Just heard the local talk radio conservative here in Charlotte, on podcast from earlier today, praise the election of Michael Steele and express relief that Katon Dawson, from across the border, did not win.

The reason for Tera Servatious’s relief?

That we didn’t elect another “white guy from the South. We’ve tried that.”

This is racism.

I hate to have to point out this obvious fact, especially against a person that I otherwise admire and agree with on most issues, but how could I look myself in the mirror if I didn’t?

My political career has been defined by aversion to racism. My family opposed it against blacks in the 60s and 70s, as did I in the 70s and 80s. One of the main reasons I became a Republican in 2000 is that I saw the Democratic Party become racist in their advocacy of race based policies and laws.

One of the first columns of mine on Redstate to get picked up by other sites was my chastisement of Hugh Hewitt and other Republicans last year for their publicly announced aversion to another Southerner for a GOP Presidential nominee.

My Southern people voted for JFK, Reagan and Bush 41, non-Southerners all.

It would never occur to me to consider the domicile of a candidate as a factor in my support.

What they stand for; the laws they would enact; and their character determines my vote.

MLK and content of character comes to mind. Jesus comes to mind.

A question: Are non-Southerners so shallow and pathetic that region could turn them against a candidate?

If so,

Eff them.

And for the record, my first two choices for RNC chair were Blackwell and Steele.

Executive Committee Persons that voted for Duncan must be replaced

Anyone that that can provide a list of these people are invited to post their names and states here.

And if any are from North Carolina, I will personally launch a campaign to replace them.

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

It didn’t take long for President Barack Hussein Obama’s aggresion inviting weakness messages to bear fruit. Iran’s Jew genocide-seeking MembersOnlyJacket-ijad “reaches out” to our America-Criticizer-in-Chief (A-CINK), but I can’t tell if A-CINK will interpret this as an open hand or a clenched fist:

“Those who say they want to make change, this is the change they should make: they should apologize to the Iranian nation and try to make up for their dark background and the crimes they have committed against the Iranian nation,” [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad (pictured) said.

Not hard to tell for whom Iran’s Commander-in-Chief speaks, is it? Unlike yesterday’s olive branch from our A-CINK, President Obama:

“What I told him [Middle East envoy George Mitchell] is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating,” Obama told the interviewer.

The first Iranian fruits from our President’s increased diplomatic emphasis break from the Bush Administration comes on the heels of earlier moves last week announcing the closing of Gitmo withing 12 months and that caprured terrorists will have not one hair on their heads bothered before their “OJ trials.” The target audiences of these moves and messages have been Obama’s left-wing base and liberasl media around the world in an effort to make people like us more. But the message sent to our enemies, and especially the world’s number one sponsor of terror for four decades, is one of weakness or, as Osama bin Laden concluded before 911, that the U.S. as a “weak horse” and a “paper tiger.”

More of Iran’s demands:

“When they say policy would change, it means they would end America’s military presence around the world,” he said, referring to U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.

The Iranian president listed a range of “crimes” such as trying to block what Tehran says is a peaceful nuclear power generation program, hindering Iran’s development since the 1979 revolution and other actions by several administrations for more than 60 years.

End America’s military presence around the world? The last time our world military presence was reduced, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran twice and conquered Kuwait as our country suffered multiple attacks from al Qaeda and Iranian-backed terrorists throughout the 1990s culminating with those on September 11, 2001.

Since that date, during the era of America’s clenched Bush fist, we have suffered ZERO attacks.

Still want to loved by Al-Arabiya and the BBC, Obama?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

The UN? The BBC?

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Obama speaks in third person of United States as dictator

His first phone call after re-taking the Oath of Office prescribed for the office of President of the United States (this time sans Bible), was to the leader of the Palestinian Authority, whose Fatah Party does not recognize the right of Israel to exist.

Now, in his first television interview (with Al-Arabiya) after re-taking the Oath, President Obama seems to speak as President of some other entity while slandering my country:

“What I told him [Middle East envoy George Mitchell] is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating,” Obama told the interviewer

His reference to “dictating” is bad enough, but that he didn’t refer to the US as his country is coldly reminiscent of his “Citizen of the World” self-description during his campaign stop in Berlin, Germany (Obama pictured above in Berlin).

Does he see himself more as President of the World whose duty is to chastise a “United States” he feels no strong connection to? He spoke of “the United States” like he might speak of say Kenya.

I have written often in the past that many on the left love America, just not the actual America that has existed since 1776 and has an actual history. No, many on the left love an imaginary America that they think can be fashioned with socialist, appeasement policies and just the right kind of “smart” bureaucrats.

Obama’s disembodiment of himself from his Office to act as an international critic at large against “the United States as dictator” is especially disappointing coming on the heels of some excellent rhetoric in his Inaugural address praising the Founders and our history.

What has the United States “dictated” in the Middle East?

Somehow I don’t think President Obama bemoans the fact that President Bush refused to cooperate with Israel’s plan to bomb Iranian nuclear sites. Does he think President Clinton was the dictator when, with Israel’s agreement, offered Yassir Arafat all but pushing Israel into the Sea in 2000? Clearly Arafat was the dictator then. Are we dictating when we support Israel’s right to defend itself from attacks on their civilians from the Hezbos and Hamas?

Or is Obama referring to dictating to Saddam Hussein that he could not have Kuwait or commit genocide against the Kurds?

Obama made some great choices for his national security team during the transition, but since taking office he has exuded weakness to would be enemies of the United States like most elected Democrats do. Don’t worry Osama, if we catch you, we won’t harm a hair on your head and we’ll give you an OJ trial.

The deterrence of the United States, re-established with such success after 911 by President Bush, is withering away.

Vice President Joe Biden warned of an international test within six months.

President Obama’s aggression inviting weakness may move the exam up before Summer.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

If only there were less humans, Utopia would appear.

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

First, it was purges of the masses who wouldn’t cooperate by Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

The Berlin Wall fell and ended that illusion.

Then it was the 60s and 70s population explosion threat. Population increased exponentially as Reagan-Thatcher conservative prosperity and Clinton globalism reduced poverty and busted that bubble.

Then it was the threat of man-made global warming by exhaling, procreating humans, debunked by actual and continuous 21st century global cooling.

Now, another Democratic party liberal suggests that if only humans would de-populate, Nirvana would materialize:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (pictured) boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic “stimulus” package, claiming “contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”

Pelosi, the mother of 5 children and 6 grandchildren, who once said, “Nothing in my life will ever, ever compare to being a mom,” seemed to imply babies are somehow a burden on the treasury.

