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.

From Hope to Fear – Campaigning versus Governing is a post from: Common Sense University

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            Even though, we did not vote for him, he will be our President just the same and we wish him all the best for his term in office. With this we also mean that the political bickering in Washington D.C. will be reduced and that all elected officials will truly try and work together for the benefit of all the people in this country. Of course, there are differences of opinion as they should be but we always wondered why the differences had to lead and result in rancor and sometimes vicious personal attacks.

            But back to the Inauguration. The transfer of power of the Executive branch from President George W. Bush to President-Elect Barack Obama begins with the swearing into office of the latter. This will take place on the steps of the Capitol Building in the presence of hundreds of thousands of people and it is in its formality simple, yet such a powerful event due to its peaceful nature as anchored in the Constitution of this country. The fact that the loser of the Presidential election, Senator John McCain will be sitting close by while this swearing-in ceremony is taken place speaks volumes about the power of Democracy. And we think it is something to cherish and behold.

            While Barack Obama can be envied for having won the election, he also deserves our common sympathy because he is entering the Presidency at a time when things are tough on almost all fronts. While we are winding down the war in Iraq, we are apparently ramping up the conflict in Afghanistan by adding troops there and the overall war on terror is still going strong. We have to remain alert for potential future terrorist attacks. The Middle East and particularly the current war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza strip is of major concern to everybody and the possible threat of Iran becoming a nuclear power is a continuous problem. Couple that with the current economical and financial situation not only nationwide but worldwide and we have to come to one conclusion:  From Day One of his Presidency, Mr. Obama’s plate is full!

            It is our sincere hope that he will be given a chance by everybody to adjust to this new job and get familiar with the full scope this job encompasses. We wish that this will happen so that he does not have to deal with the additional burden of intense, instant criticism expressed in demeaning name-calling as it did happen with his predecessor George W. Bush. It was truly shameful how he was treated, calling him everything from being stupid and just plain dumb to being a liar and even a murderer was abhorrent and disgusting. These statements were made not just by his ideological opponents in the media, the movie industry and among liberal bloggers but also by active members of Congress in both chambers. It was very difficult to take and understand for those who had voted for George Bush and believed in what he wanted to do for America. This total lack of civility on the part of Bush’s critics was a low point in American history.

            It is our sincere hope that a President Obama will never have to experience this kind of gutter attacks by his ideological opponents, we hope that criticism of him will remain factual and civil and not ever become so vile and personally insulting. Let us be realistic, whatever his decisions or plans for America, he will never be able to please everybody, that is a given. Yet, he will be the President and we only have one at a time!

Presidential Inauguration – A Grand Moment is a post from: Common Sense University

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            According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in November 2008, the total labor force in the United States amounted to 164,947,000 of which 154,616,000 were employed, the difference being the current number of unemployed people, 10,331,000. This is an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent. Compared to the rates during the years from 2002 to 2007 when the rate was between 4.5 and 5.0 percent, this number is high. The question is, why are these increased unemployment number cause for major concern, after all, they represent only about slightly more than three million people? There are several reasons and they would require in-depth analysis but the media’s preferred focus on NEGATIVE NEWS is a major part and the driving force behind the constant drumbeat about how bad we are all off in this country. There are self-anointed experts called economists who just love nothing more than to forecast gloom and doom and unfortunately, they are getting the media’s attention and that is all we hear.

            But if we take a moment and look at the numbers in totality, it is definitely not as bad. When one takes into consideration that it is a generally accepted fact for many decades that about four percent are considered permanently unemployable, the true number of unemployed jobseekers is 2.7 percent and that amounts to 4.5 million people. Surely, this is not desirable by any stretch and we feel genuine concern for the well-being of these folks but it does not mean that America is going down the tubes now, after all, nearly 155 million individuals are still working. OK then, what if unemployment goes to ten percent over the next six months or more?  It would mean that the number of unemployed would increase to 16.5 million citizens, an increase of 6.2 million from now. It would be bad but it would still leave 148.5 million people employed. One would have to go back a few decades to compare equally dire times yet it would not mean that the ‘skies are falling‘, would it? Not when one considers that unemployment rates in major industrialized European countries have been hanging around for years near and even over ten percent.

