Category Archives: Conservative Government

A divergent path

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If you are a long time reader of this blog, you will have noticed I’ve been somewhat quiet since the election.  There are a variety of reasons for that reticence…long delayed chores, commitments to friends, and just a bit a depression that I think has afflicted all of us.

I like to call myself a political observer. That is what I call myself when around my ‘Pub friends. I’ve disappointed a few that wanted me to be more active in the political process. I was active this year supporting friends who were running for office. I’m glad to say they all won their offices.

Still, it wasn’t enough to win on the larger state and national scale. There have been many who have pontificated where the failure occurred—we didn’t address the moderates, the independents, the Hispanic voters. We needed to address woman and modify our pro-life stance. We should embrace all the illegals like the democrats and further continue to dilute our voter base.

Those are the opinions of the Washington GOP and their political toadies like Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer. Each of them have sold their souls to the GOP establishment. I want nothing to do with them. Whenever I hear them speak, I understand they really have no concept how the rest of the conservatives really think. They don’t understand why we oppose them—after all, they are the party elite!

No more.

At the core, the Republican Party is fragmenting. The conservative base feels betrayed. Why? Because we believe the party elite crammed a vulnerable candidate down our throats whose conservative credentials were weak at best. Then they modified the party’s convention rules to further weaken conservatives, those not of the establishment to maintain the establishment’s control of the party’s primary, caucus and convention process. The result was that many conservatives shifted to 3rd parties or didn’t vote. It was enough to lose those “swing” states.  Democrat ballot box stuffing didn’t help either.

The party elites believe they can continue as before. That won’t happen. In the states and among political pundits outside of Washington, forces are moving. Here’s just a few comments from a couple of well-known conservatives.

Laura Ingraham unloaded on her radio show with this comment.

Laura Unleashed

Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindahl offers the Republicans some simple advice in the wake of crushing losses on November 6. Be smart…be the ideas party…offer intelligent solutions. This sounds obvious, but approach, language, strategy all have to be carefully considered in the wake of Mitt Romney’s defeat and the loss of Senate contests that should have been gimmes for the GOP. As for those Republicans who believe that the party needs to moderate or change its core beliefs to survive, go for it. I think that is both a political fools errand and and bad policy. Most people are conservative because they believe free markets and limited government, borne out of our Judeo-Christian tradition, represent the best hope for America. Those are the principles I will continue to advocate for, regardless of intra-party squabbling or the panic of the moment.

Bobby Jindal had this to say.

Jindal: End ‘dumbed-down conservatism’

By JONATHAN MARTIN | 11/13/12 4:22 AM EST

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Monday called on Republicans to “stop being the stupid party” and make a concerted effort to reach a broader swath of voters with an inclusive economic message that pre-empts efforts to caricature the GOP as the party of the rich.

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“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything,” Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. “We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”

He was just as blunt on how the GOP should speak to voters, criticizing his party for offending and speaking down to much of the electorate.

“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,” Jindal said. “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

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Jindal, a Brown Graduate and Rhodes Scholar, is already a favorite of conservative intellectuals and his assessment that Republican difficulties owe as much to economics as demographics will be well-received by right-leaning thinkers. Since last week, a sort of backlash to the backlash has sprouted up, with some conservatives castigating what they see as too much knee-jerk pandering on immigration and not enough discussion of what they see as the party’s unimaginative, donor-driven fiscal policies.Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, said the GOP “must reject identity politics” and “treat folks as individuals, as Americans, not as members of special interest groups.”

Raising Romney’s damaging comments about voters who don’t pay income taxes, Jindal urged the GOP to make clear they want the support of every American.

“The Republican Party is going to fight for every single vote,” he said. “That means the 47 percent and the 53 percent, that means any other combination of numbers going up to 100 percent.”

Bobby Jindal will be the incoming leader of the Republican Governors Association. There’s more at the website if you wish to follow the link. 

Across the country, groups of conservatives are organizing, planning and gathering. Some call for a new 3rd party. Others point out that we already have conservative 3rd parties and none have been able to draw double-digit percentages in elections at any level. More, this time, believe as I do that change to the Republican Party must come from within. To do that, we must weed out the establishment drones at the local and state levels. Then we can seize the national central committee.

