Only 7 major college teams remain unbeaten and in the driver's seat for the national championship but if the powerhouses like Auburn and other major conference teams lose it will open the floodgates to a host of once beaten premier teams to challenge for the title.
Just behind the first tier of unbeaten teams stand Alabama, Ohio State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Arizona, Stanford, LSU and Florida State. Finishing unbeaten will not be easy as 1. Auburn still faces Alabama, 2. Oregon faces USC, Arizona and always dangerous Oregon State, 3. Boise State has a battle brewing with Nevada, 4. TCU still must face unbeaten Utah, 5. Michigan State faces Iowa, 6.Missouri faces Nebraska and 8. Utah faces TCU.
The top games this weekend have Michigan State against Iowa and Missouri against Nebraska. For the first time in three weeks the number one may remain the same as Auburn faces Mississippi with a 3-4 record.
One week before the elections the polls politicians don't want you to see are showing startling results as the campaign draws to a close. These are not the polls of individual races but the ones measuring the sentiment of likely voters. Gallup shows that likely enthusiastic voters leaning Democrat are at 37% while likely voters leaning Republican are at 63%, the highest Republican figure ever recorded in the history of the polls. That means a 26% lead in enthusiasm for those leaning Republican with just one week to go.
More ominous for the Democrats, this is after the President, Vice President and First Lady Michelle Obama have been crisscrossing the nation seeking to generate enthusiasm and raising millions of campaign dollars. Clearly this election has become a referendum on the Obama agenda and the Obama campaign strategy.
The last year there was a Republican landslide was 1994 when the GOP took control of both the House and Senate and the GOP enthusiasm advantage was only 9% compared to 26% this year. With the discontent of Independents over Obama and his Democrats rising consistently, Independents favor the GOP over Democrats by over 14%.
A Gallup poll released Friday found that only 23 percent of Independent voters agree that “most members of Congress deserve reelection.” The similar figure for Republican voters is 21 percent, according to Gallup, while 59 percent of Democrats say most US representatives should be returned to office. The combined results of all three groups means only 33 percent of voters overall think incumbents deserve to win. That’s the lowest such percentage prior to a midterm election that Gallup has found in the past 16 years.
At the same time if Republicans win overwhelmingly they sill have a lot of work to do to convince the public they will do what is best for the nation as just 43% of the people believe either party can lead effectively. The GOP will have two years to prove they can best meet the public needs.
With both political parties staking early claims to success in the midterm elections and the spin machines in high gear pending the reality of the November 2 balloting, perhaps we should look at how America will survive one of the most contentious campaigns in recent memory.
Let's face it, between the two parties practically every aspect of American society has been demonized by one party or the other. It matters not whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, somewhere someone has probably trashed you and what you stand for this year.
TV ads already tell us both the Democrats and Republicans are bad for America. The Democrats are socialists or selfish if they back Obama while Republicans are Neanderthals or racists f they oppose him. Conservatives and liberals are both anti-American. There are the pacifists and war mongers, the tree huggers and drill baby drill brigades, '60's revolutionaries and Reaganities, Muslim haters and Jewish lovers, radical Christians and atheists, and the list goes on and on.
These were times when finding the issues in the midst of the virulent debate was almost impossible. Truth seemed to serve no purpose, facts were much too long for sound bites, and worn out clichés and slick slogans were always more convenient than honesty with the voters.
Partisanship and polarization were accepted strategies while reason and compromise were condemned. Heaven forbid if you were a spokesperson of any significance for a cause like Sarah Palin, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid, not to mention Barack Obama, because you were the target of scorn, rumor and innuendo at a scale not often witnessed in America.
The news media and the politicians were guilty of baiting the opposition, freely distorting facts, spreading untruths and character assassination, all plastered in our faces by blank checks from corporations, unions, billionaires and a bevy of special interests intent on having a bunch of politicians in their back pocket.
Yet come November 3 America will awaken to a new day and a bunch of new leaders just like it will awaken every day from now until Judgment Day. No doubt there will be some deep wounds left by the hatred and bitterness of the rhetoric and the lack of good judgment by politicians of both parties who were all too willing to forfeit fair play and common decency for their own egos and political survival.