            We believe that there is a strong need for realistic reporting in the media, in fact, we, the citizenry should demand it. Instead of hearing about dire predictions for 2009 and the years after as well as comparisons to the ‘Great Depression’, we should be getting the facts, and nothing else. Why can a newspaper or business magazine not bring actual charts of total statistics as they are available from government sources? The only common sense answer to this question is that it must be so much more fun for the media membership to ‘scare the hell out of people’! Which brings us to the question: “Is that what the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press was intended for?” We don’t think so and we all should demand a correction in this matter. Give us the total picture and we are smart enough to figure out for ourselves where things stand and what might be ahead of us. And accordingly, people on an individual bases will make adjustments in their lives and spending habits, they will figure out ways how to cope. As terrible as facing unemployment is in reality, as a nation we always have found ways to cope and to deal with changes in the negative and we will survive the current economic downturn and come out ahead in the future. Consider Common Sense firmly believes that the skies are not falling in America!

“The skies are falling, the skies are falling” is a post from: Common Sense University

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The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College by Mark Steyn while he was in residence as a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellow in Journalism:

Slippery Slope

Our democratic governments today preside over multicultural societies that have less and less glue holding them together. They’ve grown comfortable with the idea of the state as the mediator between interest groups. And confronted by growing and restive Muslim populations, they’re increasingly at ease with the idea of regulating freedom in the interests of social harmony.

It’s a different situation in America, which has the First Amendment and a social consensus that increasingly does not exist in Europe. Europe’s consensus seems to be that Danish cartoonists should be able to draw what they like, but not if it sparks Islamic violence. It is certainly odd that the requirement of self-restraint should only apply to one party.

Last month, in a characteristically clotted speech followed by a rather more careless BBC interview, the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it was dangerous to have one law for everyone and that the introduction of Sharia to the United Kingdom was “inevitable.” Within days of His Grace’s remarks, the British and Ontario governments both confirmed that thousands of polygamous men in their jurisdictions are receiving welfare payments for each of their wives. Kipling wrote that East is East and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet. But when the twain do meet, you often wind up with the worst of both worlds. Say what you like about a polygamist in Waziristan or Somalia, but he has to do it on his own dime. To collect a welfare check for each spouse, he has to move to London or Toronto. Government-subsidized polygamy is an innovation of the Western world.

If you need another reason to be opposed to socialized health care, one reason is because it fosters the insouciant attitude to basic hygiene procedures that has led to the rise of deadly “superbugs.” I see British Muslim nurses in public hospitals riddled with C. difficile are refusing to comply with hygiene procedures on the grounds that scrubbing requires them to bare their arms, which is un-Islamic. Which is a thought to ponder just before you go under the anaesthetic. I mentioned to some of Hillsdale’s students in class that gay-bashing is on the rise in the most famously “tolerant” cities in Europe. As Der Spiegel reported, “With the number of homophobic attacks rising in the Dutch metropolis, Amsterdam officials are commissioning a study to determine why Moroccan men are targeting the city’s gays.”

Gee, whiz. That’s a toughie. Wonder what the reason could be. But don’t worry, the brain trust at the University of Amsterdam is on top of things: “Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder. Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity.”

Bingo! Telling young Moroccan men they’re closeted homosexuals seems certain to lessen tensions in the city! While you’re at it, a lot of those Turks seem a bit light in their loafers, don’t you think?

Our Suicidal Urge

So don’t worry, nothing’s happening. Just a few gay Muslims frustrated at the lack of gay Muslim nightclubs. Sharia in Britain? Taxpayer-subsidized polygamy in Toronto? Yawn. Nothing to see here. True, if you’d suggested such things on September 10, 2001, most Britons and Canadians would have said you were nuts. But a few years on and it doesn’t seem such a big deal, nor will the next concession, or the one after that.

