The continuous boom of fireworks woke me up last night. As per long-standing tradition I went to bed early New Years Eve. I have yet to regret that old decision.

2009 has a number of unique promises to fulfill. Whether or not it will is yet to be seen. We could either be witnessing the dawn of one of our most prosperous decades beginning with 2010, or the inexorable advance of Armageddon; the potential swing of the pendulum is that wide.

President-elect Obama has already shown himself to be less of a puppet of the liberal left than a lot of pundits feared. His willingness to work with people his typical constituency view as blood enemies shows an inner core of character I was unable to see during the campaign. It will be interesting to see how his middle-income tax cut fares and what, if implemented; it will do for the economy. American big business has become quite reactionary when asked to share their plunder. I personally know of instances where a business owner has actually taken steps that harmed his credit rather than reduce his own personal income to save the business his father began.

As is typical to the Middle East, the millennium-old conflict between the sons of Abraham rages on, but for the past several hundred years the fault lies on Ishmael’s side, not on Isaac’s. I have yet to get a real handle on the problem with the Palestinians. Their heritage is Jordanian, not Israeli. They hail from southwestern Jordon, not from the western side of the Jordon River. Not one accomplishment toward bettering humanity or society, or even themselves can be attributed to any of their disparate groups, and yet the world seems intent on blaming Israel, the real victim, for the Palestinians’ troubles. It seems to me that when someone gives you thousands of acres of arable land, you develop it; you don’t spend all your time developing weapons. The followers of the Babylonian moon god allah don’t care about logic, obviously.

Because of the vast Democrat sweep of nearly every significant office, the Reid/Pelosi cabal has been clamoring to move even further toward socialization. They envision American healthcare as being a mirror of what is offered in Canada. There are so many errors in that form of judgment that space is simply not sufficient to even cover a tiny percentage, but let’s just look at a couple right now. Both Pelosi and Reid happen to be independently wealthy. Over the years I have noticed that those who proclaim the socialist agenda to be the best are often the least generous with their own wealth when they have it. Both Pelosi and Reid share the trait of being dictatorial. They do not work well as the member of a decision-making team; they have a drive to be the one and only decision maker. Every socialistic leader in our world’s history has shared the same trait.

In Canada, it is true, you can see a doctor without paying a co pay. Of course, you have already paid 60% in taxes and had to wait for upwards of half a year while your condition grew worse, but that $20 didn’t leave your wallet. As in the UK, Canada’s health system has morphed into a two-tier system. Those who can afford to pay for extra privilege, get it and the government, used to privilege, does nothing to halt the trend. Do you really think that if it came to it that Reid or Pelosi would be waiting in line with you to see a doctor?

About a year ago my humble house was worth about $250,000. Now it is worth about $150,000. I have actually worked to improve the property, but the price went down. Fortunately the taxes also went with the price. Some economists are warning of hyper-inflation while others are screaming about the coming depression. I think a different scenario is possible, if Uncle Sam will get out of the way. My house was never actually worth a quarter of a million. It simply is too small and in too normal of a location for that price. As with all the other homes around my neighborhood, it was caught up in a short term economic frenzy and far too many scam artists got into a feeding frenzy. The balloon has burst and now things are beginning to stabilize...as long as greed is kept out of it. Gas prices are just about where they really belong along with a great many other commodities. If those businesses who failed were actually allowed to fail, better run companies would take their place. It has happened before and it will happen again. Simply because the owner of a business has a friend in Washington, it does not mean that my taxes can be used to cover up his failure. At least it shouldn’t mean that.

So, welcome to 2009. It should be an interesting year.

This column was posted a few weeks ago, but it bears repeating, with an update at the end.

Why is it that the fundamental American way of life is the only thing left on earth that can be ridiculed, offended, belittled and discriminated against with impunity? The world’s best known talk show host, Rush Limbaugh read the regulations our neighbor to the south has in place for those who are not Mexican citizens wishing to build a business or purchase property.