The revelation came during an exchange Sunday morning on ABC’s THIS WEEK.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

As I have confessed since bolting the Party of Death seven years ago, my former party is vile. It is morally and intellectually bankrupt and an ever present danger to the preservation of liberty and a United States we would recognize being passed on to the next generation.

They must be confronted and opposed by a culture of LIFE, 24/7, and all those republicans that suggest that Christians and Southerners must decrease while their kind increase are voices of a Slouching Towards Gomorrah that wouldn’t even help a emasculated GOP that actually desired to govern, much less a GOP that would lead.

Thier’s are the voices of the same loser that ran the party during the pre-Newt 40 years of wilderness wandering minority as well as a death knell for Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill.

Will the RNC quote Beelzebub’s voice in 2010 congressional races? Ken Blackwell would.

Remember that this is the party that favors the partial birth abortion; cloning; letting minors be kidnapped across state lines for abortions without parental consent and funding “planned” parenthood abortions with funds earmarked for abortions based on race.

Bill Clinton triangulated on all issues but one. Even he would cross NOW. The Democratic Party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of abortionists.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by TMR Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner @ Examiner.com, where all for verification links may be accessed.

Talk about burying the lede, i.e. The Truth.

The two main objectives of the Drive-By Media in the dissemination of their “news” product are, (a) never let liberalism nor Democrats be discredited; and (b) make sure that the media is seen a necessary agent of positive change.

The dead-tree version in Charlotte seems so dedicated to these axioms, that they are even willing to be a party to damaging the Queen City’s most prominent company, Bank of America.

Ever since the BofA’s stock began to fall a few weeks ago due to growing awareness of the extent of toxic Merrill Lynch assets held by the bank, the Charlotte Observer has seemed to be on a vendetta against the bank’s Chief Executive Officer. The opening paragraphs of most all of their articles on the subject place the blame on CEO Ken Lewis (pictured) and the purchase of Merrill Lynch last year.

Federal governement forced BofA to buy Merrill

But nearly always saved for non-front page paragraphs that tthe Observer knows are much less frequently read is the real story:

Bank of America began seeking government assistance in December as Merrill’s fourth-quarter results worsened, sources familiar with the situation said. Lewis even sent lawyers to New York to see if rising losses equated to a “material adverse” situation that could let the bank escape the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported. Worried about the possible fallout for the financial system, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged Lewis to complete the deal…

Urged to complete the deal? The truth is that BofA was mugged by the Feds and forced to marry Merrill in a shotgun wedding:

So much for being a good corporate citizen. Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis earned kudos last year for stepping into the breach when the mortgage market and Wall Street cratered. BofA’s purchase of Countrywide Financial and its September agreement to buy Merrill Lynch offered a welcome dose of optimism and private capital amid the panic.

In December, Mr. Lewis realized that he had been too optimistic. And when he considered breaking off the Merrill engagement, Washington arranged a shotgun wedding. After BofA shareholders approved the Merrill purchase on December 5, Mr. Lewis saw Merrill’s assets plunge in value and began to explore a way out. At least he wanted a better price given the erosion in Merrill’s real estate and corporate portfolio.

Mr. Lewis’s effort to protect his common shareholders was vetoed by his most important shareholder, the feds. In October the U.S. Treasury had insisted on investing $15 billion in his bank. Come December, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told him that Merrill had to be saved, and that BofA had to be the savior. Mr. Lewis said yesterday that the government was “firmly of the view” that canceling or delaying the Merrill deal might result in “serious systemic harm.”
In other words, the feds believe that the way to calm financial markets is to force the nation’s largest, and a heretofore healthy, bank to swallow toxic assets it didn’t want…

Media agenda to prevent liberal democrat accountability

The Charlotte Observer knows that BOA was forced to go through with the deal, but consistently lead their stories on the BOA stock plunge by blaming Lewis even when he recently bought $1.2 million of the bank’s stock.

What is their agenda? Could it be to protect liberals and elected Democrats.

President Barack Obama recently complained about the lack of accountability in the law that allowed Merrill Lynch’s CEO had spent over one million dollars of TARP (government bank bailout) funds on executive suite office renovations.

Hold President Obama and fellow Democrats accountable

The problems with the President’s allegations: Merrill made the renovations more than eight months before TARP passed the Congress in September and then Senator Obama and the majority Democratic Party Congress passed the TARP law that allowed the Treasury Secretary unfettered discretion in the spending of over $700 billion.

We have seen this unaccountability scheme between the Democrats and the Drive-Bys before over the last two years as corporate CEOs and “greed” were blamed for the housing bubble and resulting credit crunch that led to the current economic crisis including that of BOA’s:

It started under Carter, and it accelerated under Clinton. The so called noble idea was that home ownership should be expanded from 60% to at least 70%. Through PR pressure and arm twisting on lending institutions by the government, the fear of being labeled as discriminatory by Jesse Jackson or other extortion thugs, and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), requirements for mortgage loans relaxed…

Urban communities that no bank would seriously consider lending to were now badges of honor. Credit scoring, financials, current job, etc. – these were no longer paramount. This was doubly encouraged because Government Sponsored Organizations (GSE’s) like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would buy these loans so the lending institutions didn’t really have to worry…

Prior to all this, both Bush and McCain tried to rein in the GSE’s and their excesses, but the attempt fell on deaf ears in Congress…

What do the major actors in this debacle that have been protected from accountability by the Charlotte Observer and other Drive-bys have in common with President Obama?

President Carter and Jesse Jackson are Democrats. Democrats created the market-distorting GSE’s and Democrats Barney Frank (pictured), Chris Dodd and Franklin Raines were primarily responsible for blocking regulations offered by republicans to correct the housing problem from 2002-2007. Did I mention that President Obama is a Democrat?

Greed has existed since Eve bit the apple and always will, but we don’t have economic crises all the time. Government policy is primarily responsible for Bank of America’s and America’s ills. Yet, for the past two years we have seen those very elected Democrats escape responsibility via show trials with subpoenaed corporate CEOs as “defendants” all with Drive-By Media complicity in the cover up.

The Democrats must be held accountable. So should the in the tank for liberals in the no longer “main stream” media.
They will be here at Examiner.com.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Many pundits, even on the left, have characterized President Barack Obama’s Inaugural address as pedestrian, or, at best “just fine.”

Charles Krauthammer today, suggests that Obama intentionally bombed:

It was so rhetorically flat, so lacking in rhythm and cadence, one almost has to believe he did it on purpose. Best not to dazzle on Opening Day. Otherwise, they’ll expect magic all the time.