The assumption that you can hop on the Sharia Express and just ride a couple of stops is one almighty leap of faith. More to the point, who are you relying on to “hold the line”? Influential figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury? The politically correct bureaucrats at Canada’s Human Rights Commissions? The geniuses who run Harvard, and who’ve just introduced gender-segregated swimming and gym sessions at the behest of Harvard’s Islamic Society? (Would they have done that for Amish or Mennonite students?) The Western world is not run by fellows noted for their line-holding: Look at what they’re conceding now and then try to figure out what they’ll be conceding in five years’ time. The idea that the West’s multicultural establishment can hold the line would be more plausible if it was clear they had any idea where the line is, or even gave any indication of believing in one.

My book, supposedly Islamaphobic, isn’t even really about Islam. The single most important line in it is the profound observation, by historian Arnold Toynbee, that “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.” One manifestation of that suicidal urge is illiberal notions harnessed in the cause of liberalism. In calling for the introduction of Sharia, the Archbishop of Canterbury joins a long list of Western appeasers, including a Dutch cabinet minister who said if the country were to vote to introduce Islamic law that would be fine by him, and the Swedish cabinet minister who said we should be nice to Muslims now so that Muslims will be nice to us when they’re in the majority.

Ultimately, our crisis is not about Islam. It’s not about fire-breathing Imams or polygamists whooping it up on welfare. It’s not about them. It’s about us. And by us I mean the culture that shaped the modern world, and established the global networks, legal systems, and trading relationships on which the planet depends.

To reprise Sir Edward Grey, the lamps are going out all over the world, and an awful lot of the map will look an awful lot darker by the time many Americans realize the scale of this struggle.

Lights Out on Liberty, Part 2 of 2 is a post from: Common Sense University

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The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College by Mark Steyn while he was in residence as a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellow in Journalism:

Mark Steyn’s column appears in the New York Sun, the Washington Times, Philadelphia’s Evening Bulletin, and the Orange County Register. In addition, he writes for The New Criterion, Maclean’s in Canada, the Jerusalem Post, The Australian, and Hawke’s Bay Today in New Zealand. The author of National Review’s Happy Warrior column, he also blogs on National Review Online and appears weekly on the Hugh Hewitt Radio Show. He is the author of several books, most recently America Alone: The End of The World as We Know It. Born in Toronto, Mr. Steyn lives with his family in New Hampshire.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on March 13, 2008, while Mr. Steyn was in residence as a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellow in Journalism.

ON AUGUST 3, 1914, on the eve of the First World War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey stood at the window of his office in the summer dusk and observed, “The lamps are going out all over Europe.” Today, the lights are going out on liberty all over the Western world, but in a more subtle and profound way.

Much of the West is far too comfortable with state regulation of speech and expression, which puts freedom itself at risk. Let me cite some examples: The response of the European Union Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security to the crisis over the Danish cartoons that sparked Muslim violence was to propose that newspapers exercise “prudence” on certain controversial subjects involving religions beginning with the letter “I.” At the end of her life, the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci-after writing of the contradiction between Islam and the Western tradition of liberty-was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland, and most other European jurisdictions by groups who believed her opinions were not merely offensive, but criminal. In France, author Michel Houellebecq was sued by Muslim and other “anti-racist groups” who believed the opinions of a fictional character in one of his novels were likewise criminal.

In Canada, the official complaint about my own so-called “flagrant Islamophobia”-filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress-attributes to me the following “assertions”:

America will be an Islamic Republic by 2040. There will be a break for Muslim prayers during the Super Bowl. There will be a religious police enforcing Islamic norms. The USS Ronald Reagan will be renamed after Osama bin Laden. Females will not be allowed to be cheerleaders. Popular American radio and TV hosts will be replaced by Imams.