The law is in essence: If you immigrate to Mexico, you have to speak the native language. You have to be a professional or an investor; unskilled workers are not allowed. Bilingual education is not taught in the schools, and there are no special ballots for elections. No government business will be conducted in any language other than Spanish. Foreigners will not have the right to vote or hold political office. Take that Arnold.

Immigrants to Mexico are forbidden to be a burden to taxpayers. They are not entitled to welfare, food stamps, or any other government social program. Investment is a requirement to immigration: an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage. However, there are restrictions on the purchasing of land and where foreigners can own homes. Beachfront property is limited to Mexican citizens, and foreigners must relinquish individual rights to the property.

There is no right to protest. No right to demonstrate. Only the Mexican flag can be flown. Political organizing is forbidden and speaking ill of the administration can land the speaker in jail. Also, entering Mexico illegally is a direct route to prison.

When Limbaugh read those laws as if they were his suggestion for the US, the protests were deafening, and not one of the protesters changed their opinion after it was revealed where the law originated. After all, only the U.S. can be at fault.

The same occurs in regard to the Middle East. The only Middle Eastern country where women hold equal status with men is Israel. Yet because Israel’s constitution closely mirrors that of the U.S. and America has consistently upheld that tiny country’s right to exist, Israel has become a target for contempt right along with fundamental America. Israel is also the only Middle Eastern country where you have a right to worship as you please, as long as you allow Israel its right to exist. The other countries, Islamic to a fault have a real problem with that existence. Neither America nor Israel should be here. Because of them, Islam’s spread has no been as fast, nor as complete as it should have been.

All of the deriders manage to miss the fact that within Islamic countries, women are little more than property and are not even as important as a prized camel or sheep. In many of these countries female children are sexually mutilated in a disgusting ritual disguised as a rite of adulthood. They are, in essence, treated as foreigners within their own country. They are not allowed to own property, achieve anything resembling an education, or even defend themselves if attacked. In fact one of the most common crimes a woman under bondage to Islam can commit is being raped. Where are the feminists? They are amazingly silent on this issue. Could it be that Islamic women, not being able to further the feminist agenda, have no importance to the cause?

Here in the U.S. we jailed a pedophile who claimed to be a prophet. His name is Warren Jeffs. He attempted to use religion as a shield for his crimes. Fortunately for future children who may have come under his influence, fundamental America was there and Jeffs is now sulking behind bars. Unfortunately for millions of Middle Eastern children, the false prophet Mohammed was not stopped. There was no country established whereby all were granted self-evident rights. A minor Babylonian moon god called Allah was given far more importance than the cult deserved and the rest sadly is history.

Now we have a left-leaning majority in power and the first thing many of them want to do is further tighten the restrictions on American free speech. Enter the so-called Fairness Doctrine. What the doctrine says and what it will do are two entirely different things. On the surface, any broadcast medium must have a “balance” of opinion; both sides of a given issue must be allowed equal time. As an example, the FOX network must reformat every single one of their talk shows into a Hannity & Combs clone where both the conservative and liberal opinions are offered up for the listener to digest. The same would have to be done at MSNBC and CNN, but do you really think that would happen? Remember, this would be overseen by the likes of Whorehouse Harry Reid and Nancy “give me your guns” Pelosi. Can you imagine either of them allowing a conservative voice into the diatribe at MSNBC? Not a chance.

What will happen is that the only network left in the world that gives an alternate world view to all of the others will be silenced. That is what the left calls fairness.

 Liberal politicians on both sides of the aisle want to control every aspect of the average citizen’s life. How you think, work, play, worship, and relax, those should not be your choice...not according to the liberals. The elite in the liberal camp firmly believe they are far better suited to make those decisions, and the liberal drones agree with them. To the drone, it is far easier to shift the responsibility over to the government.

