1) They're masters of public relations.

I had no idea how my open-handedness could be made to look, after the fact. At the time I bought the subprime portfolio I thought: This is sort of like my way of giving something back. I didn't expect a profile in Philanthropy Today or anything like that. I mean, I bought at a discount. But I thought people would admire the Wall Street big shot who found a way to help the little guy. Sort of like a money doctor helping a sick person. Then the little guy wheels around and gives me this financial enema. And I'm the one who gets crap in the papers! Everyone feels sorry for the poor, and no one feels sorry for me. Even though it's my money! No good deed goes unpunished.

2) Poor people don't respect other people's money in the way money deserves to be respected.

Call me a romantic: I want everyone to have a shot at the American dream. Even people who haven't earned it. I did everything I could so that these schlubs could at least own their own place. The media is now making my generosity out to be some kind of scandal. Teaser rates weren't a scandal. Teaser rates were a sign of misplaced trust: I trusted these people to get their teams of lawyers to vet anything before they signed it. Turns out, if you're poor, you don't need to pay lawyers. You don't like the deal you just wave your hands in the air and moan about how poor you are. Then you default.

3) I've grown out of touch with ``poor culture.''

Hard to say when this happened; it might have been when I stopped flying commercial. Or maybe it was when I gave up the bleacher seats and got the suite. But the first rule in this business is to know the people you're in business with, and I broke it. People complain about the rich getting richer and the poor being left behind. Is it any wonder? Look at them! Did it ever occur to even one of them that they might pay me back by WORKING HARDER? I don't think so. But as I say, it was my fault, for not studying the poor more closely before I lent them the money. When the only time you've ever seen a lion is in his cage in the zoo, you start thinking of him as a pet cat. You forget that he wants to eat you.

4) Our society is really, really hostile to success. At the same time it's shockingly indulgent of poor people.

A Republican president now wants to bail them out! I have a different solution. Debtors' prison is obviously a little too retro, and besides that it would just use more taxpayers' money. But the poor could work off their debts. All over Greenwich I see lawns to be mowed, houses to be painted, sports cars to be tuned up. Some of these poor people must have skills. The ones that don't could be trained to do some of the less skilled labor -- say, working as clowns at rich kids' birthday parties. They could even have an act: put them in clown suits and see how many can be stuffed into a Maybach. It'd be like the circus, only better. Transporting entire neighborhoods of poor people to upper Manhattan and lower Connecticut might seem impractical. It's not: Mexico does this sort of thing routinely. And in the long run it might be for the good of poor people. If the consequences were more serious, maybe they wouldn't stay poor.

5) I think it's time we all become more realistic about letting the poor anywhere near Wall Street.

Lending money to poor countries was a bad idea: Does it make any more sense to lend money to poor people? They don't even have mineral rights! There's a reason the rich aren't getting richer as fast as they should: they keep getting tangled up with the poor. It's unrealistic to say that Wall Street should cut itself off entirely from poor -- or, if you will, ``mainstream'' -- culture. As I say, I'll still do business with the masses. But I'll only engage in their finances if they can clump themselves together into a semblance of a rich person. I'll still accept pension fund money, for example. (Nothing under $50 million, please.) And I'm willing to finance the purchase of entire companies staffed basically with poor people. I did deals with Milken, before they broke him. I own some Blackstone. (Hang
tough, Steve!) But never again will I go one-on-one again with poor people. They're sharks.

(Michael Lewis is the author, most recently of ``The Blind Side,'' and is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The views he expresses are his own.)

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The Fed, as an institution, is lost. They are not hawks. They are chicken hawks.

But God bless Cramer, by the way. The man has a right to his opinion. And I love it when opinions are expressed passionately. Lord knows I get a little animated myself from time to time. But I disagree with him wholeheartedly.

What is the role of the Fed? Easy - inflation and employment. That is what it says in black and white. But the one thing that separates us from a banana republic is the Fed's independent authority in protecting the purchasing power of the currency in your wallet. That unspoken doctrine is the one link between today's economy and the past.

