Trent Derr's Posts

Sorry Baaaarack. We’re Not Sheep.

Posted by Trent Derr on June 22, 2011 at 5:30pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

The President quipped last week that part of the reason why his stimulus plan didn’t work was “the shovel ready jobs weren’t as shovel ready as we thought.” Since Obama has no business experience and hasn’t ever created a free market job, he’s totally befuddled why none of his economic plans are working. Even the President knows we are slipping into a double dip recession. He’s doing his best to still blame George Bush but even Debbie Wasserman Schultz admitted that the Democrats now own the economy.

The root causes of the economy continuing to swoon are the Progressive and Keynesian policies that Obama has implemented in the last two and a half years. Poor Barack. He doesn’t even realize that he sabotaged his own re-election. He took all the liberal economic classes in college, and he listened to all of his leftist professors and mentors. He believes the ruling class in the government should be able to dictate a recovery through amping up government spending and implementing regulations that will force business and consumer behavior into triggering an economic recovery. Obama believes if the peasants would just do what the ruling class says to do, we’ll be just fine.

Sorry Baaaarack. We’re not sheep. That’s why Liberal government policies and Keynesian economics don’t work. Progressive expect the working class to follow orders from the bureaucrats and to behave the way the Liberal rules and regulations dictate. In fact, the Progressive policies are dependent upon people not adapting their behavior to work around the rules to pursue their own self-interest in spite of the new government dictates and regulations. If the working class isn’t willing to be dependent upon the government, Liberalism fails. Continue...

Why Weiner Matters

Posted by Trent Derr on June 9, 2011 at 4:21pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

Ok by now, we’ve all heard about it. Weinergate. Representative Anthony Weiner started with denials, followed by hedging, and finally followed by admission. All of this seasoned with Weiner’s shocked response to the question regarding whether he was going to resign – “No, I’m not going to resign.” The guy who has been married less than a year who had phone sex, exchanged sexting messages, and sent pornographic photos to no less than six women over Facebook and Twitter doesn’t have the class or common sense to know when to resign. Duh…

However, why does this whole drama around Anthony Weiner’s behavior really matter to the country at large? For one, he was engaged in having phone sex, sexting, and sending pornographic pictures utilizing the assets of the US Congress. This will be at least one reason why Weiner will be investigated by the House Ethics Committee.

Second, employers have a right to establish standards of conduct for employees, especially for behavior during work hours. It is common for senior level employees to have morality and behavioral clauses that apply to their employment. Often the clauses are not only intended to prevent legal claims against the company but more importantly to prevent the employee from damaging the reputation of the company. Clearly all of these conditions apply to Weiner. All congress people work for the citizens of the United States so congressmen are employees. There is no doubt that this type of behavior damages the reputation of Congress and the US Government at large. Finally, it has become obvious that Representative Weiner was sexting, having phone sex and distributing pornographic material during “normal” work hours. Any employee I can think of that worked for a company in the United States would be terminated for Weiner’s behavior. They would be gone immediately. Continue...

This Is A Stick Up! Seven Ways Obamacare Raids Your Wallet.

Posted by Trent Derr on May 25, 2011 at 3:07pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

By now most of us realize how Obamacare is designed to take control of healthcare decisions away from individuals and place them in the hands of bureaucrats. After all, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid understood that as government gains more control over healthcare, the politicians have even greater powers to “sell” favors by granting exceptions, waivers and special rules that favor their friends and those who will donate to their campaigns. This became all the more evident recently when 38 additional Obamacare waivers were granted to businesses in Nancy Pelosi’s district.

Unfortunately this level of institutionalized corruption in our Federal government has become commonplace. What isn’t as apparent is how Obamacare is designed to take money out of all of our wallets by enacting additional taxes and penalties. These taxes include increased Medicare taxes, penalties on plans the government feels offer to good of coverage, penalties on those who chose to not buy insurance and an excise tax on pharmaceutical companies.

1) Beginning in 2013, payroll taxes from Medicare will increase by 62% for households that the government has decided are “higher income”.

2) Similarly, Obamacare created a new 3.8% Medicare Tax on interest, dividends, royalties, rental income, capital gains, and annuities.

Continue...

They Are Progressive… Like Cancer. Here’s the Cure

Posted by Trent Derr on May 4, 2011 at 6:30pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

Progressive: “A person advocating or implementing liberal social reforms to destroy traditional societal values in stages, proceeding step by step.”

