He promised to bring both parties together when he was campaigning. Today, we have the bitterest partisan divide at anytime in this country.

He promised that that stimulus package would prevent unemployment from climbing over 8%. Today, we are at 9.2% and his administration has told us that this will be the “new normal.”

He told us that his health care package would lower health care rates for us all. Instead, Aetna moved out of Indiana today and last month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a report showing that health care costs will rise faster with Obamacare in place than they would have in its absence. That just seems wrong.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me, though, was the debt limit fiasco. “Once we raise the nation’s debt limit, we will put investors’ fears to rest and maintain the country’s AAA credit rating.” Mr. President, the stock market dropped more than 500 points today and has now gone backwards for the year.

I think you are now 0-for-term on your pred

Q: How do you feel about abortion and the death penalty?

A: This is an interesting question. We hear Republicans tell us they are pro-life but want capital punishment. We hear Democrats argue pro-choice but are against capital punishment. If you spend the time to think this through, both sides are wrong.

How can one argue for life for a fetus, and then argue to take it against someone else? By the same token, how can you argue to take the unborn child’s life, but save a convicted killer?

The bottom line is that you have to be pro-life and anti-capital punishment. Life is not man’s to give or take. That only comes from Above. I choose to honor and respect life — and that means the unborn child and the convicted murderer. It’s the only choice that isn’t hypocritical.

Q: Should children be required to say the Pledge of Allegience in our schools?

A: Yes. There are some who say this is offensive to others. And these are the same people that find the 10 Commandments offensive in our parks and believe that the separation of church and state means that absolutely no religion can come to infringe upon their atheism. That’s poppycock!

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights, they didn’t intend for a separation of church and state. In fact, they still open Congress with a daily prayer. Separation of church and state was introduced in a court case at a later date. The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” This was important to the Founding Fathers because the Church of England required everyone to worship there and to tithe there. This became a form of taxation through the Church.

The Founding Fathers said, “No. That’s not right. Therefore, we will not allow the Congress to ever establish a national religion.” Somehow, this came to be interpreted that if you’re in public, you can’t talk about religion. While the religious people are expected to give up their faith in order to avoid offending those of a different faith (or those without faith completely), those of us that choose to worship God, find it just as offensive that atheists want us to stop.

This country was founded on faith, so maybe some folks just need to get over it and respect the wishes of the majority.

What happens when you give notice to all of your employees, offer them severance packages, and hope the other county approves the deal? If  I was on the Board, I’d be thinking that I had done a pretty good job. All I have to do is make sure the other county approves the contract, begins providing services, and flout my accomplishments to my constituents.

What happens when the other county doesn’t immediately approve that contract, the commissioners have to wait a few more days, but because they’ve already offered their employees severance packages they have to extend the time of the contract for three more months? The savings start to drop, but I still feel pretty good about what I’ve accomplished on the Board, right?

What happens when it is revealed that the contract to take over the jail isn’t just a cut-and-dried contract to provide those operations? Rather, it’s a two-part contract so that Part I involves the housing and transport of inmates and Part II involves running the booking operation. Further, the contract allows you to cancel Part I of the contract if the other county doesn’t agree to do Part II of the contract. What happens then? Don’t you hope that the other county opts to accept Part II so that you can be done and continue to revel in your glory for savings hundreds of thousands of dollars?

What if the other county declines Part II? Aren’t you wondering why you didn’t have a lot of this taken care of before you started bragging about it to your constituents? Further, are you looking to rescind Part I of the contract?

This is the dilemma the Dodge County Board of Supervisors faces right now. The savings for Part I of the contract exist because of the personnel costs that were going to be eliminated by farming jail services out to another county. Unfortunately, for Dodge County Supervisors, Saunders County opted not to take part in the booking operations of the jail.

If Dodge County must provide booking services, there are no personnel savings. The jail needs three people to operate — regardless of whether it is a booking facility only or a jail. One person is in the control room to unlock doors, one person to escort prisoners, and one person to assist in operations and with unruly prisoners. It can’t be done any other way.

What are the Supervisors thinking now? Because the booking operations have been thrown back into their lap, they lose their savings for moving operations to Wahoo. Worse, they have no employees to run the booking operations after September 1 because those employees have been given notice and many of them have found different jobs. It now appears that perhaps there are zero savings (maybe even additional costs) in the decisions that were made by the Board of Supervisors in this fiasco.

So, if you’re a member of the Dodge County Board of Supervisors, you have to provide booking operations for the jail, you need to decide whether you’re going to keep the jail, you need to hire back 12 – 15 employees, and you have to tell the public that you’re latest decision may have just cost the taxpayers a significant sum of money, I have to ask the question, “What are you going to do?”

Section 2.
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Why an article like this today? I started thinking. Many of our sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, are going to be graduating from high school and college in the coming days. I only wish them the best. But I started thinking about the state of the economy, the country’s financial woes, and began to wonder, “How can they fix this?”

Finally, the answer hit me — Repeal the 26th Amendment. It’s a radical idea. But it might just have merit. The argument for the amendment (40 years ago) was that since 18-year olds could drink and be drafted into military service, they should be allowed to vote. Today, 18-year olds can’t drink and the country doesn’t have a draft so that argument doesn’t work anymore (hence, the repeal of their right to vote). If you are an 18-year old serving in the military, none of this applies to you. You can vote.

People under the age of 25 aren’t married (usually), don’t own a house, effectively have no tax burden, and according to ObamaCare are allowed to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies because they are children. We don’t let children vote because they might screw things up. Can you imagine who your 10-year old would vote for?

Research has shown that a person’s brain isn’t fully developed until the age of 25. Insurance companies have known this for years as they set prices on auto insurance premiums. A person’s frontal lobes, which play a significant role in decision-making, aren’t fully developed until then. Why are we going to let people that can’t make sound decisions vote for the president?

Someone once said, “If you’re under 30 and not a liberal, you have no heart. If you’re over 30 and not conservative, you have no brain.” Who would have ever thought that someone telling our 18 year olds two years ago that they should, “Vote for Obama! It’ll be cool!” would have cost them their futures?

We let them vote and now we have seen the error of our ways.

When Clinton took office in Jan 1993, the average price of gas nationwide that week was $1.061. When he started his second term, gas prices had jumped to $1.241, or about 4.25% annually. When he left office, and Bush took over, the gas prices at Bush’s inauguration were $1.474. That means the price increased about 4.69% annually. So far, it could be said that Clinton kept the price of oil pretty consistent.

Bush took over in Jan 2001. When he started his second term, the price of gas had risen to 1.819. The price of gas was rising at just under 6% a year. I know that I haven’t accounted for the period in there where gas hit $4.00 a gallon for a little bit, but from inauguration to inauguration, it stayed consistent. When Bush finished his second term (and Obama took over), the average price for a gallon of gas was $1.847. In other words, during his last four years in office, Bush kept the price of gas from increasing at less than one percent per year!

Obama has taken gas prices from $1.84 on his inauguration day to $3.791 in just over two years. This is an increase of greater than 52% per year. Where is this going to keep going? When is enough going to be enough? And did you notice that the media is predicting gas prices of $5 by Memorial Day? I think that’s just to get us used to the idea, because that seems outrageous to me.

Tell me, can you rate a president based on gas prices? If you can, Obama is receiving a failing grade.