What does a Fed-free world look like? You have panics. The panic of 1819. The panic of 1873. The panic of 1907. Some people lose everything. Some other people, prudent people, do not. Panics are good. They punish the losers and reward the winners. But somewhere, in the interest of the collective, the idea permeated that one could prevent financial panics by, simplistically, printing more money.

In the movie "Dave," Kevin Kline, as President, announces that, by fiat, all Americans will have a job. There is a cost to providing everyone with a job. And there is a cost with providing everyone with a market safety net. It does not come out of nowhere. It comes out of your wallet and mine. Building more and more houses makes existing houses worth less. Printing more and more dollars makes existing dollars worth less. Am I some wild-eyed Libertarian gold bug? Yes, I want to buy gold more than ever, though I try to resist classification.

Without losers, there can be no winners. If you keep bailing out jerks, then it should not surprise you if you breed more jerks. If you keep administering drugs, it should not surprise you if your patient twitches uncontrollably.

Bring back "debtor's prison" and see how many credit problems you have.

A Market Professional
August 20, 2007

Red State Patriot commentary: Without winners, there can be no losers - the central thesis of liberalism, and the antithesis of liberty and a market economy.

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The following is a verbatim sampling of the survey questions, (with emphasis added). Read each question and contemplate the grammatical construction and precise wording of the sentence. Reflect on what was being asked. Think of the myriad aspects of each issue that were carefully not asked. Nowhere in the survey document was it explained how the information from the survey responses would be used - or if it would be used at all. Unfortunately, space does not permit reproducing all 55 questions.

Questions:
6. How concerned are you that we potentially face more terrorism within the United States and that it will directly impact your family? (There have been hundreds of terrorist incidents in the United States since 2001, all of Islamic origins, few of which have been reported by the media. What American is not concerned? Only an enemy of the United States would not be concerned. Who in the state or federal government should be on that list?)

9. Do you think our government is doing enough to secure America's borders against foreign terrorists? (Doing "enough." The RNC is kidding, right? Is the risk to the United States at the borders only from foreign terrorists? What about national sovereignty, drugs, human trafficking, disease, violent crime, etc.? The question might have been more relevant if the word "anything" been substituted for the word "enough.")

10. Do you believe that all foreigners within the United States whose visas have expired should be tracked down and deported? (And the alternate choice is what?)

16. Is President Bush right in standing up to the Democrats as they try to expand the size, scope and costs of the federal government? (Are there any indications that President Bush is "standing up," or has ever "stood up?")

20. Do you favor a major overhaul of the current Federal Tax Code that would replace today's burdensome tax collection system with one that is simpler and fairer? (Does simpler mean you can do it yourself? Will the IRS be abolished? Will more than only the top 50% of wage earners pay a fair share of taxes? Will liberal Republicans and Democrats use this as an opportunity to do what they have been promising, increase taxes under the guise of tax simplification?)

23. Do you believe that it is imperative to modernize and restore fiscal soundness to Social Security? (Assuming the political reality of a Social Security system, why do liberals believe a bankrupt system would be the preferred choice? United States citizens don't. Why do congressmen prefer that Americans should have to make do with less latter in life as a result of higher taxes, lower Social Security benefits and a devalued dollar? The inescapable reality will only exacerbate as Congress fiddles.)

29. How much of a role should the federal government have in an individual's health care? (Government already decides who lives and who dies. How much more control do liberals need?)

40. Are you in favor of establishing a guest worker program that will allow people to enter the United States temporarily to fill jobs that Americans do not take? (Are you in favor of outsourcing all of America, everything from street maintenance to airports to teachers? Whether we send the jobs overseas or bring in illegal aliens as labor, it amounts to outsourcing American jobs. Why not outsource our nation's government in hopes we can find someone who will get their job done? Arguably outsourcing would decrease corruption.)