Progressive Cancer: “A disease that attacks the body by using abnormal cancerous cells to kill normal cells while incrementally spreading in stages through nearby tissues and then throughout the body through a process called metastases.”

Notice the two definitions are very similar. One is a physical disease that incrementally destroys the body by killing good cells with bad ones, and the other is a social disease that destroys society by killing good values with bad ones. That’s why when someone snobbishly professes they are a Progressive, my response is of course you are Progressive, like a cancer.

The challenge is that Liberals understand that their ideas can spread like a disease if they can only inject them into the governmental machinery. A great example of one of the deceptions that the Progressives use to incrementally spread their disease is their constant claims for the need to compromise. First they stake out an outrageous goal, like nationalizing all health care into a single payer program. They initially stake out a goal they really want but at the same time they don’t realistically expect to achieve it all at once. When the public rejects the Left’s extremist idea, the Progressives fall back to a more incremental approach. Their approach is to convert their end state goal into a few enabling components and implement those components one at a time. So instead of overtly stating they want to nationalize healthcare, they will state that they are only attempting to implement health care exchanges. Using this stealth strategy, Progressives drive to implement each of their enabling concepts into the government bureaucracy because the bureaucracy serves as the carrier to spread their disease. Continue...

One Riot One Ranger – What a Difference One Patriot Can Make in America

Posted by Trent Derr on April 27, 2011 at 6:30pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

The Texas Rangers are the second oldest state law enforcement agency in the United States. They initially functioned as a paramilitary force during the time that the Republic of Texas was an independent country. Today the Rangers function as the Texas State Bureau of Investigation. Over time, they have investigated and captured criminals spanning from murderers (John Wesley Hardin), to bank robbers (Bonnie & Clyde), to corrupt politicians. As part of their long and colorful history, the Rangers have developed quite a reputation. That reputation was earned by the Rangers time after time taking on some of the most evil people in society with a relatively small number of men. As an example, there were only 144 Rangers in 2009.

One enduring story about the Rangers from 1896 includes the original occurrence of the well-known saying: “One Riot, One Ranger”. In response to the illegal fight that was scheduled to break out in Dallas, the Rangers sent one man, Captain Bill McDonald to prevent the riot. Although many in the public were concerned that the Rangers only sent one man to address the fight, Captain McDonald was accustomed to being outnumbered. To jump to the end of the story, of course McDonald was successful in achieving his mission and preventing the fight. However it is Captain McDonald’s response to the Mayor of Dallas that echoes through Ranger history. When the Mayor questioned McDonald regarding why he didn’t have more Rangers with him, the Captain replied (paraphrased), “One Riot, One Ranger”.

Sometimes, the right person in the right place at the right time makes all the difference. Today America’s Patriots face a similar challenge in being outnumbered by those who are plotting to do evil in our society. Continue...

Why The Democrats Should Fear the Tea Party (and it's not what you think)

Posted by Trent Derr on April 11, 2011 at 5:30pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

You can tell that someone feels threatened by you when they publicly degrade and poke fun at you. Given that standard, the Tea Party has been under the skin of Democrats from the day that it sprung to life a little more than 2 years ago. As recent as the current budget battle, Harry Reid blames the Tea Party for not allowing Republicans to compromise on the Federal budget and perpetuate the excessive government spending. Thanks Harry. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said about the Tea Party in recent memory.

But why does the Democratic leadership actually fear the impact of the Tea Party? Yes the Tea Party is on the other side of the ideological spectrum from the Far Left wing of the Democratic Party. Clearly the Tea Party is fiscally conservative, believes in constitutionally limited government, and favors free market solutions. However those positions are an accurate description of most conservative voters’ beliefs so that isn’t what is under the Democratic leaders’ skin.

The average Tea Party member is over 35 years old. That fact aligns with the typical conservative voting demographic that includes individuals over 35 years of age with a skewing of the population to those 55 and older. So the Left’s concern isn’t caused by the fact that the Tea Party is a threat to the Left’s hold on older voters. The older voting population has always been split between the left and the conservatives. The older Americans with a taker mentality are liberal, and those with a builder mentality are conservative.

Continue...

Obamacare – 8 Metrics They Don’t Want You to Know

Posted by Trent Derr on March 31, 2011 at 6:30pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

When you examine Obamacare in detail, you find that the facts of the legislation contradict most of the selling points that the Liberals used as their basis for voting for the bill.

