Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Obama has been very vocal about the corruption in Washington and pledged not to take money from so called “special interests”, but he has done exactly that. This comes on top of Obama’s outright lie that he would seek federal campaign money, only to flip-flop on the issue later, arrogantly saying he would not. Obama says he will not support drilling to drive down the price of gas. Obama says he does not support reform of Social Security except to increase the taxes. The list goes on and on.
It seems the only “change” that Barack Obama is talking about is the change in your wallet, and how much he wants it. In truth, he is the King of the Status Quo. He wants to keep Washington the same bureaucratic mess that his Democrat concubines have made it. He wants to keep the border open as it is, and give all illegal immigrants who broke the laws of our nation a free pass to citizenship. He wants to socialize medicine and seize control of the private sector and free market like a modern day Joseph Stalin. He wants to see a return to the failed policies of the Jimmy Carter era, and wants to hand out American lives on a silver platter to anti-American foreign interests, while we beg and plead them to release our people instead of going and getting them ourselves.
Obama believes that terrorists who attack our nation deserve the same rights as the people they viciously murdered, despite that the constitution affords no protection to non-citizens of this nation, especially not to those who attack us. He wants to sit down with countries that have sworn to see our destruction without preconditions. He wants us to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq and let countries like Iran take it over. He wants us to just let the Taliban control Afghanistan and seal ourselves up in an invisible wall and pretend like if we ignore the rest of the world, we’ll be safe.
No matter which way you look at it, Barack Obama is nothing new and nothing different. He offers the same failed policies of his Democrat bretheren and would set America back fifty years economically and technologically.
The Bottom Line: Obama offers high taxes, high gas prices, no technological advancement, the complete destruction and bankrupting of our medical system, giving terrorists rights, letting terrorists go only to let them attack us again, surrender, and defeat.
Update: Hey Boneyard Banter. I had no idea anyone would find this. If anyone is wondering who I am, I’m the son of a former East Carolinian sports writer back in the 70′s (known by the nickname Doctor Zee), and a Sophomore Honor Student at ECU. I kept hearing all this talk about expansion so I figured I’d post my analysis about it. Hope you guys liked it.
Summer is a very interesting time of year. It is a time of graduations, longer days, shorter nights, and is also the exact moment when the conference expansion rumor mill starts spinning so fast, it almost flies off its hinges. In the past, expansion rumors were just that, rumors, but all that changed in 2003 when the Atlantic Coast Conference expanded, pillaging and looting their rivals the Big East. This would set off an expansion wildfire that quickly escalated to Conference USA, who refilled its depleted ranks through the MAC and WAC. When the smoke cleared, East Carolina was once again left at the altar, as many teams like South Florida, who didn’t even play football prior to 1997, were admitted into the Big East ahead of them and obtained the much coveted BCS label.
With the resigning of Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese after this year, the expansion wildfire may once again be close at hand. The conflict between the basketball and football members is something that the new commissioner is going to have to deal with, and soon. Depending on who that commissioner may be, the conflict may only get worse from here, resulting in a split along basketball and football members.
Realistically, there is only one choice for the Big East to save itself: either Big East Football expands to have between 9 and 12 teams (10 being preferred,) or the football and basketball schools will be forced to split and form new conferences.
The question remains, if the Big East expands, who are the likely candidates? All kinds of blogs, sports analysts and crazies recommend all kinds of candidates, but are any of them realistic? Out of the possible choices, you can automatically discount schools that have already left once before. Virginia Tech, Miami, Boston College and Temple left for their own reasons and I doubt that within the span of three to five years that they would change their minds. Schools that are already in BCS conferences are equally as unlikely. It doesn’t make sense for an SEC or Big Ten school to abandon all that money just to settle for less.
You can also discount any I-AA football program. Why would the Big East want to take a school that it would have to mold into a I-A program instead of picking one of the many available choices? It’s like going to the grocery store and buying some pumpkin seeds for Halloween instead of a whole pumpkin. Sure, you’ll have the pumpkin down the road, but you won’t have it when you need it and you have no guarantee of how big it’s going to be and how long it’s going to take.
It is even more unlikely that Notre Dame will want to give up its status as an independent in football. Notre Dame has its own television contracts, the ability to schedule who it wants, an automatic shot to the BCS during eligible seasons, and doesn’t have to go through a conference championship to get it.
This leaves a few teams right on the cusp. Of Conference USA, East Carolina and Memphis seem to be the most likely candidates, whereas teams like Central Florida and Marshall can expect heavy protests from sister universities South Florida and West Virginia. It is expected that FedEx will support Memphis in its bid, but the dark horse in this race is Pepsi and its relationship with ECU. Coca-Cola prides itself on being the official soft drink of the ACC, so what happens if East Carolina brings Pepsi along for the ride? Not only will you be establishing television markets in the ACC’s backyard, but you will be bringing along a large corporate sponsor competing directly with an ACC sponsor.
The Big East could try adding teams from the MAC or a transitioning team like Western Kentucky, but my argument about I-AA schools is also applicable here: why build programs when you get obtain established ones with a history of bowl attendance?
In all the madness, one fact remains: the new commissioner is going to have to do something to mend the conference or the sun may finally set on the Big East.
You hear about it on the news: the declining value of the dollar, increased gas prices, lost jobs, lower wages, and what have the Democrats proposed to solve these issues? You hear the words “Windfall profits”, “tax the rich”, “cap and trade”, but you don’t know what they mean. I’ll tell you what they mean. It means tax tax tax tax and tax. The Democrats’ solution to anything is to create a tax for it. The Windfall profits tax is just that: another tax on corporations that will pass it on to the consumer. The “Cap and trade” bill is a monumental cost to the American consumer, without any environmental benefit to it at all might I add, that will shoot energy costs through the proverbial roof. When it comes down to it, a Democrat solution to a problem is to take more of your money and offer nothing useful in return.
The Republicans have offered meaningful, cut to the chase solutions, such as decreasing the price of oil by drilling for more and opening new refineries for processing said oil. They’ve said we have to stop punishing corporations and instead give them benefits for keeping money and jobs in America. We’ve got to stop the Unions, who have gone out of control and become a cartel unto themselves, siphoning the life out of corporations like General Motors, and we have to let the private sector, the free market, figure out how to deal with environmental issues through competition and not through failed government policy. We have to let the free market drive down the costs of prescription drugs and healthcare, not let the government socialize a third of the American economy and threaten to bankrupt our economy like France. We’ve got to protect our borders and send back every illegal alien back to their country of origin. We have to decrease the bloated government bureaucracy and cut government spending. We’ve got to develop new military technologies and send men back to the moon and onward towards Mars.
This is the Republican ideal, no, the Conservative ideal, that America is the greatest country in the world, and we have to fight to keep it that way. The Democrats would have you satisfied with the words of Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter: “Do With Less.” In other words, don’t look for hope, don’t look towards the future with eyes wide open, get your head out of the clouds, close your eyes, bury your head in the sand and look towards your government for the answers; “we keep you safe, we are your hope.”
This is what it boils down to when fighting for your country’s soul: those who want to keep the legacy alive, and those who want to destroy it to seize power for themselves.
