A Gray Morning

Naive… Dumb…Stupid… Out of touch… There are others things I could say about how I’m feeling about myself but most are unfit to print.

Everything I had thought about Romney as a candidate has been proven so. Everything I have thought about the national and local Republican Party has once again been proven so. I set aside common sense and simply went along once again.

In a strange way I have felt some relief this morning. I turned on the news at four thirty this morning and searched for the local weather report and not the latest political polls. Weather has a direct impact on our day to day life on our little farm. My granddad bought this place in 1921. I will be the third generation to live out my life here.

There is a sense of safety and beauty on our farm. When I decide to lock the front gate the world is right where it should be - which is outside. Although we are dependent to some extent on the outside basic food and shelter is here as it has been for almost a hundred years for my family. Doctors won't make house calls but most other needs are met through internet shopping. We seem to use it more and more along with the weekly trip to Walmart and dinners out.  Combined mileage for cars and truck was less than fifteen thousand miles last year and will be less this year. Other than paying local government rent in the form of taxes on the farm what goes on outside has little direct impact on our daily lives.

My involvement in this political campaign came about mostly because of the impact this president and this federal government has and will have on our children and grandchildren. Even though I know they will adapt and manage in this evolving socialist order, I really didn't want them to have to do so. The grandchildren will grow up under the new social norms and not know anything different.

This election has been helpful in that it has shown us the dollar amount the political elites in both national parties are willing to spend to protect their power. Most of the elected that has taken the country down this road are still in elected office and will continue to do what they have done while declaring, to all who will listen, that they are not the ones who are changing the American meaning of liberty and freedom.

By 2016 there will be so many citizens dependent on various government social programs there will not be any room for a conservative political voice. However, I am confident the GOP will find a white, wealth, moderate, middle aged man to run for president. He will be a nice man who will lose just like so many other milksop GOP selected candidates in the past. My belief is that the Tea Party was the last vestige of conservative America. (This election somehow reminds me of the Scopes trial.)

Citizens will be told that American new socialism is different from all the other nations’ socialism in that it will not betray its citizens. We were told this while we watched all the nations in Europe financially collapse.  

History repeats itself and so do politicians in their quest for personal power. Socialism is one of the best forms of government for them to hide behind.

I don't really feel bad for the young men and particularly women who voted for Obama. As their lives evolve their hopes of the middle class American way of life for them and their children, a way of life many grew up in, is out of reach. They will not connect the dots. They will not see the part they played nor take responsibility for their part in this election drama.

The average citizen’s attitude towards the Tea Party and its members tells a tale of effective political and media campaigning. It is now thought of as a radical group of dumb old folks who need to sit down and shut up.  We are defined, along with a few elected GOP members, as the people who interfere with social progress. That was our goal, in some sense, so they are probably right.

As a group there are many ways left to us to contribute to the future of the nation. We will still be able to vote and so long as we are not threatening the politically elite we will be tolerated.  I don't know how much energy or desire there is left within the Tea group but local town/county boards and elected offices could be a focal point.

In my readings many of the Tea Party web sites across the country it seems they are not what they were a year or so ago.  Lots of rabid articles and rabid commenter’s on these sites. I'm sure also that many people who read what I post on this The Oxford Tea Party web site see it as inappropriate also. Certainly supporting Newt was seen as a poor idea. This is not an apology because I knew him as a warrior and I believed this election was going to be a war. No one could accuse Romney of being a warrior and we knew this about him ‘out the gate’.  There is an adage that simply states, nice guys finish last. Who we might accuse for coming in last is the Republican Party at the national and local levels. The Party no longer walks or talks the core principles of conservatism. Their quest has been for power and the focus of their efforts has been to keep them in power.  That is not a vision or a mission for liberty and freedom. Try as they might the money and candidates could not sell their morphed version of the Reagan ideals.

We fought a good fight in this election. We lost. I don't want to recant American political history but we have had a number of presidents who were loved because they believed that America should become a socialist nation and worked towards that goal. FDR is the icon.  Obama is just one more in a long chain. There a difference now in that we have allowed presidents more and more power. Obama has and will use this power like none before him. He said to congress if you don’t act I will and he has. America will not come to end but he promised to change it and he will.

 I want to thank each person in the Tea Party for their individual efforts. This race is run.  The future will be a 'good time' for some and a ‘hard time’ for the many. The dependent underclass on social programs is growing along with their voting power. Their power will be used to grow the social programs. This is the writing on the wall. Everyone will still get a piece of the new American pie for a while. A much smaller piece for sure.

The bright side in all this is, if there is one, is that financial crisis, such as we the one we are facing, creates unique opportunities. We will just have to do lots of shoveling to find the pony.

