Shrine of the Times - Mt. Rushmore

A show on MSNBC was debating whether or not Barack Obama should be on Mount Rushmore is like a bunch of fat kids debating whether or not to eat cake - Just dispense with the formalities and start carving already.

It was announced today that some people are pushing to add Obama's head up onto the Keystone National Park, SD monument at Mt. Rushmore.

Imagine and picture the exploded head of Barak Obama included along with Ferdinand Marcos, and the Great Sphinx of Giza. (The other two are missing noses, ears and teeth.)  After Obama gets done fighting in his last term in office, he just might look like them too.

Reality check: There is not enough room on Mt. Rushmore for another sculpted head. Besides, only dead Presidents appear on currency and monuments. 

Ego & Effigies - The Test of Time

The stone head Ferdinand Marcos constructed of steel rebar and concrete was built on the side of Mt. Pugo, a mountain in La Union Province north of Manilla, Philippines to honor his Mt. Rushmore-like ego. It crumbled from neglect, graffiti and vandalism since his 1986 ouster.

BeforeAfter - 25 years later

Ferdinand Marcos, a lawyer, a member of the Philippine House of Representatives (1949-59) and the Philippine Senate (1959-65), Ferdinand Marcos became the president of the Philippines in 1966, a post he held until 1986, when his people rose up against his bloody, corrupt, twenty year dictatorial rule and he fled. Marcos, his family and his associates had embezzled billions of dollars from the Philippine economy through various corrupt practices: cronyism, nepotism, pay-offs, bribes, embezzlement, complicit politicians, imprisonment, murder and executions.

Obama's Taxing Problem - 501C4 Scandal

"The power to tax is the power to destroy."

This quotation comes from the words of DANIEL WEBSTER and those of JOHN MARSHALL in the Supreme Court case, McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819 Supreme Court ruling.

Statesman Daniel Webster, (1782–1852), in arguing the case, said: “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy,” 17 U.S. 327 (1819).

In his decision, Chief Justice Marshall said: “That the power of taxing it [the bank] by the States may be exercised so as to destroy it, is too obvious to be denied” (p. 427), and “That the power to tax involves the power to destroy … [is] not to be denied” (p. 431).

The Department of Treasury through the Internal Revenue Service, for two election cycles, did trample on Constitution laws by blocking and abridging the rights of over 500 conservative groups from establishing non-profit organizations. The IRS partisan political classifications suborned illegal activities to prevent all of these organizations from obtaining tax-exempt status, a 501C4 designation, thereby blocking donors from contributing funds as tax-free donation write-offs actively discouraging participation and promotion of conservative political activism to educate and inform the public for a better, more knowledgeable electorate. It effectively blocked nearly all opposition against the Obama presidential campaigns.

"I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, especially the IRS!"

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt." - Mark Twain In order to get ahead of all the news releases, Obama's loud-mouth Nixonian bellicose outrage is feckless. As a continuing series of revelations about the IRS scandal and other misconduct by members of the Obama administration have escalated, they're costing Obama much more of his party's support and personal political caché. Obama goes forth denying anything is his fault and further blames Rush Limbaugh for his ongoing troubles - Really, Mr. President?

"Mr. President, who's going to jail over this scandal?", asks Speaker John Boehner.

As American as Apple Pie - Cinco de Mayo

With the immigration issue on everyone's mind and how to solve the problem of citizenship and assimilation into American culture, it is natural for new Americans to embrace their ancestral culture with pride, but must also remember they have now pledged their allegiance to the United States of America as U.S. citizens.

Although Tacos, Pizza & Chocolate Cookies were invented in Mexico, Italy and the United States, respectively, some things are not what they seem. "Cinco de Mayo es no hecho en Mexico" - Cinco de Mayo was created in the U.S. for the U.S.  In fact, many Mexicans don't know why we crazy Americans call their national day of Independence as May 5. It has no association with Mexican Independence, but does commemorate a battle on May 5, 1862, in which the Mexican army defeated the French forces of Napoleon III.  It has been uniquely an American way to identify the Hispanounidenses, the "Hispanics of the United States."

Memo: El Grito, every 16^th of September since 1810 is the Mexican Fiesta par excellence! On this day Mexicans all over the world celebrate Mexico’s independence from Spanish rule.

