Senator Obama said the most horrific thing last night. Did anyone else jump out of their seat? He said,

"No American soldier ever dies in vain; he dies carrying out the orders of his commander in chief."

I would have screamed had not the bile got into my mouth first. An American soldier does not die in vain because he dies protecting the Constitution, the embodiment of a most noble ideal that all men are created equal. An American soldier does not die in vain because he is defending liberty, which is worth more than life itself.

Now compare that with what Obama said last night. According to Obama, the nobility of the sacrifice has nothing to do with the idea of America but rather with the individual who happens to be president at the time. In other words, the sacrifice of the soldier is noble because he dies for Obama. Talk about a messiah complex. 

I know what Obama said, but here is what I heard: "No soldier dies in vain; he dies carrying out the orders of his Fuehrer." Does that sound more familiar to you?

Yesterday I stumbled upon a simple means of health care reform. I asked, "How much?"

I need a simple out patient procedure done. Nothing to worry about but something that is bugging me. I called up my doctor and asked, "How much?" The first response was, "Doesn't your insurance pay for it?" The staff had to dig to find out. It took ten minutes to find the answer. It turned out to be $300 to $500.

Image buying anything else that cost that much, like a small television for instance. Image going to the store, looking at televisions. You are inevitably going to ask, "How much." You are not going to find the staff caught off guard, scrambling to find the price for you. Actually, you will not even have to ask because the price will be displayed prominently. More than that, the store will mail you fliers advertising the price of televisions that week.

Insurance has single handedly raised the cost of health care because it has removed from the customer the single most important weapon in combating higher cost: true price. In health care, there is no incentive for the patient (or customer, as I like to call him) to lower cost because he is not rewarded by lower costs. His insurance premium costs the same whether he goes with the $300 procedure or the $500 procedure. There is no incentive for the doctor to lower cost because he is not rewarded by lower costs. He does not gain or loose customers as he lowers or raises his prices.

Health insurance as it exists now is not the answer; it is the problem. It should not be called health insurance to begin with. No other insurance works the same way. Your home owners insurance does not pay for light bulbs. Your flood insurance does not pay for mopping the kitchen. Your automobile insurance does not pay for oil changes. In every other market in which there is insurance, the market forces of price and shopping are still in affect. It is only in the health industry that these critical forces are removed.

Insurance is the problem, so it is only natural that the solution proposed by Democrats is more insurance. Democrats always prescribe more of the problem as the solution. In education, Democrats want more government schools. In energy, they want more government regulation. In national defense, they want more appeasement of our enemies.

We need a real Republican president this fall who believes in free enterprise. We have the potential to solve the health care problem and make our market the envy of the world. Alas, we also have the potential to hand over ten percent of our economy to the socialists to ruin. It certainly makes for an interesting year.

This week, Hillary Clinton touted "the strength of the American labor movement as the backbone for a strong middle class." (WashTimes) Oh, really, Mrs. Clinton? What do the numbers say?

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership in 2006 was only 7.4 percent of the private workforce.

How does that compare with small businesses? According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses:

• Employ about half of all private sector employees.
• Pay more than 45 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade.
• Create more than half of nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
• Hire 40 percent of high tech workers

The numbers are obvious. Small business is the backbone of a strong middle class, not the labor movement. 

Someone show me a quote where Hillary is supporting small business. Someone show me a plan of hers that will help small business. Hillary's plan for socialized health care is amazingly effective measure for destroying small business in this country as we know it. If a small business owner can not afford the dictated government health insurance, then he cannot start or grow his business. If small business owners cannot hire, then who will provide the 60 to 80 percent net new jobs over the next decade?

Here is a quote to leave you with from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Just under half (7.5 million) of the 15.4 million union members in the U.S. lived in six states (California, 2.3 million; New York, 2.0 million; Illinois, 0.9 million; Michigan, 0.8 million; New Jersey, 0.8 million; and Pennsylvania, 0.7 million), though these states accounted for about one-third of wage and salary employment nationally.

Something about those states sounds familiar. Where is that map of the 2004 presidential election again?

Who would be so foolish as to tell Americans that it cannot be done? We carved a nation out of a wilderness. In 1776 we defeated the world's greatest superpower, Great Britain, and established a republic. In the 1860s we preserved the Union. We built the Transcontinental Railroad, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Panama Canal. It was Americans who invented the airplane, the telephone, the electric light, the nuclear reactor. We won three world wars in a century. We went to the Moon. In every case, we were told it could not be done.