I disagree. The tepid response to Obama’s speech was the continuation of a trend that dates back to weeks and months before the election, interrupted only by the orgasmic reaction to his Election Night acceptance speech.

This is the effect of a two year campaign filled with vacuous, meaningless hope and change rhetoric and human nature’s tendency to boredom with the same old, same old.

Like a drug, one can only get the endorphins going with increasing doses. Maybe if he had boogied with Ellen and Michelle between Inaugural clauses, a mosh pit would have formed?

In many ways, it seems Obama has already been President for a year or so, given the ubiquitous media coverage. In fact, I think the honeymoon ended late last summer, with the financial crisis and McCain’s feckless response turning the election back to Obama after the Sarah Palin (pictured) bump had threatened the perfect environment for Democrats for a short time.

Palin continues to get raucous reponses to her recent speeches. She hasn’t been campaigning for 24 months like Obama.

Obama tried to get the crowd going. He paused often, seeming to expect applause, only to be disappointed. This occurred often last Summer and into the Fall.

Obama will have to actually deliver the promised goods of prosperity now due to the other factor that has contributed to declining ratings of “The Obama Show”: the deepening recession.

To use a phrase of the President’s that Saturday Night Live made famous, words alone, “just won’t do”.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Last Saturday, the federal government approved sales of offshore plots for oil drilling off the North and South Carolina coasts:

The Carolinas’ coast is included in areas a federal agency proposed Friday for possible oil and gas drilling.

Leases off most of the Atlantic coast could be offered for sale between 2010 and 2015, the Minerals Management Service said in a draft proposal.

Ten of the 31 proposed sales, including those off the Carolinas, were off-limits to drilling until presidential and congressional moratoria expired in mid-2008.

Whether all those sales actually go forward will be up to the incoming Obama administration, the service said. Public and political support, environmental sensitivity and revenue-sharing with states will factor into those decisions.

We will be interested to know if Charlotte’s Mel Watt (D-NC) will urge President Obama to include the jobs that would result from the oil lease sales in the 3-4 million jibs he promised to create or save.

We are confident that Charlotte’s Sue Myrick (R-NC) will support the job creation bill given her past position on the issue.

This could be an early test for Obama. As I have argued for weeks, Republicans must be vigilant in pitting Obama and the Democrats against each other and their job killing radical environmentalists and trial lawyers that pay the Democratic Party’s bills for all to see. Especially for all the naive Obama voters who believe he will “stimulate” an economy other than a government jobs and lawyer position economy.

If the American people are denied the right to bail themselves out thru simulations like recovering our own energy resources, then we should take Obama’s words of praise for the “doers and makers of things” in his Inauguration speech and drill for the oil as an MLK-like act of civil disobedience.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

We finally found a provision of the Constitution that Barack Obama respects and that is not above his pay grade: The Oath of Office that is the prescribed moment of conception for live presidencies.

So serious did he deem the exact words required, that he re-took the oath 19 hours and 35 minutes from the same Chief Justice of the United States that flubbed his administrative task at Noon on Inauguration Day.

Too bad the millions of babies aborted since the fateful decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, 36 years ago today, can’t get a “do over.” (see depiction above of what results of do overs would look like in the president’s hands)

Yes, for President Obama, the words of the U.S. Constitution are set in stone when it comes to making damn sure his Presidency lives, but when it comes to the “least of these” he repeatedly promised to use government to help during the campaign and in pronouncements since, the Constitution “lives” so that that their non-Presidencies may be snuffed out.

The Oath of Office can’t be altered by one jot or tittle, but we can insert the word “choice” in place of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments so that its easier for a woman to make the BMW payments lest her mental health be harmed, even in month nine with the legs of “part of her body” dangling towards Earth, at the prospect of the cost of Pampers.

We were certainly no McCainiac, but we certainly voted for him with enthusiasm precisely due to the stark choice presented on the issue of life.

Moreover, before Obama re-took the Oath (predicted less than three hours after the flubbing on the podium by yours truly), we had documented his contempt for the framers of the Constitution on the day before his election:

“I think we can say that the Constitution reflected a (sic) enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day and that the framers had that same blind spot…[and] [the U.S. Constitution] reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.”

It was also passing strange that in the last few days leading up to Inauguration Day, Obama’s speeches and the Inaugural speech itself, contained voluminous praise for the values, principles and courage of the Founders; wisdom of the framers of the Constitution; reviews of the vast panoply of American history as heroic; as well as praise for the “doers and makers of things” in a paean to free market capitalism.

We give a tip of the hat to the President for all that, as it is all anathema to his far left supporters in the Democratic Party, that are also funded to a large degree by those whose greatest victory was Roe v. Wade. Their kind are the ones that regularly trash America as land of racists that have raped the poor. They have poisoned our school children’s minds for 40 years with a trashing of America’s founders as just slaveholders whose monuments should be torn down.

We are happy that a liberal Democrat descended from an African father could look past the fact that our founders were born into a world in which slavery existed, to see their great wisdom that made his prosperity and success possible. We will be sure to quote you to school children when your ideological allies contradict you in academia, film and the press.

But back to the millions of dead babies that would love the luxury of a dead Constitution that would protect their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as much as it protects the sanctity of presidential conceptions.

What you say Obama, are their lives still above your pay grade, like they have been for every other Democratic Party President and the vast majority of its leadership in Congress and its appointed judges?

Is the Constitution dead enough for an Oath, also dead enough for parents to be notified that their minor children are seeking abortions?

How about a re-do on your previous contempt for the document?

Do what your words of praise for the Framers at the Inaugural imply and save millions of lives!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Less than three hours after the Chief Justice of the United States (John Roberts pictured) misplaced the word “faithfully” in his administration of the constitutionally prescribed Oath, my erstwhile alter ego issued the following comment here and at other websites:

The Chief Justice flubbed the Oath by misplacing the word, “faithfully”:

The correct version:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Roberts said:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will execute the office of President of the United States, faithfully…”

And the Oath is a constitutionally mandated procedure, so I can understand how Obama is thinking, “man, if we don’t get this right, I’m not really President.’!

Obama mistakenly called himself the 44th American to take the Oath. Wrong. Since Grover Cleveland took the oath in non-consecutive terms and is considered both the 22nd and 24th President, only 43 Americans have taken the Oath.

