Category Archives: Conservatism

Friday Follies for May 8, 2015

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Jackson County MO Sheriff Mike Sharp

Here is some local Missouri news. Jackson County MO Sheriff Mike Sharp, in the face of a 21,000 CCW application/renewal backlog and growing pressure from state and local parties, finally acts. He has hired two temporary, part-time employees to address the issue.

You can find the story here, on the WMSA website.

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Today is the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Today’s FOX Newsletter noted the anniversary with this short piece.

Today we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Fortunately for posterity, the late Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Relman Morin, then an AP war correspondent, was present to paint a gripping picture of the surrender by German commanders to allied officers: “There was a moment of silence, and in that moment, the scene seemed to freeze. It had the character of a picture, somehow, a queer unreality. Here was the end of nearly five years of war, of blood and death, of high excitement and fear and great discomfort, of explosions and bullets whining and the wailing of air raid sirens. Here, brought into this room, was the end of all that. Your mind refused to take it in. Hence, this was a dream, this room with the Nile green walls and the charts, the black table, and the uniformed men seated around it. The words, ‘There are four copies to be signed,’ meant nothing unless you forced the meaning to come, ramming it into your brain with a hard, conscious effort.”

“All the greatest things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.” – Winston Churchill in a May 17, 1947 speech at Royal Albert Hall. On Thursday, members of the high command of the British military presented a bust of Churchill  to their counterparts at the Pentagon.

I wonder if Obama will force the Pentagon to send the bust back like he sent back the bust of Churchill that used to reside in the White House?

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On Drudge’s front page is an announcement. The US unemployment rate exceeds 93 million. The AP states the unemployment percentage is only 5.4%.

The AP lies. Simple math will tell you that if 93 million are unemployed out of a population of 325 million, the rate is 28%, not 5.4%.

But…but…but…you can’t include children and school kids! True, that would reduce the 93 million to a lower number AND INCREASE THE PERCENTAGE OF UNEMPLOYED!

Math works. You can fudge the figures and lie, but math will tell you the truth.

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Speaking of Drudge, The Hill has just announced that Matt Drudge is the 2nd most influential man in America. The liberal digital magazine is no fan of Matt Drudge. But they did admit…

Is Drudge the second most influential man in America, behind the president? It is a debatable proposition that might well be true. More than any single person in American politics besides the president, he determines the content of debate in our national discourse on an hourly basis.

In many ways, I deplore the influence of Matt Drudge, but in the meantime, would someone send this piece to Drudge and maybe he will post it (wink, wink)? — The Hill.

The Hill would love to had as many hits on their website as does Drudge in just one hour.

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In case you weren’t looking, conservatism, well, the British variety, returned to the UK. Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party takes the majority of seats in Parliament in their general election yesterday. The Scottish National Party (SNP) took 56 out of 59 regional seats making them a political power that must be accommodated. Many of the opposition party leaders resigned their party positions. Some lost their seats as MPs as well.

Cameron won on a platform of more power to the Scottish regional parliament and a vote on the UK’s continuing membership in the EU. If the UK leaves, the EU could, in light of its growing financial instability, fragment, shedding some of its more financially irresponsible members…like Greece.

 

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Finally!

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Senator Ted Cruz delivers remarks before announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination to run for US President March 23, 2015, at Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia.(PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)

Finally there’s an announced candidate I can vote for. Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for President in the 2016 election at the Liberty University to a rousing ovation. He immediately went to the top of the polls

Wow!

Of course he’s at the top of the polls. He’s the only one who has officially announced his candidacy by-passing the ‘exploratory’ phase completely.

His speech is already on YouTube. In his announcement, he vowed to end Obamacare if a repeal appeared on his desk and to end the IRS.

But the trolls are already out. Obama has already stolen a step on Cruz by buying the TedCruz.com domain name. It a liberal front supporting Obama and illegal immigration. It’s a tossup if the new domain owners are Obama or La Raza or one of the other uberliberal front groups. It really makes no difference as long as they prevent Ted Cruz or his supporters from using it.

The trolls seized the TedCruz.com domain but the real Ted is using TedCruz.org. On his website, Ted Cruz lists his policy positions and his voting record unlike liberals and RINOs who fear to make public their positions and voting records.

Pedro Gonzales, who is the editor of a website called NewsMachete.com, wrote a column about Cruz in the American Thinker.

