Dear Friends:  

           My name is Joe Porter. I live in   Champaign ,  Illinois .  I'm 46 years old, a born-again Christian, a husband, a father, a small business owner, a veteran, and a homeowner. I don't consider myself to be either conservative or liberal, and I vote for the person,  not Republican or Democrat. I don't believe there are  'two Americas ' but that every person in this country can be whomever and  whatever they want to be if they'll just work to get there and nowhere else on earth can they find such opportunities. I believe our government should help those who are legitimately downtrodden, and should  always put the interests of  America  first.  

    The purpose of this message is that I'm concerned about the future of this great nation. I'm worried that the silent majority of honest, hard-working, tax-paying people in this country have been passive for too long. Most folks I know choose not to involve themselves in politics. They go about their daily lives, paying their bills, raising  their kids, and doing what they can to maintain the good life. They vote and consider doing so to be a sacred trust. They shake their heads at the political pundits and so-called 'news', thinking that what they hear is always spun by whomever is reporting it. They can't understand how elected officials can regularly violate the public trust with pork barrel  spending. They don't want government handouts. They want the government to protect them, not raise their taxes for more government programs.  

        We are in the unique position in this country of electing our leaders. It's a privilege to do so. I've never found a candidate in any election with whom I agreed on everything. I'll wager that most of us don't even agree with our families or spouses 100% of the  time. So when I step into that voting booth, I always try to look at the big picture and cast my vote for the man or woman who is best qualified for the job.   I've hired a lot of people in my lifetime, and essentially that's what an election is - a hiring process. Who has the credentials? Whom do I want working for me? Whom can I trust to do the job right?

       I'm concerned that a growing number of voters in this country simply don't get it. They are caught up in a fervor they can't explain, and calling it 'change'.  

    'Change what?', I ask.  

    'Well, we're going to change  America ', they say.  

     'In what way?', I query.  

     'We want someone new and fresh in the White House', they exclaim.

   'So,  someone who's not a politician?', I say.  

      'Uh, well, no, we just want a lot of stuff changed, so we're voting for Obama', they state.  

      'So  the current system, the system of freedom and democracy that has enabled a man to grow up in this great country, get a fine education, raise incredible amounts of money and dominate the news, and win his party's nomination for the White House that system's all wrong?'

    'No, no, that part of the system's okay we just need a lot of change.'

   And so it goes. 'Change we can believe in.'  

   Quite frankly, I don't believe that vague proclamations of change hold any promise for me. In recent months, I've been asking virtually everyone I encounter how they're voting. I live in  Illinois , so most folks tell me they're voting for Barack Obama.   But no one can really tell me why only that he's going to change a lot of stuff 'Change, change, change.' I have yet to find one single person who can tell me distinctly and convincingly why this man is qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful nation on earth other than the fact that he claims he's going to implement a lot of change.  

 We've all seen the emails about Obama's genealogy, his upbringing, his Muslim background, and his church affiliations. Let's ignore this for a moment. Put it all aside. Then ask yourself, 'What qualifies this man to be my president?  That he's a brilliant orator and talks about change?'   

   CHANGE WHAT?  

    Friends, I'll be forthright with you I believe the American voters who are supporting Barack Obama don't have a clue what they're doing, as evidenced by the fact that not one of them - NOT ONE of them I've spoken to can spell out his qualifications. Not even the most liberal media can explain why he should be elected.  Political experience? Negligible. Foreign relations? Non-existent. Achievements?  Name one.  Someone who wants to unite the country?  If you haven't read his wife's thesis from   Princeton , look it up on the web. This is who's lining up to be our next First Lady?  The only thing I can glean from Obama's constant harping about change is that we're in for a lot of new taxes.  

   For me, the choice is clear. I've looked carefully at the two leading applicants for the job, and I've made  my choice.  

    Here's a question - 'Where were you five and a half years ago? Around Christmas, 2002.  You've had five or six birthdays in that time. My son has grown from a sixth grade child to a high school graduate.   Five and a half years is a good chunk of time. About 2,000 days.  2,000 nights of sleep.  6,000 meals, give or take.'  

    John McCain spent that amount of time, from 1967 to 1973, in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp.  

