The Letter Everyone Should Read

The Perspective: I didn't write this myself, this is from a letter that was sent to my friend Glenn Beck .

Well, these are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:

One, illegal immigration. I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and the trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S., I'm not a racist. This isn't to be confused with legal immigration.

Glenn Beck's Common Sense Now available in book stores nationwide...

Two, the TARP bill, I want it repealed and I want no further funding supplied to it. We told you no, but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze, repeal.

Three: Czars, I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the czars. No more czars. Government officials answer to the process, not to the president. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.

Four, cap and trade. The debate on global warming is not over. There is more to say.

Five, universal healthcare. I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don't you dare try to pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!

Six, growing government control. I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Mind your own business. You have enough to take care of with your real obligations. Why don't you start there.

Seven, ACORN. I do not want ACORN and its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them every time on every real estate deal that closes. Stop the funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audits and investigations. I do not trust them with taking the census over with our taxpayer money. I don't trust them with our taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before taxpayers get any more involved with them. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, hello. Stop protecting your political buddies. You work for us, the people. Investigate.

Eight, redistribution of wealth. No, no, no. I work for my money. It is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth that I will support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do you want me to hate my employers? Why ‑‑ what do you have against shareholders making a profit?

Nine, charitable contributions. Although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities, where we know our needs best and can use our local talent and our local resources. Butt out, please. We want to do it ourselves.

Ten, corporate bailouts. Knock it off. Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we'll be better off just getting into it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful. Have you ever ripped off a Band‑Aid? We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us the chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.

Eleven, transparency and accountability. How about it? No, really, how about it? Let's have it. Let's say we give the buzzwords a rest and have some straight honest talk. Please try ‑‑ please stop manipulating and trying to appease me with clever wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around and meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.

Twelve, unprecedented quick spending. Stop it now.

Take a breath. Listen to the people. Let's just slow down and get some input from some nonpoliticians on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law. I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant or a violent person. I am a parent and a grandparent. I work. I'm busy. I'm busy. I am busy, and I am tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawn, wash our cars on the weekends and be responsible contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same all while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.

I entrusted you with upholding the Constitution. I believed in the checks and balances to keep from getting far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think I find humor in the hiring of a speed reader to unintelligently ramble all through a bill that you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not. It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face. I am not laughing at your arrogance. Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it but you should expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children. We did not want the TARP bill. We said no. We would repeal it if we could. I am sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all of the recent spending.

From my perspective, it seems that all of you have gone insane. I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back. You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess that you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington. Our president often knows all the right buzzword is unsustainable. Well, no kidding. How many tens of thousands of dollars did the focus group cost to come up with that word? We don't want your overpriced words. Stop treating us like we're morons.

We want all of you to stop focusing on your reelection and do the job we want done, not the job you want done or the job your party wants done. You work for us and at this rate I guarantee you not for long because we are coming. We will be heard and we will be represented. You think we're so busy with our lives that we will never come for you? We are the formerly silent majority, all of us who quietly work , pay taxes, obey the law, vote, save money, keep our noses to the grindstone and we are now looking up at you. You have awakened us, the patriotic spirit so strong and so powerful that it had been sleeping too long. You have pushed us too far. Our numbers are great. They may surprise you. For every one of us who will be there, there will be hundreds more that could not come. Unlike you, we have their trust. We will represent them honestly, rest assured. They will be at the polls on voting day to usher you out of office. We have cancelled vacations. We will use our last few dollars saved. We will find the representation among us and a grassroots campaign will flourish. We didn't ask for this fight. But the gloves are coming off. We do not come in violence, but we are angry. You will represent us or you will be replaced with someone who will. There are candidates among us when hewill rise like a Phoenix from the ashes that you have made of our constitution.

Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.

The Rigged Iran Elections and What They Really Mean

The Perspective: The Supreme Leader of Iran has spoken, and it is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for another four years. A major, cataclysmic war is the most likely outcome of the Iranian elections. And the battle lines are clear. It's Netanyahu vs. Ahmadinejad -- Bibi vs. Mahmoud -- and the big question is: Who will strike first?

This weekend's events in Iran tell us a lot.

First, the results prove that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei firmly, completely and whole-heartedly supports Ahmadinejad's End Times beliefs. Khamenei also fully supports Ahmadinejad's commitment to build nuclear weapons and long-range, high-speed ballistic missiles. There is no daylight between Khamenei and Ahmadinejad on this Radical eschatology, or End Times theology, as some analysts and commentators have suggested. These two men are who I have said all along they are: members of an apocalyptic, genocidal death cult. They are kindred spirits. They believe the wind is at their backs, that Allah is on their side, and they believe they will soon see complete victory. That's what makes them so dangerous.

