Category Archives: The Establishment

Monday’s Talking Points

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Headlines on various news outlets this morning: 

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Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel

Hagel Fired for Contradicting Obama over ISIS threat!

From FOX News…

OBAMA FINDS MIDTERM SCAPEGOAT IN HAGEL
In another strong sign of President Obama’s hard tack left in the wake of a midterm drubbing, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is heading for the exits. First reported by the NYT, the cashiering of the Pentagon boss comes after “the two men mutually agreed” that it was time for the only Republican in Obama’s cabinet to go. But given the fact that the White House was the one pushing out the story, it seems more likely that the president had grown tired of the ongoing pressure from Hagel and members of the top brass to take a more aggressive stance on national security threats abroad. The conflict went public back in August when Hagel openly contradicted White House talking points on the threat posed by Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria. While Obama succumbed to the pressure, Hagel’s ouster shows the president seeking to reassert control over his foundering foreign policy. — FOX Newsletter, November 24, 2014

Never let it be said that Obama lets anyone on his staff disagree with him. I wonder which hand-puppet will be chosen next for Sec’y of Defense?

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Rand Paul has been the fair-haired boy of Libertarians and the Paulbot wing of the GOP. He has been viewed as an opponent of the GOP Washington establishment. When Ted Cruz and Mike Lee stood up in opposition to Harry Reid, and occasionally Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul stood in the background giving the impression of supporting Cruz and Lee but seldom actually doing so on the floor of the Senate.

I’ve never trusted Rand Paul. In my view, he is too much like his Dad—inconsistent, a bit unstable with a tin-foil hat firmly in place. My view, again, has been vindicated. The reports today have Rand Paul cozing up to Mitch McConnell, worming his way into the establishment and the Ruling Class.

Paul strengthens McConnell ties with fundraiser hire – National Review: “[Sen.] Rand Paul [R-Ky.] is bringing on [Sen.] Mitch McConnell’s [R-Ky.] national finance director, Laura Sequeira, to play a key fundraising role at his political-action committee ahead of an expected 2016 presidential campaign.”

[Flashback: “We’ve developed a very tight relationship, and I’m for him…I don’t think he’s made a final decision on that. But he’ll be able to count on me.” – Senate Majority Leader-elect Mitch McConnell in a post-election interview.] — FOX Newsletter, November 24, 2014.

McConnell, immediately following the election, betrayed the GOP by publicly stating the Senate would not use the only real weapons of Congress against a rogue President—impeachment and removal from office, and the power of the purse—defunding Obama’s acts of defiance to Congress and strictures of the Constitution. When asked what McConnell would do to oppose Obama, McConnell, in essence, said he’d rollover and do nothing. That allows Obama to continue his lawless edicts without opposition…and now Rand Paul will help McConnell to do…nothing.

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I have been called, on occasion, a Grammar-Nazi. I accept that label. Why is grammar necessary, and spelling, too? Because correct grammar and spelling enhances communication and decreases confusion and misunderstanding.

It is a failing of education when schools no longer teach grammar, sentence structure and construction, spelling and writing. Not cursive hand-writing, although that should be taught, too, but writing as in Writing an Essay. Clear, concise writing, with proper sentence and paragraph structure, is fading. Others agree with me.

Descriptive versus Prescriptive: Another Left-Wing Scam

By Bruce Deitrick Price, November 24, 2014

Everywhere we look, we’ve got pompous professors telling us they don’t dare prescribe what’s right in language.  No, no, no, no.  It’s not their role.  Nor yours either, that’s for sure.  People can express themselves as they wish.  It’s America, the 21st century.  God forbid we should tell anybody how to do anything.“Weird Al” Yankovic put out a popular video called “Word Crimes.”  It’s gotten almost 20,000,000 views.  In effect, he says: “Hey, moron, do it the right way.”  He got everybody talking about correct grammar.  Boy, we needed that.  Thanks, Weird Al.

Naturally, all the primly pontificating nuisances crawled out of the woodwork to tell us: hey, stop all that prescribing!  You can only describe. 

