Almost As Bad As McCain/Feingold!

Utah legislators are all talking the ethics reform talk after incidents brought legislators behaving badly to the attention of the voting public in the past year. However, what they are talking about (as reported in the SL Trib anyway) is hardly "ethics" reform.

While the House historically has been more eager to pass such reforms, Speaker-in-waiting Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, said his members have yet to solidify a particular posture.

"There's still a lot of ground to be plowed," Clark said. "But I'm optimistic that we can make some very positive and significant changes."

Due to constituent concerns, Rep. Steve Mascaro, R-West Jordan, launched a bill to prevent the personal pocketing of campaign funds when an elected official leaves office. He also wants to ban gifts above $10 and tweak the lieutenant governor's online reporting of campaign funds to be more user-friendly and transparent.

Incoming House Majority Whip Brad Dee, R-Washington Terrace, has slotted bills for pending campaign-finance reforms that require further research and discussion.

"We're looking at caps and the frequency of reporting," Dee said.

Campaign-donation caps are on the table but, Clark cautioned, there are two sides to that coin.

"Public office should not just be for those that can self-fund," Clark said. "But we also should be trying to limit the influence of any single individual or ideology on the process."

Everything mentioned in the linked story is campaign finance reform - not ethics reform. Restricting legitimate constituent access to legislators - even if it is in the form of donations and gifts - will not change the heart of a legislator who is bound and determined to behave in an illegal or immoral fashion. All it will do is drive that person's deceptions to new depths! Plus this kind of legislation will not stop a donor who is determined to game the system from gaming it - take a look at all of the donations that came to the Obama campaign from "people" like John Galt, Della Ware and Adolph Hitler!

Campaign contributions under false names are illegal, as are contributions by noncitizens. Federal campaign law also limits the amount any one citizen can contribute to the presidential campaign to $2,300. The acceptance of campaign contributions via credit card without AVS protection facilitates illegal contributions.

A determined campaign will find a way around these artificial constraints. It has been done in the past and it will continue as long as we the voters continue to harbor a "wink, wink, nudge, nudge say no more" attitude when "our" guys behave in an unethical manner.

Like every other kind of reform out there, ethics reform must start with the voters. For once we start holding ourselves accountable for our actions we can then start holding our legislators accountable.

RNC Insanity

Yesterday I made passing reference to some remarks made this week by RNC Chair candidate Curly Haugland. I think that these remarks need greater scrutiny because it show exactly WHY the RNC is in big trouble.

Republicans, reeling from another election defeat, have taken to arguing over whether their national leader should come from the elected ranks of the Republican National Committee or be a political celebrity such as former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele.

"For this association of members to choose to outsource its leadership would, I believe, be an abdication of our responsibility," Curly Haugland, an RNC member from North Dakota and the former North Dakota Republican Party chairman, wrote in an e-mail to Mr. Steele.

Mr. Haugland called on Mr. Steele to quit the contest for Republican national chairman because he is not an RNC member.

"In my estimation, 168 committed members of the Republican National Committee are a
powerful army of qualified advocates for Republican principles; certainly much more threatening to the Democrats than one celebrity spokesman," Mr. Haugland said.

The utter arrogance of Mr. Haugland's remarks are exactly why the RNC is in the dire straits it is in today. Right now the RNC is totally devoid of new ideas. It is firmly entrenched in the "consultancy class" mentality.

But the quote that says it all is...

"Your chosen path to leadership of the Republican National Committee exemplifies the problem we should immediately seek to resolve, that being the practice of allowing nonmembers to exert undue influence in the process of selecting our leaders" Mr. Haugland wrote Mr. Steele. "Getting the Republican Party back on the right 'track' is a job rightfully left to the Republicans who have been elected to run this railroad."

Excuse me Mr. Haugland - but YOU and the rest of the 168 elected National Committeemen and women are part of the problem. The same National Committee that you claim is the best answer for the ills of the RNC is the same one that elected the last two Chairmen - the ones that have worked their hardest to get DEMOCRATS elected. This is the same National Committee that only wants the grass roots voluteers time and money - but leave the ideas at home because we all know better than you. This is the same National Committee that

IF the Republican National Committee (of which Mr. Haugland is a member) is really concerned about the fate of the Republican Party and really wanted to make a few changes they really need to talk to the few Republicans who did manage to win this year....Republicans like Jason Chaffetz who beat out RNC endorsed candidate - incumbent Chris Cannon - in the primary this year. They might want to ask Rep. elect Chaffetz what he did that managed to win over voters in his district. They might want to ask Chaffetz volunteers what Rep-elect Chaffetz did to win their vote and their money and their time.

IF the RNC really cared about moving forward (as opposed to just stagnating in the present) they would actively COURT conservative elected officials and activists like former Lt. Gov. Steele and Governor Mark Stanford. They will come to those donors who have closed their wallets in the last two electoral cycles and ask "Why". They might come to the grass roots activists who stayed home this year and ask "Why?".

Right now, the "Republicans who have been elected to run this railroad" are the ones who have run us off of the rails. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result so WHY should we continue to entrust the direction of the Republican Party to people who are hell bent on pushing the Party toward political obscurity. THAT is the question of the year.

Racing For The Chair

Earlier this month I wrote about an excellent column by John Hawkins over at Townhall. He has another one up that picks up where the first left off.

After a GOP beating, there is always a debate between the people who want the party to become more principled and those who want to turn the GOP into a poll-driven pile of mush that they believe will be more appealing to centrists. The problem with this whole discussion is that the "we need to be more moderate" crowd tends to simply ignore a number of inconvenient facts that make their position completely untenable.

