The Worm has Turned

This morning, Senator Arlen Specter of PA, showed the true colors that we already knew him for and announced that he is switching from the Republican Party to the Democratic party and will seek re-election as a Democrat.

Showing himself as a cowardly, spineless RINO during the vote for the economic Stimulus package, he now has looked his political mortality in the face as those actions have spurred conservative candidate Pat Toomey to challenge him in the 2010Republican primary for his Senate seat. Toomey has already showed himself to be a strong candidate that would make Arlen run hard just to win the primary. Now he has chosen the easy way out and will run as a Democrat, dodging a primary bullet (unless a real Democrat mounts a challenge to him and makes him work for a spot in he election). Knowing just how much his defection will hurt the Republican's tenuous position in the Senate, Specter took the lowest of the low roads and turned on them when they were at their most vulnerable.

President Obama was given a note containing the Specter information during a news conference this morning. He indicated that he was pleased to have the turncoat on his side---(as he fits well with the rest of the political thugs in his administration)---and will give Arlen his full support. And of course, MO Senator Claire McCaskill, says the Republicans have no one to blame but themselves when they make a moderate Republican a vanishing species.

My perspective is more that this leaves the road open in at least one 2010 race for a real conservative who can likely beat Specter no matter what coat he wears when he runs.

Et tu Brute?

Real American Heroes--Far Too Few

Over a decade ago, my daughter was applying to colleges and the mandatory essay was a sore subject in our home. The topic of "A LIVING American Hero" was required by one of the colleges and finding one was giving her fits. First the criteria of "Living" honed the list considerably. Then "American" took away the contenders from other countries. My suggestions were rebuffed as being unfamiliar, old or in some other way inappropriate for a pithy (not to mention cool) college essay...all of which was OK with me, but when turned back on her with suggestions of contemporary cultural icons, entertainers, sports figures and other more familiar individuals, she also had reasons why they were unsuited to be considered heroes. This debate went on for days with the deadline looming and finally in desperation, I suggested that if there were no REAL American Heroes in her perspective of what this entailed, then why not write the essay and entitle it "Today there are NO Real American Heroes." And then defend this position and let her opinions fly. After all, the essay is really all about your written communication skills, how you defend your position and not so much who you choose. And that was the essay she wrote! I found the essay quite revealing and apparently so did the college for which it was written as it was one of the ones who accepted her and offered her financial incentives to attend.

Today, the world has changed significantly. 9-11 gave us stories of people who literally laid down their lives to save others in the Twin Towers. All of us know, at least peripherally, young men and women who have joined the military for the cause of freedom and some of them have given mightily with their blood or their lives for that cause. But bubbling to the surface in the past months are the names of two more ordinary Americans who, I feel, are true role models for all Americans. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and Captain Richard Phillips, ordinary people, who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances and who responded in courageous and altruistic ways.

If you don't know who these remarkable men are, you must be living under a rock or watching too much MTV, but "Sully" Sullenberger was the captain of US Airways Flight 1549 who crash landed his plane in the Hudson River, saving the lives of all aboard his plane. Captain Sullenberger was the last to leave the plane, walking it twice to make certain that there were no other passengers left behind and later worrying that a library book was in his possession on the plane and was lost. His clear head, bravery, clarity under duress saved the lives of 151 passengers. His quiet humility was impressive after the fact. His peers, however, acknowledged that this was the sort of thing that they would have expected from a true leader like Sully.

And last week on Easter Sunday, Captain Richard Phillips from the Maersk Alabama was rescued by US Navy Seal snipers from Somali pirates who had held him for 5 days. He allowed himself to be taken hostage so that the ship and the rest of his crew could go free. When he returned from his captivity, he said that the real heroes were the US Navy Seals who pulled off the dramatic rescue. Again, he was humble and dignified and displayed grace under fire. His crew, when interviewed, again praised the Captain and freely indicated that this was the kind of leader that he was.

These are the true American heroes that walk among us every day. They are the unknown and unsung heroes until serendipity places them in a place where bravery, courage and dignity simply happen because something needs to be done. They are the heroes who don't see themselves as doing something extraordinary, but rather as folks who are just doing their jobs.

Politically, conservatives are looking for a real American hero who will rise up and take the political reins. Right now there is a great deal of searching among the known commodities and nothing is coming to the forefront. Perhaps the real hero will be someone who rises from the ranks of the common man and is "just doing his job."

Happy Easter!

He is risen! He is risen, indeed!

