Alexandra Swann's Blog, page 11

5 Things Obama Should be Apologizing for, but Isn't

This week President Obama "apologized" to the American public on NBC for his Obamacare mantra, which he repeated as many as 36 times, "If you like your health insurance; you can keep it. If you like your doctor; you can keep him." We all now know for certain what we conservatives strongly suspected all along--this was a patently untrue statement. As the Obamacare rollout has taken place, millions of Americans are getting notices that their health insurance policies, which they did actually like very much, are being cancelled because they don't comply with the new law. In the effort to make everything "fair" and everyone "equal" we now have young men paying for maternity care and people who are childless covering the cost of pediatrics as part of the cost-spreading wealth redistributing policies of the Obama Administration.




Obama's apology on NBC was not unlike the old joke where somebody calls another person an idiot and then, when forced to apologize says, "I'm sorry that you're an idiot." If you listen carefully to what he actually said, he apologized for not making it clear that some Americans might lose their coverage. If you read between the lines a little you will hear a loud and clear, "I'm sorry you weren't smart enough to understand how this was going to work and now you're mad." The President whose most famous tag line is "Let me be clear," is apologizing for not being clear enough in a statement made over and over about how his signature health care law would work. He's not apologizing for lying to everyone; nor is he apologizing for ruining the health care of millions--he is merely apologizing to the American public because they believed what he said in the first place.




With that in mind, I have compiled a list of five things that I believe Obama should apologize to the American people for. I do this with the clear understanding that such an apology is not coming--now or ever. But that in no way changes the fact that an apology--followed by action--is owed.




1. Obamacare. No, not just the rollout or the "misstatements" about Americans losing their coverage. Obama should be apologizing for the entire debacle. This is a law that was passed with backroom deals by politicians who did not even bother to read it before voting for it. We need a heartfelt sincere "I'm sorry" for giving the IRS power over our lives and health care, for causing the loss of health insurance for millions of Americans, for forcing millions more into part-time employment under 29 hours a week and for raising costs of insurance. If he wants to apologize for misinforming the American people, he could apologize for convincing millions of Americans that they were going to get something for nothing--that somewhere on this planet there actually is a free lunch. Only now are Americans beginning to understand that the "free" health care they were promised is actually very expensive. Obamacare is a disaster that will only get worse with time; an apology won't fix it but sincere contrition for this mess would be a good starting point to getting some real solutions.




2. Dodd Frank: The OTHER huge piece of legislation from 2010 is also just beginning to make itself felt. In two months the qualified mortgages will go into effect, along with the 3% caps on points and fees. Small business people who make their livings originating mortgage loans are finally waking up to the fact that caps on points and fees in the QMs are not workable with a small business model and will in fact drive them out of business. Dodd Frank makes the Wall Street banks too big to fail, makes the small business owners too small to succeed and eliminates the dream of homeownership for nearly 50% of Americans who qualified to purchase homes in 2010. In 2014 as this law fully takes effect, the ramifications will echo through the housing and mortgage markets for a long time.




3. The NSA surveillance program: Not only is the government recording all of OUR phone calls and Internet communications; apparently they are recording all the whole world's phone calls and Internet communications. This is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment in our country, and a slap in the face to world leaders who are supposed to be our allies. Obama should apologize to the American people on two fronts: First for violating our Constitutional rights and second for making us the laughingstock of the world by letting our security protocols be exposed.




4. Climate Change Regulations/War on Coal: At a time when American businesses and individuals are struggling, Obama is working to make energy more expensive via his climate change regulations and his war on coal. Without control of both houses of Congress, Obama has had no chance of passing his climate change bill, so in the absence of such a bill, he is enacting more and more climate change regulations through executive order and administrative action. Through these regulations, and particularly his newest executive order issued last Friday, Obama is using the power of the presidency to remake the nation into a socialist urban utopia where energy is scarce and expensive, housing is limited and expensive and the American dream of a home and car is just a vague distant memory.




5. $17 Trillion Deficit--and Counting... Whereas Senator Obama told us that high deficits were unpatriotic, President Obama has hosted a five year spending spree, which includes presiding over the largest debt increase in one day in our nation's history--$328 billion incurred on October 17, 2013 after the standoff over the debt ceiling and the government shutdown ended. Under the terms of the deal made with Congress, the president has the power to borrow as much money as he likes between now and February when the debt ceiling battle begins again. Experts predict that we will see a total of $700 billion in new debt by that date--taking us close to the $18 trillion dollar mark. We can expect about $21 trillion in debt by the end of Obama's second term. This massive debt is the result of government bailouts to big corporations, expansion of welfare entitlement programs and expansion of government itself, all at a time that many middle class Americans lost their homes, businesses and savings, jobs and futures. We are going to spend the next several decades paying for a party that we did not even get to attend. For that, Obama owes this entire country an apology.




Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

Do You Want to See Something Really Scary?--2013 Edition

I have not been able to write a post for five weeks because of the time I have had to spend getting my newest novel, The Force , co-written with Joyce Swann, edited and published. The marketing for The Force touts that it is the "best scary Christian fiction book of the year"--a description which I believe is very accurate. But today, I turn from a futuristic scary tale of population control and genetic engineering to real life scariness.

This marks the fourth annual edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.

The year 2013 has seen its share of scandals and problems--revelations of massive NSA spying on millions of Americans as well as millions of non U.S. citizens living in other countries, hearings that went nowhere on the Benghazi scandal, revelations that the IRS was deliberately harassing conservative groups prior to the 2012 elections, and of course, the epic joint failures of the Obamacare website and reports that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance plans after being promised by POTUS that "if you like your health coverage you can keep it." For scariness, it would be hard to pick a favorite out of this monstrous mix, but what really stands out is the White House's response to every one of these revelations. If Jay Carney and Barack Obama are to be believed, the president has absolutely no idea of what is going on in his own Administration. It turns out that he finds out what is happening in America the same way the rest of us do--by seeing it on the nightly news. No wonder everything is in such a mess!