#1 – 18 Million People Added to Medicare while Cutting $500 Billion from the Program

Obamacare claims to cover 34 million new individuals with insurance. The primary approach that the legislation uses to cover the uninsured is to expand the number of people under Medicare. Yes, Medicare. The same Medicare that was already scheduled to go bankrupt by 2017 before Obamacare passed. The new legislation will add 18 million people to Medicare while reducing funding for Medicare by $500 billion. Thus there is no choice but to reduce benefits to the existing Medicare recipients. Given that more than half of the doctors in the United States do not accept Medicare, the further constraint of doctor availability will be another form of institutionalized rationing.

#2 – 17.1 Million Individuals with Private Insurance Will Lose Their Existing Coverage

Although more people are covered under Obamacare, the plan also causes a major redistribution of how individuals are covered for health care. 1.4 million citizens will lose their employer sponsored coverage and 15.7 will lose their other private coverage while they are shifted to either Medicare, “exchanges” under the plan, or will become uninsured. Yes about 1 million individuals with insurance today will become uninsured and have no coverage under Obamacare. So the economics of Obamacare will cause at least 17.1 million Americans to lose their existing coverage under Obamacare although the President assured us all that we would be able to keep our existing plans. Continue...

Selling Lies – The Formula the Left Uses To Take Away Your Rights

Posted by Trent Derr on March 24, 2011 at 6:00pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

As part of their dogma, the Left believes society only operates “fairly” when more power is concentrated in the Federal Government and fewer rights are exercised independently by individuals. In their view, one of the major purposes of the Government is to equalize outcomes across society (try to find that in the Constitution). Note that it’s the equality of outcomes, not equality of opportunities, that is their definition of fairness. To achieve that goal, Liberals need an excuse to take rights and responsibilities from individuals and shift that power to the Government. Then that Governmental power can be used to institutionalize fairness by passing laws and regulations that provide for the equality of outcomes across society. However in spite of these plans, the Left has a major cultural roadblock in their way. One of our traditional American values is to treasure and defend our individual rights. When Americans are thinking rationally, we rarely, if ever, voluntarily give up any of our rights.

When the Liberals want to influence American opinion on an issue, they need to overcome that obstacle. To do so, they use a consistent formula to warp the public perception in their favor. Their approach does not involve an in-depth analysis of the facts with the subsequent generation of possible alternatives to be evaluated. Frankly facts get in their way. Their strategy is simply based on manipulating the public’s emotions. Liberals want to generate guilty feelings or stir up hate or trigger rage. Their tactic is to generate strong emotions in the public and with those emotions shut down rational thought. Create a crisis. Create an injustice. Pretend there is no time to think about, discuss, or even read the bill. We have to act now! Sound familiar? Continue...

3 Economic Policies Reagan Had Right (And Obama Never Learned)

Posted by Trent Derr on March 17, 2011 at 7:30pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism Blog

President Reagan is probably best known for three major accomplishments: rekindling the American spirit of entrepreneurship, defeating the Soviets in the Cold War leading to the eventual collapse of the USSR, and creating the most robust peacetime economic expansion in American history. In this posting, we’ll focus on topics more applicable to Reagan’s economic accomplishments. Reagan’s economic philosophy has been referred to by many names including Reaganomics and Supply Side Economics.

Arguably Reagan was dealing with a much more complex economic environment in 1980 than we have today. Reagan was faced with high unemployment, high inflation, high interest rates, a slow-growing economy and a high government deficit as a percentage of GDP. Today we primarily have high unemployment, a slow-growing economy and a high government deficit. However over the last two years the policies implemented by the Obama administration have not significantly reduced unemployment, have dramatically increased the government debt and have started to increase both inflation and interest rates. Note that inflation and interest rates were not a problem when Obama entered office. Continue...

Barry Deceives Liberty – How Would You Respond to a Progressive?

Posted by Trent Derr on March 10, 2011 at 5:30pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism Blog

My wife was seated in the airport waiting to catch her flight back home. So far so good. She was already past security waiting in the gate area. As usual, she was reading a book trying to pass the minutes until it was time to board. My wife can be as entertained by people watching as anyone. However if she has a good book, she would rather tune out the world and slip into a well written story, but not today. On this day, she along with everyone else in the gate area were going to have their concentration shattered by a guy on his cell phone. For sake of discussion, let’s call him Barry. Barry had a pretty deep voice, and he was talking loud.