And why?  Because when anthropologists go in the jungle to study a primitive culture, they must remember that the natives are the experts on their own language.  Great.  That’s fine and dandy.  But that has nothing to do with how we should deal with our own language. In our case, you ask the relevant experts (teachers, novelists, journalists), average the answers, and that’s probably a good guide.  But you certainly don’t listen to left-wing scam artists telling you that our experts are not allowed to speak, because anything they say would be prescriptive, and we don’t allow that when we go into the jungle on anthropological expeditions.  Doesn’t this sophistry almost make your head spin?

But look again, and it turns out there is a second sophistry on top of the first one.  These discussions about natives, experts, and ourselves casually presuppose that we are talking about adults.  But many times, without ever acknowledging it, the discussion shifts over to school and the teaching of children.  Isn’t it obvious that the freedom you might give to adults is not appropriately given to children?

In other words, when liberal sophisticates start discussing this issue, they always pose it in terms of freedom, creativity, self-expression, laissez-faire, do your own thing, and gather ye rosebuds while ye may.  Sure, if you insist, adults can wear clothes inside-out and stay drunk.  Let’s not waste time discussing it.  If you want to arrange your sentences backward and break every grammatical rule, go for it.

What we’re discussing now is what’s appropriate in the early grades at school.  Teaching is typically prescriptive, and that’s how it should be.  Schools should teach the right ways to do things.  (This approach has got to be far more efficient than what many public schools are now doing: teach no ways at all, or teach all the ways as if none is preferable.) 

Bottom line, what newspapers call Standard English should be taught first.  That seems to be what our left-wing professors are eager to stop.

So what are the pros and cons?  Do you let a child do anything the child wants?  Are you doing children a favor if you allow them to go out with dirty faces or raggedy clothes?  Isn’t it foolish to pretend that children live and learn in a vacuum?

It seems to be common sense and common decency to tell children what is typically done.  With regard to language, this might require explaining regional variations, work-related slang, and even class differences.  Most children can understand these ideas at a fairly young age.  They probably already speak a different way with their friends from how they do with their parents.

To pretend that all these nuances don’t exist is the opposite of teaching.  To pretend that everything is equally acceptable is a nasty sort of nihilism.

Question is, why are liberals so eager to drown children in permissiveness and relativism?  Who is being served?  Just recently reports came out about a Chicago school that was teaching anal sex to fifth-graders.  And this would be for whose benefit?  The children’s?  No, this is surely liberals trying to break down the last barriers.

Presumably we’re seeing that same worldview when schools refuse to teach grammar.  The point, always, is power – in this case, the power to make the rules.  That’s why the left always maneuvers to control language, semantics, and education.

The sophistry prohibiting prescriptive grammar is not about grammar at all.  It’s about the left being able to tell everybody else how to talk, and how to think.  (Note that the anti-prescriptive diktat is itself prescriptive.)

Liberals always want to play their ideological games, using kids as guinea pigs.  If you don’t tell the kids what the prevailing rules are, the kids will be left in an intellectual wasteland.  To excuse this, you have a whole Education Establishment boldly proclaiming that whatever little children say is just fine, whatever it is.  No rules, guessing, and invented spelling – that’s what elementary education is for many.

But how can they justify all this logically?  Well, some genius thought, why don’t we just bring back anthropological field work to our own society?  We’ll announce (and argue with great indignation) that professional authors, English professors, and smart citizens who have used the language expertly for a lifetime have absolutely no special standing.  They should shut up, lest they be guilty of the crime of prescription.  The left has gotten away with this fluff for 75 years.

Aren’t you tired of left-wing professors using lame sophistries to dumb down the schools and the society?  Here’s a plan: don’t accept lame sophistries.

Sophistry. That’s a word I’ve not seen for a long, long time. Truthfully, now, how many of you know what it means? Don’t know? Here’s the definition. If you and your children don’t know, it’s a good topic for teaching both of you.

soph·ist·ry
ˈsäfəstrē/
noun
noun: sophistry
  1. the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.
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They’re scared

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The political future of democrats continues to slide. In Missouri, State Treasurer, Clint Zweiful, has announced he won’t run again for any office. Zweiful is term limited as Treasurer.

