I had no power at home so I checked my email at work and got two pieces of great news. 1) Occupy Los Angeles has finally been evicted from its nauseating camp .  2) There’s a video of Adam Carolla (formerly of The Man Show) that’s proven its appeal by going viral overnight.

What a glorious rant!  Not since Rick Santelli’s “rant heard ‘round the world” that launched the tea party movement has someone given voice so perfectly to the collective thoughts of everybody who works for a living and understands that they are not entitled to a permanent vacation.  To see it for yourself, Google Adam Carolla tears OWS Millennials a New One.

Adam Carolla gets it.  I’ve been referring to this pack of brats (even before they started occupying public spaces) as the Indignantly Entitled Generation.  

It goes back to their childhoods as Carolla points out.  Sweet Kindergarten teachers heap on the praise when one of the kids shows up and breathes.  And instead of a good old-fashioned swat on the ass when one of the little darlings force-feeds Playdoh® to his classmate, he gets a talking to about the feelings of others.  And the tearful kid he force-fed, who has just yakked up a glob of clay, gets forced to hear an insincere apology.  

Parents are brought in to “conference” about these incidents so the educrats can lecture them about how to properly parent to instill the maximum amount of self-esteem.  

Lazy kids are labeled with multiple learning disabilities or ADHD or Bi-Polar and given Individual Education Plans to help them get through some semblance of school.  The experts are brought in to dispense stimulants or anti-depressants depending on what diagnosis is in vogue at the time.  

Basically, the kid is surrounded by attentive adults when he behaves badly.  What do you think he learns?

When I was a kid, there were three reading groups in my 3^rd-grade class.  If you were in the slow group, you knew it.  But you could move into the advanced group if you demonstrated you were reading at that level.  Such an achievement gives a kid actual self-esteem, not the sense of shame he feels on hearing unearned praise.

When children go through most of their young lives receiving unearned praise, extra attention for bad behavior, and equal rewards to what the truly talented, brilliant, or hard workers receive, they are going to grow up believing simultaneously that they are a piece of crap and that the world should revolve around them.  Most people resolve this bit of cognitive dissonance by denying the “piece of crap” part and by becoming belligerent about what they believe the world owes them.  Some add membership in a grievance group to this revolting psychological stew.  

And there you have an OWS demonstrator.  He just graduated from a private university (that either his indulgent parents or an even more indulgent government paid for) and he’s angry that he can’t find a high-paying job that will keep him in the style his parents worked 30 years to achieve.  

God forbid he should take a service job or an entry level job in the field he wants to get into like people did in generations past.  He’s entitled to more.  His parents and teachers have always told him so.  

God forbid he should live in a studio apartment and live off rice and beans—not pre-packaged rice and beans but the kind that come in plastic bags, the kind that the beans have to be soaked overnight before being boiled for an hour.  He’s entitled to nourishing food and a balanced diet and if his parents can’t or won’t provide it, the taxpayers will be forced to through food stamps.

I was at a mental health professionals’ conference recently.  During a breakout session, one of the younger attendees asked the presenter “What is the state doing to help us advance our education?”  The presenter answered sympathetically and I sat there in amazement that this is what it’s come to.  It’s now just taken for granted—at least in the People’s Republic of California—that advanced education is one of the things the state should provide.  

The envy voiced by these OWS protestors is the natural characterological result of what’s been driven out of our culture: the Ten Commandments and a consequent common understanding of right and wrong.  Envy and jealousy used to be shameful character traits you’d try to hide if you felt them rattling their cages in your soul.  No longer.  Now all your friends will join you in chanting about them and in crapping on another person’s property that happens to be nicer than what you have.  

They blame capitalism for what they don’t have when it’s obvious that only capitalism could provide the financial support, the take-it-for-granted ease of life, and the permissive society that would countenance these brats.  I’ve noticed there’s no Occupy Riyadh or Occupy Havana or Occupy Beijing.  Neither kings nor commies like free speech.