Ted Cruz’s policy positions

By Pedro Gonzales, March 23, 2015

Now that Ted Cruz has decided to run for president, he is the first one with a website that actually states his policy positions.  Other would-be candidates, like Scott Walker and Rand Paul, have none, since they are not yet declared candidates.  (They do have websites for their current office, but none specifically addressing policy positions of what they would do as president.)

There’s a lot to chew over at TedCruz.org, but here’s a sampling of Cruz’s positions.

Authored the Obamacare Repeal Act as his first piece [of] legislation.

Led the fight to defund Obamacare — the largest regulatory challenge facing our nation which has resulted in killing jobs, cutting workers’ hours, and causing millions of Americans to lose their doctors or health care.

I remember when Cruz had his “mini-filibuster” on this subject.  He spoke for 21 hours straight.  He and Mike Lee were basically alone; no other senators came to offer support for any substantive period of time.  Rand Paul made a cameo appearance for about five minutes.

Authored legislation to end taxpayer dollars subsidizing corporate fat cats, including the Ex-Im Bank.

Opposed the Renewable Fuel Standard ethanol subsidy.

All the other candidates support ethanol, except for Rick Perry.

Led the fight against regulating the Internet as a public utility because it threatens the Internet as a haven for entrepreneurial freedom and unlimited opportunity.

Rand Paul, to his credit, has been outspoken on this as well.

Set an early, high standard for meaningful Republican opposition to increasing the debt ceiling.

Demanded a 60-vote threshold vote on a clean debt-ceiling increase in February 2013, when Republican leadership wanted to allow the Democrats to raise the limit with a simple majority vote.

Led the charge on behalf of 13 states to successfully defend, before the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal law that bans one form of late-term abortion, the Partial Birth Abortion Act.

Joined 18 states in successfully defending the New Hampshire parental-notification law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Successfully defended in federal court Texas’s Rider 8, which prohibits state funds for groups that provide abortions.

Fought for the right of states to define marriage, without intrusion by unelected federal judges, by drafting the State Marriage Defense Act.

Opposed the Obama Administration’s dangerous deal with Iran that would allow Iran to pursue nuclear weapons.

Successfully pressured the Obama Administration to lift its unprecedented FAA ban on flights to Israel after exposing the move as, in essence, an economic boycott of our strongest ally in the Middle East. The ban was lifted within 36 hours of the Senator’s actions

Championed the Expatriate Terrorist Act to prevent Americans who join ISIS from returning to the United States to commit acts of terror at home.

Joined Texas and 25 other states in a lawsuit to stop President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty.

Authored legislation to triple the size of the U.S. Border Patrol.

Played a crucial role in preventing federal legislation to restrict the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

Led 31 states in District of Columbia v. Heller where the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ban on firearms in a 5-4 landmark decision.

This is just a small sampling of the material on TedCruz.org; there’s a lot on his positions and record there.  People think of him as being only a senator in his first term, but they forget that he was solicitor general of Texas and litigated a lot of cases to preserve our freedoms.

I like a lot of what I read here, and I suspect that you do, too.  I look forward to the other candidates declaring and putting up websites showing their policy positions so we can compare and contrast.  But for now I’m impressed not just by the amount of information Cruz has put up, but by the degree of detail.

Now we conservatives have a candidate who is one of us. Who has the same dreams and visions that we do, one who wants to restore constitutional government to Washington.

And finally, he’s a flat tax advocate rather than that god awful consumption/national sales tax.

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What’s next?

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A typical Tea Party meeting.

I attended a Tea Party meeting earlier this month just after the mid-term elections. Part of the meeting was to celebrate the wins by the GOP. One of the ladies who attended was asking what’s next? I had my opinion but I listened for someone to answer her. No one did. I didn’t either because my opinion would have differed with some of those in attendance.

There was a lot of talk, talk about Agenda 21, GMOs, Common Core, a plethora of opinions about many subjects. But not one said what really was the next step—elect a conservative ‘Pub into the White House and the Governor’s Mansion in 2016 while building a conservative majority in both Houses of Congress and our Legislature.

In truth, I didn’t expect anything more than I heard. It’s the failing of the Tea Party and why it has lost it’s influence in political events—no common plan on what to do next.

When the Tea Party first appeared, there were many agendas driving the Tea Parties, but there was one common theme—No More Taxes, hence the name T.E.A Party or Taxed Enough Already party.

The Tea Party has lost that cohesion and watching many grassroots organizations, I doubt it will recover. The Tea Party is not, was not, a singular organization.

Everyone has an agenda. I do, too. I want to elect conservatives into office. That is the only way to effect change. Once we have those conservatives in office, then, we can change those push-buttons, like Right-to-Work, Common Core, Agenda 21, repealing Obamacare and Frank-Dodd and others. But, without achieving that first goal, there will be no success achieving the second nor the third.