It didn’t matter if you had on headphones, wore hearing aids or were half-deaf, you could hear Barry. His baritone voice blasted through the atmosphere at the gate such that everyone could hear every word he was saying. It became very clear, very quickly he was trying his best to get out of the dog house. It was obvious from his side of the conversation that Barry was in deep TROUBLE. He was in trouble with his girlfriend Liberty, and she was really ticked off. You couldn’t hear her side of the conversation, but it definitely was NOT PG-13. Barry was doing his best to convince his girlfriend over the phone that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. She wasn’t buying it.

That’s part of the reason why he was talking so loud. Continue...

Ronald Reagan's Top 6 Military Principles and Their Impact on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Posted by Trent Derr on March 8, 2011 at 7:00pm

Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

President Reagan was a strong advocate of Peace through Strength. Essentially he believed that foreign powers were less likely to engage with the United States militarily if they were certain that they would receive immediate, disproportionate punishment from our armed forces. It’s the same philosophy that most of us were smart enough to learn in grade school: Bullies don’t pick on the strong kids. They pick on the weak kids. If a bully picks on you, punch them really hard in the nose. Not only will they go away, they will probably not pick on you again. They will slink off and look for a weaker target.

Along with Peace through Strength, Reagan had several other beliefs that guided his thinking regarding protecting America from foreign enemies. First: there is good and evil. Second, in facing evil, it is justified to use military force. Third, if we are going to use force, use overwhelming force. Fourth, nation building works if you have a nation to begin with. Fifth, technology and innovative tactics both help overcome manpower or military imbalances. Finally, always leave your enemies guessing how extreme your military response might be.

There is good and evil. There is right and wrong. Reagan clearly would have seen both Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda as evil and threats to the citizens of the United States. Continue...

Cooter's Fired Up and Other Reasons Why the Democrats are in Trouble in 2012

Posted by Trent Derr on March 1, 2011 at 5:30pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

The other day on a Southwest Airlines flight back to Houston, I saw him, Cooter. He was one big dude, and he was making his way down the aisle of the plane carrying his duffel bag and his hardhat. As usual, his hardhat was decorated with stickers from most of the plants where he had worked. Since Cooter does contract work, he had a lot of stickers! The row I was in was full. It just so happened that Cooter’s traveling companion, Bubba, was seated in the window seat of my row. So Cooter put his carry-on in the overhead and sat in the row behind me.

Ok, I didn’t really know if his name was actually Cooter, but I know a lot of Cooters. Cooter is a slang name for a group of working people across the United States. Cooter builds cars in Tennessee, raises cattle in Kansas and installs cat crackers in refineries in Texas. Cooter is good at what he does. He takes pride in his work, his family and his yard. You wouldn’t want to make Cooter mad if you were another man. However, he loves babies and little kids.

Cooter voted for Carter, Reagan, Clinton and George W Bush (the first time). He didn’t vote at all in the 2008 election because he was disgusted with the candidates. Cooter often chooses not to vote unless something has him fired up. He can get fired up about anything that he thinks impacts his family. Continue...

WWRD? Part 2 – What would Reagan do about immigration?

Posted by Trent Derr on February 28, 2011 at 5:30pm

by: Trent Derr - American Exceptionalism

As a continuing part of our series What Would Reagan Do, we’re going to discuss what Reagan would do to address our current immigration problems. Clearly Reagan would have been shocked by our current situation related to rampant illegal immigration, the violence across our southern border in Mexico, and the crime being brought into American cities by illegal aliens.

Addressing Reagan’s views regarding immigration is complex because he had two seemingly conflicting views. For one, Reagan believed in the integrity of the borders of the United States. This view would have been only reinforced by our current international terrorism risks in a post 9-11 world. In fact one of Reagan’s most well-known quotes is: “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”

On the other side of the coin, Reagan believed the United States was the last great hope for the world. Reagan lived the American Dream and saw that dream as a gift from God for all free people. He fully understood the desire of the masses to come to America and to assimilate into the melting pot as Americans. Continue...

WWRD? (What Would Reagan Do) - How would Ronald Reagan address the challenges we have today?