Sixteen plus plus hours later Matt Drudge reports:

OBAMA RE-SWORN IN

At 735 pm, Roberts administred the oath of office again to obama in the map room. Robert gibbs said the wh counsel, greg craig, believes the oath was fine Tuesday, but one word was out of sequence so they did this out of a “an abundance of caution.” “We decided it was so much fun…” Obama joked while sitting on a couch. Obama stood and walked over to make small talk with pool as roberts donned his black robe. “Are you ready to take the oath?” Roberts asked. “I am, and we’re going to do it very slowly,” obama replied. Oath took 25 seconds. After a flawless recitation, roberts smiled and said, “congratulations, again.” Obama said, “thank you, sir.” Smattering of applause. “All right.” Obama said. “The bad news for the pool is there’s 12 more balls.”

So, for 19+ hours, we know that Barack Obama was not President of the United States.

Was President Bush still president?

Or was Vice-President Joe Biden, whose Otah of Office was administered flawlessly the first time, actually President-in-fact? And if so, is that why we still haven’t seen the expected “international test”?

Now, if only President Obama could count.

Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com where you may access all links not provided that are referenced in this article.

With their latest in the tank for a liberal Democrat mission accomplished, our local dead-tree Drive-By media (Charlotte Observer) announced a post-Inauguration “triple play” war on tobacco, which, if successful, would kill many jobs that President Obama promised to save (link at Examiner link above).

If the same strategy were applied on baseball diamonds, where real peril exists for catchers, the Charlotte Observer would have to call for a statewide (or local option) ban on America’s National Pastime, rather than allow them to wear masks (see Yogi Berra pictured above).

Here are the disturbing details of the Observer’s war on individual liberty and private property rights, but I repeat myself:

The 2009 N.C. General Assembly should enact a statewide smoking ban in public places, including restaurants and bars (or at the very least free local elected officials to take that step on their own).
The legislature also should raise the cigarette tax by at least 50 cents a pack and bring North Carolina’s tax to the national average.

Congress should give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco.

Grand slams beat triple plays all day long, so here goes.

Let’s start with “out” three: For decades now, every cigarette pack (and all containers of tobacco products) has been emblazoned with dire warnings of death from a General. Regulation by the FDA would mean an outright ban.

Now, for the bait-and-switch of “out” two: They want to ban a product while they promise tax revenues from the use of it. Most legislative proposals also earmark the revenues for health care, which always leads to later tax increases from more stable sources of income.

Finally, as to “out” one, before my “second-hand” home run (be patient, the metaphors will be worth it very soon), I find it quite telling that the most prominent argument used by proponents of smoking bans is that they must “protect workers”, primarily those working as cooks, bartenders, waitresses in restaurants and bars.

Yet, they don’t seek to ban textile plants. In fact, this same newspaper regularly bemoans the loss of textile jobs to countries overseas. Many years ago, the Charlotte Observer won a Pulitzer prize for a long series of articles investigating the causes of brown lung disease in textile workers. One of the results of that series was the increased wearing of masks by workers in plants where one would regularly breathe in cotton dust.

Why the difference in the case of food service workers? Do they care less about their jobs?

The reason is obvious: the issue is not about health. If it were, the problem could be solved by the wearing of a mask by the worker. The issue, rather is a tyranny of a majority mob bent on asserting its will against private property owners that saved the fruits of their labor to build a business. No matter that the free market has provided that 65% of the restaurant market is non-smoking already.

This is about ascethics as well. They don’t want to be served by someone wearing a mask, even though masks could be dressed up for anal retentive liberals (see picture above) who deem it their right to eat anywhere they want and control the air within.

And what do the Disturbing anti-Liberty newspaper and their allies offer as the need for the police power to prevent Winstons and Salems from being lighted inside bars in Winston-Salem?

Second-hand smoke.

And just in case one of us common sense holders questions them, well, they have “experts.’ And we know that science has never been politicized, don’t we? Al Gore said that half of North Carolina was “in the balance” with the rest of the Earth in his book twenty years ago with doom scheduled for 1998. Raleigh remains dry, unlike 10,000 years ago before Chevy SUVs roamed the planet, but I digress.

Expert witness number one is the Surgeon General, whose declaration they conveniently fail to date. With good reason too, since its over 15 years old. The Surgeon General also warned us a heterosexual AIDS epidemic that never came.

“Expert” number two? Sit down for this one:

Smokefree NC, a health advocacy group, estimates that workers in a smoke-filled room for one eight-hour shift are smoking the equivalent of one to two packs a day.

Yes, if you roll the stuff up in a cylindrical piece of paper and suck the smoke of twenty down your throat everyday, you might die from it in 60+ years. But if you disperse the smoke in parts per septillion and breathe it in, you are at the same risk? Liberals think we are all fools.

I have my experts too, with this 2008 report from Dr. Jerome Arnett Jr. (jerry.arnett@gmail.com) is a pulmonologist who lives in Helvetia, West Virginia.:

A 1986 surgeon general’s report concluded involuntary smoking caused lung cancer, but it offered only weak epidemiological evidence to support the claim. In 1989 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was charged with further evaluating the evidence for health effects of SHS.

The report has been used by the tobacco-control movement and government agencies, including public health departments, to justify the imposition of thousands of indoor smoking bans in public places.

In 1992 EPA published its report … claiming [secondhand smoke] is a serious public health problem … [But] the report has been largely discredited and, in 1998, was legally vacated by a federal judge.

A longer version of this essay with footnotes is available here.

By the way, ever notice how rare it is for a dead-tree drive-by media outlet to provide such easy access to their sources? I think I’ll put Dr. Arnett up against a “health advocacy group” with the Charlotte Observer’s fax machine number any day.

Back to baseball: I wonder who gets hit in the face more by the ball, catchers or Left fielders?

Care about workers?

Let them wear masks!

Before they come for your food, like they have in New York (link at Examiner links above and below).

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

For more info: ABC Health and Consumer Affairs reporter John Stossel on the myths of the dangers of second-hand smoke. (links at Examiner.com)

Property rights trump second-hand smoke

I didn’t vote for Barack Obama.

I oppose the change he advocated in his campaign, but he is my President.

[Originally published at Examiner.com which version contains all links to supportive and referential material.]

But I have great hope that America will thrive under his leadership and will pray for him and my country daily, as I did for President George W. Bush and all that preceded him.

My hopes have risen in many ways during the transition, especially with respect to national security and defense issues. The President-Elect retained the Defense Secretary that helped President Bush continue on the path to victory in Iran and retain the perfect protection of the homeland since 911. Obama has also recently scoffed at the suggestion of looking backwards at prosecutions of government agents that obtained life-saving intel from three prominent al Qaida detainees via so-called waterboarding torture. And, our next President has backed off his reckless campaign pledge to “immediately” close the POW camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, now publicly acknowledging that dangerous terrorists are housed there.

