We walk into the room, and find our country, the United States of America, down on the floor, unconscious, not breathing, and with no pulse. Death is imminent.

Triage is in order. Treat the immediately life-threatening conditions first. Then fix the underlying problems.

The mnemonic used in CPR training, “ABC” (Airway, Breathing, Circulation), focuses on the order of importance of things in first-responder emergency care. Rescue breathing, for example, can’t happen without an open airway.

Circulation, including cardiac compressions and stopping bleeding, is irrelevant if there are no airway and breathing  to get  oxygen into the blood.

Get the airway open, deliver some breaths if needed, and then do cardiac compressions, if needed.  After the ABCs are taken care of, tend to the bleeding.

Fractures, pain control, swelling, infection, and other, important, but less urgent conditions come later. They cannot be neglected, but they come after ABC.

Same with our country.

Yes, we need a conservative president, and the more conservative, the better. However, any president who is not an America-hating, hard-core leftist,  is a life-saving improvement over Barack Obama. He has our national airway blocked. He will kill our country in another four year term.

Elect a president who will fire the “czars,” sequester the insane spending on pointless, destructive bureaucratic regulations, and take the government’s choking grip off the economy’s airway.

Airway open.

Get the air moving in the lungs. Tell Congress to repeal the stupid laws that gave these bureaucracies imperial power over Americans. Make the Justice Department administer justice, and not the political whims of the White House.

Breathing established.

Elect succeeding generations of strict constitutionalists to the House and Senate, so that any president who wants to rule like a king is hogtied and impotent, and impeached and removed, if necessary. Federal judges who want to write law from the bench will be returned by a Constitutionally responsible Congress to the private sector, or to prison, if they have done wrong in office.

Stem the government’s endless appetite for power and property by stopping it from doing the endless things it has no business doing. Abolish unconstitutional agencies, and fire their employees.

Circulation restored, and bleeding stopped.

Then, fix the deeply-rooted, abusive practices of a government that have had generations to fester and swell.

This process will take several election cycles, but it can work, if we don’t turn our backs on politics after the next election.

A, B, and C. Each is vital, but none is enough, without the others.

The best president in history is only a temporary fix, without a Congress and a judicial branch that will do their constitutional jobs.

None of this can happen without an electorate that is educated on the founding documents, and involved for the long haul — not just for 2012, but for every election from now on, and for every day in between.

We may put off our country’s imminent death, but we will have done nothing to forestall its progressive, degenerative decline into third-world, bankrupt, crippled irrelevancy — and death is still the ultimate result.

ABC.

A presidential election is a beginning, but it is just a beginning. It’s not a long-term job; it’s a never-ending job, and it’s the voters that have to do it.

First, ABC.

Dried marijuana "bud," Courtesy of Wikipedia. NOT my photo! ("Eees no' mine!!")

Let’s just say I know enough about smoking marijuana (having been college-aged in the late 60′s) to know how apt is the term “wasted” in that context… but let’s also say that I could have passed a random, pop drug test any time over the last forty years, and I could do so at right this moment.

While I am not chomping at the bit for the legal right to hit the pot store on the way home from WalMart, it is hard NOT to see the cost of the “war on drugs” on our Constitutional rights. And, no, you don’t have to be a Paulistinian, or even a classical Libertarian to see it.

“]”]”

Would you trust your rights to "Good" Attorneys General -- Ashcroft (L) and Thornburgh (R)

“]”]”]”]

Or to these? BAD Attorneys General -- Holder (L) Reno (R) [Wikipedia

What have we given up from the Bill of Rights, just to ignore the inherent evil of no-knock warrants and civil asset forfeiture? If a government acting in our best interests can abuse these procedures, what can a government that holds us in contempt do with them?

Legalizing marijuana would break away the current markets for marijuana from their very close relationship with the markets for heroin, cocaine, meth, hot guns, stolen property, prostitution, human and drug smuggling, terrorism, etc., draining tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from that income stream, and diverting it into taxable income streams. It would also unclog thousands of slots on pending court case calendars and empty prison and jail cells of people who otherwise wouldn’t be there, making room for the people who really should be locked up.

