My daughter loves Cinderella. My son loves Iron Man. My wife loves Mickey Mouse. And I love NFL Football. We spend a lot of time and money on these passions. And nearly all of it funnels into one big mega-corporation: Disney – which also owns ESPN and Marvel Entertainment.*

But as it turns out, we’ve been funding a corporation that gives money and air time to Liberal causes we stand opposed to – including Obama’s Presidential campaign, gay marriage advocacy, and abortion initiatives.

Furthermore, we have seen an increasingly Liberal/Progressive vocal presence on the part of many of their paid actors, TV personalities, creators, and corporate officers.

However, even in the face of the above facts, we’ve never considered a boycott of Disney or any of its subsidies.

That is, until now…

So what has caused us to reconsider our relationship with the company that provides us with endless hours of enjoyment?

Their unyielding pursuit of profit.

Yes, I know that sounds odd reason for a free-market Capitalist such as myself to even consider shunning a company because of their pursuit of profit. But that would represent a misunderstanding on your part of what Capitalism is.

To wit, Capitalism is not about the unyielding pursuit of profits by any means necessary. Doing so is short-sighted and could quite possibly wander into areas of corporate malfeasance. No, Capitalism is not irresponsible. On the contrary, Capitalism is the height of responsibility because it helps drive employment, innovation, and economic expansion in such a way that it must strive for a balance with the community and causes around it to fully prosper.

So what did Disney do to earn my scorn and possibly lose my hard-earned entertainment spending cash?

They laid off 10% of their ESPN workforce. That’s 400 workers. Without notice. Without just cause. And all in the name of profit. Not a “we’re losing money and must shed some costs to get into the black” profit. No, this was a “we made record profits, but we want even more, more, more!!!” move of greed.

Now, I am no stranger to layoffs, having suffered through a couple myself. And I fully understand that if a company is struggling to stay afloat, or maneuvering to be more competitive with others in their sector, cutting labor costs is one of many tools available for bringing the bottom line into the black in a very quick manner.

But Disney overall, and ESPN specifically, are not facing cost overruns, a downturn in their market, or increasing competition that threatens their existence, let alone their dominance. In fact, Disney as a whole and the ESPN division specifically are enjoying near record profits and lofty stock prices.** Sure, they are facing increased costs via taxes and healthcare (courtesy of their pal, Obama). And ESPN did just lay out an enormous amount of capital to lock up broadcast rights to many major sports leagues, as well as $125-million for a new Sportscenter studio. But none of that warrants a mass layoff.

This was not just a “cutting some dead weight” layoff. It’s a 10% across the board targeting of senior high salary non-executive positions that they plan to refill with lower wage workers (on the whole; to be sure, some babies did get thrown out with the bathwater as well). One would wonder why they didn’t offer these workers salary reductions. Or why a few multi-million dollar salaried execs didn’t just say “hey, between us we can take that kind of hit from our salaries and keep these people on the job.”

Yes, I understand that free-market Capitalism requires that the landscape be devoid of regulations on salary, capital investments, and the right to hire and fire. But that does not mean that a company must be without a heart.

But heartless is what Disney has become. Marvel Entertainment has long been tight-fisted under CEO Ike Perlmutter. And ESPN locking in broadcasting rights now can save them money in the future. And of course Disney is always one huge flop (can you say “John Carter?”) away from taking on some serious red ink, if only temporarily. However, these are three companies generally known for their ability to print money hand over fist.

A fist which has unfortunately been used on the very employees who make these companies great. They have treated people as expendable, easily replaced widgets. And that is not the sort of magic people expect from Disney.

* Full disclosure: I have worked in the past as a freelance writer for Marvel Comics. In fact, the bulk of my comic book work was on the Disney license they held during the 1990s.

** Ironically, he Disney stock price has fallen in the past 3 days since they made their heart and soul disappear.

I am not one of those people who hates to say “I told you so.” I figure, if you’ve been warned and you ignore the warnings, then you get what you deserve. So, to all of you who supported Barack Obama in any election  – in any capacity including staying home and note voting for his opponent – allow me to strike up the band…

I told you so!

I told you he was an enemy of the United States Constitution in my series We The People vs Obama.