Still, we are a nation that survived politics for 234 years because we placed our faith in the wisdom and genius of our Founding Fathers, not the politicians of expediency of today. By adhering to the incredible blueprint for success left as a legacy from our Founders, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the people of America have always survived the politicians.
Politicians come and go but the principles of our foundation never change. Our people are guaranteed life, liberty, equal opportunity, freedom and the pursuit of happiness no matter what the politicians in Washington do to try and take it away. Long ago the people understood that the conservative or liberal views of our politicians swing like a pendulum throughout our history when the people decide it is time for it to swing, not when the politicians declare they know what is best for us.
Our Founding Fathers created this great political show in our nation's capitol and then added an elaborate government framework with three distinct branches of government and checks and balances in order to protect the people from wasting all our lives being preoccupied with politics. There are 546 people in Washington doing the people's business at the beck and call of the people. That includes a president and vice president, 100 Senators and 435 house members, all elected, and 9 Supreme Court Justices appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
That's it. It takes 2 million civilian employees and 2 more million military to do the work of the 546 people but then it does keep a lot of people employed, out of Main Street and out of our hair throughout the year. In the end the 4 million people running our federal government equal just over 1% of our population so at least we have saved about 99% of the people from taking themselves too seriously.
Outside of Washington we know that a hard work ethic, common sense, a good sense of humor and a good bit of humility are the keys to our economy, education, competitiveness, sense of fair play, creative energy, compassion and place in the world, not the boasting or saber rattling of our politicians. And certainly not the pre-occupation of the media with the sins of the politicians.
It is the politicians who have the most to learn from the election. They must learn to shut up, stop whining and get on with the people's business or they will be thrown out of office. Right now they have lost sight of their role. We don't send Messiahs to Washington to lead us to salvation, we have our own churches and Gods to take care of that. We send people to Washington and the moment they lose sight of that relationship to us, is the moment their usefulness to America has ended.
This year the politicians are a sorry lot with a huge ego and an even bigger appetite for money. Greed is not an asset for our elected representatives. Come November 3, those lucky enough to survive and get elected have two years to demonstrate they have got the message. They better clean up their act, all of them, work together, and fix the mess they have got us into before we take things into our own hands. .
(Reuters) - Families mourned on Sunday the victims of one of Mexico's worst shootings, weeping over the open coffins of teenagers as young as 14 as Ciudad Juarez residents expressed outrage at surging violence.
Crowding around the bodies in white and gray coffins, parents and friends sobbed as they bid farewell to the 14 people killed at a family birthday party on Friday night in the Mexican city that is the epicenter of the country's drug war.
"This can't be happening. Today it's them who are killed, and tomorrow who will be next?" said a sister of one of the victims, who gave only her first name, Miriam.
In Tijuana across the border from San Diego, California, suspected drug gang hitmen shot dead 13 people at a drug rehab clinic on Sunday, a member of the local police force said.
And in the northern state of Coahuila, two women and a teenage boy died on Sunday after being caught in crossfire during a shootout between unidentified gunmen, police and soldiers, state prosecutors said.
The shooting in Juarez on Friday was the second massacre at a party this month in the city across from El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juarez has become one of the world's most violent cities since drug cartels launched a turf war there in early 2008. Almost 7,000 people have been killed in the city since then. .
Last Friday Morning Joe broadcast live from Tuscaloosa, Alabama as Joe Scarborough was receiving an award from the University. The broadcast was from the Rama Bama Cafe and for the most liberal network on TV it is a little odd and hypocritical that as you watched the show I could find no Blacks in the crowd of Cafe patrons but mostly Blacks in the kitchen preparing food.
How can that be politically correct for MSNBC? Just another example of the dual standards for the liberal media versus the Tea Party, Sarah Palin or anyone else on their hit list. They would have been condemned for not showing Black patrons. Let Mika show you the crowd for the record in the video until MSNBC jams the broadcast. .
One of the realities of economics is a favorable (Conservative) Congress can always trump an unfavorable (Liberal) president and never is that more obvious than in the 2010 midterm elections. Obama has clearly staked his claim as the enemy of the business community, big and small business, with harsh anti-business and class polarization rhetoric and a Progressive agenda threatening income redistribution and regulatory interference in a broad range of business interests.