Not only are those other agendas diverting our attention, some of them are questionable validity. Too many of us, now, have no experience in critical thinking, nor interest in validating their viewpoints.

There was a TV ad this last year, one about a dating service I believe, where a woman dates a phony Frenchman with an obvious phony French accent. She met him on the internet and “everything on the internet is true.” We all laughed. But it is an example of the failings of too many.

The left has created a religion of global warming based on a computer model that was created to fit the theory that Man was ruining the planet. Us unbelievers, looked outside an the lowering temperature averages, looked at the average temperature for the last fifty years, and saw no evidence of global warming. Then we watched while the studies supporting global warming were found to be manufactured and filled with cherry-picked and false data. We pointed out these flaws to the believers…and they refused to understand, nor accept any criticism of their beliefs.

We, like them, have our faulty beliefs. Beliefs founded on faulty science and the believers will allow no one to argue contrary to those beliefs. We’re just as bad as are those on the left.

But I digress.

So, what’s next? Is there a plan? Do we have a goal?

I do. I’m going to work to elect conservatives at all levels of government. I will do my own vetting of candidates. I’ll not rely solely on others who may or may not have the same agenda as I. I will make mistakes. I will, at some point, support someone who is not worthy. When I do so, it will be my error, not that of someone I followed blindly.

The lack of critical thinking, a concept no longer taught in school, is one reason why so many are lead astray. The lack of critical thinking like the failings in teaching real science, instead of pseudo-science, is one reason why our attention is diverted from a common goal, why we cannot reach a common consensus. We have not learned to question assumptions or even recognize when arguments are based on unsupported theory.

Like the TV ad, we believe whatever we’re told if the source appears to support our thinking while never questioning its validity…just like the left and the global warming advocates.

I have friends whose sole focus is fighting against Agenda 21. Other friends are strong activists for Right-to-Work, others are against Common Core. I will support them as I can because with my support, they will support me, in turn, towards my goal, electing conservatives.

I will not, however, allow myself to be diverted from my goal to theirs. The fault of the Tea Party today is that too many have no common view, no central goal. They’ve allowed themselves to be nothing more than a debating society with a different discussion topic each month.

The Great Grass Roots Uprising of 2010 has failed. Unless we conservative Tea Partiers consolidate our efforts towards a single goal, the Tea Party will just be another footnote in history, if that. Its epitaph may read, “The Tea Party. Died while dithering about a direction.”

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Friday Follies for August 29, 2014

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It has been a long week. It shouldn’t have seemed that way but it did. I’ve been beating the bushes trying to get conservatives involved in politics. I’ve not been very successful.

Case in point. I’m a member of several conservative political organizations. In every one, there is a small group that is active. Each group has an occasional drop-in who may visit for a meeting or two but their attendance is irregular at best. Most, pleading a busy schedule, drift off.

There is a distinct age gulf in the membership. All the active members are older—in their 50s and up. The younger crowd is too busy to bother—and that is a problem. Not for us, but for them.

We want to get younger members to join, whole families if possible. But we are rarely successful—“We’re too busy! The kids have too many activities. I have to take Junior to baseball/softball/soccer/football/basketball/swimming practice.” It is just the same for the girls. Then, during school session, add voice/band/music practice, Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts/4-H, plus the kids come home with a 30lb backpack full of homework (do the kids ever do work at school anymore?).

Oh, we can still get a turnout for an isolated meeting for a cause such as Common Core or Agenda 21. But when it come to electing officials who will represent us in government, people claim they don’t have time.

It’s a cop-out. People can and will act if their private ox is being gored but politics? Heavens, no! In reality, it is a matter of priorities. What is more important. Being a helicopter parent who is determined their kids are under constant scrutiny or insuring those same children have any freedom when they become adults.

I constantly hear, “I’m not interested in politics!” and every time I remember the remainder of that quote—“but politics is interested in you.”

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Homeschoolers! Lissen-up!

http://www.umsystem.edu/newscentral/legislative-update/files/2014/03/LU-3-13-Emery.jpgNeed a project for your kids? Take them to the upcoming Missouri Legislature Veto Override session. There are a number of interesting issues that will be voted upon to override Governor Jay Nixon’s veto.

Meet the legislators; visit your state Representative and Senator, watch the bills being discussed and voted upon from the visitor’s gallery. See your state government in action. Coordinate your activity with another group (WMSA pitch here.) Find other homeschoolers, combine resources and perhaps share costs.