[Zweiful] told The Associated Press he considered running for U.S. Senate or lieutenant governor in 2016. But he said he opted against a campaign partly because he wants to continue to be involved with the activities of his two teenage daughters. — KY3 TV.

Staying home with the family is the usual political cop-out when a politico thinks he is toast.

But Zweiful isn’t the only democrat running scared. McCaskill is too. How to I know? I observe her actions before and after the last election.

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Senator Claire McCaskill, D-MO

Before the election, an election that did not include McCaskill running for re-election, she was the dems fair-haired girl. Her prospects were good. She was rumored to be in the fast-lane as Missouri’s next democrat candidate for Governor or Eric Holder’s replacement as AG.

Then came the 2014 mid-terms elections. McCaskill did a 180º turn. The democrats were out. McCaskill started talking like a ‘Pub. She was against Harry Reid for Minority Leader, she was for passage of the Keystone XL pipeline. There were rumors, unsubstantiated so far, that she’d flip parties (gag!).

No, with the temperament growing in Missouri, McCaskill knows she’s toast when her term is up. Her plans for running for Missouri Governor dissipated with her criticism of Reid and other high-level dems in Washington. Her statements didn’t go well with the democrat establishment within the state. Those facts leave McCaskill with few options.

One democrat finally has gotten over his panic.  Mark Begich has tossed in the towel and has conceded his run for Alaska Senator to ‘Pub Dan Sullivan.

Alex DeMarban, November 17, 2014

After holding on to dwindling hope for days, Sen. Mark Begich on Monday conceded he had lost his U.S. Senate race to Republican Dan Sullivan.

With the concession coming nearly two weeks after the Nov. 4 general election and with few votes left to count, the statement was largely a formality.

The Associated Press called the race nearly a week ago. Soon after, Sullivan attended orientation meetings in D.C. to prepare to take office and voted for Republican leaders in the new Senate majority that takes power in January.

The democrat who is running most scared is Mary Landrieu. She’s so scared she’ll lose next month to ‘Pub Bill Cassidy, that she’s suddenly embraced the Keystone XL Pipeline. Landrieu hopes voters will forget that she was the Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee and did nothing about the Keystone project…until she failed to win reelection.

The ‘Pub controlled House has aided her flip-flop by passing, again, a bill to allow the project. Landrieu has latched onto the Keystone pipeline as a last desperate attempt to gain some supporters. I doubt it will work. The last poll I saw, a week after the mid-term, had Landrieu down 16 points behind Cassidy and abandoned by her party.

The ‘Pubs won. Now they need to decide what to do with their success. Whatever it may be, we can be assured that Mitch McConnell will screw it up.

 

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Friday Follies for November 14, 2014

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I haven’t used the ‘Follies’ headline for awhile. I do so when there are a number of items appearing on the ‘net but none worthy for a longer post nor discussion.

We won the mid-term ten days ago. We should be celebrating but we’re not. Why? Because we are watching the Washington GOP leadership selling us down the river0—again. The day after the election, McConnell tells a reporter he will not use Congress’ more potent weapon, the power of the purse. “We won’t shut down the government!” he declares meaning he will continue with the stream of CRs and upholding Harry Reid’s plan for funding everything we’re against—Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, open border, and governmental tyranny across the nation.

“Throw the bum out!”  Too late, McConnell has been re-elected as Majority leader. Boehner was re-elected Speaker of the House with only three dissenting votes.

McConnell chosen as next Senate majority leader, Boehner re-elected as House speaker

WASHINGTON –  Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell joined House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio on Thursday at the pinnacle of the congressional and Republican power structures in Washington — two establishment deal-cutters, each on occasion frustrated by the other’s inability to rein in their party’s most zealous ideologues.

The pair, formally selected Thursday to lead their party’s new majority control of Congress, will be charged with guiding Republicans on Capitol Hill for the final two years of President Obama’s presidency. Their success or failure could determine whether the GOP can take back the White House in 2016.

McConnell, 72, is taciturn and rarely cracks a smile. “Why don’t you get a life?” he joked to photographers trying to snap photos of him after he was unanimously chosen by his Senate GOP colleagues Thursday to serve as the new majority leader starting in January.

The article blathers on here, if you’ve the stomach to read it.

