For lots of us pre-boomers, this politically correct stuff seems contrived at best and plain stupid at worst. It has only been the past decade or so that those wanting to control what we think, by changing what we're allowed to say and do on a daily basis, have edged their way into the mainstream of American life.

Back when we pre-boomers were kids (those born between 1930 and 1945) everyone enjoyed the Christmas season. We had a Christmas play at school attended by parents. Throughout the several weeks leading up to Christmas we sang carols every day. There was always a pageant put on by the kids in the higher grades, and we were read "Christmas Story" from the bible at assembly in the auditorium. Each classroom had a tree and a party. Plus Santa made a visit to each room and every child received a small gift provided by the local merchants' association. No one complained in those days.

We celebrated Lincoln's birthday on February 12 followed less than two weeks later by Washington' birthday on the 22nd. We learned about both these great presidents in the classroom and always were entertained by a little performance attended by the entire school. It made the short month go even fasted. This was good because it would be another 6 weeks or so before we had any more time off from school.

Easter vacation was a welcomed break. The school activities were secular in nature with bunnies and egg decorating and usually a play about Peter Rabbit or the like. In the fall, we studied about Columbus but there was no show unless we did a portrayal in our classes. Thanksgiving was always celebrated with the "Story of the First Thanksgiving" with the participants playing the role of Pilgrims or Indians (there was no Native-American lobby in the '40s and '50s), and the kids wore those goofy black hats and bonnets or colorful head-dresses. It was fun as well as a learning opportunity.

Along the way the PC crowd decided our traditions are inappropriate. So the Christmas holidays are now "Winter Vacation" and the only entertainment kids are exposed to in school are symbols and songs that don't offend anyone. Carols are out because they allude to the religious aspects of Christmas, even though this is the reason behind this federal holiday. Santa, trees and decorations are banned from many schools as well.

"Spring Break" is the new name for Easter vacation. And there's talk of changing Columbus Day to "Fall Day," because the man who discovered America was harsh in the way he treated the Indians -- remember, he set out to find a new trade route to India. Unfortunately, most explorers were not gentle with the inhabitants of the places they claimed for their countries, and the natives weren't always happy to see them, but it is part of history. The PCs haven't attack Thanksgiving yet, but it's only a matter of time.

So, the only way our grandchildren and great grandchildren are going to learn about the traditions that were such a rich part of our lives is for us to tell them the stories from our childhood. They'll love it, and so will you.

By: Don Potter
Don Potter, a Philadelphia native, was born in 1936 and is a 50 year veteran of the advertising agency business. Now living in Los Angeles, he has written two novels in retirement, frequently writes on marketing issues, and has a blog dedicated to pre-boomers (those born between 1930 and 1945).

Read more articles for and about pre-boomers with thoughts, comments and opinions designed to spark thinking, foster discussion, and stimulate debate by logging on to http://www.pre-boomermusings.com

Barack Obama has made it a point to continually talk about the "mess" he inherited from the Bush administration. In August, he said "But I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don't mind cleaning up after them, but don't do a lot of talking."

Indeed, Barack Obama inherited an economy in freefall. There are wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, while terrorist groups remain a constant threat. North Korea and Iran are testing long range missiles in conjunction with the development of nuclear weapons. It's worth noting that the precarious state of the country is what got him elected in the first place. If everything was going along swimmingly, the country wouldn't have changed direction.

Liberals need a catastrophe to get elected. They use the misfortune of others, a bad economy, a war, racial tension, hurricanes, the Rachel Maddow show - anything and everything to convince others that they and only they, can come in on their white horses with shining armor to come to the rescue and save the day. Their very existence as a political force is predicated not on solving real problems but on having problems to justify the need for their policies.

It's a vicious circle. Without having to have to worry about consequences, liberals can promote the most radical policies the way that a gambler can go down double or nothing, without ever having to worry about losing. They are never held to account for their policies. No matter what the facts say, it's always someone else's fault. Hence they have a 'Heads I Win - Tales you lose' policy. If the radical policy produces results, they are heroes; if not, then there is justification for more of their policies.