To drive this point home, MSNBC--a news outlet so left-learning that if you looked up the phrase "liberal media" in the dictionary you would find their logo as an illustration--has compiled a montage of Barack Obama and Jay Carney insisting that the president did not know about any of the problems in his administration before the nightly news reported them. (The only thing more noteworthy than Obama's shameless admissions that he is apparently clueless about all of the activities of his own Administration is that his most fervent supporters in the mainstream media are now starting to turn on him.) You can watch the clip here:







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xSoSaJqbas&feature=player_embedded

If Obama actually does not know anything that is happening in the Administration before it is reported to news media outlets, that begs the question, "Who is actually running the country?" I realize that Obama did not have a lot of executive experience before being elected POTUS--in fact, his experience appears to have been limited mainly to running his own campaign--but even he must understand that the job of the executive branch is to manage the country. Obama spends so much time campaigning for what he wants that he does not understand that the implementation phase is always more critical than the sales phase--and infinitely more difficult. After all, I can tell you anything and I may be able to convince you that what I am saying is true, but the real question is whether I can deliver on my promises. Last week, National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent article titled King Obama about this dichotomy in the Obama Administration between his salesmanship and his actual delivery on his promises. (The G-file is a free newsletter from National Review which you can get to your inbox every Friday by subscribing here.)  The question is worth repeating, if Obama is just the front man who goes out and makes great speeches and rallies the country, then who is the real executive? Whom do we blame for all of these failures? Who is actually accountable? And why is an unelected, nameless, faceless individual actually running the nation? It's a scary question.

The second possibility is that Obama is not learning of these fiascoes on the nightly news with the rest of us; he has been briefed well ahead of time, but he does not care enough to deal with any of the issues facing the country. Just as important, he does not have any qualms about repeatedly lying to the American people by using the worst excuse imaginable--that he is too inept to be president. Such a lie shows not only a blatant disregard for the truth, but an extreme disrespect for the nation that elected him president twice. He does not take the job America hired him to do seriously enough to even admit that it is his job. "I didn't know what was happening" is a perfectly acceptable excuse for failure from a man who never admits that he should have known what was going on, should have been supervising the IRS commissioner, should have logged onto the signature website for his Administration to see what all Americans would see, should have made sure the ambassador and the four Americans who died at Benghazi were rescued. By using, "this is the first I've heard about it" as an excuse, he is telling the American people that we are not important enough for him to get up each day and do his job. That's scary too.

We have not seen the last of the scandals; an Administration this mismanaged can only sink further and further into failure. But all Americans, regardless of political party, should be gravely concerned that we have a leader who either doesn't care enough to find out what is going on, or doesn't respect us enough to give us a straight answer when asked about the failures. It's pretty scary stuff.  Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.



Download The Force free on Kindle through November 2, 2013. 



 

Do You Want to See Something Really Scary?--2013 Edition

I have not been able to write a post for five weeks because of the time I have had to spend getting my newest novel, The Force , co-written with Joyce Swann, edited and published. The marketing for The Force touts that it is the "best scary Christian fiction book of the year"--a description which I believe is very accurate. But today, I turn from a futuristic scary tale of population control and genetic engineering to real life scariness.

This marks the fourth annual edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.

The year 2013 has seen its share of scandals and problems--revelations of massive NSA spying on millions of Americans as well as millions of non U.S. citizens living in other countries, hearings that went nowhere on the Benghazi scandal, revelations that the IRS was deliberately harassing conservative groups prior to the 2012 elections, and of course, the epic joint failures of the Obamacare website and reports that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance plans after being promised by POTUS that "if you like your health coverage you can keep it." For scariness, it would be hard to pick a favorite out of this monstrous mix, but what really stands out is the White House's response to every one of these revelations. If Jay Carney and Barack Obama are to be believed, the president has absolutely no idea of what is going on in his own Administration. It turns out that he finds out what is happening in America the same way the rest of us do--by seeing it on the nightly news. No wonder everything is in such a mess!

To drive this point home, MSNBC--a news outlet so left-learning that if you looked up the phrase "liberal media" in the dictionary you would find their logo as an illustration--has compiled a montage of Barack Obama and Jay Carney insisting that the president did not know about any of the problems in his administration before the nightly news reported them. (The only thing more noteworthy than Obama's shameless admissions that he is apparently clueless about all of the activities of his own Administration is that his most fervent supporters in the mainstream media are now starting to turn on him.) You can watch the clip here:







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xSoSaJqbas&feature=player_embedded

If Obama actually does not know anything that is happening in the Administration before it is reported to news media outlets, that begs the question, "Who is actually running the country?" I realize that Obama did not have a lot of executive experience before being elected POTUS--in fact, his experience appears to have been limited mainly to running his own campaign--but even he must understand that the job of the executive branch is to manage the country. Obama spends so much time campaigning for what he wants that he does not understand that the implementation phase is always more critical than the sales phase--and infinitely more difficult. After all, I can tell you anything and I may be able to convince you that what I am saying is true, but the real question is whether I can deliver on my promises. Last week, National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent article titled King Obama about this dichotomy in the Obama Administration between his salesmanship and his actual delivery on his promises. (The G-file is a free newsletter from National Review which you can get to your inbox every Friday by subscribing here.)  The question is worth repeating, if Obama is just the front man who goes out and makes great speeches and rallies the country, then who is the real executive? Whom do we blame for all of these failures? Who is actually accountable? And why is an unelected, nameless, faceless individual actually running the nation? It's a scary question.