The following article was originally published on mumbleabout.com on September 20,2011

I was getting my hair done last Saturday and overheard one woman say to another “Well, we can afford to pay more, so I think our taxes should go up.” At that point, I switched from “overhearing” to “eavesdropping” and made sure the women could see my iPhone case with the Gadsden Flag’s proclamation: “Don’t Tread On Me.”

It never ceases to amaze me how generous liberals like to be with other people’s money. Who is this “we” that woman was volunteering to pay higher taxes? Speak for yourself, sister. You and Warren Buffett can go ahead and send it in—from your bank accounts, not mine.

There used to be this thing in America that some of us still practice. It’s called charity or giving. It’s when I, voluntarily and for reasons of my own, decide that I want to give some of my hard-earned money to somebody else.

When I heard Obama’s much-ballyhooed JOBS speech last week, I thought, okay, just drop the JO from that and you’ll have the essence and the fragrance of this new speech that’s just like every other speech he has given. He hurls the same weapons at the same people in the class war he would dearly love to start.

His rhetoric is a match lit to the dry kindling of jealousy. It’s an appeal to one of the worst flaws in the human character, so ugly it has a name: the green-eyed monster, and so destructive to God’s world, it was prohibited in one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shall not covet.

Let’s face it. The world’s goods are not equally divided. You probably have more than some, but less than others. How would it strike you if Obama included your income level in his definition of “wealthy”?

He has set the bar at $250,000 ($200,000 in some reports). That may be a fortune in a rural community where rents and home prices are low, but in Southern California, after the taxes Obama wants to impose (not to mention State taxes, FICA, sales tax, and so on), that will leave you just about enough to make the mortgage on your modest three-bedroom house, keep the kids in college, and pay the other bills if the price of gasoline and groceries doesn’t go up too much. You’re not going to have enough left to hang out with Obama on Martha’s Vineyard. You’ll be lucky to get a week at the Colorado River.

As we get more details about how Obama plans to pay for his jobs for union members (oops, I mean public works projects like highway repair), it’s turning out that he intends to repeal the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers, chop nearly $250 billion from Medicare, make another $330 billion in cuts in other benefit programs, and save $1 trillion by pulling our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan (but not from the skies over Libya).

Reasonable people can disagree about the objective value of how much we’re spending in entitlements and military engagement. I’m not sure why when Republicans merely mention needing to do something about Social Security, Medicare, welfare, other entitlements, the Democrats and the media start screaming that Republicans are planning to let the poor and the elderly die in the streets. But when Obama mentions cutting entitlements, we hear not a peep. Personally, I don’t believe he’s at all interested in cutting entitlement spending. He’s interested in taxing some wealthy people (those who don’t run unions and who own businesses both large and small) and from that pot of money, giving generously to those he loves (union bosses and other Solyndras).

This is what confounds me, and if you really think about it honestly, it should confound you as well. Let’s say there’s a trillion dollars in wealth out there (to pick a nice round number). It’s currently owned by the “wealthy” (and for this discussion, let’s just say that “wealthy” means whatever Obama wants it to mean). But the wealthy don’t generally stash their cash in mattresses. They invest, spend, and hire.

They invest in American companies, which directly creates jobs. They invest in foreign companies, many of which export goods and services back to America. This also creates jobs in America: for the importer, for the distributors, for the merchants.

The wealthy spend. They buy stuff—at Neiman Marcus and at Target. They spend money at restaurants, movies, gas stations, grocery stores, and every place else. Liberals love to tell us that demand is the real job-creator. (If Economics 101 were still required in school, everyone would know that supply and demand is just looking at the same thing from two different perspectives; supply is demand and demand is supply). Anyway, the more money the wealthy have, the more they will demand, creating yet more jobs.

Finally, the wealthy hire. They hire gardeners, housekeepers, nannies, decorators, contractors, painters, plumbers, and so on. Again, this creates jobs.