Think this sounds crazy? In 1977, the Carter administration passed the Community Reinvestment Act. The goal was noble, as most liberal goals seem, but devoid of logic, as most liberal plans are. The idea was to create a situation where low income people would be able to buy homes. Banks had to prove that a certain percentage of loans went to these low income people and it forced them to make loans to people who didn't qualify. In the 1990's, in order to guarantee those loans, Freddie Mac and Fannie May promised to buy 2 trillion dollars worth of those mortgages. This took financial pressure off banks and they were able to make more of these risky loans and show what good 'corporate citizens' they were. The downfall was inevitable.

Once all this was set in place, there was speculation and trading on these loans to try to profit from it but none of that would have happened if the irresponsible policies weren't put into effect in 1977 and then increased in the 1990's. Before the inevitable collapse, President Bush tried to point out that there would be problems if the current policies continued. It was liberals such as Barney Frank who assured everyone that Fannie and Freddy were solvent. Bush didn't push the point as hard as he should have, but at least he recognized the problem while liberal democrats said there was no problem.

So Barack Obama is elected into office based on an economic downturn that was created by exactly the kind of policies that he wants to implement to solve the problem. Incidentally, Social Security is another problem that George Bush tried to deal with. They criticized him for bringing up Social Security the same way they criticized him for trying to deal with the mortgage crisis. When Social Security blows up, liberals will no doubt use the same policies that blew it up to try to fix it. At the same time, they will blame republican and conservative greed for causing it to fail even though conservatives were the only ones who tried to head off the problems before they became critical.

President Obama talks about those who 'created the mess'. How many messes has the left created and how many of those messes have they had to answer for? When you don't have to answer to your failures, when you are, in fact, rewarded for your failures, it doesn't provide any incentive to stop failing. Liberals either don't understand or don't care that there are consequences to their actions that go beyond the immediate situation at hand.

One mess created by liberals is the banning of the chemical DDT. Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring" created hysteria around chemical pesticides. The manufacturers of DDT, farmers, scientists, and others tried to assure people that DDT was not harmful and had tremendous benefits. The anti DDT campaign took on a life of its own and when a liberal cause takes on that kind of momentum, there is no stopping it (See Global Warming). So DDT was banned. Since 1972, over 100 million people have died from malaria. This is a disease that was on the verge of being eradicated in the early 1960s. Millions of people died needlessly. This is a catastrophic event of monumental proportions that few people address and fewer take responsibility for. It's not an exaggeration - 100 MILLION people have lost their lives yet no one is asked to answer for this! Is it because their heart was in the right place? Their intentions were good? People continue to suffer, mostly in Africa, to this very day and some are talking about re-introducing DDT - a bit late for all those who died because of well-intentioned people. For more information on Rachel Carson and the DDT ban, a good article is "Rachel Carson's Ecological Genocide" by Lisa Makson in FrontPageMagazine.com.

Another fine mess that liberals have never had to answer for was when they pressured congress to withdraw all funding from the war in Vietnam. When the US withdrew, it did so under a treaty that it would go back in if the situation got out of hand. There was so much pressure by the left to get out of Vietnam, that they constantly blamed the US and absolved the North Vietnamese or the Khmer Rouge of any wrong doing. When it became obvious that mass extermination was taking place in Cambodia, the left continued to blame the US and make excuses for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. They placed all the blame on Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger as if, even if that were true, it would absolve them of the responsibility of living up to a treaty and saving the millions of people who were being slaughtered.

The propaganda that took place then was similar to the propaganda now and there was no FOX news, talk radio, or the internet to present the other side. Movies such as "The Killing Fields" made it seem as if everything the Cambodians did was the result of the actions of the US. Just as now with Islamic terrorism, it could never be that there were purely evil people who had to be fought and stopped. Nevertheless, regardless of the cause of the Cambodian genocide, we had an obligation to stop it, not to excuse the actions of mass murderers. Two million people died in Cambodia. Not only did the left not want to stop this genocide, they actually praised the people committing the genocide! For a more complete telling of the true story of the Khmer Rouge, see the chapter called "The Bloodbath" in Mona Charen's book "Useful Idiots".