The second possibility is that Obama is not learning of these fiascoes on the nightly news with the rest of us; he has been briefed well ahead of time, but he does not care enough to deal with any of the issues facing the country. Just as important, he does not have any qualms about repeatedly lying to the American people by using the worst excuse imaginable--that he is too inept to be president. Such a lie shows not only a blatant disregard for the truth, but an extreme disrespect for the nation that elected him president twice. He does not take the job America hired him to do seriously enough to even admit that it is his job. "I didn't know what was happening" is a perfectly acceptable excuse for failure from a man who never admits that he should have known what was going on, should have been supervising the IRS commissioner, should have logged onto the signature website for his Administration to see what all Americans would see, should have made sure the ambassador and the four Americans who died at Benghazi were rescued. By using, "this is the first I've heard about it" as an excuse, he is telling the American people that we are not important enough for him to get up each day and do his job. That's scary too.

We have not seen the last of the scandals; an Administration this mismanaged can only sink further and further into failure. But all Americans, regardless of political party, should be gravely concerned that we have a leader who either doesn't care enough to find out what is going on, or doesn't respect us enough to give us a straight answer when asked about the failures. It's pretty scary stuff.  Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.



Download The Force free on Kindle through November 2, 2013. 



 

Do You Want to See Something Really Scary?--2013 Edition

I have not been able to write a post for five weeks because of the time I have had to spend getting my newest novel, The Force , co-written with Joyce Swann, edited and published. The marketing for The Force touts that it is the "best scary Christian fiction book of the year"--a description which I believe is very accurate. But today, I turn from a futuristic scary tale of population control and genetic engineering to real life scariness.

This marks the fourth annual edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.

The year 2013 has seen its share of scandals and problems--revelations of massive NSA spying on millions of Americans as well as millions of non U.S. citizens living in other countries, hearings that went nowhere on the Benghazi scandal, revelations that the IRS was deliberately harassing conservative groups prior to the 2012 elections, and of course, the epic joint failures of the Obamacare website and reports that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance plans after being promised by POTUS that "if you like your health coverage you can keep it." For scariness, it would be hard to pick a favorite out of this monstrous mix, but what really stands out is the White House's response to every one of these revelations. If Jay Carney and Barack Obama are to be believed, the president has absolutely no idea of what is going on in his own Administration. It turns out that he finds out what is happening in America the same way the rest of us do--by seeing it on the nightly news. No wonder everything is in such a mess!

To drive this point home, MSNBC--a news outlet so left-learning that if you looked up the phrase "liberal media" in the dictionary you would find their logo as an illustration--has compiled a montage of Barack Obama and Jay Carney insisting that the president did not know about any of the problems in his administration before the nightly news reported them. (The only thing more noteworthy than Obama's shameless admissions that he is apparently clueless about all of the activities of his own Administration is that his most fervent supporters in the mainstream media are now starting to turn on him.) You can watch the clip here:







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xSoSaJqbas&feature=player_embedded

If Obama actually does not know anything that is happening in the Administration before it is reported to news media outlets, that begs the question, "Who is actually running the country?" I realize that Obama did not have a lot of executive experience before being elected POTUS--in fact, his experience appears to have been limited mainly to running his own campaign--but even he must understand that the job of the executive branch is to manage the country. Obama spends so much time campaigning for what he wants that he does not understand that the implementation phase is always more critical than the sales phase--and infinitely more difficult. After all, I can tell you anything and I may be able to convince you that what I am saying is true, but the real question is whether I can deliver on my promises. Last week, National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent article titled King Obama about this dichotomy in the Obama Administration between his salesmanship and his actual delivery on his promises. (The G-file is a free newsletter from National Review which you can get to your inbox every Friday by subscribing here.)  The question is worth repeating, if Obama is just the front man who goes out and makes great speeches and rallies the country, then who is the real executive? Whom do we blame for all of these failures? Who is actually accountable? And why is an unelected, nameless, faceless individual actually running the nation? It's a scary question.

The second possibility is that Obama is not learning of these fiascoes on the nightly news with the rest of us; he has been briefed well ahead of time, but he does not care enough to deal with any of the issues facing the country. Just as important, he does not have any qualms about repeatedly lying to the American people by using the worst excuse imaginable--that he is too inept to be president. Such a lie shows not only a blatant disregard for the truth, but an extreme disrespect for the nation that elected him president twice. He does not take the job America hired him to do seriously enough to even admit that it is his job. "I didn't know what was happening" is a perfectly acceptable excuse for failure from a man who never admits that he should have known what was going on, should have been supervising the IRS commissioner, should have logged onto the signature website for his Administration to see what all Americans would see, should have made sure the ambassador and the four Americans who died at Benghazi were rescued. By using, "this is the first I've heard about it" as an excuse, he is telling the American people that we are not important enough for him to get up each day and do his job. That's scary too.

We have not seen the last of the scandals; an Administration this mismanaged can only sink further and further into failure. But all Americans, regardless of political party, should be gravely concerned that we have a leader who either doesn't care enough to find out what is going on, or doesn't respect us enough to give us a straight answer when asked about the failures. It's pretty scary stuff.  Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.



Download The Force free on Kindle through November 2, 2013. 



 

Do You Want to See Something Really Scary?--2013 Edition

I have not been able to write a post for five weeks because of the time I have had to spend getting my newest novel, The Force , co-written with Joyce Swann, edited and published. The marketing for The Force touts that it is the "best scary Christian fiction book of the year"--a description which I believe is very accurate. But today, I turn from a futuristic scary tale of population control and genetic engineering to real life scariness.