Those who used our support this last election cycle must declare their stance now. Are you for us, the conservatives who worked to get you elected or for the establishment? The time to choose is coming. Choose wisely.

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Principles, Values and Motivations

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As conservatives, we base our principles on the Constitution, the writings of our Founders, of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. These writers and others expound the theories that our nation has placed into practice as our Constitution.

From these principles, we create our values: individual liberty, self-reliance, personal responsibility and growth through personal effort and work. These values give meaning to our lives, our families and our children. Together, our principles and values, have created a culture that is foreign to many. Particularly, the left, whose principles and values differ radically.

Today’s topic, however, is not about those differences. It is about motivations—what drives us towards our goal of reclaiming our state and federal governments, of reinstituting those cherished values into government and reclaiming our individual liberties and self-worth.

At the root, while creating a personal framework, neither principles nor values truly drive our motivation. It is the imposition of contrary principles and values that motivate us. I found an article by John Hawkins on PJ media (H/T to Dinah H) that enumerates the issues that motivate us as we move toward the elections in thirty days. John writes of five issues…agendas, perhaps, that has been adopted by the left. These agendas, as they have been and continue to be implemented on a national scale creates conflicts with our established, conservative culture, principles and values. Those differences, ours from our values and the left’s from the agendas below, creates and supports our motivation.

5 Revolting Facets Of American Culture

The black mold in the walls of American culture.

1) An elevation of victimhood

In a weird reversal of how the world has worked since man was raised up out of the dust, it has become good to be a victim in America. In fact, many of the people held up as “victims” in our country are loving every second of their “victimhood.”

The best recent example of that phenomenon is Sandra Fluke. Here’s an unaccomplished 30 year old student who went to Congress and demanded that other people be forced to pay thousands of dollars a year to subsidize her birth control. It’s like the set-up of a stand-up comedian’s joke, except that when people responded with the natural punch lines which featured lots of “She’s a slut” jokes, Sandra Fluke was treated like a victim. Next thing you know, she’s on TV, she’s treated like a heroine, she gets a speaking slot at the Democratic Convention. For a 5th rate mediocrity like Sandra Fluke, her supposed “victimhood” was the best thing that ever happened to her.

…

2) A fascination with freaks, failures, and deviants

For many Americans, the easiest way to get your name in the papers, get people talking about you, and make money isn’t to be great at something, it’s to be a dirtbag. Make a sex tape, flash your vagina getting out of a car, or just behave like a jackass and everyone will be saying your name. If you don’t think that’s true, then why do you know who Snooki is?

…

When you reward bad behavior with money and fame, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get more bad behavior. Snooki may be a skanky loser, but how many young girls are thinking, “A skanky ‘loser’ with money, fame, and a TV show sounds pretty good to me!”

3) Infantilization

America is a country that was born in revolution and peopled by some of the most independent human beings ever to walk the earth. Our ancestors explored, conquered, and settled this nation under some of the harshest conditions imaginable, even in many places where “government” was more of a theoretical concept than a functioning entity. Now, the government educates your kids, gives you money and food if you don’t have a job, picks which toilets and light bulbs you’re allowed to buy, runs your health care, and takes care of you when you get old.

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We’ve become a society where adults are encouraged to behave like children and as Mark Steyn has said, “A society of children cannot survive, no matter how all-embracing the government nanny.”

4) Hyper-sexualization:

Sex is a healthy, normal, and good part of life. For that matter, so is water. But just as you can drown in a flood, our society is drowning in sex. It saturates our magazine ads, TV, and the Internet to such an extent that gyrating women in bikinis trying to sell us beer or teenagers having sex on TV barely even catches our attention.