   When offered early release, he refused it.  He considered this offer to be a public relations stunt by his captors, and insisted that those held longer than he should be released first.  Did you get that part?  He was offered his freedom, and he turned it down.  A regimen of beatings and torture began.  

   Do you possess such strength of character?  Locked in a filthy cell in a foreign country, would you turn down your own freedom in favor of your fellow man?  I submit that's a quality of character that is rarely found, and for me, this singular act defines John McCain.  

  Unlike several presidential candidates in recent years whose military service is questionable or non-existent, you will not find anyone to denigrate the integrity and moral courage of this man.  A graduate of Annapolis, during his Naval service he received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.  His own son is now serving in the Marine Corps in  Iraq .  Barack Obama is fond of saying 'We honor John McCain's service...BUT...', which to me is condescending and offensive - because what I hear is, 'Let's forget this man's sacrifice for his country, and his proven leadership abilities, and talk some more about change.'  

  I don't agree with John McCain on everything - but I am utterly convinced that he is qualified to be our next President, and I trust him to do what's right.  I know in my heart that he has the best interests of our country in mind.  He doesn't simply want to be President - he wants to lead  America ,  and there's a huge difference.  Factually, there is simply no comparison between the two candidates.  A man of questionable background and motives who prattles on  about change, can't hold a candle to a man who has devoted his life in public service to this nation, retiring from the Navy in1981 and elected to the Senate in1982.  

   Perhaps Obama's supporters are taking a stance between old and new. Maybe they don't care about McCain's service or his strength of character, or his unblemished qualifications to be President.  Maybe  'likeability' is a higher priority for them than 'trust'.  Being a prisoner of war is not what qualifies John McCain to be President of the United States of America    - but his demonstrated leadership certainly DOES.  

    Dear friends, it is time for us to stand.  It is time for thinking Americans to say, 'Enough.' It is time for people of all parties to stop following the party line.  It is time for anyone who wants to keep   America    first, who wants the right man leading their nation, to start a dialogue with all their friends and neighbors and ask who they're voting for, and why.  

  There's a lot of evil in this world. That should be readily apparent to all of us by now.  And when faced with that evil as we are now, I want a man who knows the cost of war on his troops and on his citizens.  I want a man who puts my family's interests before any foreign country.   
    I want a President who's qualified to lead.   

          E-mail:   mailto:ronald.hess@alumni.purdue.edu - ronald.hess@alumni.purdue.edu  

"Political intervention is one reason we lost in Vietnam"

Total agreement.

So why let politicians, or the political agenda of a new president, put us in that same position again?

Just to jump in here:

Disagree with the Bush taking total responsibility for the war. He did not ask Hussein to bar UN inspectors. He did not ask Hussein to make countless threats against us. He did not cast the votes on behalf of Congress authorizing the use of force.

I have no problem with disagreeing with how the war is being fought, but I sincerely believe the war in Iraq and Afghanistan must be fought.

And of course I also disagree that we learned nothing from Vietnam. But since I doubt VieVet meant it in a literal sense I’ll give him a pass on that one. LOL

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this bill. This is only going to make the problem that much worse. The problem came about because we spent too much; we borrowed too much, and we printed too much money; we inflated too much, and we overregulated. This is all that this bill is about is more of the same.

So you can't solve the problem. We are looking at a symptom. We are looking at the collapsing of a market that was unstable. It was unstable because of the way it came about. It came about because of a monopoly control of money and credit by the Federal Reserve System, and that is a natural consequence of what happens when a Federal Reserve System creates too much credit.

Now, there have been a fair number of free market economists around who have predicted this would happen. Yet do we look to them for advice? No. We totally exclude them. We don't listen to them. We don't look at them. We look to the people who created the problem, and then we perpetuate the problem.

The most serious mistake that could be made here today is to blame free market capitalism for this problem. This has nothing to do with free market capitalism. This has to do with a managed economy, with an inflationary system, with corporatism, and with a special interest system. It has nothing to do with the failure of free markets and capitalism. Yet we're resorting now, once again, to promoting more and more government.