41. Do you support increased funding for border control operations? (Why should we increase funding of border control operations, particularly when we could save money (billions of dollars) and save lives (thousands each year) by building the border fence? The border fence would cost a fraction of the annual budget of the Border Patrol. It was noteworthy that no survey question was asked about the advisability of decreasing taxpayer-funded social services extended to illegal aliens. The RNC agenda on immigration is painfully clear.)

45. Does the national news media accurately report the news without liberal bias? (While reporting accurately is only one of a host of serious issues associated with liberal media bias, who cares? Accurate information is available from alternate sources. The main-stream-media, flying in ever decreasing concentric circles, has reduced itself to being their own audience and their only audience.)

51. How do you rate President Bush's job performance? (The five survey choices ranged from excellent to poor, which arbitrarily prevented selecting a choice outside the range of positive numbers. I had in mind "i," the square root of -1, an imaginary number to represent an imaginary performance.)

55. What do you consider the most important steps the Republican Party can take in the coming months to help advance President Bush's agenda and win back a majority in Congress? (Why is the focus solely on the welfare of the Republican Party, and not on the economic and cultural vitality of the United States of America and the welfare of hard-working citizens? Even if the RNC were to change their words and the color of their stripes, pretending to be conservative just as Democrats pretend a faith, they would not be changing their compost pile of people. They remain liberals. President Bush's liberal agenda has been widely repudiated by those who vote. It is incredibly unlikely that conservative voters will knowingly advance President Bush's agenda. And yet, that is the singular premise of the RNC survey and solicitation. The Republican Party, far more liberal than conservative, is clearly in disarray having been overrun by liberal ideologues. Without conservative candidates and conservative principles, the Republican Party will fail again in 2008.)

The rest of the survey questions were equally inane.

Also relevant is that the survey was at least the sixth such survey (and possibly more than the tenth - I've lost count), all of which were the same survey sent out by the RNC in the last couple years - with exactly the same questions. How relevant can the questions be if they never change? What have liberal Republicans accomplished in all these years if the questions never change? When we stop long enough to comtemplate the real purpose of a survey, the RNC surveys begin to have a purpose. Rather than seek the opinions of survey recipients, a survey is better used - intended - to measure whether or not the propaganda is working, and to solicit donations. So much for our opinions, which should not come as a surprise.

As an aside, who do you think was going to score and correlate the hundred of thousands of responses to each of 55 questions? Processing donations in the form of personal checks or credit cards will consume most of the time of staff and volunteers. The money will make it into the RNC financial accounts, and the donor's name and address will be added to a database of easy marks for future solicitations. Apparently we can receive the results of the survey if requested, but why would you want to - ten times? My name and personal information is also in the database. However, I have a difficult time envisioning any candidate articulating their campaign position in a public policy address by actually saying, "According to the 'Ask America, 2007 Nationwide Policy Survey', Question number 50, a huge majority of the respondents believe there should be a consititutional amendment banning gay marriage, therefore if elected I will oppose gay marriage."

Reading the entire "survey" evoked a response comparable to experiencing cruel and unusual punishment. The survey was probably more unpleasant to a conservative than anything the detainees at Abu Ghraib were ever subjected to. Since I read the survey voluntarily, Senator John McCain would probably say my discomfort was self-inflicted and while painful, it was not inhumane or torture. Well, I beg to differ. The survey, as constructed, and repeatedly inflicted every month or two on an unwilling participant, was surely designed to be an instrument of slow political torture. When I had finished the survey, I was left with a mental image of being escorted by two burly political operatives into a voting booth, restrained at the hands and feet, wearing bright orange garb and provided an "opportunity" to vote on issues already decided years ago by political hacks behind closed doors - a vote limited to two choices, neither of which were in the nation's best interests.

Conservative philosophy suggests that what is in the best interests of the individual citizen and individual liberty is also, by definition, in the best interests of the United States of America. Ever-increasing socialism is not in the best interests of individual American citizens, unless one's goal is shared misery and the voter has a self-destructive desire to serve those who seek to rule rather than govern. Maybe there is some truth to the suggestion that Washington, D.C. in general, and the United States Congress in particular, have become the insane asylum of the universe.

