The DNC: Same ol' same ol

Anybody who is paying attention could have scripted the first night of the Democratic National Convention. We heard nothing new, just the same old broken record about women's health rights, gay rights, the brilliance of obamacare, and how much Barack cares for everybody, with the added twist of Michelle Obama's speech about what a great American her husband is.

It started with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Deborah Wasserman-Shultz opening the convention talking about bringing change to America. Change was the promise, along with hope, four years ago, but all the change we've seen has been bad. Gasoline prices are two dollars higher than when Obama took over, the unemployment rate has been as high as 10.2%, and has hung at 8.1% or higher for 42 months, and the deficit just topped 16 trillion dollars. And Shultz is still talking about change. What we need is to change what Obama is doing!

There were some very interesting speakers on the agenda. One Democrat Representative from Colorado, Polis, boasted that Obama had taken no money from special interest groups. Let's see; Obama promised not to have any former lobbyists in his administration, but since many of those lobbies had actually contributed to his campaign, he filled his administration with former lobbyists. So what we got from Polis was a distortion, if not a flat out lie.

Kathleen Sibelius, head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and former failed governor of Kansas, got up to talk of her father's efforts to pass Medicare for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and boasted that she was following his lead in standing up for women's health rights, a theme we would continue to hear the whole night. Evil Republicans are against contraception, but Democrats believe a woman has the right to make her own health care choices. In other words, abortion on demand paid for by all taxpayers no matter what their religious beliefs are.

By the way, Republicans are not at war with women, and we are not against contraception, we just don't think we need to pay for everybody else's condoms. We are against abortion on demand, and against anyone that forces us to pay for it.

She accused Republicans and Ryan's budget plan of destroying Medicare while Obama saved it. She forgot to mention that obamacare took 716 billion dollars out of Medicare to pay for itself, leaving those on Medicare with three-quarters of a billion dollars less funds available for their needs. Obamacare is already a success, she said, because millions of people received $500 back from insurance companies that weren't complying with some regulation. Put that in perspective. Those $500 were not savings generated by obamacare. They were fines issued by an administration bordering on dictatorship.

They paraded a woman army captain across the stage who had lost both legs when her helicopter was shot down in Iraq. She has my respect for her service and bravery and the sacrifice she has made. But she got my ire up when she claimed to have proven that women can do anything as well as any man. Male-female class warfare? This is supposed to be unifying?

I don't know about the army, but when I was in Naval Aviation, about 50% of all who started flight school washed out. Of those who got into the jet pipeline about 20% would wash out. Of the women who got into the jet pipeline, none ever washed out. I was in a squadron in the Philippines that was non-combat arms, so we had a lot of women pilots. I can tell you from personal experience as a NATOPS check flight pilot, that most of those women wouldn't have been there if they were men. There were some good female pilots, but their 100% success rate in flight school was a politically correct creation, not an example of their ability.

Having said that, I'll honor this woman for her patriotism, but not for her politics. She praised Obama for listening to military leaders who have long said homosexuals ought to be allowed to serve openly. They weren't saying that when I was in, they were mostly opposed to Clinton enacting "Don't ask don't tell" because the system of not allowing gays had always worked well before that. Military leadership was not in favor of this change either, and reports four years ago showed most of them against it. Unfortunately we have a Joint Chiefs of Staff filled with political yes men who don't have the guts to stand up to the foolish destructive policies of the president.

The left is quick to compare conservatives with Nazis. I'll give you a real Nazi comparison. In the 1930's Wilhelm Keitel, the head of the Wehrmacht, as well as most of the German military leadership, didn't have the courage to stand up to Hitler's megalomania and they followed him to their own destruction. That's where our military leadership in Washington is today.

The woman captain finished her speech saying Obama "will never ignore our soldiers." The speech drew throngs of cheers and applause from people who mostly have never served and have no idea what's going on with the military. Obama is gutting the military in personnel and funding, and has publicly stated he thinks the military should pay for its own medical care! And now his Justice Department has sued Ohio to prevent military personnel from that State from having extra time to vote when they are overseas.

Yeah, he really cares about the military. Fortunately the soldiers at Ft. Bliss weren't fooled Monday when Obama spoke to them. They sat in cold silence as Obama spoke once again taking credit for killing bin Laden.

They watched two videos at the convention last night. One, supposedly a tribute to Ted Kennedy, spent more time attacking Romney than praising Kennedy. The other was a greeting from the biggest losing incumbent president in history, Jimmy Carter.

Carter spoke of integrity and trust. He said after watching Obama that he believes he has integrity, that he knows why and who he serves. He talked about America's reputation being restored and dialogue with trust possible around the world. He said Obama had accomplished all of this in spite of unprecedented opposition, and that he stood for the right policies for the right reasons.

