My sense of Mark and what drives him is growing. Along with my appreciation of his positions, I find his arguments used to sustain his viewpoints nearly impregnable.

Seldom am I upset when a radio talk show host concludes his/her broadcast. Not so with Mark. I’m pissed off that he has shut down because I want more of him, his wit, his intelligence, his anger, his overall persona and his direct approach to the problems we all face.

Just this week he told a caller who praised the health care system in North Korea to “get the hell out” of America and move to North Korea if he thought their health care system was so remarkable. Why, I thought, for the love of God, don’t more people act like Mark and just cut to the proverbial chase? If America is so screwed up, just get the hell out!

Like Mark, many of us believe that the reckless spending and irresponsible actions of our government, State and Federal, have us on a path to utter destruction…and not just financially, but morally as well. That is why I’ve joined him in the crusade against the mad, mad, mad, mad world and work of Barack Obama, his stooges and all of the other self-serving career politicians who don’t give a rat’s anus about average Americans.

My like of and love for Mark Levin is not a fickle, trendy, passing fancy rather, it is predicated upon shared conservative principles, beliefs and problem solving that stem from a belief that we are “endowed by a Creator” with rights and responsibilities not only to ourselves but to everyone around us, including the next generation.

My like of Mark is based upon shared truth, expressed with undying passion born of love for America.

Like Mark, iVoteAmerica believes that the next two elections could well determine the direction America takes for many decades to come.

Like Mark, iVoteAmerica urges you to turn off the television and get off the couch this November to vote. We have to flush the political toilet.

Hop over to Mark Levin’s website.

Yesterday, July 15, 2010, with cautious optimism, BP announced that indeed the leak had been capped and that testing would begin to ensure the long term viability of their solution.

The BP debacle, however maddening, became for me a laboratory where I could learn lessons about the effectiveness of business versus that of government.

Despite the tragedy and its ensuing ecological and economic damage to the Gulf region, a picture has emerged that demonstrates how the real world of business works and how the real world of government pretends to work.

THE REAL WORLD OF GOVERNMENT

Throughout the entire BP episode we were treated (for lack of a better word) to a real world lesson about how government and business deal with and solve problems. In this case, monumental and catastrophic problems. The BP oil spill was indeed the ultimate reality show.

It is indeed interesting to see how the Obama administration began to posture itself from “day one” and to politicize the issue. Officials were paraded before cameras declaring that our government was on top of the situation. They weren’t.

When Bobby Jindal (R), Governor of Louisiana, petitioned Washington for support of his action plans to save the coast line from the consequences of the oil spill he was met with red tape, resistance and ultimately rejection.

All the while, Barack Obama and his minions were hitting the airways proclaiming their competencies while slapping BP upside their corporate head and painting a picture in the minds of Americans of a greedy, self-serving corporate monster.

Now that the leak is capped we will hear more from Obama Land about “oversight” and “being on top” of the BP tragedy. We will hear about the dangerous risks businesses take and how corporate recklessness can destroy our lives.

But what, if anything, did government actually do to help end the crisis? What particular skills did the President and his underlings bring to the table to actually contain the leak? Did our government create the carefully engineered designs for the cap? Was the Washington machine hands-on in any way whatsoever?

Were any of the bureaucrats actually involved in turning any wrenches? Did anyone from inside the beltway operate the joystick and computerized controls involved in the operation of BP’s submersible robots that performed their duties at more than 5,000 feet below the surface?

NO…NO…and, finally, NO! In fact, it could be argued that our government was part of the problem and that the bureaucratic red tape prevented the protection of the precious Gulf beaches and estuaries and contributed to the disaster.

THE REAL WORLD OF BUSINESS

There is no doubt that in the post explosion aftermath BP blundered and did so big time. The BP public relations were a nightmare and only served to further fuel the animosity building in the Gulf.

Businesses, unlike scripted bureaucrats, are not always good at the microphone or the teleprompter.

It became obvious that BP had a monster on the loose. But what is remarkable is the fact that BP appears to have accomplished what businesses always accomplish…solutions.