What then is the bottom line? Conservatives will vote for their principles, but not for any candidate or politicial party that abandons their conservative principles.

It appears that the Republican National Committee (RNC) does not understand conservative philosophy or share conservative principles. The survey questions would seem to indicate that the RNC does not know, which every conservative knows either intuitively or by faith, the difference between "right and wrong."

Can you name and discuss with some reasonable semblence of insight one domestic or foreign policy decision of the current administration that disproves the assertion that, "If you don't know where you are going, any direction you take will get you there?" The RNC, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity want Republican and Independent voters to elect or re-elect the same or like-minded people as those currently in office. It will be a cold day. Our only alternative may well be an ugly choice, Comrade Clinton. Either way, historians will clinically document 2008 as the year of national suicide. In the aftermath, everybody will point fingers at their friends and neighbors attempting to shift responsibility.

Democraks are correct about at least one thing - a conservative GOP was once-upon-a-time the party of wealthy, successful, and ambitious Americans. Conservative Republicans thrived instead of survived, educated instead of failed, won instead of lost, cherished family instead of a village, achieved instead of blamed, lead and innovated instead of complained and sued, and worshiped freely. Today, liberal Republicans differ little from Democrats. They share a desire to emulate Soviet- and Cuban-style socialism and accummulate power and wealth at the expense of taxpayers, while being inappropriately subsidized by the votes of non-taxpayers, felons and illegal aliens.

Just as illegal aliens flooded across America’s borders in search of opportunity without cultural allegiance, liberals have flooded across the borders of the Republican Party for more than a decade seeking "easy money," i.e., political opportunity without any commitment to conservatism, and laying waste to the U.S. Constitution in the process. The Republican Party and America have both suffered the same tragic fate – an invasion by illegal aliens (liberals politicians and Mexican nationals) who care little about anything but themselves – in both cases led by none less than Senator John McCain. Faux conservatives in the Republican Party did nothing to control their Party borders or national borders and the rest is history.

Do you remember? In 2004, the nation truly belonged to Republicans. Their leadership would have lasted for decades into the future if the GOP had remained true to principles of conservatism, national security, faith, freedom, sanctity of life and the American family. Historians will say that the ascendancy of Republicans didn’t last long, which will be the sorry legacy of President George W. Bush and an exceptionally weak Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. There were numerous advance clues to George W. Bush, beginning in Texas, with his “compassionate conservatism,” a cleverly packaged virulent strain of socialism, and his open advocacy for all forms of social services for illegal aliens.

In hindsight, “compassionate” was a code word for “liberalism,” and Americans were asked to believe that the oxymoron of liberal conservatism was somehow feasible if only administered by George W. Bush. The political dynamics in 2004 were such that a majority of American citizens were genuinely desperate not to elect as President of the United States a national traitor. If only the Republican National Committee (RNC) understood (or cared) that conservatives, registered Republicans or Independents, did not vote for Governor George W. Bush, but voted against Vice President Al Gore in 2000, voted against Senator John F. Kerry in 2004, and voted against liberal Republicans in 2006. The choice facing the electorate in recent decades, in almost every political jurisdiction, has not been one of eagerly voting for the best of two candidates, but going to the polls and voting against the worst of the two candidates. Will history repeat itself in 2008?

The choice is simple and Americans need to choose. Will it be personal freedom, education instead of indoctrination, less government, less regulation and lower taxes, ownership of private property and financial success, the by-products of a philosophy of personal excellence, integrity, initiative and patriotism? Or, will it be the liberal alternative, a life in the shackles of state-dependency and citizen subservience, without anything but temporary jobs and a dismal national future? Your children's future under the auspices of liberal democratic socialism is well documented, i.e., a state of equalized poverty, shared misery, bussed to the next election machine and told how to vote.