In fact, I didn’t “assert” any of these things. They are plot twists I cited in my review of Robert Ferrigno’s novel, Prayers for the Assassin. It’s customary in reviewing novels to cite aspects of the plot. For example, a review of Moby Dick will usually mention the whale. These days, apparently, the Canadian Islamic Congress and the government’s human rights investigators (who have taken up the case) believe that describing the plot of a novel should be illegal.

You may recall that Margaret Atwood, some years back, wrote a novel about her own dystopian theocratic fantasy, in which America was a Christian tyranny named the Republic of Gilead. What’s to stop a Christian group from dragging a doting reviewer of Margaret Atwood’s book in front of a Canadian human rights court? As it happens, Christian groups tend not to do that, which is just as well, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a lot to write about.

These are small parts of a very big picture. After the London Tube bombings and the French riots a few years back, commentators lined up behind the idea that Western Muslims are insufficiently assimilated. But in their mastery of legalisms and the language of victimology, they’re superbly assimilated. Since these are the principal means of discourse in multicultural societies, they’ve mastered all they need to know. Every day of the week, somewhere in the West, a Muslim lobbying group is engaging in an action similar to what I’m facing in Canada. Meanwhile, in London, masked men marched through the streets with signs reading “Behead the Enemies of Islam” and promising another 9/11 and another Holocaust, all while being protected by a phalanx of London policemen.

Thus we see that today’s multicultural societies tolerate the explicitly intolerant and avowedly unicultural, while refusing to tolerate anyone pointing out that intolerance. It’s been that way for 20 years now, ever since Valentine’s Day 1989, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie, a British subject, and shortly thereafter large numbers of British Muslims marched through English cities openly calling for Rushdie to be killed. A reader in Bradford wrote to me recalling asking a West Yorkshire policeman on the street that day why the various “Muslim community leaders” weren’t being arrested for incitement to murder. The officer said they’d been told to “play it cool.” The calls for blood got more raucous. My correspondent asked his question again. The policeman told him to “Push off” (he expressed the sentiment rather more Anglo-Saxonly, but let that pass) “or I’ll arrest you.” Mr. Rushdie was infuriated when the then Archbishop of Canterbury lapsed into root-cause mode. “I well understand the devout Muslims’ reaction, wounded by what they hold most dear and would themselves die for,” said His Grace. Rushdie replied tersely: “There is only one person around here who is in any danger of dying.”

And that’s the way it’s gone ever since. For all the talk about rampant “Islamophobia,” it’s usually only the other party who is “in any danger of dying.”

War on the Homefront

I wrote my book America Alone because I wanted to reframe how we thought about the War on Terror-an insufficient and evasive designation that has long since outlasted whatever usefulness it may once have had. It remains true that we are good at military campaigns, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our tanks and ships are better, and our bombs and soldiers are smarter. But these are not ultimately the most important battlefronts. We do indeed face what the strategists call asymmetric warfare, but it is not in the Sunni triangle or the Hindu Kush. We face it right here in the Western world.

Norman Podhoretz, among others, has argued that we are engaged in a second Cold War. But it might be truer to call it a Cold Civil War, by which I mean a war within the West, a war waged in our major cities. We now have Muslim “honor killings,” for instance, not just in tribal Pakistan and Yemen, but in Germany and the Netherlands, in Toronto and Dallas. And even if there were no battles in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if no one was flying planes into tall buildings in New York City or blowing up trains, buses, and nightclubs in Madrid, London, and Bali, we would still be in danger of losing this war without a shot being fired.

The British government recently announced that it would be issuing Sharia-compliant Islamic bonds-that is, bonds compliant with Islamic law and practice as prescribed in the Koran. This is another reason to be in favor of small government: The bigger government gets, the more it must look for funding in some pretty unusual places-in this case wealthy Saudis. As The Mail on Sunday put it, this innovation marks “one of the most significant economic advances of Sharia law in the non-Muslim world.”

At about the same time, The Times of London reported that “Knorbert the piglet has been dropped as the mascot of Fortis Bank, after it decided to stop giving piggy banks to children for fear of offending Muslims.” Now, I’m no Islamic scholar, but Mohammed expressed no view regarding Knorbert the piglet. There’s not a single sura about it. The Koran, an otherwise exhaustive text, is silent on the matter of anthropomorphic porcine representation.

