They weren’t gunshots but the pops were startling nonetheless.  As the eggs hit the windshield, visibility immediately became a problem.

Jerry Ragle was pretty shaken as he pulled the Tea Party Express bus to a stop.  He had just prevented 40,000  lbs. of tour bus from crashing into 15 or 20 people.

I was on that Tea Party Express bus conducting some interviews for Right Network’s new show: “RUNNING”.

Throwing eggs may be funny when you are in high school, but none of us were laughing then.

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The late Robert Brewster Loudon, my father, departed this World, just two years ago.  While I hated to lose and deeply miss him, I am so glad he has not had to see what is happening to his Country.  You see, his story is like so many from the Greatest Generation although rather unique.  He survived the Great Depression.  He was drafted into World War II, and spared combat when the Japanese surrendered.  His story is unlike many because in the history of this Country, few people loved the American automobile like my father.

My father did hands on, ground up restorations on more classic cars than I can count.  He personally founded many car clubs over the years and was a regular at national swap meets and the big annual gatherings.  His personal favorite was always the Kenosha, Wisconsin gathering of the defunct company, American Motors Corporation.  He was pretty widely published and also recognized as one of the best professional car appraisers.  He even raced semi-pro for the SCCA and once set a speed record at Daytona.  He wrote a book on cars that he never published.  I will never forget where the happy tale turns bittersweet.  The man, who ALWAYS believed in buying American, announced to his four boys that he had bought all of us something that will last forever, and always grow in value-General Motors common stock.

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Today, in 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia.

Here is a smidge of our video from Saturday’s Tea Party Express coverage in Searchlight, Nevada. The AP calls this a hospitality tent. We call it destruction of property and assault. Either way, this is Harry Reid’s Democrat Party. So tolerant. So enlightened. So Progressive.   With friends like these, Senator Reid, who needs enemies?

Card check is dead, right? Wrong.

This weekend the president named a key SEIU lawyer to the quiet but crucial National Labor Relations Board through a controversial recess appointment.

By doing so, the president has gone well outside the norm of history by failing to appoint a Republican and Democrat at the same time. Some worry he is trying to stack the deck to make sure government can — as they have said in their own words — “change the rules governing forming a union through administrative action” even without passing a card check bill.

TheTruthAboutEFCA.com tracked down an expert who is a previous NLRB member, and he said:

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Citizens United v. FEC made clear that political speech cannot be limited simply because the speakers have organized themselves under a corporate form.  It was just one short year ago that the case was argued for the first time before the Supreme Court, and the federal government shockingly asserted that it could ban books.

One year later we have seen the First Amendment vindicated not once, but twice – first in Citizens United and now in SpeechNow.org v. FEC.  Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit protected the rights of individuals to donate to groups wishing to exercise their right to political speech.

In SpeechNow.org  v. FEC a political organization sought to “promote the First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom to assemble by expressly advocating for federal candidates whom it views as supporting those rights and against those whom it sees as insufficiently committed to those rights.”

The organization planned to solicit funds from individuals and use those funds to run independent expenditures “expressly advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate.”

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Global warming alarmists are now alarmed because they cannot account for the cooling trend that has been evident since the late 1990s in contradiction to their climate models. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests the planet has entered a cooling cycle that could persist for decades. Dr. Don Easterbook, for instance, a geologist and professor emeritus at Western Washington University, has concluded that sea surface temperatures will experience a drop that could last for the next 25 to 30 years based on his observations of the Pacific Decadal Oscilliation or PDO, a weather phenomenon that reverts between warm and cool modes.

Researchers who have long questioned the premise of man-made global warming theories point out that alarmist claims are driven more by computer models that omit key variables than they are by actual observations. The growing “climategate” scandal goes a long way toward vindicating the scientific skeptics who have been ostracized in the media and the academic community. Emails that have been leaked to the Internet from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia show that researchers have deliberately fudged and manipulated data in an effort to account for predicted catastrophic warming that has not materialized.

In his testimony before the British Parliament, Phil Jones, the CRU director, suggested that he would be cleared of any wrongdoing once a fuller body of evidence is presented. The emails that have been made public were only a “tenth of one percent” of his correspondence, Jones said.