I could go on all night on this one, but briefly: Obama is a more consummate liar than Bill Clinton. Example? He told us obamacare would not cover abortion. It does. If that were the only lie he has told it would be enough, but it's so bad you can't trust a single word out of his mouth. So much for integrity.

Obama obviously does not know why he serves since he's played 104 rounds of golf in three and a half years, nor does he know he's there to serve us. He has issued scores of executive orders cramming his agenda down our throats, unconstitutionally by-passing Congress. He has sued several states to prevent them from arresting illegal aliens. It seems he's more concerned with illegals than American citizens. Our reputation around the world is a paper tiger. We can't even get Iran to talk, much less join a dialogue and they're about to get a nuclear weapon. Unprecedented opposition? Ronald Reagan and both Bushes had more opposition than Obama ever had, including the left wing press which is in Obama's pocket. No, Carter's speech when examined was not a rousing endorsement, it was an indictment.

Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, shouting at the top of his lungs, said if a person is healthy and willing to work and to play by the rules, he should be able to get a job. Exactly! That's the whole point. There are 23 million Americans who can't find a job. That's Obama's fault and that's why he needs to go!

The Democrats' token hispanic speaker, Julian Castro, got up to demonize what he called "trickle down, supply side, Romney-Ryan, or Ryan-Romney" economics. They have never worked, he said. His speech was nothing more than Obama blather warmed over. We've been hearing this ad nauseum for the last four years.

This is a common Democrat strategy. Don't examine the facts, just lie about them loud enough and long enough until every non-thinking person believes you. Say, that was Hitler's strategy too!

The fact is, tax and spend bigger government is what Jimmy Carter gave us. It didn't work. Trickle down, supply-side, smaller government is what Ronald Reagan gave us. It led to the longest peacetime expansion of the US economy in history. It ended when George H.W. Bush broke his promise and raised taxes. Clinton was already headed for defeat in 1996 for his tax raising and big government spending ideas, when the Republican Revolution of 1994 turned the economy around with tax cuts and reduced spending. Clinton changed his ways, became a supply-sider, claimed credit for the economic turnaround, and coasted into reelection.

After four years of surpluses, Clinton left office with the economy falling into a recession. I'm not an economic expert, but I think the reason was that Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, refused to restrict the money flow by raising interest rates and created an economic bubble that burst just as Bush was elected.

W. Bush then was faced with 9/11 and the War on Terror, but his tax cuts in 2002 led to a recovery of the economy. Bush, however, using the war as an excuse, really betrayed conservative Republican fiscal principles and failed to cut spending. When the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006 he refused to do anything to control the spending and the two largest deficits of his administration took place in his last two years. Then, as the country headed into another recession, he implemented the TARP bailout, a socialist government takeover of the economy, not much different than Obama's stimulus package less than a year later.

The economic truth is, every time the government has cut taxes across the board and reduced spending, which is trickle-down, supply-side, the economy has soared. Every time taxes have been raised and spending unchecked and government expanded, the economy has tanked. The record is there for anybody to see, but Democrats turn the Reagan years around by calling them the Decade of Greed, and greedy people who want a bigger slice of the government pie (which always leads to less freedom!) fall for the lie every time.

If the Republicans were smart, they wouldn't run from the accusations that it's Bush's fault. They'd acknowledge his betrayal and say, Yes, Bush betrayed the Republican ideal of fiscal responsibility and joined the Democrats in control of Congress in overspending and causing the recession. To that extent it's Bush's fault, but Bush isn't here anymore and continuing those Democrat policies that Bush joined has only made our economic situation worse.

It will be interesting to see what Bill Clinton has to say tonight. His administration had an unemployment rate of under five percent and four straight years of budget surpluses, all thanks to trickle-down Reaganomics. He's got a tricky task ahead to convince the country to continue the policies that have led to the economic disaster we are in, policies that he rejected when he was president.

The night ended with Michelle Obama praising her husband. It was a great delivery, much better than her husband has ever done. She said, "Barack knows about the American dream because he's lived it."

If that's true, why is he trying to take away from everybody else the opportunity to live the same dream? Or is it that he hasn't really lived the dream? He grew up in Indonesia dirt poor and somehow went to Harvard Law School. He didn't work for anything, somebody else gave it to him, just like they gave him his Nobel Prize for doing nothing. He never worked for anything in his life. Radical socialists, including Saul Alinksy, got him where he is today, and now he wants to force their socialism on the rest of us. Why? So we can all be dirt poor like he was. I got news for you, Michelle. Ronald Reagan, the one your husband likes to compare himself with, had a different idea about the American dream.

"The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become." - Ronald Reagan

Is it significant that the Democrats have removed all mention of God from their platform? What we've seen so far is not much different than what the Democrats gave us under Walter Mondale in 1984. The difference is that in 1984 the country wasn't ungodly enough to accept it. The question now is, have we become ungodly enough?

I hope not.