Long term, this is disastrous because of everything we're doing here and because of everything we've done for 6 months. We've already pumped in $700 billion. Here is another $700 billion. This is going to destroy the dollar. That's what you should be concerned about. Yes, Wall Street is in trouble. There are a lot of problems, and if we don't vote for this, there are going to be problems. Believe me: If you destroy the dollar, you're going to destroy a worldwide economy, and that's what we're on the verge of doing, and it is inevitable, if we continue this, that that's what's going to happen. It's going to be a lot more serious than what we're dealing with today.

We need to get our house in order. We need more oversight--that is a certainty--but we need oversight of the Federal Reserve System, of the Exchange Stabilization Fund and of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets. Find out what they're doing. How much have they been meddling in the market?

What we're doing today is going to make things much worse.

The beneficiaries of the corrupt monetary system of the last 3 decades are now desperately looking for victims to stick with the bill after they have reaped decades of profit and privilege.

The difficulties in our economy will continue because the legislative and the executive branches have not yet begun to address the real problems. The housing bubble's collapse, as was the dot corn bubble's collapse, was predictable and is merely a symptom of the monetary system that brought us to this point.

Indeed, we do face a major crisis, but it is much bigger than the freezing up of Wall Street and dealing with worthless assets on the books of major banks. The true crisis is the pending collapse of the fiat dollar system that emerged after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971.

For 37 years the world built a financial system based on the dollar as the reserve currency of the world in an attempt to make the dollar serve as the new standard of value. However since 1971, the dollar has had no intrinsic value, as it is not tied to gold. The dollar is simply a fiat currency, which has fluctuated in value on a daily, if not hourly, bias. This worked to some degree until the market realized that too much debt and malinvestment existed and a correction was required.

Because of our economic and military strength, compared to other countries, trust in America's currency lasted longer than deserved. This resulted in the biggest worldwide economic distortion in all of history. The problem is much bigger than the fears of a temporary decline on Wall Street if the bailout is not agreed to.

Money's most important function is to serve as a means of exchange--a measurement of value. If this crucial yardstick is not stable, it becomes impossible for investors, entrepreneurs, savers, and consumers to make correct decisions; these mistakes create the bubble that must eventually be corrected.

Just imagine the results if a construction company was forced to use a yardstick whose measures changed daily to construct a skyscraper. The result would be a very unstable and dangerous building. No doubt the construction company would try to cover up their fundamental problem with patchwork repairs, but no amount of patchwork can fix a building with an unstable inner structure. Eventually, the skyscraper will collapse, forcing the construction company to rebuild--hopefully this time with a stable yardstick. This $700 billion package is more patchwork repair and will prove to be money down a rat hole and will only make the dollar crisis that much worse.

But what politicians are willing to say that the financial "skyscraper''--the global financial and monetary system-is a house of cards. It is not going to happen at this juncture. They're not even talking about this. They talk only of bailouts, more monetary inflation, more special interest spending, more debt, and more regulations. There is almost no talk of the relationship of the Community Reinvestment Act, HUD, and government assisted loans to the housing bubble. And there is no talk of the oversight that is desperately needed for the Federal Reserve, the Exchange Stabilization Fund, and all the activities of the President's Working Group on financial markets. When these actions are taken we will at last know that Congress is serious about the reforms that are really needed.

In conclusion, there are three good reasons why Congress should reject this legislation:

It is immoral--Dumping bad debt on the innocent taxpayers is an act of theft and is wrong.

It is unconstitutional--There is no constitutional authority to use government power to serve special interests.

It is bad economic policy--By refusing to address the monetary system while continuing to place the burdens of the bailout on the dollar, we can be certain that in time, we will be faced with another, more severe crisis when the market figures out that there is no magic government bailout or regulation that can make a fraudulent monetary system work.

Monetary reform will eventually come, but, unfortunately, Congress' actions this week make it more likely the reform will come under dire circumstances, such as the midst of a worldwide collapse of the dollar. The question then will be how much of our liberties will be sacrificed in the process. Just remember what we lost in the aftermath of 9-11.

The best result we can hope for is that the economic necessity of getting our fiscal house in order will, at last, force us to give up our world empire. Without the empire we can then concentrate on rebuilding the Republic.