We pray that President Obama will honor his more recent pledges and not what he now refers to, post-intelligence briefings from President Bush, as “campaign rhetoric.”

In the area of economic policy, I can’t say that my hopes have risen as much, given the pork and government jobs bill being passed off as an emergency stimulus bill to combat the current economic crisis and create jobs. We hold out some hope given his choice of former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers as chief economic advisor and some other appointees; his reluctance to seek campaign promised tax hikes for at least two years; and that his proposed stimulus bill had more tax cuts than the bill passed out of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives.

But, we expect to oppose Obama and the liberal Democrats on economic and social policy. After all, I am a conservative and, in fact, a convert to same after 18 years a Democrat activist and official until 2000, precisely because we came to see their policies as proven failures. We have no doubt that we need a stimulus. We need a supply side stimulus policy that has proven to be a success on many occasions via individual and corporate tax rate cuts, capital gains tax cuts and reductions in regulations that would turn the American people loose to bail themselves out through expanded oil exploration and the building of oil refineries, nuclear power plants and the creation of small businesses.

We would love for the new President’s Inaugural Address to contain some reference to these types of measures, but we aren’t holding our breathe.

But we do have hope that the address can be a net positive for the nation. Inaugural addresses are more important than most speeches because they are read by school children and are used to define the nation’s ideals. We here that Obama will speak of responsibility as a theme, and we think that is appropriate and good. We just pray that it is not used as a ruse for class warfare and does not exclude from responsibility, those elected government officials that helped bring about the current economic crisis.

For President Barack Hussein Obama’s Inaugural Address to be a success in my eyes, he will have to say three things that relate directly to the ideal of “responsibility”:

1 – Publicly and unequivocally thank his predecessor for keeping us safe since the attacks of September 11, 2009;

2 – Publicly and unequivocally thank the former Commander-in-Chief and the armed forces of the United States for the victory in Iraq. Show the men and women in uniform the respect they deserve for succeeding in their mission. Don’t treat them like victims that need to be rescued from their mission by you.

3 – Pays homage to the wisdom and greatness of the Founders as he has been doing of late in speeches leading up to Inauguration Day. This can go a long way to correcting the politically correct trashing of this nation’s glorious history by so many in academia.

If a President won’t defend us, we won’t be defended. Congress can’t force a Commander-in-Chief to fire one bullet, drop one bomb, or round up visa overstays from Muslim countries after a terrorist attack.

I will never forget when former Attorney General John Ashcroft related President Bush’s first words to him after the 911 attacks:

“John, don’t ever let this happen again.”

John didn’t and neither did the President. And we all know that a President Gore would have never crossed the political correctness police and picked up all those visa overstays that we now know prevent follow up attacks.

Has the President-Elect related the equivalent to his national security team? Will he have the courage to do whatever it takes to protect us?

Let us pray that he will.

Today is a great day for America and a great example for the world. It is now self evident, what I have known for over two decades: America is not only not a racist country, it is the most non-racist nation in history.

Once again, we show the world how to peacefully transfer power.

We just hope and pray that our new leader is as committed to keeping the peace on U.S. soil as President Bush has been.

Farewell and Godspeed to the man that kept us safe and Congratulations and best wishes to our 44th President of the United States.

God Bless America!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

All Americans should celebrate the life of this great American and the minders of the Georgia State House located just blocks from the place of his birth in Atlanta, should find a more prominent place for his portrait, but I digress.

Below is my first Charlotte Observer column published January 16, 2007. So important have race relations been in my life that I made it the subject of my dead tree main stream media debut.

Read More →

Worst presidents ever don’t win wars, liberate millions and keep us safe.

Worst presidents ever have names like Carter and Buchanan.

I found this masterpiece rebuttal to the Bush bashers over at Leftist American Online (AOL), by one of their token conservatives. But that this genius is outnumbered is no disability. Our absentee hero, Caleb Howe puts liberals in the fetal position crying for Obamommy.

Enjoy this excerpt and go to AOL and read the whole thing and the crazed comments from the soon to be let down by the Messiah crowd after they hear Jesus’ name from Warren’s lips!

Much like the crass and tasteless foot-stomping triumphalism we were subjected to on the day after the election of Barack Obama, the preponderance of media elites and left-bloggers have this week begun writing their snide, polemic send-offs for President George Bush in advance of next weeks inauguration. It is, of course, to be expected. If we’ve learned nothing else of the “Bush Lied, People Died” drones over the last few years, we know how much they treasure their favorite assassination target.

The hyperbole is, if I may likewise indulge, so over the top as to cause one to ponder either the sanity or the honesty of some of these would-be pundits and historians, if not both. From the uber hip “Worst. President. Ever.” epithets, to cries of war criminal, science killer, and even mass murderer, the frothy left is taking their final gibbering, wild-eyed romp of mayhem across the web and screen. After all, decorum will, on Tuesday, become the word of the day, as every Joe the Plumber, blogger, or media personality who thereafter challenges or questions the mighty Obama can expect to be heartily attacked for their audacity (another personality attribute which is soon to fall into ironic disfavor).

But if I might, I’d like to cut in to this frenetic political lap dance with a bit of my own, perhaps less aroused, but at least as self-important, commentary.

President Bush had a task set before him on September 11, 2001. Something had failed. Our agencies weren’t working together properly, perhaps. Intelligence breakdown. Security breakdown. The enemy had brought terror and death among us. From that day forward the President’s agenda would by necessity revolve around and be set against the backdrop of foreign policy and terrorism. It is neither high drama nor dudgeon to name this era the post-911 world, so significant were the events of that day.

Into this new world we, as a singular nation, followed our leader, President George W. Bush. Upon his shoulders the weight of our hopes and fears rested, and by his stride our march across the new history would be defined.

Coming soon: DeVine Gamecock’s take on the Bush legacy at The Minority Report

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Listening to Charles Krauthammer (pictured) describe the President-Elect, post-George Will supper, as smart, nimble and intellectually curious ad nauseum, reminds of just how useless certain words, like “smart”, can become.

Take the word “gentleman.” It used to actually convey information when it applied to British gentlemen of a certain station, but now conveys only the idea that the person describing such a person, subjectively likes them.

Nimble? Have we changed the subject to gymnastics?

Intellectually curious? Smart?

Since when, and surely ignorance is not mutually exclusive?

After all, Barack Hussein Obama was born 47 years ago. Has he ever been intellectually curious about the effects of JFK, Reagan and his immediate predecessor’s tax rate cuts on economic growth and tax revenues received? How about the effects of the aggression inviting weakness of Carter and Clinton?

