DAILY DOSE OF DEPRESSION
Re: Quin Hillyer’s Not Gonna Write About It:

Your despair at the current political situation in this country regarding the Stimulus Bill has led you to a rock solid truth: that the Stimulus is a political bill, not an economic bill. It is designed to deliver Democrat votes in areas of the country that are changing from red to blue. The earlier TARP concept to unfreeze credit markets is a legitimate economic concept that should be continued. But the Stimulus Bill is a lie, an assault on common sense.

We know it is a lie because its underlying assumption is a lie. Global Warming caused by human induced release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has not been proved. Indeed it has been disproved. Based on the assumption of Global Warming, the Democrats say they will bring alternative energy sources to market with government subsidies and eliminate carbon as a pollutant. These alternative energy sources cannot make it to market on their own dime. Meanwhile abundant natural resources, trillions of dollars in oil, gas and coal, enough to meet our energy needs for decades lay wasting in the ground and in the sea.

To fund the Stimulus, the government will borrow huge sums of money. Yet the oil, natural gas and coal are commodities which are the equivalent of money. So why do we have to borrow money from foreigners when our natural resources can provide the money to fund economic growth?

Again the reason is that the Stimulus is really a plan to take control of the Country. So take heart that the truth is in sight and right makes might.
— Howard Lohmuller

Two things: 1) The artwork with this article is reminiscent of Soviet art of the last century.

2) One of the best adjectives I have heard to date to describe Obama, his works, his minions and others of his ilk: “Obamunist.” (Obama plus communist)

I guess now I should start to worry about the knock on the door in the middle of the night by Obama’s STASI, er, the “Peoples’ Army,” or whatever the new domestic “peacekeeping” organizations will be called.
— Gretchen L. Chellson
Alexandria, Virginia

Two books explain much of what is happening in America. The first is “The Vision of the Anointed,” by Thomas Sowell, and the second, more frightening, is “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” by William Shirer. The former gives the motives, and the latter describes the means for subjugating a free people. The parallels with pre-1936 Nazi Germany are so striking as to be make one believe he is reliving history. Obama’s apocalyptic language is appropriate, but not in the way he intended. We must commit to live free or die.
— Larry C. Roberts

BRACING FOR IMPACT
Re: W. James Antle’s The Democrats’ Greatest Hits:

Frightening piece, Mr. Antle.

The four horsepersons of the new apocalypse — Obama, Emanuel, Reid, and Pelosi – are using me as an economic crash test dummy, securely buckled in and headed toward a wall at a hundred miles an hour.

Thud!
— A. C. Santore

I can’t imagine why Americans are so upset about running trillion-dollar deficits, year after year. After all, soon enough I’ll be able to take a newly printed $100 trillion bill out of my pocket and personally pay down the entire national debt — and get change back, to boot. Problem solved, worry warts.
— David Govett
Davis, California

CARRIES HIMSELF LIKE A…JOKER

Re: Nicole Russell’s Al in a Box:

Mr. Franken certainly does not have the bearing of a Senator; few Democrats today do. Mr. Franken is typical of today’s Democrats, most of whom are motivated by anger and hatred. They are angry that we, the people, do not buy into their hokey social and economic theories. And they hate the country that allowed their parents and grandparents to accumulate the wealth that sustains them now.
— Jay W. Molyneaux
Denver, North Carolina

OLDER MODEL PERSPECTIVE
Re: Eric Peters’s The Future of the Car Industry:

Mr. Peters is right, of course, it can’t be stopped now. The native auto industry is in for big changes under the direction of the country’s number one tax cheat and most of it is unavoidable but it did not have to be this way. GM, which has fed my family since my parents came to Michigan at the start of World War II, deserves a better fate even if it has made big mistakes, but these pale into insignificance when compared to the abuse from our own government. These, as I have written previously, include but are not limited to the awful CAFE, almost unlimited support for an increasingly clueless UAW, environmental overreaches, stupid inhibitions on the development our own resources, and the like. All while the over-capacity scenario was gathering with the support of Socialist governments the world over.

I suppose that one can’t overestimate the cost of health care on the Big Three. I recall that after I left GM in early 1991 to work for the State of Michigan, I was appalled when all the auto companies embraced the Clinton health care take over. At that time the litany was health care was 17% of our GNP and something must be done. We are hearing the same from Obama’s people this time. I gave speeches around the state in 1991 as Director of Workers’ Compensation for Michigan to the effect “who says 17% is too much maybe it is not enough considering the advances in health care in the USA that has improved the lives of all citizens and especially seniors immeasurably. I ask essentially the same question today: “why do we want to ruin the best if not perfect health care system in the world because someone thinks 17% is too much?” Well Mr. Peters, change is hard for everyone and I guess more so for “seasoned citizens” who have been around long enough to see the whole picture but we also know change is inevitable and each generation will have its own failures and successes. I just wish this generation had evolved from a less toxic culture.
— Jack Wheatley
Royal Oak, Michigan.