Now let’s say the federal government decides to take that trillion dollars away from the “wealthy” by taxing them. None of the previously mentioned investing, spending, and hiring will now happen. Instead a large chunk of that trillion dollars will be siphoned off for a federal slush fund to buy Democratic votes, reward campaign contributors with cushy jobs in the federal government or no-bid contracts to supply services to the federal government. Yes, this also creates jobs. But it creates far less of them and instead of happening naturally by the exchange of one thing for another among free people, it now happens through force, confiscation, and then the phony largess of the federal government.

This is just another stimulus plan like the one they rammed through in February 2009. Where did the almost $900 billion for that fiasco go? There are signs up here and there informing us that this traffic jam is brought to us courtesy of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. They had Fair Oaks Avenue in my home town fouled up for more than a year, yet I rarely saw workers out there. They also had one of those signs sitting outside a decrepit hotel that was formerly home to the elderly on fixed incomes. Those elderly people are all gone now and the hotel is boarded up. This is what we got? Year-long repaving of less than a mile of street? Disappeared old folks?

Don’t fool yourself. Obama’s goal is not to create jobs. His goal is to hoard power for himself and his cronies—to pick and choose who gets their money taken away and who gets to have more.

The following article was originally published on mumbleabout.com on September 6, 2011

I was at the gym on Monday morning when President Obama appeared on the giant screen in front of the elliptical machine I was slogging away on.  I unplugged the energetic workout mix I had been listening to and plugged in to hear Obama.  It only took about 15 seconds before I had my speed up to 9.1 on that freaking machine, so angry had I become at yet another round of Obama’s lies and distortions being broadcast to the world.  Forget the dance mixes.  From now on, I’m working out to Obama speeches. 

Opening up for Obama was Jim Hoffa Jr., Teamsters Union President, whose disturbing offer of the Teamsters as an army to march for Obama accompanied by a call to “take these sons of bitches out” (SOBs being Tea Partiers).  If Sarah Palin had said something like that, we’d be in for wall-to-wall coverage of her “violent rhetoric” on all the mainstream news outlets. 

I’m not worried about Hoffa’s violent rhetoric.  I think it was just hyperbole.  I mean, nobody in the Teamsters has any mob ties and couldn’t possibly arrange a hit, right? 

Also, I know of one member of Local 399 (Hollywood Teamsters, representing motion picture workers: grips, drivers, etc.) who is a card-carrying member of the Tea Party as well.  Mr. Hoffa shouldn’t count on him for his army.

Obama’s remarks were about what you’d expect:  all credit to labor unions and his administration for everything that’s ever gone right with the economy and a reference to the “last ten years,” (translation: It’s Bush’s fault) for all that’s wrong with the economy now.  Then a sneak preview of his Big Fat Greek Speech on Thursday:  the nation’s highways need repairing (implying that he will make sure one million unemployed construction workers are put to work on the highways). 

He also said he wants trade deals worked out to “open markets for goods stamped Made in America.”  Then he threatened Congressional Republicans they if they don’t agree with his proposals, continued unemployment will be their fault.  In other words, “I’ve got a plan.  If you don’t agree with it, if you think it will actually be destructive to the economy, you dare not object because then you will be the obstacle to job creation.”  I pray this setup is transparent enough for even Obama sympathizers to see through.

Obama’s speeches generally contain more economic fallacies than Saudi Arabia has sand, but he used several of his old standbys in this speech.  His favorite seems to be Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy.  For those unfamiliar, it is: A broken window stimulates the economy because it generates income for the window maker who may then spend it on other things.  Keynesian economists love this argument.  They dredge it up for every natural disaster (Most recent incarnation:  Hurricane Irene will be good for the economy because billions will be spent on repairing the damage.)  Bastiat pointed out that the fallacy is readily apparent when we take this thinking to its logical conclusion.  If broken windows (or natural disasters) are good for the economy, why wait for them?  Let’s run around breaking things so we can get people employed to fix them. 