I started keeping a file on pig controversies a couple of years ago, and you would be surprised at how routine they have become. Recently, for instance, a local government council prohibited its workers from having knickknacks on their desks representing Winnie the Pooh’s sidekick Piglet. As Pastor Martin Niemoller might have said, “First they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character, and if I was, I’d be more of an Eeyore. Then they came for the Three Little Pigs and Babe, and by the time I realized the Western world had turned into a 24/7 Looney Tunes, it was too late, because there was no Porky Pig to stammer, ‘Th-th-th-that’s all folks!’, and bring the nightmare to an end.”

What all these stories have in common is excessive deference to-and in fact fear of-Islam. If the story of the Three Little Pigs is forbidden when Muslims still comprise less than ten percent of Europe’s population, what else will be on the black list when they comprise 20 percent? In small but telling ways, non-Muslim communities are being persuaded that a kind of uber-Islamic law now applies to all. And if you don’t remember the Three Little Pigs, by the way, one builds a house of straw, another of sticks, and both get blown down by the Big Bad Wolf. Western Civilization is a mighty house of bricks, but you don’t need a Big Bad Wolf when the pig is so eager to demolish the house himself.

I would argue that these incremental concessions to Islam are ultimately a bigger threat than terrorism. What matters is not what the lads in the Afghan cave-the “extremists”-believe, but what the non-extremists believe, what people who are for the most part law-abiding taxpayers of functioning democracies believe. For example, a recent poll found that 36 percent of Muslims between the ages of 16 and 24 believe that those who convert to another religion should be punished by death. That’s not 36 percent of young Muslims in Waziristan or Yemen or Sudan, but 36 percent of young Muslims in the United Kingdom. Forty percent of British Muslims would like to live under Sharia-in Britain. Twenty percent have sympathy for the July 7 Tube bombers. And, given that Islam is the principal source of population growth in every city down the spine of England from Manchester to Sheffield to Birmingham to London, and in every major Western European city, these statistics are not without significance for the future.

Because I discussed these facts in print, my publisher is now being sued before three Canadian human rights commissions. The plaintiff in my case is Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, a man who announced on Canadian TV that he approves of the murder of all Israeli civilians over the age of 18. He is thus an objective supporter of terrorism. I don’t begrudge him the right to his opinions, but I wish he felt the same about mine. Far from that, posing as a leader of the “anti-hate” movement in Canada, he is using the squeamishness of a politically correct society to squash freedom.

As the famous saying goes, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. What the Canadian Islamic Congress and similar groups in the West are trying to do is criminalize vigilance. They want to use the legal system to circumscribe debate on one of the great questions of the age: the relationship between Islam and the West and the increasing Islamization of much of the Western world, in what the United Nations itself calls the fastest population transformation in history.

Lights Out on Liberty, Part 1 of 2 is a post from: Common Sense University

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            We here at this website are fully aware that this concern is shared by Mr. Obama and his advisors and do not think that he needs us to tell him this. Nonetheless, we can make suggestions or recommend steps that we feel are elementary for the President-Elect to take and consider. If we forget his record as United States Senator where he was a ‘junior’ member in a club of one-hundred, now we will judge him by his managerial style and decision making abilities. We were also told by the liberal media and his campaign staff that we should not judge him by his previous associations (Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, Tony Rezko, ACORN etc.) nor his experiences as a community organizer and since his college work and records were intentionally secreted away by Obama, we really did not have much to go on and were restricted to what he was saying during speeches and debates. As a result of this, he is pretty much a blank page and we have to wait now to see what he does.