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Hyper-sexualized Halloween costumes, nudity on the Internet and in film, and musicians wearing outfits that would have been considered risque for prostitutes fifty years ago have become the norm. Worse yet, we don’t know how to stop ourselves. Any time someone suggests that we turn the dial down a notch or two from acting like a society full of pimps and whores, you’d think it was a suggestion that we put everyone in formless robes and chastity belts. There should be some setting between Leave it to Beaver and a strip club that we can embrace as a country.  (RELATED CONTENT: What Father Would Permit His Young Daughter to Wear a Bikini? and The Difference Between Sexy Bikinis and Slutty Thongs — And Why Little Girls Should Wear Neither)

5) Indifference towards societal disintegration

Thomas Sowell had it right when he said, “Civilization has been aptly called a ‘thin crust over a volcano.’ The anointed are constantly picking at that crust.”

We seem to start out with an assumption that our culture is healthy, vibrant, and can’t be damaged by any of our societal tinkering. It’s hard to understand what would give anyone this impression when roughly a third of the population has been divorced, 73 percent of black children, 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites are born outside marriage, and 1 out of every 32 Americans is in prison or on parole.

Yet, we slur Christianity, encourage gay marriage, talk up single motherhood, push deviancy in TV and movies, mock morality and scoff at codes of honor. Throughout most of history, civilizations haven’t looked at attempts to stave off cultural rot as religious zealotry or prudishness; they’ve considered it to be simple common sense.

Truly, we are in a culture war. A war between those of us who cherish our traditions, our Christian values and the principles that built this country against those of the dependency class, those who have neither values based on religion or on self-improvement but of personal aggrandizement—a transitory display of self that fades with age and without gaining wisdom.

The next battle in that war comes in a month when we go to the polls to determine which of these two cultural visions will be sustained.  The war between these two cultures will not be resolved in a single battle for there is no end as long as greed, sloth and a lust for power exists. This election will not determine the winner of the culture war. If we lose, however, it could be a devastating to our continued survival as a nation of free individuals. The nation is becoming fragile and it could take little for it to be permanently damaged.

When you enter the polling booth next month, think on these motivators and check the box, flip the lever for the conservative candidate…the candidate whose personal ethos supports our common principles and values, the candidate who is motivated, like us, in defense of our nation, our principles, values and culture.

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Observations on a Primary

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It’s over! Some of the folks I supported won, some lost. I’m happy with most of the results. One who I supported won with nearly 70% of the votes.

While I watched the results roll in last night, I noticed at trend building.  The state ‘Pub establishment took a beating yesterday. A number of the establishment’s candidates lost, some with significant margins, to those who received support from Missouri’s grassroot conservatives.  Many of these grassroot organizations were initially started by Paul supporters. Some were frustrated Tea Partiers unhappy with the “organized” Tea Party like Freedom Works and the AFP. They felt that the organized Tea Party had sold out to the GOP establishment.

I don’t know if that is true or not. From my perspective, I think there is some truth hidden in those frustrations.  The Tea Party Express was established by Trent Lott in an attempt to subvert the Tea Party.  It didn’t work.

Let’s take the U. S. Senate race between John Brunner, Sarah Steelman and Tod Akin as an example.  All the conventional polls had Brunner winning with Steelman second, followed by Akin—the Uber-Conservative according to Claire McCaskill.  Brunner had the money, mostly his own, Steelman had the support of the MOGOP establishment, Freedom Works, some of the AFP and endorsements and support from Sarah Palin. Tod Akin had…the overwhelming support of grassroot groups scattered across the state. Groups that worked under the radar for the most part and out of mind by the establishment. I voted for Sarah Steelman. But it was a close toss-up between her and Tod Akin.

There were other signs of grassroot groups making their presence felt. Another example was the race for the Missouri District 31 Senate. Scott Largent was the establishment’s pick. He also had the support of the teacher’s unions and from an out-of-state corporation with a feud with Largent’s opponent, Ed Emery.  That corporation paid for a large amount of negative, mud-slinging ads against Emery. Largent didn’t pay for those ads. Neither did he disavow them. Instead, he incorporated some of the themes from those ads into his own campaign. Largent also had the support of the Cass County establishment including endorsements from several office holders. In one county, Bates, if I remember correctly, Largent had the support of the county teacher’s union who urged their democrat members to cross party lines to vote against Emery.