We've already gone the moderate route -- and lost. One of the most surreal aspects of the post-2008 campaign is listening to moderates pretend that the last eight years never happened.

You say that the GOP can't win as a small government party. Well, we've already tried being a big government party for the last 8 years and it failed. You think running a moderate, pro-amnesty candidate who eschews social issues is the key to winning elections? Well, that's who we ran in 2008 and he received even less votes than George Bush did in 2004.

Principled conservatives were screaming this from the rooftops after the 2006 election. Yet all we heard out of GOP leadership was "well ya know the war..." and "it was just a tough year to be a Republican...". Here's a radical thought...why don't you try being a CONSERVATIVE instead of a "Republican"....

A "moderate" GOP can't generate the volunteers or money needed to win. Yes, the GOP needs both moderate and conservative voters to win elections. Additionally, in certain districts and states, moderate Republicans are more electable than conservatives. That being said, the rightward leaning media, fundraising, and campaign workers are dominated by conservatives. So, if the right side of the party is depressed, there's not enough money or campaign workers to go around and there isn't a strong pushback against the lies put out by Democrats. Does this sound familiar GOP? Remind us again about your fundraising numbers this year? Do I really need to say more about how far removed from your base you really are? There can be no fiscal conservatism in D.C. without social conservatism. There are some people who think the GOP needs to kick social conservatives to the curb and focus entirely on fiscal conservatism in order to help our election prospects, but they're missing three very important points. #1) For the most part, fiscal conservatives are socially conservative and vice-versa. Yes, there are socially conservative Republicans who aren't fiscal conservatives (See George Bush for example), but they're not typical. #2) In Congress, although there are exceptions, the overwhelming majority of Republicans who aren't socially conservative, aren't fiscally conservative either. Show me a Republican in Congress who's pro-abortion at least 75% of the time, I will show you a Republican who's a big spender, too. #3) People who are most concerned about traditional values make up such a large block of voters that the GOP would be lucky to hold 100 seats in the House and 30 seats in the Senate without their help. So, if the social conservatives are sidelined, the fiscal conservatives will be sidelined by default, too, because they won't have the votes to get elected. The conservative coalition that President Reagan cobbled together was symbolized by a three legged stool. Remove ANY ONE of the three legs (fiscal conservatives, social conservatives and moderates) the stool is doomed to fail. It is simple physics! The GOP's drop amongst Hispanics hasn't been caused by opposition to illegal immigration. This myth, propagated by proponents of amnesty and open borders, doesn't bear up under scrutiny. In 2000, George Bush received 35% of the Hispanic vote. In 2004, although the exit polls showed that Bush got 44% of the Hispanic vote, they were horribly flawed. Realistically, Bush probably pulled in 38%-39% of the Hispanic vote that year. In 2006, the GOP pulled 30% of the Hispanic vote and McCain captured about 31% of the Hispanic vote in 2008. First off, the fact that McCain only pulled 31% of the Hispanic vote should prove once and for all that the amnesty issue doesn't move Hispanic votes over to the GOP. If it did, certainly McCain, who has been the biggest advocate of amnesty in the entire Republican Party would have been the candidate to do it. Hispanic immigrants who came here legally are upset with those who want to give the rule breakers a pass. While we more than empathize with where these folks are coming from (given that our families often came from similar circumstances), we are not going to get excited about a candidate that spits on the hard work of our families who came here the right way - it's just not likely to happen. The GOP cannot win without the conservative media. You may like talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity or you may not, but the reality is that the GOP absolutely cannot win elections when they're telling everyone who'll listen that the Republican Party is mediocre. There are two reasons for that. #1) Those radio hosts are popular in the first place largely because the conservatives who make up the GOP's base agree with them. If the talk show hosts are not happy with something, their listeners probably aren't happy with it either -- and making your core supporters happy is the first lesson of Politics 101. #2) Because the mainstream media is so heavily biased towards the Democratic Party, most independent voters take what they say about Republicans with a grain of salt. However, independents perceive conservative talk radio hosts and their listeners to be on the "GOP's side." So, if they hear criticism of the Republican Party from those people, they tend to think it must be true. So, Republicans can afford to have Keith Olbermann and Katie Couric telling people that they stink, but they can't win elections if conservative talk radio hosts, columnists, and bloggers are ripping them up one side and down the other.

The current Republican Party leadership has long taken their biggest ally - the alternative media - for granted. However, they need to learn the lesson that Howard Dean brought to the DNC 4 years ago. They need to make the alternative media welcome partners in the process. They must listen to and respect and respond to the concerns of the alternative meide if they are ever going to find their way out of the wilderness. This is a lesson that at least one of the candidates for RNC chair has claimed to have learned, but one has to wonder about the other candidates. At least one of them has shown himself to be as clueless (when it comes to the base) as the current chairman.

Conservatives across the country are watching this race to see if the RNC is ever going to come back to its roots or if it is going to insist on fading into insignificance. The election of this RNC chair is that important to the party. Hopefully the National Committeemen and women will listen (finally) to their base and not to the consultancy class in DC.

Happy Thanksgiving

This last 12 months have been rather challenging for the Logical Household, as my friends all know. The Logical Husband's job transfer and the move to Utah (and selling a house in THIS market) were tough on us all but we persevered and we are now together as a family and that is enough to be thankful for on it's own. Couple that with all of my good friends in MN and my new good friends here in Utah and it has been a year to truly be grateful for.