Anyone wanting to send a message to Washington need only vote Republican and the extent of GOP wins will dictate the extent of the positive economic bounce that may result in the stock market and throughout the business community. Seldom, if ever, has a sitting president run against the entire scope of the broad based business community that fuels the American economy.
Perhaps Obama had no choice because he relied on the far left and self-serving special interests to get elected in the first place in 2008 and as feeble as his efforts were to take care of the unions, health care industries like insurers and pharmaceutical giants, and the housing industry, he built a base of special interests with diametrically opposed agendas.
Whatever he did to help his Goldman Sachs base hurt his SEIU union base. His efforts to protect the union health care plans while trying to appease the health care industry left him with a phony health care reform that may extend coverage to the uninsured at some point, but assured the health care industry they could raise prices and premiums to cover any loss. By guaranteeing that unions could keep their Cadillac high cost plans he assured future health care would drive up prices for all Americans.
As for his so called economic reforms, his highly heralded economic reform program did not even touch the housing industry which brought down the economy in the first place. His hundreds of millions of dollar contributors from Wall Street not only did not even get a slap on the wrist, they got federal bailouts and record bonuses since Obama was elected.
To protect his contributors to the most expensive presidential campaign in history in which Obama and the Democrats spent well over ONE BILLION DOLLARS to get him elected, he had to create a straw dog to blame for his failure to keep unemployment under 8%, his promise not mine, in order to get his TRILLION DOLLAR non-stimulus bill passed. Thus the Republicans and Bush became the enemy.
Certain truths have been conveniently obscured by our young president and he seems convinced the people of Main Street America are too stupid see through the political smoke screen. He cannot deliver on his promises to his own liberal base because the nation and the world are rejecting the folly of a liberal nation dominating the world. Unfortunately someone has to pay for the socialist agenda and it won't be the socialists who claim to be entitled to cradle to grave care from the government.
Every socialist experiment in the world in which there is no capitalist base to pay for the program has failed, pure and simple. Nearly every country in Europe has had to elect a conservative government to undertake the painful budget and deficit reforms needed to save the nations from bankruptcy while gutting the liberal promises previously made.
At the same time, Obama has run against the Bush and Republican record the 8 years before he got elected and forgets to mention the Democrats under Pelosi, not the Republicans, controlled the House the last two Bush years and approved the record deficits. During the entire 8 years many Democrats had to vote with the GOP in order for the depending to happen. In fact during the entire Bush years Republicans never had control like Obama did the last two years with huge majorities in the House and Senate, yet Bush always got the Democrats to approve his budgets and deficits and never whined about the Democrat minority or majority blocking progress.
A whole lot of misinformation has been thrown at the electorate in this, the worst year in campaigns in ages. It is a testament to the fact Obama made no effort to reform the campaign laws that give special interests more control than citizens and give campaign funds more importance than citizen needs. He owned the national agenda and made NO effort to fix the corrupt campaign mess we are in.
So we shall see to what extent the people were fooled by the politicians like Obama who has now taken his rightful place among the political establishment he is so quick to condemn. As I said, the stronger the Republican vote against the Obama agenda the stronger the recovery of the economy and the return to bi-partisan cooperation to solve our problems. .
As a journalist I have always been intrigued by the perceptions Americans have of our Southern neighbor the nation of Mexico. It always amazed me that so much of what Americans believed was influenced by the movies and news and so little by reality and the truth.
Though I was born and raised in Iowa I was fortunate to have relatives living by the Rio Grande River in Mission, Texas, just across the border from Mexico. My parents loved to take the family on trips and we spent many vacations down in the bottom of Texas where Mexicans always outnumbered the Americans.
Later when I went to college at the University of Arizona Tucson was less than an hour from Mexico and for those of us without a large allowance a trip across the border to Nogales or camping in Mexico on the Gulf of California was far less expensive. We even had the annual spring break ritual when tens of thousands of college students from Arizona to California schools would set out down the coast of Mexico and party until we ran out of money.
Even in those days we were warned of the dangers of banditos, the corrupt federales, and to beware of the water and food though the cheap tequila was always a much bigger threat. When you think about tens of thousands of rebellious teenagers invading the quiet villages of the Mexican coast I suspect they were warned about us as much as we were warned about them.
