We’re not interested in government fixes, we’re interested in freedom.

— Sarah Palin

My fellow Americans –

This Palin woman stimulates me on multiple levels. She’s absolutely right in what she says. Let’s go back to first principles. We founded this country as “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” not as a goddamn hippie commune for pussies.

I believe in America and I believe in Americans. I believe that the majority of Americans — not as one-sided a majority as there was in my day but a majority nonetheless — do not want to be condescended to, do not want to be talked down to, but rather just want to be left alone to succeed or fail on their own merits.

Yours eternally in freedom,

Tom

My fellow Americans –

Perhaps it was unfair of me to be critical of President Obama’s healthcare speech without having heard it. There’s not much to do on a Saturday night when you’re dead, so I read the transcript:

We’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse. . . . The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies . . . Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan.

And how much money are we talking about, sir?

Now, add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years.

WTF?!

I will not accept the status quo as a solution.

OK — cut the bullshit, my friend. Your “plan” vs. “the status quo” is a false choice. You’ve just said so yourself. If you’ve figured out how to eliminate $900 billion in waste and inefficiency from the current system, GO AHEAD AND DO IT! Why are you tying that to 1,000 pages of unrelated “reforms” that no one has even bothered to read?

If you can eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency — I don’t believe that for a second, but let’s say you can — you will have no greater supporter than old Tom Jefferson. AND — you will have acquired so much credibility that you’ll be able to pass any reforms you like.

Don’t present false choices to us like we’re a nation of fools. Cut the bullshit and DO something.

— Tom

I’ve never understood what was so great about this guy. He was immature, a drunk and a womanizer. In 1979, he couldn’t answer a softball question about why he wanted to be president and didn’t even make it out of the primaries.

The best thing I can say about him is that he got things done. He had an undeniably impressive track record of passing legislation — most of it disastrous, of course — but he did get it passed.

And he killed that poor girl, Mary Jo Kopechne. Don’t forget that. Put her in a lake, then went back to his hotel room and fell asleep. Never even reported it. Far from ending his political career though, the whole Chappaquidick “incident” was written off as just Ted being Ted.

As a deceased person myself, I know that death is like following a light into the next world. If you’re lucky, that light won’t be the moon shining through the window of a submerged Olds 88 . . .

My fellow Americans –

Did you know that I was born on this date in 1743? Probably you didn’t because nobody makes a big deal about it like Washington’s birthday or Lincoln’s.

That used to really bother me but I’m okay with it now.

Anyway — it’s MY birthday but YOU get the gift. Point your browser at the Guess Her Muff website. GADZOOKS! You will not be disappointed!

Sadly, ladies styling their pubes had not entered into the marketplace of ideas in the 18th century. I can’t help thinking what Sally Hemings would have looked like with a Brazilian.

AH-OOGAH!

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — If anyone could emerge from the AIG bonus debacle looking good, it could be New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

— “NY’s Cuomo wins praise for pursuing AIG on bailout”

Cuomo. KWOH-moh. Italian, I suppose.

I have no personal animosity toward Mr. Cuomo, but despite his favorable write-ups in the press, he is certainly no hero in these matters.

Americans have short memories. Even members of the press — or “the media,” as you now call them — who should provide context and perspective, have short memories.

Set the Wayback Machine to 1995. Bill Clinton is president and Henry Cisneros, the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, institutes a requirement that 42 percent of the mortgages financed by government-sponsored entities (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac serve low- and moderate-income families.

Things only got worse under Cisneros’ successor, Andrew Cuomo:

Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages in underserved neighborhoods and for the “very-low-income.” Part of the pitch was racial, with Cuomo contending that Fannie and Freddie weren’t granting mortgages to minorities at the same rate as the private market. William Apgar, Cuomo’s top aide, told The Washington Post: “We believe that there are a lot of loans to black Americans that could be safely purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if these companies were more flexible.”