So to all of my dear friends back home in MN and my new friends here, I wish you all the best blessings. I am grateful to you all for all of the love and support during a trying year. I am grateful that God has put you all in my life and I look forward to yet another wonderful exciting year ahead.

On that note, here is today's Founders Morning quote.

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors."

–George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Challenging Times Two

Yesterday, the Minnesota State Canvassing Board dealt a blow to the Franken campaign.

Democrat Al Franken suffered a setback Wednesday when the state Canvassing Board unanimously turned down his campaign's request to include rejected absentee ballots in the U.S. Senate recount, prompting a Franken attorney to threaten to go all the way to Washington if necessary to get them considered.

The campaign handled it in it's usually classy manner...

"Whether it is at the county level, before the Canvassing Board, before the courts or before the United States Senate, we don't know yet. But we remain confident these votes will be counted," said Marc Elias, the campaign's lead recount attorney, who added that he won't appeal...

The problem for the Franken campaign is that these ballots were rejected for valid, legal reasons.

Subdivision 1. Check of voter eligibility; proper execution of certificate.

Upon receipt of an absentee ballot returned as provided in sections 203B.16 to 203B.27, the election judges shall compare the voter's name with the names recorded under section 203B.19 in the statewide registration system to insure that the ballot is from a voter eligible to cast an absentee ballot under sections 203B.16 to 203B.27. The election judges shall mark the return envelope "Accepted" and initial or sign the return envelope below the word "Accepted" if the election judges are satisfied that:

(1) the voter's name on the return envelope appears in substantially the same form as on the application records provided to the election judges by the county auditor;

(2) the voter has signed the federal oath prescribed pursuant to section 705(b)(2) of the Help America Vote Act, Public Law 107-252;

(3) the voter has set forth the same voter's passport number, or Minnesota driver's license or state identification card number, or the last four digits of the voter's Social Security number as submitted on the application, if the voter has one of these documents; and

(4) the voter has not already voted at that election, either in person or by absentee ballot.

If the identification number described in clause (3) does not match the number as submitted on the application, the election judges must make a reasonable effort to satisfy themselves through other information provided by the applicant, or by an individual authorized to apply on behalf of the voter, that the ballots were returned by the same person to whom the ballots were transmitted.

An absentee ballot cast pursuant to sections 203B.16 to 203B.27 may only be rejected for the lack of one of clauses (1) to (4). In particular, failure to place the ballot within the security envelope before placing it in the outer white envelope is not a reason to reject an absentee ballot.

This is something that happens every two years. Election judges are trained on their duties and responsibilities before they go to the polling place so it is not like these volunteers go in not knowing how to handle these situations. In addition, the absentee ballots are handled only by state employees, who drive the absentee ballots out to their respective precincts where they are then handled by the head election judge. That person, is required to only handle the ballots with witnesses present and that is usually just to count the number of absentee ballots (to make sure that there are no discrepancies in what came from the state) and then to feed them into the SECURED optical scanner.

When the absentee ballots are scanned in the precinct (by the head election judge), those ballots that are rejected are noted (again by law) with the reason why they have been rejected. Note that a mis-matched signature is NOT one of the reasons for rejection - contrary to the rumor spread by the Franken campaign.

But that's not the only misinformation floating around: An elderly woman in Beltrami County whose absentee ballot was rejected because her signature did not match the signature on her voter registration card.

"Her signature was indeed different than what was on file with the county," said Mark Elias, Franken's Recount Attorney. "And that was because she had suffered a stroke."

But that's NOT TRUE.

Beltrami County election officials say there's no such voter they know about, and that no ballots were rejected because of mismatched signatures.

The Minnesota law is so clear and the training so thorough, that even DFL Attorney General Lori Swanson weighed in against Team Franken's claims.

According to an advisory opinion issued last week by the office of Democratic state Attorney General Lori Swanson, "Only the ballots cast in the election and the summary statements certified by the election judges may be considered in the recount process." A recount manual prepared this year by the office of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, also a Democrat, makes clear that the canvassing board only supervises "an administrative recount" that is "not to determine if absentee ballots were properly accepted."

Emphasis mine.

The statement by SOS Ritchie could be the only nail that Team Franken has to hang any appeal on. The canvassing board IS indeed only an administrative body, but it has 2 state Supreme Court Justices sitting on it and 2 District Court Judges on it. One of the State Supreme Court justices is the Chief Justice of the court. This could be important should one of Team Franken's threats be pulled into play and it sounds like it is likely to happen based on this quote from Senate Majority Leader Harry Redid (D-NV).

The board's action drew a response from the Senate's top Democrat, Majority Leader Harry Reid. In a written statement, he called the decision a "cause for great concern."

"As the process moves forward, Minnesota authorities must ensure that no voter is disenfranchised," Reid said. "A citizen's right to have his or her vote counted is fundamental in our democracy."

I would venture to guess that the State Supreme Court justices would not appreciate someone like Senator Reid (who is NOT a Minnesotan) telling them that they don't know what they are doing. Just a wild guess....

Senator Reid had best be mindful of his own words. For if the US Senate steps in to attempt to over turn the votes of the PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA he could have a fight on his hands. The people have voted, Senator and they did not chose Al Franken. While the close vote does warrant a recount and the scrutiny of a recount, the interference of outside interlopers is NOT warranted and will not be accepted by Minnesotans without a fight. Should the US Senate decide to interfere in the will of Minnesota voters, you can be assured that Republicans nationwide will also get involved and that could turn a potential hot spot into a powder keg. Meanwhile the people of MN will be without both of its representatives in the US Senate.