Over a century later, the Chicano movement has picked up the "Cinco de Mayo" Independence Day as an expression of their demands for civil rights which did more to just make it laughably even a more American celebration.  It was a clever choice  because it didn't carry the risk of pitting different Hispanic nationalities against one another under the single banner of Mexican culture. After all, there are over twenty Spanish-speaking countries, mostly Mexico, but also Cuba, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Nicararagua, Guatemala, Dominican Republic and others in the Hispanic Melting Pot.

To the contrary, a racially prejudicial movement, “La Raza" (the race), Upside down US Flaghas undermined Hispanic assimilation into U.S. citizenship by teaching that the United States stole the southwest from Mexico, that the Pilgrims brought plagues to intentionally wipe out indigenous peoples, and that Thanksgiving should be changed to a day of atonement for the evil that the U.S. perpetrated on the Mexican people. La Raza demands that the United States return the southwest states back into Mexico. What we have here is something  insidious and used to teach disdain for the United States and the overthrow of our government. “Sowing of seeds of hate” has nothing to do with ethnic pride; it is an attempt by socialist radicals to use our Hispanics as pawns in their war against capitalism and the existing power structures. The ultimate La Raza disrespect: The US Flag flown on Cinco de Mayo upside down under the Mexican flag on an American High School flag pole in Montebello, California.

The Tucson School District offers a course: Mexican-American Studies, formerly known as “La Raza" (the race) Studies. Read this jaw-dropping excerpt, “An Epic Poem", from the course textbook which states:

I shed tears of sorrow, I sow seeds of hate
The force of tyranny of men who rule by farce and hypocrisy,
In a country that has wiped out all my history, stifled all my pride….
My land is lost and stolen, My culture has been raped
Poverty and city-living under the colonial system of the Anglo has frustrated our people’s culture
One note, especially to those young Chicanos, hard drugs and the drug culture is the invention of the gringo because he has no culture.
We have to destroy capitalism…The Declaration of Independence states that we the people have the right to revolution, the right to overthrow a government that has committed abuses and seeks complete control over the people. This is in order to clean out the corrupted, rotten officials that developed out of any type of capitalistic systems.

Obama at a La Raza speechSay President Obama, shouldn't these kind of La Raza textbook materials under the Federally funded Schools' curriculum be exposed during the current Senate Immigration System Debates? 

We are a land of immigrants and that fact has made us strong as a country. What unites us as a nation is the idea that we are all Americans, with allegiance to and pride in this country, even as we honor and respect the many cultures and countries that our families came from, La Raza supporters are not, they suborn treason.

I'm shocked that gambling is going on!

ObamaCare is a Cracker Jack Deal!The looming crisis on implementation of ObamaCare has begun to fill the news. Even his allies are using the term "train wreck." ObamaCare is not only the most slovenly written major law in modern American history, it is full of sneaked-in surprises people are just discovering. The Democrats of Washington took advantage of the country's now-habitual distractedness: The country, now seeing what's coming in terms of taxes and fees, will not be amused.

What damaged the Obama presidency more, looking back, was, ironically, the trash-talking some Republican leaders indulged in after the 2008 campaign. It entered their heads at the Obama White House and gave them a warped sense of the battlefield.

In a conference call with conservative activists in July 2009, then-Sen. Jim DeMint said of the president's health-care bill, "If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." Not long after, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was quoted as saying that the GOP's primary goal was to make Mr. Obama a one-term president.

The press hyped this as if it were something new, a unique and epic level of partisan animus. Members of the administration also thought it was something new. It made them assume no deals with Republicans were possible. It gave Obama a handy excuse they still use: "It's not us, they vowed from the beginning they wouldn't work with us!"

But none of it was new. The other side always vows to crush you. Anyone who'd been around for a while knew the Republicans were trying to sound tough, using hyperbole to buck up the troops. It's how they talk when they're on the ropes. But the president and his staffers hadn't been around for a while. They were young. They didn't understand what they were hearing was par for the course.

