Hilltop Farm: Review: No He Can't: How Barack Obama is dismantling hope and change

Disclaimer: I rec'd a review copy of this book through the publisher's Book Sneeze review program. The review below is my honest reaction to No He Can't: How Barack Obama is dismantling hope and change.

I've been to many places in my almost-50 years of life and I have to say I love our country -- there are few places on this earth that can boast of major political upheavals occurring peacefully, of the freedoms we Americans have and use daily, of the wealth and power of our nation. But these great benefits come with a price -- the price of responsibility for knowing what is happening in our country, of knowing what our employees (remember, when you vote someone into office, they are for all intents and purposes your employees -- if you don't like what they are doing, you must "fire" them!). in Washington are doing for us, and in ensuring that we never allow these rights, these freedoms to be taken from ANY American.

Kevin McCullough's book, No He Can't, is a book that every voting-age (or even, soon-to-be voting age) American should read. McCullough defines four major policies areas and what the current administration, that is, Mr. Obama, is saying he'll do, is actually doing and what the end results will be if these policies remain unchecked. The policies areas covered include:

the economy -- on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama stated that there would be no tax increase for families making less than $250,000 per year; but in the same speeches, he swore he would remove the tax breaks of the Bush administration -- the net result? By cancelling the tax breaks, the tax bill for everyone went up. The $1.3 TRILLION stimulus package, the brain-child of such experts as Mr. Obama, Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi -- a package that could have been distributed to each family in the United States (where a family of four could be given a check for $17,000) -- instead went for corporate bail-outs, "cash for clunkers" (that no one wanted anyway and which ran out of funding within a week of the program's start), and millions to STD awareness. In other words, the huge national debt incurred by this stimulus package was a major flop ... and one that we'll be paying for the next few centuries. Remember, these politicians are our employees -- "we the people" elected them and asked them to do a job; is this the job we asked them to do?
national security and international policies -- in May 2010, Mr. Obama gave the commencement speech at WestPoint. His topic was that he was intent on shaping a new international order, to minimize the US role of securing democratic values around the world, and "implied that America should not claim the mantle or the right of self-protection or self-responsibility" (pg 79). He was talking to newly graduated Army officers, men and women who would shortly be asked to go out and defend our country -- and the President of the United States tells them he's basically moving toward getting rid of these jobs? That's like telling a group of new-hires in a company that in the next few years, we won't need you anymore! Mr. Obama, who seems to promote a non-American agenda (buddying-up to anti-American international leaders like Chavez of Venezuela and Castro of Cuba, embracing blatantly non-democratic policies),on one of his first international trips as President he spoke to a group of Egyptian students in Cairo; the speech "equated the roots of freedom in the United States with the origins of Islam, a religious system that enslaves women and dehumanizes and kills opponents" (pg 84). Really? Is this what we want our hired President to say? Is this what we think?
domestic policies -- all of the domestic policies pushed by the Obama administration (health care bill, education policies, recreating the definition of "family", allowing millions of federal dollars to go to Planned Parenthood, etc) seek to shift our democracy to a socialist state through more and more, bigger and bigger government, to cause our free market economy to implode, and to punish those who disagree with his policies. When the blogosphere was rampant with critical essays about the proposed health bill, the White House website asked readers to send links to anti-administration posts to the White House so they could track the dissidents! Really? In a democratic country, we're encouraged to rat on each other? Hmmm ... so much for the First Amendment! Is this what we want our elected officials to say and do?

The final section of the book, "render unto Caesar", lays-out what "we the people" need to do. McCullough asks the reader: how do we treat our political officials, and most especially, how do we treat our President? We elect these folks ... and the elected officials are our employees. If they are not doing their job, they need to be fired. We are stockholders in the country, we all benefit when all is well and we all suffer when things are not good. We elect officials who we think will fix things. We have hope that our officials will fix what's broken, leave the overall good things in place, and make, FIRST, the country a better place, and SECOND, make the world a better place. Is our current administration doing this? Why not?

Politically, I'm a conservative -- want smaller government, less federal spending, protection of rights for all humans (from the pre-born to natural death). I am a Roman Catholic and believe in a merciful God and my right to practice my religion. I don't want any of these things taken away ... I don't want a debt that my great-great-great-grandchildren will have to cover. I don't want bigger and bigger government. I don't want a socialist state where the liberal elite tell me and mine what we should do. I am part of "we the people" and I think Mr. Obama needs to be "fired" at his next "review" time.