We can choose to work on the plantation picking cotton for those politicians who compete to live in the "big house," or we can be well-educated, prosperous, free men and women. The only limits to our success and our freedom are those we impose on ourselves by failing in our first responsibility in life, i.e., to educate ourselves. If education was what it once was, what it should be, without government interference, Americans would know that the bleached bones of millions of unfortunate people, victims of every socialist-style government in the history of the world - no exceptions - litter the roadside of human evolution.

Having failed to educate ourselves and our youth early and so completely, there are few employment opportunities remaining in life except to pick another man's cotton. The RNC survey, "Ask America, 2007 Nationwide Policy Survey," sixth iteration, goes a long way to confirm that assessment.

Red State Patriot

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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Assuming an 8% annual economic rate of growth, it will take China about 30 years, assuming 4% annual productivity growth, before it would exhaust this huge pool of unemployed. Can the United States compete with those labor costs for the next 30 years? Not in our wildest dreams! Where do you think the “jobs” will be - where will consumer goods and weaponry be manufactured over the next 30 years? Where will your waffle maker and toaster be manufactured? China and India, of course! If you doubt even for a minute, visit any retail merchandiser in the United States and check each appliance and article of clothing for their origin of manufacture.

Politicians tell you not to be concerned! The United States will still have many jobs. What they don't tell you, either out of ignorance or malice, is that those jobs will be temporary positions. The future holds far fewer jobs for Americans, regardless of individual educational achievement. Predictably, the only real jobs that can lead to measurable wealth will become the province of the elite, and they will be intensely coveted, particularly those with tenure such as "professor" or "congressman." Significant barriers to entry are being erected by the incumbents in those "jobs" as you read this article.

Those among us who are considered less qualified by the elite will predictably clamor for even more income and wealth redistribution. The government’s roster of Americans dependent on income redistribution will continue to grow exponentially. Government dependency has already become typical rather than the exception. More and larger definable groups have begun competing openly and ruthlessly for available taxpayer-subsidized handouts.

Congressmen, consumed absolutely with self-indulgence, self-aggrandizement and power over their fellow citizens, continue to demonstrate they do not have the vision, intellect, ethics, statesmanship, or the will to redirect a nation careening out of economic and social control. From their point of view, everything is as it should be. They rule, we serve. The reality is simple and painfully brutal: your education, your employability and your standard of living in coming years is solely your responsibility, unless you are willing to clean swimming pools or flip burgers while the government augments your meager existence. It would be incredibly wise, but uncharacteristic, for our nation's youth to wake up while the coffee is still warm enough to smell it.

In our modern “global economy,” Americans must quickly come to understand that have to compete with every other nation’s labor as a cost of doing business, from Mexico to China. If an American citizen hopes to earn 10 times as much as an Indian and 50 times as much as a Chinese, he is going to have to produce 10 times or 50 times as much as his competitors in India and China, of equal or better quality, or his job is going to move offshore. Only Rip Van Winkle is unaware that millions of jobs have already fled America to foreign shores as a result of excessive federal and state taxation, burdensome regulation by government administrative agencies (e.g., OSHA, EPA), runaway litigation, personnel benefits which include the cost of healthcare, and employee unions.

Is there one industry in the United States today that can leverage the needed productivity in the coming years? Not likely. Even the U.S. airline industry is on the verge of widespread bankruptcy. The automotive industry, led by Ford Motor Company is in close pursuit. Ford executives are arguably engaged in a form of intentional and self-inflicted corporate suicide, not unlike Jonestown.

What would be necessary to revitalize the American economy quickly enough that it will matter?

Congressmen, those who have the temerity to call themselves our elected representatives, but have forgotten that they are Americans first and foremost, would have to join the team. All employers, with the support of the nation’s citizenry, would have to create a “Team America” initiative not unlike the Kennedy space initiatives and NASA of the 1960’s. All Americans would have to commit to invest massive sums into new equipment (capital investment), vocational and technical training, and invigorate retro-style education solely grounded in mathematics, sciences and focused solely on student excellence. In the interim, free-loaders and race-baiters would have to forego hundreds of billions of dollars of taxation destined for pork projects and income redistribution for political purposes. Not likely ....