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For some good news, Sullivan has been declared the winner in the Alaska Senate race. Begich continues to wallow in his fantasy and has not, as far as I know, conceded the race. No class. A common fault of democrats.

Sullivan brings up the number of GOP Senators to 53. The last race still to be determined is Cassidy vs. Landrieu in Louisiana. Landrieu is pushing the Keystone Pipeline bill in an attempt to gain votes but it doesn’t appears to have helped.

‘Her campaign is running on fumes’: Final Senate race looks to be a Louisiana laugher as internal polls show GOP’s Bill Cassidy opening up 16-point lead over Sen. Mary Landrieu

  • Poll commissioned by GOP candidate’s campaign shows massive advantage leading up to Dec. 6 runoff 
  • Win by GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy would bring total Republican pickup to a whopping 10 seats
  • Landrieu is hoping a long-awaited vote on the Keystone XL pipeline will improve her fortunes
  • Poll was leaked in Washington to send a message to energy lobbyists who think she can prevail
  • Survey is an ‘automated’ phone poll that Landrieu’s campaign considers less credible than traditional surveys conducted by voice
  • ‘Her campaign is running on fumes,’ the pollster told MailOnline 

Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu is trailing her Republican challenger by a giant 16-point margin in a runoff for one of Louisiana’s two U.S. Senate seats, according to poll results obtained by MailOnline.

The survey, commissioned by GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy’s campaign, was leaked to media in order to fire a shot over the senator’s bow and send a signal to energy lobbyists that her ship is taking on water.

It suggests that Democrats’ worst fears have been realized even though Landrieu edged Cassidy by 1 percentage point on Election Day.

…

A second Republican candidate, Rob Maness, won 14 per cent of the vote on Nov. 4, enough to deny them both the 50-percent showing required to avoid a December 6 runoff. 

Now Maness has endorsed Cassidy, helping him erase his 1-point deficit with Landrieu and adding far more.

Cassidy is ‘trying to shut K Street down for Mary’ by selectively releasing the polling data, a source close to his campaign in Louisiana told MailOnline.

‘The energy folks, the lobbyists, keep trying to say she has a chance to win. That’s why it was leaked.’

Landrieu has lined up for what Republican Capitol Hill aides are calling the ‘Hail Mary XL,’ a legislative strategy to save her Senate seat by winning a vote to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring 700,000 barrels of oil daily from the Canadian province of Alberta to the Gulf coast.

From the information I’ve been able to gather, Landrieu is toast. Cassidy will bring the total number of GOP Senators to 54. It would be nice if McConnell would use that number as leverage dealing with Obama and the democrats but my expectation for that is…nil.

One question I have…why do we see these breaking news stories in the UK Daily Mail instead of a US news outlet? Our country is in sad shape when we have to use foreign sources for news here in the US.

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I wrote yesterday about the push to expand Missouri’s medicaid using the three-year funding promised as part of Obamacare. What the advocates for that expansion don’t bother to tell you is that the state would be responsible for the added ocsts after that third year. Why is Jackson County and Truman Medical Centers in such dire straits? Increased cost of medical care compounded by the cost of complying with federal regulations.

Those increased cost are having another negative medical impact—rural hospitals.

Rural hospitals in critical condition

Rural hospitals serve many of society’s most vulnerable.

Jayne O’Donnell and Laura Ungar, USA TODAY

RICHLAND, Ga. — Stewart-Webster Hospital had only 25 beds when it still treated patients. The rural hospital served this small town of 1,400 residents and those in the surrounding farms and crossroads for more than six decades.

But since the hospital closed in the spring of last year, many of those in need have to travel up to 40 miles to other hospitals. That’s roughly the same distance it takes to get from Times Square to Greenwich, Conn., or from the White House to Baltimore, or from downtown San Francisco to San Jose.

Those trips would be unthinkable for city residents, but it’s becoming a common way of life for many rural residents in this state, and across the nation.

Since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals — with a total of more than 1,500 beds — have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The pace of closures has quickened: from 3 in 2010 to 13 in 2013, and 12 already this year. Georgia alone has lost five rural hospitals since 2012, and at least six more are teetering on the brink of collapse. Each of the state’s closed hospitals served about 10,000 people — a lot for remaining area hospitals to absorb.