Second, the results prove that the people of Iran never had a real choice. This wasn't a real election. It was totally and completely rigged by a Radical Muslim mafia. The aftermath became, as one Iranian noted over the weekend, a Tehran Tiananmen. Protesters and dissidents were beaten, arrested and tortured. Text messaging was turned off. Facebook was shut down. The internet was down or slowed for vast stretches. All this prevents ordinary citizens from mobilizing their opposition to the government. That said, however, the massive turnout at the polls -- and the street demonstrations and violence in Iran over the weekend -- showed that even though Iranians didn't have real Reformer candidates to choose from, the vast Iranians are deeply disgusted with the current regime. They long for true freedom and true democracy. They desperately wanted the elections to be real. They are ABA -- Anybody But Ahmadinejad. They don't buy into the regime's End Times theology. They desperately want someone to liberate them. I feel for them. I want them to be free. Now more than ever.

Third, the results prove that the Obama administration's belief that you can sit down and have a rational discussion with such Radicals -- or trust an agreement even if one could be negotiated with them -- is nonsensical. How could we possibly trust the Iranian leadership to keep a promise to stop building nuclear weapons (if such a promise were made), when they steal elections and beat and torture dissidents in front of the whole world?

Fourth, as for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech, he was right: Iran is the real threat to the region and the world, not Israel's refusal to make more "land for missiles concessions" to the Palestinian leadership.

The Invisible War

The Perspective:

The foiled synagogue bombing plot shows us one thing: We are truly the victims of our own success. I noted this week that this is a triumph for law enforcement, but it’s also a subtle reminder of how the fight against radical Islamic terrorism isn’t over — most importantly, it’s not over on the home front.

This event obviates it, sure. But in our postmodern mentality, there’s a certain bit of cognitive dissonance about impending terrorist attacks. The threat level offered by Homeland Security is background noise, discussions of terrorism are simply examples of fear-mongering, and the closing of Guantanamo Bay is a priority, moreso than effectively communicating a new strategy of fighting terror.

This last is actually the most pertinent to the Obama administration, because his speech, while certainly a testament to his good faith in the rule of law, put forward no such new strategy. Instead, it focused, as his speeches tend to focus, on the rhetoric surrounding the debate. In this, Obama provided nothing new aside from his own desire to dismiss his dissenters as those too focused on the past — but in a way, it’s Obama who, despite frequently talking about the last eight years, seems to have learned nothing.

Perhaps this is because being direct about these issues puts him in political jeopardy. As Karl Rove notes in his thoughtful Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday, Obama has indeed backtracked on a number of national security initiatives. This shows a calculating and thoughtful side to the president that is, in some way, reassuring.

What is not reassuring, however, is his unwillingness to come out and speak directly about his intentions. This is a longstanding characteristic of this man prior to the White House. I suspect that over time, we will see more of this pattern. He will continue to pledge greater transparency, to call for respectful debate in his speeches, all the while offering little substance to the people hanging on his words.

It’s not evil. It’s just disappointing. A thoughtful man reluctant to share his thoughts with the people who depend on them.

The Homegrown Threat

The Perspective: The dramatic foiling of a year-long plot to blow up two New York City synagogues and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York has important lessons for combating terrorism in America. First, it reinforces the New York Police Department’s argument that militant Islamic terrorist threats to the United States may increasingly be homegrown.

Law enforcement officials say they believe that at least three of the four accused were converts to Islam, that all four had been in prison. One of them was on parole. One official said that they may have met and perhaps been radicalized while attending a post-prison release rehabilitation program in Newburgh, some 70 miles north of New York City.

Second, a law enforcement official said that the disruption of the plot illustrates the importance of having police surveillance in place “at the right time and the right place” given how quickly the operational part of the planned attack unfolded. According to the complaint charging the three African-Americans and one Haitian-born immigrant with conspiring to use WMD in the United States, the men decided to get weapons to attack their targets at a meeting on December 5, 2008. This means that the plot went into high gear in less than six months.

Third, the incident demonstrates the importance of a smooth working relationship between the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which led the investigation, and the New York Police Department. In recent years, relations between the agencies have been strained over access to information in counter-terrorism cases and by other turf issues. But both Federal and local officials said today that cooperation had improved significantly since the appointment last December of a well-respected G-man, Joseph M. Demarest Jr., to head the FBI’s powerful New York office. Both NY Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and Mr. Demarest were on hand at the press conference last night describing details of the alleged plot.

Fourth, the disruption of the attack depended in large part on information provided by a “confidential witness,” an informant whom the FBI recruited six years ago and sent to Newburgh after pleading guilty in 2002 to criminal fraud and being sentenced to five years of probation. The complaint quotes a FBI official as saying that the information the informant provided during this and other investigations “has proven to be accurate and reliable” and has been “corroborated by other evidence.”