One of the leading arguments for amnesty is that we cannot deport 10 million people. The problem, they argue, cannot be solved so we must surrender and accept a new status quo.

How is handling 10 million illegal immigrants harder than any of the other challenges that Americans have faced in the past? Knowing our history, it is absolutely insulting to say that we cannot solve this problem. We are Americans. We can do anything that we put our minds to do.

The impossibility of deporting 10 million people is a red herring. I refuse to accept it as a viable argument in the debate. Given our resources, we could deport 10 million people. The point is, however, irrelevant. Why would we have to deport anyone when we did not have to import anyone?

The illegal immigrants exerted a great amount of energy, resources and ingenuity in breaking and entering into our country. Americans did not pay a dime or lift a finger to get them here. The illegal immigrants got here on their own; they will leave here on there own. The illegal immigrants broke into our country because they saw rewards for their efforts. They will leave just as quickly when they see no rewards and only punish for their efforts.

Do not tell me that America cannot solve the immigration problem. I am an American. I do not know the meaning of "can't".

See: "Illegal immigrants self deport as woes mount" (Reuters, 2007.12.24)

In today's New York Times, Maureen Dowd gave us this quote:

"He [Bill Clinton] suggests to Matt Bai in today’s Times Magazine that she [Hillary] can be F.D.R. to his Teddy Roosevelt, getting through the ideas that fell flat the first time."

It is the SAT question from hell: Hillary Clinton is to Bill Clinton as Franklin Roosevelt is to Teddy Roosevelt. God help us if that is true.

Teddy Roosevelt was certainly no conservative, but at least he was a Republican. Think about how vastly worse FDR was than TR. Think of all the horror FDR inflicted upon our economy and constitution. Now take that difference and apply it to the Clintons. According to Bill Clinton himself, as bad as he was, his wife will be far, far worse. Hillary will be as far to left of Bill as Franklin was to Teddy. That, my friends, is a frightening thought.

I was on the Fred'08 website and saw the senator responding to the Politico. I was curious, so I went and read the article by Roger Simon. The hat comment meant little to me. Two other things in the article struck me as far more absurd.

The first absurdity was the quote from the editor of the Waverly Democrat who stated, "Bluntly, I don’t know why he is running." Of course she would not know why Fred Thompson is running. She is a liberal democrat. She would no sooner understand why a true conservative would run for president than I would understand why socialists like her are so eager to surrender their sacred liberty for government cheese.

The second absurdity was Simon calling Fred Thomson lazy. By his own admission, Simon and a guy from Time magazine tried to weasel in on the senator's scheduled interview with the local newspaper. Apparently Simon did not take "no" well and had an ax to grind for the rest of the day. Who is lazy? Why didn't Simon get off his tuchas and schedule his own interview if he wanted one? He didn't even get the hat quote right and there was someone standing right next to him with a video camera.

From what I can tell, Simon's job is to write two or three articles each week. Fred Thomson is running for president. Honestly, who do you think is working harder?

The Friday, November 30, editorial page in USA Today stated,

"The charismatic Chavez is a classic demagogue, gaining power by convincing people that their woes are the fault of others, primarily the United States, and promising an instantly rosy future."

How, I wonder, would the editorial staff differentiate their description of the socialist Chavez from the leadership of the Democratic Party? Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Richardson are all socialists. Throughout their entire campaigns, all we hear is how much the people suffer and how they will remove all our suffering if only we give them power. According to the democrats, all our woes come from the United States government not doing enough or doing the wrong thing.

For instance, it is never the individual's fault for being uninsured. It's not the consumers' fault that health care costs are rising. Hand over control of the health care system to the Democrats, they say, and the future will be instantly rosy. Surrender power over another 10 percent of the economy, they argue, and no one will suffer any more.

The USA Today editorial ended with a warning:

It is true that power corrupts. But democracy can trump it, unless too many people vote to give away their own power.

I certainly hope that Americans can hear the warning for themselves. Democrats are asking, no demanding, that Americans vote to give away their own power over their own health care. This time next year, Americans will face the same choice as the Venezuelans face today: hold on to your freedom or surrender to the classic demagogues.