The statists graciously accept all our offers to surrender our rights for alleged safety or other benefits, regardless of the “war” allegedly being fought — drugs, poverty, terrorism, income inequality…

They know from history that such rights, once surrendered, are seldom restored, except by force and the spilling of lots of blood. At some point, it will be too late to get them back without that terrible cost.

We’re not there just yet, but we’re awfully close.

Curry Todd's mug shot, which will be used by gun control advocates from now on as a poster for their cause. Thanks, Curry. Oh, and thanks for driving drunk, too.

Sometimes you just want to slap yourself on the forehead and ask, “WHAT WAS I THINKING?“

Tennessee state representative Curry Todd should have a real sore forehead by now, having embarrassed Tennessee gun rights advocates by being arrested for driving drunk.  But wait! There’s more! He had a holstered .38 Special in the car with him. But, wait! There’s even more!

Curry Todd was the “driving” force behind the new state law that removed the prohibition against carrying a concealed weapon WITH A CONCEALED CARRY PERMIT into a bar or restaurant where alcohol is served. And yes, Todd was also charged with the possession of a firearm while intoxicated.

You can be sure the irony of a gun-rights advocate being arrested for a gun law violation has not escaped notice among the foaming-at-the-mouth gun-haters. Take some anti-nausea medicine and read The Tennessean online, and the comments about the related stories, if you want to see anti-gun Schadenfreude on full display.

But, something is missing in all this coverage. Where is the outrage against a drunk driver?

While having a gun in the car when he was driving drunk was illegal and utterly stupid, there is nothing to indicate the firearm ever left the car, that it ever left the holster, that it was ever pointed at anyone or anything — and certainly — no evidence that it was ever used to harm anyone.

What could much more easily have resulted in tragedy that night was not the gun.

Forgive me if I sound a little strident about this, but the deadliest weapon in this story wasn’t IN the car; it WAS the car.  Thousands of pounds of steel that could have easily killed a whole crowd was being operated by a guy who was drunk, according to the police report. And, if you doubt the police report, check the mug shot, above. What is it about driving drunk that is not at least as repugnant to people on either side of the Second Amendment issue as the fact that a firearm was present?

Why do I seem strident about anybody driving drunk? It’s personal. Somebody very close to me was killed by a drunk driver, and it’s not something one forgets.

On June 6, 1994 (yes, the 50th anniversary of D-Day), I got a hysterical call from my mother-in-law, telling me between sobs that my 19-year-old nephew — her oldest grandson, and my wife’s oldest nephew — James Robert Anemone, had been killed, along with his 17-year-old serious girlfriend, by a drunk driver. It’s another story entirely, but James was as close as I have ever come to having a son, and I was as close as he would ever come to having a father.

James and his girl were both sober. The drunk was a minor with a history of driving drunk and public intoxication charges, and he was drunk enough that evening that his blood alcohol level would have put a non-drinker into a coma. But this guy was used to being drunk, and he was used to driving drunk and getting away with it — until he crossed the center line and hit two innocent people head-on,  and killed them. With his car.

Curry Todd’s gun was never a danger to anyone, but his car and his drunken state were a danger to everyone unfortunate enough to share the road with him.  Guns are used  hundreds of thousands or millions of times a year to prevent crimes, but I know of no reports of drunks using their cars to prevent a crime; and tens of thousands of deaths each year result from drunk driving.

Which will get more attention from the “mainstream” press in the Curry Todd incident — the gun, or the car piloted by the guy in the mug shot, above?

Now, what do gun rights advocates do about this ugly situation?

Do we all crawl into a cave and abandon the cause of gun rights? Not just NO, but, HELL NO. We can do what I am doing , here — we can offer Curry Todd the opportunity to redeem himself somewhat in our eyes by offering his resignation from the legislature.  At the very, very least, he should humble himself before the public with a sincere, deeply-felt apology, and a hard commitment to dealing with his alcoholism.

And, he needs to promise his constituents, his colleagues, his family, and me — that he will never get behind the wheel drunk again.

The Kinman Bar, courtesy of Wikipedia. What Leftist "Journalists" picture when they think about letting concealed carry permit holders carry into places that serve alcohol.

As Old Lodge Skins said in the classic movie, Little Big Man, “Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Remember those blood-soaked gunfights in places that sell alcohol, when Tennessee allowed us permit holders to carry concealed into them? You don’t? Perhaps that’s because they didn’t happen.

