Robert E. Kelly's Blog (25)

President Obama leads Mitt Romney nationally by three points.  The House will remain Republican controlled, and the Senate appears to be a tossup – six states are listed as too close to call.

Poll results, at this stage of the election contest, are astonishing to many Americans.   No president has failed more…

Remember … democracy soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into … such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure….

John Adams, An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power,…

The stakes are high in the upcoming election. And the choice is clear: President Barack Obama is an open critic of the Constitution; Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, is a Constitutionalist.

Obama is a follower of Theodore Roosevelt (Republican), Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) and Franklin Roosevelt (Democrat), all of whom were critics of the limitations on executive power that are imposed by the Constitution. FDR even had the chutzpah to write his personal Bill of Rights for the nation –…

Dominant federal policy since the 1960s has been progressive, which is a fancy word- substitute for the out-of-favor “liberal.”  The only exception to this was four years of Reagan, during which the theory that federal deficits are unimportant was debunked.  He couldn’t do much about the chronic problem, however, because the fundamental cause of continuing deficits (the runaway cost of entitlement programs) was cemented into the…

Conservatives in the 2010 election took control of the House and almost did the same in the Senate.  And they eagerly looked forward to the 2012 presidential election.  They would support one of their own and he/she would lead them to the White House.   

 The first wave of disillusion set in when their favorite warriors refused to enter the presidential primaries. Gov. Mitch Daniels (IN) said no because of family problems; Gov. Christie (NJ), Gov. Jindal (LA), Sen. Rubio (FL)…

Leveraged buyouts got into the primary contest because, in Iowa, Newt Gingrich was systematically attacked by TV ads.  As Gingrich sees it, they caused his drop from the upper echelon of competitors to the lower one.  Mostly, he blames Romney for this and, he decided to get even when he had the money (recently) to do so. 

 Gingrich aims to prove that Romney is not an honorable capitalist, but a predatory investor who made millions by closing up…

Southern states in 1860 were threatening secession.  If Abraham Lincoln or Stephen Douglas became president in 1860, secession was almost certain; if Vice President John C. Breckenridge won the election, the status quo may have been maintained for a few years.  This was the most important election in American history in terms of the survival of the United States as a unified nation.    

 Lincoln overwhelmingly won;…

Jesus Christ was born about 2000 years ago.  If you search his name on Amazon, you get about 180,000 results.  Do the same for Aristotle, 14,000; Plato, 16,000; Aquinas, 14,000; Muhammad, 23,000; Hitler; 16,000; Stalin, 6,000; Churchill, 11,000; Roosevelt, 36,000; Eisenhower, 7,000; Reagan, 12,000; Luther, 2,000; Knox, 15,000.

 Based on the above, it’s safe to say that President Grant was on safe ground in 1870 when he made Christmas, December 25th, a national…

Gingrich, Romney, and Cain are the leaders in the current primary race.  Momentum is with Gingrich. 

 In match-ups with Obama, Gingrich loses by eight percent, Romney by one and Cain by nine.  On the other hand, likely voters who strongly approve of Obama dropped from 45 percent to 25 percent in two years.  He should lose, based on his record.  Republicans could win the presidency and a veto-proof Congress if they present a focused message that is understandable and…

There is no need to review the current tax system here, or to prove that it is an anchor around America’s neck.  Both political parties recognize this, although their proposed remedies are vastly different.  On the upside, the tax problem is finally on the table for all to see, and within two years it is likely that a new tax system more geared to growth and stability will be in place.  

 Republican debates have consistently headlined the tax issue.  If they…

Herman Cain has come out of nowhere to become the frontrunner in the Republican primary process.  This is so primarily because of his 9-9-9 tax plan, which he sells with a natural charm that has drawn voters to him.

 Two questions have thus far been raised about Cain: 1) Is he serious about his candidacy?  2) Is his 9-9-9 tax plan a realistic proposal for tax reform?  In this column, only the first question will be addressed.

 Is…

Republican presidential debates are underway; the public has been introduced to the candidates.  It’s time to form a few basic ideas about them, and about the relationship of their messages to the mood of the nation. 

The Election Landscape

The election landscape is not favorable to President Obama.  A few poll numbers demonstrate this:

• According to Gallup, Obama’s…

President Obama has proposed a joint session of Congress on September 7, 2011 at 8 p.m. as the forum for his next speech.  The subject matter, allegedly, will be his proposals for stimulating the economy and accelerating job growth.

Is this a sincere attempt to deal with a national problem in a bipartisan way? Or is it a blatant attempt to establish a campaign 2012 strategy for Obama that hopes to be a successful carbon copy of Harry Truman’s campaign…

Part 1- Why the Crisis?

The American public for weeks was deluged with news reports telling them and the world that Armageddon would arrive if the national debt limit were not lifted so that the government could meet its obligations.  Finally, the crisis is past.  A compromise was reached and the debt ceiling was increased by $2.1 trillion.

The debt ceiling was increased many times in past years.  Why did the…

Compassionate ideas divorced from fiscal realities produce devastating results.  This has been the American experience for more than a half-century.  The result?  National debt at the close of fiscal year 2011 is estimated at $15 trillion – about 100 percent of GDP (gross domestic product).  This can’t continue.    

Many (including me) have written about how this debt accumulated and who bears the weight of responsibility for it.  But this isn’t…

America is faced with a perilous financial future if it doesn’t change the way it operates in Washington.  For more than a half century, federal spending has exceeded federal income and debt has soared.  Figures supplied by the current administration show that national debt in 2015 will be about $20 trillion, or 103 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP - the value of the nation’s production).  Unchecked, this trend will destroy America.

In…

Debate, vigorous and healthy in the United States, occasionally gets hot because the  representatives of the people are persistently pressed from five directions: 1) The needs of the nation; 2) The demands of constituents; 3) The demands of political parties: 4) The demands of those who fund campaigns and 5) Their own appetites for security and power.

Hot rhetoric can be briefly disturbing, but it is soon forgotten for so long as the subject matter remains impersonal…

Paul Ryan, a Republican, became a member of the House of Representatives in 1998 and thereafter he climbed to his current post as chairman of the House Budget Committee.  He became nationally known during the debates last year over Obamacare, during which he presented the Republican position against the mammoth new entitlement program.  

 Republicans failed in their attempt to roadblock Obamacare, but the elections of 2010 gave them new hope.  In a massive victory, which many…

It is a stated objective of President Obama and of the Democratic Party to nationalize health care.  They came close to getting it while they still had a veto-proof majority -- they jammed Obamacare through Congress. 

 The election of 2010, however, gave Republicans control of the House, and it gave them more power in the Senate, which means the issue is still alive – they can delay the implementation of Obamacare; after the election of 2012, they could possibly overturn…

 BACKGROUND

 The modern state of Israel was established in 1948 over the objection of Arab states.  Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia immediately declared war on the new state.  The conflict ended in 1949, with Israel the victor – it occupied about 50 percent more territory than had been originally allotted to it by the United Nations. 

 In one form or another, that war has continued ever since.  Mostly it is thought…