospect that, if realized, could transform the way schools across the country are run.        She is trying to achieve this through a relentless focus on finding - and rewarding - strong teachers, purging incompetent ones and weakening the tenure system that keeps bad teachers in classrooms. Rhee is convinced that the answer to the United States’ education catastrophe is talent in the form of outstanding teachers and principals. Needless to say, Ms. Rhee and the teachers union are ideological opposites and she is fully aware of it. Her ferocity has alienated many people and not just the Union leaders and membership. Even members of the Washington D.C. city council find her difficult to deal with. While she is aware of this sort of criticism, she stays the course she has charted to achieve her objectives.

            We here at Common Sense University find this not only courageous on her part but are encouraged that it is taking place in the first place and we therefore salute Michelle Rhee. For all of you currently pursuing careers in education, we urge you to read up and find out more about this goal-oriented woman who is set on a course to reverse long-standing woes in America’s education sector. We can hardly afford to fall further behind other industrial nations when it comes to high educational standards and results and we firmly believe that it will take many more Michelle Rhee’s to get there from where we are now.