When Tennessee legislated to allow concealed carry holders to carry into places that sell alcohol, The Tennessean promised us that there would be a bloodbath because of voodoo. Yes, voodoo. The presence of two, inanimate objects in the same space — alcohol and firearms — was magically supposed to trigger carnage and wholesale death.

While Tennessean “journalists” may think alcohol is OK, we know that 99% of them find firearms to be inherently evil. Since we also know that these same “journalists” believe in magic, we are not surprised that they imbue inanimate objects with magical power.

We heard plenty about the “pouring gasoline on a fire” outcome that was clearly ahead, when we allowed law-abiding gun owners to carry their evil objects into public places. So, where are the stacks of reports of gun violence since the law passed?

Well, of course, not being dependent on magical thinking allowed the rest of us to understand that the predicted mass killing by firearm was no more likely before the law went into effect than after. As has already happened in dozens of other states, nothing new happened.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=334117

Guns are NOT inherently evil.

Alcohol is NOT inherently evil.

Objects are NOT inherently evil.

BEHAVIOR may certainly be evil (though it may be impossible for Tennessean “journalists” to wrap their tiny minds around that), but inanimate objects are… inanimate objects.

Irrational fear of firearms is… irrational.

Thanks for letting me clear this up. The “journalists” at The Tennessean may now resume their magical thinking.

I know you’re supposed to hate the sin and love the sinner, but a sinner who sins again and again needs not just love, but tough love.  House Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose debt deal is in the best tradition of deal makers like Bob Dole and John McCain, and  have dealt us into where we are today.

Yes, I know, Republicans [switch to parrot voice] “only control one half of one branch of government.” What kept John Boehner from walking out of the surrender negotiation with the White House and the Senate, stating clearly that he would not take part in a “compromise” that leaves us worse off than we were before? What kept Mitch McConnell from keeping his mouth shut at a time when he could be seen as competing with his own side?

Boehner and McConnell let the fear that they would be portrayed in the dinosaur media as causing a default guide their actions. Well, the default threat was a lie, the Dow is in a tailspin, trailing smoke, and no rating service in its right mind is going to let a debt-loaded borrower borrow more at less than confiscatory rates. And this was a great deal? Was it really better than no deal?

I don’t think so. These leaders failed us, and not for the first time.

It’s time for tough love, starting in the primaries.

John and Mitch, it’s time to retire.

THE DUNCEPHANT -- Proud symbol of the compassionate conservative, big-tent, self-defeating, Stupid Party

Let me see if I understand the criticism from those on the nominal right who support the Boehner two-step:

1) Anyone who opposes Boehner is supporting Reid, Pelosi, Obama, Schumer, et al., because they oppose it, too.

2) Cut, Cap and Balance failed to get a vote in the Senate, so the House has to pass something the Senate will like.

3) Republicans will be blamed for default, for Social Security checks and VA benefit checks not being issued, and for the downgrade of US credit, among other things, if Boehner’s latest mutation doesn’t get out of the House.

There are other criticisms, but these are the big ones.

1) Anyone against Boehner must support Obama, Reid, Pelosi, sexually transmitted deases and Karl Marx.

Is this supposed to be an argument worthy of mega-brains like Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol? Guilt by association?

The small-government right opposes Boehner because it is a capitulation. It grants Obama nearly a trillion dollars of immediate spending authorization, and razor-thin, ephemeral spending cuts.

The big government left opposes Boehner because they have been told to, by their ideological leaders, and because even phantom spending reductions threaten their eternal right to buy votes with taxpayers’ money, and they will fight like rabid raccoons against anyone or anything that threatens that practice.

The pathetic spending cuts, history has shown anyone who cares, won’t happen, because current Congresses can’t obligate future Congresses. And, even if they could, so what? When have laws or obligations stopped big government from doing what it wants? When the people driving the policy think the Constitution is “flawed,” because it is a document of “negative liberties,” what’s to stop them? If Congress won’t allow it, find a judge who will. What will the RINOs do? “Well, it’s settled law,” they will say, and go back to their perpetual election campaigns.