I told you on multiple occasions the disaster that would follow the passage of ObamaCare: “Patient Protection and Affordable Cara Act” is Still A Bad Bill, What To Do With ObamaCare, and ObamaCare Kills More Than Just Jobs – to name a few.

I told you Obama was an appeasement-motivated lamb who was willing to lead his sheep to slaughter in articles such as Obama & Morsi: Brothers in Arms and Arab Spring, Global Fail.

And I told you that he would use the IRS and the Department of Justice to go after any who dared to expose or oppose him multiple times, including in the columns We The People vs Obama – Part 2: The Co-Conspirators, Obama Can Have You Killed, and Obama The Assassin.

But you Democrats, Liberals, and mainstream media chattel just would not listen. And now, to quote Barack Obama’s long time adviser and Pastor – Reverend Jeremiah Wright – “America’s chickens have come home to roost.”

So let’s take a look at where exactly those chickens are laying their eggs.

• Benghazi – where 4 Americans were murdered by terrorists while the Obama Administration did nothing, despite calls for help and available units being in the vicinity. They blamed it on a video nobody had even seen, and covered up the truth. But the truth is coming out, despite how much dancing Obama does to try to put out the flames.
• The First Amendment – as the Department of Justice goes after the AP news service in such a sweeping way that the media has begun to turn against their once-upon-a-time false Messiah.
• People’s Health and Welfare - as ObamaCare collapses under its own weight before even protecting one patient, let alone make healthcare anything close to affordable.
• Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution – which gives the House of Representatives sole power to raise revenue, a provision now skipped at least twice by ObamaCare – first, when the bill was actually put in place by the Senate (who gutted a bill that had passed the House and replaced it with the provisions of ObamaCare using a procedural trick) and now again as HHS Secretary Sebelius solicits corporations for funds to set up ObamaCare’s unpopular health insurance exchanges.
• The IRS – where an untold number of bureaucrats at who knows what levels of power used their personal authority to carry out Obama’s very clear mandate to go after anybody who opposed him. This targeting of TEA Party and other Conservative groups and individuals may very well have affected the outcome of the 2012 election, giving credence as well to claims that voter fraud was also used by Obama and his supporters to affect the election outcome.

And these five examples unfortunately represent just the tip of a corrupt iceberg. Barack Obama and his cronies of control have infected numerous areas of personal lives, corporate effectiveness, and national safety. He warned us that he was going to fundamentally transform America. But he never said he would do it in a good way.

So take this “I told you so” and learn one thing: don’t get fooled by the hype. If you vote like a fool, we all pay for your folly – but nobody pays more than the people who made such tyranny possible. You may think your support of corruption protects you from it, but know that it will bite you twice as hard and you will fall twice as far. Such are the lessons of history.

I’ll confess up front… I have broken more than one of the Ten Commandments, and several minor local laws as well. Nothing that ever did any long-term damage to anybody – except perhaps for the dark spots these transgressions have left on my own soul and a couple hundred dollars in traffic fines.

And I’d bet good cash money that there is not one person among you who are reading this who could confidently say that they have not done the same. Unless Jesus Himself subscribes to TheWriteAmerica…

Thus, sinners that we all are, we should be careful not to cast stones at others who, when you get right down to it, are just as human as we are.

The fact is, however, that despite our personal sins, we are all nonetheless stone throwers who measure up the sins of others and choose a jagged projectile with which to gash their flesh and draw blood, figuratively speaking, I hope. We shouldn’t do it – “do not judge lest ye be judged” and all that – but we do it anyway.

However, when it comes to the sins of our politicians, perhaps us sinners should sometimes throw a stone or two, at least at the voting booth. After all, we don’t want liars and crooks sitting in the seats of power, do we?

In most cases, sadly, cowards that we are, we hope that the media and shame will do our work for us and the sinful candidate caught with his hand in the cookie jar will drop out of the race. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen, and we then turn a blind eye and pull the lever for the candidate who should be too ashamed to pop his or her head out of the sand, let alone climb into the public spotlight.

The most recent case of the “shameful sinner” comes from my own party – newly elected Congressman Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Let me be clear up front: I generally do like Sanford’s politics and policies, and I treasure another Republican voice and vote in the House of Representatives. But Sanford is a liar and an adulterer, who had to be caught red-handed before he would even consider confession and contrition. He heinously broke the trust of the one person whose trust he should never have broken, his wife. And he broke faith with the people of South Carolina by lying about it to their faces and using their tax money to fund his international affair.