It is my hope and prayer that Team Franken takes the high road and accepts the results of the recount without resorting to court challenges and bringing in outside influences. However, I fear that this will not be the case. It just does not fit with Al Franken's personality at all.

Founders Morning Quotes

"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe."

–James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785

And They Wonder Why...

The dinosaur media wonders why they are falling further and further into obsolescence....

Seen on Yahoo news today was this headline

Obama promotes fiscal restraint, big spending

That headline was followed by this story....

CHICAGO – President-elect Barack Obama named Peter Orszag as his budget director on Tuesday and said his job will be to conduct a thorough review of federal spending programs, "eliminating those programs we don't need and insisting that those we do need operate in a cost-effective way."

With the economy in crisis, Obama said, "Budget reform is not an option. It's a necessity."

Echoing Abraham Lincoln, Obama added, "I will ask my economic team to think anew and act anew."

Orszag is the director of the Congressional Budget Office, a man who the president-elect said "knows where the bodies are buried."

I sat there at my desk, dumbfounded to the point where a co-worker asked me what was wrong. I said "read this headline" which he did and HE was equally dumbfounded. After sitting there for a couple of minutes, I navigated back to the Yahoo News main page where lo and behold the headline had magically changed.

Someone (hopefully) got spanked for their rampant stupidity.....

Founders Morning Quotes

A little tardy.....

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition."

—Thomas Jefferson (Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 15 February 1791)

Challenging Times

I have not written much about the ongoing Senatorial recount in Minnesota for a couple of reasons. One is I am not quite as plugged in to the goings on now that I am several hundred miles away (even though my dear friend Gary Gross does his best to keep me up to speed) and two because I am very much content to be the spectator and wait to see what happens. However a couple of things have happened in the last couple of days that have changed my mind.

First (as my friend Gary points out) local Stearns County authorities have decided that the actions of certain Franken surrogates have gotten out of control.

Date: November 24, 2008
Contact: Randy Schreifels, County Auditor-Treasurer, 320-656-3901

U.S. Senate Race Recount Facing More Challenges

The process is slowing down in Stearns County’s hand recount of the U.S. Senate race.

Stearns County election officials are getting many more frivolous challenges, mainly starting with one challenger from the Al Franken campaign. When this happens, the Norm Coleman campaign will counter with another frivolous challenge.

By 10:00 this morning, there have already been seven ballots challenged, where voter intent is very clear. On Friday, there were 15 challenges, and most of them were frivolous as well. Compare that to just 8 challenges the entire first day and only 3 challenges the second day.

This morning, for example, a ballot was challenged because the oval wasn’t completely blackened, although the majority of it was filled in. Another ballot was challenged because there was a mark, or a small line, somewhere else on the ballot, not even near the U.S. Senate race.

Stearns County officials were hoping to wrap up the recount today, but that goal might now be in jeopardy. At the end of the day on Friday, Stearns County had approximately just 16,000 ballots left to recount, out of 79,000 total ballots, and officials were hoping to finish those today. But with the extra challenges, the process could extend into Tuesday.

Then my other dear friend Captain Ed pointed out a challenged ballot that must be seen to be believed.






A larger version of the ballot can be seen here.

Apparently, the Franken volunteer that challenged this particular ballot is unclear as to the intent of this particular voter! If they are that confused, then a lot of their challenged ballots may end up going back in the Coleman pile once the canvassing board rules on them.

One thing to keep in mind, as the counting marches toward it's conclusion. Hennepin County and Ramsey County are almost done with their counting. They are the two most populace DFL leaning counties in the state. Meanwhile, Scott County - the most populace REPUBLICAN county in the state has yet to count a single ballot. Their counting is scheduled to start on December 3!

The moral of this story is that you really should not count your chickens (or your votes) before they are all hatched - or recounted.

Founders Morning Quotes

"The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations."

—George Washington, letter to Thomas Nelson, August 20, 1778

When Will They Ever Learn?

My good friend Gary Gross has a post up at True North and Let Freedom Ring that is a very compelling read.

Victor Davis Hanson’s column at NRO is this morning’s great reading. In it, he discusses the competing theories about what happened to the GOP this election cycle. Here’s the first theory Dr. Hanson discusses:

It was a sort of fluke. Party faithful will shrug that almost everything conspired this year against the conservative brand: two wars; the sinking economy; eight years of presidential incumbency; a biased, unethical media; Bush’s low ratings; the absence of an incumbent president or VP candidate on the ticket; more exposed Republican congressional seats than Democratic ones; a charismatic path-breaking opposition candidate, etc. The stars were wrong, rather than the ideas.

So, the theory goes, just make McCain appear a little younger, Obama sound a little bit more like John Kerry, and take away the mid-September financial meltdown, and, presto!, a Republican would now be in the White House.

This thinking should be immediately dismissed. This thinking is status quo thinking, which is the most stagnant thinking within the GOP. It’s defeatist thinking and it shouldn’t be tolerated.

I have been hearing this particular line of thinking out of the GOP "experts" since 2006 and Gary is right - this type of thinking should be dismissed with all due prejudice.

It’s foolishness from a strategic standpoint. It doesn’t address inspiring workers (ed - and voters) to do the mechanics of campaigning; it doesn’t address the advantages Obama has in terms of GOTV, fundraising and event planning. The GOP won’t be competitive nationwide until the GOP steps vigorously into the 21st Century.