Absurd, right?  Yet the federal government merely employs a more sophisticated version of this fallacy whenever it “creates jobs” in one area at the expense of job creation in another area.  The federal government can only create government jobs (which must be supported by confiscating money from your paycheck) or government-funded jobs which are contracted out to private firms (again supported by confiscating money from your paycheck). 

Most would agree that road repair and maintenance are good things, but most would also agree that spending $73,000 to study the impact of dragon boat racing on cancer survivors is ridiculous (though it probably did provide employment for one or two pampered grad students).  We must begin asking the question “At the expense of whom?” whenever Obama or any politician promises to create jobs. 

The private sector funds the public sector.  If the private sector is being taxed and regulated to the point that it cannot generate wealth over its tax burden and lost productivity due to regulation, it will not hire people.  To put it simply, if your employer’s taxes go up (because he’s a “fatcat”—Obama’s new favorite insult—making more than $250,000 per year) and he has to lay off part of his workforce, including you, how does that make you better off? 

By the way, if Obama hates “fatcats” so much, maybe he shouldn’t vacation with them on Martha’s Vineyard.

Is California next up for this tactic?

In a breathtaking display of Orwellian irony, the California Redistricting Commission is citing the 1964 Voting Rights Act, which prohibited “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure” and made it illegal “to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”  The Commission cites this act, but intends to do the exact opposite. 

How did we come to this?  In 2008, California voters approved Proposition 11, which empowered a citizens commission to draw boundaries for the California Assembly districts and the California State Senate and that these boundaries would be redrawn every 10 years following the US Census.  Last November, California voters approved Proposition 20, which expanded the commission’s authority to also draw boundaries for US Congressional districts.  Both propositions sound great, don’t they?  Congressional districts were to be determined by citizens rather than politicians.  Constituents would be able to choose their representatives rather than having their representatives choosing their constituents.   

Congressional districts were to be formed by “communities of interest."  Prop. 20 defines a "community of interest" as "a contiguous population which shares common social and economic interests that should be included within a single district for purposes of its effective and fair representation. Examples of such shared interests are those common to an urban area, an industrial area, or an agricultural area, and those common to areas in which the people share similar living standards, use the same transportation facilities, have similar work opportunities, or have access to the same media of communication relevant to the election process."

So how in the world could this commission justify sawing Pasadena in half?  How could it justify carving out the historical conjoined siblings of Pasadena—San Marino and Arcadia?  How could it justify including the far-flung communities of San Dimas, Upland, Claremont, and La Verne, which you have to drive forever to get to? 

It couldn’t, unless it were corrupted somewhere along the line by developing an agenda to bestow privilege on particular racial groups which reliably vote Democrat (why blacks and Hispanics vote Democrat when it is not in their interest to do so as powerfully demonstrated by the decline in median income and employment in those communities since the Democrats took over the Federal Government in 2008 is another story).  The real goal of the commission was to create partisan redistricting favoring Democrats by using an utterly absurd interpretation of the Voting Rights Act to appeal to everyone’s desire to avoid racial prejudice. 

Does anyone really truly think that the way to avoid racial prejudice is to create race-based congressional districts?  Who the hell cares what color or ethnic background a voter has?  Only Democrats.  Democrats have long supported the Balkanization of our great nation, advocating continued segregation under the guise of “multiculturalism.”  Democrats have long nurtured suspicion and mistrust between the races.  They like it that way.  Repeating the lie that Republicans and Tea Partiers are racist over-and-over¹⁰⁰  (have to use scientific notation to accurately describe the number of times this crap is repeated daily on television) is the only trick they’ve got to try to separate us. 

