I'm having a difficult time distinguishing between the reality show starring Donald Trump called "The Apprentice" and reality with an apprentice in the White House named Barack Obama.  Both have their fans that love to watch them to see what will happen next, both are the top man in charge in their individual show, and both are able to fire people.  There is one minute difference, however, one that Obama doesn't seem to mind or care about, and that is Trump can fire people because it is both a TV show and a private entity in which people desire to work.  On the other hand, Obama sees it fit to fire someone from a private company as the leader of, at one point, the free world.

Now that the line has been crossed, shouldn't every private citizen that is employed in the private sector be fearful that perhaps Obama will fire them next?  Just imagine, Jimmy who works at a coal plant could be fired because Obama deems him not "green" enough because of how he does his job.  Dr. Smith could be fired because he might want to be paid by either the individual patient or their insurance company directly, not the government-run health programs.  Suzy that manages a McDonald's could be fired because she is making children fat.  Tim Geithner could be fired for not paying his taxes.  Wait, that one is implausible.  The point is that if Obama sees it fit that he fires the CEO of GM, what will stop him from firing anyone else he sees fit?  Maybe Ron Gettelfinger, the current chief president of the UAW, should have been fired.  It's the UAW's fault for running GM into the ground in the first place.  If Obama oversteps the line again and fires someone, I pick him.  Maybe we can all vote on it, American Idol style, on who to fire next.

Which brings me to my next point.  I don't know if the firing of GM's CEO, Rick Wagoner, was a deal of sorts that guaranteed GM more of our tax dollars if he left.  Regardless the reason behind it, PLEASE STOP GIVING GM AND CHRYSLER MORE OF OUR MONEY!  They have already gotten much more than enough.  Stop wasting our tax dollars on these businesses that are so far into the grave that four feet of dirt would have to be shoveled off of them to even discover their rotting corpses.  If we want to support them we would go buy their cars.  Give us every penny of our tax dollars back that was sent to these failures and maybe we can then consider buying something from them.  That should be the only way, though, that they receive a cent from any of us, by the willing transaction at a GM or Chrysler dealer.  This government's socialist idea of wealth redistribution obviously isn't working and it won't work in the future.  Let them fail, let them go bankrupt, let them figure it out like every other company would have to do.

I am getting awfully fed up with the enormous waste of my tax dollars, even though Obama has only been the apprentice for three months or so. Now not only do I have to watch tax dollars be wasted like the water from sprinklers in the middle of a rainstorm, I have to be concerned about perhaps being fired by the government.  This is America?  What gives them the right to remove a private individual from their job?  Absolutely outrageous!  This is getting so old and I've about had enough with this recklessness and waste.   I'm getting tired of the abuse of power and socialization of America.  Let GM's CEO quit on his own, or be fired by the company.  Let GM and Chrysler figure out survival on their own.  And give me my tax dollars back!

Why did we elect an apprentice when we were suppose to elect a president?

According to this website, http://costofwar.com, the cost of the Iraq War is a bit over $607 billion at this moment.  How accurate the number is, I haven't a clue.  This website, http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home, says that $656.1 billion have allocated to the Iraq War.  Chances are it is somewhere in the low to mid $600 billion range.  That will suffice for the time being.

Think back a few years and recall that anytime President Bush wanted more money for the Iraq War, say, another $150 billion, he was criticized for wasting so much money, for spending so much money, on an "unjustified" war.  What these critics neglected to realize, however, is how those billions of dollars were, for the most part, put to good use.  It bought freedom, the end of oppression, and more rights most Iraqis saw under Saddam's vicious rule.

Now think back a few days and recall another figure, $9.3 trillion.  That is the amount the Congressional Budget Office said Obama's budget plan would create in deficits in the next decade.  You don't have to be a mathematician to realize that $9.3 trillion > $600 some billion.  The Iraq War is a few days over six years old.  If its total cost to date is $650 billion that would calculate out to approximately $108.3 billion a year.  That is a drop in the bucket to even Obama's grand scheme of the "stimulus" scam.  Taking Obama's budget down to a per year cost would make it $930 billion.  Again, you don't have to be a mathematician to see that a yearly cost of $108.3 billion < a yearly cost of $930 billion.