Posted by Trent Derr on February 24, 2011 at 5:00pm

by: Trent Derr - Morning in America

Are you better off than you were two years ago? For most people, the answer is no. Compared to two years ago, more people are unemployed, the credit markets are still a mess, businesses are still being stymied by further federal regulation, and the global community has no idea what we stand for with our foreign policy.

What if we could roll the clock back? Roll it back a little more than two years to September 2008. At that time, the United States was at one of our more critical inflection points. We had military actions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, our southern border states were seeing a serious uptick in crime being committed by illegal aliens, the economy was starting to stagnate, and we had a looming credit crisis. Over a series of postings, we’ll address how Reagan would have addressed each of these issues. What Would Reagan Do?

The Credit Crisis

Reagan was a true believer in the free market. He believed in capitalism, American businesses, and most importantly the American people. Reagan knew that one of the key mechanisms of the free market is to correct imbalances that occur in the exchange of goods and currency. If you ever had any doubt about Reagan’s belief in free markets, look at how he handled the stock crash on “Black Monday”, stock market collapse of October 19, 1987. Continue...

Your Lipstick Stains on the Front Lobe of my Left Side Brains - Will Palin run for President?

Posted by Trent Derr on February 23, 2011 at 5:00pm

by: Trent Derr - Morning in America

Hey Soul Sister

“What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick!” And with that shot over the bow at the Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin announced her arrival on to the national political stage. From her position as a relatively unknown Governor of Alaska, Palin launched one of the most exciting Vice Presidential candidacies in U.S. history.

From the completion of that speech, even before McCain lost to Obama, there was the question about her aspirations regarding the Presidency. Will Sarah Run? And that question is still outstanding today. Although she hasn’t announced, she’s made several moves to improve her position if she does decide to run. She’s now a frequent commentator on Fox News, has written several books, has had a brief series on cable television on TLC, formed her own Political Action Committee, and most importantly threw her support behind many individuals in their respective state level candidacies. Yes, Sarah is collecting “chips”. Continue...

Our Sputter and Nicked Up Moment - Commentary on the State of the Union

Posted by Trent Derr on February 22, 2011 at 5:30pm

by: Trent Derr - Morning in America

I swore I heard that right. Did the President say this is our “Sputter and Nicked Up” moment? Was this the first time that he decided to finally come clean with the American people? I thought to myself, well at least he was being honest in his State of the Union speech. He’s finally breaking it to everyone that after his first two years in office he’s set the economy up for another dip… and a bad one. Yes I know that the stock market has been going up for the last couple months and other economic indicators have had minor upticks. This temporary uptick has been due to the FED pumping liquidity into the financial markets at a level nearly matching 90% of our current GDP.

But Obama has decided to come clean. He’s telling us when the FED’s stimulus runs out again, the economy is going to sputter, fall back into recession, and we’re all going to get nicked up. The latest stimulus by the FED is known as QE2 (Quantitative Easing 2). Why is it called QE2? Because QE1 didn’t work. Yes Obama was able to leverage QE1 to trigger a rebound in the stock market but that happens when the FED pours cash into the financial market. The impact of Quantitative Easing 1 stopped working in late April 2010, and the stock market swooned. continued...

Hu JaDaddy? - Commentary on our National Debt and Relationship with China

Posted by Trent Derr on February 21, 2011 at 5:52pm

by: Trent Derr - Morning in America

As I mentioned to some friends, due to the amount of money the President is borrowing from the Chinese, Obama is no longer able to refer to the Chinese leader as Hu Jintao. Now Obama is required to call him Hu JaDaddy. To paraphrase Jay Leno, the bad news is the Chinese Leader came to the White House this week. The good news is he said we could keep it.

However I’m not picking on the Chinese. I’m opposed to the United States owing that amount of money to anyone. Let alone a country that crushes dissent in their citizens, imprisons their Noble Prize winners, thinks that America is a temporary aberration in history, and has nuclear weapons pointed at us. In any debtor relationship, you lose authority and the ability to negotiate from a level playing field. Anyone who doesn’t think it matters where you borrow money is a fool. Just ask a person who has ended up in “cement shoes” in the waters off of New Jersey whether it matters. But I digress…

Personally, I’m not as concerned about what our debt to China says about them as what is says about us. The reckless increased spending by the Obama Administration is not primarily being driven by building infrastructure, fighting a war, or funding social security. Continue...