Hanging Chads

The nightmare of the 2000 presidential election with its hanging chads and butterfly ballots is never going to go away. Not that I didn't expect this to surface this year. What is interesting is that the folks in the Democrat Party are referring to it as it pertaines to the current mess with the delegates from Florida and Michigan. Already we are hearing the mournful "Count all the votes" only in this case the Democrats have brought disaster on themselves.

Let's take a little walk back in time to the year 2000, a presidential election year where that very smart guy and inventor of the Internet, Al Gore, was going to wipe up the floor with that dunce from Texas, George Bush. The whole thing came down to Florida's returns. Briefly here is what happened.

At 7:30 PM the networks declared Gore the winner based on exit poll information. Bush, however, began to pick up more votes so that by 10 PM the networks state that the race is undecided. At 2:30 AM Bush is declared the winner. By 4:30 AM Gore has narrowed the gap to approximately 2000 votes. While he had previously conceded to Bush earlier in the evening, Gore now with drew his concession and decided to wait for the recount.

On November 9, the day after the election, Gore initiated legal action by asking for a hand recount of four counties, heavily Democratic, putting the election in to the judicial system for a decision. On November 10, the automatic recount of the election was completed and Bush was declared the winner by a small margin. Note, this was not the hand recount of the four counties requested by Gore.

On November 11, the Bush team asked that a Federal Court in Miami stop the recount. On November 13, the judge in that Miami Federal Court denied the Bush team's request and the recount went on and on and on. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court stepped in and rightly stopped the recount. With that decision, George W. Bush became president of the United States. Further recounts had Bush winning in all legally recounted scenarios. If Gore had gone for the suggested full state recount he would have had a narrow victory. The Democrats and their allies in the press have yet to determine what a vote really is in the matter of a recount.

What was more distressing was the ignorance of the American voter. Many across this nation acted as though they had never heard of the Electoral College much less how it actually worked. People across this nation stated that they had always believed that the guy with the popular vote won the office of the presidency this despite the fact that this very type of election had occurred three previous times in our nation's history, 1824, 1876, and 1888. Please tell your kids to pay attention in history class.

Now the Democrats are stating that the folks in Florida and Michigan are not going to be properly represented at the Democratic Convention and if a compromise is not reached that will be true. But keep in mind Democrats, your party leaders made this decision and your party, at least 20 some years ago made the decision to put Super delegates into place to control who wins the nomination. This was done so that the party had the appearance of fairness while making sure that the right guys, McGovern, Carter, Dukakis,Mondale, and others, received the nomination. Your party took the smoke filled rooms public.

The Plan Is Out

Praise be the truth is out! Yesterday, Maxine Waters, a representative from California and sympathizer of Fidel Castro, told the world that if the oil companies did not promise to lower gas prices for consumers if the companies were allowed to drill wherever they wanted she would press for government takeover of said companies. There is no longer any doubt where the Democratic Party stands. As of 7:46 AM this morning no Democrat from the committee, indeed no Democrat from anywhere in the party has stepped forward to denounce Maxine.

Ms. Waters simply revealed what is and has been going on within the Democrat Party for a long time. Those who have read their history and have paid attention to what is going on in this nation are not surprised by the blatant takeover statement that was made. Our supposed leaders have been taking us down the path to socialism/nationalism for the past century particularly during Democrat administrations.

There is no doubt that we have an energy problem. Congress wants to blame it on the oil companies allegeded price fixing. Time and time again they bring the CEOs of the oil companies before their silly committees to get face time and time and time again they have found nothing to indicate there is wrong doing. That is because they have failed to look in the proper place. The greatest wrong doing will not be found in the closets of the oil companies executives, it will be found in the closets of the likes of Maxine Waters and the dastardly deed can be summed up in one word, regulation.

The regulations placed on the oil companies are not the sole reason for the high price of oil but I would argue that they are a major contributor. Regulations that keep them from drilling for gas and oil off our coasts while China is drilling in the Gulf possibly horizontally and thus grabbing product that might rightfully be ours. Regulations that are so prohibitive that oil companies do not want to build refineries. Regulations that prohibit us from building nuclear plants that in and of itself could have a tremendous affect on so called carbon footprints given that such a thing really exists and is really harmful. Regulations that require some 26 blends of gas and retooling at least twice a year. Why do we have all these blends? Why wouldn't we have the best blend for the entire country? Aren't all of us entitled to the best air quality?