So what is the purpose of this math lesson, you may be asking; that is, if you made it this far through the crunching of humongous numbers.  It isn't hard to remember, as aforementioned, the immense outrage each and every time President Bush wanted more funding for the Iraq War.  Another $100 billion was deemed way too much.  But where is the outrage from the media and all the other critics at the massive amount of money President Obama wishes to spend?  Obama is spending a trillion dollars like it is pocket change.  There is no outrage, however, by the elitists saying that it is wasteful and unnecessary.

I am getting utterly sick and tired of my money be wasted by our new president, and it's only been three months!   At least when President Bush "wasted" my money it was going to buy freedom and opportunity.  Obama is wasting my money on handouts, bogus "research," and rewarding failure.  Obama is seeking to spend more than 8.5 times the cost of the "extraordinarily expensive" Iraq War for much less worthy reasons.  Unfortunately these numbers, like $9.3 trillion, are so massive that I cannot wrap my head around them.  They have no tangible meaning because I have never held $9.3 trillion, much less $1 million.  All I know is that $9.3 trillion is a lot of money, but have no perspective of it and nothing to compare it to.  I am, however, utterly appalled at the lack of outrage that this amount of money should draw from everyone.  It seems soon our money will be worth less than the paper it is printed on.  Hyperinflation is exactly how Hitler rose to power; I hope we are not headed there!

Why is outrage towards money spent and/or wasted so selective?

I am so thrilled that Jimmy Carter could be elected to his second term, even though it took almost 30 years for it to happen. But perhaps more importantly such reelection is historic. I am so delighted to be alive for this second term since I was not alive for his first. When is a rogue nation, perhaps Iran once again, going to take our citizens hostage for over a year? How long until the 20% interest rates return? When are the 70% tax rates going to make their return to boost this struggling economy? How long until the inflation rate it back up to 16%?

What do Jimmy Carter circa 1976 and Barack Obama circa 2008 have in common? Carter had and Obama has a complete lack of knowledge of international relations and the economy. The ignorance on both fronts is frightening, especially with such hateful countries that would like nothing more than to see us crumble. Domestically things could be just as grim with the utter lack of knowledge that Obama has on economic issues. I have taken two economics classes and I know more than he does. 

Obama got to where he is today based on the platform of being against the Iraqi War. Congratulations! Being so anti-war, he was also against the troop reinforcement and he was dead wrong on that. He rose to fame based on this one aspect, without having much knowledge of it, and managed to get his party’s nomination. But then the war started going well, too well to be an anti-war candidate. You know when you don’t hear anything about the Iraqi War for a month or two that things must better. Luckily for Obama, however, the economy tanked because of, in part, the subprime mortgage mess that the Democrats earnestly supported because everyone needs a house. Then Obama became a pseudo resident expert on the economy. And for some reason the ignorant Americans who are completely brain dead economically found their messiah.

Can anyone point me to an example in history where redistribution created new wealth and a better society? Certainly it didn’t go so well in Communist Russia. The last time I checked Cuba didn’t have the fastest growing economy in the world, or this hemisphere for that matter. I also want to see an example of how increasing taxes on the “rich” has previously made the middle class better. From the logical standpoint, doing so will create fewer jobs, raise prices, and be more of an incentive to drive jobs overseas. Sure the “middle class” might get a “tax cut” but it will do nothing for the economy. It won’t create new jobs, expand businesses, innovate, or even be extra cash in your wallet when prices increase. Why will they increase? A business will not absorb a tax increase and lose money; they will fire people, not hire people, raise prices, or any combination or all of the three. 