Responsibility. To the liberal mindset, if you add the word “self” before responsibility, you are speaking blasphemy. A populace of independent, self-reliant citizens is a vision of unspeakable horror to the liberal. One reason is that the independent need no one to tell them what to do. The independent make their own decisions. They deal with problems as they come along and they succeed or fail on their own. They are the ones who make the fundamental choices about their own lives. The liberal elite want to remove that ability, even to the point of telling you how to travel or at what temperature your home will be kept.

Pelosi, Reid, Dodd…to the liberal elite, the pinnacle of established wisdom...to the true conservative, a new axis of evil; a tri-liberal committee. Because of the policies and laws these three stooges have put in place, the ability to be self reliant has become an endangered dream. One of the favorite tools of the liberal is healthcare, specifically the arena of pain management.

Pain is a reality of the human condition. Bruises come with the territory. Pain is nature’s way of telling us to “not do that again”. Unfortunately, sometimes things go wrong and pain becomes a constant unwelcome presence in our lives. The pain management specialty is made up of doctors who have studied and in some cases perfected ways to allow the pain sufferer to live a functional life while dealing with that pain. Liberals somehow think that is wrong. They point out the tiny percentage of patients who act irresponsibly as an indication of the whole. Rush Limbaugh’s problem with pain medication is one of their prime examples. They ignore the fact that Mr. Limbaugh has dealt with that problem and seems to be doing quite well right now. To the liberal, a middleclass working American dealing with chronic pain while supporting themselves and their family is as much a danger to society as a meth addict in the gutters of skid row.

The Las Vegas Sun, the liberal newspaper in my area, had an article this morning about a doctor who prescribed pain medication in an irresponsible manner. Well, doctors happen to be human, and humanity does act irresponsibly, sometimes more often than not. That does not mean that in order to solve that problem, you eliminate the ability of those doctors who do prescribe responsibly to help their patients. If you are liberal, that is exactly how you deal with the problem. You punish the patients. You create laws that make it illegal to even think about doing what caused the actual harm. Punish the wrongdoer only? What do you think we are, conservatives?

The best way to solve the healthcare problem and to lower costs is not by adding innumerable layers of regulation, but by making a few responsible changes to how things are done.

One: remove the profit motive. It is fundamentally un-American for a few people to become wealthy off of the misery of others. A hospital or a health insurance company can offer their employees a very good living while supplying their patients with high quality products and services. The Mayo Clinic is a prime example of this. In healthcare the profit motive is what prompts the greedy to order their employees to eject patients from their hospital rooms the second the coverage lapses, or to force nurses to use needles on more than one patient. The profit motive is what causes insurance carriers to refuse contracted benefits on the flimsiest of excuses while granting their board members multimillion dollar bonuses. If you think these examples are absurd, every one of them happened right here in Nevada over the past few years and every one of them was defended by the liberal elite in my legislature. One of the chief supporters of the companies that committed these atrocities was Nevada Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, the recipient of the Consumer Advocate award. Now that is irony. To the media, it is not what you do that counts, it is what you say.

Two: allow doctors and patients to develop a true working relationship where prescribed medications and procedures are concerned. A doctor has enough to do without spending additional hours filing multiple copies of reports to faceless bureaucrats. Don’t remove avenues of help simply because some people may abuse the medicine. People can be idiots, but don’t punish the responsible for the actions of the irresponsible. And don’t make medications that work unavailable for the same reason.

Three: pull the weeds. Sometimes people turn out to be bad, and that includes physicians. The liberal elite think that the best way to deal with that problem is to tighten the regulations so that it is harder to do the bad things. This is the way they deal with everything. The ridiculous gun laws are an example. Making it harder for a doctor to do the job only makes it hard on the patients. If a physician violates the oath that begins with “do no harm”, and it turns out that this was done intentionally, yank the license. There will be plenty of candidates to fill those shoes. We will not have a shortage of doctors if the profession is regulated in a responsible manner. We will though if we allow the liberal mindset to run our lives.