When I was in grade school and later in high school, I was required to pass a test of the US and state constitutions. One test was required to graduate into high school. The other was a state requirement for a high school diploma. In my high school, we spent a complete semester being taught the mechanics of government. Anyone who failed had a second chance in summer school. There was a third chance to pass the test for a high school diploma in a night class with adults, an early form of G.E.D.

That requirement no longer exists. It should, but it doesn’t. I suppose it’s more important to be taught diversity and other social engineering agendas than for students to understand how government works.

Homeschoolers take note of this opportunity. Every year I see a number of Jeff City public and private school kids touring the Capitol. I’ve seen other homeschoolers there as well with their kids. Witnessing government in action is too good an educational opportunity to miss. Perhaps you, too, will learn something as well.

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ISIS is back in the news and Obama is, as usual, ignoring that crises. “We’re not at war with ISIS,” he claims. Obama ignores the statements from ISIS that they are at war with us and the rest of the world.

Islamic State’s ‘Laptop of Doom’
By Rick Moran, August 29, 2014

We don’t have a strategy yet to attack Islamic State. But they are developing a strategy to attack us.

A laptop found by Syrian rebels last January in an ISIS hideout proved to be a goldmine of information. Foreign Policy’s Harald Doornbos and Jenan Moussa got their hands on the machine, downloaded 146 gigabytes of material, and were shocked at what they found:

The laptop’s contents turn out to be a treasure trove of documents that provide ideological justifications for jihadi organizations — and practical training on how to carry out the Islamic State’s deadly campaigns. They include videos of Osama bin Laden, manuals on how to make bombs, instructions for stealing cars, and lessons on how to use disguises in order to avoid getting arrested while traveling from one jihadi hot spot to another.

But after hours upon hours of scrolling through the documents, it became clear that the ISIS laptop contains more than the typical propaganda and instruction manuals used by jihadists. The documents also suggest that the laptop’s owner was teaching himself about the use of biological weaponry, in preparation for a potential attack that would have shocked the world.

The information on the laptop makes clear that its owner is a Tunisian national named Muhammed S. who joined ISIS in Syria and who studied chemistry and physics at two universities in Tunisia’s northeast. Even more disturbing is how he planned to use that education:
The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals.

“The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge,” the document states.

The document includes instructions for how to test the weaponized disease safely, before it is used in a terrorist attack. “When the microbe is injected in small mice, the symptoms of the disease should start to appear within 24 hours,” the document says.

The laptop also includes a 26-page fatwa, or Islamic ruling, on the usage of weapons of mass destruction. “If Muslims cannot defeat the kafir [unbelievers] in a different way, it is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction,” states the fatwa by Saudi jihadi cleric Nasir al-Fahd, who is currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. “Even if it kills all of them and wipes them and their descendants off the face of the Earth.”

When contacted by phone, a staff member at a Tunisian university listed on Muhammed’s exam papers confirmed that he indeed studied chemistry and physics there. She said the university lost track of him after 2011, however.

It is very difficult to weaponize any biological agent. You need a modern lab and a trained team of scientists to build a usuable weapon. But that doesn’t mean that the terrorists aren’t trying very hard to build one:

Nothing on the ISIS laptop, of course, suggests that the jihadists already possess these dangerous weapons. And any jihadi organization contemplating a bioterrorist attack will face many difficulties: Al Qaeda tried unsuccessfully for years to get its hands on such weapons, and the United States has devoted massive resources to preventing terrorists from making just this sort of breakthrough. The material on this laptop, however, is a reminder that jihadists are also hard at work at acquiring the weapons that could allow them to kill thousands of people with one blow.

“The real difficulty in all of these weapons … [is] to actually have a workable distribution system that will kill a lot of people,” said Magnus Ranstorp, research director of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College. “But to produce quite scary weapons is certainly within [the Islamic State’s] capabilities.”

As you can see, ISIS is not a bunch of sheepherders hiding in caves. Educated professionals are also flocking to their banner and you have to think they can accomplish just about anything any modern army does – including building weapons of mass destruction.

Islamists call us “Crusaders.” There have been many Crusades over the last millennium. Perhaps it is time for another one. It is already being fought from the Islamist’ side. If we are to survive as a people and culture, it is time to recognize that fact for what it is.

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Money laundering. Says it all.

