Hennessy's View

I am very honored by the invitations I get to speak to various clubs and organizations around Greater St. Louis, including Illinois. This August, I have the chance to meet two groups and to guest host a radio show. 

On August 18, I’ll speak to the Meramec Township Republican Committee.

On August 26, I’ll be speaking at the North County Republican Club meeting at Yac’s Restaurant at 407 Dunn Rd. in Florissant. 

But even before all that, Dr. Gina Loudon has asked me to guest-host her wonderful new radio show  on TruthTalk 630 AM this Wednesday, August 11, from 4 to 6 p.m. I am still working on my guests, but please listen in.

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The only two people in the world who believe the economy is healthy and vibrant are Barack Obama and Joe Biden. 

Now, the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) is getting ready to announce that the economy is sicker than we thought.

Although Fed policymakers still believe the basic trajectory of the economy remains one of moderate expansion, there may be more attention given to heightened dangers of a sharp slowdown. “The FOMC will have to tone down its assessment of the economy in view of recent weak indicators on real growth, real consumption spending and employment,” said Brian Bethune and Nigel Gault, economists at Global Insight.

Last Friday, we got more bad news about the economy, particularly job growth.  The economy still is not adding enough new jobs to keep up with population growth. The 9.5 percent unemployment rate remains that low only because so many people have simply given up finding a job. 

Yet Barack Obama keeps telling audiences that we’re better off than we think we are.

The fact remains that the economy is getting weaker, not stronger.  Consumer confidence is falling, heading toward 12-month lows.  A swarm of bureaucrats and an avalanche of tax hikes are about to hit the country on January 1.  The Obama agenda includes measures intended to hurt businesses and the American consumer.

Obama is right to say that the economy is on track. What he’s not tell you is that the track he’s put it on is one that ends in tears for most Americans.

On November 2, most Americans will elect to switch trains.  A ticket to anywhere is better than Obama’s express to economic hell.

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No, not Marie Antoinette.  Too clichéd and too . . . ancient. Rather, Michelle Obama’s opulent life rekindles  fond memories of Imelda Marcos.

Imelda Marcos was the wife of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos was more a dictator than a president.  Another parallel.  In 1986, the Filipinos and the world had enough. Marcos was deposed and Imelda’s extravagance exposed.

Imelda Marcos’s closet contained 2,700 pairs of shoes. That’s a different pair of shoes every day for  7.3 years. Undoubtedly, some would have gone out of style by the time she got to them. Others would have come back in.

The Obamas vacation.  So much so that the White House has taken to lying about trips that they cannot conceal.

In this post-Great Recession era, we’re told consumerism no longer is about things about experiences.  The super rich, the executive class, and the wanna-bes don’t buy more than is necessary; they do more than is necessary.

Since taking office, the Obamas have vacationed like a Fortune 500 CEO given a year to live. Obama is on a mission to have slept in more places than George Washington. The overseas record has already fallen.

For the record, it appears the Obamas took three vacations in May, two in June, one in July, and plan three more for August. My counting could be off.

In between, there have been more than a dozen parties, barbecues, balls, dinners, date nights, boys’ nights, girls’ nights, and day trips.

Opulence and extravagance don’t always end up in a closet.

In 1986, Lance Morrow wrote an essay about Imelda Marcos’s shoes for Time.

Consider her profligacy in another way. What is the purpose of riches? To buy freedom–to purchase choices, immunities from the will of others, or of fate. If Imelda kept a collection of 2,700 pairs of shoes, it was not because (as some candle-snuffing moralists might think) she should be expected to wear them all, and must be judged a wastrel if she did not, but because the 2,700 pairs gave her options. Her step no doubt grew lighter in the knowledge of such freedom. Did she display her shoes the way that Jay Gatsby reveled in his wonderful shirts?
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,961002-2,00.html#ixzz0vxroQRww

Ironic, isn’t it?  That Barack and Michelle Obama abuse their freedom even as they deny us ours. As they steal away your children’s futures, they flit about from Spain to Martha’s Vineyard.

Filthy creatures.

The Obamas are using your money and mine to life a lifestyle unattainable from their chosen careers. Neither makes the kind of money required to live as they do at the taxpayer’s expense.  They vilify the rich who earned the privilege of lives of leisure. But it’s okay for them to steal such lives from working people. And the unemployed.

Perhaps Obama knows that dusk is falling on his day in the sun. The Summer Solstice is more than a month behind us.  In November, the American people—his subjects, as it were—will elect a new Congress.  That Congress might very well clip his wings.  He may want to get it all in before the music stops.

No matter his reasons, Obama has earned the scorn of the American people. During the Gulf oil spill, he golfed and giggled with celebrities.  With 9.5 percent unemployment (and rising), he vacations or sends his family on $350,000 junkets.  His determination to remain aloof has exposed his underlying arrogance.

About Marcos, Morrow wrote:

Christ said, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” Marcos did not wish to wait. He turned Christianity upside down. He took nourishment from the mouths of the poor and transformed it into his treasure on earth. Such venality is not a matter of either Freud or metaphysics. It is just a brutal habit, the crocodile reflex of a man too long in power. It is a subdivision of the banality of evil.