Then there is the question will conservation give us cheap prices? If we indeed move toward a 30mpg target for car mileage what will happen? I believe we will not only see smaller and less safe cars, we will also see higher gas prices because oil companies have an obligation to their stockholders. We use less gas or power the price will go up. If you check you will see that since we have been in conservation mode in this country energy prices have gone through the roof and they will continue to do so unless we get a real energy plan into place and recognize that what we must do is use things like solar and wind power as supplemental power.

Yesterday, May 27, 2008, it was announced that coal, we have an abundance of it, was going to be turned into jet fuel for the Air Force. Other nations, including Japan the only country to be struck with a nuclear weapon, use nuclear power plants. Why don't we? I remember a 7th grade assembly where a representative of General Electric used a sun lamp to show us the future, a solar car. Where is it? Why don't we have it? Could it be cost? Could it be cloudy days say here in Pennsylvania when your car might not run all that well?

The sad part of all of this is that this debate should have been going on in the 1970's during the Carter Administration and our first messy gas lines. Carter established the Energy Department and then went on with his business of not governing. Least you think I am too partisan let me state that every administration since Carter has steered away from making us less dependent on foreign oil. But the real person to blame can be found every day when we look in the mirror.

We have a candidate running for the office of President who just the other day condemned us for our consumption. According to Senator Obama, we should not be allowed to drive our SUVs thus telling us what cars we can buy. We eat to much thus it is our fault that others are starving. We, that leader of the free world, we the first people to step up to assist in every disaster in the world, we are looking at a socialist who would be president and who already has an admitted comrade in arms in the House of Representatives and Maxine isn't the only one there.

What is the Appropriate Label for Jimmy Carter?

James Earl Carter, 38th president of the United States, is having a difficult time shaping his legacy. Anticipating a bad showing in the history books, he continues to run around the world in an effort to salvage his reputation and his legacy. Let's take a little trip back in time to the 1976 presidential race.

The competitors for the office of president in 1976 were Gerald Ford and James Carter. President Ford, the incumbent, came to the office as a result of the resignation of Richard Nixon. James Carter was the Governor of Georgia. Ford, the experts tell us, had angered a lot of Americans by pardoning Nixon for his involvement in a scandal known as Watergate. Governor Carter, an Annapolis graduate, was an appealing choice for many Americans after the tumultuous Watergate affair. Initially Carter had a wide lead in the polls but Ford would narrow that lead to 2 points by the time of the election. James Carter took the oath of office in January of 1977.

The new president presented himself as a humble, religious man from Plains, Georgia. Indeed, he took great pride in the fact that he was a peanut farmer. As it would turn out, many Americans wished he had chosen to remain in that position.

During his time in office we saw the first major gas crisis. Long lines appeared at the pumps. Eventually we had alternate day pumping based on an odd-even system using license plates. Carter proved to be ineffective when dealing with OPEC. Despite the fact that he created the Cabinet Post for a Department of Energy, nothing was done to turn the nation in a new direction.

With the overthrow of the Shah we saw the mullahs come to power in Iran. We were called the Great Satan by the mullahs and their followers. Eventually they took over our embassy there and held a number of Americans hostage for 444 days. This crisis crippled Carter and he spent a vast amount of time in the White House not doing the nation's business.

His domestic policy and programs were almost as good as his foreign policy. Under his administration we would suffer stagflation. Interest rates went into double digits. Prices went up. People lost their jobs. And the president told us that we were suffering from a "malaise" In his fireside chat to us he exclaimed, in the face of rising fuel oil prices, that we should put on our sweaters and pretty much get use to it.

With prices rising and wages not keeping pace, we were in one of the worse economic times I personally can remember. I was a teacher at the time. We negotiated a 7% wage increase but inflation was at 12%. I was not making up ground at that rate and a lot of my fellow Americans were in the same boat with me. Needless to say, James Earl Carter was a one term president.

Now Carter is trying to establish his legacy. He has been a gadfly flitting from one spot to another to put a sheen on Jimmy Carter. He has sat down with wretched people like Hugo Chavez and now he has spent time with Hamas, a group of avowed terrorists who swear that they will destroy Israel. I can think of only one other president who was as much the egomaniac and that was Woodrow Wilson. Jimmy Carter needs to return to Plains, Georgia. Above all else, the state department needs to revoke his passport before he does some serious damage in the world in his effort to salvage his own ego.