All I Can Hear is Chirping

President Obama hosts a Seder dinner at the White House and starts Pizza Wars between St. Louis and Chicago deep dish pizzerias on Friday. He will be trotting off to the Virgin Islands on Easter morning....meanwhile, during this entire time there is an American citizen being held captive by Somali pirates for nearly 4 days in a life boat and today an American tug flying an Italian flag with 16 aboard was taken by another band of pirates. The Somali pirates have threatened to kill the American Captain. They have openly mocked America saying "We are not afraid of you." Where is Obama and the administration on this issue???? Chirp...chirp....chirp...chirp

If this man dies while you are partying, (aka Nero fiddling while Rome burns), his blood is on YOUR hands. Swift and decisive action could have ended this long before this brave man a. gave himself up so that the rest of the crew would be saved and b. took matters into his own hands in a failed escape attempt. Chirp..chirp..chirp

Sorry Barry, but you can't vote "present" anymore. You are running out of Star Power and after your G20 tour, there are more and more people who are willing to see that the Emperor has no clothes. The world has seen that you were too busy to visit the Normandy beaches with French President Sarkoszy, but found plenty of time to visit several mosques and admire the name Hussein on one of the inscriptions. Your speeches belittled your country. Your wife had the audacity to touch the Queen of England and you bowed to the Saudi King. For those who were blinded by the B***S*** during your campaign, your true colors are now beginning to bleed through. Things get tough and you take a vacation.

When American citizens ANYWHERE are threatened with death and a motley band of rag tag pirates (read Islamic terrorists) with automatic weapons in a life boat are mocking YOU and YOUR ability (read willingness) to defeat them, while they are surrounded by the US Navy, for heaven's sake. it's time to man up..... that is, if you aren't truly impotent under all that veneer. Viagra, anyone????

Missourians Unite!!!

There is a meeting tomorrow 4/4/09 at 2:30 PM at Pillar in the Valley 229 Chesterfield Business Parkway in Chesterfield MO with William Federer (who never disappoints!!) as one of the featured speakers. The meeting is sponsored by www.resistnet.com and www.grassfire.org and www.teamsarah.com.

I just received this email from one of the organizers and I wanted to pass this along and be sure that you pass it on to all of your local friends and neighbors.

A message from Cindy McGee to all members of Missouri for Sarah! on Team Sarah!

I wanted to remind everyone about the meeting tomorrow and hoping that some schedules have changed and will allow more of you to join us. I am very excited about the prospects for our meeting tomorrow in Chesterfield. William Federer will be speaking on the first amendment and Roland Wetzel will be speaking on how we can get involve in influencing politics and the GOP in Missouri and Washington. Of course we will be discussing things to act on now and hopefully get people involved in the Tax Day Tea Parties around out state on the 15th. We also have been contacted by an independent broadcaster who wants to record the meeting. Lots of exciting possibilities, most important is uniting and pushing back against this unprecedented march to a socialist/marxist government. We must stand and fight now. We are loosing ground with every day that passes. I know I will be seeing some of you tomorrow and look forward to seeing the rest in the future.


If any of you have the chance to attend this meeting, I am sure that you will NOT be disappointed.

Good Old American Ingenuity!

Last week, I wrote about Don Davis, the president of Centrue Bank in St. Louis who picked up his ball and went home after legislation passed the US House of Representatives limiting the salaries of bank executives whose banks were recipients of TARP monies (either willingly or under duress as the FDIC was encouraging banks, even those like Centrue with strong balance sheets to take TARP money to increase their capital). This afternoon Fox News reports that Rick Wagoner, CEO of GM will be stepping down immediately at the request of the Administration.

A White House official told FOX Business that Wagoner was asked by the Administration to step down as a precondition for the company to continue to get help with its restructuring.

The idea that our government can cherry pick the businesses that survive, the salaries that executives can make, and the conditions under which people can continue in their positions is, frankly, frightening! While the two aforementioned individuals also had something to do with government bailouts, it is not a far stretch to imagine that this kind of meddlesome behavior could extend to companies and people who have not been bailed out. They may simply have rubbed someone the wrong way or said the wrong thing to the wrong person. They may have espoused the wrong philosophy. They may have unknowingly made an enemy who is now exacting a twisted revenge. In the case of Wagoner, it may be that he is on the wrong side of the UAW to whom Obama owes a great debt of gratitude for his election and perhaps Wagoner has seen fit to call BS on the UAW and its monstrous pension, legacy healthcare and wasteful pay for no work clauses in the union contracts.

"This does not surprise me... Rick has seen good and bad times and it seems that a fresh face is needed,” said Mike Green, president of United Auto Workers Local 652 in Lansing, Mich. "There are a lot of smart, capable people inside GM and this will not muck up anything moving forward."

Or could it be that Obama is playing good cop, bad cop with the UAW so that by removing Wagoner they can also justify strong arming the UAW into concessions under the same threats.