Legislative boundaries should be drawn faithfully according to language of Prop. 20 (see above).  Ask any resident of Pasadena, San Marino, Arcadia, Altadena, and Sierra Madre where they shop, dine, go to movies, go to worship, and so on, and they’ll tell you they pretty much stay in these areas.  They do not—repeat, do not—drive to San Dimas for dinner.  Ask any resident of Pasadena whether its historical homes and areas should be split off from the rest of Pasadena because it has a majority black population and they’ll look at you like you’re nuts .  I never thought I’d see the day when logic and history were turned on their heads, when it would be somehow deemed an act of justice to promote racial segregation. 

For interested residents of the San Gabriel Valley, the commission’s maps have now been published and you can see them at: 

• State Assembly District 41: http://tinyurl.com/3ot2rlr
• State Senate District 25: tinyurl.com/3q12hxw
• US Congressional District 27: http://tinyurl.com/3eem8eq

Democratic politicians Judy Chu and Anthony Portantino have already announced candidacy or interest in representing these new districts (so much for constituents choosing their representatives!).  The only way we can stop this travesty is to contact the Redistricting Commission by the end of the day on August 15 (that’s two days from now) and object strenuously.  Email them at votersfirstact@crc.ca.gov.

Also, please visit http://www.fairthelines.org.  Commissioner Michael Ward is being prohibited by the commission from filing a public minority report on his reasons for voting against the proposed maps.  Also, please read the Flash Report by constitutional and election law attorneys Eastman and Bell: http://www.flashreport.org/blog/2011/07/22/eastman-bell-the-constitutional-role-of-partisans-in-the-redistricting-process/

 

 

I wonder how many shrinks Martin Bashir called before he found one who would 1) diagnose people he has never met or assessed, 2) predict the future behavior of a group, and 3) display attitudes, traits, and beliefs that point so clearly in the direction of an Axis II Personality Disorder.  Now I’m not diagnosing.  Dr. Stanton Peele may not meet all the required clinical criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but it’s looking like he’s got at least a few.  Also, I’ve been puzzling over the constant display of psychological projection coming from the Left for years.  In case you don’t know, projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else.  Leftists call the Tea Party violent when it’s actually their union thugs who are violent.  Leftists say the Tea Party wants to gag them.  Refresh my memory—which side of the aisle uses the courts to stifle political speech and wants the totalitarian Fairness Doctrine resurrected?  Calling Dr. Stanton Peele an “addiction specialist” is laughable.  Peele has almost zero credibility amongst addiction professionals who actually work on the front lines.  His notorious book, Resisting 12-Step Coercion, was written specifically for those who are looking for a loophole to continue their addiction.  Alcoholics Anonymous, started by an alcoholic stockbroker and an alcoholic physician in 1935, has been the most phenomenal solution to addiction ever.  One of Peele’s biggest problems with Alcoholics Anonymous is its reliance on a Higher Power or God.  He writes in his blog that the “forcing people to pray is against the US Constitution.”  I suppose that forcing people to pray would go against the establishment clause of the First Amendment.  The only problem is that AA does not “force people to pray.”  It must be a week for logical fallacies.  Between the Left’s Red Herrings to distract people from the real issue of US debt and this one, a classic example of Straw Man, I’m exhausted from trying to follow the trains of thought that simply go off the rails.

It’s pretty funny how often I can draw a parallel between the behavior of liberals and the behavior of alcoholics at the treatment center where I work.  Blaming the Tea Party for S&P’s downgrade of the US credit rating is exactly like an alcoholic blaming the person who was desperately trying to stop her drinking for her drinking.   “It’s your fault I drank and wrecked the car.  If you hadn’t argued with me about how much I was drinking . . .”  

The federal government needs an intervention.

All the pundits on all the networks have a variety of red herrings to try to distract us from the real problem. A variety of leftists have stated that S&P has no credibility because of its high rating of mortgage-backed securities back in 2008.  Others say that S&P’s math was flawed.  It’s interesting to me that both of these arguments were originally woven by the White House spin machine but have now become part of the mainstream media’s tapestry.  Others ask if the US deserves this downgrade in credit rating.  