Finally, while Washington is mired in debate about how and where Gitmo detainees should be held and/or tried, the foiled plot in New York demonstrates that the terrorist threat to America, and to New York in particular, did not end with Obama’s election as president, but rather, remains alive and well. James Cromitie, the plot’s alleged ringleader, is an American citizen and convert to Islam. Also known as “Abdul Rahman,” Cromitie was released in 2004 after having served four years in prison for selling drugs in a school zone. To the best of law enforcement’s knowledge, he had never met anyone from Al Qaeda or a terrorist group. Yet the complaint quotes him last November lamenting the fact that “the best target [the World Trade Center] was hit already.” That left a strike at Iraq and Afghanistan-bound military aircraft and an attack on synagogues as the best fallback targets. “I hate those motherf***ers, those f***ing Jewish bastards,” the complaint quotes Cromitie as saying. “I would like to get [to destroy] a synagogue.”

Onta Williams, known as “Hamza,” 33, had also served a year in jail in 2003 for possessing a controlled substance, believed to be cocaine, a law enforcement source said. Last April, the complaint says, he declared “in substance” that “they [the U.S. military] are killing Muslim brothers and sisters in Muslim countries, so, if we kill them here [in the United States]…it is equal.”

The FBI supplied the alleged plotters with three mock “impromptu explosive devices” containing 30-plus pounds of phony C-4, which Cromitie placed on Wednesday night in cars parked in front of two synagogues, including the Riverdale Jewish Center. Had it been real, that much C-4 could have significantly damaged the building, which was scheduled to hold three services on Thursday morning at 6:05 am, 6:45 a.m. and 7:45 a.m.

Law enforcement officials say that the men were going to explode the IED’s remotely by cell phone as they attacked Afghanistan and Iraq-bound aircraft taking off from Stewart International Airport in Newburgh. But the stinger missiles the informant had provided were, fortunately, as phony as the IED’s.

All four men are presumed innocent until proven guilty, of course, and whoever winds up defending them will undoubtedly argue that that the informant egged the four men on and provoked them into staging the attack. There is still much we don’t know about how and where the men met, how and where they were radicalized, and whether in fact their alleged violent tendencies were enflamed by the informant.

But the foiling of the plot seems at face value a clear success for the FBI and NYPD. The sense of vindication today is especially keen within the NYPD, which in 2007, released a 90-page assessment of the terrorist threat facing the nation. The study argued that the primary terrorist threat to New Yorkers—indeed, to all Americans—comes not from Al -Qaeda in Iraq or from the mountainous tribal region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, as the intelligence community in Washington asserted that same year in its national intelligence estimate. Rather, the NYPD concluded, the main terrorist threat was increasingly homegrown. While Al Qaeda remained a vital source of “inspiration and an ideological reference point,” the study concluded, the more insidious terrorist threat came primarily from younger Muslim men between the ages of 15 and 35 who have no direct Al Qaeda connection, but who become radicalized by exposure to an “extreme and minority interpretation” of Islam.

That seems to be the case in this latest of the homegrown plots interrupted by the NYPD and the FBI.

Obama...Let Me Count The Ways

The Perspective:

In his commencement address at Arizona State University on May 13, President Obama said that, “building a body of work…is about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up to a lasting legacy.”

As he fulfills this definition in his presidency, let’s look at eighteen hard and soft positions belonging to Barack Obama and his administration to evaluate whether—so far—the results are good or bad for the country.

1. ENEMIES LIST

• Hard on condemning their critics (especially Rush Limbaugh).

• Soft on condemning radical Islamic terrorism (even to the point that Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary avoids the term, preferring “man-caused disasters”).

2. TERRORISM

• Hard on closing the Guantanamo Bay prison by the end of the year and halting tough interrogation procedures.

• Soft on explaining what will happen if released terrorists do more harm at home or abroad and also explaining how easing up on captured terrorists helps prevent future attacks that are as bad as or worse than September 11, 2001.

3. MIDDLE EAST

• Hard on demands on Israel (asking it to make even more concessions to its enemies).

• Soft on pressuring the Palestinians, the Iranians and those who want to see Israel destroyed.

4. TAXES

• Hard on increasing taxes on those who pay the most (while assuming their commercial behavior won’t be affected by confiscations of their wealth).

• Soft on justifying why more money should be given to those who pay little or no taxes (while assuming they’ll paid back for “spreading the wealth around” by voting for Democrats).

Going Green? Only if "Green" means money

The Perspective:

The central question in the debate over global warming and cap-and-trade has nothing to do with the environment or even with energy. It’s all about one thing: revenue. Kudos to Republican leaders for taking a clear stand that they will oppose any global warming bill that raises federal taxes, but as long as Democrats refuse to make the same commitment, the global warming debate is about one thing: revenue.