COST-BENEFIT
Re: William Tucker’s The Next Subprime Mortgage Meltdown:

The Looney Left frequently attacks missile defense as being too expensive and ineffective (too little bang for the buck); they have no patience for working out the bugs from the system. Yet the very same people have no problems with, or question about the expense and effectiveness of, alternative energies; they simply accept that the technology is possible and efficient. Consistency in logic is needed — by both sides of the aisle.
— Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York

NOT-SO-GREAT EMANCIPATOR
Re: Roger Kaplan’s Lincoln at 200:

Lincoln worshipers continue to claim that his actions were justified by one of two angles, “saving the Union” or ending slavery.

No where in the Constitution does it say a thing about leaving the Union. The Constitution is silent — if viewed as a legally binding contract, there is nothing that binds the states to the union of the states in the founding documents. The founding documents did not create an all powerful central government like the one they fought a war to get away from.

Those who use ending the institution of slavery by force as a worthy or singular justification need to explain why that institution was any less an abomination in 1619 when the first slaves were traded at Jamestown Virginia, in 1776 when the northern colonies essentially begged their southern slave colonies to join in their war of independence or more importantly why the Constitution was ratified with slavery left intact as an institution?

All rolled up, the end justifies the means is what took place between 1861 and 1865. The precedents set by Lincoln’s actions have spawned some pretty negative consequences for which we are all paying.

The Civil War didn’t just happen one fine day. It took decades of discontent and friction between those that were trying to limit it or destroy it by simple majority rule and those trying to preserve it and their economic way of life or expand it. It is my belief that a separate Confederacy would have been an economic failure in a relatively short period of time if they had been let go

John Adams, a Federalist like Lincoln, said on his death bed, “Jefferson survives,” meaning that Jefferson’s ideal of a loose confederation of states survived the test of time while his belief in a strong central government didn’t. I doubt either Jefferson or Adams would look too approvingly upon where we are today given that the written Constitution means nothing as a check and balance and the Federal Government is bankrupting the nation and subsidizing the production of more slaves by the day.
— Thom Bateman
Newport News, Virginia

FINALLY, SOMETHING TO LIKE ABOUT BC
Re: G. Tracy Mehan, III’s A Miracle in Boston:

Thank you for this article. And so timely! I look forward to showing it to my fellow alumni at the Boston College High School New York Alumni Club get-together tonight (17 Feb) in Manhattan.
— Paul DeSisto
Cedar Grove, New Jersey

GOLF DIGEST, PROPAGANDA MILL
Re: The Prowler’s In All Fairness:

If we are going down the “Fairness” road…will it change magazines and retail stores? Will “Golf Digest” be required to carry baseball statistics and information?

And, last weekend I was in “Babies ‘R Us.” I looked all over and couldn’t find an outdoor charcoal grill anywhere. Can Mr. Waxman see about requiring them to stock outdoor products as well?
— Bill H.
Plano, Texas

I guess Barack Obama and his cronies want to remake the media in their own image.

This is the same nonsensical pattern the liberal left has been following for years: preach honest debate and the “fair” exchange of ideas, but silence your opposition.

Obama’s cronies contend that broadcast media operate on airwaves that belong to the public. If that’s true, then why is it that the government defines what is in the public interest? Is the public too stupid to know that for themselves?

Perhaps what the public chooses to listen to or watch has a bearing on what their interest might be. Businesses, if they want to stay in business, will from time to time survey their customers to see how well they are meeting their customers’ needs. And businesses will study those results and make adjustments accordingly. They don’t need the government’s help.

Broadcast outlets are also businesses. In order for them to stay in business they must know what their customers demand. And like any business, they have the means to get that information from them without interference from the government.

Unless, of course, the government wishes to control the information that the media outlets disperse.

In the 1770s, the only media we had were Committees of Correspondence. These committees let people in Pennsylvania know what was going on in Massachusetts, as well as the other colonies so that the Founding Fathers and others had reliable sources of information.

Just think.  Had there been a “Fairness Doctrine” in place in the 1770s, there would never have been a United States of America.
— Mike Sheeran

AH, FOR THE GOOD OLD (TESTAMENT) DAYS
Re: Mark Tooley’s A Real “Economic” Recovery:

Samson slew a thousand Philistines with the jaw bone of an ass (Judges 15:15). Boy, oh, boy, what he could have done with “church maestro Brian McLaren.”
— Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York