            The first indication might come when we see whom he will choose to fill his cabinet and other major positions in the White House. If he is truly realistic and has a good grasp of what is going on in the World and America right now, he will surround himself with the most capable, proven and experienced individuals in order to have a strong and effective beginning of his Presidency. Contrarily, the worst thing Mr. Obama could do at this time is to think of re-election in 2012 and other self-gratifying future events. He is right now in the toughest position anybody could be in: To become the President of the United States of America and therewith the leader of the free world! This is the most powerful job on this planet in a time of financial and economic crisis together with the winds of war still blowing strongly as well as other regional conflicts and it requires concentrated focus on his part and we hope he will show us this in these coming days and weeks by his building his administration by way of selecting the best qualified persons for these undoubtedly challenging jobs.

            He should also delay delivery on his campaign promises such as Universal Health Care, tax cuts for 95 percent of all people and so on, after all, he has four years to do so and it would be better if he concentrated on righting the economic ship and settling the financial crisis. People feel uncertain about the future and words like ‘Hope’ and ‘Change we need’ do not change those feelings. When one has to worry about losing a job, promises by politicians do not allay such fears on an individual basis because no one can reasonable assume that Mr. Obama would step in and tell the respective employer: “Do not fire my friend!” We think, nobody would be presumptive (or should we call it stupid?). Only a stabilization of the economy can bring any kind of peace of mind to millions people and he should realize this and act accordingly and the sooner he can show results, the better this country and for that matter the world will be of and we can only hope that he will be able to do this.

            Consider Common Sense will not comment on every individual appointment by the President-Elect but will visit his actions in summary format in early January. We believe and hope that the transition into the White House for the Obama Administration will be swift and with the full cooperation and support of the Bush administration at every level. We wish Mr. Obama the best of luck in these coming weeks and in his decisions and the choices he will make.

From Rhetoric to Reality is a post from: Common Sense University

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Although Barack wasn’t our first choice, he was a decisive winner and will be our next President.  His issues were discussed in this blog, and are there to be judged against.  Common Sense Politics will not condemn Barack Obama because we have different beliefs, but will certainly hold him to his words, as are included in many of the articles here.  We would hope that those that voted for him will hold him to this same standard, doing what you said.

It would be easy to criticize him and his policies, but, as said, we will hope for the best, and hope that the campaign showed him many issues that many Americans want addressed.  Although his past may show otherwise, he will soon be President of the United States, and that commands a different level of compassion and values for its constituents.  The advisors he chooses should help with this, but time will tell.

This site will continue with political analyses at times, but plans on moving toward another theme that revolves around common sense education.  A possibility would be to investigate common sense thoughts for their validity and use it to help teach kids to not take things at face value, but consider several sources of information and arrive at their own conclusion using common sense.

Congratulations again to President-Elect Barack Obama!  We hope your presidency unites Americans while keeping its constitutional values. In your acceptance speech, you promised to be the President to all Americans and we sincerely hope you meant those words. This would require consideration from more than one ideological point of view when new programs are proposed and eventual become law.

Congratulations to President-Elect Obama is a post from: Common Sense University

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            So then, who is it going to be and what will be the consequences? In our opinion, a victory by Senator Barack Obama coupled with an increase of Democrats in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate will clearly be a turn to the proverbial ‘Left’. We will see larger government in the next few years and attempts by the Democrats to ‘spread the wealth around’ and reducing the military. We are not guessing here, we have heard them say it; Barack Obama has said numerous times that spreading the wealth around is good for America and Representative Barney Frank from Massachusetts said recently that he would like to cut the military budget by 25 percent. That is scary, to say the least. Such a reduction in military spending would severely impact our national security; it would have to mean ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan quickly without reasonable rationale. In other words, withdrawal of troops without logic, it would mean retreat instead of pursuit of victory.

            What would an election victory by John McCain mean for America? To Common Sense Politics it would certainly mean trustworthy experience in the White House from Day One; it would mean more certainty of what will happen under a McCain Presidency. He has stated repeatedly that he wants to cut Government spending and in view of a recession will not raise taxes. From Economics 101 we should all know that raising taxes during a recession will be the worst thing anybody can possibly do and we know how Democrats love to tax and the higher they are, the taxes, the better they like them! Another benefit of a McCain Presidency would be the presence of a Veto Pen in the White House and therefore represents the existence (and continuation) of “Checks and Balances” in the Federal Government.