What is also apparent is the motivation behind BP’s action…survival. In the final analysis, no one could save BP except BP. Herein is my point. Solutions and survival mean different things to government than they do to business people and this was never more obvious to me than during this crisis.

Government regulates, stipulates and postulates; always attempting to tilt the playing field to its advantage. In the case of government, solutions are created in the vacuum of politics where there the line between winning and losing is carefully drawn, moved and misaligned.

Government doesn’t have to solve problems associated with oil spills and other disasters; government can only pontificate and create illusions with respect to its role in our lives amidst tragedies like the oil spill.

In contrast to the role and actions of big government, businesses, driven almost entirely by survival instincts (aka “profit motives”), must actually solve problems in measurable and demonstrable ways. Solutions and survival become a zero sum game to any business facing challenges like the BP oil spill.

Unlike big government’s spin machine, at the end of BP’s day there would be little, if any, wiggle room. Everything is on the line and that is what business is all about and what capitalism is all about. There are no back doors or escape hatches.

Shutting off the plume is a measurable outcome resulting from real world problem solving and a huge amount of actual capital. That is precisely what business does; risks capital to solve problems and provide solutions.

Unlike Barack Obama posturing and warning that he was going to “kick ass” (his words), business people have to plug their leaks everyday and put themselves on the line as they face the risk of potential and ultimate failure.

Plugging leaks is something Barack Obama doesn’t understand, at least not from the standpoint of having actually operated a business, met payroll or created profitable solutions that pay the bills, send kids to college, pay for health care and finance a summer vacation.

There are some lessons we can learn from the BP oil disaster and most of them show us the difference between how most business people live and solve problems and how government pretends to help while it feigns expertise.

The tragedy of the Gulf oil spill will be with us for many years. But I am wondering what situation we might be facing today if Washington D.C., Barak Obama and his legions of bureaucrats were left alone to plug the leak.

The entire event forces us to ask a basic question about whether we believe the nine-to-five bureaucrats possess the same will, fortitude, creativity and discipline to solve problems that the BP management and employees and the thousands of Gulf residents displayed throughout the crises?

The BP oil spill is filled with lessons about our government’s inability to be in charge of our lives at any level.

The BP oil spill is once again filled with lessons about the power of individual people to solve problems, giant problems in ways that government never can.

The BP oil spill has been horrible but there is something important we can learn about the difference between how government pretends to solve our problems and how we the people, when allowed to do so, can and do solve our own problems.

Syndicated from Alan Caruba

Ever since polls have been taken there have been presidents who encountered disapproval during their terms in office. Usually history exonerates them to some degree. This is not likely to happen with Barack Obama.

As this is written, a Politico.com polls puts Obama’s job disapproval rating at 46.4% and Congress has a disapproval rate of 72%, a figure matched by Rasmussen Reports. Obama’s disapproval rate according to Rasmussen was 44%.

Polls, we are always told, are “snapshots” of public opinion at a given time, but the polls consistently tell us that the vast majority of Americans disapprove of the President and Congress, and believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction.

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan, wrote “I don’t see how the president’s position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president’s judgment and instincts.”

Suffice it to say that, if elections were being held next Tuesday, voters would replace most of those in Congress and, if Obama’s ratings continue to fall—-and I think they will—-there would be an angry mob surrounding the White House carrying torches and pitchforks demanding his resignation.

In that fanciful scenario Obama would head home to Chicago to work on another ghost-written autobiography or memoir of his brief stay in the White House and America would be stuck with Joe Biden. If Nancy Pelosi is reelected, she would be next in line!

Since January 2009 the Obama administration has created an economic and financial house of cards. No part of it is sustainable.

Turning around Congress and the nation’s future can be likened to turning a super tanker. It takes five miles of ocean just to slow the ship. In America’s case, the ship has been outward bound on a sea of progressive programs that everyone knows are not working and which have begun to spring giant leaks in the hull.

There is plenty of blame to go around for our present troubles. Both parties studiously ignored the ticking time bomb of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that have put taxpayers on the hook for $1.6 trillion. The “toxic assets” they created brought down banks and investment houses.

