Is America Mad?

My friend Phillip Adams wrote an article in The Australian recently titled Is America mad? Phillip has a tendency to lean a bit to the left at times, but he has leaned so far this time that he has fallen off the cliff. Personally, I think he bumped his head more than once on the way down. Some of his ridiculous offerings to show that America has gone mad were nothing more than “yellow journalism,” resurrected from the graveyard of 19th and 20th century journalism, a time when journalists sought to out-lie, out-twist, and color facts to suit their own agendas to sell papers. Wait, that sounds almost like the journalism of the 21st century. Alas, I digress, since that would be a topic for a whole other blog post. I will leave you to read the article for yourself, and then you decide.

I replied to Phillip’s post in the comments section, but apparently the censors at The Australian, or perhaps one of Phillip’s assistants, deemed it not suitable for publication. My only choice was to fire it off to Phillip’s personal e-mail address, where I am sure he will read it. We have exchanged opinions for a good number of years now, and, to this date, Phillip has yet to take offense to any rebuttal I have offered, unlike some of the other left-wing writers in various media enterprises. At the end of my e-mail to Phillip, I advised that I would be writing an article using the same title as his presentation that would tell him why America is mad. Some of you have figured it out, but it seems that our friends and enemies alike on the left have not “gotten it yet.”

Is America Mad?

Yes, America is mad. The people of America are mad. American citizens have not lost their minds; they are mad, angry, furious at what is happening to our country. Those of you who are old enough to remember the production called Network will remember the words of Howard Beale, broadcast journalist on UBS, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Yes, rather than just drinking at the kool-ade pond of the elephants or the donkeys, the citizens who are informed are mad as hell. We have seen this demonstrated across this great nation of ours in the form of Town Hall meetings, Tea Parties, and most recently, the Tea Party in Washington, DC, where some two million (give or take a few thousand) American citizens gathered to announce to Washington and to the world that "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" My daddy would have said, “Enough is enough, and too much is nasty.”

America is mad at the government spending that is driving this country deeper and deeper into debt, so deep that neither our grandchildren nor their children will ever see paid off. America is mad because of $787B stimulus spending and the $410B omnibus spending, that together about equal the $1.2T deficit that was supposedly "inherited.”

Now that the fiscal year has ended, we see that the feds ran a $1.58T deficit for FY 2009, the all-time record and the first deficit over a trillion bucks. This deficit is 3.4 times the $459B deficit of 2008, and 10 times the $160B deficit of 2007, which began when Republicans were still in control of Congress.

The left claims that those on the right are racists and are “mad” at Obama for all the spending, but that is not the truth. The American people are mad at those responsible for the madness and spending, whether it includes the President or not. The target of the anger is Congress. It is Congress that is responsible for budgets and budget deficits. Appropriations and budgets are set by the legislature, not the President. And Congress has been controlled by Democrats for nearly three years now, during which time they have set the two highest deficits in history, this year's record being almost four times the Republican record of 2004.

A survey of the OMB's Historical Tables (page 21) going back to the inception of the income tax in 1913 shows that no matter how we look at it, a Republican Congress does better at balancing the budget than does a Democrat Congress. Republican Congresses have produced the most recent surpluses, the largest surpluses, the most back-to-back surpluses, the most surpluses under a President of either party, etc. This is why the Democrats and their media lapdogs lay the responsibility for budgets and deficits on the President.

According to the OMB's Mid-Session Review (page 26) from August 25, total revenue for FY 2009 was down by $450 billion from FY 2008, yet the deficit was up by more than $1.1 trillion. So the problem is spending, not revenue. And in the middle of this massive shortfall, Congress is trying to saddle America with even more debt, with "initiatives" like healthcare reform, cap-and-trade, and "green" ventures. The latest OMB projections predict huge deficits for the next decade. These projections do not take into account Congress' spending spree in legislation that is still under consideration.

America is mad because of the complete violation of the Constitution by this President. He seized control of two major automobile companies and gave majority ownership to the Unions as payback for votes, with complete disregard to the objections of stockholders and to the giving of a major portion of ownership to Fiat for ZERO dollars while the stockholders in that company were disenfranchised. He placed politically appointed individuals in charge of both these companies while discharging CEOs who were the rightfully elected officers of these companies. Only the stockholders through the board of directors have to right to discharge these individuals, not the President of the U.S.

America is mad because of the so-called Healthcare Reform Bill that is being crammed down our throats by the do-nothings in Congress and a President who, by their own admission, have not read the bill and don’t know what is in it because it is too complicated to understand even by lawyers. The question is then: Why is such a travesty being considered? The job of the legislature is to offer checks and balances and not allow a President to run any request roughshod over the American people. America is mad because the legislature is not doing the job it was elected to do. It appears that perhaps those elected representatives received a wake-up call during the August recess, but we will continue to wait and see just how awake they are, or if they will allow the plan to be pushed through even though the majority of the people do not want it, according to the latest Rasmussen poll. (41% of voters nationwide now favor the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the lowest level of support yet measured. Fifty-six percent (56%) are opposed to the plan.)

Americans are mad because they see this country slowly being handed into control of foreign influence rather than American influence especially in the business and financial markets. According to Rasmussen, fifty-eight percent (58%) say the American economy will benefit more from decisions made by U.S. business leaders to help their own businesses grow than from decisions made by world leaders to help the global economy.

While Obama and the world leaders pushed ahead with plans for greater international coordination of their national economic policies, 60% of Americans think international organizations should have less influence on U.S. economic policy , not more. After all, 75% say what’s good for the world economy is not always good for the U.S. economy America is mad at the constant lies being handed off as truth and/or “good-for-you” by an administration that feels the American public is too stupid to know the truth or to decide what is good for them on their own.

I offered just a small portion of the Barnyard Bovine Excrement that has been handed to the American Public over the last 18 months in this article and this one

America is mad due to constantly being told that more spending and more government in our daily lives is what we need and is, according to the left, subscribed to in the Constitution in the phrase “For the General Welfare.” The way the left wishes to use this phrase is to provide more for the non-productive while taking more from the productive. Those who are informed are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore,” for certainly this was not the intent of the Founding Fathers and writers of the Constitution.

So, in answer to Phillip Adams’ article in The Australia, yes, America is mad, but not in the way you use the word “mad.” America is mad that so many of its fellow citizens are too blind to see in Obama what Roman philosopher and statesman <Marcus Tullius Cicero said 2000 years ago when lamenting Julius Caesar's rise to dictator:

" Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions … Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the “new, wonderful good society” which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean “more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious” [emphasis added]. Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he only one man.