To me, these are actions that we as also flawed people must forgive, especially after confession and contrition, but I don’t think as voters we should ever forget them. Quite frankly, are you telling me that South Carolina could not produce a Conservative/Republican who had not violated his core vows to wife and voter? That is a sad statement to make, indeed.

But lest the Democrats gloat too much, let them not forget Ted Kennedy. They continually re-elected this alcoholic for decades after he left what may have been his adulterous girlfriend (we do not know the truth on that) to die at the bottom of a lake (that we do know that for sure, despite his home state’s failure to bring charges against him or his pals in the Senate to censure him as he should have been).

If I were John Edwards or Gary Hart, I’d be thinking to myself about now “hey, why did I have to drop out of politics if Sanford and Kennedy – and who was that one President caught with his hands on the wrong body and then lied straight to all of our faces – didn’t?”

And the sins do not stop with adultery and lying.

There’s Charles Rangel who misappropriated funds, and yet still represents his neighborhood in the House.

And Marion Barry, who despite drug addiction and perjury is still trusted to help run the city of Washington, D.C.

Not to mention the insider trading and money manipulation by politicians such as Spencer Bachus, Diane Feinstein, John Kerry, Dick Durbin, and Jim Moran.

Now let me be clear again – I am all for redemption, forgiveness, and second chances. But that does not mean I am ready to forget what a person did that required redemption and forgiveness. I’m not advocating all-out lifelong shunning of a person for their sins. What I am advocating is not putting them right back into the halls of power that either corrupted their hearts or drew out some dark part of their personality.

Forgive – sure! But give them the keys to the kingdom? That’s just pure foolishness.

A close friend of mine is a well-known plastic surgeon. During the early part of his career, he was an Emergency Room / Trauma surgeon at a hospital in the heart of gang-land Philadelphia. He handled bullet holes, knife slashes, car crashes, and severe burns. As an ER surgeon, he knew how to prioritize things and give each person the immediate care they needed as well as the highly delicate care that took more time. The basics went something like this: save the life, lessen the pain, make it look pretty – in that order. He is a man who knows the difference between a rush to save a burn victim’s life and a starlet looking for bigger boobs.

Unfortunately, the US government specializes in boobs, and knows little about true emergencies. And though both sides of the aisle are guilty of prioritizing cosmetic fixes over life-saving and pain-reducing results, the Obama Administration and his cronies in Congress have elevated the philosophy of “never let a good crisis go to waste” to an ugly art form.

It must be admitted that Barack Obama began his presidency with a clear mandate from the people. He promised hope and change – a different approach to politics in general, along with economics, healthcare, and foreign policy. Obama also had a super-majority in Congress, giving him the ability to prioritize and solve problems as he saw fit. Unfortunately, he squandered all of this political capital on petty partisanship and business as usual.

And what was his first order of business? To ram through a backroom deal-filled healthcare bill that did nothing in the immediate term for people in need of healthcare but immediately caused harm to the economy via added fees, new taxes, and redefined terms of business.

Don’t misunderstand me – reforming our healthcare and health insurance system is vital. There is plenty of need out there to help people afford health insurance, control medical costs, reduce wait times for important procedures, expand medical research, and improve quality of care.

But ObamaCare doesn’t do any of those things. Instead, it was negotiated behind closed doors between Obama, union bosses, and pharmaceutical company and insurance provider big-wigs. It was inserted into a gutted bill in a bit of Senate trickery, given little time for debate, and nearly no time for our representatives in Congress or the people in general a chance to read it. Nancy Pelosi told us we needed to pass the bill to see what was in the bill, and the liberals in the media made people believe it. Now our public naivety and the Democrats’ duplicity has saddled us with a 2000-page bill filled with holes, onerous penalties – excuse me, I mean “taxes” – and very little in the way of anything that helps healthcare be protective of patients or affordable to any of us.

All in all, healthcare was an important need and a certain priority, but it was not a crises… at least, not before ObamaCare passed.