This marks the fourth annual edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.

The year 2013 has seen its share of scandals and problems--revelations of massive NSA spying on millions of Americans as well as millions of non U.S. citizens living in other countries, hearings that went nowhere on the Benghazi scandal, revelations that the IRS was deliberately harassing conservative groups prior to the 2012 elections, and of course, the epic joint failures of the Obamacare website and reports that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance plans after being promised by POTUS that "if you like your health coverage you can keep it." For scariness, it would be hard to pick a favorite out of this monstrous mix, but what really stands out is the White House's response to every one of these revelations. If Jay Carney and Barack Obama are to be believed, the president has absolutely no idea of what is going on in his own Administration. It turns out that he finds out what is happening in America the same way the rest of us do--by seeing it on the nightly news. No wonder everything is in such a mess!

To drive this point home, MSNBC--a news outlet so left-learning that if you looked up the phrase "liberal media" in the dictionary you would find their logo as an illustration--has compiled a montage of Barack Obama and Jay Carney insisting that the president did not know about any of the problems in his administration before the nightly news reported them. (The only thing more noteworthy than Obama's shameless admissions that he is apparently clueless about all of the activities of his own Administration is that his most fervent supporters in the mainstream media are now starting to turn on him.) You can watch the clip here:







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xSoSaJqbas&feature=player_embedded

If Obama actually does not know anything that is happening in the Administration before it is reported to news media outlets, that begs the question, "Who is actually running the country?" I realize that Obama did not have a lot of executive experience before being elected POTUS--in fact, his experience appears to have been limited mainly to running his own campaign--but even he must understand that the job of the executive branch is to manage the country. Obama spends so much time campaigning for what he wants that he does not understand that the implementation phase is always more critical than the sales phase--and infinitely more difficult. After all, I can tell you anything and I may be able to convince you that what I am saying is true, but the real question is whether I can deliver on my promises. Last week, National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent article titled King Obama about this dichotomy in the Obama Administration between his salesmanship and his actual delivery on his promises. (The G-file is a free newsletter from National Review which you can get to your inbox every Friday by subscribing here.)  The question is worth repeating, if Obama is just the front man who goes out and makes great speeches and rallies the country, then who is the real executive? Whom do we blame for all of these failures? Who is actually accountable? And why is an unelected, nameless, faceless individual actually running the nation? It's a scary question.

The second possibility is that Obama is not learning of these fiascoes on the nightly news with the rest of us; he has been briefed well ahead of time, but he does not care enough to deal with any of the issues facing the country. Just as important, he does not have any qualms about repeatedly lying to the American people by using the worst excuse imaginable--that he is too inept to be president. Such a lie shows not only a blatant disregard for the truth, but an extreme disrespect for the nation that elected him president twice. He does not take the job America hired him to do seriously enough to even admit that it is his job. "I didn't know what was happening" is a perfectly acceptable excuse for failure from a man who never admits that he should have known what was going on, should have been supervising the IRS commissioner, should have logged onto the signature website for his Administration to see what all Americans would see, should have made sure the ambassador and the four Americans who died at Benghazi were rescued. By using, "this is the first I've heard about it" as an excuse, he is telling the American people that we are not important enough for him to get up each day and do his job. That's scary too.

We have not seen the last of the scandals; an Administration this mismanaged can only sink further and further into failure. But all Americans, regardless of political party, should be gravely concerned that we have a leader who either doesn't care enough to find out what is going on, or doesn't respect us enough to give us a straight answer when asked about the failures. It's pretty scary stuff.  Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.



Download The Force free on Kindle through November 2, 2013. 



 

Do You Want to See Something Really Scary?--2013 Edition

I have not been able to write a post for five weeks because of the time I have had to spend getting my newest novel, The Force , co-written with Joyce Swann, edited and published. The marketing for The Force touts that it is the "best scary Christian fiction book of the year"--a description which I believe is very accurate. But today, I turn from a futuristic scary tale of population control and genetic engineering to real life scariness.

This marks the fourth annual edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.

The year 2013 has seen its share of scandals and problems--revelations of massive NSA spying on millions of Americans as well as millions of non U.S. citizens living in other countries, hearings that went nowhere on the Benghazi scandal, revelations that the IRS was deliberately harassing conservative groups prior to the 2012 elections, and of course, the epic joint failures of the Obamacare website and reports that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance plans after being promised by POTUS that "if you like your health coverage you can keep it." For scariness, it would be hard to pick a favorite out of this monstrous mix, but what really stands out is the White House's response to every one of these revelations. If Jay Carney and Barack Obama are to be believed, the president has absolutely no idea of what is going on in his own Administration. It turns out that he finds out what is happening in America the same way the rest of us do--by seeing it on the nightly news. No wonder everything is in such a mess!

