With the healthcare debate it might be important to note a few key words from the Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, otherwise known as the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

First: “endowed by their Creator” -- American values spring forth not from Congress, the President, the Courts, or even the people; the rights of Americans come from God.

Second: “among these” -- This is not a complete list of those rights.

By any unbiased understanding of the God as perceived by a vast majority of Americans, there is a moral obligation to, as the U.S. Constitution puts it: “promote the general Welfare”. Everyone who is in America has a God-given right to healthcare. The level of such care should be debated, but not the concept that all should have the care.

Having pushed through an unread “stimulus” bill, increased the debit and deficit, burdened future generations of Americans with the bill, and having tried but failed to force health care reform down American’s throats, President Obama is now planning to address a joint session of Congress on the matter.

I realize Democrats do not answer questions from people who disagree, but I would like to see him start by answering one simple question: “What problem/problems are you trying to solve?”

According to the President, there are 46 million uninsured people in this country. According to one estimate, 9.7 million are not U.S. citizens and 14 million already qualify for Medicaid or other programs. That leaves some 23 million people truly uncovered out of a population of 307 million.

Now, obviously, those people need health care/insurance, but what would it take to do that?

There are also other problems to solve.

Most health insurance is tied to your job, lose your job and you lose your health insurance. Mr. Obama, provide a suggested solution to that problem, perhaps health unemployment insurance.

Then there are all those “unnecessary” tests. I would guess some of the tests are done to make money. Many more are probably done by doctors who are concerned that if they do not do every possible test, and something goes wrong, the doctor will be sued. The first group of test is fraud and there are already laws on the books for that – just enforce them. As for the second, tort reform – perhaps an independent arbitration board.

There are other issues – but until Mr. Obama lists the problems he wants to solve, Americans should not support any so-call solutions, no matter how well packaged.

According to the AP:

A Commerce Department report on Thursday showed total retail sales edged down 0.1 percent…Excluding motor vehicles and parts, sales fell 0.6 percent in July…

Analysts had expected a boost to retail sales from the government's "cash for clunkers" program and predicted a 0.7 percent advance in overall July sales.

They said the program…had pulled spending away from other sectors.

Just shocking that people took advantage of the government's give-away of cash and spent some of their own money to buy the cars and thus did not spend that money elsewhere.

In other words:

• Cash for clunkers took money (borrowed from the future) and gave it to others (wealth distribution).
• People took money the they would have spent on other items anyway and spent it on cars (so little change in total money they spent).

Pakistan's nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in little reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety and security of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to western analysts.

The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly.

This is certainly an under reported story in the USA and a very, very scary scenario. It is one of the nightmares facing the USA, the West, Israel, India and others. 

According to the liberal Los Angeles Times:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, insisting at the start of a long and politically heated summer congressional recess that healthcare reform can be achieved this fall, today are calling the disruption of "town-hall'' meetings by vocal protesters "simply un-American.''

But, when anti-Bush, anti-war protesters were demonstrating at the private burials of soldiers killed in action, not a peep was heard from them – it was free speech.

The nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Japan on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed on August 9^th by the detonation of the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. It is estimated (no one knows for sure) that the bombs killed as many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki.

Sixty-four years later, it is easy for some to say the bombs should not have been dropped. But, some prespective.

On the night of 9–10 March 1945, US Army Air Force B-29s dropped 1,700 tons of bombs on Tokoyo. Approximately 16 square miles of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting firestorm. Not A-bombs -- firebombs, of which the US had many, many more to drop.

On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945 (April Fool’s Day) the US invaded Okinawa. The battle has one of the highest number of casualties of any World War Two engagement: the Japanese lost over 100,000 troops, and the Allies (mostly United States) suffered more than 50,000 casualties, with over 12,000 killed in action. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, wounded or attempted suicide. Approximately one-fourth of the civilian population died due to the invasion.

Had the USA not dropped the atomic bombs, and had an invasion of Japan been necessary, it is estimted that US and Allied casualties (dead, wounded, missing) would be 1.4 to 4.0 million. Japanese dead have been estimated at 5-10 million.

As absurd as it sounds, the US dropping the atomic bombs saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives; both Allied and Japanese.

Now imagine the coverage if Rudolph Giuliani had implemented such a program. What if George W. Bush initiated a similar Federal program! One can almost hear the screams from the left.

According to The Liberal New York Times:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended a city program to send homeless families out of New York on planes, trains and buses on Wednesday, saying it “saves the taxpayers of New York City an enormous amount of money.”

Speaking in the Blue Room in City Hall to announce a new finance commissioner, Mr. Bloomberg was asked if the program simply shifts the homelessness program to a different place, as some critics of the program have suggested.

“I don’t know, when they get to the other places, whether they find jobs,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It may be an easier place for them. If we don’t — we either have two choices. We can do this program or pay an enormous amount of money daily to provide housing.”

It costs the city about $36,000 a year to provide shelter for a homeless family. The average stay in shelter is about nine months.

But Mr. Bloomberg appeared sensitive to the image of flying homeless families to far-flung places, as the program is set up to do. In the past two years, families have been provided one-way tickets to Haiti, Peru, Mexico City, St. Croix, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, Santo Domingo and Casablanca. (The most popular destinations are Puerto Rico, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.)

“The average cost is trivial,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Most go by bus. Very few go overseas, very few go long distances. Bus is the normal ways we pay for transportation, rather than air.”