I even drove through Mexico from the border to Monterrey, the industrial city, Mexico City, Guadalajara and Acapulco and made it back safely. As students we drove with thousands of kids from Arizona down the Gulf of California to beach villages of Puerto Libertad, Guaymas and Mazatlan and seldom had a problem unless we caused the problems.
There were always dangers, about the same you might encounter in any metropolitan area in America if you got off the beaten path. But I was not a party animal and spent much of my time trying to learn about the Mexican people. I was fascinated by the rich and ancient history of the people and the hundreds of different Mexican Indian tribes I met along the way.
Back in Iowa most people were aware of Mexico only from the Walt Disney movie The Alamo, or the struggles for Independence by settlers from the Republic of Texas. Little was taught about the struggle of the people of Mexico against foreign invasions.
The Spanish invaded Mexico in 1519 and conquered an area from Mexico to South Carolina to San Francisco on the West Coast before they were through. Great Britain took part of Mexico in 1763 and part of Mexico was under French and part under Spanish rule in the time of Napoleon.
Through this period many European monarchs survived only because of the tons of gold they stole from the Mexican native Indians and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Mexican natives. It was the stolen wealth of Mexico that transformed Spain from a bankrupt nation to the most powerful kingdom on Earth at the time of the Spanish Armada. By 1821 the Mexicans declared independence from the Europeans but war broke out in the Texas territory which led to the fall of the Alamo in 1836 and Texas Independence the same year.
Four more military campaigns were fought between the Mexicans and Americans from 1846-48 before Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the fighting. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861 Great Britain, Spain and France all invaded Mexico in hopes of being in position to invade the USA if Lincoln lost the war for the Union. By 1863 France gained control of Mexico, Great Britain settled for Canada, and Spain was sent packing.
During the same time the first Mexican civil war took place and ended when American troops drove the French out of Mexico in 1867 and settled claims with Mexico. This was the first time our two nations helped each other and began a series of positive steps to be good neighbors. A second Mexican Revolution took place from 1910 to 1920 and there was American intervention until the outbreak of World War I. When World War II broke out Mexico joined the Americans in fighting the Germans and Japanese.
By 1995 America again came to the aid of the Mexicans when we saved them from a banking crisis that threatened to bankrupt the nation. Throughout the development of the United States Mexican migrant workers crossing the border were always a vital and welcome contribution to the development of our vegetable and fruit crops and agricultural production. As our industrial and manufacturing industries expanded illegal immigrants crossed the border to work.
And here we are today, again faced with a dire problem in which the Mexicans are fighting a brutal war against drug cartels to stop the illegal flow of drugs into America. This is really our war, not theirs as the cartels would not be in northern Mexico if not for the American drug trade.
Make no mistake, the brutal consequence of the war is that over 28,000 Mexicans have been killed in drug battles the past couple of years along the Mexican border leaving the peaceful towns and villages in a state of war and terror. Compare that to the 5,771 American military deaths throughout the entire Iraq and Afghanistan wars. That means FIVE times as many Mexicans have been killed defending our borders from drug cartels than our military deaths fighting terrorism halfway around the world.
Our political response has been to build a wall along the border to keep the bad guys away from us, to shield us from the carnage, and to ignore the horrors and massacre being inflicted on the Mexican people for our problems. What is taking place right under our noses is a massacre that should shame the most powerful nation on earth, a bloodbath being inflicted upon an innocent people who are just trying to help us out again.
Part two of this story will provide a detailed overview on how we can correct this tragedy and rebuild the relationship with the people of Mexico that reflects our common bond throughout our history as defenders against the Europeans and others who have threatened our freedom, and how we can be partners in seeking economic and energy independence in the world.
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Every time the Obama's almost convince us they are just like us common people they go and do something to prove they are not. Call it political naivety or stupidity, once an elitist always an elitist. You will never find Willie Nelson performing in the White House when pop stars like the Jonas brothers (for the Obama daughters) or Beyonce are available. Michelle's idea of catching a show is flying to NYC for a Broadway Production.