To drive this point home, MSNBC--a news outlet so left-learning that if you looked up the phrase "liberal media" in the dictionary you would find their logo as an illustration--has compiled a montage of Barack Obama and Jay Carney insisting that the president did not know about any of the problems in his administration before the nightly news reported them. (The only thing more noteworthy than Obama's shameless admissions that he is apparently clueless about all of the activities of his own Administration is that his most fervent supporters in the mainstream media are now starting to turn on him.) You can watch the clip here:







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xSoSaJqbas&feature=player_embedded

If Obama actually does not know anything that is happening in the Administration before it is reported to news media outlets, that begs the question, "Who is actually running the country?" I realize that Obama did not have a lot of executive experience before being elected POTUS--in fact, his experience appears to have been limited mainly to running his own campaign--but even he must understand that the job of the executive branch is to manage the country. Obama spends so much time campaigning for what he wants that he does not understand that the implementation phase is always more critical than the sales phase--and infinitely more difficult. After all, I can tell you anything and I may be able to convince you that what I am saying is true, but the real question is whether I can deliver on my promises. Last week, National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent article titled King Obama about this dichotomy in the Obama Administration between his salesmanship and his actual delivery on his promises. (The G-file is a free newsletter from National Review which you can get to your inbox every Friday by subscribing here.)  The question is worth repeating, if Obama is just the front man who goes out and makes great speeches and rallies the country, then who is the real executive? Whom do we blame for all of these failures? Who is actually accountable? And why is an unelected, nameless, faceless individual actually running the nation? It's a scary question.

The second possibility is that Obama is not learning of these fiascoes on the nightly news with the rest of us; he has been briefed well ahead of time, but he does not care enough to deal with any of the issues facing the country. Just as important, he does not have any qualms about repeatedly lying to the American people by using the worst excuse imaginable--that he is too inept to be president. Such a lie shows not only a blatant disregard for the truth, but an extreme disrespect for the nation that elected him president twice. He does not take the job America hired him to do seriously enough to even admit that it is his job. "I didn't know what was happening" is a perfectly acceptable excuse for failure from a man who never admits that he should have known what was going on, should have been supervising the IRS commissioner, should have logged onto the signature website for his Administration to see what all Americans would see, should have made sure the ambassador and the four Americans who died at Benghazi were rescued. By using, "this is the first I've heard about it" as an excuse, he is telling the American people that we are not important enough for him to get up each day and do his job. That's scary too.

We have not seen the last of the scandals; an Administration this mismanaged can only sink further and further into failure. But all Americans, regardless of political party, should be gravely concerned that we have a leader who either doesn't care enough to find out what is going on, or doesn't respect us enough to give us a straight answer when asked about the failures. It's pretty scary stuff.  Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.



Download The Force free on Kindle through November 2, 2013. 



 

Do You Want to See Something Really Scary?--2013 Edition

I have not been able to write a post for five weeks because of the time I have had to spend getting my newest novel, The Force , co-written with Joyce Swann, edited and published. The marketing for The Force touts that it is the "best scary Christian fiction book of the year"--a description which I believe is very accurate. But today, I turn from a futuristic scary tale of population control and genetic engineering to real life scariness.

This marks the fourth annual edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.

The year 2013 has seen its share of scandals and problems--revelations of massive NSA spying on millions of Americans as well as millions of non U.S. citizens living in other countries, hearings that went nowhere on the Benghazi scandal, revelations that the IRS was deliberately harassing conservative groups prior to the 2012 elections, and of course, the epic joint failures of the Obamacare website and reports that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance plans after being promised by POTUS that "if you like your health coverage you can keep it." For scariness, it would be hard to pick a favorite out of this monstrous mix, but what really stands out is the White House's response to every one of these revelations. If Jay Carney and Barack Obama are to be believed, the president has absolutely no idea of what is going on in his own Administration. It turns out that he finds out what is happening in America the same way the rest of us do--by seeing it on the nightly news. No wonder everything is in such a mess!

To drive this point home, MSNBC--a news outlet so left-learning that if you looked up the phrase "liberal media" in the dictionary you would find their logo as an illustration--has compiled a montage of Barack Obama and Jay Carney insisting that the president did not know about any of the problems in his administration before the nightly news reported them. (The only thing more noteworthy than Obama's shameless admissions that he is apparently clueless about all of the activities of his own Administration is that his most fervent supporters in the mainstream media are now starting to turn on him.) You can watch the clip here:







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xSoSaJqbas&feature=player_embedded

If Obama actually does not know anything that is happening in the Administration before it is reported to news media outlets, that begs the question, "Who is actually running the country?" I realize that Obama did not have a lot of executive experience before being elected POTUS--in fact, his experience appears to have been limited mainly to running his own campaign--but even he must understand that the job of the executive branch is to manage the country. Obama spends so much time campaigning for what he wants that he does not understand that the implementation phase is always more critical than the sales phase--and infinitely more difficult. After all, I can tell you anything and I may be able to convince you that what I am saying is true, but the real question is whether I can deliver on my promises. Last week, National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent article titled King Obama about this dichotomy in the Obama Administration between his salesmanship and his actual delivery on his promises. (The G-file is a free newsletter from National Review which you can get to your inbox every Friday by subscribing here.)  The question is worth repeating, if Obama is just the front man who goes out and makes great speeches and rallies the country, then who is the real executive? Whom do we blame for all of these failures? Who is actually accountable? And why is an unelected, nameless, faceless individual actually running the nation? It's a scary question.

The second possibility is that Obama is not learning of these fiascoes on the nightly news with the rest of us; he has been briefed well ahead of time, but he does not care enough to deal with any of the issues facing the country. Just as important, he does not have any qualms about repeatedly lying to the American people by using the worst excuse imaginable--that he is too inept to be president. Such a lie shows not only a blatant disregard for the truth, but an extreme disrespect for the nation that elected him president twice. He does not take the job America hired him to do seriously enough to even admit that it is his job. "I didn't know what was happening" is a perfectly acceptable excuse for failure from a man who never admits that he should have known what was going on, should have been supervising the IRS commissioner, should have logged onto the signature website for his Administration to see what all Americans would see, should have made sure the ambassador and the four Americans who died at Benghazi were rescued. By using, "this is the first I've heard about it" as an excuse, he is telling the American people that we are not important enough for him to get up each day and do his job. That's scary too.