What is more likely is that Congress will employ their only other (three-phase) alternative available, (1) cutting your benefits, (2) dramatically increasing your taxes, and (3) undertaking intense social engineering. Their intent would be even more redistribution of power, influence, jobs, education, income, housing, transportation, private property and health care by accelerating socialism and redistributing what wealth still remains. All this will be necessary in order to support those citizens who long ago stopped working with the permission of Congress and state legislatures, and illegal aliens who are willing to work but contribute nothing.

Congress’ choice of the redistribution alternative, in lieu of the “Team America” approach, will cynically be calculated to ensure that politicians, at every level of government, protect and expand their own financial security in the lifestyle of a Hollywood movie star, rock or sports superstar. This they will accomplish by first legislating themselves a special elite status that no other American enjoys, including specialized medical care and exclusive retirement provisions. If that were not enough, Congress has already enacted their own unique ability to solicit, accumulate and keep massive amounts of personal wealth from campaign contributions upon their retirement. The provisions of Congressional retirement, were they to become widely known, would gag most Americans.

There is always a point of peak efficiency given existing technology. Just as there is elasticity in maximizing total revenue, so too is there elasticity in both taxation and income redistribution, which is why, when marginal tax rates are lowered, tax revenues increase. The same concept applies inversely to redistribution entitlements. At some point, excessive prices, taxes, and entitlements all become destructive to maximizing national ‘total GNP’ and economic growth.

Until decision makers are reigned in, and Congressmen once again become citizen legislators who are limited in tenure and not permitted to profit from elected office, decisions from Congress (and courts) will continue to focus on protecting their own self-interests, as a ruling elite class, at the sacrifice of all other Americans. If the economic engine in America is running low on fuel, clearly Congress isn't focused on filling the fuel tank, i.e., making any more fuel (real jobs) or creating better fuel (job training and new technologies). They demonstrate on a daily basis that the only fuel tank that matters is their own.

Red State Patriot would suggest that all Americans get out of debt as soon as possible and be very grateful if you still have a “job.” Be even more grateful if you still have a job two years from now. Hopefully the graphic accompanying this article, as you study it, will become self-explanatory.

Red State Patriot

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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For those of you who did not have the opportunity to listen to several hours of broadcast excellence on August 3rd, Rush proudly stated that he had been a visitor to the White House on three separate occasions, and said with obvious affection, “Bush loves the country. He is the most confident man. He is a barrel of laughs. He is at ease. He is unfazed by any of the criticism that he gets. He doesn’t care about it.”

Well Rush, I am here to tell you and most Americans will tell you, President Bush should care more about it and most importantly, you should know the difference. Thinking poorly of fellow Americans, thinking them ignorant, serves no constructive purpose other than to highlight the arrogance of elitism. Maybe – just maybe – Americans recognize the risks to this nation and our economy better than their pompous critics. It is not surprising that a majority of Americans understand President Bush perfectly. Why otherwise would his support polls be so low? And of course you will hear him say that he does not care about the polls. Most Americans correctly take this to mean that he also does not care about our opinions, what we think, what we want, or what we say.

Rush, does that include you? Your comments gave me cause to worry for the first time in a decade. The ice under both you and the President is getting incredibly thin and cracks are evident everywhere. Please be very, very careful. Do you realize where you are standing?

The problem of illegal aliens, and their associated crime wave, will continue only as long as the Federal Government and state governors want it to – and they want it to continue. We have more than enough tools in the shed to secure the border, instantly if necessary. The United States can send astronauts to the moon, build structures that reach far into the sky, and array an incredible assortment of modern weapons on the battlefield. But the President refuses to allow the building of a simple fence, the total cost of which would be not much more than a single year’s budget of the Border Patrol. President Bush has flatly refused to secure United States’ borders, arguably in violation of his Oath of Office. The President has personally obstructed the efforts of others to preserve national sovereignty, entered into international agreements that would someday result in dissolution of the United States into some form of a North American Union, and has publicly denigrated anyone trying to enforce existing immigration laws. That much is an uncontested fact.