One change that must happen is in candidate recruitment. Too often, we’ve run the person who lots the election before. Too often we’ve recruited someone from the state senate. These candidates shouldn’t be expected to win. The voters rendered a verdict on the ousted incumbent. More often than not, state senators aren’t the assertive people that representatives are. Picking the ‘next in line’ guy is a great way to lose elections. Legacy picks are disasters-in-waiting.

Great candidates are identified by how energetic and articulate they are. Great candidates are identified by their adherance to conservative principles AND their energy AND their ability to articulate conservative principles.

I’d further opine that great candidates (a) naturally go on the offensive on the biggest issues of the day, (b) challenge their opponents statements and (c) are naturals at answering the voters’ why questions.

A case in point is our own freshman Congressman Jason Chaffetz who took DC by storm last week. When he was campaigning he took on a sitting incumbent in the primary and dispatched him with ease - a feat he duplicated in the general election. How he did it was hard work for sure, but he was also not afraid to go on the attack when his opponents tried to mischaracterize his statements in order to score cheap political points. He took his case directly to the voters in numerous town hall meetings - bypassing the filter of a not too friendly media - and he answered their questions. He showed clearly that a conservative candidate can win.

Jason also did the one thing that the old school GOP experts have thus far refused to do. He had a massive on line presence - a la the Ron Paul and Barack Obama campaigns. The online presence allowed people from the far flung corners of his large district to communicate and to strategize.

One thing that the GOP needs to do if it is going to move forward in the 21st century is to JOIN it technologically! Until that time comes.....

During the course of the primaries, I was somewhat surprised to see some otherwise rock-ribbed conservatives backing former Governor Mike Huckabee for President. When asked, they always claimed that he was the "only" conservative in the bunch. Yet the more I researched the former Governor's record, the more puzzled I was because his record just did not match the conservative claims. No matter his spending record in Little Rock or his support of amnesty for illegal immigrants or his Al Gore like support of cap and trade, these otherwise staunch conservatives were smitten.

Well not all of them were.

Ronald Reagan used to quip that the 11th Commandment is: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. While there are times for Republicans to call one another out for un-Republican behavior, such arguments are best kept inside the family and should not be aired openly to unsympathetic media.

It is therefore unfortunate that, at a time when the GOP needs to close ranks and seek unity, Governor Mike Huckabee has aimed his fire at his fellow Republicans. In the just-released Do the Right Thing, which he has been promoting on news shows and in major newspapers, Governor Huckabee takes shots at several prominent Republicans, including his one-time rivals for the GOP presidential nomination Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.

He also takes a couple shots at me, claiming I told him that the issues I have worked on most of my professional life -- the sanctity of human life, the preservation of marriage and family and religious freedom -- were no longer a focus of mine and that my focus has shifted to foreign policy matters. Gov. Huckabee writes of being puzzled about why I didn’t endorse his presidential candidacy, stating, “Gary Bauer reportedly wasn’t impressed at all and set forth from that day onward to find an ever-changing reason to deny me his support.”

Mr. Bauer then goes on to recount his meeting with former Governor Huckabee.

Huckabee is wrong on a couple of counts. First, my passion and work on behalf of values issues have in no way diminished. Second, I have believed since 9-11 that the West’s battle against Islamofascism is a crucial component in the fight for our civilization. Thus it is a values issue. That Huckabee fails to understand all this gets to the heart of why I did not support him.

Huckabee said that during a private meeting we had, “it was like playing whack-a-mole at the arcade -- whatever issue I addressed, another one surfaced as the ‘problem’ that made my candidacy unacceptable.”

In fact, talking with Huckabee was like playing whack-a-mole, because he had a number of issues that posed problems. It wasn’t just that he didn’t get it on foreign policy. His record on taxes and spending, illegal immigration, his apparent backing of Al Gore's carbon cap and trade scheme, support for voting rights for Washington, D.C., and cozying up to unions like the NEA all worried me. Huckabee can call it whack-a-mole. But for me there were just too many items where he wasn’t sufficiently conservative coupled with a lack of attention and experience on foreign affairs.

Now Governor Huckabee is now using this scorched earth policy to silence all of his critics in advance of his run again for President in 2012. All I can say is I hope that these otherwise solid conservatives will take the coming 4 years to really look into former Governor Huckabee's real record - not the one that he has doctored up for the primary this year.

Founders Morning Quotes

I am starting a new feature today - Founders Morning quotes. The quotes are courtesy of The Patriot Post.

Today is a two-fer.

"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."

—George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

and

"If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs." --Theodore Roosevelt

Enjoy and have a great Friday.

Take This Cob....

The "impossible" has happened.

A Sanpete County (UT) turkey processing plant is shutting down and nearly 400 employees are being laid off.

Officials at the Moroni Feed Co. say the plant will go idle at the end of the day Thursday.

The 60-member turkey cooperative is hoping to reopen March 16.

Brandon Olson, the company's chief financial officer, says the rising cost of corn -- driven by government subsidies for ethanol -- has driven up feed prices for raising turkeys.

Commissioner of agriculture Leonard Blackham said, "Corn hit $8 a bushel, and generally it's down to about $2.25."

The company says fresh turkeys will still be available for Thanksgiving.

Moroni Feed Co. processes about 5 million turkeys a year. The turkeys are sold under the Norbest brand.

Emphasis mine.

But how can that beeeeeeee. After all - Governor Pawlenty and the rest of the corn ethanol evangelists assured us that this was not going to happen.