All that backfired.  Emery was another who had the support of those grassroot groups and from frustrated Paul supporters unaffiliated with any of the other organizations.  Out of five counties in that Senatorial district, Emery won four including Cass, the largest, most populous of the five. Cass has more potential votes than any two or three counties in the district combined. The only county that Emery didn’t lead was Henry county. Clinton, the largest town in Henry County is Largent’s home and he rightfully expected to win Henry County and did.  Still it didn’t help. In the end, Emery won with 10,100 votes to Largent’s 9,600.

Another example was the race between Jacob Turk and Jerry Nolte for the 5th Congressional District. During Missouri’s redistricting last year, the GOP establishment purposely took a notch out of Cleaver’s district that just happened to include Turk’s home and placed Turk into another district that already had a strong ‘Pub incumbent. That plan was later thrown out but it’s an example of how far the establishment will go against one of their opponents.

Came the election, Turk won handily. Nolte, with the establishment’s stamp of approval, lost. Turk won the GOP slot against democrat Emmanuel Cleaver with 59% of the GOP primary votes.

There is a lesson to be learned from yesterday’s primary if the Missouri GOP establishment is wise enough to accept it. 

Don’t ignore Missouri’s conservative grassroots. Do so at your peril.

There has been an old adage that I believe is still valid. “So goes Missouri, so goes the nation.” GOP, heed this and learn.

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Comparisons

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Obamacare went to the Supreme Court last week.  Obama’s Solicitor General and his assistant were…well, let’s say they did not present their side very well. One description I read on the Internet said they were minor leaguers meeting major league All-Stars. In my opinion it was worse than that.

The conventional wisdom of the pundits and many others is that Obamacare is toast and that it will be declared unconstitutional in its entirety.  I’m not so sure, but the outcome of Obamacare isn’t my primary topic today.

Given the premise that Obamacare is unconstitutional, libs say they’ll just expand medicare to include everyone. Medicare has been in force since the 1960s. Everyone knows it’s constitutional and has no requirement for people to sign up. No Individual Mandate so they say.

Really?

I’m retired and started drawing Social Security in January of last year. I signed up for Medicare and it became effective for me on the 1st of March.  Much as I dislike Medicare, I didn’t have much choice.

I could have refused Medicare.  Yes, I had that right.  If I did, however, I’d also lose my Social Security.  As much as I hate to admit it, my Social Security income is a significant percentage of my fixed income. More than my other sources combined.

Given that, and I’m not alone, I really didn’t have a choice.  My circumstances, like that of most retired Americans, made choosing Medicare an Individual Mandate.

My preference would have been to continue with my health insurance provided by my former employer. Theoretically, I could if I ponied up payments for that insurance.  The monthly bill, however, was more by several hundred dollars than my pension check.

My former employer assumed I would be receiving medicare when I hit 65 and did not provide equal corporate health insurance to retirees once they reach Medicare age.

This year, my options became much more…limited.  I had a gap of several months when my employer healthcare ended and Medicare began.  My wife, also retired, was in the same boat.  We were able to find some month-to-month catastrophic insurance at a reasonable cost, around $400/mth for the two of us.  It was limited, no prescription plan, pay-as-you-go for office visits and office lab-work.

For some, this would be a viable alternative. For us, it was not optimum. We needed a drug plan for our expensive medications, and for blood work done every quarter. For us, as bad as it is, we’re back to Medicare.

I don’t know how long Medicare will be suitable.  If Obamacare remains in force, two current Medicare add-ons, the Advantage Plan, and Supplemental Insurance, will not be allowed.  I and my wife, in a last minute rush, chose an Advantage plan for this year.  Now that I’ve had a chance to do more investigation, we’ll choose a Supplemental plan next year—if we can.

Given existing Medicare law, do we have an Individual Mandate requiring us to choose Medicare?  For us, “Yes.”

Therefore, if retirees have no choice but to sign up for Medicare, that is an Individual Mandate.  If the Individual Mandate portion of Obamacare is not constitutional is not Medicare unconstitutional as well?

That is a very good question that I have no answer.  While it may require me to pay more out-of-pocket, I like Paul Ryan’s plan to move Medicare to a subsidized private health plan. With competition, and much less federal regulation, I’ll bet healthcare for retirees will become much, much better and much, much cheaper for all.