Three years and one hundred and seventy three articles later The Oxford Tea Party web site is going to take a vacation.  Take a few steps back. Let some time pass and begin to rethink the question of, “What’s next.” November 6, 2012 was just the end of the current election cycle and the next one is only twenty four months down the road.

The countdown Election Day clock on my computer’s home screen just informed me that the time to the November 6th election has expired. The question the clock popped up asked, "Do you want to reset?" (I had to smile at its question.) How do you think I responded to my clock’s question?

Ron

docnick37@gmail.com

Http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com

My Mother's Race

From Dreams Of My Father: President Obama

"I found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race."

What are we thinking? What has happened to common sense? If businesses close people lose jobs. That is not a complex reality. If we impose too many regulations on our businesses and burden them with taxes they close the doors and/or move their plants out of the reach of our government. We have seen this happen year after year and regulation after regulation since Slick Willie got in office and signed NAFTA… But politicians don't connect (or can't) connect these two dots: Higher taxes and burdensome regulations close businesses and lose jobs.

T'was the night before elections,

And all thru' the town,

Tempers were flaring

Emotions ran up and down.

From 2000 to 2011, nearly 66,484 U.S. factories closed, and millions of skilled manufacturing workers lost their jobs. If I were to go back to 1990 to 2011 the numbers would be even more dramatic. We lost capacity to make drywall, steel, concrete, antibiotics, high-tech circuit boards---the list goes on.

I, in my bathrobe

With cat on my lap,

Had shut off the TV,

Tired of political crap

America once led the world in manufacturing. Now, much of our basic infrastructure needs are dependent on overseas producers. We don't have companies here that make socks, underwear, neckties, etc. We haven't made TV's, computers, mobile phones here in decades. We are even importing lots of our food…. If real disaster strikes, will we simply be unprepared?

When all of a sudden,

There arose such a noise,

I peered out my window,

Saw Obama and his boys

We have become a dependent nation. The greatest producing nation in the history of the world is now dependent on other nations for the most bassic consumer needs.

Government regulations, taxes, and unions have put us in this predicament. Socks, underwear, TV's. mobile phones, computers, and all the other things we need in our 'walking around lives' have now become a national security issue. That’s sounds like a funning things to say… Really it’s a sad thing to say.

They had come for my wallet,

They wanted my pay

To hand out to others

Who had not worked a day!

Our increasing dependence on foreign goods is very,very dangerous. A major part of our strength in America besides our faith came from the fact that we made what we needed. We could take care of ourselves. We grew all of our own food as well as proded our own oil. Therefore we didn't need anyone to help us out.

We got in our financial mess without a whimper. Shouted down by the liberal media and our duly elected, the warning voices, throughout the years, were ignored.

Tytler, way back in the early part of the 19th century, wrote about our democratic form of government: From bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, and from dependence back to bondage.

His prediction has a strangely familiar ring.

He snatched up my money,

And quick as a wink,

Jumped on his bandwagon

As I gagged from the stink.

Hyman Minsky points out that the more comfortable we get with a given condition or trend, the longer it will persist and then when the trend fails, the more dramatic  the correction. The problem with long term  macroeconomic stability is that it tends to produce unstable financial arrangements. If we believe that tomorrow and next year will be the same as last week and last year, we are more willing to add debt or postpone savings in favor of current consumption. The longer the period of stability, the higher the potential risk for even greater instability when market participants must change their behavior.

He then rallied his henchmen

Who were pulling his cart.

I could tell they were out

To tear the country apart!

What Minsky warns about is exactly what we voters have been doing during these last few congresses. Not one person reading this article runs their financial house the way our elected representatives have run our national financial house. AND yet we rationalize their behavior and leave them in office, and leave them in office. AND leave them in office creating tax burdens on families and strangling regulations and taxes on our businesses.

Even today the warning voices are being shouted down. BUT the whimpering is beginning and just behind the whimpering will come the rage. I am surprised the young folks with their college degrees and their student loan debts aren't out on the streets already. I assume they are not on the streets because they haven't paid attention to what their government has been doing… maybe their parents aren't paying attention either….

I hate putting numbers or charts in articles but sometimes just knowing what the numbers are is important even if we can't relate personally to the numbers.

The young graduates need to know the current government has created a debt for them to pay IF they ever get a job. The debt just passed $16 trillion (and that's not counting the $117 trillion on unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security!)

OK, a trillion is hard to imagine…. Every day since the beginning of 2012  our government has spent 10.4 billion dollars each and every day. (Even a billion is a hard number to imagine.) The problem is we don't have 10.4 billion dollars a day to spend so we borrow 4 billion dollars from someone to make up the difference.