Governor Pawlenty (and the rest of the corn ethanol evangelists) ignored the warnings that people like Mr. Olson raised all summer long and now the chickens are coming home to roost (pun very much intended). So when does AAA get to say "I told you so"?

It Must Be Winter

Snow topped peaks, resorts opening and Warren Miller films on the television. It must be winter in the mountains.

To my Utah neighbors - I need a recommendation on a beginner friendly hill for the Junior Logician. The Logical Husband and I have both skied real mountains, but all the Junior has skied is Minnesota hills. He is a little intimidated by the thought of skiing something THIS BIG! While I may be jonesing to ski Alta I know he will not be so thrilled soooo....

Oh and to my conservative friends out there - check out the Warren Miller Foundation. Gotta love it - the man is a ski bum and a free-marketeer too boot!

Another Reason Why The GOP Is in Trouble...

Mike Huckabee.....

On Tuesday, that book will arrive on store shelves, and in terms of payback, it will not disappoint. At once a memoir of his campaign, a treatise on the ills of the Republican Party and a blueprint for his own political future, Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America is filled with sharp words for his fellow Republicans who frustrated his bid for the party's nomination.

I'm all for bringing common sense back into the process. Heaven knows there is a certain lack of it in politics as a whole. However, the former Governor from Arkansas is HARDLY the one to bring that about...

In a chapter titled "Faux-Cons: Worse than Liberalism," Huckabee identifies what he calls the "real threat" to the Republican Party: "libertarianism masked as conservatism." He is not so much concerned with the libertarian candidate Ron Paul's Republican supporters as he is with a strain of mainstream fiscal-conservative thought that demands ideological purity, seeing any tax increase as apostasy and leaving little room for government-driven solutions to people's problems. "

Emphasis mine. Since when did "government driven solutions to peoples problems" become a CONSERVATE trait Governor????? If anyone is the "Faux-Con", Governor, it is you and not former Senator Thompson or former Governor Romney (two former rivals that Gov. Huckabee aimed his sights at).

Please, Governor, for the sake of the party go back to Arkansas where your "faux" conservative/populism sells. The rest of us are not buying it.

Bankrupting The Country

Gee - no one would have ever guessed that this was coming.

OTTAWA, November 14, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new study has revealed that the Canadian government will spend $171.9-billion this year on health care, or $5,170 per person. At this rate “health care spending is expected to grow faster than Canada’s economy, outpacing inflation and population growth,” according to Glenda Yeates, President and CEO of the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which released the study yesterday.

Demographers have warned that the aging and slow growth of the Canadian population is a direct threat to the long-term prognosis of its raft of expensive, publicly funded social services, including its health care system.

Brian Day, past president of the Canadian Medical Association, told the Globe and Mail that with the Baby Boom generation growing older, the system is headed for a “demographic blowout.”

The CIHI study found that government expenditure on health will reach 10.7 per cent of the country's gross domestic product. Yeates said the study’s results are “going to raise questions for Canada and other countries as to how much do we really want to spend on health care.” The organization's findings may prove especially significant and timely given US president-elect Barack Obama's stated plans to move the US towards socialized healthcare.

At the same time that the Canadian government is paying record sums to keep its socialized medical services afloat, which includes government-funded abortion-on-demand, the population of Canada continues to age and its birth rate remains one of the lowest in the western world.

The median age for women in Canada is 41.2 years, over the age at which women easily conceive children. Recently the total fertility rate has risen only slightly to 1.57 children born per woman. To maintain a steady population, however, a country must have 2.1 children born per woman.

Despite massive immigration, Canada’s population, currently 33,399,600, has grown by only 276,780 since last year. With most new residents being adults, the problem of the aging of the population is not addressed by the government’s open-door policy, aimed at bringing workers into the country. The average Canadian life expectancy is 81.16 years. Combined, these statistics paint a grim picture of the future of Canada’s health services, with fewer and fewer young people to pay for the health care of a rapidly aging population.

The 2006 census showed that the country’s population is aging at an alarming rate. The report from Statistics Canada said that the number of people over age 64 has increased by 11.5 per cent in the last 5 years. Of the total 32,973,546 Canadians, "the number of people aged 55 to 64, many of whom are workers approaching retirement, has never been so high in Canada, at close to 3.7 million in 2006."

Universal healthcare - bankrupting the Canadian economy? Whodathunkit??????

Lots of Questions - What Are The GOP's Answers?

John Hawkins had a great column up at Townhall this week. It asks the same hard questions that many conservatives have been asking of the GOP for almost four years now.

#1) If both the GOP and the Democrats support bigger government, how does the country survive long term given the size of the debt we already have and the deficits we're running right now? In other words, how can running massive deficits possibly be sustainable over the long haul?

#2) If the GOP were to officially become a big government party, wouldn't there be a real danger of having a large third party spring up that would represent the considerable number (I'd say a majority, at least in the abstract) of Americans who do want smaller government and less spending?

#3) If the GOP becomes a big government party, how do you see us differentiating ourselves from the Democratic Party? Do we spend almost as much as they do, but not quite as much? Do we spend even more? Do we favor deficit spending, but just on different things? Isn't there a real danger that Democrats -- since their base tends to generally be OK with excessive spending -- could simply outbid us on anything we offered to the American people?

#4) Since the majority of the GOP's core supporters don't agree with "moderate" positions like big spending or amnesty, feel very strongly about it, and feel those positions harm the party politically, how can the party continue to hew to those positions over the long term without being permanently at odds with the people who should be their strongest supporters?