If conservatives win the White House and Congress next fall, let’s reform Medicare by dissolving it and all the existing regulations with it.  Changes are needed and Paul Ryan’s plan is, for me and my wife, a much better option than Medicare as it now exists.

State Employee Benefits

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A question was posed yesterday concerning retirement benefits for MO Legislators.  The Missouri General Assembly Legislators, by design, are part-time positions only.  Their yearly salary is capped at $31,000 per legislative year.

As a part-time legislature, compensation is low with the General Assembly, and most senators and representatives hold jobs outside their legislative duties. Law makers are paid $31,351 per legislative year. — Wiki

The legislators are term limited to eight years as a Representative and eight years as a state Senator.  A total for any individual of sixteen years. The question is whether Legislators should receive a state retirement.

No.  The Missouri Constitution clearly states that Legislators are part-time.  The office is not designed to provide a “living wage” nor should it be.  Legislators should be in office to serve the state and their constituents, not to be served by the state.

Almost immediately, another asked if that retirement ban should extend to other state employees and to police and firemen.  My opinion to both is a qualified, “Yes.”

Many (most?) corporations across the country no longer provide company retirement plans.  They have switched to 401K plans with some degree of matching employer funds.  For those who don’t know what a 401K plan is, it is an employee savings plan where an employee can save for retirement and not be taxed on those funds until they are withdrawn at retirement.  Most employers will contribute, to some degree, “matching funds” to those plans. The amount of contribution can vary from zero to one hundred percent match of the employee’s contribution.

Over a period of years the 401K fund can grow quite large.  If an employee moves from one job to another, he can take those funds with him and continue to contribute to them at his new job.  For me and those whom I worked with, the 401K plan has worked very well.

Only those corporations saddled with unions still have a company retirement plan. In some states, even those pension plans are shifting to 401K plans.  Public service employees, like unions, still balk and ignore this trend.

As a recently retired engineer, I know what it is to work toward a goal of being independent in retirement.  I’ve  planned my retirement through most of my working life. I admit it’s not as big as I would have desired, but my plan has worked well enough.

One of the contributors of the discussion stated that without a retirement plan, a state provided pension plan, no one would want to be a state employee or a Police Officer or Firemen.  For the latter, if a retirement plan was their motivation of joining the Police or Fire Departments, they are in the wrong profession.

But that argument still exists for some.  In truth, the state can no longer afford state provided pensions.  The individual must take responsibility for his future.  What the state should do is to provide the tools to allow the employee to make his own decision: ignore the situation as many do, or use those tools to create a personal plan and the mechanism for the employee to fund that plan. The responsibility of the state ends there.

The corruption of state pension plans, driven by public service unions, must end.  We know the farce of the Wisconsin state pension plan where the state provides the funding and the union member contributions go to the union central committee to be used for political contributions to liberal and socialist organizations. That is nothing more than theft. It is misusing public moneys to fund a plan while the so-call individual contributions are siphoned into political contributions for the democrat party.  If that isn’t a criminal act, it should be. 

States can no longer provide cradle to grave support for their citizens as they can no longer provide such services to their employees.  People and employees must manage their futures independent of the State.  The argument that the lack of pensions and other state-provided benefits will prevent people from filling state positions is as false as the idea that the State must provide universal healthcare. The concept doesn’t work nor can we afford the expense. 

The day of personal responsibility must return. The proper role of the state as an employer is to provide the tools and, perhaps, mechanisms for the employees to create their own futures.  The day of the state management of personal benefits is over.  Let’s move forward with plans that reinforce personal responsibility instead of state dependency.

Alert! Obama’s teleprompter stolen and held for ransom!

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Overnight, a truck with Obama’s teleprompter, podium, presidential seals and a portable sound stage was stolen in Virginia.  The truck contained the equipment that was to be used for a speech by Obama at Chesterfield, VA, a few days ago.

The Richmond Police received a communication about the stolen teleprompter.

October 18, 2011

APB put out for Obama’s teleprompter

Rick Moran

Police in Richmond, VA have issued an All Points Bulletin for a truck carrying President Obama’s teleprompter and other electronic equipment which was stolen from the hotel yesterday.