            Speaking strictly on experience, the gap could not be wider between the two Presidential contenders. While Barack Obama’s political star has been rising very speedily, his resume of accomplishments is rather empty. How could it not be? He has been on the national stage a mere four years since his election to be a United States Senator from Illinois and since he has spent half this time running for President. The list of his actual senatorial accomplishments is very short and his votes have all been rather liberal and not bi-partisan. Compared to that, John McCain has been in Congress since 1983, the first few years as Congressman and since 1987 as Senator from Arizona and has a long record of being bi-partisan and has been called a ‘maverick’ for his independent stances on controversial votes. He has been in the service of the United States a total of 55 years when one includes his military service.

            It appears though that large voter groups, among them especially the younger generation, look at the world totally different today in that they like instant stardom as it is created annually in the ‘American Idol’ contests. Are they seeing that in Barack Obama? We here tend to believe it and yet they have a right to vote just like anybody else who is a citizen of America. While we all might be in for a long evening tomorrow, early East coast States results could project the ultimate winner within a few hours after the polls close there. Should so-called ‘red’ States Florida, North Carolina and Virginia (with 55 electoral college votes) be declared for Barack Obama early, it would be impossible for John McCain to become President. On the other hand, if these three States together with Pennsylvania (a total of 76 electoral college votes) will be ‘declared too close to call’ well into the evening, McCain could be the winner once all the votes are counted. But as we stated above by quoting Yogi Berra, “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over!” Therefore, we will wait!

What is it going to be, America? is a post from: Common Sense University

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Just a couple days left.  Charging money for carbon credits that in essence is just another tax from O.  This will hasten the increasing cost to all and the faster decline in our economic situation.

OBAMA TELLS SAN FRANCISCO HE WILL BANKRUPT THE COAL INDUSTRY is a post from: Common Sense University

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            As to his career, it appears that he succeeded in achieving goals when he set his mind on them. When he decided to go into politics, he knew how to go about it and he became a State Senator in Illinois in 1997. In 2004, he ran for United States Senator from Illinois and he won on an ‘Anti-War’ platform. He was sworn in as Senator in January 2005 and merely two years later, he announced his intentions to run for President in 2008. It appears, that he applied for the next job shortly after he attained one and there is nothing wrong with being ambitious but it did not allow him to attain real experience. While his resume is impressive, his actual voting and achievement record is very slim. In the Illinois Senate he took the easy way out more than a hundred times by voting ‘present’ and in his few years in the U.S. Senate, he voted along party lines and is considered the most liberal Senator in the chamber. He showed little interest in being bi-partisan and rarely attempted to bring such legislation to the floor. But the one place where he was consistent was his anti Iraq War stance; he voted against the 2007 Iraq War surge and even voted to cut funding for the troop while they were fighting there. We find that very objectionable, being liberal and being partisan are things we can accept but to vote against funding the troops is abominable in our opinion. But he had great cover since many Democrats voted the same way and even though the military surge has succeeded, he cannot bring himself to this day to admit he was wrong about it initially.

            From the beginning of his run for President, he became a media darling and they have been his greatest assets throughout the Presidential campaign. He proposed “Change” and “Hope”. At first, it was ‘Change we can believe in’ which has now been revised to ‘Change we need’. The overwhelmingly liberal media in America ate this all up and have consequently been extremely negligent when it comes to checking on Barack Obama’s past; in particular his college years and his questionable associations in Chicago with people that can at best be described as dubious. While Obama sat in the pews of Trinity United Church of Christ for twenty years, he claims that he never heard the anti-American hate filled sermons of Reverend Jeremiah Wright; he worked for years with a former, yet unrepentant domestic terrorist William Ayers on education programs and who knows what else But to Mr. Obama, Ayers at first was just another guy in the neighborhood. Obama was wheeling and dealing for a time with a notorious and recently convicted real estate developer and slumlord Tony Rezko but he (Obama) had no involvement there we hear. While this might be true, we have to question Mr. Obama’s judgment as to the caliber and character of people he was friendly with. In the case of Rev. Wright, he has even referred to him as his spiritual advisor and mentor who also married the Obama’s and baptized their two daughters. Only after Wright became known nationwide for his hateful and anti American speeches did the Presidential candidate have to distance himself from the pastor. Yet he still maintains that he never heard these kind of speeches when he attended his sermons. We find this remarkable in that this and similar explanations have been accepted by the media and by all his supporters.