We have not seen the last of the scandals; an Administration this mismanaged can only sink further and further into failure. But all Americans, regardless of political party, should be gravely concerned that we have a leader who either doesn't care enough to find out what is going on, or doesn't respect us enough to give us a straight answer when asked about the failures. It's pretty scary stuff.  Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.



Download The Force free on Kindle through November 2, 2013. 



 

Do You Want to See Something Really Scary?--2013 Edition

I have not been able to write a post for five weeks because of the time I have had to spend getting my newest novel, The Force , co-written with Joyce Swann, edited and published. The marketing for The Force touts that it is the "best scary Christian fiction book of the year"--a description which I believe is very accurate. But today, I turn from a futuristic scary tale of population control and genetic engineering to real life scariness.




This marks the fourth annual edition of "Do you want to see something really scary?" The recurring title of this post is, of course, a tribute to Twilight Zone--the movie. I did not see it--my mother was extremely strict and never allowed us to watch horror movies or even light comedy containing anything that smacked of the occult. But I remember my father coming back from a trip and telling us that he had been driving with his nephew on a dark, wood-lined road when his nephew told about the scene from Twilight Zone where a set of characters are in a car at night trying to scare each other. Finally, one of them says to the driver of the car, "Do you want to see something really scary?" When his friend agrees, he turns his face away, and when he turns back he has become a monster who kills the young man who is driving.




The year 2013 has seen its share of scandals and problems--revelations of massive NSA spying on millions of Americans as well as millions of non U.S. citizens living in other countries, hearings that went nowhere on the Benghazi scandal, revelations that the IRS was deliberately harassing conservative groups prior to the 2012 elections, and of course, the epic joint failures of the Obamacare website and reports that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance plans after being promised by POTUS that "if you like your health coverage you can keep it." For scariness, it would be hard to pick a favorite out of this monstrous mix, but what really stands out is the White House's response to every one of these revelations. If Jay Carney and Barack Obama are to be believed, the president has absolutely no idea of what is going on in his own Administration. It turns out that he finds out what is happening in America the same way the rest of us do--by seeing it on the nightly news. No wonder everything is in such a mess!




To drive this point home, MSNBC--a news outlet so left-learning that if you looked up the phrase "liberal media" in the dictionary you would find their logo as an illustration--has complied a montage of Barack Obama and Jay Carney insisting that the president did not know about any of the problems in his administration before the nightly news reported them. (The only thing more noteworthy than Obama's shameless admissions that he is apparently clueless about all of the activities of his own Administration is that his most fervent supporters in the mainstream media are now starting to turn on him.) You can watch the clip here:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xSoSaJqbas&feature=player_embedded




If Obama actually does not know anything that is happening in the Administration before it is reported to news media outlets, that begs the question, "Who is actually running the country?" I realize that Obama did not have a lot of executive experience before being elected POTUS--in fact, his experience appears to have been limited mainly to running his own campaign--but even he must understand that the job of the executive branch is to manage the country. Obama spends so much time campaigning for what he wants that he does not understand that the implementation phase is always more critical than the sales phase--and infinitely more difficult. After all, I can tell you anything and I may be able to convince you that what I am saying is true, but the real question is whether I can deliver on my promises. Last week, National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent article titled King Obama about this dichotomy in the Obama Administration between his salesmanship and his actual delivery on his promises. (The G-file is a free newsletter from National Review which you can get to your inbox every Friday by subscribing here.)

 

The question is worth repeating, if Obama is just the front man who goes out and makes great speeches and rallies the country, then who is the real executive? Whom do we blame for all of these failures? Who is actually accountable? And why is an unelected, nameless, faceless individual actually running the nation? It's a scary question.




The second possibility is that Obama is not learning of these fiascoes on the nightly news with the rest of us; he has been briefed well ahead of time, but he does not care enough to deal with any of the issues facing the country. Just as important, he does not have any qualms about repeatedly lying to the American people by using the worst excuse imaginable--that he is too inept to be president. Such a lie shows not only a blatant disregard for the truth, but an extreme disrespect for the nation that elected him president twice. He does not take the job America hired him to do seriously enough to even admit that it is his job. "I didn't know what was happening" is a perfectly acceptable excuse for failure from a man who never admits that he should have known what was going on, should have been supervising the IRS commissioner, should have logged onto the signature website for his Administration to see what all Americans would see, should have made sure the ambassador and the four Americans who died at Benghazi were rescued. By using, "this is the first I've heard about it" as an excuse, he is telling the American people that we are not important enough for him to get up each day and do his job. That's scary too.




We have not seen the last of the scandals; an Administration this mismanaged can only sink further and further into failure. But all Americans, regardless of political party, should be gravely concerned that we have a leader who either doesn't care enough to find out what is going on, or doesn't respect us enough to give us a straight answer when asked about the failures. It's pretty scary stuff.

 

 Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.



Download The Force free on Kindle through November 2, 2013. 





 

Lobbing a Cruz Missile at Ameritopia

Last night I finished reading Mark Levin's Ameritopia . I have never listened to Levin's show--even when it was on the air in my market, which is no longer the case. My mother listened to him, though--she admired him a lot and would often repeat something she had heard him say. Her respect for him caused me to begin to follow him on social media and as I did so, I developed my own respect for his genuine belief in the value of conservatism and small government. That, along with the blockbuster success of his newest book, The Liberty Amendments , inspired me to read Ameritopia.



I highly recommend the book; I have a master's degree in history and I taught U.S. history from the discovery of the Americas to 1865 and from 1865 to present day (which was 1989-1991 when I was teaching) for four years, but I still learned a lot from Levin's book--both about the philosophies that drove the Founders and the philosophies of those who have worked to blur the boundaries of government and empower this growing central authority.