A source told FOX Business that the Obama Administration is likely to set a hard deadline for GM and Chrysler to meet their restructuring goals, which include getting bondholders and the United Auto Workers union to agree to major concessions. If they don’t meet those goals by the deadline, the source said, the auto makers would likely be allowed to enter into bankruptcy protection.

So it is with some degree of pride that I read in the St. Louis Business Journal on Friday March 27, 2009, that Don Davis is giving the middle finger salute to the Administration and TARP and has already lined up a couple of partners, $10million dollars in capital, and is looking to buy a bank! He and his partners have joined forces and pooled their own money and are looking for a small bank in which they can take an ownership interest and......BEGIN LENDING!!!

"The time is perfect to buy or merge with a small bank," Davis said. "So many good people can't get capital right now. I have capital. We can raise another $5 million easily, and once you get $15 million, you can get $20 million." He said the money he and his partners have raised can be an alternative to government bailout money for a bank in need of capital.

"The advantage to buying a bank, instead of starting one....is that you can get into the business immediately. The regulators are not in the mood to hand out new bank charters. Davis' plan to buy a small bank is smart because small banks are more likely to have fewer problem loans. Dan Hogan, a banking consultant, said Davis and his partners are doing what good capitalists do----they adapt! "If you change the rules of the game, a capitalist will learn the new rules and win the game--unless you keep changing the rules."

Perhaps Rick Wagoner can do the same and like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, rally entrepreneurial individuals to take Saturn back as its own quality brand in the USA while GM goes bankrupt under its own weight and the weight of the UAW. Capitalism and American ingenuity is still alive in spite of the fact that TARP monies have put Chris Dodd and Barney Frank in charge of your bank and a tax cheat in charge of the IRS.

It's Happening---We Told You So

Sometimes it is so much fun to say "I told you so!" Like when you are on an auto trip and your husband gets lost and you tell him to go one way and he wants to go the other way and after an hour of driving in circles, you end up where YOU said to go in the first place! There is much glee derived from the phrase!!

Sometimes, however, "I told you so" comes with sadness, regret, tragedy and even ruin. And then there are those times where "I told you so" lies somewhere in the middle.

During the run-up to the election, candidate Obama's ties to William Ayers and Reverend Wright, were poo poo'ed as being inconsequential and yet in the prism of now President Obama's sweeping plans for our government, free enterprise, charities, immigration, taxes and even basic Constitutional freedoms, we can see the fingerprints of these individuals all over them. Sadly, Obama is doing exactly as he promised and we told you so!

When candidate Obama told Joe the Plumber that his plan was to "Spread the Wealth Around", Joe was excoriated for having the unmitigated gall to question "THE ONE". We were told, that this was the way to a healthy economy during an "unprecedented" downturn. The threat of spreading the wealth and setting a boundary of $250,000 for the line dividing the rich from the rest of the unwashed masses was taken very seriously by many small businessmen and the contraction of the economy was well on the way before candidate Obama ever set foot in the Oval Office. Well before the election, small businesses started pulling back on expansion plans, unnecessary spending, and started laying off people. Smart small businesses hunkered down and went into survival mode and vowed to stay small to avoid being penalized for their success....we told you so!

Conservatives railed against wealth redistribution and warned that demonizing the earners who create the jobs, buy the goods and give to charities would take away any incentive for them to be productive. Now in a mere two months we have thrown trillions of dollars down the rat hole of unsupervised bailouts in the name of Stimulus only to see the recipients give us the middle finger salute on so many fronts that our legislators have initiated legislation to tax away the bonuses of bankers and other companies that take bailout funds. Well, yesterday in the St. Louis Business Journal, this story was featured.

Don Davis, president of Centrue Bank in St. Louis, has resigned because his income will be severely restricted by new federal limitations on bank executives. In January, Centrue accepted $32.7 million under the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly called TARP. Later the federal government imposed restrictions on the bonuses of top executives at banks and other financial institutions that took TARP money. "My salary and bonus isn't going to work — TARP isn't going to allow it," Davis said in an interview Monday. Davis, for example, is paid $350,000 in base salary, but also receives 10 percent of the profits of the St. Louis branch of Centrue. In 2008, that amounted to about $750,000 for Davis. "TARP doesn't like me getting that," Davis said. Don Davis, president of Centrue Bank in St. Louis, has resigned because his income will be severely restricted by new federal limitations on bank executives.

So now we are seeing that this prophecy is coming true. Businessmen are taking their ball and bat and going home--game over. If government can determine who will be punitively taxed, what is standing between you, the ordinary guy, and them???? The answer is..."nothing". And it does NOT give me pleasure to say "I told you so."