In fact, the most common mode of travel for families in the program is air, not bus. Forty-eight percent travel by airplane; 37 percent by bus; and 15 percent by train, according to city data.

Count me among those who think that all this hoopla over President Obama’s birth certificate is a bunch of animal waste. Those pursuing this should investigate something much more critical and dangerous, like the Piltdown man.

However, according to the AP:

State officials again are confirming that President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.

Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said Monday she has seen the original birth records that verify Obama was born in Hawaii, and is a "natural-born American citizen."

Fukino made the announcement in hopes of ending any lingering rumors about Obama's citizenship. She issued a similar press release Oct. 31.

State law bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.

Excuse me, if the citizens of the United States do not have a “tangible interest” in their president’s birth certificate, one of the requirements to be president – who does.

If the facts as presented are shown to be correct, then the fascists have really taken over the country. According to the New York Post:

A Brooklyn nurse claims she was forced to choose between her religious convictions and her job when Mount Sinai Hospital ordered her to assist in a late-term abortion against her will…

The hospital even exaggerated the patient's condition and claimed the woman could die if the nurse, a devout Catholic, did not follow orders, the nurse alleges in a lawsuit…

The married mother of a year-old baby was 30 minutes into her early-morning shift when she realized she had been assigned to an abortion. She begged her supervisor to find a replacement nurse for the procedure. The hospital had a six-hour window to find a fill-in, the suit says…

Her pleas were rejected, and instead she was threatened with career-ending charges of insubordination and patient abandonment, according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.

According to the AP:

Sonia Sotomayor's success at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing has some Republicans in a tight spot, with conservative senators forced to weigh the political calculus of voting on the court's first Latina nominee, who also is the first liberal nominee in 15 years.

The underlying politics are dicey for Republicans. They must be careful to keep faith with constituents like National Rifle Association members who oppose her, yet avoid offending the Hispanic voters who represent the fastest-growing segment of the electorate.

According to Reuters:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Flight Operations Unit, carrying out a policy begun under former President George W. Bush, has moved an average of 4,200 unauthorized migrants a week this year, up from 3,700 last year.

Wonder what liberals and Democrats (is there any other kind of Democrat?) would say if a Republican president had increased the number of illegal aliens deported?

What is with the liberal media’s obsession with Sarah Palin?

If you disregard articles on oil and gas, there was all but no national coverage of Mrs. Palin before July 2008.

The governor wrote an op-ed piece in The (liberal) New York Times on January 5, 2008 (on polar bears).

The Times of London on February 11, 2008 wrote: “Seeking to offset a Clinton-Obama duo with either an obscure female such as Sarah Palin (Governor of Alaska)…” Note at that point it was a Clinton-Obama ticket.

A few weeks later Mrs. Palin really got coverage: The Washington Post, February 27, 2008:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is emerging as consensus pick for vice president among both Republicans and Democrats.

Well, not exactly, but, based on a perusal of the nearly 600 entries in our contest to pick a running mate for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and the 2,600 entries to select one for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a fair number of Loop Fans speculated that either candidate might pick Bloomberg as his No. 2…

…One entrant, from Cairo, picked 44-year-old Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R).

On May 26, 2008 Nat Hentoff in The Washington Times wrote a substantial piece putting forth Sarah Palin as the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

But, Newsweek, on June 16, 2008, wrote: “…conservatives talk up Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, but she is all but unknown to McCain.”

One would guess that on June 30, 2008, outside of Alaska, almost zero percent of Americans would remember ever hearing of Sara Palin.

So, for discussions sake, say Sarah Palin “burst” onto the national scene on July 1, 2008. By election night in November her 15 minutes of fame should have ended.

That is just over four months in the spotlight.

Today, eight months after the election the liberal media cannot let go of Sarah Palin.

There is almost no rational explanation for their obsession.

Perhaps the best explanation is they are trying to make her the poster “girl” for Republicans and by vilifying her they hope their ongoing negative attacks on her will rub off on the entire Republican Party.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Today it is worth remembering that our nation was founded on the above principles:

All are created equal.

That people’s rights come from God.

Government gets its power from the people.

“States like these [Iran, Iraq and North Korea], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”

President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 29, 2002

In the years since President Bush labeled the “axis of evil”, liberals and Democrats have made much fun out of this “rhetoric” and Mr. Bush’s cowboy foreign policy.

Today, Iran is pursuing atomic weapons and killing its people in the streets. A U.S. navy vessel is tracking a North Korean ship which maybe carrying nuclear materials (perhaps to Iran) and North Korea is threatening nuclear war.

Decades ago when I was a young lad in school, all the boys always had a fascination for the “new girl in school”. Who knows why, perhaps she was just something different.

In 2008 Barack Obama ran on a big government, huge social program, and immense spending platform. Some 69,500,000 people or almost 53% of those who voted, voted for Mr. Obama for president.

Today, according to the liberal Los Angeles Times:

Currently, 90% of Americans are worried to some degree about the exploding federal spending deficit, a galactic number certain to gain politicians' attention on both sides.

I know Mr. Obama was different, charismatic and promising change. But, what did everyone think he was going to do?

Buyer’s remorse is when you buy something, perhaps on the spur of the moment or to wanting to have the latest, and then realizing that you overpaid or the item was not what you expected.

Although Mr. Obama’s popularity is down, it is still pretty high, so I suspect buyer’s remorse has not set in – yet.

But, now that the new girl in school has been in class for a couple of months I think many of the “boys” realize she is not really all that different from all the other girls.