Bill Clinton's foes made fierce vows about him, the enemies of both Bushes did the same. The opposing party always gets on the phone or gathers in what used to be Georgetown dens toPresident Reagan & Speaker Tip O'Neill - 1985 at White House denigrate the new guy and vow to fight him to the end. That's how blowhards blow. When Reagan came in they vowed to take him down, and it was personal. Speaker Tip O'Neill called him "ignorant" and a "disgrace" and said it was "sinful" that he was president. He called Reagan "a man who has no care and no concern for thePolitical Pundit Chris Matthews working class of America" and said: "He's cold. He's mean. He's got ice water for blood." An O'Neill staffer, now a cable news pundit, Chris Matthews once greeted Reagan in the Capitol with the words: "Mr. President, welcome to the room where we plot against you."

They did. President Reagan knew it.

Yet he had no problem dealing successfully with O'Neill. He didn't moan, "Oh they hate me, it's no use!"

As Captain Renault raids Rick's Cafe Americain he shouts, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" - Note to the next White House: There's always gambling at Rick's Cafe Americain. It's never a shock and not an excuse. It's business as usual. And if you're a leader you can lead right past it.

"People do what they know how to do," meaning politicians use whatever talent they have, and when it no longer works they continue using it.  Barack, however, has now resorted to pulling a "Bogart," by adopting Bogie's film persona, Rick's attitude of a world-weary resignation at how bad things are and what little he can do about it - "after all, it's the Republican's fault." - Obama is a Lame Duck!CASABLANCA, the 1942 Best Picture Oscar winner - Paul Henreid, Ingrid Bergman & Humphrey Bogart.

In case you are not familiar with Casablanca, the 1942 Best Picture film classic:

Casablanca - In French-occupied Morocco, American expatriate Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) runs a dive bar called Rick’s and makes money gambling. When his former lover Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) comes into his bar, all the old feelings of their past relationship in Paris come back to him. Unfortunately, Ilsa and her revolutionary husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) are trying to get out of the country and are meeting resistance from the Germans and the Prefect of Police Captain Renault (Claude Rains) in his service as a figure of authority of the Nazis. As Rick and Ilsa start to fall back in love, the two are torn at what to do in order to survive.

Your Patriotic Duty - Bear the Tax Burden

To avoid anyone reading this from nodding off to sleep, let me very quickly get the point across and allow you to read the whole text below for further clarification.

News Headline:Ben Bernake

Ben Bernake, head of the U.S. Fed Bank, explains when government spending programs are wasteful by adding little to national wealth or productivity, then taxpayers view this increased spending as simply increasing the debt burden they must bear and they reduce their own expenditure with the net effect that government fiscal actions will be reduced.

News Flash:

The Principle of Ricardian equivelence - This is doublespeak repeating Obama fiscal mantra - "Spend more and more!"  Obama assumes a "net zero tax cost" when he can tax and then gain net savings back from his federal spending programs. As Obama follows Ben Bernanke's logic, the taxpayers will not suffer from more taxes, they simply will tighten their belts further and spend less to live - and that's how the American Standard of Living is redistributed and beaten down lower on the backs of all taxpayers.

Realistically, the practical effect of Ricardian equivalence on spending/saving in the US is probably minimal anyway because the top 20 percent of Americans earn 53.4 percent of the total U.S. income, but pay 67.2 percent of total income tax. The 47% who pay no tax (and anticipate continuing to pay no tax) aren't worried about any future tax liability, and they are the ones with the highest marginal propensity to consume and spend. Since prevailing tax rules contain future uncertainties about additional taxes, it may be more likely to suspect reactions to curtail some spending under this threat.

Bernanke speech - Japan Society of Monetary Economics, May 31, 2003:

"In economics textbooks, the idea that people will save rather than spend tax cuts because of the implied increase in future tax obligations is known as the principle of Ricardian equivalence. In general, the evidence for Ricardian equivalence in real economies is mixed, but it seems most likely to apply in a situation like that prevailing today in Japan, in which people have been made highly aware of the potential burden of the national debt."

The principle of Ricardian equivalence does not apply exactly to increases in government purchases (for example, road building) but it may apply there approximately. If, for example, people think that government spending projects are generally wasteful and add little to national wealth or productivity, then taxpayers may view increased government spending as simply increasing the burden of the government debt that they must bear. If, as a result, they react to increases in government spending by reducing their own expenditure, the net stimulative effect of fiscal actions will be reduced.