Krauthammer says that Obama is professorial and thoughtful in the way he restates the positions of conservatism (with respect Charles says, and I do appreciate that) so that he can seek a middle ground with liberals, at least rhetorically.

But how “smart” is that? The liberal policies he and his party advocate are proven failures for at least the past 40 years.

Or is it that Obama doesn’t want private sector economic growth and doesn’t see Soviet Unions, 911s or Iranian mullahs as significant?

Does he have a religious-like commitment to certain collectivist values and is “smart” about fooling us all into electing him anyway?

I don’t think its smart to have been intellectually curious about the values of the Founders, the Constitution and the results of the policies of liberal Democrats vs. Conservative Republicans and come away either wanting to water down conservatism with failed liberal policies or rejecting our values and goals altogether in favor of fundamental change (see Socialism writ larger).

There are many kinds of smart. Those that score well on tests (memorization); move up the ladder within organizations (butt lickers); and/or reply to statements of others with witty, erudite retorts (use words with more than four syllables). There are those that are creatively smart.

But, as we have seen, at least since Adlai Stevenson through John Kerry, one can apparently possess all or most of the above and be operationally dumb on all the big issues. In fact, the most colossally stupid ideas seem to require that they be thought up by Ivy League PhD’s. Appeasement of discredited Egghead by Ike and wind surfer lost to Dubya!

All of the above evidences of “smartness” can be handy tools in the service of good policies and the transmission of good values. But isn’t it more important that one be wise, i.e. the ultimate smart, on the bottom line, i.e. results?

Reagan matriculated at Eureka College. He got “we win, they lose”; supply side economic growth; and SDI right. But he was never “smart enough” to convince the self-appointed declarers of smartness, that he was smart.

Haven’t those labeled smart by that crowd been our worst Presidents?

Yet, even our conservative pundits inside the beltway (Did I just stumble upon the key factor with that locale?) throw out the conventional wisdom conclusion as to Obama’s smarts as a reason we should be optimistic.

I, for one, would like to judge The One by his fruits. His first fruits don’t look so smart.

He wants energy independence but wants to restrict oil drilling and bankrupt the coal industry. All his stimulus bill will stimulate are government and lawyer jobs and environmental impact statements. And his statement that the CIA will be bound by the Army Field Manual is cause for celebration is Osama’s cave.

Obama is smart?

Didn’t smart used to be a synonym for pregnant?

Call me in nine months and let’s see the baby his smarts deliver.

So many of the smart people have falsely attacked Christians (especially evangelicals), Southerners as dumb and the GOP as anti-intellectual, racist, bigots and homophobes.

I thank God I was smart enough to leave the Democratic Party after 18 years in 2001. Before that, I was too dumb to ignore what my intellect told me was true about the smart people, i.e. that liberals project their own bigotry in defense of policies they have used to replace belief in God and to salve their egos and ameliorate misplaced guilt.

That’s not smart.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Obama’s “looking over shoulder” assurances not withstanding

[5:56 pm EST update: On a special Sunday edition on of FNC's Special Report, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post echoed Gamecock's call for preemptive pardons for those CIA agents and others involved in the waterboarding and the decision to waterboard KSM and two other al Qaida leaders that led to information that saved thousands of American lives. Krauthammer went further and endorsed the awarding of medals to the agents and others involved. He suggested that Obama is "too smart" to follow the lead of John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi, but still said he hopes Bush will issue the preemptive pardons...and medals! Bravo Charles!]

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

I have generally opposed blanket, preemptive pardons as Presidents leave office, as too violative of the rule of law. But Eric Holder’s (pictured) recent confirmation testimony gives me pause.

President-Elect Barack Obama recently reinforced my general opposition when he lauded the great and courageous work of intelligence personnel that should not have to “spend all their time looking over their shoulders,” when asked about the possible future prosecutions of those involved in “waterboarding” three high level captured al Qaida terrorists.

Vice-President Cheney said last week that he didn’t deem preemptive pardons necessary since all actions were legal.

But Obama’s nominee for Attorney General, the Cabinet position that will make decisions about illegality and prosecutions after the new president’s Day One, make it necessary in my mind that President Bush consider pardons, before his last Day 1461, for those that have been looking over their shoulders thanks to Obama and the Democrats’ rhetoric for the last four years:

Holder avoided directly addressing the possibility that Bush-era officials could face criminal prosecutions for their involvement in wiretapping and interrogation policies. But he quickly followed up by telling lawmakers that, when he called for a “reckoning” last year, he was referring not to indictments but to gathering information. Holder also cited the words of Obama, who has decried calls “to criminalize policy differences where they might exist.”

On counterterrorism policies, he said he would “follow the evidence, the facts, the law.”

Earlier in his testimony, Eric Holder unequivocally declared that he deemed waterboarding to be illegal torture.

Until now, I have kept my powder dry on Holder since there are consequences to elections; he may be the best we can get; he did say in 2002 that captured terrorists were illegal enemy combatants not entitled to POW status under Geneva; and since I considered Holder a minor fly on the wall with respect to the Hillary-driven FALN terrorist and Bill-driven Marc Rich pardons.

Given other testimony of Holder, but more so the loaded questions of Democrats and especially the intentions of John Conyers, one could also make a case that the Democrats’ politicization of national security and government policy in general (see US Attorney firings, etc), one could also justify sweeping preemptive pardons. But I think such pardons would usher in a lawlessness never before seen in America with preemptive pardons becoming as quadrennially traditional as “So help me God” at the end of the Oath.

Al Gore already did enough damage to the fabric of American exceptional-ism and uniqueness when he was the first to withdraw a Presidential election concession. Another such line we must not cross just now, and hopefully not ever.

My powder is still dry on seeking to deny Holder the AG job, but is no longer dry on deeming preemptive pardons acceptable on the narrow issue of those involved in waterboarding.

I just wish Obama would make it clear that he will not go down the road Holder suggests so that CIA heroes can rest their necks, now strained looking over their shoulders.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” – The Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Former cave residence in Afghanistan (pictured)

The drive-by media and the leaders of the national Democratic Party have claimed for four years that the War on Terror was a failure since Osama bin Laden was still at large.
The President-Elect himself campaigned for two years on the theme that the Iraq War had caused President Bush to lose focus on capturing OBL.

These slanders on the Commander in Chief and the armed forces he has led in the Iraq, Afghanistan and other theaters of the greater war on terror have issued despite no attacks on the homeland since 911, the removal of any safe haven in Afghanistan, the decimation and scattering of al Qaida, the defeat of al Qaida in Iraq and the relegation of OBL to cave-manufactured black market audio tapes.