The Affordable Care Act was designed to improve access to health care for all Americans and will give them another chance at getting health insurance during open enrollment starting this Saturday. But critics say the ACA is also accelerating the demise of rural outposts that cater to many of society’s most vulnerable. These hospitals treat some of the sickest and poorest patients — those least aware of how to stay healthy. Hospital officials contend that the law’s penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they’re released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden.

“The stand-alone, community hospital is going the way of the dinosaur,” says Angela Mattie, chairwoman of the health care management and organizational leadership department at Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University, known for its public opinion surveys on issues including public health.

The closings threaten to decimate a network of rural hospitals the federal government first established beginning in the late 1940s to ensure that no one would be without health care. It was a theme that resonated during the push for the new health law. But rural hospital officials and others say that federal regulators — along with state governments — are now starving the hospitals they created with policies and reimbursement rates that make it nearly impossible for them to stay afloat.

Low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements hurt these hospitals more than others because it’s how most of their patients are insured, if they are at all. Here in Stewart County, it’s a problem that expanding Medicaid to all of the poorest patients -– which the ACA intended but 23 states including Georgia have not done, according to the federal government — would help, but wouldn’t solve.

“They set the whole rural system up for failure,” says Jimmy Lewis, CEO of Hometown Health, an association representing rural hospitals in Georgia and Alabama, believed to be the next state facing mass closures. “Through entitlements and a mandate to provide service without regard to condition, they got us to (the highest reimbursements), and now they’re pulling the rug out from under us.”

For many rural hospitals, partnering with big health systems is the only hope for survival. Some have resorted to begging large hospitals for mergers or at least money to help them pay their bills. But Douglas Leonard, president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said these days, “I’m not sure they can get anyone to answer the phone when they call.”

The article continues at the website. Obamacare does not just increase the cost of an individual’s medical care, it also reduces the reimbursement of those services to hospitals and physicians. In the end, we all suffer. The institutions with tighter cash flows are hit first and worse.

System Failure! No Post Today

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A severe thunderstorm rolled through last night—high winds and rain up to 4″ per hour. The National Weather Service sent a small streams and urban flooding alert earlier in the evening.

Around 2:00am, we lost power. It was out for at least two hours. When I came downstairs this morning, all my servers were powered down. Two were on UPS systems, two were not. All the servers survived. My keyboard however, one I’ve used since the 1990s, a Compaq industrial, high volume keyboard, one we used for my former employer’s call centers, didn’t respond. I finally got it up and running.

It’s on to 10:30am. Everything seems to be working once again. but it’s too late for a normal blog post. Instead I’ll direct you to a  link that documents all the GOP Senators who donated to the Thad Cochran campaign. MIssouri’s Roy Blunt in among the contributors as are both Kansas Senators, Roberts and Moran.

Here is the list of contributors and their donations:

Thad Cochran’s Senate Enablers

July 03, 2014

GOP Senate Contributions to Cochran
Senator — Amount Given — Phone Number

Roy Blunt (R-MO) — $15,000 — (202) 224-5721

Jerry Moran (R-KS) — $10,000 — (202) 224-6521

Pat Roberts (R-KS) — $5,000 — (202) 224-4774

You can see the entire list by following the link above. Here is another column on the same subject and provides some additional background on the story.

Donor Controversies Hit ‘Mississippi Conservatives’

By – 7.8.14

The headline in the New York Times over the weekend was straightforward: “Unease in G.O.P. Over Mississippi Tea Party Anger”:

The stormy aftermath of Mississippi’s Republican Senate runoff has sent Tea Party conservatives around the country to the ramparts, raising the prospect of a prolonged battle that holds the potential to depress conservative turnout in November in Mississippi — and possibly beyond.

Well, there’s an understatement. Just last night Texas Senator Ted Cruz was on Mark Levin’s show talking about “the D.C. machine” running “false attacks” that were “racially charged” and demanding that allegations of criminal conduct — one man reportedly told Charles C. Johnson that Cochran paid him to buy votes — be “vigorously investigated.” There should be “unease” in the Republican Party, as more and more of the base becomes aware of just how cynical GOP leadership has become, and as the curtain continues to be pulled up on all the shenanigans in Mississippi.