If anything, the more recent email revelations serve to invalidate the use of climate models that figure prominently into the reports issued through the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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America’s biggest fiscal challenge is excessive government spending. The public sector is far too large today and it is projected to get much bigger in coming decades. But the corrupt and punitive internal revenue code is second on the list of fiscal problems. This new video, narrated by yours truly and produced by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, explains how a flat tax would work and why it would promote growth and fairness.

There are two big hurdles that must be overcome to achieve tax reform. The first obstacle is that the class-warfare crowd wants the tax code to penalize success with high tax rates. That issue is addressed in the video in a couple of ways. I explain that fairness should be defined as treating all people equally, and I also point out that upper-income taxpayers are far more likely to benefit from all the deductions, credits, exemptions, preferences, and other loopholes in the tax code.

The second obstacle, which is more of an inside-the-beltway issue, is that the current tax system is very rewarding for the iron triangle of lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats (or maybe iron rectangle if we include the tax preparation industry).

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The US economy remains in a tepid stage at best – subject to a multiple dip recession at worst.  Unemployment is high and private sector jobs are taking longer than usual to rebound.  Even the Obama Administration is forced to admit unemployment will be high for a long time to come.   Starting two years ago this July, I said if Obama was elected President, we would have a difficult economy, at best, for at least six years.  Unless our governments, federal and state, make a concerted effort to change the economic psychology facing Americans today, that prediction can’t help but come true.

There is no question that the American economy is in bad shape.  Unemployment has only been this high one other time since World War II, i.e. in the 1980’s.  Recessions similar or deeper than this recession occurred in 1918, the Great Depression, the 3 recessions of the 1950’s, and the stagflation of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

Recessions of this magnitude take on a life of their own because both businesses and consumers are plagued with doubts – doubts about future government policy, doubts about consumer spending, doubts about the prospects for future investments.  Those doubts literally diminish future economic activity as investors and consumers favor caution over investing and spending.  The psychology of larger recessions exaggerates downturns as fears mount.  That Psychology of Doubt delays recoveries in ways that cannot be measured by statistics alone.

In order to break that Psychology of Doubt, it takes bold action on the part of governments – not half measures or technical adjustments.  Indeed, each of those recessions did not end until there was a dramatic change in the government policy – usually a change to the very policies that drove our economy into the ditch in the first place – excepting only World War II’s effect on the Great Depression.

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In 1935, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel that envisioned a political tragedy akin to the Obama administration.  It Can’t Happen Here is the story of Berzilius Windrip, a Democrat senator nominated for the presidency.

A charming, charismatic demagogue, he is elected by promising lots of free goodies for everyone.  Once in power, President Windrip ruins the economy, neutralizes Congress and cracks down on dissent.  He makes himself dictator, with assistance from a civilian national security force.

Berzelius Windrip mmm mmm mmm!

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Both represent ideals we Americans hold dear. But they aren’t really the same thing and as we have seen in the still acrimonious national debate over the issue of health care and the government’s proper role in providing it, the two concepts come into stark relief.  Moreover, a tension between the meaning of freedom and the meaning of equality will be tested further as President Obama and his newly muscular acolytes in Congress, still intoxicated by the success of their battering-ram legislative strategy, begin to eye other opportunities to (as our president likes to remind us) transform America.  And make no mistake about it; the transformation “party” the president is hosting has only just begun. Think card check, think cap and trade, think compensation control, think regulatory expansion and think, REALLY THINK, about the greatest search in the history of America, through every nook and cranny of our economy, for new sources of tax revenue to pay for the transformation.

To us the word “freedom” embodies the individual right of free choice. The word equality encompasses the bedrock principle that every person should have the same rights to all the protections and rights granted under our Constitution.  Thus, the rallying cry of Patrick Henry, “give me liberty or give me death” exists side by side with the proposition best enunciated by Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech where he envisioned a world “where people would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”   In other words, the concept of  “equality” defined as Dr. King stated it can, and should, live side by side with the concept of “liberty (an individual’s right to personal choice as enunciated by the famous remark of Patrick Henry. But with regard to the expansion of government into the private sector the two words can run into conflict.