 

 

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The Weekend Review

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Do you know this man?http://media.washtimes.com/media/image/2012/11/06/20121106-195938-pic-910164513_mugshot_four_by_three_s267x200.jpg?ec8f261d4936ae3433a61cef779c1dbc8a3728fb

No, it’s not a TV commercial. Richard Viguerie is a long-time conservative who has helped the campaigns of a number of conservatives. He is not among those who believe the GOP establishment should lead the GOP.

Viguerie has just released a book, titled, Takeover: The 100-Year War for the Soul of the GOP and How Conservatives Can Finally Win It, In it, he writes about the civil war that is taking place within the GOP. (Where have you heard that before, readers?)

The Daily Caller reviewed his book. According to the Daily Caller,  Viguerie said:

“Our true opponents are Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove, and George Bush. They’re the ones who have been engaged in a massive expansion of government and the American voters don’t like them,” “Whenever they are the face of the opposition to the Democrats, the Republicans almost always lose on the national level. It is the most important political battle in America and it’s not between Republicans and Democrats — it’s inside the Republican Party. And for the most part, conservatives have been losing.” — The Daily Caller.

You can read the column by following the link above. One statement Viguerie makes is that the ‘new’ conservatives, new to the political scene like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul, are loosely tethered to the GOP and more strongly to conservative principles. Viguerie views that as a positive trend within the GOP.

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Have you heard about this? It wasn’t a recent report, although the lawsuit is. It’s another example of unrestrained police abuse. I have to wonder why the majority of these cases occur in the larger metropolitan areas dominated by liberals?

The short report is that some ABC agents in Virginia terrorized two colleges students for buying—a case of water and some cookie ingredients.

UVA student was victim of malicious, spiteful cops, $40 million lawsuit claims

Robby Soave, Reporter, 12:11 AM 03/31/2014

A University of Virginia student is suing the Commonwealth of Virginia for $40 million after her harrowing run-in with the state police, who–acting out of “anger and personal spite”–drew their guns and arrested her on obviously false charges, according to the lawsuit.

The incident happened last June, after 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly and two of her friends purchased a case of water bottles and cookie-baking supplies at a local Harris Teeter.

Officers with Virginia’s Alcohol Beverage Control agency were staking out the grocery store, on the hunt for lawbreakers. Mistaking Daly’s water bottles for beer, they thought they had found one.

Three officers followed the students to Daly’s car. After Daly and her friends had already climbed inside, the officers began banging on their windows. They were wearing their badges around their necks, but Daly couldn’t see them clearly and were unsure whether they were actual cops, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Daly was instructed to roll down her window, but she couldn’t do so without turning the car on, which angered the officers. One drew a gun and attempted to bash in the window.

Daly called 911 and tried to drive to a police station. The emergency operator then told her that the assailants were indeed police officers, so she pulled over. Police then arrested her for assaulting two different officers and failing to stop when ordered. She spent a night in jail. (RELATED: UPDATED: UVA student jailed for possession of bottled water, ice cream)

The charges were eventually dropped, after ABC determined that the officers’s heavy-handed tactics violated official policy.

The ordeal terrified Daly and left her in a nervous state. Her lawsuit alleges that the officers “acted with actual malice, out of embarrassment and disgrace for their own intentional and grossly negligent acts and charged (Daly) with three felonies and did so out of anger and personal spite.”

According to the lawsuit, Daly, “does not and never has consumed alcohol or abused drugs, and/or her parents, on her behalf, have incurred significant legal, medical and other costs, and will continue to do so in the future due to the malicious, intentional, and/or grossly negligent actions of the (d)efendants.”

The lawsuit asks for $40 million in damages.

While that may seem like a lot of money, The Washington Post’s Radley Balko wrote that it “may be just what Virginia policymakers need to start taking these issues seriously. The militarization of regulatory agencies such as the ABC is a disturbing trend,” he wrote.

It is interesting that even the uber-liberal Washington Post viewed the actions of the ABC agents as, “disturbing.”

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In closing for today, here is another example of democrat deceit. Folks, never forget who are our real enemies.

Obamacare voter form pre-marked for Dems – Daily Caller: “A couple in La Mesa, California received a voter registration card from California’s Obamacare exchange already pre-marked for the Democratic Party… ‘I’m an old guy and I never would have noticed it, except I have an accountant that notices every dot and dash on a piece of paper as a wife,’ the man who received the card said… Covered California is in the midst of sending out voter registration cards to all of its sign-ups, due to pressure from left-wing groups threatening legal action if they don’t comply… Covered California denied responsibility for the violation.”

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Friday Follies for October 4, 2013

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I feel vindicated. Earlier this week, I created a scenario for the creation of a new political party. Today, I saw the article below that appears to mirror those first steps I formulated on this post.