At the story’s center is the Mississippi Conservatives PAC, which is on the receiving end of furious charges of race-baiting against insurgent candidate Chris McDaniel and the Tea Party as a whole. But an even bigger problem comes from evidence that the group calling itself Mississippi Conservatives was anything but, illustrating in stunning detail how the establishments and donors of the Republican and Democratic parties intermingle.

The column continues at the American Spectator website. You can read it here.

I don’t expect anymore power outages. At least, not today. I’m thankful there was no lasting damage, just some small fixes. Y’all have a great day and drop back tomorrow.

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The next battlefield—Kansas

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The Battle of Mississippi in the GOP civil war is drawing to a close. The result is still in doubt. For the establishment GOP its Pyrrhic victory may evolve to defeat in November.

Chris McDaniel is investigating what appears to be massive vote fraud—democrats crossing over to vote in the run-off. That’s illegal in Mississippi. More than 1,000 fraudulent votes have been found already. Haley Barbour is being investigated about robo-calls to black claiming a McDaniel win will mean an end to welfare and other false claims. Reports of vote buying by the GOP establishment are also under investigation, one that may cause Cochran being removed from the ballot in November. The Washington GOP, through the NRSC, had dumped a ton of money into Mississippi to support Thad Cochran.

Why would a Cochran victory be Pyrrhic? Because the GOP has tainted the well. If Cochran versus the democrat is the choice in November, why would the GOP expect all those alienated conservatives to vote for Cochran? If that is the choice, I would expect conservatives to just not vote for Cochran and the democrat may win. When people see no clear choice, they may choose to not choose at all.

The NRSC is doing the same in another state—Kansas. Pat Roberts, a 47-year Washington veteran who hasn’t lived in Kansas for decades, is being challenged by Dr. Milton Wolf. The NRSC is dumping more and more money into Kansas against Wolf—another Tea Partier challenging a GOP establishment stalwart and political rubber-stamp.

Remember Mississippi, and FIGHT. LIKE. HELL. in Kansas

This Independence Day, the American Revolution endures

By: Diary)  |  July 3rd, 2014 at 02:05 PM

Conservatives, this is your call to arms, and Kansas is the battlefield.

The truth of the Mississippi Betrayal hurts. GOP party bosses have declared an all-out war on conservatives and betrayed our Republican Party itself in the process. The GOP establishment in general and the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC) in particular have some serious explaining to do.

America is descending into a struggle, less about Republicans versus Democrats and more about the permanent ruling class versus the American citizens. The NRSC betrayed the wishes of its Republican donors by diverting their hard-earned money from their stated goal of defeating Democrats and instead used the funds in Mississippi where they defeated a conservative Republican. The betrayal included outrageous and false charges of racism against a fellow Republican where they actually joined league with liberal Democrats including explosive evidence that Sen. Thad Cochran’s campaign possibly funded an illegal vote-buying scheme.

The party boss behind the NRSC’s bone-headed betrayal is Kansas’ own Sen. Jerry Moran. The NRSC spent over $200 thousand and deployed an army of staffers and volunteers to knock tens of thousands of doors and ring tens of thousands of phones in Mississippi to join league with liberal Democrats and defeat Chris McDaniel for the sin of being a constitutional conservative.

This was never about defeating Democrats or winning a Republican majority in the Senate. RNC chairman Reince Priebus admitted that Mississippi was not in play for Democrats. Faced with the ugly truth on the KCMO Morning Show with Greg Knapp, NRSC Chairman Sen. Jerry Moran confessed, “First of all, the NRSC is not the Republican Party.” He excused the betrayal with an  unusually candid confession that the NRSC “supports Republican incumbent senators to help them get reelected. That’s an important aspect of its mission.”

Kansas is the new Ground Zero.