On his current campaign swing Barack again demonstrated his propensity for rock star elitism when he decided to show his concern for Main Street America and the small business community that powers our national economy by having a private meeting with the rock star of the mega-corporate world Steven Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple Corporation, the 2nd largest corporation in America.
It seems a key qualification for a business person to get a personal meeting with the people's president is to be a member of the billionaires club like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Steven Jobs. Hardly Main Street's idea of the common folk but when you are an Ivy League elitist you tend to have a different view of yourself and who should be in your presence I guess.
Make no mistake, Steven Jobs is legendary in the business world and is most certainly the top rock star of the billionaires club but in the midst of the final days of campaigning couldn't our president just once have a meeting with a corporate leader who represents the Made In America by American Workers goal we all want to promote, including our wayward president? I mean Apple has more Chinese employees in China than any other American company?
If I were an elitist and I had their money Jobs would be on my short list as well but why doesn't our president meet with a real American company CEO that epitomizes the Made In America by Americans we all want to see? Obama need look no further than his own state of Illinois for the perfect example, Caterpillar Corporation.
Caterpillar makes heavy equipment in America crucial to construction and mining operations around the world. It is one of the largest exporter of America goods overseas. In spite of the worldwide recession Caterpillar has increased their American manufacturing work force by over 7,500 employees in the last year and significantly increased export sales overseas which helps our balance of trade deficit. I guess it is too much to ask that an elitist president jump in the cab of an earth moving Cat from his home state when he can sip a latté in Silicon Valley with a billionaire.
We love you Obama because you are our president but be honest about yourself when your media people try to paint you as a commoner. John Kennedy never had to distort his Ivy League image to win our love because he knew even Ivy Leaguers can show concern and compassion for everyone and be real.
Barack and Michelle spent the last two years saying one thing and doing another. That does not sit well with the public and only makes you hypocrites. You say Michelle won't campaign then send her out to do million dollar political events. She spends a day on the Gulf Coast and a week at a Southern Spanish resort on vacation.
It's okay for our president to be a little elitist, we expect our president to be a little special. But do it with the style and class of a Kennedy, acknowledge you are different, but be the friend and advocate of Main Street America, along with rubbing shoulders with the billionaires club. .
The liberal media showed it's true colors when NPR fired their Senior Political Analyst Juan Williams, a decorated Black Journalist with a long and distinguished career with the Washington Post and NPR after Williams made comments about the Muslim controversy on the Fox News Bill O'Reilly.
Of course Fox has long been feared and hated by the Obama administration and is hated by the far left community because the Fox News ratings have buried the combined ratings of all the liberal shows and that has left the liberals bristling since Obama got elected.
Still there are a lot of good liberals and good liberal causes but when the liberals punish a fellow liberal for exercising free speech, now that is a true censoring of free speech. I wonder if we can get the liberal American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to defend the liberal reporter in a suit against the liberal National Public Broadcasting Networks over the right to free speech.
Sounds like a boondoggle for the liberal Trial Lawyers Association.
Here's what he said.
On Monday, O'Reilly asked Williams if there is a "Muslim dilemma" in the United States. The NPR analyst and longtime Fox News contributor agreed with O'Reilly that such a thing exists, and added that "political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don't address reality."
"I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot," Williams continued. "You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."
Some commentators and a leading Muslim civil rights organization took issue with Williams' comments. .
If the hundreds of polls being taken across the nation are scientific based, why are they so wrong on election day? The answer to this rather complex question is oftentimes simple as we watch the election day results and wonder how the different polls could be so far off the target. To understand the two principle deviations in polling results, one being over or underestimating the margin of victory, the second being the failure to anticipate the party impact, we must examine a number of factors.
First is the source of the polls. No matter what anyone says, any poll can distort results with some minor and seemingly insignificant actions. For example, those favoring one party over the other may inject bias with the language of the question. Questions can be deliberately designed to influence the answer by the language used.
For example, if you ask if someone likes President Obama most all Americans want to like our president and give them the benefit of the doubt. The media never portrays it that way but Americans not want their president to fail. But if you ask them if they are happy with the success of President Obama in making your life better, you will get a far different and better picture of public perception.