The vehicle was later recovered Monday afternoon in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express near the airport. Sources tell WWBT/NBC12 that law enforcement agencies were seen examining a white truck that was parked there.

There are no indications of whether equipment was taken from the truck.
“No classified or sensitive information was in the vehicle. We take incidents such as this very seriously and a formal investigation is continuing,” a Defense Information Systems Agency spokesperson told the news outlet.

No ransom demand for the teleprompter has been made as yet, but a source in the Richmond police department reports receiving a threat from an unknown caller who reportedly said, “Tell the prez that unless he gives the OWS demonstrators what they want, the TOTUS gets one right between the paddles.”
White House aides considered canceling several events, worried that the lack of a teleprompter would make the president more incoherent than usual. But Obama bravely insisted that “the show must go on” and would ad lib if necessary. Panicked advisors talked about rigging a “Fail Safe” switch so that they could turn the sound off on the president’s mike if, as expected, Obama began to stutter and stammer while losing his place. It is unknown if they were able to install the switch prior to the president’s appearance.

This column in the American Thinker was written as a straight story. I would caution you, however, to take it as satire.  Although there is an element of believability to it, don’t take this version of the story to heart.

By the way, did you know that TOTUS has his own website?  Yes, he does. You can find it here.  He reports from captivity in this posting.


Heh, heh!


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If you’ve read some of my comments floating around the internet, you will know I’m not a Ron Paul fan.  I think he’s a ticking time-bomb like many of those on the left.  If elected, I also think he’d do as much, or perhaps more, damage to our country as is Obama and his coterie of Marxists.

That said, I do like some of Ron Paul’s proposals.  The American Thinker reports of those plans.

October 17, 2011

Ron Paul’s Serious Proposal

J. Robert Smith

GOP presidential aspirant Ron Paul will unveil his budget and government reform proposal today, the Wall Street Journal reports.  Paul’s plan is a serious alternative to the generally cautious Romney proposal.  Paul’s plan will either be met with stony silence by the fossil media and DC’s RINOs or derided as politically unrealistic.  Libertarians will cheer, but so should grassroots conservatives.
If elected president, Paul proposes cutting a trillion dollars in spending during his first year in office.  Mitt Romney is aiming for a paltry $20 billion (possibly less than Cardinals’ slugger Albert Pujos will be paid annually when he signs a new contract).
Paul wants to eliminate five cabinet-level departments, they being the Departments of Energy, Education, Interior, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development (isn’t HUD a delicious oxymoron?  Let’s think Detroit or Newark.).
But that’s not all.  Danny Yardon in the Wall Street Journal writes:

Mr. Paul would also push for the repeal of the new health-care law, last year’s Wall Street regulations law and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the 2002 corporate governance law passed in response to a number of corporate scandals, including Enron. 

 Mr. Paul, who wrote the book “End the Fed,” calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve and “competing currency legislation to strengthen the dollar and stabilize inflation.” The excerpts did not provide more details on how such legislation would work.

When it comes to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, Mr. Paul wants a system that “honors our promise to our seniors and veterans, while allowing young workers to opt out.”  He also wants to run Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor, and “other welfare programs” through block grants to states.

And as a nice jab at the political class, Paul proposes cutting the president’s annual salary from four hundred grand annually to just $39K.  Public service should be a sacrifice, not an alternative career path.   
Paul’s proposal is the core of a real reform agenda, not the milquetoast stuff coming from Romney, who’s more about trying to restore America, pre-Obama.  Paul’s plan addresses the problem of government boldly (who could see Ron Paul waving a pale pastel flag, anyway?).
Does Paul’s budget and government reform proposal increase his chances of securing the GOP presidential nomination?  Nope (let the brickbats fly, Paul supporters!).  But Paul’s willingness to go big and bold in addressing the problem of government should be well noted by Perry, Cain, and Bachmann. 