— “Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie,” The Village Voice

Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s put half of the GSE money into mortgages for very low income black people! And let’s not trouble them for a down payment either:

Fannie also developed a “flexible” product line, providing up to 100 percent financing and requiring borrowers to make as little as a $500 contribution, and bought $13.7 billion of those loans in 2003.

And yet I often hear the ensuing financial meltdown being blamed on “greed” and “the evils of capitalism.”

That was not capitalism; that was government manipulation of the housing market.

Americans have very short memories . . .

Obama still has the approval of the people, but the establishment is beginning to mumble that the president may not have what it takes.

— Newsweek.com

Gee — do you really think so? What was your first clue? The loud noise of nest eggs being crushed all over America every time he opens his mouth?

President of the United States is not a job for a dilettante three years out of the Illinois state senate. Before I was elected president, I served as governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state under George Washington and vice president under John Adams.

I also wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and, in my younger years, at age 33, a little something called the Declaration of Independence.

President Obama’s accomplishments? I’ll step aside and let one of his supporters enumerate them:

This is America! How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage? President Obama are you listening? How about we all stop paying our mortgage!

— Rick Santelli (video), CNBC Chicago

I’m rolling over in my grave, as the gentleman from Chicago has already noted. Count me in for the Chicago Tea Party!

A little revolution now and then is a good thing; the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

I’ll bring Samuel Adams along. Not the beer, you yahoos, the patriot! He has experience with this sort of thing.

P.S. Medary.com has provided a Chicago Tea Party broadside, or whatever you call them nowadays.

The situation could not be more serious. It is inexcusable and irresponsible for any of us to get bogged down in distraction, delay or politics as usual while millions of Americans are being put out of work. Now is the time for Congress to act.

— Barack Obama

Bah-loney. The American economy will bounce back as it always has, as surely as day follows night, no matter what anyone does or doesn’t do.

The only urgency in passing a stimulus bill (which doesn’t work, as I’ve explained previously) is so President Obama can take the credit for the recovery when it occurs . . .

Congress doesn’t have its own stash [of money]. Every dollar it injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It’s merely redistributed from one group of people to another.

— Brian Reidl, The Wall Street Journal

As you probably learned in school, we founded this country as a free-market economy and viewed government intervention in the market with the greatest skepticism.

The above article is the clearest explanation I’ve seen for why bailouts and “stimulus plans” involving government spending never work.

The latest failed companies hoping for a bailout are General Motors and Ford. I hope Henry Ford — a great American like myself, who is currently whirling like a lathe in his Detroit grave — will pardon me for saying so, but these companies are nothing but engines of mass financial destruction.

According to the WSJ, GM and Ford invested a combined $465 billion between 1998 and 2007.

As of last Friday’s market close, they had market caps of $4 billion (Ford) and $1.7 billion (GM).

They’ve wiped out almost $460 billion of American capital in the last 10 years and now they want more money.

Look — my friend Paul Epps has a sister who spent every dollar she ever had on booze, drugs and abortions. For a while, friends and family members tried to help her by giving her money when she didn’t have any.

Do I have to tell you how that turned out?

I’m not suggesting that executives at Ford and GM spent the $460 billion on booze, drugs and abortions — not all of it anyway — but I am saying that sometimes people who don’t have any money can’t be helped by giving them more money.

Firstly, I’d like to thank Paul Epps for giving me this space on his web site to express my humble views. He is a real American.

What concerns me today is that a candidate for president, Barack Obama, has said that he wants to “spread the wealth around” in America.

It was a long time ago, but let me remind those of you who didn’t pay attention in history class that we founded this country as a rebellion against a too-powerful government. We believed in — and fought for — self-reliance and freedom, including the economic freedom to earn a dollar and spend it any way you want to.

When someone tells you that he is going to decide how much money you can earn before he starts taking it away from you and giving it to someone else, that man is a scoundrel.

And when Americans — the descendants of rebels and revolutionaries — can listen to this and fail to rise up in dissent, it makes me want to vomit for what this once-great nation has become.