What should we do? The Iowahawk newspaper started pulling numbers together in an attempt to see how the debt can be paid along with the interest on the borrowed money.

Here are some of their ideas:

Start with two of the biggest and therefore 'most evil' corporation in America.

Exxon Mobil and Walmart, take every single penny of their combined 2011 global profits. No one will have a problem with that, because these "evil corporations" should pay! That number is $46.7 billion, which helps run the country from midnight January 1, 2012 to 12:45PM on January 5th.

Well, that is not enough….

So lets look at the other 498 largest companies in America and take all of their profits of $567 billion also… That gets us enough money to get us to 12:15 AM February 29. (If there is a February 29) BUT now we are close to the Super Bowl.

Just suppose we grabbed all the advertising dollars spent on Super Bowl ads? That is another 200 million…. Not really much there so let's say we grab all the money from Super Bowl ads over the last 46 years. Now we are talking … Another 5.2 billion. So all of this money still leaves us on the same day, February 29th.

I know all of this is silly but if you earned a million dollars a day and started in the year Christ was born and made the million ever single day up to 2012, you would not even be close to earning a trillion dollars. 

So college grads Obama and this government has just planned your life's work.

They took off for his cause.

And they flew out of sight,

I heard him laugh at the nation

Who wouldn't stand up and fight!

So I leave you to think on this one final note… If you don't want socialism, get out the votes!!! Author Unknown

Current Rasmussen poll:

Even with Americans poised to pick a president and one-third of the nation’s senators, most voters continue to feel the federal government does not have the  approval of its citizenry. One of the central tenets of the Declaration of Independence is that “governments derive their only just powers from the consent of the governed,” but just 25% of Likely U.S. Voters think the federal government today has that consent. Sixty percent (60%) believe the federal government does not have the consent of the governed.

Before I hit the send key I just want to note the opening quote in this article from Obama's book about his animosity and grievance against all white Americans. In more than four years I cannot remember any in the political elite liberal media or conservative media noting the racist bias he clearly carries in his life. This bias has never been called into question nor has Obama been confronted about his other comments on America, its government, or the Christian white majority. Had anyone in the Tea Party made a similar remark about animosity toward blacks what the press would do in not really imaginable.

So before closing I want to add this footnote for Chris Matthews, who is the liberal media's watch-dog for all things racist: "I am not going to vote for Obama. Not because he is black but because he has failed in his job as president. Broken the trust that American voters gave him. Sullied the image of America in the eyes of the world and betrayed long standing friends around the world. His behavior in office has hurt the very minority groups who  have trusted him the most. If Obama was white I would be writing exactly the same thing."

8 days, 9 hours, 14 minutes until the polls open.

Ron

docnick37@gmail.com

Http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com

A Few More Days

If we did not know or if we did know and simply didn't accept that very few voters/citizens do not make any effort to find out or understand what is happening within our government, within our economy, within our lives, this election cycle should drive us to a final and complete acceptance of this reality. Most have an idea of what they want the American way of life to be or believe it to be in a subjective way and simply rationalize, distort, and deny, any thing/everything they see, hear, sense to the contrary. Very much like the people who lived in matrix in the  motion picture Matrix. Where computer generated reality was created by the political elite, supported by all forms of information media and delivered from moment to moment and day to day and accepted by the citizens as reality.

Is this a good, fair and balanced definition of where this country and its people are?

No… There are still many seekers… Many who still remember and question the directions of the leaders over the last few decades have led us.  Where we find ourselves in this presidential election campaign is at a tipping point. No longer can  we or do we  believe a few changes here and there will make a difference. Our ship of state much like New York is under water. The foundation that our fathers built has been weakened. This campaign is not about Obama or Romney or Harry Reid or Nancy. It's about us. Like our fathers/mothers along with Tea Party members we have contributed  through the raising of our children, passing down beliefs and  values, producing good and services, paying taxes for the good of the whole, and supported our men  and  women in all levels of government.  That is how most of us have spent our lives.

Within the history of the world no people have worked so hard, stayed focused so long, and have contributed so much to the world. We are we…There hasn't been any group like us. What has gone wrong?  

Given our history along with our imagination and creativity we can change how we are being governed. We can do this...We can solve the financial problems but first the political problems must be solved. In a very heavy handed way  we must remind the people who we elected that they are 'short term' employees. Short term is the operative idea the politicians along with many of their supporters have not understood. Also, most of the rest of us forget this also.

We the people elect to office those who go to Washington and we the voters who hired them have no idea what they are doing. None…The question is, "What has gone wrong?" THAT is what has gone wrong.

In any business you hire someone. Screen the new hire and then watch what they do. If they don't do what they are hired to do you fire them. Many of us have experienced this simple reality with people who have worked for us. Yet, we don't apply this to the people we elected. Why?