Any poll that is publicly published will either provide a biased view or sanitize the information to give more generic answers. It is the unpublished, insider polls that are closer to the truth and they will never be made public during an election. Most election strategy and all election media spending (advertising) is based on these secret polls. They have no interest in sharing their secrets with the media or opposition.
If you hear the president, the Democratic or Republican spokespeople or candidates talk about the public polls, which they do most of the time, you can discount the statement on partisan grounds. It is the insider daily tracking polls that tell the true story.
In order for any poll to really be accurate it must sort the sample by Democrats, Republicans and Independents which most don't. Then registered voters. Those who actually vote in off year elections which few polls ever track. And then it must be adjusted for turnout based on the motivation of the voters. Right now the Republican turnout should be about a third higher than Democrat as half of the Democrats are not satisfied with the president.
Add to that the fact traditional Democrat groups are not motivated. Then consider that the Independents who actually elected Obama have deserted him in huge numbers meaning about half of them have no party loyalty, which is not bad thing after the job both parties have done lately, so they will likely vote GOP in protest.
With 12 days to go not much will change as most people have already made up their minds. The economy is stuck until the GOP wins when you will see a significant improvement in the economy followed by improvement in the jobs picture because small businesses will know Obama cannot bury them in new taxes and regulations.
My advice, hang on to your hats as the politicians will get off one long blast of hot air in debates, commercials and appearances. When the smoke clears the people will speak and a new agenda will finally start to materialize to set us on the road to recovery, hopefully with a lot of new faces. Just 12 more days and people can start telling the truth again. .
Reality is as reality seems and the rage and discontent in America has been fueled by the most partisan, polarizing and paralyzing new president in our modern history. Somewhere along the way after being sworn in as president Barack Obama and his Chicago gang made a series of assumptions that defy logic and reflect either a total misunderstanding of democracy or an arrogant exercise in power politics not see since, maybe Napoleon in France.
Socialism is a political system based on a perceived sense of entitlement. In modern times the very socialist leaning system so rigorously pursued by our president and his confidants is crumbling around the world in nation after nation, especially in Europe, that embraced the socialist notion of creating a society based on entitlement rather than hard work and productivity.
One by one the socialist experiments of the world have fallen into disarray just as our young, idealistic and inexperienced new president decided he knew what was best for America without consulting the American people he was elected to represent. In America an election victory, especially one by just 7 % as Obama achieved, is far from a mandate but an opportunity to lead.
In the sweet elixir of his victory he forgot the most important principles of politics in America, our president is not king and once elected our president serves all the people all the time, not just those he likes who blindly support him. Two years later, nothing has changed. Obama remains the President of the Democrats who still support him and everyone else be damned, including the Democrats who once supported him and he betrayed for political expediency.
Make no mistake, Obama's agenda has no regard for the little people who are the backbone and foundation of America. His elitist worldview is based on bringing to America what we have rejected for over 234 years. We have no intention of making all the mistakes of our older European friends who long ago jumped to socialism because they were seduced by leaders whose vision extended no further than their noses.
Europe is a really old place and they have seen thousands of years of monarchs, despots, dictators, crazy kings, revolutions, capitalism, socialism, nazism and communism all come and go in the name of God and the worker. Of course once they become popular the God part fades away.
Recent generations have seen the collapse of the empty promises of socialism and nation by nation is not paying for the socialist sins of their parents. The health care and education systems love by Obama are self-destructing in a sea of long term debt. The cradle to grave promise of social welfare and pensions is drowning in bankrupt nations, ever growing demands for entitlement, and the rejection of socialist and leftist government and their replacement with fiscally conservative governments.
From the UK to France, Spain to Greece, Ireland to Italy, they are all following the lead of the one nation that has most incorporated and imitated the American way, the nation of Germany. Led by Angela Merkel and her conservative government, Germany is the most powerful nation in Europe after being totally destroyed and gutted twice in the past century and after absorbing the ruins of East Germany into the German nation after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Of course that should not be surprising to those of us in America since over sixty million Americans are fully or partly of German ancestry, the largest ethnic block by far in America. These are the descendants of the German immigrants to America who built our unparalleled agricultural system in the 1800's and powered our industrial revolution in the 1900's.