Last week I wrote a post entitled Stand up to Bullies--Defund Obamacare--encouraging the Senate GOP to grow some backbone and defund this monstrous new piece of legalisation which is killing jobs, reducing us to a nation of part-time workers and destroying healthcare. Then on Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz gave his twenty-one hour floor speech about the evils of Obamacare, to the profound admiration of Tea Party members and most limited government conservatives and the contempt of everyone else. I was proud of Cruz--I spent my afternoon sending tweets to encourage his efforts. Even though the majority of the Senate GOP has openly distanced themselves from his floor speech and his demands to defund Obamacare, he brought awareness to the problems of Obamacare in a way that no one else was willing to do.



As I finished Ameritopia last night, I appreciated what Cruz had done this week even more. Ted Cruz and I were born the same year (1970) in a post Lyndon Johnson Great Society world. To our generation, entitlements--Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are a way of life. We have never lived without these big government programs and we cannot envision a world without them. I have always openly supported the "safety net" as a necessary function of a compassionate society. But Mark Levin's book challenges the thinking of my generation that says that big government programs are necessary even if they need tweaking. He bluntly reminds us that when Social Security was initially passed in 1935 there was no big public support for Social Security for all people; the Congress could have passed a smaller measure to provide for the needy and indigent during the Depression, but Roosevelt shot down those measures in favor of an all-encompassing bill that would provide an unsustainable model for government funded retirement. Now, seventy-eight years later, even though all of us who watch the news at all know that the current Social Security program is unsustainable and facing bankruptcy, the idea of getting rid of it is unthinkable. Even those of us who basically know that we will never be able to collect Social Security ourselves find the idea of scrapping this program difficult to comprehend. After all "it's always been there."



A similar case can be made for Medicare and Medicaid. These precursors to the national health care system we are getting today were introduced within the decade before Cruz and I were born. "Free" health care for seniors is a real misnomer--seniors pay for expensive supplemental plans to offset the shortages of a program that is also unsustainable. When my mother turned sixty-five, she had to start paying for her "free government health care" out of her own pocket because she had elected not to draw Social Security until she was sixty-six. Normally, Medicare premiums are deducted from the senior citizen's Social Security check, but when the Social Security payments are delayed or deferred, the senior still has to pay the premiums. Our business was slow and she ended up having to pay premiums for her "free" health care on her credit card so that she could make ends meet until she started receiving Social Security to offset the premiums. Only in America.



As Levin points out in his book, the price of these "entitlement" programs is government dependency and centralized control.  We trade our individual rights and liberties in exchange for the promise of something "free" all the while deliberately ignoring the fact that nothing is free and that the price we pay for these entitlement programs is huge, both in terms of our finances and in terms of our liberties.  The first generation to suffer the losses of liberty feels the effects most profoundly, but subsequent generations accept the control and the expenses of the huge programs with no concept of the freedom and independence that has been traded away.



Now we are faced with another massive, unworkable government program. We know already that Obamacare is even now forcing businesses to drop their health care coverage, that it is causing employers to cut hours down below 30 hours a week for part-time employees and that it is causing insurance companies to cancel policies. I know that Obama and his cronies keep preaching that premiums will drop, but we haven't seen any evidence of that so far. This week the new premiums for single individuals were released for Texas--the average for a single person is a little over $300.00 a month. Also this week, the employees of one of the large school districts here were informed that their out of pocket premiums for their district employees were going to more than double--to over $200.00 per month for individuals. We have plenty of evidence that Obamacare does not keep any of the promises that the president made when he sold it to the nation.



But Ted Cruz understands something else that only a person from our generation can truly appreciate. He knows that, good or bad, entitlements become ingrained into the fabric of society with each new generation. The generation that is born in 2014 and after will grow up in a world in which health care--however mediocre--is a universal right and the idea of repeal will be as foreign to them as the idea of repealing Social Security is to us. We are just one generation away from losing this battle forever.



To those who claimed, as Harry Reid did this week, that Ted Cruz's speech was a "waste of time", nothing could be further from the truth. Cruz is doing much more than grandstanding--he is reminding us that we have a responsibility to protect liberty and that massive government and massive social entitlements pose a threat to liberty easily as great as the threat we face from foreign governments or terrorism. If we want to live under the U.S. Constitution, as many of us say we do, we must wholeheartedly reject what Mark Levin terms "Ameritopia"--big government programs and entitlements that allow the federal government to micro manage our lives at the expense of our freedoms. To all of those in the GOP who claim, as John McCain did this week, that Obamacare is the law of the land we need to accept it, we respond "No, We Don't." We don't need to accept big government, massive spending, massive debt and massive intrusions into our independence. We need to stand up as a people and reject "Ameritopia" and the big government "sugar" that goes with it.



Mark Levin ends his book with a quote from Ronald Reagan's 1981 inaugural address. In light of what happened this week with Cruz's speech, I found this appropriate and inspiring, and so I will finish my post today with these words from possibly the greatest champion of conservatism who has ever been elected to the presidency:

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We're not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing."

Download The Planner Free on Kindle through Saturday September 28.



Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.

Lobbing a Cruz Missile at Ameritopia

Last night I finished reading Mark Levin's Ameritopia . I have never listened to Levin's show--even when it was on the air in my market, which is no longer the case. My mother listened to him, though--she admired him a lot and would often repeat something she had heard him say. Her respect for him caused me to begin to follow him on social media and as I did so, I developed my own respect for his genuine belief in the value of conservatism and small government. That, along with the blockbuster success of his newest book, The Liberty Amendments , inspired me to read Ameritopia.