House and Senate conservatives have formed a caucus all their own, separate and apart from moderate Republicans and their own GOP leaders. Their meetings, held in person and over the phone, have helped the relatively small band of lawmakers maintain a united front and outsize influence in a budget debate that led to a government shutdown.

At the meetings, they have shared information and ideas, developed strategy and discussed how to frame the fight over Obamacare as part of a larger budget debate. They met in person most recently last Monday evening, according to Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa — just hours before the government shut down.

The private pow-wows have enabled conservative lawmakers to coalesce around some of the hallmark proposals of the government-funding fight, including the notion that they could fund government programs one at a time. — The Washington Examiner.

On Monday, I speculated that Congressional conservatives from both houses would form a caucus in defiance of the leadership of both parties. It appears now that my speculation was accurate.

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The new conservative coalition of Senators and Representatives have clout, as Harry Reid found out this week. Reid was disappointed that Boehner reneged on a secret deal he had made with Reid. Reid thought Boehner would support funding Obamacare in the CR in return for some nebulous promises from Reid. But, when the time came for Boehner to betray his party and House members, he didn’t. The pressure from House and Senate conservatives was too great.

Harry Reid puts John Boehner and his speakership in the crosshairs

By STEVE CONTORNO | OCTOBER 3, 2013 AT 1:35 PM

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday accused House Speaker John Boehner of reneging on a deal reached in September to fund government and said the Republican leader has put his political future ahead of the country.

Reid said that when he and Boehner met in early September, the Republican leader wanted a clean continuing resolution to fund government at $988 billion, or sequestration levels. The Nevada Democrat said Boehner then backed away from that agreement after conservatives in the GOP caucus flipped.

“We didn’t like it. But we negotiated, that was our compromise. The exact bill that he now refuses to let the House vote on, that was our negotiation,” Reid said. “I didn’t twist his arm. He twisted mine a little bit to get that number. Now he refuses to let his own party vote because he’s afraid to stand up to something he originally agreed to.”

On Wednesday, Reid offered Boehner an out by promising to negotiate a host of Republican objectives, like tax reform and the health care law, in a bicameral budget committee after the House passed a measure to fund government with no strings attached. Boehner immediately turned it down as a disingenuous proposal.

“I thought we had something he couldn’t refuse,” Reid said Thursday.

Reid’s Don Corlene tactics failed. Boo. Hoo.

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The IRS has been targeting selected conservatives for some time. Evangelist Franklin Graham, and conservative Christine O’Donnell are two from that list. Now, another conservative has been audited by the IRS, suddenly, after his famous speech before Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, Dr. Ben Carson.

The long line of conservatives targeted by the IRS

By John Solomon and Ben Wolfgang, The Washington Times, Thursday, October 3, 2013

Tea party groups, Franklin Graham, Christine O’Donnell, a pro-marriage group. And now Dr. Ben Carson.

The list of conservatives targeted by the Internal Revenue Service for audits, tax-exempt reviews or tax privacy breaches keeps growing, raising fresh questions in Washington about whether a scandal the Obama administration has blamed on bureaucratic incompetence and coincidence may in fact involve something more nefarious.

The latest revelation came Thursday from Dr. Carson, the renowned neurosurgeon who told The Washington Times that he was targeted for an audit just months after he gave a speech in front of President Obama that challenged America’s leadership. The agency requested to review his real estate holdings and then conducted a full audit.

In the end, the IRS found no wrongdoing, Dr. Carson said, but it raised his suspicions about being singled out for his speech.

“I guess it could be a coincidence, but I never had been audited before and never really had any encounters with the IRS,” Dr. Carson said in an interview. “But it certainly would make one suspicious because we know now the IRS has been used for political purposes and therefore actions like this come under suspicion.”

The article continues at the website.

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For weeks, since the last debt limit fight, Obama has threatened to take unilateral action to raise the debt limit citing Section 4 of the 14th Amendment as justification. He’s threatening to take action again to remove Congressional power of the purse.

If Congress Won’t Raise the Debt Ceiling, Obama Will Be Forced to Break the Law

Wouldn’t it be better to save the nation from default by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment, than to stand by and do nothing?

Back in 2011, I found myself writing (and writing and writing and writing and writing) about Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment. Afterwards, it seemed like a bizarre interlude: The brief crisis about the debt ceiling surely would not repeat itself in our lifetimes. After all, President Obama was handily reelected, the Democrats held onto the Senate, and the Republicans must surely have learned their lesson.