Whether it's as severe as mass extermination or a banking crisis, schools that can't educate, a war on poverty that creates more poverty, inner city programs that create crumbling cities, rent control ideas that create a lack of housing, ideas to stop crime by understanding criminal behavior, rather than punishing it - thereby causing more crime, welfare ideas that cause dependency instead of personal growth, the messes created by liberal ideas are endless. They are never held accountable for these failures. It's either because they didn't do enough of whatever their miserable idea was, or they didn't have enough money to do it correctly. It never dawns on them that maybe the ideas, themselves, are flawed.

So, we are now being forced to buy this bill of goods that has failed so miserably in the past. Apparently, we have no choice but to accept it. We're supposed to just "get out of the way and stop talking", but we have to leave our money behind of course -- they'll need that. Obama is like a vacuum cleaner salesman who is going to pour some dirt all over the floor to prove how great the vacuum cleaner will work. It won't work and we shouldn't have to pay $10,000,000,000,000 for a broken vacuum cleaner that will leave a mess on the floor.

By: Howard Jacobs
MBA Marketing Pace University
I currently work for a large financial institution.
I started the blog EndTheChange because I am outraged at the direction our country is going in. People who feel this way want to know "What can I do?" This blog is my little way of trying to set the record straight on the upside-down state of our country.
http://endthechange.blogspot.com

If you are very well-informed about the health care issues facing America right now, feel free to skip this article. There's probably very little I can add to your understanding.

However, if you find yourself saying things like: "I don't understand how someone can oppose universal health care." or "How can someone say health care is not an obvious human right?" or "Obama cares so much for all of us. These radicals are just opposing it because it's his plan." or any of a few dozen variations, this guide very well might be for you.

Many have said, semi-incorrectly, that the proposed plan will not allow one to use private insurance. The fact of the matter is, yes it will...

But..........

Picture this:

Say there were a small neighborhood with three pizza shops that have been competing with one another for about two decades. Everyone in town has their favorite, and all the owners are doing quite well for themselves.

The pizza is not cheap, however, at $2.00 a slice. So, sadly, the less fortunate kids in town view pizza as a rare treat, and even the middle class folk don't want to buy too much, because of that burning feeling in the pocket.

... But it sure is tasty ...

Now, after much protestation in the community that the pizza is too expensive for many, the government decides to subsidize a new pizza shop, and pizza is only one nickel a slice. The pizza is definitely inferior to all three other shops, but there isn't a person in the neighborhood who can't have pizza whenever they choose.

The other three pizza shops start going crazy. "The government is trying to shut us down," they yell.

The government smugly replies, "We aren't shutting anyone down. Everyone, without exception, will still retain the option to go to the other places as often as they want."

But we're not naive.

We know what happens next.

Tons upon tons of people ditch the other three shops for the sake of the much cheaper alternative.

For a little while the other three hang on, cutting costs here and there, firing a few employees, charging even more in the hopes that they will gain some extra profit... but the end result is inevitable. They cannot compete with the government.

All the talk of allowing people to buy whatever pizza they choose is irrelevant if the other places have to close down.

*You see, when you look past all the political jargon (i.e. blah blah) you realize in the upcoming changes the end of private medicine as we know it.*

So what happens next?

After all thee private pizza shops are no longer around, the very mediocre government subsidized option is the only one left standing.

And the lines are out the door. After all, who can resist pizza at such an amazing price?

But there are thousands of people in this town, and they all love pizza. Now, some of them used to buy only one slice, but now buy two. Some used to cook for parties, but now order a dozen pizza pies. Some used to try and estimate exactly how much pizza they needed, but now they gladly overestimate with no fear whatsoever.

(Picture people who now go to the doctor much more often. People who go every time they have the smallest cough. Millions of previously uninsured people who never used to go who now go freely. And so on.)

In order to deal with the influx of customers to the nickel shop, several new decisions need to be made.

Should we hire new workers? Should we rush them through the training so we can get them into the shop ASAP?

Should we seek cheaper ingredients to deal with the increase in cost with the influx of orders?

Perhaps we might need to create a system where people need to order their pizza several weeks in advance? Or we need to prioritze some people over others, saying some people should not receive as many pizzas as others?