Those of us who were, and are, appalled by last week’s heavy-handed spectacle of one-party rule mandating the biggest expansion of government in the lifetime of almost everyone reading this essay are alarmed about the ramifications of almost tyrannical rule by a ruling class seeking to expand government into the furthest reaches of what has always been within the domain of the private citizen’s personal choices. Our friends on the left say that we are on the wrong side of history, but it is they who occupy that space.  It is they, including our president and his party, who are racing full speed backwards to emulate societies with entitlement systems that threaten to hobble one nation after another. Think Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Great Britain, France, Ireland, Japan and on and on.  The governments and economies of Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain are hanging on by their finger tips, more or less, counting on the healthier members of the EU (e.g. Germany) to bail them out although “not so fast” say the Germans.  We could go back into history a little further and romanticize the failed egalitarian dreams of the Soviet revolutionaries or, perhaps, Chairman Mao’s People’s Republic of China.  But the Soviet Union crashed nearly a generation ago and China abandoned Chairman Mao’s dream as soon as he died (and they have had nothing but robust economic growth to show for it).  So exactly who is on the wrong side of history here?

Make no mistake; the transformation that the left has in mind for America is nothing more than a grab for the redistribution of wealth.

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Al Franken became famous as a comedian. A long-time writer for Saturday Night Live, he developed routines and characters that made us laugh. But, as my latest video reminds us, even funny people can be humorless. Not only is Franken a jerk to me, as I ask admittedly tough questions about ObamaCare, but he’s a jerk to his own hapless staff. The job market in DC can’t be bad enough to put up with this.

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Today, in 1886, Dr. John Pemberton brewed the first batch of Coca-Cola. A handful of years later, our family became one of the first franchise bottlers. That business has gone away, but it never really leaves us. Cheers.

Now Max Baucus tells us: the health care overhaul America was just forced to endure was the government’s attempt to fix the “mal-distribution of income.”  It’s an admission that sadly comes after the bill has passed and been signed by President Obama.  But it’s better late than never.

While the acknowledgment likely wouldn’t have stopped the legislation because chances are it was common knowledge behind closed doors, at least the admission has now become public.  And it proves the point the whole exercise had nothing to do with Americans’ health and more to do with the Marxist concept of “redistributing” wealth.

According to FoxNews.com, Baucus said:

“Too often, much of late, the last couple three years, the mal-distribution of income in American is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind,” he said. “Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America.”

Excuse me Senator, but who the hell are you to decide who is “too wealthy?”  Given this claptrap, you’d be a perfect candidate for a Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez administration – after all, Castro did just call ObamaCare a “miracle.”  Or would Castro and Chavez fit right into the leadership in Washington, DC these days?

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In my piece over the weekend, I cited the Obama administration’s “Making Home Affordable” mortgage bailout plan as a paradigmatic example of why the public is right to distrust the federal government’s capacity to manage health care.

I quoted a grim New York Times article from January entitled, “US Loan Effort is Seen As Adding to Housing Woes.”  The headline speaks for itself.  The piece says that top experts have concluded that Big Government’s intervention to reverse the housing market spiral has actually accelerated said spiral:

Critics increasingly argue that the program, Making Home Affordable, has raised false hopes among people who simply cannot afford their homes.As a result, desperate homeowners have sent payments to banks in often-futile efforts to keep their homes, which some see as wasting dollars they could have saved in preparation for moving to cheaper rental residences. Some borrowers have seen their credit tarnished while falsely assuming that loan modifications involved no negative reports to credit agencies.

Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.

This week brings more bad news for “Making Home Affordable’s” central planners in Washington.  In a new report, TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky rips the program for:

…Having ill-defined metrics and for helping far fewer homeowners than originally proposed. “The program risks helping few, and for the rest, merely spreading out the foreclosure crisis.”

Poor planning, poor implementation, and no credible plan to demonstrate effectiveness?  Go figure!  It also turns out that–shockingly–the administration grossly over-promised the number of homeowners its scheme would assist.

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In the wake of last week’s vote for national health care, it is becoming clear that the Republicans have a great shot at success on Election Day this November.  The Republican establishment is wisely listening to conservatives who believe in limited government, but will Republican politicians keep their promises once back in power?

Today’s political landscape is reminiscent of 1994.  Conservatives were incensed at big government.  Threats of national health care legislation, gun bans, and tax increases woke up the movement.  Conservatives demanded limited government.  They made themselves heard and they put Republicans back in charge of Congress.  America had a conservative Congress for a few years, thanks to principled conservatives like Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich.