Or not so much.

Regardless of how the current shutdown crisis ends, it seems there will be a second debt-ceiling crisis two weeks from now. And the questions are flying again: Is the debt-ceiling statute unconstitutional? Can Obama “invoke” Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment and assert authority to breach the debt ceiling to pay “the public debt of the United States, authorized by law”? Or can one party, decisively defeated in a nationwide election and controlling only the lower house of the legislature, threaten the full faith and credit of the United states — and the health of the world economy — in pursuit of its short-term partisan advantage?

The world has heard enough from me on this subject, but three nuanced analyses are worth looking at. The first, by Henry J. Aaron of the Brookings Institution, notes that the debt-ceiling crisis threatens not just the president’s constitutional duty to make payments on the public debt but also the accompanying requirement that he spend money lawfully appropriated by Congress, either as part of a yearly budget or as part of statutes authorizing “entitlement” payments like Medicare or veterans’ benefits.

Failing to do any of these things would be a default on the president’s duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” The president may not be able to obey all three sources of law; if so, Aaron argues, he should make the payments and ignore the debt ceiling. “The debt ceiling is the fiscal equivalent of the human appendix — a law with no discoverable purpose,” he writes. “If Congress leaves the debt ceiling at a level inconsistent with duly enacted spending and tax laws, the president has no choice but to ignore it.”

Aaron’s argument echoes the elegant analysis last fall by law professors Neil Buchanan of George Washington University and Michael Dorf of Cornell. These two prominent scholars concluded that paying appropriated monies and interest on the debt represents the “least unconstitutional” option open to a president when Congress refuses to approve a debt-ceiling increase.

The writer above is a liberal, as you probably noticed. Like all liberals, he sees the Constitution as an impediment—unless it can be twisted to their advantage. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment gives the President NO POWER to unilaterally raise the debt, nor spend federal funds not authorized by Congress, specifically by the House of Representatives. To do so would eliminate the Balance of Powers in the Constitution; the balance deliberately designed to constrain the excesses of government.

If Obama and the congressional dems follow this path, it can only be corrected by counter-balancing force. I would much prefer we don’t go there!

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Malaise

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It’s gray outside at 9am. The temperature is hovering at freezing and we’re expected to get some light snow/freezing rain at any time. In two more days, it will be Spring. Today, however, it’s still Winter and the blahs are here.

The condition is accompanied by a local election in a month for city mayor and some councilmen. With one exception, the candidates are dems, dem-wannabees, or RINOs. From conversations with a number of folks-in-the-know, the long knives are out and betrayals has broken several friendships.

A pox on them.

No, I don’t mean that. A part-time ‘Pub, even one who only gives lip-service to conservatism, is still, marginally, better than dems who are blatant with their schemes to steal our wealth and squander our hard-built fiscal reserves.

The malaise extends from local ‘Pub politics to the state ‘Pubs to the national committees. The establishment believes they can retain, retrieve their national power by becoming democrat-lite. Reince Priebus presented his marketing plan to sell the “republican” brand by adopting all the social initiatives of the democrats. They released this plan just as CPAC was ending.

Reince Priebus gives GOP prescription for future

Posted by Rachel Weiner on March 18, 2013 at 9:39 am

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus gave a blistering assessment of the GOP’s problems on Monday based on the results of a months-long review, and he called on the party to reinvent itself and officially endorse immigration reform.

Referring to the November election, Priebus said at a breakfast meeting: “There’s no one reason we lost. Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren’t inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; and our primary and debate process needed improvement.”

“So, there’s no one solution,” he said. “There’s a long list of them.”

Among the report’s 219 prescriptions: a $10 million marketing campaign, aimed in particular at women, minorities and gays; a shorter, more controlled primary season and earlier national convention; and creation of an open data platform and analytics institute to provide research for Republican candidates.

Mississippi Committeeman Henry Barbour, Florida strategist Sally Bradshaw, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, Puerto Rico Committewoman Zori Fonalledas and South Carolina Committeman Glenn McCall authored the report.

The report was received with a resounding “thud!” of dropped jaws from conservatives. The report was supported by those in the Washington establishment , such as Karl Rove and Ann Coulter, while attacking the ‘Pub conservative base. The divergence of views was so divisive that some well-known, conservative observers speculated that the end of the republican party was on the horizon.

Trouble Brewing in GOP

David Limbaugh, Mar 19, 2013

For the first time, I am wondering about the long-term viability of the Republican Party. I say this not as an advocate of its demise or restructuring but as an observer of troubling signs.

