Mona Charen suggests that polarization of our country isn't so bad.  Bipartisanship sounds great and feels good, but The Forgotten Man thinks it's just another word for sacrificing your principles and constituents to further your political career.  

President Obama recently said in a speech about financial reform,"...I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money."   But how does he know how much is enough?  Tom Sowell addresses that question here  by suggesting that "politicians with the power to determine each citizen's income are no longer public servants. They are public masters."   Sowell reminds us that the "once you buy the arguments that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy-- quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody's rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go."  The French Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of the Nazis are all examples of periods when "expanded and arbitrary powers were put into the hands of politicians-- and were used against the population as a whole.

You may scoff at the suggestion that President Obama is moving our country down the same path, but I wonder if the citizens of those countries scoffed too?

There's an old saying among referees that they just 'call it as they see it'  Michael Barone does the same here when he labels the muslim terrorists as exactly that, muslim terrorists.  The most enlightening part of Barone's article is the chronology of attacks by muslim fanatics that are instinctively blamed on something other than islamofascism by leaders such as Eric Holder, Michael Bloomberg and others media types.  Barone's theory is that they refuse to 'call it like it is' because of their disdain for the American people in assuming we will lynch mob muslim.  If he is right, this is insulting, but unfrotunately I think Barone is on to something.  It's just one more reason why The Forgotten Man is disgusted with government leaders and distrusts the media.

President Obama has nominated Elena Kogan to replace John Stevens on the Supreme Court leading The Forgotten Man to wonder what kind of justice will she be.  The WSJ editorializes here about what we can expect from here writings.  "Justice Marshall, she wrote admiringly, "allowed his personal experiences and the knowledge of suffering and deprivation gained from those experiences, to guide him." In his view, she explained, Constitutional interpretation demanded that the courts "show a special solicitude for the despised and disadvantaged . . . and however much some recent Justices have sniped at that vision, it remains a thing of glory."  Makes sense doesn't it?  Favor the 'despised (whoever they are) and the disadvantaged' over every other citizen covered by the Constitution.

Turns out that the Times Square Bomber made it through airport security before he was apprehended.  As Ann Coulter writes here, it appears that our defense strategy is more 'hope' than 'change'.  Next week will be the 104th month since the terrorists attacked us, but our government still hasn't figured it out and we have gotten luck twice in the past five months.  How much longer can our luck carry the day?  As Coulter points out, "Both of the attempted bombers who sailed through airport security, I note, were young males of Middle Eastern descent. I wonder if we could develop a security plan based on that information?"  Ann is right again on this one. 

In another sign of the decay of our country, Lindsay Bryant of the Morgan Hill Times reports here about the four Live Oak High School students who were asked to leave school because they wore t-shirts with the American flag.  Bryant reports that  The five teens were sitting at a table outside during their brunch break about 10:10 a.m. when Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez asked two boys to take off their American flag bandannas. The boys said they complied. The boys were told they must turn their T-shirts inside-out or be sent home - and that it would not be considered a suspension - but that Rodriguez did not want any fights to break out among Mexican-American students and those wearing American flags"  The issue?  It was Cinco de Mayo. 

No surprise, the guy who tried to car-bomb Times Square was from Pakistan.  He has been detained and is being questioned (hopefully better than the Christmas Day bomber).  The way he was caught shows how amazing our capabilities are to fight this war on terror.  "In the end, it was secret Army intelligence planes that did him in. Armed with his cell phone number, they circled the skies over the New York area, intercepting a call to Emirates Airlines reservations, before scrambling to catch him at John F. Kennedy International Airport."  Great stuff, but I can't help but wonder why we are reporting to the enemy our capabilities to catch and destroy them? 

Check out these quotes as reported in the Patriot Post and decide for yourself who is stirring the racial divide over Arizona's new immigration law.

"Stirring the melting pot: "Now to the growing national backlash against the state of Arizona over its tough new immigration law that says police can stop people just on the suspicion they might be there illegally." --NBC's Brian Williams.

"It's now gone beyond protest to threats of a boycott, as Arizona becomes a laughing stock to some." --NBC's Andrea Mitchell.

"Critics are having a field day with this, Sheriff Arpaio, as you know. Some are calling for a business boycott of the state of Arizona. The Homeland Security Secretary, used to be the governor of Arizona, says she doesn't like this, this bill. Editorial cartoons are making fun of it. Here's one where a guy goes up to a fast food counter and orders nachos and is immediately surrounded by police for probable cause. Are you worried that it affects the image of your state?" --NBC's Matt Lauer to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

As the WSJ reports here, taxes are going up in 2011.  "Last week the Senate Budget Committee passed a fiscal 2011 budget resolution that includes an increase in the top tax rate on dividends to 39.6% from the current 15%—a 164% increase. This blows past the 20% rate that President Obama proposed in his 2011 budget and which his economic advisers promised on these pages in 2008.  And that's only for starters. The recent health-care bill includes a 3.8% surcharge on all investment income, including dividends, beginning in 2013. This would nearly triple the top dividend rate to 43.4% in Mr. Obama's four years as President. We suppose the White House would call this another great victory for income equality."

The Forgotten Man has been warning about this for months.  Time to sell your stocks now, especially those with dividend payouts.  Unless you prefer to give your extra earnings to others under President Obama's vision of income equality.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, while testifying before a Senate panel, said the United States’s southwest border is “as secure now as it has ever been.”  according to this CNSNews.com story.  She goes on,  “I say this again as someone who has walked that border,” she said. “I’ve ridden that border. I’ve flown it. I’ve driven it. I know that border I think as well as anyone, and I will tell you it is as secure now as it has ever been.”  Is she serious?  Even if she is right, 460 thousand people grossing the border illegally every year in Arizona is intolerable.  Even worse, is this report from Terrence Jeffrey that points out that "three Border Patrol agents are assaulted on the average day at or near the U.S. border. Someone is kidnapped every 35 hours in Phoenix, Ariz., often by agents of alien smuggling organizations. And one-in-five American teenagers last year used some type of illegal drug, many of which were imported across the unsecured U.S.-Mexico border."  Jeffrey got these facts from the recently released National Drug Threat Assessment for 2010, published by the National Drug Intelligence Center, a division of the U.S. Justice Department.   The government knows about the problem, yet hasn't done anything to fix it and our Homeland Security Secretary things everything is just fine.

This is the kind of do-nothing attitude that drives average Americans to be disdainful of government involvement in anything.  As Peggy Noonan writes here, Instead, our national establishments deliberately allow the crisis to grow and fester, ignoring public unrest and amusing themselves by damning anyone's attempt to deal with the problem they fear to address.  Why does the federal government do this? Because so many within it are stupid and unimaginative and don't trust the American people. Which of course the American people have noticed....They feel increasingly alienated from their government. And alienation, again, is often followed by deep animosity, and animosity by the breaking up of things. If our leaders were farsighted not only for themselves but for the country, they would fix the border."

Peggy get's it, they don't trust the American people and ignore the common sense of the Forgotten Men who know the obvious solution to this problem.