The bottom line here is that under the Obama administration’s plan money from ordinary energy consumers that will be taken out of their pockets to fund big government special interest spending programs in Washington and bailouts on Wall Street. That’s why the White House put the expected revenue from its cap-and-trade plan into the budget to pay for its spending programs. That’s why Harry Reid noted that the money that will come in from the cap-and-trade plan would be about that same amount that as what he’d like to spend on a government takeover of the health care system! And that’s why proponents of cap-and-trade don’t seem bothered by the fact that the program would have no discernible impact on global averages temperatures or any of the supposed impacts of global warming. It’s all about the money.

That’s where the NoClimateTax.com pledge comes in. Through this Web site, thousands of activists have been asking members of Congress and state legislators to sign a pledge and make a firm written commitment not to use a global warming bill as a vehicle for raising revenue.

Last week Republican Leader John Boehner, Whip Eric Cantor, Conference Chairman Mike Pence, and Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Joe Barton all signed the NoClimateTax.com pledge, which says:

“I, ___________, pledge to the taxpayers of the State of _____ and to the American people that I will oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in federal government revenue.”

In doing so they joined the leader of House conservatives, Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price, 20 other Republican members of Congress, and 112 state elected officials who had already signed the pledge.

As the number of signers grows, it will become more and more clear that members of Congress who are unwilling to sign are really more interested in raising federal revenues than addressing global warming.

By taking the pledge Republican leadership put the ball firmly in the court of House Democratic leadership. If Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer will make the same commitment to the American people that John Boehner and Eric Cantor have already made, then we can move forward with an honest debate about what, if anything, should be done about global warming without the possibility of a tax hike lurking in the background. If they refuse to sign, then we can simplify this whole debate to one question: do we want a big tax hike on energy?

“If Republicans convince voters that clean energy legislation amounts to a new tax, Obama’s plan is toast.”

If Democrats want to save their faltering plan, they should sign the NoClimateTax.com pledge and get to work on a bill that doesn’t raise taxes.

One Word: Failure

The Perspective:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has given the Obama administration a “B-plus” for its first 100 days and has graded the news media a “strong A;” but both should be flunked for failing to admit that Barack Obama is rationing where he shouldn’t and not rationing where he should.

Obama’s sweeping health care reform proposals are ridden with rationing when you look behind the code language and stealth tactics. Just recently, on “Meet the Press,” Lawrence Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, talked about “experts” who, using “the right kind of cost effectiveness…estimate that we could take as much as $700 billion a year out of our health care system” by eliminating unnecessary procedures.

Under Obamacare, those “experts” will be government bureaucrats — not doctors. Obama’s stimulus package dedicates $1.1 billion to medical “comparative effectiveness research.” This is Obama-speak for bureaucrats determining if your doctor is using what the government deems are the right procedures at appropriate costs. Other than Gibbs and the see-hear-and-speak-no-rationing mainstream media reporters, who doesn’t acknowledge that health care rationing is baked into Obama’s health care plans?

Rationing is also an important part of other of Obama’s priorities. Although President Obama pays lip service to educational reform, including the expansion of charter schools, Obama opted for rationing when his Education Department ended the Opportunity Scholarship Program that had provided 1,714 mostly black and Hispanic children in the District of Columbia with $7,500 per child in vouchers to move them from failing D.C. schools into private or parochial schools (where their reading scores beat their public school counterparts). Don’t count on Gibbs and Obama’s journalistic cheerleaders to tell you that Obama will cave and allow similar forms of rationing to please the teachers’ unions and that 38 percent of members of Congress have their children in private schools.

Rationing oil exploration, the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy (in favor of expensive “alternatives” such as ethanol) as well as the rationing of carbon emissions in a “cap-and-trade” program are all elements of Obama’s “green” agenda. Of course the government, which has “bailed out” automakers, is also pressuring them to “ration” the production of cars that don’t meet Obama’s “green” standards. The net effect will be to ration consumer choices and also to impose the largest tax increase (on energy) in American history.

Regarding national defense, Obama’s most ambitious rationing proposal is his call for a worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons. So far, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Al Qaeda and others threatening the United States have shown no inclination to follow Obama’s lead. Will Obama “ration” military spending and efforts against terrorism to the point that the country will be judiciously protected? His first 100 days have raised several questions in that regard.

The one area where Obama has failed to ration is in his massive expansion of government spending, taxation, indebtedness and control. Obama has ignored several opportunities to cut pork projects and other government waste, abuse and corruption.

As President Obama celebrates his first 100 days in office with nary a nod to what he is rationing and what he is failing to ration, consider that he still has 1360 days in office to make either the right or the wrong decisions about rationing.

Since we can’t rely on his press secretary or many in the mainstream media to reveal what’s really happening, it’s important that we don’t ration our vigilance or our outspokenness.