The Republican Party is thought to be the institutional vehicle for the advancement of conservative policies, but for decades, the conservative movement has been frustrated with the party’s deviation from conservative principles — its refusal to live up to its decidedly conservative platform.

I believe that the disappointing results for Republicans in the 2006 elections and probably the 2012 elections, as well, were in no small part attributable to frustrated conservatives staying at home.

The thinking among many conservatives has been that the party has consistently fallen short by failing to restrain the growth of the ever-expanding federal government and by failing to nominate sufficiently conservative presidential nominees. That is, if we would just nominate and elect Reagan conservatives and govern on Reagan principles, we would recapture majority status in no time.

The main opposing view — call it the establishment view — holds that Republicans need to accept that the reign of small government is over, get with the program and devise policies to make the irreversibly enormous government smarter and more energetic. In other words, Republicans need to surrender to the notion that liberalism’s concept of government has won and rejigger their agenda toward taming the leviathan rather than shrinking it.

I’d feel better if the ongoing competition between Reagan conservatives and establishment Republicans were the only big fissure in the GOP right now, but there are other cracks that threaten to break wide open, too. Our problems transcend our differing approaches to the size and scope of government and to fiscal and other economic issues.

Reagan conservatism is no longer under attack from just establishment Republicans; it’s also under attack from many inside the conservative movement itself. Reagan conservatism is a three-legged stool of fiscal, foreign policy and social issues conservatism. But today many libertarian-oriented conservatives are singing from the liberal libertine hymnal that the GOP needs to remake its image as more inclusive, less tolerant, less judgmental and less strident. In other words, it needs to lighten up and quit opposing gay marriage, at least soften its position on abortion, and get on board the amnesty train to legalize illegal immigrants. I won’t even get into troubling foreign policy divisions among so-called neocons, so-called isolationists and those who simply believe we should conduct our foreign policy based foremost on promoting our strategic national interests.

One might reasonably assume that President Obama’s abysmal record would usher in an era of GOP unity, but ironically, his policies have put such a strain on America that they seem to be exacerbating, rather than alleviating, the divisions within the GOP. I see my more libertarian-oriented conservative friends on Twitter, for example, wholly frustrated with conservatives who refuse to surrender on the social issues and thereby, in their view, jeopardize a coalition that could successfully oppose Obama’s bankrupting of America. It’s as if they believe that all social conservatives have morphed into Todd Akins.

Maybe it’s just from where I’m sitting, but it appears to me that momentum is building among Republicans to capitulate on the issue of same-sex marriage, no matter what negative consequences might result from society’s abandonment of support for traditional marriage. Likewise, it seems that many Republicans are determined to surrender on the immigration issue on the naive hope that Republicans will instantly shed the ogre factor and be on equal footing to compete for the Hispanic vote.

I belong to the school that believes the Republican Party must remain the party of mainstream Reagan conservatism rather than try to become a diluted version of the Democratic Party. This does not mean Republicans can’t come up with creative policy solutions when advisable, but it does mean that conservatism is based on timeless principles that require no major revisions. Conservatives are champions of freedom, the rule of law and enforcement of the social compact between government and the people enshrined in the Constitution, which imposes limitations on government in order to maximize our liberties. If we reject these ideas, then we have turned our backs on what America means and what has made America unique. What’s the point of winning elections if the price is American exceptionalism?

I refuse to acquiesce to the cowardly notion that conservatives are intolerant or mean-spirited because they oppose discriminant treatment for groups and classes of people, because they support the rule of law, because they oppose a runaway entitlement state and because they adhere to traditional values, including the protection of innocent life.

But my personal preferences as to the future of the conservative movement and the GOP aren’t really the point. The point is that no matter what I prefer, the hard truth is that the movement inside the Republican Party to abandon social conservatism is nothing short of a political death wish. Denying it will not alter the reality.

David Limbaugh is a well-respected, conservative writer. He is as much a conservative as his brother and, like his brother, he is not a member of the establishment—The Ruling Class, as Rush has labeled them.

If the split does come, we can kiss goodbye winning the 2016 presidential election. The new party hasn’t time to seize control of the state party organizations, or, where the establishment retains control, to build their own state organizations. They need local, state and national organizations, well-managed and organized political infrastructure, to win the necessary electoral college votes and the election.

I’m not sure which is worse, the dems winning again in 2016 with Hilliary (gag!) or another dem, or having the establishment continue in control of the ‘Pubs. In either case, our chances of winning in 2016 has taken a nose-dive.

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