The Tea Party is not a third national party….That was never the goal. It is possible that we already have two national parties too many… In my mind we in the Tea Party are emerging as the conscience of a failing political system. If we look at the current political system it seems to look the same as last year and the last century. Roll call is done ever day in the House and Senate.  Bills are written, committees meet, votes are taken, election are held, some members leave, some new members come in and everything looks the same but doesn't feel the same. 

We are left with a gnawing feeling that something is very wrong. What is wrong? We want to believe, that it is them, they, individually, and as a group that has caused our feeling of distrust. Certainly that has a ring of truth but not the whole truth.

The starting idea was that we wanted to be governed by a government of the people, for the people and by the people. The form we chose was a representative form of government and called it a democratic government. Not exactly the same but since we put term limits which requires elections every-so-often we thought that would somehow make a difference in what had been done/tried in the past. (History is littered with Rome (s) and its variations.) Well, low and behold, we have congressmen and senators who have been elected to office longer that twenty seven present of our population has been living. Continuing to fiddle while our nation, under the current president and congress, are assuring us each one them is doing the right things for us and the country.

On the whole we listen to their speechifying and reelect most of them.

So with this in mind where does the finger of failure point?

Most of us know/believe Obama has failed us as president. He is running again for another term and we find that about half of the population don't know or believe he has failed in his job. Close to half is a large number and the other half doesn't understand how the first half are measuring his success. The next six or so days will not answer that question regardless of the outcome.

The representative form of governments have failed because the people through out history have failed to be responsible. Men and women striving for personal power are what political candidates are, what they have been in the past, and what they will be in the future. Regardless of time and/or place throughout history these same political people have promised the voters they were not in politics for personal power but to help each of them. Voters continue to believe this basic campaign tactic. They do this because it serves them by relieving them of their personal responsibilities. The underlying promise is that the politician will take care of them. How does this basic principle in representative government continue to confound and confuse the voters?  

Each reader, at sometime in their life in someway, knows why and how they have made these same kind of the 'take-care-of-me' choices related to family, friend,  jobs, etc.  However, as we aged being taken care of became less and less of a goal  

for most but not for all and that is who makes up the other fifty percent.

For the past month each day Obama is out campaigning he is falling in the polls in most of the important states. Common sense would dictate that he should get off the campaign trail.  Which he did…. The storm gave him a cover. Team Obama being a clever group decided to send a likeable surrogate in his stead.  So they decided their best bet was a disbarred lawyer, who paid a 25K fine over a personal legal issue, 850K settlement sexual settlement to a young woman, a 90K fine for giving false testimony, an a 90K fine in another sexual defined case with another woman. A man who assures us Obama should  have another fours more years and who is loved by all. A sure vote getter. A man who stands shoulder to shoulder as an abuser of trust with the current president. The polls should leap….One way or the other.

From Audacity of Hope: President Obama Says

"I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."

You have to wonder how the other fifty percent have been able to rationalize the character of our president. It is one thing for a black man to rationalize distrust of a white man but for an American President to say that his beliefs and faith would direct his allegiances against America is hard to accept but will not be forgiven or forgotten. The writers of our history will see to that. 

In the few campaign days left we may well see other news stories concerning Obama's character as well as his hidden agenda for America's relationships to the new governments in the mid-east. Of course he would not sent troops into Libya no matter who is at risk, or Iran, or Egypt, or any other Muslim country. (Read the above quote again.)

This episode in our national life, as destructive as it has been, is coming to an end.

I had predicted a 307 to 316 Electoral College in favor of Romney. Numerous comments believe I am low-balling this number. I hope these higher numbers they are suggesting are right and that I have made yet another mistake in my predictions. 

After the elections the hard work will be the day to day job of taking back our country… We will supply, in this election, the congressional voters needed but we still will not control their votes on issues concerning our goals of a government, once again, for and by the people. How are we going to do this? Will there be any energy left to do this job? 

Let me float an idea as a starting point: Lets us, in the Tea Party,  fund a central web site (one exist already) where information on every bill in house and senate committees are posted. Insist every representative and senator post what they are thinking about each bill. It doesn't matter if the bill is incomplete. Have a voting section on the web site tied to comment from us. That kind of information and exchange of ideas will allow us into the governing process. Also, it will help the elected to remember who hired them and what their job is about. Hopefully this would create a sense of working together. This may help. But if we don't find someway for us to stay connected to them and them to us we will be complaining again in twenty four months about the same things we have complained about in these last two election cycles. What we know is calling their office or sending e-mails does little if anything. 

Only 5 days and 10 hours left. There is still time to do a lot of ground work.

Ron

docnick37@gmail.com

Http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com