#5) Let's do the math on amnesty: there are roughly 12-20 million illegal immigrants, most of whom are Hispanics. Hispanics broke 70/30 for the Democrats in 2006 and 69/31 for the Dems in 2008 according to the latest exit poll data. If the split stayed at 70/30 and 12-20 million new illegals were made citizens, that would mean the Democrats would add another 4.8 to 8 million potential new voters as a result of amnesty. The top end of that scale is a larger margin than what Barack Obama won by in 2008.

I'll start you off with the first 5 but there are 10 more questions that the state and national GOP leadership needs to answer if they ever hope to regain the trust of the Reagan Conservative Movement that they have cast aside for the last 8 years.

But most importantly, the question that the GOP leadership needs to ask and meditate on is this....how long do you want to remain a minority party?

The 5 W's - Who, What, When, Where and WHY

Paul Rolly's column in today's Tribune is (in my humble opinion) a must read.

While I personally support same-sex couples having the same legal right to marriage as heterosexuals, I also believe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had the right to take a stand on the issue and counsel its members to do the same.

The church currently is taking intense heat for its statements at the pulpits encouraging support of California's Proposition 8 and for the $22 million or so its members contributed to the cause.

To church leaders and many of its members, the amendment banning gay marriage is a moral issue and, while I disagree, they have the right to push their agenda using any political means under the law.

Now I don't completely agree with Rolly on his support of same-sex marriage (more on that later), I do agree (as I said before) that the protests have gone way to far when it comes to the tactics of some of the protesters. I also disagree with Rolly when he says...

Religious leaders like the Moral Majority fundamentalists have often used their substantial clerical influence to push for secular laws compatible to their faiths and help elect government officials who comply with their wishes.

Liberal organizations, too, use a commonality of belief or lifestyle to raise money and elect politicians who promote their agendas.

Issue advocacy groups on both sides of the aisle do not look for politicians who "comply" with their wishes as much as they look for politicians who share the same BELIEFS that these groups do. There is a big difference.

One of the puzzling things about this column was that the headline ("Many groups besides LDS Church push political agendas") didn't seem to match up with the column itself. The column only mentions one group (the Moral Majority). If there are other groups Rolly, how about naming them? Or would you like me to? Maybe it was simply a matter that the headline writer wrote the headline without reading the column? It would be nice to know.

If Rolly's column were to do the headline justice it really needs to spend more time focusing on these "other groups" rather than focusing (as he does) solely on the LDS Church. There are indeed many groups that lobby legislators and citizens on issues, including Prop 8. Many organizations who also lobbied voters to approve Prop 8 have not been attacked like the LDS Church has and SOMEONE needs to ask the most pressing question....WHY? Why is the Catholic Church not taking the same kind of heat that the Mormon Church is? Why are these activists not going after groups like the American Family Council for their support of Prop 8?

Rolly's continuing focus on the LDS Church and it's past lobbying efforts have - for good or for ill - continued to make the focus of this current debate the LDS Church and not the people who are shooting out windows, vandalizing LDS Churches and setting fires to copies of the Book of Mormon! The glare of the spotlight needs to be on THESE bad actors and not the LDS Church! We need to focus on the actions of people who want to scare their opponents into silent submission.

More Proof Of (a) Global Warming (scam)

As NBC gets ready to bash the country over the head on Global Warming a not so startling FACT about the global warming pushers is being reported across the pond.

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

Emphasis mine. Not only has the author of Al Gore's Nobel Prize been caught fudging his data, he has been caught doing this BEFORE!

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

It was so bad that Hansen had to go back and change years worth of data. Even better - when confronted with the error in the data, Hansen and the GISS went back and changed the data to try to match up with their conclusion...

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic...

...except for one little problem...

...GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

Oh snap I hate it when that happens.....

Look - I'm not going to say that there is no such thing as global warming - it does happen and it has happened FOR CENTURIES. What I am saying is that the warming of the last decade is in line with centuries of cyclical warming caused by solar flares - not anything that vain man has done. I am also saying that we need to be absolutely factually certain that we can do anything about this natural cycle before we enact changes that will cripple the world for decades - if not centuries.

New Fun Site For Political Junkies

and students of politics period. The site is called Political Advocacy Groups and it is run by the University of Washington at Vancouver. It lists out all of the political advocacy groups by name and by category. It's a great way for anyone to see just who is influencing of our elected representatives (instead of you the voters). I intend to bookmark it so that I can learn more.

Even More Tolerance

Jazz and I spoke a little bit this afternoon (on our weekly show) about the Prop 8 fall out against the Mormon Church. What neither one of us knew was as we were speaking, the HazMat Unit of the Salt Lake City Police were just blocks away from where I sat at the scene of the latest attack on the Mormon Church.

The FBI was testing an envelope mailed to the Salt Lake City LDS temple Thursday to determine if the white powder it contained was dangerous.
At 4:05 p.m., a recorder's office employee working in the temple's annex opened a manila envelope that contained a smaller envelope with powder in it, said Salt Lake City Fire Department spokesman Scott Freitag.
"As soon as he saw it he put it down," Freitag said.
LDS security was summoned and put the envelopes and powder into a plastic bag. Security officers called 911 and the Salt Lake City Fire Department's Hazardous Material crew and FBI agents arrived.
The man who opened the envelope and two other employees were kept in the annex for more than an hour. Their clothes were washed on site. Only the man who opened the envelope got a small amount of powder on his hand, Freitag said. It was determined the employees were not injured and later went home.
HAZMAT crews used a bleach-like product to sanitize the annex just to be safe, Freitag said. The annex office is in a separate building near the temple. Temple Square was not evacuated while HAZMAT crews were there.
Two FBI agents left the temple grounds about 5 p.m. with a black plastic trash bag containing the envelopes and powder.