Except for the time in power, the parallels are remarkable.

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On September 12, we make our third trip to the Arch Steps to rally our spirits and inform our neighbors.

On February 27, 2009, we met for the for first time.  It started a revolution. It disrupted lives.  It promises to change the course of history, the way the great New Madrid Earthquake forever altered the course of the Mississippi River.

Over the past 18 months, we’ve come a long way. We’ve had a few setbacks.  We’ve stumbled. We’ve grown.

In recent weeks, I’ve sensed a renewed sense of optimism and determination as we emerge from The Dip that inevitably hampers an organization’s rise.

Every time I’ve asked, you’ve responded. So I will ask you one more time, perhaps for the last time:

• Will you stand with me on the Arch grounds on Sunday, September 12?
• Will you wear Red, White, or Blue to symbolize your love of liberty, your acceptance of duty, and your faith in the American Ideal?
• Will you come with a full voice and happy, expectant heart, confident that our communion will lead to victory for First Principles in November?
• And will you bring you kids and five friends so that they might one day say, “I was there when the American people stood up to tyranny and turned back despotism with power of our faith.”

RSVP on Facebook

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The primaries are over.

I honestly believe that in the St. Louis area, the rightward-most, viable candidate won each of the key votes. The people of Missouri are in a position to make historical shifts in our Washington representation. And those shifts are just the first step and restoring America’s First Principles.

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Roy Blunt is a conservative.  He will be a big step up for conservatism in the Senate.  No, we wasn’t the rightward-most candidate in the race.  But he was the rightward-most, viable candidate.  He still is.  He is the only candidate to the right of Robin Carnahan who has any chance of winning.  Any chance at all. If you don’t work hard to get Roy elected, then don’t complain when Robin Carnahan is the 51st vote to put the next Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court.  This race could decide the life or death of the USA.  And Roy Blunt is the good guy in this very close race.

Ed Martin Jr. has the best chance to win the 3rd Congressional District in my lifetime.  He’s running against a weak, flawed, and frivolous empty suit named Russ Carnahan. Ed Martin is a solid conservative, an original Tea Partyer, and dedicated American patriot. Ed can reconstitute the Reagan Coalition in South St. Louis city and county and in Jefferson and Ste. Genevieve Counties.  I believe he will.  Ed is the kind of patriot, along with John and Gina Loudon and Jim Lembke, who took an enormous gamble by showing up at that first tea party in February 2009. Politicians avoid situations they don’t control, and none of those people knew me from Adam.  But Ed believed that his country needed him at that moment, just as it needed the other 1,500 people who gave up a day of work to stand for liberty, responsible government, and community. Now, Ed believes his country needs him in Washington.  I can’t think of a better person to represent the district where I grew up and where my mom and dad and sisters, nieces, nephews, and grand-nieces and nephews still live.

Tom Schweich took a lot of heat during the primary, but no one challenged his credentials for Missouri Auditor.  I was personally skeptical of Tom before I met him.  His only public service involved foreign service, working for the State Department at the UN and in Afghanistan. When we met for lunch, my doubts about his fitness for Auditor quickly disappeared. In fact, I got the sense that it was all Tom could do to restrain himself from running over to the bar and balancing the cash drawer. He has a lifetime of experience overseeing various kinds of corporate audits and criminal financial investigations. Who do you want auditing the disbursement of billions of dollars in stimulus funds?  Democrat Susan Montee?  Democrat Jay Nixon?  Turncoat Chris Koster who won’t even defend Missourians against Obama’s un-Constitutional insurance mandates? John Ashcroft doesn’t endorse RINOs, and Ashcroft has endorsed Schweich.

I was thrilled to see that Paul Curtman, running for Missouri’s 105th House seat received almost twice as many primary votes as his Democrat opponent.  But Paul has a lot of work to do before November, and he’ll need a lot of help.  If you want a viable strict Constitutionalist candidate for the US House or Senate down the road, you better be working for Paul Curtman this year.  He is the future.

Likewise, Gary Fuhr’s win in the Republican primary for MO 97 makes me happy, although a couple of other fantastic candidates were in that race.  Gary will make a great leader in Jefferson City if his friends and neighbors and primary opponents put him there.  He and Paul will make a great team.

There’s a lot more to cover, but I have work to do around the house.  And we’re all busy with preparations for the Biggest Tea Party St. Louis Ever Saw on 9-12 Under the Arch.  If you haven’t already done so, please RSVP on Facebook and invite your friends and family from anywhere to spend a patriotic weekend in St. Louis.  Our local economy can use the visitors.

I know that the passions of the primary are still with us, but we can’t sit around licking wounds or celebrating much longer.  We have thousands of doors to knock, dozens of rallies to attend, tens of thousands phone calls to make.  The Tea Party movement launched to change America’s future through a revolution at the ballot box.  I don’t give hoot in hell who gets the credit, just so there’s a lot of credit to give.

And just to end with a cliché, let’s get out there and win one for the Gipper.

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