Of late, the actions of Barack Obama have been the greatest affirmations of the national security legacy of his soon to be predecessor. The Guantanamo Bay prison that was to be immediately shut down, or at least within 100 days, now has a 12-month lease renewal, at minimum. John Conyers’ and other House Democrats’ calls for war crimes prosecutions of CIA and military interrogators that dared misplace hairs on KSM’s head are falling on deaf, if substantial ears, as Obama lauds the great and courageous work of intelligence personelle that should not have to “spend all their time looking over their shoulders.”

Of course, Obama, the democrats and the treason media have spent much of their time over the last four years causing patriots in the CIA, FBI and armed forces to have to look over their shoulders while also keeping us safe against enemies trying to get through them to us.

No apology for all that? Guess not.

And what of that living symbol of supposed Bush failure that made change essential?

In an interview Wednesday with “CBS Evening News,” President-elect Barack Obama said that regardless of whether bin Laden is alive, the U.S. must weaken the al-Qaida network to the point that it can no longer function. “My preference, obviously, would be to capture or kill him,” Obama said. “But if we have so tightened the noose that he’s in a cave somewhere and can’t even communicate with his operatives then we will meet our goal of protecting America.”

Yes, “we” have tightened the noose Obama. “We” have met the goal of protecting America.

No thanks to you and any Democrat not named Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman.

You weren’t part of that “we.”

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

An astute political observer in Alabama, while issuing disclaimers that he was not an economist as he conveyed astute observations to his economically and legally credentialed friend, would have made William Shakespeare proud with soul of wit brevity in reducing the “stimulus” issue down to its essentials.

“Mike,” he said, “aren’t there only two ways to stimulate the economy: Let the banks make loans based on market wisdom rather than government direction and stimulate job-producing investors to borrow and spend thru corporate, capital gains and other tax rate cuts and regulation reductions.”

I think that sums it up pretty well.

The outline we now have of the Speaker Nancy Pelosi (pictured above) House version of the Obama stimulus plan meets neither of the necessary criteria. In short, it is not a “stimulus” bill, unless by stimulus you mean state and federal government job retention and public works pork. We were told that there would be no earmarks and no pork. Yet, what are most earmarks? Public work projects, i.e. pork. I guess if enough of the bill is pork, it metastasizes into “stimulus. Must be an organic “meat”? Let’s look at some details:

Details of the two-year package, which calls for $550 billion in new spending and $275 billion in tax relief… the document provides the first blueprint of how President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats plan to fight the historic economic downturn, which has already wiped out 2.6 million jobs… [but] few elements of the package would hit the economy before the second half of the year, with the largest boost coming in late 2009 and into 2010.

Ok, so we have an emergency, an economic crisis and are virtually threatened daily by the President-Elect that failure to pass the bill before President’s Day (James Buchanan gets equal billing with George Washington), we would be risking another Great Depression. (We were originally told that we risked calamity unless it passed on Day One.) Yet, now are told that “few elements” of the bill would stimulate until “late 2009 and into 2010.”

Guess they plan on blaming Bush till Valentine’s Day 2010? But I thought the liberal democrats cared about the suffering of Americans going on now?

We have much experience with pork barrel public works spending in this country since the Great Depression, and despite all the talk of getting funds to “shovel-ready” projects in the states, the fact is that all that will be stimulated initially are jobs for lawyers issuing environmental impact studies. In any event, public works have no history of stimulating recessions into recoveries, ever, even in the equivalents of “late 2009’s and into 2010’s.”

So far, we see that the caring is about lawyer jobs. But what of the rest of the 2/3 the package that is spending:

Some of the biggest expenditures will go directly to the states, with $90 billion going to increase the federal share of Medicaid payments and an additional $79 billion to help states avoid cutbacks in education and other services.

Most of the money is what we called “revenue sharing” in the pre-Obama Era. Now, we have come to what this bill actually is about: saving government jobs.

We are told by President-Elect Barack Obama (pictured below) that we all have to sacrifice, to have “some skin in the game.” Turns out the skin of private companies must lay-off workers but not the government. No, government skin is more equal than other skin in Obama and Pelosi’s game.

The stimulus bill is a stimulus bill, for government only.

You can look at the details of the spending via the link above, and I am for some of the public works projects. But when so much is being spent under the guise of combating climate change fka global warming while the nation is in deep freeze, on “investments” in “clean” energy, I turn a cold shoulder to any claims of “stimulus.”

But oh yeah, there are some token tax cuts, just not to likely job producers. You see, those folks have been on strike since the democrats took over Congress in 2006 and let the world know that the tax rates of job producers would go up at least by 2011. Obama holds out a Valentine that, despite his class warfare campaign to raise those taxes on the “rich” (ever get a job from the “poor”?), he might just let the “Bush” tax cuts die a natural death.

How nice. The very policy that has had investors on strikes since late 2005 will remain in place and that’s supposed to be a favor?

We know what stimulates, thanks to Coolidge (pictured) above, Harding, JFK, Reagan, Dubya, and Alexander Hamilton for goodness sakes, and that is Liberty, i.e. incentives to industriousness due to the prospect of getting to keep the fruits of one’s labor and capital.

Now, I have rarely seen a tax cut I didn’t like, but most of these are one shot deals much like the two Bush rebates that will not cause consumers to fundamentally change their behavior, i.e. spend instead of save. For that, even the senior senator from Illinois now admits, requires permanent tax rate changes.

So what do we have in the way of tax changes in the bill?:

Businesses would get “bonus” depreciation for investing in new plants and equipment. The proposal also allows companies that have losses this year to get refunds for taxes paid as far back as 2003; current tax rules allow losses to be carried back only two years. The plan also includes Mr. Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit of $500 per worker and $1,000 for couples.

The bonus depreciation is good, but won’t kick in for many years. The carry-back loss provision is good, but, by definition only applies to failing companies that aren’t going to be hiring new workers.

The puny $10-20/week individual tax credits, are, well, pathetic.

Want to really boost spending? How about either a permanent or temporary payroll tax cut?

But if you really want to stimulate the economy, let’s do what we know works and get job-producing investors off strike. Let’s slash one of the world’s highest corporate tax rates, follow the Clinton-Gingrich example and cut capital gains tax rates.

What we have in this country now is a shortage of capital after all!

And let’s follow JFK, Reagan and Bush43 and cut tax rates at the top and let the rich do some hiring.

For decades conservatives have been slandered by the liberal media and democrats as not “caring” about the poor and downtrodden.

We care. Do you?