The people in charge of maintaining the value of the U.S. dollar, primarily Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve, began to reduce the amount of interest banks had to pay to borrow. By the time that amount reached zero percent and banks became reluctant to loan even among each other, one might conclude our money had become valueless.

When the market crashed in September 2008, the U.S. government bailed out some banks and investment firms, buying their “toxic assets.” Banks stopped lending, Lehman Brothers went out of business, and the slide toward economic collapse began in earnest. With all that TARP money and subsequent “stimulus” billions, the one element of the economy that didn’t get any help were our small and medium size businesses, the ones that create eight out of every ten new jobs.

Meanwhile Social Security is broke and Medicare soon will be. The former is insolvent and the latter has been expanded in ways that will require rationing medical care European-style. There may not be “death panels”, but the effect will be the same. There will be little incentive for anyone to go into the medical profession.

Thanks to the Obama administration’s close association with SIEU, the mammoth government service workers union, Americans are discovering that it and other comparable unions have been operating on a “public be damned” philosophy. In America, the biggest employer is state and federal governments. Union members are no longer affordable.

When a teacher recently complained she wasn’t being paid enough, New Jersey’s Governor, Chris Christie, told her to get another job.

Around the 1970s the American economy began to move away from one that actually made things to one in which “financial services” replaced this essential requirement for a viable economy.

Now conjure with this. The national debt is $13 TRILLION. The Gross Domestic Product is around $12.9 trillion. According to Reuters, the United States posted an $82.69 billion deficit in April, “nearly four times the $20.91 billion shortfall registered in April 2009 and the largest on record for that month.”

Moody’s Investor Services keeps repeating that our “AAA” rating is going to go bye-bye any day now. It will cost more for the U.S. to borrow money and we are already paying billions in interest on what has been borrowed. If this sounds like Greece, it is.

One reason Congress is so unpopular is that they are repeating and exacerbating all the failed policies of the Depression years; not getting out of the way so that the private sector of the economy can recover. More and more of the economy is being nationalized.

There are two outstanding reasons President Obama is unpopular. He lies all the time and he is spectacularly incompetent. He is the living example of the Peter Principle in which a person is finally promoted to a job for which he has no qualifications.

He engaged in the same kind of mockery with the Tea Party when he said about its view of over taxation and the health care reform bill, “I would think they would be grateful…”

This time the President went after John McCain, Arizona and Arizona’s newly passed illegal immigration law. To the delight of the main stream media attendees, he mocked Arizona’s attempt to control its borders with these words:

“Unfortunately, John McCain couldn’t make it. Recently he claimed that he had never identified himself as a maverick. And we all know what happens in Arizona when you don’t have ID. (Laughter.) Adios, amigos. (Laughter and applause.)”

iVoteAmerica is headquartered in Arizona, where the approval rate of Arizona’s new law making it illegal to be illegal is a staggering 70% and climbing.

I wonder how the widow and family members of rancher Robert Krentz felt when she heard those words from the President of the United States, the Chief Law Enforcement officer charged with enforcing immigration laws and controlling the borders.

I wonder how the President’s mockery felt to Pinal County Deputy Louie Puroll, his family and the many law enforcement officials as Barack Obama made lite of the border situation in Arizona that led to the Deputy Puroll’s being shot by two undocumented aliens. Puroll was attacked about 5 miles south of Interstate 8 near its junction with Arizona Highway 84 and sustained a gun shot would near one of his kidneys. The Deputy was patrolling near Interstate 8 when he discovered marijuana bales and five suspected smugglers, at least one of which opened fire upon him with an automatic weapon.

On Saturday, May 1, 2010, Arizona law enforcement officials reported arresting the alleged drug smugglers responsible for shooting the Deputy and reportedly captured 17 suspected illegal immigrants, among whom are the three illegals who are now believed to be the shooters of Deputy Louie Puroll.

iVoteAmerica would like to predict the ouster of Barack Obama as our President in 2012 and to quote him precisely, “adios amigo.”