2) The Senate didn’t “like” CC&P, so the House has to pass something Reid & Co. will “friend.”

As the establishment Republican critics often say, CC&B didn’t even get a vote in the Senate. To that I say, so what? The Senate is controlled by Democrats, and collaborating RINOs. Is anyone really surprised that CC&B didn’t get a vote?

Do the establishment Republicans above somehow think Boehner 3.x could get through the Senate as anything but a shell, gutted and carved up like a Halloween pumpkin, and filled with progressive and socialist candy? And that is only if demented clown Reid lets it get that far.

And then, what? The Boehner pumpkin zombie bill goes back to the House. House members with 0.5 brain or more vote it down, and the media/White House axis brand the House Republicans as obstructionists. Is there ANYTHING about this outcome that is not utterly predictable?

3) Republicans will be blamed for financial ruin, the starvation of the elderly and babies, the deaths of polar bears, and the cake falling, if they don’t get behind Boehner 3.x.

Republicans, as the establishmentarians are always lecturing us, only have one-half of one branch of the legislature, which is one-third of the government. Yes, I read that somewhere. And, by the way, that’s wrong. Republicans do NOT have one-half of the House.

They have a clear majority, if they ever decide to vote together, which is considerably more than 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/3. If the leadership had principle in mind, rather than obscure gamesmanship and obsolete reelection strategies,  they would use that majority to pass legislation that is clearly right for the country, and not what “might” pass the Democrat Senate.

They should get the message out that they are doing what the Constitution not only allows, but compels them to do. And they should let the chips fall where they may. Those who are unable, or unwilling to do that, should be encouraged to find jobs in lobby shops and universities, where they will be in more forgiving, less demanding environments.

This way to Prison Camp. "Not just for the summer anymore!" http://federalprisoncamptour.com/

Republican Senators Offer Alternative Plan for Martial Law

Washington, October 29th, 2012

In the wake of President Obama’s declaration of martial law last week, just weeks before the 2012 general election, moderate Senate Republicans have proposed some alternatives to the President’s executive orders authorizing indefinite detention without trial and civil asset forfeiture.

The measures were described as “draconian” by former talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who has not been heard from in several days. Senate Republicans Olympia Snow, John McCain and minority leader Mitch McConnell came forward today with what they call “a reasonable alternative” to the emergency measures. They say they have met with Senators Harry Reid and Dick Durbin to negotiate the release on recognizance of several Republican senators, congressmen, and state governors, all of whom had been “very critical” of the emergency measures.

Senate Majority Leader McConnell spoke for the group:

“In this time of crisis, we must reach across the aisle to our colleagues and come to some sort of compromise on these executive orders. While we appreciate the urgency and severity of the situation that faces the President, we believe it is possible to deal with our unfortunate circumstances with a more moderate, measured approach.”

“We propose to allow those thousands of Americans being held incommunicado and without legal representation or charges being filed, to be released on their own recognizance from the detention camps around the country, after signing an agreement not to participate in political activity. They should be allowed to return to their homes, if they have not been demolished or re-assigned to needy immigrant families. They should wear a GPS-enabled house arrest ankle bracelet and keep authorities apprised of their whereabouts at all times.

“Of course, we would expect the President’s National Stability Police Force to continue to hold anyone who is a real security threat, but we expect that such detainees would be tried and convicted or released within a reasonable period.”

Saying they were trying to reach missing Congressional colleagues to get a consensus in support of the compromise, McConnell expects to be allowed to meet with the President’s chief of staff to present the proposal “within the next few weeks.”

{Note — like my “euthanasia letter” of a while back, I started this out as satire, but, as in that letter,  the events described are not nearly as fanciful or funny as most of us wish they were. The best I can manage is a strong sense of irony. From irony to irons, you might say. — TC}

We've done it before -- Andersonville POW Camp, circa 1864 -- Mass Grave http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/11andersonville/11visual3.htm

Rest in Peace, Caylee Anthony

Why do “juries of our peers” render idiotic verdicts? Because they are our peers.

Is anyone surprised that a jury of Casey Anthony’s peers acquitted her of murder? 

I confess, I didn’t follow the case. There were approximately 16,272 murders reported in the USA in 2008. 

