'Puff, the Magic Obama!'

Last Thursday evening at the Democratic National Convention, presidential nominee Barack Obama tried to score a political touchdown on the 50-yard line at Denver's Invesco Field. Instead, he won the all-time governmental convention award for the best over-the-top political spectacle of sight, sound, speech and pyrotechnics — complete with superstar performances, "Braveheart"-like epic music, and an Olympic-sized fireworks show.

For a week prior to the event, newscasters, commentators and pundits were trying to guess what exactly that Greco-Roman column-structured stage backdrop was and what it was supposed to be representing and stating on behalf of Obama. Despite the fact that Obama's camp suggested that these Athenian columns were merely representative of the history of democracy, the entire visual felt more like a temple than a tenured politician's presidential platform. Even his podium looked more like a lectern or pulpit, rising and falling at will and out of sight beneath the stage. Is this the simple, substance-oriented, budget-cutting Obama we can expect if he's president?

As I listened to Obama's speech, which mentioned "change" roughly 15 times, I thought, "I wonder how many of those 80,000 in attendance (and millions more watching on television) realize what type of change is really coming with Obama?"

I'm not saying that change isn't needed. It is. I want changes in government, but not the type that will increase its role in our lives. I want changes with the goal to better adhere to the Constitution, but not the type that appoints liberal judges and justices who legislate from the bench. I want changes regarding America's relations with the rest of the world, but not the type that further compromises our national security. I want changes regarding America's role in the Middle East, but not the type that creates instability and gives al-Qaida the upper hand again. I want changes to our medical care, but I don't want more big government and billions of dollars in new taxes. I want changes regarding America's deficit, but not the type that increases it. I want changes at America's borders, but not the type that creates more holes for terrorists and other illegal transport. I desperately want changes in the tax code, but not ones that ultimately raise taxes. (Only a "fair tax" eliminates most.) But all those types of changes are exactly what Americans will experience if we elect Barack Obama to be president.

Let there be no doubt about it: We will have change with Obama, but, America, I assure you that it is not the type of change we need or want. No way. No how. NObama. Now, more than ever, is the time to join the NObamaNation revolution.

As with so many of you, I realized months ago that Obama can get away with just about anything because all that too many Americans seem to care about are charisma and the term "change." It doesn't matter if Obama plagiarizes speeches, who his pastor and spiritual mentor was for 20 years, that he has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, that he refused to wear the American flag as a pin, that he didn't place his hand over his heart during the national anthem, that his wife just recently has become proud of her country, or that he is sympathetic to Muslim terrorist groups, etc.

So it seems those Greek pillars just may represent something after all, because in ancient Greece, people were more enamored by rhetoric and passionate presentations than by principled truths and pragmatic solutions. In modern America, these few millenniums later, nothing seems to have changed. I might not be the smartest man on the political block, but I know fluff when I see it (or is it Puff?). Obama conducted his version of a political David Copperfield magic show. Will Americans really not see beyond his illusory performance? America, we are being duped again by fluff and folly, glitz and glamour, and hype and Hollywood.

It's time for America to wake up before it's too late! Reawakening our country and making necessary societal changes are the very reasons I've fully engaged in the culture wars with my new book (to be released Sept. 7), "Black Belt Patriotism," available for pre-order from Amazon.com. It is my battle plan for winning back America. But it's not just my plan; it's our Founders' plan, as I turn to them for their old solutions to our new problems.

Bottom line: Obama's big-government solutions will cost us big money through increased taxes and increased national debt. In the third chapter of my book, "Stop America's Nightmare of Debt," I cite Thomas Jefferson, who gives some timely advice for such a prospective form of government:

"What we need now more than ever is smaller government and lower taxes. Thomas Jefferson was particularly eloquent on the problem of government debt and taxes: 'To preserve (the) independence (of the people), we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.' (A prophetic statement?)"

To find out more about Chuck Norris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CHUCK NORRIS

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