There is one short and simple reason: greed. The border is making too much money for too many people just the way that it is.

What is the character of a man, in Congress or the Presidency, who permits personal greed to trump national sovereignty? What is the character of a man who would abandon the U.S. Constitution and hundreds of thousands of men and women who have given their mortal existence to create and preserve the United States of America? What is the character of a man who would sell out his fellow citizens for short sighted business and political reasons? The reality is simple. The President is acting in self interest, one way or another. The President is either profiting from the transgressions taking place on the border, or supporting those who are – or both. It is as simple as that. There are no other options; there is no other justification for not closing the border when it is obviously needed to protect fellow American citizens from victimization and to defend our nation’s society and culture from being ravaged. Arguably, every death of an American citizen at the hands of an illegal alien will forever be blood on the hands of George W. Bush, the man you so admire. If you were talking hypothetically, off the record, what phrase would you use to describe any President of the United States, at any time in history, who would willingly sell out his United States birthright and his own nation’s sovereignty?

Most Americans prefer to believe the president is supposed to govern, not to rule. When the Administration and Congress both blatantly and defiantly ignore the Rule of Law, they've unilaterally chosen to rule America, not govern the United States. Is this really what you support?

One way of looking at our nation’s domestic reality, whether you agree with the president’s policies or not, is that President Bush has lost every single political race of substance in which he has been entered, on every single track, for almost seven years. Who but an ideologue would bet on such a nag, an almost certain loser by the end of the race? That doesn’t sound like you, regardless of how much you may like the horse. The horse has proven itself woefully lacking, and wishful thinking about what could have been doesn’t change that.

Maybe the classic story of the Wizard of Oz has some applicability. If President Bush had any courage what-so-ever, anything resembling a brain, or the faintest trace of a Christian heart, he would have long since closed the borders and ended the carnage to United States citizens who are experiencing more than 3,000 annual deaths at the hands of illegal aliens. When one adds the violent crime, property damage, drugs and fraud being inflicted on American society, who is it that you believe truly matters to President Bush? The facts are irrefutable. Apparently not United States citizens! If not United States citizens, then what about United States soldiers? It is totally illogical to claim to care about the soldiers and not your fellow citizens.

Rush, you often claim with some apparent semblance of accuracy to be running this country. May I conclude that “open borders” and refusing to enforce existing immigration laws has become your choice of domestic immigration policy? If not immigration laws, which federal and state laws would you personally choose to enforce? Which laws do you suggest Americans simply ignore? Or is it strictly a matter of personal choice?

If open borders and national lawlessness is not a central feature of the Limbaugh Institute of Conservative Studies, do you have the personal and broadcast integrity to take an unambiguous position, and by doing so, send a strong message to the President of the United States? Or, will you continue to equivocate while hiding behind the skirts of being an entertainer?

Rush, please stand up and be counted. United States citizens by the millions, many of them dittoheads, are standing up across this great country, in communities large and small, many risking their mortal existence to protect our way of life and their fellow citizens. Why not liberals? Because to them, the "one" is more important than the "whole;" but why not you?

If you are implicitly refusing to be a United States citizen first and foremost, maybe we shouldn’t be listening to you. While it would be easy to say, “lead, follow or get out of the way (off the air), I choose to believe you are eminently qualified and destined to lead. So, for all that is precious in America, lead - but not blindly following the White Rabbit into a rabbit hole leading to Wonderland.

Until dittoheads have evidence to the contrary, we must consider the possibility that you view yourself as the White Rabbit and think of the White House as Wonderland.

Red State Patriot

Comments are welcome at redstatepatriot@hughes.net. Please include the title of the article as your subject line. Selected responses, in whole or part, may be published (appended to the article).

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