Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University ‘s Hoover Institution.  She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.

In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer’s television series, “A World of Ideas.” The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.

Dr. Wortham is author of “The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness” which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.

She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.

Recently she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

Her article (below) by her is something worth your time to read.

 “Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America .

 I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America , all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the “change” that Obama asserts has come to America .

 Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depends. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared “progressive” whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them.

 I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration – political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University ‘s Kennedy School of Government.

 I would have to believe that “fairness” is the equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to “go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice” is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the “bottom up,” and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

 Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting “Yes We Can!” I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead – and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

  So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States , the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmy Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.

 So, toast yourselves, 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee, Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good.

  There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.
God Help Us all…

How we get to a nuke-free world matters. To mitigate the threat of nuclear war, treaty negotiators must understand what they are up against. That includes understanding how the other parties plan to use nukes, both as military assets and as foreign policy tools.

Reagan knew that. But it’s not clear that Obama’s negotiators appreciate Moscow’s evident intent to keep using its potent nuclear threat to advance its foreign policy interests.

Like Reagan, Obama believes America must lead the way to nuclear disarmament. Unlike Reagan, he believes this requires an assertion of “moral” leadership, to be demonstrated simply by reducing our nuclear stockpile and refusing to modernize the U.S. arsenal. It’s a false premise.

In the post-Cold War era, U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles have atrophied, yet the nuclear threat has increased. Today, there are many more nuclear-armed states, and some are far less stable — and far more irresponsible — than the U.S.S.R.

Reagan recognized that the ultimate goal of arms negotiations is to make the world safer, more stable and more free. To eliminate the need for large nuclear arsenals, he went about eliminating the dependence — both ours and others’ — on massive nuclear attack as the guarantor of security.

Thus, the first items on Reagan’s agenda were building up U.S. conventional forces and introducing missile defenses. That allowed his negotiators to approach arms control agreements from a position of strength.

Obama has it backward. He started with cutting back on defense — especially in acquisition programs. Bye-bye, F-22.

He also cut missile defense, starting with systems to protect the homeland. But even that wasn’t enough to make the Russians happy.

“The problem is our America partners are developing missile defenses,” objected Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last December. “Our partners may come to feel completely safe.” That sounds like a leader who still thinks that maintaining the threat of nuclear attack is a good idea. If not, why is it a “problem” for Americans to feel safe?

Reagan understood his adversaries. Obama does not.

Russia wants an arms control treaty to solidify its position as a pre-eminent nuclear power, one on par with America. Atomic diplomacy is a cornerstone of Russian foreign policy.

Iran and North Korea have no use for arms treaties. But our eagerness to enter a pact with a lesser power like Russia only signals to them that America is indeed a declining power. And that gives them reason to think that, by continuing their nuclear weapons programs, they can become even more powerful forces on the world stage.

Just last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad displayed the “nuclear bully” mind-set Reagan understood so well. “You should know,” Ahmadinejad bellowed, “that the more hostile you are, the stronger an incentive our people will have, it will double. …” In his mind, this treaty reveals a weaker America, one less likely to back its rhetoric of freedom with deeds.

Perversely, a wrongheaded treaty that embraces nuclear disarmament while eschewing nuclear defense and improvement of conventional forces actually encourages a new nuclear arms race — or worse.

Reagan’s sound vision for “rendering nuclear weapons obsolete” started with first ensuring robust defenses, then reducing the nuclear stockpile appropriately. Obama has taken a “reduce first, beef up defense later (if ever)” approach.

It’s a path that leads to even greater danger, not to “zero.” Doubtless President Obama is motivated by the very best of intentions. But in a world of proliferating nuclear power, we should remember where a road paved only with good intentions leads.

    Expect Obama and his Minions to try anything, I mean anything, to push  ObamaCare through!

                          GOP Texan

                    GOP Texan

In the piney woods of South Georgia, 70-year-old Claude Cox is home receiving daily intravenous antibiotics over the next 10 weeks to combat a bacterial infection in his left lung. The leukemia patient spent four days instead of many weeks in the hospital thanks to home health care services which send a nurse to his house to help administer the antibiotics.

In a cost-efficient move, Medicare pays for home health care to keep patients out of hospitals – a program combining efficiency with compassion. But if President Obama and Congress have their way, Cox and many of the other 3.2 million other Medicare patients who utilize home health care benefits could be cut off next year. Congress may not have adopted a health reform bill yet, but the administration and Congress are already taking steps to ration cost-effective, life-saving programs such as home health care.  Bureaucrats at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued an order in mid-August cutting $34 billion from home health care programs for Medicare over the next 10 years.  If these cuts prevail, it could put more than two-thirds of the nation’s 9,800 home health care providers out of business by 2011.  Rather than target crooks that rip off the taxpayers to the tune of $80 to $120 billion annually in Medicare and Medicaid programs, the administration and Congress are aiming at the defenseless: homebound patients who need help feeding, dressing, taking their medication or even utilizing the bathroom. 

A recent study released by Avalere Health found that early use of home health care after hospitalization for those with chronic diseases saved Medicare $1.71 billion from 2005-06. Home health care produces better outcomes by keeping patients out of hospitals or nursing homes, allowing them to heal in a more personalized setting, according to the Rand Corp. Many of the 3.2 million Medicare patients who use home health services will be the first victims of health care rationing as a result of the Obama Healthcare Reform Movement. This gives all of us a glimpse life under a Washington-run health care system.

Unfortunately, it is the homebound, the very sick and disabled who may be the first to pay the price for the politicians hell bent on financing “free” health care for all.

What Goes Around, Comes Around . . . for these politicians who have absolutely no compassion.  Their time will come!

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       ↓ Nothing good about this!

While President Obama claims to have inherited the 2009 budget deficit, it is important to note that the estimated 2009 budget deficit has increased by $400 billion since his inauguration, and the whole point of the “stimulus” was to increase deficit spending to nearly $2 trillion based on the unproven notion that would it alleviate the recession.

• The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001.
• In 2009, Washington will spend $30,958 per household–the highest level in American history–and under President Obama’s budget, the figure will rise above $33,000 by 2019.
• The White House brags that it will cut the deficit in half by 2013. The President does not mention that the deficit has nearly quadrupled this year. Merely cutting it in half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush.

The public national debt–$5.8 trillion as of 2008–is projected to double by 2012 and nearly triple by 2019. Thus, America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined.

                      Can Obama tell the truth?  Evidently NOT!