That’s something else Obama fails to realize. He claims he wants to give “tax cuts” to companies that don’t ship jobs overseas. Ironically, jobs are shipped overseas because of the astronomical tax rates they would otherwise have to endure here in America. A 40% combined corporate tax rate doesn’t help business, that’s for sure. The 40% is the current rate, who knows what it will go up to once Obama takes charge. All the European countries have lower rates, even the socialist welfare states like Sweden.   Is it too much to ask for our politicians to have knowledge of the basics of economics? The matters seem so simple and straight forward, but, in general, the policies of one party do not support the principles of economics and the policies of the other party do.

Just like after Jimmy Carter left this country in shambles, I hope someone is ready and able to rise up in four years and lead us back to security and safety, prosperity and growth, respected and feared. The prospects are not looking so well right now, but four years is a lot of time for something to happen.  After four years of being operated by someone with absolutely no experience in operating or running any type of business or other entity where money had to be earned and bills had to be paid, this country will need change. Perhaps it won’t be hard to find someone that can, again, deliver us from evil, the evil of our foreign affairs policies, or lack there of, and asinine economic policies that have been tried before, and have failed each time.

Will the law be changed so Jimmy Carter can run for a third term?

Barack Obama is a liar, or, at very least, a word twisting deceiver with his smooth talk of empty words and “inspiring” persona. And beyond my general dislike for the man on the basis of him being more or less invisible, completely unknown, and not criticize on the basis of being deemed a racist, I have two glaring examples of his lies that he has muttered in the past few days.

The first one comes from his interview on FOX News last Friday. It must have been important because he went on FOX News.   He told Major Garrett that he never heard his pastor say any offensive or derogatory words while sitting in church. But then yesterday at his race speech, he said that he did hear such comments, and tried to draw common ground by suggesting that we have all heard things by our pastors that we disagree with. Alright, fine. That has no correlation to what he previously said, in fact, it contradicted it. From never to it did happen in a couple of days, foggy memory? I doubt it, rather, I believe it is him trying to save his political career and presidential aspirations that have been, in my opinion, falsely held up, sustained, and kept away from such controversy. Apparently he saw it necessary to say one thing to initially condemn his pastor, then the other to draw comparisons to each and every one of our pastors. In his first comments concerning his apparently revered reverend, he is going to say that he has no idea of the statements made and play dumb. But then just a couple days later he changes his story? Talk about doing whatever he can to save himself. What a politician, say what you need to at the appropriate time; which leads me to my second example.

Obama runs around talking about he has been against the war from the start. But with a little fact checking from the past, one is able to conclude contrary to this statement. The first problem is being against the war since the beginning and being against the war in the beginning. He was the latter, not the former. He initially was against the war, seeing no justification to remove a brutal dictator that terrorized his own people. But then in 2003, he had thoughts that he may have been wrong to oppose it and that his position and that of President Bush really had no difference. Perhaps Obama can cite when, in 2003 at this time, President Bush was too against the war. In September of 2004 when campaigning for the Senate, he thought that pulling out of Iraq would be disastrous and even said that he would send more troops to stabilize the country. And in November of that year, he said that we are committed since we went into Iraq in the first place. Again, like the politician he is, when the American people saw Iraq as bad, mostly because of the corrupt media and their own incompetence, he changed his position and I believe has been against it ever since said change. However, he cannot logically be talking about how he has been against the war from the beginning, implying that he has for the past five years, when that obviously isn’t the case. Perhaps he was initially and has been the past few years, but what about specifically 2003 and 2004 where he likened his position to that of President Bush, that he would support a “surge,” that we cannot pull out because it would be ruinous, and we are committed now that we went. At least President Bush hasn’t changed his position from one to the other, back to the first during this war. Imagine going to war, pulling out the troops, and then putting them back into action. We cannot have a president that changes such important positions depending on what the average, ignorant American thinks. Who knows who they are polling anyway? Yet he still gives his speeches on how he’s been against the war from the get go. 

How long will it be until we see the “Obama Lied” bumper stickers?