And now Obama and his wolves in do-gooders clothing want to reform the Second Amendment and Immigration. On both of these fronts they tell us we are facing emergencies. And yet, there has not been any real increase in gun crimes, and even the firmest backers of gun control legislation admit that their proposed reforms – which must be acted on immediately for the good of the children – does nothing to reduce tragedies such as Sandy Hook and Aurora.

Nor has there been any new tragic change in our dismal immigration situation that could be referred to as an emergency. But that isn’t stopping the Dems led by Charles Schumer and the RINOs – oddly led by what I am officially calling “former TEA Party darling” Marco Rubio – from trying to cram an amnesty-first/border security maybe never bill down the throats of law-abiding American citizens. In fact, this so-called Gang of 8 is using such a dense smoke screen that it took a bombing in Boston – by a family that entered our country through the immigration sieve that their bill does nothing to close – to get them to at least gently tap the brakes and give a passive nod to Senators Rand Paul’s and Ted Cruz’s call for a closer look at security measures.

When this country was founded, and as the rules and procedures of government were formed, the leaders took care to separate emergencies from needs, and needs from wants. They had a sense of propriety and priority that put crises in their proper place. It’s now become a priority that our government officials learn to do the same thing. Reforming how the government approaches the business of governing is a crises that we cannot afford to let go to waste.

Liberals are like people in the early throes of a stroke – they try to communicate, but only gibberish comes out of their mouths. Words change meaning, their message is garbled, and the only thing really being communicated is that they are suffering from a serious neurological disorder.

Look at the labels they use to describe themselves to see what I mean. At first, they wore the badge “liberal” proudly. After all, its origin in the Latin word liberalis means “suitable for a freeman” and in the French – liber – it implies “free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious,” And who doesn’t love freedom? Oh yeah… Liberals. We know they are not too keen on leaving people free from restraint (think “bureaucracy”), though they are pretty high on licentiousness.

Realizing sometime post Woodrow Wilson that “liberal” was already taking on the stench of control and restriction, the Liberals started to call themselves “Progressives” instead. It gave them the air of moving forward, being future-lookers filled with new ideas. Which lasted about as long as Wilson’s failed League of Nations. By the time FDR got his hooks into the economy, “progressive” and “liberal” became synonymous with “handouts” and “the government knows what’s good for you better than you do.”

But of course, the Liberals butchering of the English language does not end with there 2 famous self-labels. No, there’s a whole host of words they are always misusing.

By way of expediency, lets look at just their most egregious language violations in list form. Otherwise, we’d be here until the end of Obama’s presidency (which, word has it, will try to extend past the end of his Constitutional limit by misusing the phrases “martial law” and “state of emergency.”)

• Marriage: This word has meant one thing since the very dawn of time – the officially sanctioned union between one man and one woman for the purposes of cohabitation. One man and one woman. Sure, there have been times when people have tried other combinations, such as multiple men and/or women, but those have mostly ended in disaster for the people and the societies that condoned such redefinitions. But now the Liberals are trying to redefine the word again, and are throwing the entire nation into a battle for the Constitution, religious freedom, and the upbringing of children. Which brings us to the next set of words…
• Husband, Wife, Father, Mother: Again, these words have always meant the same thing since the beginning of history. They are specifically gender based. I don’t care how pretty the art is in Heather Has Two Mommies, the truth is Heather has one biological mother and one biological father, and is being ripped off from knowing the best potential option for her life – that is, to be raised in a home with a real father and mother.
• Affordable: Look no further than ObamaCare to know that the Liberals have no idea what this word really means.
• Tolerant: Tolerant means to accept that other people have different viewpoints than your own and have a right to such viewpoints. But “tolerant” does not mean that you have to necessarily condone those views and give up your right to disagree. But in Liberalspeak, “tolerant” means “if you don’t condone and give into my viewpoint, you suck and have no right to your own viewpoint.”
• Racism: Look to Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the entire Congressional Black Caucus to know that this word is being falsely applied to Conservatives, whether those Conservatives are Black, White, Asian, Latino, or from Mars. Just ask Dr. Ben Carson, Col. Alan West, and host of other Conservatives of Color what happens if they stray off of the Liberal Plantation.

I literally could just keep going on and on. For instance, there’s the woman who had an operation to “become” a man, who then married another woman, who then got pregnant with the help of some man’s sperm, and who is now trying to get divorced from her wife and is demanding the right to be forever known as the child’s “father.”