I would like to know what caused the media (especially CNN, apparently), to focus on this particular tragedy. However, the explanation for this obsessive focus is a topic for another day. What matters to me is the flash of outrage I’ve seen on the Web against the verdict.

Really, why is anyone surprised? Why was anyone surprised that O. J. Simpson was acquitted of the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman?

Did any of us honestly expect that the quality of juries would have improved since then? Why? Have our peers gotten smarter over the last sixteen years? Hardly.

The dismal and deliberate failure of the public education monopoly was bound to result in the failure of any system that relies on the integrity, discernment and decency of the individual, for that system to function properly.

We saw in ’08 what it did to the electoral system, and now, not for the first time, we are seeing the toxic effect of institutionalized ignorance on the principle of “a jury of one’s peers.” This failure is nothing but more evidence of the success of Cultural Marxism.

How did the “public education monopoly” get so bad, despite the billions of local, state and federal tax dollars that have been spent on it? Because it was meant to fail. Cultural Marxism has as its goal the destruction of American society, so the former United States of America can be turned into a socialist utopia, and, eventually, into a communist dictatorship. This goal outlasted the Soviet Union, showing us how patient and dedicated the Cultural Marxists are.

One of the pillars of the Cultural Marxists’ plan, along with co-opting religion, the family, feminism, the arts and the media, is the dumbing-down of Americans. By removing the study of substantive subjects from the curriculum, and substituting political indoctrination, aggressive sexualization, and discrediting parental authority, Cultural Marxists, working through university teacher certification programs and teacher unions, have been largely successful.

A jury of one’s peers, these days, includes a lot of people who never were taught the classic “Three Rs,” or rigorous analytical thought. In other words, they were deprived of the ability to reason and reach conclusions based on facts they could find on their own.

Why? Because, as Forrest Gump was wont to say, “stupid is as stupid does,” and stupid people are more easily manipulated than skeptical thinkers who are capable of finding out the truth on their own. In other words, they are reliant on government and media to understand and deal with their world. In other words, they are ready-made Democrat voters and government dependents.

When you randomly select twelve of these products of public education to serve on a jury, you are likely to get people who can’t think for themselves, and will believe whatever emotional manipulation, lies and half-truths they heard last, most often, and loudest.

You are likely to get the OJ and Anthony verdicts. You are likely to get a majority of voters who are persuaded to support “Hope and Change,” because the words are nice, and because they mean whatever voters want them to mean. You are likely to get big audiences for “reality” television and sensational criminal trials. You are not likely to get people who will turn off their televisions and ask their children, “You learned WHAT in school today?!

Rest in peace, Caylee Anthony.

LAUNCELOT
Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of
the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his
own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of
your son: give me your blessing: truth will come
to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son
may, but at the length truth will out.

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene II

It's NOT THE ECONOMY!

Why does any public discussion of our stumbling, staggering, bleeding economy dissolve into accounting-speak — deficits, debt, bonds, seasonally-adjusted unemployment figures, tax deductions, accelerated depreciation, corporate tax loopholes, taxing the rich, oil-depletion allowances, big oil, big tobacco, jobs training, college tuition, blah, blah, blah, ZZZZZ?

BECAUSE IT’S SUPPOSED TO. Whether it’s the baffled and hackneyed vice president or the Decepticon-in-Chief telling us we need to blame some fictional Monopoly-man villain, or the super-caffeinated Congressman Paul Ryan speed-talking to us about the his budget plan, we are soon lulled into a haze of indifference by the “hate-the-rich” blather, or the “dismal science” jargon.

This is by design. The Left blames the “rich,” and the Right blames the Left. Neither side in the argument will dare a passing glance at the real issue behind all the class-warfare rhetoric and financial minutiae – the metastatic intrusion of government into every aspect of our lives, consuming our freedoms and transforming our country from a beacon of freedom into an addled, paralyzed, stupid, Euro-socialist dinosaur.

In short, the real issue is the loss of freedom.

When a whole country tries to move back into its parents’ basement, somebody has to pick up the tab, and here we are. A nanny-state is an ever-expanding expense, and the trade of freedom for an illusion of security always, always, always has the same result. The number of people willing to make that trade exceeds the number of those who refuse, and, as Margaret Thatcher famously said, “…sooner or later, you run out of other peoples’ money.”