Unfortunately, some within the movement wanted to use the levers of power to achieve societal change.  As I detailed in an earlier column, a handful of aging social conservative leaders who still cling to the statism of the progressive movement of their youth wished to use the power of big government to change American society.  Rather than seeking to prevent big government from harming traditional values, they instead thought big government could promote values by limiting freedom.  Needless to say, this was the wrong direction for a party elected on the promise of limited government, and it would not be long before they were put out of power.

In the final years of GOP control, all we saw was big spending and even bigger government.

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March 31^st is Cesar Chávez Day. In California and six other states, government offices are closed. At my college, Claremont McKenna and the Claremont Colleges, we celebrate Cesar Chavez for one full month. (It is widely known that even white liberals tire after that much self-flagellation – although how much they can take is still a matter of dispute.)

If that month long celebration seems excessive, it is because it is. If history is any indication, however, it may not be that long until all Americans must submit to Chavez Day because Barack Obama, as a presidential candidate, thought that it ought to be a federal holiday.

It’s tough to tell how much Obama was pandering to a certain wing of the Hispanic vote and how much he sincerely believes in the struggle of La Raza, but I submit to you, dear reader, that Cesar Chavez Day ought not to have been a holiday in the first place.

There are several myths about Chávez that deserve explanation, clarification, and explication, but the most pressing of these myths is that Chavez helped Latino fruit pickers get a living wage. He did no such thing.

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Big Government would not exist were it not given sanction by the people.  Those who continue to support it have been duped in large part as a direct or indirect result of the ideological subversion of our academic institutions.  The leaders in all fields of our society were raised in the politically correct, militantly liberal academy, and so it is only natural that the influence of socialist ideas has infected every aspect of our culture.  In so doing, academia has produced leaders that undermine our society rather than helping it to flourish.

It is evident that educational institutions are turning society on its head when we see the kinds of leaders they herald as the shining examples for our students to follow.  On May 17th of this year, the graduating students of Columbia University will spend their morning listening to their Class Day speaker, Benjamin Jealous.  Readers may recall that Mr. Jealous penned a piece for the Huffington Post in which he ardently defended and praised Van Jones, calling him “an American treasure.”  He is being called on to speak because he is a star in the social justice movement.

For as Columbia’s Dean puts it, “Columbia’s undergraduate experience is built on the idea that our college must not only help students develop their capacities for critical thinking, but also nurture in them the responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic society. Benjamin Todd Jealous wonderfully personifies the value that Columbians have long placed on active engagement in the world and in finding the solutions to society’s challenges.”  Jealous does so by leading what he refers to as “a volunteer army for social change” in the NAACP.  That he would describe the organization in such a light should come as no surprise as Jealous is a former New York community organizer and AFL-CIO spokesman.

Mr. Jealous’ address to my class will mark a fitting end to my four years at Columbia in which I witnessed the attack on members of the Minutemen, the speech of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a professor pushing for students to join the peace corps in the middle of his science class and Israeli Apartheid Week amongst innumerable other travesties.

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You think Obama has been a nightmare? You ain’t seen nothing yet. That was just the preview.

American business, the motor of the global economy, was dealt a deathblow by the Marxist putsch that the Democrat Party delivered in the form of the healthcare bill. Why wasn’t this made public before the vote? The numbers are staggering. It was revealed Friday that AT&T, the largest telephone company in the country, will take a one-billion-dollar hit in the current quarter as a result of this economic attack on America. The farm-equipment company Deere is looking at $150 million in new healthcare-related charges this quarter, and Caterpillar is facing  $100 million.

Who do you think will pay for this? We will pay. According to Reuters, “Verizon Communications, the second biggest U.S. phone company, told employees that tax burdens under the new law would likely filter down to employees.” Business is not something in the abstract, or the evil force the leftists and the communists deceptively smear it to be — business is work, business is people, it is jobs, it is production. When business pays, we pay. Jobs pay. Consumers pay.

And we will pay for more than that as well. Have you seen the commercials yet for people who have maxed out their credit cards, and have loans over ten thousand that they can’t pay back, urging them to apply for stimulus dollars? Are you one of those who played by the rules, worked hard, did the right thing? If so, you’re screwed. The man has you and your wallet and your kids’ wallet by the throat. Welcome to the era of the degenerate: they will be sucking your blood and your children’s blood and your children’s children’s blood for decades to come, or however long America lasts.

Notice how Obama bad news always drops on Friday nights. But the Democrats will not forever be able to keep quiet the reality and the consequences of Obama rule.

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