Confused? Sure… But sadly not as much as this poor child will be.

Or how about the AP’s sudden decision to officially stop using the designation “Illegal Immigrant” for people who enter the United States without permission with the intention of staying without permission.

Oh, those Liberals… I mean Progressives, sure are funny. And by “funny” I mean “sad, deceitful, fiends who purposely try to obscure the truth by manipulating language in the hopes of deceiving people.”

(Hat Tip to: BizPac Review where I first read the story about the AP’s new stance on “illegal immigrant.”)

Kids do say the darndest things to Presidents who think they can do anything they want…

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I used to be a huge college basketball fan. It was impossible not to be when living in Las Vegas from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s. Those were the heydays of the UNLV Running Rebels. Jerry Tarkanian, Final Four appearances, Larry Johnson, Reggie Theus, Gregg Anthony, a National Championship… it all made it easy to live and breath college hoops.

Which was fine for my growing up years. But then I became an adult, and it became time to put college basketball in its proper place. I have a life to run now. Marriage, children, church, work… the things that take my time, care, and hard-earned money… well, they really put my hobbies in perspective. After all, I can’t let my my family finances flounder while I obsess about hoop teams’ rankings and tourney seeds.

Too bad President Obama has yet to figure out the same thing…

As President of the United States, Barrack Obama is required by law to deliver a budget blueprint to Congress by the first Monday in February each and every year. He has yet to hit that deadline even once, and is still tardy on the 2013 budget as of this writing. But he has put together his 2013 NCAA College Basketball tourney brackets in time for the annual event’s first tip! No budget – but we know he favors Indiana to win it all this year.

Not that any budget by President Obama has a snowball’s chance in a Las Vegas summer of passing. In fact, none of Obama’s late budgets have received even one measly vote in Congress. They are so packed with far-left Liberal spending and onerous tax increases that not even his most committed brown-nosers in Congress is willing to put their name on it.

So instead of a budget that cuts spending, reigns in runaway entitlement programs, and rights the US fiscal ship, we have the Sequester – that ham-fisted across the board list of mandatory cuts that were meant to punish the President and Congress for not doing their job.

I’ve argued before that the Sequester has a silver lining; at least it does something about spending, and it leaves a whole lot of elected officials with egg on their face. Hopefully that will translate into voters taking charge of America’s fiscal future at the voting booth.

And maybe, just maybe, the White House and Congress would begin to take responsibility for how our tax money is spent.

Alas, that is not the case. As stated by the White House, instead of sitting down and applying the Sequester cuts in a well-thought out way, they instead want the cuts to cause as much pain for the American public as possible. Then they’ll just blame the Republicans and Viola! the Dems can go back to spending and taxing US citizens into a red hole.

But this time, Obama may have miscalculated the power of his teleprompter. The public – and even some people in the fawning ObamaMedia – are not happy with the “choices” the White House and its agencies have made. For instance, while Obama cancelled White House tours – which are done for free by volunteer tour guides – he kept intact the White House Visitor’s Office Manager’s salary of $100,000.

And that’s just one flake on Obama’s fast melting PR snowball…

• The Department of Homeland Security gave hundreds of illegal immigrants – including some with records of violent crimes – a get out of jail free card, when they admit they could have cut spending elsewhere.
• While Obama made a human shield of children and the vaccinations they require, the government spent $1.5 million for a study on why 75% of lesbians are obese.
• The White House is contemplating playing the Scrooge instead of the Easter Bunny this year, but ironically has $664,000 tax payer dollars for a Ukrainian Easter Egg Workshop.
• And there’s something like $8 million in public money going to wineries, cookbooks, iPhone Apps, and winter festivals!

And that’s just a taste of how ridiculous the Democrats have been acting over the slowing down of future spending! Which is all that the Sequester really is. It certainly isn’t an actual reduction in spending!

So while America continues to mount up debt like the Running Rebels pulling away in the second half, Obama and his cronies live the high life, going on trips, throwing parties on Capitol Hill, and applying their very weak prediction skills to this year’s college hoops tourney.

Maybe if taxpayers put on some uniforms and racked up some points, we could get Obama’s attention…

Oh wait, United States soldiers already do that, and Obama is playing Sequester Games with their needed funds too.