And now the NRSC is circling the wagons around another insider favorite, my GOP primary opponent, Sen. Pat Roberts who has been in Washington for 47 years. Like Thad Cochran, Roberts’ record is lackluster at best. Roberts is posing as a conservative during an election year. Before I challenged him, however, Pat Roberts’ 2012 scorecard at Club For Growth was 55 and at FreedomWorks was 54. He voted for Barack Obama’s $600 billion fiscal cliff tax hike and to raise the debt ceiling 11 different times. Pat Roberts even voted to put Kathleen Sebelius in charge of ObamaCare.

Perhaps most offensive, Pat Roberts doesn’t even have a home in Kansas. He first ran for Congress using a vacant lot in Dodge City (where he has never lived) as his official address. He scrambled to rent a bedroom from a donor where he brags that he has “full access to the recliner.” (I’m going to give him permanent access to that recliner.) The Kansas GOP circled the wagons around Pat Roberts by empaneling a board of his public endorsers to declare he can remain on the ballot despite having declared that his Virginia home is his primary residence.

Playing the insider game, Sen. Pat Roberts contributed $5,000 from his PAC to Thad Cochran’s campaign which is now accused of the illegal Democrat vote-buying scandal.

…

We must start acting like the Americans we were meant to be: sovereign citizens of the republic, not subjects of a permanent ruling class. Our Founders conquered a continent and fought a revolution to escape a permanent ruling class. We must not be the generation that surrenders it. We must not squander the blessings of liberty they provided.

This Independence Day the American Revolution endures and the battlefield is Kansas. Step up. Join the revolution. Contribute. Volunteer. Say a prayer for our nation. Get involved.

Remember Mississippi, and FIGHT. LIKE. HELL. in Kansas.

Kansas Senator and NRSC Chairman Jerry Moran was on Greg Knapp’s local radio talk show. Knapp asked Moran directly about the NRSC’s role in the Mississippi primary and about the robo-calls and other reports of political abuse and illegalities. Moran, at first, didn’t answer the question, skirting the issue. Under pressure, he distanced himself claiming the NRSC had no control over expenditures after donating the money. Moran didn’t answer the followup question, “Who received the NRSC’s money?”

That same station is running back-to-back ads by the Robert’s campaign claiming Wolf ridiculed patient x-rays on Facebook. When pressed for proof, Robert’s people never responded but they continue to make the same unsupported claims. The say Wolf violated ethics conventions. They ignore Robert’s own ethics issues. A typical tactic of the GOP establishment.

The Missouri primary is less than a month away, August 5th. Missourians, like Kansans must make choices. Fortunately, the MO GOP is responding better than the leadership in Kansas and Mississippi. If they want to gain control of the Governor’s mansion and retain control of the statehouse, they had better support the grassroots conservatives across the state…or, else! Remember what happened to the Whigs.

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Mississippi Primary just won’t go away

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The NRSC, Haley Barbour, Thad Cochran and Karl Rove wish they’d been more…clandestine in their behind-the-scenes maneuvering in this past primary election. In fact, I’ll bet they hope to survive their fiasco without spending time in the gray-bar hotel.

http://images.politico.com/global/2014/06/28/140628_thad_cochran_gty_605.jpgYesterday, a black minister accused the Cochran campaign of vote buying. That is illegal at both the state and federal level.

Democrat Pastor Accuses Thad Cochran Campaign of Vote-for-Pay Scheme

 

 

A black Mississippi pastor has emerged to claim Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) campaign paid “thousands” of Democrats $15 each to vote in the June 24 GOP runoff – and that he was Rev. Stevie Fielder, an associate pastor at First Union Missionary Baptist Church in Meridian, Mississippi, says Cochran’s campaign “told me to offer blacks $15 each and to vote for Thad.”

Fielder, who was paid by freelance journalist Charles C. Johnson for the story, provided a new outlet launched by Johnson—GotNews.com—with four text messages from a person purporting to be Cochran campaign staffer Saleem Baird.

The messages cite an official Cochran campaign email address—Saleem@ThadForMs.com—and include detailed discussions of the campaign providing envelopes of money to distribute to people who vote.

“Send me individual names and amounts along with home address to saleem@thadforms.com and I’ll have money separated in envelopes at the office waiting for you,” one message, sent three days before the runoff, says.

Fielder said he helped distribute the Cochran cash for votes on a promise of eventually getting paid $16,000—and because a key Cochran campaign staffer convinced him that Cochran’s conservative challenger state Sen. Chris McDaniel was racist.

“They sold me on the fact that he was a racist and that the right thing to do was to keep him out of office,” Fielder said.

But Cochran’s campaign never paid, Fielder said.

Today, it has been disclosed that Haley Barbour was behind the racial robot calls against McDaniel.

On the Tuesday broadcast of his FOX News show, host Sean Hannity played a radio ad that aired in Mississippi during the Republican primary which clearly pitted State Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-Miss.) as a racist that wants to take away government benefits. The group responsible for that ad, Citizens for Progress, is reportedly backed by Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi and former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“He’s got some answering to do on that,” Hannity said. — Real Clear Politics.

Neither story bodes well for Cochran, Barbour, et. al. There appears to be concrete proof supporting the accusation. It does not bode well for the NRSC, either, nor the GOP Washington establishment. More reports from Mississippi by McDaniel supporters say they will not vote for Cochran if he is still on the ballot come November. It could well be that a democrat is elected to the Senate this year in Mississippi.

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It is a new day

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…or is it?

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Yesterday’s Virginia primary had a big upset. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA-7) lost his seat in the primary to challenger and economist Dave Brat. There are numerous articles being published this morning how that happened.

Some pundits say is was a Tea Party victory. In reality, it wasn’t, it was a grassroots victory assisted by some big-name conservatives like Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin. There is a difference.

The national Tea Party organizations like the Tea Party Express and AFP ignored the race assuming, so say some, that Cantor was a shoo-in. Apparently, so did many of Cantor’s supporters because they stayed home and didn’t vote. The turnout was very low, 65,000 out of a population of over a quarter-million.

Cantor’s flip-flops came home. He hadn’t had much opposition since he first won his seat in 2001. He was unopposed until 2010 and 2012. In 2012, he courted the Tea Party and won by 79%. Since then, Cantor turned, vilifying his former supporters and sucking up to the GOP establishment.

David Brat, the winner of the primary against Cantor wrote this statement in an article for the Daily Caller earlier this year.

Congressman Cantor’s profile has been erratic even by Washington standards — flitting from eager establishmentarian coat-holder to self-glorified “Young Gun” and back again. His loyalties, both upward and downward, have shifted in his eager embrace of the Ruling Class. Washington’s only genuine article of faith: maintaining control regardless of how that control affects the life of the folks back home.

Like so many other GOP Representatives, Cantor let ambition override his duty to his constituents. Being elected in a strong, conservative district is no guarantee for incumbents. (Are you listening Vicky Hartzler?) So far this year, we are seeing numerous successful challenges to the GOP establishment, Cantor is one of them.

***

The worm turned…in California of all places!

Tenure for teachers in California received a severe blow in court this week. Judge Rolf M. Treu, Los Angeles Superior Court, found five California statues concerning teacher tenure unconstitutional.

Treu found that the statutes permit too many grossly incompetent teachers to remain in classrooms across the state — and found that those teachers shortchange their students by putting them months or years behind their peers in math and reading.

He ruled that such a system violates the state constitution’s guarantee that all children receive “basic equality of educational opportunity.” In a blunt, unsparing 16-page opinion, Treu compared his ruling to the seminal federal desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, decided 60 years ago last month. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience,” Treu wrote. — Politico.

For decades the California educational system has been the prime example was what not to do. With test scores pummeling, teachers fought to block testing, lest it prove the abysmal results of their social engineering agenda.

Test scores should be used to review the effectiveness of education. Too many school districts—and state educational systems, would rather teach the tests than actually educate their students. Systems that do ‘teach the tests’ then blame the tests for their failures to educate. Long before this case, it was evident that local and state education systems were more interested in their own sinecure than teaching.

We will soon hear the howl of outraged teacher unions calling for this judge’s head for speaking truth. Once again, unions have been found to be the refuge of many incompetents. The good teachers will get tarred equally along with the bad. They have no other recourse…California is not a RIght-to-Work state. Teachers are required to join the teachers union if they want to teach.

But that was yesterday. Perhaps…just perhaps the students of California will have a new day now that it will be easier to be rid of the lazy and incompetents in the California school system.

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