In answer to the last, I would have to say yes indeed.  Deroy Murdock agrees with me, calling S&P’s downgrade a “patriotic act of tough love.”  

  The real problem is that the US cannot afford to do what it has promised and nobody wants to be the one who gets his goodies taken away.  I watch people riot in Europe because they will be losing some of their entitlements.  Did you hear that word?  Entitlements.  I am so tired of hearing people talk about what they’re entitled to, or worse yet they just assume they will be given whatever they’ve got their hand out for.  They don’t bother to think about where it comes from.  

As I said, I work at a treatment center.  Despite what you may see on Celebrity Rehab or some other far-from-reality show, the message of most drug and alcohol counselors is: Wake up and smell the personal responsibility.  You are not a victim and nobody owes you anything!  No, you can’t sign up for GR and food stamps.  Go get a job.  No, we won’t help you find a doctor to sign disability paperwork so you can get paid for the rest of your life for having a completely treatable mood disorder.  By the way, do you know where the money for GR and food stamps comes from?  

Blank stare with a touch of hostility.  They know I’m about to say something they won’t like.  “The social service office?” they mumble.  

Meanwhile I’m trying to fathom the depth and breadth of the immaturity and ignorance standing before me.  It’s breathtaking.  

I counter, “Before it arrived at the social service office?”

“The government.  Oh, oh, the County,” they say, thinking they’ve guessed correctly.

“Right.  You see, the county has groves and groves of money trees out in the desert growing billions of dollars just for you.”  

I swear I’m not trying to make our patients look bad.  It really is exactly like I’ve described.  There is something interesting at play here.  The behavior I’m describing comes almost exclusively from people who are under 30.  You may want to blame their parents or a permissive culture, but it’s that and more.  Beginning with the first day of school, teachers are more concerned with a child’s self-esteem than his achievements.   That kind of thinking has produced an entire generation of young adults who feel very good about themselves for no particular reason.  And they think they are entitled to a government-funded college education, free health care, and a couple of hundred bucks a month and food stamps if they don’t have a job.  There are actually advertisements floating around encouraging people to become dependent on the government.   

On the morning of August 7 (this was after the debt ceiling debacle and S&P’s downgrade), I received an email from “Social Security Disability" <support@mktg.efdk223otackling.info> (In case you want to email them and complain) announcing “The Social Security Disability Steady Income Program.”  I am not making this up.  Here’s the text:

The Tea Party is the only group of people standing between where we are now—AA+—and where we are going if we don’t come to our senses—Greece.  

 

Most of my friends, even the ones who agree with me, know far better than to ask me a question like “What is the debt ceiling, anyway?”  They know it’s like asking me the time.  I’ll answer with the history of Switzerland and how superior Swiss watches are before I finally say, oh, it’s um, 3:15. 

Trying to explain the debt ceiling without making your listener face-plant into their lunch is a challenge.  Frankly, most people don’t give a damn about what goes on inside the Beltway.  But ABC, NBC, CBS, MSLSD, CNN, and even Fox News have all been trying to scare the crap out of people by reporting that if the politicians in Washington don’t raise the debt ceiling, doomsday will ensue.   They’re kind of vague about exactly how doomsday will look: The stock market will “react.”  The United States will “default.”  We’ll lose our triple-A credit rating.  Okay, man, whatever.  Didja hear about Amy Winehouse?

Anyway, I tried to explain it without boring my friend Kate to death when she asked me the other day.  Using an example drawn from my own life (two decades of fiscal irresponsibility before I grew up and became a Republican), I shared how every department store in town plus all the major credit card companies gave me a plastic card when I was about 20.  Having no understanding of economics, I went wild.  I bought everything I wanted, asking myself only if I could afford the increase to my minimum payments.  In a few years, I had some beautiful clothes and a 40% debt ratio—that is, I owed various entities 40% of my annual salary.  After taxes, I had 30% of my annual salary to live on.  Worse yet, the interest I was accruing on my total debt was more than my required minimum payments, which I could barely make anyway, so my debt kept getting bigger.  Plus I had normal living expenses: housing, food, utilities, etc. 