Our young president seems to have forgotten the lessons of the past or never learned them as he continues to be president to only those who don't criticize or oppose him. Well two thirds of the people don't agree with him or the direction he is leading the country and his fall from grace and the fall from grace of his Democrat party is the only possible outcome when arrogance and elitism are imposed on the people of America.
To the people of America the socialist leaning agenda of Obama is a dinosaur that has failed and is self-destructing in Europe and around the world. Americans have no desire to be better at socialism than the rest of the world. Fact is we have no interest in being anything like the rest of the world. We have the most integrated, multi-cultural, and dynamic nation in the world. We have the most powerful economy, natural resources, agricultural production and military on earth.
Our economy ranks second to none with the second greatest economy on earth, China, five times smaller than ours. We are the most generous, charitable, forgiving free people on earth and we are the only nation where people are desperate to move here and are willing to risk arrest to get here. We have a lot to be proud about and a lot more ambition, innovation, creativity and motivation than any people on earth.
Please Mr. President, respect our heritage not your naive vision. You work for us, all of us. .
As we finally head into the last 14 days of the election campaign Sarah Palin helped launch the final Tea Party Express cross country tour to help candidates as the election comes to a close. The New York Times says there are 129 Tea Party candidates running for the House and 9 running for the Senate. Of these, 33 House seats and 9 Senate seats have competitive Tea Party candidates, although less liberal groups believe far more seats may be in play. Beyond that there are a number of Tea Party candidates in the governor races, state legislatures, and even local offices.
Be that as it may, Palin and the Tea Party have written a new chapter in American political history with the first formidable launch of a movement that has a chance to evolve into a bona fide political third party. There has simply been nothing like it the past century in America.
It is true Ross Perot, who should be considered the Godfather of the Tea Party movement, did capture 19% of the vote in 1992 as a third party candidate but his efforts to form a defined political party did not succeed. Perot did, however, cost George Bush, Sr. his re-election as president. He also planted the seeds of discontent and provided a roadmap for future attempts to challenge the two party stranglehold on the American political process.
So far the Tea Party has organized as a series of independent groups, sort of a loose confederation, and has mastered much of the art of politics as seen by some stunning primary upsets. Within just a year they have demonstrated they are fearless, have weathered withering attacks by the left leaning media, the president and vice president, the congressional leadership, and the party spokespeople, while developing an ability to raise substantial money for campaigns.
In short, Sarah Palin and others give a face and a voice to the millions of disgruntled, disappointed, disgusted and determined citizens who have had enough government, deficit spending, increasing national debt and political double talk. Come November 3 we may find out just how much of an impact the silent voices of frustrated Americans might have earned.
It is clear in this election cycle the Republicans will be the primary beneficiary of the Tea Party movement because the GOP is the opposition to Obama and his left leaning agenda. But it is not clear that the Republicans can count on the long term support of the Tea Party, like into the 2012 elections. First and foremost, remember, they are Independents.
To the true Tea Party members neither political party offers much hope as they are equally responsible for being part of the old political establishment in our capitol. If the Tea Party stays with the Republicans it will only be because the GOP has changed for the better and is going to start practicing what they preach.
If they don't, look for the rise of a real third party challenge to our two party system.
There is one potential danger to the Tea Party solidarity should they decide to organize a challenge to the two party system. The only way the Tea Party could function as a national party is if they keep their platform and agenda focused on the priorities of limiting the size of government, eliminating pork barrel and deficit spending, and reducing the national debt.
Once you stray beyond the issues of economics or governmental powers, where the Tea Party members are united, and you get to the far more explosive social issues like abortion, prolife, gay rights, and many others, you begin to see the problem.
Many in the Tea Party want to adopt an expanded list of principles including social hot buttons, and then be uncompromising when pursuing them in congress and the White House. There are Tea Party members who are on both sides of most social issues. The passion for some of the causes is such they could never agree on a position. That is the long term dilemma facing Palin and the Tea Party.
They must find a way to unite as "outsiders" to fight the system while maintaining their own individual loyalty to certain causes not all will accept. If the GOP cannot find a way to accommodate these new advocates of the people, they will find another vehicle to mobilize around in the next election cycle, when Obama, the real threat to the Tea Party movement, is up for re-election. .