            When it became clear that Barack Obama would win the Democrat’s nomination for President, the liberal media went absolutely crazy over him and heaped praise on him that was becoming a Super star. From then on, whatever this candidate said was taken as gospel. When he changed positions and sometimes completely flip-flopped, the media provided complete cover for him and attacked anybody who would criticize such contradictions. We have to admit though, that over the months, Barack Obama has grown in his appearance and position, he has shown style and eloquence in his speeches and his campaign has been very well run and executed. His financial support has been record breaking and this has given him a tremendous advantage in his advertising abilities. He reportedly has outspend his opponents by a ratio of 4 to 1 and this has to have an impact on voters.

            We will not attempt here to list or discuss his policy proposals and recommend to visit his website instead http://www.barackobama.com/ to see details of his plans for the future of America. He has stated that he ‘wants to spread the wealth around’ as he told Joe the Plumber in Ohio a few weeks ago and he has since then stated publicly that he meant that. His proposed tax increases for the wealthy who make $250,000 or more per year is a promise that he could easily change once in office and we would not be surprised if he would come back next year and say that its not enough and that the taxation starts at $125,000 instead or even at a lower level. He would not be the first Democrat President to do so, Bill Clinton did the exact thing: He promised tax cuts for the middle class in 1992 and as President proposed and got through a Democrat Congress with Al Gore casting the tie-breaking vote in the Senate the biggest tax hike in recent history, including raising the taxable amount of Social Security benefits from 50% to the current 85%, effecting every Senior Citizen.

            Going back on campaign promises should not come as a surprise to anybody but we will have to wait and see if it will happen with Mr. Obama. Generally speaking, raising taxes of any sort on anybody during a recession is the dumbest thing to do as any economist or common sense will tell you. The other troubling element of Obama’s promise of cutting income taxes for 95 percent of Americans belongs to the most misleading promises ever made by a political candidate. Roughly 40 percent of income earners do not pay income taxes in America and he wants to give them a tax cut too (it could also be called ‘spreading the wealth around’). When asked, he said that they pay payroll taxes to which we say: Hello, payroll taxes are being paid for future Social Security benefits!

            As we did with John McCain in our previous article, we have to ask some questions that deserve some answers:

• Does Barack Obama have the experience to be President? The answer should be: Absolutely NOT!
• Does Barack Obama have good judgment and the right temperament to be President? We think he lacks good judgment but he might have the right temperament.
• Is Barack Obama therefore qualified to be President? We think Not!
• Will Barack Obama be a strong Commander-in-Chief? The answer is most likely: Absolutely NOT!
• Will Barack Obama be ready for this job on Day One? Again, we think: Absolutely NOT!
• Will Barack Obama be able to deal effectively with a crisis, domestic or international? In our opinion: Absolutely NOT!
• Does Barack Obama have substance or style or both? While he lacks substance, he does have style!
• Does Barack Obama have the integrity and character to be President? We believe: No!
• Would you trust Barack Obama on his promise to bring ‘Change we need’? We believe he will bring change but we question what change it will be and if we need it; we do not trust Mr. Obama!
• Would you let your kids hang around the people that have influenced Barack Obama?  Absolutely not!

We can only hope that the majority of voters ask themselves the above and similar questions for both candidates before they enter the voting booths on November 4, 2008.

A final look at…..Barack Obama is a post from: Common Sense University

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