At this point, I hear a chorus of elitists led by Paul Krugman snottily proclaiming that a nation isn’t the same as a person and that national debt is not the same as individual debt.  The point they’re trying to make is twaddle, but they’re technically correct.  A nation isn’t the same as a person and national debt isn’t the same as individual debt.  It’s a great deal worse.  Our national debt is $14 trillion.  Our annual revenue is $2.2 trillion.  Our annual interest is $3.6 trillion.  To deal with this, our elected officials have borrowed money from China, printed money (euphemistically called quantitative easing by the Obfuscator-in-Chief and his spin machine), and raised taxes.  An individual can’t do any of that.  If you want someone to bail you out of your personal irresponsibility, nobody in their right mind will do so unless you agree to some sort of personal “cut, cap, and balance” plan.  In my case, I went to my mom for help (I had the decency to be humiliated by this).  She had her own version of a balanced budget amendment that she rightfully insisted I agree to before she agreed to help me out of my mess.  (Thank you, Mom.  I hope Heaven is rewarding you for loving me enough to hold me accountable). 

In the national scenario, the American people are trying desperately to hold our irresponsible children, Obama and the US Congress, accountable.  But they aren’t having it.  Instead they’re saying that it will be the fault of those we elected to stop the madness (Tea Party Republicans) when they have to cut off social security checks next week.  This is like it would have been for me to tell Citibank they’d be responsible for me not feeding my son if they didn’t raise my credit limit—and making this threat while I was at Nordstrom charging some new clothes. 

Was my problem not having a high enough credit limit?  Of course not.  The problem was the debt I had already run up.  And our nation’s problem is not the debt ceiling; it’s the debt.  -CT

I, like many other conservative republicans, grew disaffected with the Republican Party during the last four years of George W. Bush's presidency.  I tried to follow Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow republican; however, at least in terms of domestic policy, it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to tell the republicans from the democrats. Even without TARP and Fannie and Freddie, spending was up 70% over the eight years Bush held office.  I had dutifully sent money to the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, believing that they knew best which candidates had a shot a winning and would direct funds accordingly.  Privately, I complained about the National Republican Committee never sending any interesting speakers or fundraisers our way.  My conservative friends and I joked that our residence in the People's Republic of California sucked in terms of being surrounded by nincompoops, being taxed to death, and being represented in the House by either Democrats or RINOS, but gee, the weather is great. 

Right around that time, the Tea Party formed and I fell in love with conservatism all over again.  Finally, a movement that targeted RINOs as much as it did loony libs!  I went to some rallies and supported our local candidates and made a wonderful bunch of new friends who reminded me that conservatism is vital and alive in California, even in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.  Yes, we were up against it, but I had hope again.  Then the historic 2010 election happened.  Our tea party group rejoiced as the Republican Tsunami washed across the entire country.  Though some of us felt let down by the results in Nevada and California, we all met on November 3 at 6am to renew our commitment to this fight.  We recognized that we didn't have a failure of leadership so much as a failure of citizenship.  We had been caught up in our own lives and hadn't fought the creeping socialism until it crept in and snatched our children's future, leaving nothing behind but perverted values, a coarsened culture, and a leftist narrative that sounded like music to the ears of what I call the Indignantly Entitled Generation.  God help us!

In response, I decided that the Internet needed one more blog: a report from behind enemy lines reminding the rest of the country that we might be a little beleaguered, but we are not going away.  We'll report on issues that affect California and often the rest of the nation.  Remember that old saying "As goes California, so goes the rest of the nation."  You better hope not!  And you might want to start paying attention.

-Cynthia T