Then, one of a small number of things happens. One has happened so often that no one should be surprised, but some always are: mass murder and mass graves.

In the Twentieth Century,  socialism — under its two major brand names, Communism and Nazism — took off its mask of compassion and equality of result, and showed the naked face of absolute dictatorship. It tried to reduce its operating costs and remove inconvenient political opposition by killing a hundred million or more human beings.

It never works, but don’t look for this cost-cutting measure to be abandoned permanently. Scrape the socially-acceptable, compassionate-statist veneer off of any socialist, and the dictatorial, mass murderer is always there, waiting for its moment in the sun.

Another approach is by simply printing “money.”  This doesn’t work either, as the Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe have already proven, as if proof were necessary. Sooner or later, the rest of the world catches on that the “full faith and credit” of the officially-sanctioned counterfeiting ring is meaningless.

No matter how many zeroes the print shop adds to the bill denominations, they still buy less and less, and finally, they are worth more as paper than as currency. This is but another, intermediate step to the murderous dictatorship, or to chaos and destruction.

The rarest but most blessed outcome is an awakening of the people to the reality that they are better off trusting themselves and leaving themselves to their own devices and to the mercy of their friends and relatives, than to trust any government to provide for them.

Of course, this sort of awakening is also likely to be bloody, because the beneficiaries of “other peoples’ money,” and the people who maintain their positions of privilege and power by handing it out, do not often give up their free rides voluntarily.

Some of the calcified and impoverished European socialist states are now experiencing a tentative rebirth of freedom; they have hit the financial wall, and can no longer ignore the inevitable. The trade of freedom for security always ends the same — security and freedom both expire. Whether these states, currently teetering on the razor-edge between freedom and slavery, will fall toward freedom, or away from it, it is still too early to tell.

Which way our own, uniquely-blessed country will fall, will be largely determined in the next few months.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the issue, not the economy. Will we choose freedom, as our forefathers did over 235 years ago, or slavery? The economy is an effect, not a cause. The economy will heal if we choose freedom.

If we choose slavery, we will get the economy we deserve.

Where are the leaders?

Where are the leaders – the people who can and will lead the United States of America out of the open grave we have been thrown into by the “leaders” of the last fifty years?

Where are the passionate, honest and humble men and women who know that government running every aspect of our lives is a recipe for misery and slavery?

Where are the men and women who will place themselves under the media spotlight without a crippling need for acceptance, because they understand that the media do not share, and will never share, their values?

Where are the men and women who will laugh in the faces of liberal hacks and counterfeit intellectuals with their cries of “racist” and other cheap, cowardly epithets, and call them out as the frauds and liars they are?

What follows is the speech I want to hear from a candidate who believes himself to be one of the real leaders – one who will help us to climb out of that open grave, rather than throwing in smaller shovelfuls of dirt, and telling us everything will be fine, if we just relax and embrace the darkness.

My fellow citizens:

I want to save this country. I can save this country. I need to save this country.

We are sinking into serfdom. Our government has broken the bonds the Founders wisely put on in our Constitution, and it is becoming our master, rather than our servant.

In the unending effort to buy permanent power, our government has plunged us into debt and inserted itself into every aspect of our lives.

While it pursues permanent power, our government neglects its most urgent and legitimate responsibilities. It fails at protecting the weak against the strong, and at protecting our nation against foreign and domestic enemies. It fails at protecting our rights and property against unlawful seizure and against unlawful restrictions on what we may do in and with our own property.

In fact, government has aggressively pursued the destruction of our right to own property, and to do with that property what we wish, thus rendering the right to own property nearly meaningless.

I must tell you, my fellow Americans, that once government has rendered meaningless the right to own property, we all become the property of government. The most important difference between a slave and a free person is the right to own property and to do with it, while protecting the rights of one’s neighbors, as one wishes.

I will reverse this endless expansion of government power.

I will nominate judges to the federal bench and to the supreme court, who will treat their oaths to uphold the Constitution literally. I will ask Congress to impeach judges who violate this oath.

I will pare down drastically the bloated regulatory bureaucracy that is choking off our freedom and our ability to prosper.

On my first day in office, I will fire “czars” that are unaccountable to the people and who are openly hostile to freedom, and who have no basis for authority in the Constitution.