I highly recommend the book; I have a master's degree in history and I taught U.S. history from the discovery of the Americas to 1865 and from 1865 to present day (which was 1989-1991 when I was teaching) for four years, but I still learned a lot from Levin's book--both about the philosophies that drove the Founders and the philosophies of those who have worked to blur the boundaries of government and empower this growing central authority.



Last week I wrote a post entitled Stand up to Bullies--Defund Obamacare--encouraging the Senate GOP to grow some backbone and defund this monstrous new piece of legalisation which is killing jobs, reducing us to a nation of part-time workers and destroying healthcare. Then on Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz gave his twenty-one hour floor speech about the evils of Obamacare, to the profound admiration of Tea Party members and most limited government conservatives and the contempt of everyone else. I was proud of Cruz--I spent my afternoon sending tweets to encourage his efforts. Even though the majority of the Senate GOP has openly distanced themselves from his floor speech and his demands to defund Obamacare, he brought awareness to the problems of Obamacare in a way that no one else was willing to do.



As I finished Ameritopia last night, I appreciated what Cruz had done this week even more. Ted Cruz and I were born the same year (1970) in a post Lyndon Johnson Great Society world. To our generation, entitlements--Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are a way of life. We have never lived without these big government programs and we cannot envision a world without them. I have always openly supported the "safety net" as a necessary function of a compassionate society. But Mark Levin's book challenges the thinking of my generation that says that big government programs are necessary even if they need tweaking. He bluntly reminds us that when Social Security was initially passed in 1935 there was no big public support for Social Security for all people; the Congress could have passed a smaller measure to provide for the needy and indigent during the Depression, but Roosevelt shot down those measures in favor of an all-encompassing bill that would provide an unsustainable model for government funded retirement. Now, seventy-eight years later, even though all of us who watch the news at all know that the current Social Security program is unsustainable and facing bankruptcy, the idea of getting rid of it is unthinkable. Even those of us who basically know that we will never be able to collect Social Security ourselves find the idea of scrapping this program difficult to comprehend. After all "it's always been there."



A similar case can be made for Medicare and Medicaid. These precursors to the national health care system we are getting today were introduced within the decade before Cruz and I were born. "Free" health care for seniors is a real misnomer--seniors pay for expensive supplemental plans to offset the shortages of a program that is also unsustainable. When my mother turned sixty-five, she had to start paying for her "free government health care" out of her own pocket because she had elected not to draw Social Security until she was sixty-six. Normally, Medicare premiums are deducted from the senior citizen's Social Security check, but when the Social Security payments are delayed or deferred, the senior still has to pay the premiums. Our business was slow and she ended up having to pay premiums for her "free" health care on her credit card so that she could make ends meet until she started receiving Social Security to offset the premiums. Only in America.



As Levin points out in his book, the price of these "entitlement" programs is government dependency and centralized control.  We trade our individual rights and liberties in exchange for the promise of something "free" all the while deliberately ignoring the fact that nothing is free and that the price we pay for these entitlement programs is huge, both in terms of our finances and in terms of our liberties.  The first generation to suffer the losses of liberty feels the effects most profoundly, but subsequent generations accept the control and the expenses of the huge programs with no concept of the freedom and independence that has been traded away.



Now we are faced with another massive, unworkable government program. We know already that Obamacare is even now forcing businesses to drop their health care coverage, that it is causing employers to cut hours down below 30 hours a week for part-time employees and that it is causing insurance companies to cancel policies. I know that Obama and his cronies keep preaching that premiums will drop, but we haven't seen any evidence of that so far. This week the new premiums for single individuals were released for Texas--the average for a single person is a little over $300.00 a month. Also this week, the employees of one of the large school districts here were informed that their out of pocket premiums for their district employees were going to more than double--to over $200.00 per month for individuals. We have plenty of evidence that Obamacare does not keep any of the promises that the president made when he sold it to the nation.



But Ted Cruz understands something else that only a person from our generation can truly appreciate. He knows that, good or bad, entitlements become ingrained into the fabric of society with each new generation. The generation that is born in 2014 and after will grow up in a world in which health care--however mediocre--is a universal right and the idea of repeal will be as foreign to them as the idea of repealing Social Security is to us. We are just one generation away from losing this battle forever.



To those who claimed, as Harry Reid did this week, that Ted Cruz's speech was a "waste of time", nothing could be further from the truth. Cruz is doing much more than grandstanding--he is reminding us that we have a responsibility to protect liberty and that massive government and massive social entitlements pose a threat to liberty easily as great as the threat we face from foreign governments or terrorism. If we want to live under the U.S. Constitution, as many of us say we do, we must wholeheartedly reject what Mark Levin terms "Ameritopia"--big government programs and entitlements that allow the federal government to micro manage our lives at the expense of our freedoms. To all of those in the GOP who claim, as John McCain did this week, that Obamacare is the law of the land we need to accept it, we respond "No, We Don't." We don't need to accept big government, massive spending, massive debt and massive intrusions into our independence. We need to stand up as a people and reject "Ameritopia" and the big government "sugar" that goes with it.



Mark Levin ends his book with a quote from Ronald Reagan's 1981 inaugural address. In light of what happened this week with Cruz's speech, I found this appropriate and inspiring, and so I will finish my post today with these words from possibly the greatest champion of conservatism who has ever been elected to the presidency:

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price. It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We're not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing."

Download The Planner Free on Kindle through Saturday September 28.



Alexandra Swann's novel, The Planner, about an out of control, environmentally-driven federal government implementing Agenda 21, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.