Yes, you read it right. Racism, not corporate greed, is the cause of the mortgage crash. During the days of the Clinton administration there was a young fiery community organizer/lawyer by the name of Barack Obama lobbying the Clintons to open up the mortgage industry for more minority loans. Since he liked the idea of being called the first black president, Bill Clinton thought this was a good idea. Disregarding the protests of the mortgage lenders, the Clinton administration began the process of altering the practice that had stood banks well for centuries. It took time and it took getting a few of the right politicians into power. California’s gift of Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi was invaluable. Adding into that the greed of men like Harry Reid and Duke Cunningham, Obama’s vision for the mortgage industry was well on its way.

With a few reworded bills, it soon became racist for a lender to tell someone with no credit and no job prospects that they could not have a loan. The Fed got into the mix and set up procedures whereby a lender actually had to practice fiscal insanity in order to keep their good rating.

A few smaller banks protected themselves by remaining insular and dealing only with their local community. Massive conglomerates such as BofA diversified so the crash they saw peering up over the horizon would be an irritant rather than a mortal blow.

Well, the crash came just as many analysts predicted it would, but rather than the corporate greed and lust for ever quicker profits, the cause was misguided “community organizing” and racism of the highest order. A bank is not racist merely because it will not lend money to someone unqualified to borrow. Isn’t just the smallest bit of responsibility on the prospective borrower’s side? Should they not have a valid way of raying that loan in a reasonable amount of time? Not according to the Democrats. Apparently fiscal wisdom is tantamount to racism, even if there is no color quotient applied to the loan.

You are a racist if you require a steady job for a borrower. You are a racist if you require a history of paying back loans on time. You are a racist of you take the steps you both agreed upon in the contract to recoup a default. But if you do all of this with a white customer, it is simply being a good businessman. In Obama’s world, we have to have it both ways. If we don’t, we’re being racist.

Carol Fowler, the South Carolina Democratic chairwoman went after Sarah Palin yesterday with this bit of hysteria about McCain's choice for a running mate, “whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Vitriolic hatred of Ronald Reagan seems to be the glue that holds the left together. Reagan was a man of top level morality, fairness, and integrity. What really ticked the left off was that he worked his deep Christian faith into his messages. He had no problem with proudly declaring where he stood and, the worst cut of all, the average American loved him for that. The results of Reagan's second election proved that beyond all argument. Now Sarah Palin is being targeted by that hatred because she has had the terribly bad manners to not be secretive of her own beliefs. Media mouthpieces for the radical left such as the New York Times and the Washington Post have even gone far enough to insist that Palin must answer several questions before she can be considered for candidacy. When did rags like that become the arbiters of America?

What is most telling is that socialistic politicians like Fowler, Pelosi, Rangle, and the list goes on; speak from the same elitist talking points. Palin’s background of coming from Wasilla, Alaska, her ability to hunt, and the worst of all, her Christian faith are, to them, extreme dangers. They apparently have no interest in economic issues. They have set aside the earmark flap since Palin dealt Representative Stevens a death blow. To them the social spectrum has become the overriding issue because Palin goes to church. Somehow they believe that the day McCain takes office he is going to drop dead and this rabid (shudder) Christian woman will be president and every abortion doctor will be put to death…every book not found in a One Way bookshop will be burned, and only white shoes and leisure suits will be allowed to be worn on the streets.

The above may sound ridiculous, but that is in essence what these people believe. It is a gut reaction to anyone who does not share their religion, and whether you agree or not, liberalism is a religion and abortion is one of its sacraments. The fact that Palin gave birth after science discovered her child was inflicted with Downs Syndrome was, to them, a blasphemous act. If this was the Middle East they would be called for Palin to be publicly stoned to death. They call themselves Pro-Choice, but there is no real choice, not when only one option is valid. In order to be a true member of the church of liberalism, a woman is supposed to offer her child as a sacrifice upon the alter of liberalism’s god, the ever-expanding all-powerful nanny government. Palin has violated that sacrament and her approval rating, nearly 12 times higher than the Democrat VP candidate, petrifies the left.

Has anyone ever wondered why the liberal elite never once complained about the Taliban’s treatment of women?