We can see the left cares about saving government and lawyer jobs, but what about a stimulus for the rest of us?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

And please spare the “stimulus” crock

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

It looks as if the feared “fundamental change” as “stimulus” has begun, even before Inauguration Day:

House Votes to Expand Child Health Insurance [SCHIP]

“In this moment of crisis, ensuring that every child in America has access to affordable health care is not just good economic policy, but a moral obligation we hold as parents and citizens,” Obama said.

The House bill would provide health insurance to an additional 4.1 million children and parents, including legal immigrant children and pregnant women, who currently must wait five years before becoming eligible for the program.

I favor a federal safety net for the truly needy, as did Ronald Reagan (pictured). We have one. If we want to fundamentally change the net into a hammock, we should only do so after We the People debate the matter via our elected representatives in Congress.

I also favor a quickly passed stimulus bill to address the ongoing economic crisis. The “moment of crisis” the President-Elect refers to was in no way caused by any “parents” nor families earning as much as $80K per year not getting subsidized health care. It certainly wasn’t affected at all by the fundamental rule for immigrants that they ensure they are not burdens on the public for five years.

There may very well be an argument for expanding SCHIP to cover low income children not currently covered. I suspect there is a better argument for radical change that lower health care costs so that so many families wouldn’t need subsidized health care.

But even on that score, and despite Obama’s campaign promise to support measures that lower health care costs, this House passed bill actually restricts competition:

Buried in the bill is another gift, this one to a powerful health lobby–the hospital industry. The bill is ostensibly about health coverage for children, but there’s a section that bans physicians from owning or investing in hospitals.

Not only is it not related to expanding health care for low income children, nor stimulus, but rather is anathema to both.

The simple fact of the matter is that the only way we will ever lower health care costs is when a Doctor sees a patient pull up in the parking lot and asks himself how much that person can afford to pay, before setting the price for care, rather than reading a schedule of costs prepared by government bureaucrats.

Competition from smaller physician-owned specialty hospitals are a step in that direction. But hundreds of democrats in the House and 40 republicans couldn’t abide that cost cutting in the private sector. And given that the bill is no stimulus and contains provisions including non-low income children and even adults, what is the real motive behind the new law? Could it be the expansion of government power for its own sake and as a vehicle for buying votes?

I am open to a debate on the issue of how large a safety net we need for children, even during an economic crisis such as we find ourselves in just now. But the “debate” didn’t begin until 5:39 am yesterday and ended before Midnight. For that reason alone the bill must be opposed.

There is another reason to oppose the bill. It includes a cigarette tax increase of 61 cents to $1 per pack, which will fall primarily on lower income families , for a program that funds health care for adults, non-low income kids and abrogates a compact with legal immigrants:

Smokers paying an additional 61 cents per pack of cigarettes to finance a SCHIP expansion under the Democrat proposal would cost a working class family with two adult smokers hundreds of dollars per year in additional federal tobacco taxes alone.

President-elect Barack Obama promised that folks making less than $250,000 per year would not see their taxes go up. This legislation most assuredly breaks that promise.

Oh yeah, the bill also violates one of the few I had hoped he would keep, and reminds me of the middle-class tax cut that never came in 1993.

Seems Obama is a chip off an ole Democrat block.

Hopefully Senate Republicans will show themselves to be the true champions of the truly needy and working families by opposing the subsiding of increased illegal immigration, adults, and non-needy children before we are stimulated by such fundamental change.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Senator Barack Obama votes against the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and associate Justice Samuel Alito who believe in a dead Constitution that allows for utterances of God in the public square.

Presidential candidate Obama could no more disown Rev. Jeremiah “G-D America” Wright (pictured with Obama) than he could the whole of the black community.

President-Elect Obama assigns the task of the Inaugural invocation to an Evangelical Southern Baptist preacher who is, naturally, a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage who won’t commit to not uttering the name of the real Messiah at The Mall, the greatest public square of them all:

At George W. Bush’s 2001 swearing-in, the Revs. Franklin Graham and Kirbyjon Caldwell were criticized for invoking Christ. The distinct reference at a national civic event offended some, and even prompted a lawsuit.

Warren did not answer directly when asked whether he would dedicate his prayer to Jesus. In a statement Tuesday, Warren would say only that, “I’m a Christian pastor so I will pray the only kind of prayer I know how to pray.”

Advocates for gay rights protested Obama’s decision to give Warren a prominent role at the swearing-in. Warren supported Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California. Obama defended his choice, saying he wanted the event to reflect diverse views.

Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, said it’s wrong to expect members of any faith to change how they pray in public.

“For a Christian, especially for an evangelical pastor, the Bible teaches us that we are to pray in the name of Jesus Christ. How can a minister pray any other way?” Franklin Graham said. “If you don’t want someone to pray in Jesus’ name, don’t invite an evangelical minister.”

Graham, who in 2001 stepped in for his ailing father, ended the invocation with, “We pray this in the name of the Father, and of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit.”

He then assigns the task of the first prayer of Inauguration week to an unrepentant wife and child abandoner who was chosen to be a Bishop despite that fact and the fact that he lives with the lover he left his family for. He happens to be gay:

Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the only openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church, has been asked to give the invocation at the first official inaugural activity, a welcome event with the president-elect on Sunday afternoon on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Robinson had been critical of president-elect Barack Obama for asking Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor who encouraged voters to overturn same-sex marriage in California, to deliver the invocation at the inauguration

He claims to oppose same-sex marriage, yet opposed Proposition 8 in California that made such marriages legal and now has been discovered to have publicly admitted favoring same-sex marriage prior to the recent campaign:

In a 1996 questionnaire filled out for a Chicago gay and lesbian newspaper, then called Outlines, Obama came out clearly in favor of same-sex marriage, which he has opposed on the public record throughout his short career in national politics.

“I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” Obama wrote in the typed, signed, statement.

What are we to make of all this Obama mishmash?

Is Pastor Rick Warren just a prop to appease his more socially conservative supporters? Does the family man approve of Bishop Robinson’s adulterous relationship and abandonment of children?

To this former democratic party activist and official of 18 years until 2000, it looks quite familiar: A democrat gets a pass from the leftist drive-by media with a wink and a nod, confident that the democrat will deliver on their agenda through judicial appointments.

Why alienate one voter when one can speak in vague phrases about living Constitutions and what one personally prefers, when one can have it both ways with a fawning media that will also likely not stoke up the outrage if the Name of Jesus is uttered from the Inaugural podium.

Well, this part of the drive and park media isn’t fooled, and will insist that those conservatives, black, white and Hispanic that trusted in The One will not go apprised when the betrayal is in progress.

It all seems pretty damning of God, America.

Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” – The Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts