Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Protecting America. Show all posts

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Mike Castle is a staunch supporter of 'the right to choose'; should help him cope with having his political career aborted by Christine O'Donnell

Mike Castle vs. Christine O'Donnell: Who Gets the Coveted 'Doug McLovin Ross Endorsement'?

I really don't give a crap what the beltway insiders and the faux conservatives think. I'll use a simple analogy.

Imagine you're putting together a football team. You've got an experienced, veteran receiver who, no matter what you do, runs the wrong pattern 50% of the time. It's hard to have a cohesive team with that kind of person playing a key role.

Mike Castle is just that sort of rogue player. He's wearing the wrong uniform. If he wants to help out the other team, he should put on the other jersey. And the Senate is too small a group, each member is too important, to gave a seat to another unprincipled, lifetime political hack.

Castle voted for Cap-and-Trade, the Orwellian DISCLOSE Act, he won't promise to repeal or de-fund ObamaCare, he voted against the CLEAR Act to end the Obama offshore drilling ban, against the Bush Surge strategy, voted for the ludicrous SCHIP bill, and for TARP.

Castle obviously doesn't believe in the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Tenth Amendment and likely a whole swath of other conservative principles.

O'Donnell is a normal American. So she had some financial problems. That puts her in the same boat as most folks. Castle has served in Congress been on the public dole since nine-teen-freaking-sixty-six. In the process, somehow, he's amassed great wealth -- and no one's asking how he earned that money.

Regular readers know I've been trying to raise money for Ms. O'Donnell for weeks. Join Sarah Palin and other principled conservatives: click here to send her a couple of bucks.


Monday, September 06, 2010

Is Ours 'The Weakest Generation'?

"...These [health care] negotiations will be on C-SPAN, and so the public will be part of the conversation and will see the decisions that are being made...” (Barack Obama, 1/20/2008)

...[I want] to repeal some of these tax breaks for these oil companies. But I want to do more than that. I also want to go after their windfall profits, take a segment of those profits..." (Barack Obama, 3/3/2008)

"...Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket..." (Barack Obama, 11/1/2008)

"...“I really do believe President Bush is the worst president we’ve ever had..." (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), 1/4/2009)

"...We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars..." (Barack Obama, 1/28/2009)

"...Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards..." (Attorney General Eric Holder, 2/18/2009)

"...We don't believe it makes sense to significantly subsidize the production and use of sources of energy (like oil and gas) that are dramatically going to add to our climate change (problem)..." (Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, 3/5/2009)

"...Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration..." (Department of Homeland Security report to Janet Napolitano, 4/12/2009)

"...in early January, when Barack Obama was still President-elect, two of his chief economic advisers — leading proponents of a stimulus bill — predicted that the passage of a large economic-aid package would boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%. It hasn't quite worked out that way..." (Time Magazine, 7/2/2009)

"...right now drug companies are fighting so that they can keep essentially their patents on their brand-name drugs a lot longer... every time we come close to passing health insurance reform, the special interests fight back with everything they've got." (Barack Obama, 8/11/2009)

"...When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday where the Constitution authorized Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance--a mandate included in both the House and Senate versions of the health care bill--Pelosi dismissed the question by saying: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”..." (CNS News, 8/23/2009)

"...the White House has been taken aback by the intense criticism from political opponents and local officials of Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian courtroom in New York..." (Washington Post, 2/11/2010)

"...But we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what is in it..." (Nancy Pelosi, 3/9/2010)

"...[President] Obama and his health secretary staged a two-pronged attack Monday in a stern letter to health insurance chief executives and a speech in which the president castigated insurance companies 22 times...." (Washington Post, 3/9/2010)

"...once upon a time they taught that under the U.S. Constitution a bill had to pass both the House and Senate to become law. Until this week, that is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to merely 'deem' that the House has passed the Senate health-care bill and then send it to President Obama to sign anyway..." (Wall Street Journal, 3/16/2010)

"...I don't care about the Constitution when it comes to this [health care bill]..." (Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL), 4/2/2010)

"...The president's top counterterrorism adviser on Wednesday called jihad a "legitimate tenet of Islam," arguing that the term "jihadists" should not be used to describe America's enemies... The comment comes after Brennan, in a February speech in which he described his respect for the tolerance and devotion of Middle Eastern nations, referred to Jerusalem... by its Arabic name, Al-Quds..." (Fox News, 5/27/2010)

"...As solicitor general of the United States, Elena Kagan argued in front of the Supreme Court that the federal government had the constitutional authority to ban certain political pamphlets. She also strongly implied that some political books, if they were partisan enough, could also be censored..." (Reason Magazine, 6/29/2010)

"...The financial regulation bill that President Obama will sign into law on Wednesday is supposed to clean up Wall Street. But an obscure passage buried deep in the 2,300-page legislation... could have a broad impact [on] electronics companies..." (Washington Post, 7/2/2010)

"...The federal government filed a lawsuit Tuesday aimed at blocking a controversial Arizona law that requires local police and sheriffs to question and arrest anyone whom they suspect is in the country illegally..." (Politico, 7/7/2010)

"...Less than two months after the US Department of Justice sued Arizona over the state’s controversial immigration law, it has filed another lawsuit targeting immigration practices by Arizona authorities... the [DOJ] says Phoenix-area Maricopa Community Colleges (MCC) discriminated against almost 250 noncitizen job applicants by requiring them to fill out more documents than the law requires to prove their eligibility to work...." (Christian Science Monitor, 8/31/2010)
You don't have to ride on a treacherous, unlit cow path from the north-side of Boston to Lexington as the King's Regulars attempt a surprise attack on the Sons of Liberty.

You don't have to board a frigate, sail for weeks across the Atlantic and then sack a city in Tripoli to rescue your imprisoned countrymen.

You don't have to kill a British soldier in a desperate, hand-to-hand struggle after leaping out of a boat on the beach at York during the War of 1812.

You don't have to hold the line against Pickett's desperate charge at Gettysburg as thousands of wounded men shriek bloody murder around you.

You don't have to resist a vicious attack by the Hun with fixed bayonets at Belleau Wood.

You don't have to survive a terrifying duck-boat run onto Omaha Beach as men around you are being chopped to bits by fortified Nazi gun emplacements.

You don't have to liberate the Nazi Death Camps, capping months of brutal fighting and desperate marching through the dirt roads of Europe.

You don't have to withstand a surprise attack by the Chinese 'People's Volunteer Army', fighting to hold the line in 35°-below-zero temperatures for days on end near the Chosin Reservoir.

You don't have to defend the city of Huế from a surprise attack by Viet Cong and PAVN regulars, fighting block-to-block as the entire country is set afire by the Tet Offensive.

You don't have to race across the desert, waiting for a chemical attack or a Scud missile to hit, baking in 130° temperatures, so that you can expel Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard from Kuwait.

You don't have to patrol a patch of hard-scrabble earth in Aghanistan or Iraq, waiting for the inevitable IED by the side of the road -- or signs that you've rolled right into an ambush by heavily-armed 'insurgents' equipped with Iranian RPGs.

You don't have to do any of those things. You just have to vote in November. You just have to take the time to rally your neighbors, your family members and your co-workers to vote for candidates who believe in the Constitution. You must marshal voters who will reject the out-of-control, free-spending government that has brought our country to the edge of bankruptcy.

Because if the Constitution doesn't mean anything, if all of the founders' sacrifices went for naught, if all of those American heroes who fought and bled and died for the flag mean nothing, if all your parents and grandparents gave you doesn't amount to a hill of beans, well, then our generation will be forever known as the weak-willed group that let the American dream slip from our fingers.

And we will be known forever as the generation that allowed American exceptionalism to be stolen from us by a radical leftist from San Francisco, a crooked, power-hungry weasel of a man from Nevada, and an Alinsky-trained community organizer who rose to the presidency without qualifications or even so much as a background check by the media.

You don't have to bleed for your country. All you have to do is rally our forces to vote in November. That is what we can do and that is what we must do to preserve this Republic for future generations.


Sunday, September 05, 2010

Pr·i·us In·sur·rec·tion

American Digest relays the following photo, which was apparently snapped by a Legal Insurrection reader at the Grand Canyon.

The closeups are even better.




Don't bother looking for the 'peace' or 'coexist' signs.





Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

Thursday, September 02, 2010

The Genius of Mark Levin: The Time Is Now

On 6 January 2009, I transcribed -- pretty much as I heard it -- the first half hour or so of Mark Levin's radio broadcast. I didn't realize it at the time, but it represented one of the finest chapters of his soon-to-be bestselling book, Liberty and Tyranny.

The Left is using this economic crisis to destroy the firewalls in the Constitution, to further crush the free market.

These are the plans that they devised decades ago.

The free market is the most transformative of economic systems. It fosters innovation and invention.

It produces new industries, products and services and improves upon existing ones.

Millions of individuals freely engaged in an infinite variety of actions each day, it is impossible to even conceive all of the benefits that occur in our economy at any given time.

The free market creates more wealth and more opportunites for more people than any other economic model. This is exactly why the Left -- be they socialists, or Marxists, or left-leaning Democrats -- attack it relentlessly.

That's why they lie, describing the free market as the cause of the current financial crisis. But it was in fact they, through onerous and arbitrary regulation and out-of-control governmental appendages like Fannie Mae, who twisted and distorted the free market.

The free market promotes self worth, self-sufficiency, shared values, and honest dealings. That doesn't mean to say there aren't crooks: they exist in every endeavor (especially government). But when you consider the trillions of transactions that make up the free market, the number of crooks is relatively tiny.

The free market enhances the individual, the family and the community. And it discriminates against no race, religion or gender.

The truck driver does not know the skin color of the individual who helped create the diesel fuel that powers his vehicle.

The cook does not know the religion of the dairy farmers who delivers milk to his restaurant.

The airline passenger does not know the gender of the factory workers who manufactured a critical component of the aircraft.

Nor do they care. The free market is an intricate system of voluntary economic, social and cultural interaction that are motivated by the desires and needs of the individual and the community.

Private property and the Left's attempts to co-opt it


The key to understanding the free market is private property, which is why the Left does not believe in it.

Private property is the material manifestation of the individual's labor: the material value created from a person's physical and intellectual efforts.

Oppressive taxation and regulation of your private property can become a form of servitude, particularly if such confiscation occurs because of arbitrary and illegitimate decisions on the part of a government bureaucracy. That is: decisions that are not Constitutional.

That is why the Conservative believes the federal government should only raise revenue that the Constitution authorizes and no other.

Otherwise, what are the limits on government power? What are the limits on taxation and regulation of the individual's labor? How do we contain and limit government? How do we draw the lines -- and on what basis?

The Marxist class struggle formulation pits the working class against the wealthy (sound familiar?). It serves as the Left's principal rhetorical argument for the confiscation of private property.

But it is anathema to the free market, for the individual has the power to make for himself anything he or she wants! There is no static class structure layered atop the free market! The free market is mutable, dynamic and vibrant.

And for this reason, we Conservatives believe the free market is a vital bulwark against totalitarianism. And it would appear the Left agrees for it is relentless in its assault on the free market.

The Left's rejection of Constitutional limits on government power is always justified on material grounds. In the name of "economic justice", "equality" and "fairness."

The Left creates an illusion of class struggle through a variety of inventions like the "Progressive" Income Tax. But the bottom 40% of wage earners pay no income tax!

"Economic equality" is unachievable, even in the most brutal and oppressive socialist states.

The mirage of "class struggle"


But it serves the Left's purpose to create a class system: artificially created economic categories. In this way, the Left stirs up class envy. The free market, therefore, is said to be incapable of serving the public interest because it produces "unjust results." This requires further government intervention.

The Left tries to intensify class struggle by routinely redefining categories and levels of wealth: who qualifies as the detested rich? The righteous middle class? The disenfranchised poor?

Thus community organizer and Obama mentor Saul Alinsky explained, "Organization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America's white middle class. That is where the power is."

Tax cuts for people who don't pay taxes aren't tax cuts. That's welfare. Tax cuts for businesses that can't make money: that's socialism; redistribution of wealth.

This isn't about creating jobs in the private sector. The left hates the private sector. They hate profits. They hate anything that doesn't require government subsidies, that can operate without government involvement. Those entities have to be destroyed.

The modern left is an explicit enemy of the Constitution. The modern left dominates the Democrat Party. And that is why the Democrat Party must be wiped from the political landscape in November. And in every election henceforth.

It is time for action. And you must be an evangelist for the destruction of American socialism in our time.


Only in Texas -- T-Shirt Edition

Bernie writes:

Like they say: 'Only in Texas'. I must tell you this Texan Redneck made my day.

Only in Texas -- T-Shirt EditionThis guy basically got thumbs up and chuckles from everyone.


Monday, August 30, 2010

A Tidal Wave of Values, by Victor the Contractor

By Victor the Contractor

Lately I've been hearing reading and listening to media of all kinds belittle, bemoan and minimize the role of values and faith in our society. That a culture based on hard work and 'elbow grease', if you will, can sustain its historic place in the world without the very ingenuity, drive and vigor that established it as the preeminent paradigm of Freedom and productivity is on its face nonsensical and childish in its logic. But the major media continue to drone on and on about the non-extant recovery and the obsolescence of drive as our great country staggers toward a double dip in the Great Recession or worse, a lost decade of stagflation and negative GDP growth. What we need is a return to core values! Take the economy, for instance.

That we can print money to solve our economy's problems is a very short term solution to an ingrained problem which requires a back-to-basics solution. Expanding the M1 money supply when there is a credit crunch is akin to inhaling a candy bar when you are famished. In a short time you will be worse off for it, and hungrier to boot. That's why short term stimulus never works in the long term. Once the sugar high is gone, the industry has to rely on 'organic' demand, which now has been front loaded by the financial jiggering. Then even more time is needed for the industry to return to equilibrium. So saving GM and Chrysler have forestalled their collapse for a short time but the inevitable bankruptcy of both companies is now guaranteed; if the unerring laws of economics prevail over the current artifice of bailout and stimulus sophistry. Like it or not, all those retired union guys will someday lose their free Viagra on our dime!

Moral crusaders like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity really do have their collective hands on the pulse of the nation and their ears to the ground; listening and alerting us to the coming revolution. This time, however, the tide will shift back to the fundamentals that made this country great and which ensured prosperity for generations. That the major media like CBS reported a paltry 68,000 participants at the 8/28 Re-dedication to 'God and Country' meeting at the Lincoln Memorial speaks volumes. It speaks to their collusion with the political elite to suppress a growing tide of discontent across this country that will facilitate a change in leadership on both Houses of Congress in November. Yes, I said both Houses of Congress. The famed independents who went for Obama two years ago are both ashamed and embarrassed by his lies and Congress' Communist and anti-business tendencies. They wish to punish what they see as a mixture of arrogance and incompetence on display in Washington. And it's got to stop!

We've got to stop making excuses for most of our elected representatives! They are part of the problem. Where Democrats are openly Communistic and amoral, the decision is easy: vote them out come November. Where a Republican has become a 'Democrat Lite,' a consideration of the Tea Party candidate is warranted. Our Democracy requires us to clean house in Washington from time to time, and that time is now!

Our Country needs a return to values, faith and -- dare I say -- God in these times of tribulation. We brought this on ourselves, people. Men and women of good character stood by as humanists who deny God and apologists who deny societal values (based on longstanding biblical tenets) were allowed to ruin our country, subvert our laws and poison our children's minds. Men and women of bad character are in the halls of power. Men like Harry Reid, who openly scoff at our morals and belittle our values. Women like Nancy Pelosi, who laugh at the thought of actually being held to campaign promises and speak of an urgent need to pass a bill so that the American people can find out what it contains. These haughty and arrogant legislators have a big surprise coming in November. Lets not forget Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, who really should be in prison for pressuring banks to issue mortgages to poor families, who wound up losing their homes and causing world markets to founder. We will pay for this pair's arrogance for generations to come if we stay on this heading.

The road will be difficult, as liberals and humanists, bent on a mild form of Communism, continue to sway the lazy and weak-minded of us. Can anyone blame an illegal alien for taking a job we are too cheap to pay an American to do or for an unskilled laborer to collect 99 weeks of unemployment after working for 26? In a country without a moral compass all things are forgivable. Well, I can blame them, but I am old school. Consider that one lazy man may not destroy an economy; but millions of slothful men can. A nation pays for its poverty of ambition: just research the other nine historical empires that no longer exist!

There is a way back from the abyss: a way of faith and action. Faith to believe that one's actions can sway Divine Providence. Action makes that faith real. Think of it this way, a driver may operate an automobile, but it is the engine that creates the movement that is a demonstration of action. The old 'Faith without Works is dead' (James 2:20) lesson. For who would light a candle and put it under a bushel? (Matt. 5:15 paraphrased). You get the point.

Though these excerpts are really about living according to belief they are applicable wisdom for the working world. A country that has unlimited potential accomplishes little unless activity is undertaken. A person who is gifted but lazy wastes precious ability. Not everybody is equally able, but nearly everybody can labor productively. That is our charge: To labor to correct a generation of sloth and rebellion against reason, against responsibility and even against God. I know this will grate on our humanist bretheren, but there are no successful historic empires based upon Satanism or Agnosticism. Even Nihilism and Communism result in eventual economic collapse and mass starvation, at least if capitalism doesn't swoop in and save the day -- much to the chagrin of the anarchists. Order springs from chaos: That's just how (successful) people are wired. But I digress.

Our country has awakened. Insults to our beliefs and injuries to our way of life have galvanized a nation of believers to re-commit to God, Family and Country. In 60 odd days we will send a message about what most of us hold true: the America that works hard and prays harder requires no less from its leaders. All others will be forced back into their 'pockets of liberalism' in failing cities where they can only whine about how unfair life is to those who don't work. Wasn't that the 1980's? And who was President then? That's right, Ronald Reagan!

This is my country! The country that saved the entire World from Hitler and triumphed over Communism! The land that once sent men to the Moon and, every day, feeds an entire globe of hungry mouths! We can do better! We do have values! We will re-direct our government to serve us and not the other way around! And we will shrink the federal government from its status as unelected overlords of every facet of our lives down to humble servants of we, the people! Those who work every day and pray every night will have their due! A country united under God, with the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness! God Bless America!

Victor The Contractor

Related: "1994, Democrats? You wish."

Sunday, August 29, 2010

What's America's biggest national security threat? According to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: It's the Democrats' Spending

The national debt has grown 60% since Nancy Pelosi and her cadre of far left Democrats took control of Congress and the nation's budget. For this reason, Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called out the calamitous, wildly undisciplined spending as the nation's number one security threat.

The national debt is the single biggest threat to national security, according to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the national debt by 2012, the chairman told students and local leaders in Detroit.

“That’s one year’s worth of defense budget,” he said, adding that the Pentagon needs to cut back on spending... “We’re going to have to do that if it’s going to survive at all,” Mullen said, “and do it in a way that is predictable.”

Perhaps we can arrange an MMA fight between Mullen and the Times' most sanity-challenged columnist, Paul Krugman, whose policy positions change with the party of the office-holder.

[Krugman's] attitude, which seems to be shared by the Democratic leadership in D.C., is that America can spend an unlimited amount of money with no serious consequences, that we should do so in order to pump up the economy, and then at some undefined later point, somebody else will have to restrain spending. Incidentally, this was not Paul Krugman's attitude early on in the Bush Administration. The Paul Krugman from back then sounded a great deal more concerned about fiscal conservatism than the Paul Krugman of today does.

Setting aside the fact that the evidence government spending can drive economic growth in this country is sparse indeed -- and that the debt crisis in Europe that's already hitting Greece and could easily hit us in a few years -- at what point do we say we simply admit that we don't have the money to pursue this liberal economic pipedream any more? Put another way, America has spent far too much, for far too long, and because of that, even if Krugman's desire to borrow and spend our way to prosperity worked (which it doesn't), we're so deep in the red that the cure would be worse than the disease.

Recall as well that, for the first time in modern history, Democrats did not even pass a federal budget this year. Instead, they 'deemed as passed' a non-existent budget that allows them to, well, spend like drunken progressives.

Last night, as part of a procedural vote on the emergency war supplemental bill, House Democrats attached a document that "deemed as passed" a non-existent $1.12 trillion budget. The execution of the "deeming" document allows Democrats to start spending money for Fiscal Year 2011 without the pesky constraints of a budget... The procedural vote passed 215-210 with no Republicans voting in favor and 38 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote against deeming the faux budget resolution passed.

Never before -- since the creation of the Congressional budget process -- has the House failed to pass a budget, failed to propose a budget then deemed the non-existent budget as passed as a means to avoid a direct, recorded vote on a budget, but still allow Congress to spend taxpayer money.

This is but one of many reasons that erstwhile Obama supporter and US News & World Report economist Mort Zuckerman calls the Obama Democrats "The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government in U.S. History."

Obama, Pelosi and Reid will be long gone when the entire system collapses, thanks to their malevolent treatment of the U.S. taxpayer. Like I always say: it's November or never.


Glenn Beck's Rally: How Many Were Really There?

Dan from New York:

Just when you thought "the media" couldn't make bigger fools of themselves, along comes their buffoonish treatment of the attendance at yesterday's Glenn Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Most danced around the issue, falling back on the stock "thousands" or "tens of thousands" weasels. But there was one twit among them who spilled the beans. CBS went on the record: Glenn Beck Rally Attracts Estimated 87,000.

Fortunately, we have better ways to judge the size of the crowd than to rely on Dan Rather's news organization. MLK's famed 1963 "I Have a Dream" rally was held on the same ground, and the accepted figure is 250,000.


Judge for yourself. Do you think Beck drew less than half?


As an aside, the open field filled with people on the left was overgrown with trees and unavailable to spectators in 1963.

Oh, BTW, Sharpton's rally, which the clowns positioned as the anti-Beck rally, "attracted" 3,000. So much easier to count.

Update: Affirmative Action Crowd Estimates and It Was Like A Return To Jim Crow, or Like We Were In Nazi Germany.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin and NewsReal. Thanks!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Tea Party Meets Establishment GOP in Ohio--Tea Party Wins

When a liberal starts running off at the mouth about the "Clinton Surplus" that "Bush ruined", I would definitely not advocate slapping the fool silly (as they most assuredly deserve). Instead, pleasantly explain that it was the GOP House of Representatives that created all of those wonderful budgets. Starting in '94, Bill Clinton's budgets were dictated by a strong and fiscally conservative group of Republicans. And the man in charge -- the architect of the "Clinton Surplus" -- was none other than then GOP Congressman John Kasich of Ohio.

In a nutshell, Kasich was a Tea Partier before there was a Tea Party.

Kasich is now running for the Governorship of Ohio against a hard-core leftist named Ted Strickland. Strickland's policies are those of Obama: increased taxes, increased regulations, wealth redistribution, public sector unionism, and a gradual strangulation of productive taxpayers and small businesses. One example: Ohio's estate tax is one of the most outrageous in the country.

Consider: in Ohio, estates as small as $300,000 -- say, a $225,000 house, a $25,000 car and $50,000 in other assets -- qualifies you as "rich". In 2010 the Ohio Republican Party's governing committee unanimously approved a petition to repeal the Ohio estate tax.

Correspondent Amalaur reports from a Kasich fundraiser that occurred just after a good-sized rally in Cincinnati that boasted 1,000 attendees.

John Kasich was pumped up. The fundraiser was an attempt to unify the Tea Party conservatives with the mainstream GOP.
I believe the effort was successful.
Tea Party founder Mike Wilson, now a candidate for the Ohio House, attended and spoke.
Rep. Jean Schmidt, from Ohio's Second District, pumped us up with tales of House Democrats running scared.
Her exact words: "tsunami".
Rep. Schmidt was asked point blank about Congressman Ryan's plan ("A Roadmap for America's Future"). Schmidt was fully supportive, stating it was on the right track and that it should proceed with some fine tuning.
A dozen or so doctors were in attendance and fired questions at Kasich regarding ObamaCare.
Kasich is of the mind: repeal and replace. He described, in detail, several alternatives to the existing bureaucracy that would greatly improve the cost-effectiveness of health care delivery. And they were based upon free market principles.
Kasich, frequently seen on Fox News, was excellent. Articulate, Reagan-esque, frank and bright, he addressed every question thrown at him with grace and humor.
All in all, a good deal of money was raised for a worthy cause: the one man in all of government who has a track record of budget surpluses at the federal level.
 
If you've got a few spare bucks, please contribute to John Kasich. He's our generation's OT. Original Tea Partier.


Wednesday, August 11, 2010

CNN Poll: 68% of American Voters Oppose Ground Zero Mosque

Dan from New York:

CNN Poll: 68% of American Voters Oppose Ground Zero Mosque


BY John McCormack

August 11, 2010

CNN polls registered voters on the Ground Zero mosque:

As you may know, a group of Muslims in the U.S. plan to build a mosque two blocks from the site in New York City where the World Trade Center used to stand. Do you favor or oppose this plan?

The response:

Favor 29%
Oppose 68%
No opinion 3%

So, according to the Center for American Progress, two out of every three voters are un-American bigots.

I can only imagine that voters would be even more opposed to the U.S. government's funding of the Ground Zero Mosque imam's Middle East junket.

Think about it: President Obama voted "present" on the Ground Zero mosque.

And although he's been curiously silent on the topic, his State Department's appointment of Rauf says it all.

Dude.


Monday, August 09, 2010

In Limited Government We Trust

"Greece would not have fallen had it obeyed Polybius in everything, and when Greece did meet disaster, its only help came from him" Pausanias, 8.37.2, Inscription on the Temple of Despoina near Arakesion.

In Book VI of his Histories, the ancient Greek historian Polybius described three basic forms of government, each categorized by the number of those in power. He listed monarchy (rule by the one); aristocracy (rule by the few); and democracy (rule by the many). Polybius described, over time, how each type of government would gradually decline into their various corrupted forms of tyranny, oligarchy and mob rule, respectively. His aim was to illustrate the inherent fallibility of man as exemplified by the truism Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Polybius believed that Republican Rome had designed a new form of government that could help check this inevitable decline. Rome combined all three forms of government -- monarchy (its elected executives, called consuls); aristocracy (the Senate); and democracy (the popular assemblies). In this mixed form of government, each branch would check the corrupting ambitions and power of the others.

Aristotle and Cicero were among those who praised the construction of a "mixed constitution" and the innovative idea to separate powers within a government.

The French nobleman and legal expert Charles-Louis de Secondat, the Baron de Montesquieu, studied the rise and fall of the Roman Republic. He believed that a properly designed government, in order to prevent tyranny, would require three branches of government. He wrote, "If it is to provide its citizens with the greatest possible liberty, a government must have certain features. First, since 'constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it … it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power' . This is achieved through the separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government... [to prevent any one] from acting tyrannically."

The British philosopher John Locke was also keenly interested in a design for government that would prevent its descent into tyranny. In the late 17th century, Locke argued that monarchs had no "divine right" to rule; instead, he asserted that the source of power lay in the people. Furthermore, he stated that humans were born into this world with certain natural and "inalienable" rights including to "life, liberty and property". Locke believed that government could not grant these rights because they were God-given; therefore, no government could take them away or withhold them from the people.

Thomas Jefferson used Locke's concepts as the foundation of the Declaration of Independence. He proclaimed the government's duty to protect the sacred attributes of the individual: "...to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form..."

"...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

As well, America's Founding Fathers repeatedly cited Baron de Montesquieu's seminal Spirit of the Laws and its emphasis on checks and balances within government. As James Madison wrote, "the oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu."

The Constitution was carefully designed -- based upon thousands of years of bloody experience -- to construct a federalist system of government. It divided powers not only between the three branches of government, but also between the federal government and the states. The Constitution reserved almost all powers to the states, or to the people, and enumerated a very limited set of responsibilities to which the federal government was constrained.

We conservatives are originalists: if the Constitution's meaning is not interpreted as the framers intended, if it can be altered at will, then what protects any law from arbitrary interpretation, from the capricious whims of the ill-intentioned?

If the Constitution is "living and breathing", an amorphous guidebook of suggestions that may freely be interpreted based upon current events, trends, whims or biases, what then are the limits on the federal government? And if the Constitution doesn't mean what it says, what protects the individuals from the encroachment of government intrusion into every aspect of individuals' lives?

The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution strictly limits the power of the Federal Government. It states, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. In the Founders' view, state and local governments were free to experiment -- to serve as "laboratories" in the words of Justice Louis Brandeis -- in areas prohibited to the federal government. In the 1980's, for example, Oregon's successful welfare reform efforts became the models for subsequent actions by other states.

When the federal government ignores and breaches the Tenth Amendment, it represents an illegal diminution of representative government at the state and local levels.

The once-powerful states, which created the federal government by ratifying the Constitution, have become -- in the words of Mark Levin -- "administrative appendages of the federal government." The states are subject to ever-increasing federal regulation, strangled by dictates from agencies old and new, and held hostage through billions in federal tax dollars. Levin asks, "Does anyone believe that the states would have originally ratified the Constitution had they known this would be their fate?"

The path the modern federal government is on today was accurately described by Stuart Chase in 1942. He wrote that the agenda of the Fabian Socialists -- who had launched a counter-revolution against America's founding -- was to create an authoritarian, centralized government. The agenda of the Fabian Socialists include:

• Strong, centralized government
• Government-controlled banking, credit and securities exchange (TARP, etc.)
• Government control over employment (the "Employee Free Choice Act" to speed unionization of the workplace)
• Unemployment insurance, old age pensions (lengthy unemployment benefits, Social Security)
• Universal medical care, food and housing programs (socialized medicine, food stamps, HUD)
• Access to unlimited government borrowing (massive deficits)
• A managed monetary system (an opaque Federal Reserve)
• Government control over foreign trade (China tire tariffs)
• Government control over natural energy sources, transportation and agricultural production (drilling prohibitions, Cap-and-Trade)
• Government regulation of labor (the Wagner Act, monopolistic power of trade unions)
• Heavy progressive taxation.

This indeed describes "the road we are traveling"; the direction accelerated by the branches of government controlled by modern Democrats. The Fabian Socialist counter-revolution began in earnest in the U.S. in 1933 with the imposition of the "Welfare State" and has been steadily progressing since. It confiscates ever more taxes, consolidates ever more power, while bankrupting program after program. And always -- always -- the federal government proclaims its need for more money and more power, promising that if only it can levy one more tax, enforce one more regulation, it will be able to solve all of mankind's woes.

The Greek historian Thucydides observed that “The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.” And in writing about the calamitous Peloponnesian War that engulfed and ultimately destroyed his society, he added that, "Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought."

History teaches us that the decline of a society and the demise of a government comes with the institutionalization of corruption and a wanton disregard for the written law. Such is our situation today, wherein the states have become puppets of an all-powerful federal government that confiscates more and more private property while exerting increasing control over every aspect of our lives.

If we are to protect our society from despotism and decline, whose counsel should we then cherish? Should we abide by thousands of years of experience and the wisdom of history's greatest philosophers -- Polybius, Aristotle, Montesquieu, Locke, Jefferson, Adams and Madison among them? Men who understood the nature of a government's despotic decline and sought to construct a system to counter it?

Or should we disregard their guidance and follow instead the Fabian Socialists? Should we heed Cass Sunstein, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama? Should we follow the direction of a few lawless bureaucrats that intentionally ignore their oaths of office? Who believe not in what the founders believed but instead in the infallibility of an authoritarian, centralized government?

The greatest bulwark against tyranny in America has always been the Constitution, which instantiates our carefully designed system of private property, God-given individual liberties and free enterprise.

If we are to protect our society from despotism and Fabian decline, whose counsel should we then cherish? I contend that we must fight the socialist counter-revolution using every political weapon possible. We must return our country to the rule of law as defined by our founders and codified in the Constitution. Anything less condemns our descendants to the fate that Thucydides described.