I will ask Congress to abolish entire executive branch agencies and departments that have no basis in the Constitution, and no goal but their own self-perpetuation and expansion of influence.

The unborn, the sick and the elderly – the weakest and most innocent among us — are fortunate, these days, if we allow them to live. The fortunate survivors are those who were not killed because they were inconvenient, embarrassing, expensive, or evidence of a crime.

Our government has, instead, made these innocents legitimate prey for the predators who will make themselves rich and advance their lethal, utopian ideals by killing them.

I will sign legislation that makes abortion and euthanasia illegal under federal law, and I will speak unflinchingly to the States, from the bully pulpit that is the presidency, urging them to do the same. I will ask Congress to send me a bill that removes taxpayer dollars from any program, foreign or domestic, that funds abortion or euthanasia. I will sign that bill into law immediately, before American taxpayers can be forced to pay for one more innocent’s death.

A citizen’s life is a citizen’s property, and the right to own that property is basic, without which no other right matters. The right to life subsumes the right to choose one’s own medical care, and to pay for it as one wishes. The current level of government interference in this right is intolerable, and illegal.

I will revoke any executive orders intended to advance Obamacare, and I will consider the federal court ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional as binding. I will immediately revoke the authority of any executive branch agency, board or other bureaucratic structure put in place by preceding administrations to support or enforce this law.

I will instruct Congress to send me legislation repealing Obamacare completely, and I will then ask Congress to begin structuring legislation that will unleash the private sector to revolutionize health care while dramatically reducing costs and increasing the range of options available to consumers.

I would expect this legislation to include a gradual transition over several years from government-funded — and government-restricted – health care for the aged and for those who are incapable for providing for themselves. Medicare must be replaced incrementally with private medical care that patients who are capable of it can pay for themselves, as medical care was dispensed for hundreds of years before this bloated, self-destructive program came into existence. The indigent and disabled must be protected, and they will be. Those who can pay all or a share of their health care costs, though, should do so.

Contrary to the lies you are being told by the Left, this does not mean my administration would throw the sick, the elderly or the indigent out in the street to die uncared for. That is a lie, and the liars know it. What the liars are not telling you, is that Medicare and Social Security are both utopian schemes that bought a lot of votes in their day, but their day is over. We simply can’t pay for them any longer.

Let me say that again: Medicare and Social Security are both about to run out of money. If we shut our eyes to this stubborn fact, Medicare and Social Security will still be out of money very soon, and our nation’s sorry financial state will soon prevent us from borrowing any more from Communist China to keep them afloat.

Tell me, my fellow Americans, what will happen to the sick when our government-driven health care system no longer has money to care for them? Rationing. It is happening now, in every country that foolishly believed it could nationalize its health care and not face the same, inevitable consequences.

Care is being withheld, and patients are being allowed to die from neglect and by the withdrawal of basic life support. They are starving and dying of thirst in their unchanged, soiled beds. If their families do not bring them food and change their linens, they lie in their own wastes and die, slowly and in great discomfort. This is the fate of those the Left is supposedly defending against their allegedly greedy, heartless critics.

Those who are so often vocal in their expressions of compassion and concern for the sick, are the liars who cannot face the consequences of their own lies. The helpless victims, however, face those consequences daily. This is what happens when government takes away the property right of citizens to care for their own lives. They become slaves.

What government gives, government can take away – including life, itself.

This nation has a history of decades of government encroachment into our lives, decades of spending money we do not have, decades of gradually surrendering our sovereignty to creditors and to those who think we should not have borders, decades of growing generations of government dependents, decades of failing to educate our citizens in basic skills, history and analytical thinking.

We cannot reverse this disastrous course overnight. But, we must begin immediately, shouldering the burden and working against the pain that will result, because if we do not change course, we will die as a nation, just as surely as the sick will die under national health care.

We must change course. And we will.

I want to save this country. I can save this country. I need to save this country.

But, I cannot do it alone. I must have your help and support. Now, and after the election, I must have your support and your trust. With your help, and with the Lord’s guidance, we will save this country. We must save this country. We owe it to ourselves and to our posterity.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your attention. Now, let’s get to work.

May God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.