And let's not forget that "government subsidized" is just a code-word for "sponsored by you the tax payer". So in order to pay for this heavily subsidized pizza we have two (bad) choices:

a. borrow, and send the government further into debt (bad), or

b. raise taxes (bad)

And thus we complete the package of why we fear the proposed reforms.

We fear overworked doctors. We fear the potential need to hire more doctors quickly, with worse training, to deal with increased need from more patients.

We fear being rushed through the system ultra-quickly in order to deal with the surplus of new patients, resulting in inferior care.

We fear giant waiting lists preventing us from getting essential care in a timely fashion. (Think Canada and England, where patients have died waiting for treatment.)

We fear the reorganization of priorities. If the cost needs to be reduced, someone needs to have their services reduced. In the current situation, it looks like our wonderful American government has chosen the elderly as the victim.

We fear the country going into further debt, and we fear the potential of out-of-control taxes that seem to be the inevitable result of universal health care.

We fear the Robin Hood style government that thinks all can be sponsored involuntarily by the wealthy. We fear that if the wealthy are taxed severely, they will fire tons of employees which would further wound the economy, or they might pick up and move to a country which allows them to retain their profits, crippling the economy.

We fear a non-talented, non-thorough government making hasty decisions which could destroy everything we know and love about our country. The Constitution of the United States of America is much shorter than this proposed health care bill, but it took longer to write and was written by more talented, more intelligent people. And that is why it's basically eternal and has kept this country going strong for so long.

The difference between someone like me and the people of the current administration is foresight and deliberation. We all want change. The current health care situation is ridiculous. But change is NOT inherently positive.

If intelligent, well-meaning people set forth to better our system, slowly and carefully, good things are bound to come.

But rush into something like this, and we might all soon be eating burnt, nasty pizza...

By: David Jaffe
http://rabbijaffe.today.com

President Obama recently said, "I'm not the first president to take up health care but I am determined to be the last". It is fairly certain that this congress will pass something called health care reform. It is even more certain that it will not look anything like what the president wants. He will be able to claim a political victory, but the socialist engineers in government will not allow this to be the end of the health care debate. Though this sound bite qualifies as comely rhetoric, President Obama is wrong once again.

President Obama overcame his inexperience to win his election last November, but his inexperience has caught up to him. He made the mistake of thinking that his "rock star" persona would translate into political power. There can be no doubt that the more experienced politicians that are surrounding him tried to slow him down as he began to add trillions to the national debt, began the government take over of the auto makers, and effected the destruction of millions of jobs in the name of environmentalism. He did not listen to his older and wiser advisors, and it is his major passion that will suffer because of his miscalculations.

There are two realities that the inexperienced Obama did not count on. First, it takes more than just getting elected to advance an agenda. The president did not consider the fact that the new voters that he was able to woo to the voting booth in November are not going to fight the long battles that are necessary to win policy in this constitutional republic. The new voters responsible for his electoral victory were not even aware that policy victories would require an immense amount of work after the election was over. More importantly when they voted for Obama they were expecting that he was going to do all the work for them. They were the kind of people who believe that government can solve every problem.

Secondly, because of his lack of experience in an executive position he was not aware that he held a finite amount of political capital. Because he did not heed the advice of his handlers, the president proceeded to spend his political capital like the average lottery winner spends his newfound wealth (the winners of large jackpots in the lottery are generally worse off financially within five years after winning than they were before they won the lottery). Now he has nothing left to purchase the health care plan that he so desperately wants.

The Democrats in congress will try to save face for their president. There is little doubt that they will pass something called health care reform, but it will look very little like the socialist plan the president wanted. Therefore, he has taken up health care like others before him, but he will not be the last to carry this mantle. The socialists will not be satisfied until the government has complete control of your health. The president produced a great sound bite, but it is only half right. For those who see socialism as the failed system that it is this battle will never end.

By: Randal A. Pope
Randal A. Pope is the founder of Natural Healing Herb, a distributor of quality herbal supplements for you and your family. You can find information about what herbs to use for your health. We are partnered with Nature's Sunshine®, which has been manufacturing quality herbs for your health for more than 30 years. Find us at http://www.naturalhealingherb.com