…
The Paul approach – big and bold – is the prescription that the more viable conservative contenders for the GOP nomination should examine and adopt.  Romney’s money and organization can be defeated if conservative voters are coalesced behind one conservative candidate with the guts to proclaim that the federal government needs more than handyman work; it needs an overhaul that unleashes Americans’ energy, know-how, and creativity – all of which will create a new American prosperity and better safeguard liberty moving forward.

There is more in the column above at the website.  As I said, I’m not a Ron Paul supporter, but no one can deny that some of his ideas—foreign policy and national security excluded, are worth a second, third, and fourth look.

A Conservative Foreign Policy.

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Waaay back in the day when I was still in college, I took some government classes to fill out some electives and credits while finishing my major.  Two classes were “American Foreign Policy” and “Foreign Relations and Diplomacy.”  I don’t remember the name of the instructor but he was the #2 or #3 man in the US State Department under John Foster Dulles during Eisenhower’s presidency. (Yeah, I know. This dates me.) He was also the State Department’s liaison with the CIA when Allen Dulles was the director.  John and Allen Dulles were brothers, by the way.
It was a very interesting series of classes and they were conducted more as seminars than senior year classes.  They made me think in a new manner and probably were the turning point that directed me down the conservative path—much to the chagrin of my democrat and union supporting father. I suppose the libs of that day would say that I’d been indoctrinated. In reality, none of the classes were politically oriented. Much to the contrary.

Be that as it may, I’ve always had an interest in foreign policy.  It didn’t take long for me to decided that the policies presented by democrats were…stupid if not insane.  Remember the definition of insanity is doing the same over and over again while expecting different results.

Our current policy of kissing the butt of our enemies (Chavez, Castro, Hamas/Hezbollah, et. al.) is a prime example.  It’s certainly worked to keep Obama’s most powerful enemy, Hillary Clinton, out of the country, but other than that, it’s been a complete failure.

What should be a good, workable and conservative foreign policy for out times?  The one below is short, sweet, appropriate and workable.  It was presented by Sarah Palin earlier this week at a military charity fundraiser at the Colorado Christian University. You shouldn’t be surprised you’ve not heard about it.
Sarah Palin said…
There’s a lesson here then for the effective use of force, as opposed to sending our troops on missions that are ill-defined. And it can be argued that our involvement elsewhere, say in Libya, is an example of a lack of clarity. See, these are deadly serious questions that we must ask ourselves when we contemplate sending Americans into harm’s way. Our men and women in uniform deserve a clear understanding of U.S. positions on such a crucial decision. I believe our criteria before we send our young men and women—America’s finest—into harm’s way should be spelled out clearly when it comes to the use of our military force. I can tell you what I believe that criteria should be in five points.
First, we should only commit our forces when clear and vital American interests are at stake. Period.
Second, if we have to fight, we fight to win. To do that, we use overwhelming force. We only send our troops into war with the objective to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible. We do not stretch out our military with open-ended and ill-defined missions. Nation building is a nice idea in theory, but it is not the main purpose of our armed forces. We use our military to win wars.
And third, we must have clearly defined goals and objectives before sending troops into harm’s way. If you can’t explain the mission to the American people clearly and concisely, then our sons and daughters should not be sent into battle. Period.
Fourth, American soldiers must never be put under foreign command. We will fight side by side with our allies, but American soldiers must remain under the care and the command of American officers.
Fifth, sending in our armed forces should be the last resort. We don’t go looking for dragons to slay. However, we will encourage the forces of freedom around the world who are sincerely fighting for the empowerment of the individual. When it makes sense, when it’s appropriate, we will provide them with material support to help them win their own freedom.
We are not indifferent to the cause of human rights or the desire for freedom. We are always on the side of both. But we can’t fight every war. We can’t undo every injustice around the world. But with strength and clarity in those five points, we’ll make for a safer, more prosperous, more peaceful world because as the U.S. leads by example, as we support freedom across the globe, we’re going to prove that free and healthy countries don’t wage war on other free and healthy countries. The stronger we are, the stronger and more peaceful the world will be under our example.
There is much more here.  Read the column at Red State and then compare Palin’s foreign policy with that of Obama’s.  Which would you prefer?  Me? I’ll take Sarah Palin and her foreign policy any day.