This has gone beyond protests and into the realm of terrorism. Is the GLBT community so devoid of solutions that the only thing that they can do in response to their electoral defeat is to threaten and attempt to intimidate?

So tell me....is this the way that ADULTS handle set backs or is this the way that spoiled CHILDREN handle set backs????? I mean really....

Tolerance In Action

The tolerance of the left rears it's ugly head again. This time in response to a resounding rejection by the voters. As a result of the passage of Prop. 8 by California voters, the GLBT community has gone off....on Mormon Temples across the country. Whether it is here in Utah, or California, or Seattle or in Colorado the people who demand that the rest of the world accept their "alternate lifestyles" are now engaging in the very same type of activity that brought hate crimes legislation to the lexicon. The following story was related to me by a friend. This happened to someone he knows who was in Los Angeles on Election Day.

As additional information for those who missed the news, I was at the temple assisting in the security efforts and it was quite an experience. Our temple is safe and no damage was done on the grounds.It was a site I never expected to see. At one point we had let in about 20 police vehicles through the gates because they were afraid their vehicles would be damaged as civilian cars were being vandalized. I removed the Utah plates from my truck just so I could drive through the mess and park blocks away. Two full squads of LAPD in riot gear set up their base inside the temple grounds while SWAT vehicles and hundreds of officers followed the crowds run up Santa Monica and Wilshire Boulevards. I've heard that the crowd was estimated to be over 2,500. The officers inside the temple grounds made a line on the front lawn by the fence. At one point, with 7 news and police helicopters overhead, the crowd began to climb the fence and it looked like there was going to be a lot of trouble.

We had, it seemed, a good fourth of a Polynesian ward there so it could have gotten very interesting very fast. While I was there, I was not aware of anyone actually breaching the fence, but we were asked to move far across the parking lot as they were anticipating the need to shoot tear gas canisters. I never thought I would see the day when police officers would sit perched on the spire of our temple as lookouts.

All of this happened at about 7:30 PM. It should be remembered that most likely many of the law enforcement were not in favor of our stance on Proposition 8, but nevertheless, the men and women were there doing their duty and protecting our property. For that we are grateful. And yes, there was an incident with some of our members who had gone to remove the protest signs from the front fence. One of the protesters did initiate physical contact with one of our sisters so the details are uncertain as to whether the response was fully justified. The lesson to be learned is that it's important to anticipate and avoid such confrontational situations.

Remember the world is watching our reaction and the media is everywhere. In the end, when we keep our cool, the video footage speaks the truth regarding which side is really intolerant and appears hateful when we simply do not respond or do so in a loving and controlled manner.

No matter your feelings about the Mormon Church (and I am no Mormon so I have no "dog" in this fight) they have the same rights to preach issues to their flock as the Catholic Church, the Baptist Church (where I belong) or any other church has. IF their flock goes out and acts on that teaching that is also their rights! As long as the Church is not advocating for or against a specific candidate they are well within their rights do to what they did.

If the GLBT community wants to be upset they should be upset at the voters of California. WE THE PEOPLE in California spoke - if the GLBT community does not like that maybe they should move to Massachusetts or something. But taking out their electoral loss is just as hate filled as anything they accuse others who do not approve of their "alternative lifestyles" of being.

Calling All Angels!

Project Valor is in need and they are calling on all Angels for help. I'll let Major Charles Ziegenfuss tell the tale.

The valour-IT project is out of cash--unless we raise the funds to keep going, it will cease to exist, and the DOD will issue voice software to people who don't have computers to run it.

I don't know if you know this, but we're doing the valour-it fundraiser right now, and team Army is trailing behind team Navy.

This is patently Unsat.

We, bloggers representing the largest branch of the Armed Forces, have a tradition and an image to uphold.

There are more Army bloggers than any other branch. We know them--maybe not individually, but collectively. Many of them got their start in blogging by reading us. (In my case, they read mine and said "I can do better than that!")

In any case, we need to get the word out. We need them to help. we need them to tell their friends, families, and readers about us. We need to infect them with the same thing that motivates us all: the desire to lead, to take charge, and take care of soldiers, especially those who cannot help themselves.

Please help make this go viral. Get them writing about it. Also ask mainstream bloggers to write about it. Ask mainstream bloggers to join the Army team. Ask everyone you know to contribute to the cause.

The competition started yesterday, and we're 4% of the way to our goal of $250, 000--but we are only running this until turkey day. If we can convince 240,000 folks to give a single dollar--and I don't care how bad the economy is, you can usually find a buck in your couch cushions--we'll meet our goal.

We may even get corporate dollar for dollar matching, and our visibility on this can only help them to decide to do that. The more exposure we get, the more they would like to use that exposure to their own ends, and that's fine by me, as long as they dig deep in their wallets.

So once again I will be joining the Army team to raise money for Project Valor IT. I know that times are tight but I hope that you will all chip in a buck or two for the wounded soldiers! The link is in the sidebar.

Light Posting Week

Posting will be light for a few days as life has just managed to get in the way of play. I will try to get at least one post up a morning and by next Monday I should be settled into a new routine.

Navel Gazing

One of the results of this last election is the endless navel gazing that has come out of the conservative community. Some inside the beltway pundits and consultants are hard pressed to understand how their guy, who was so "beloved" by the media could have lost and they are trying to blame it on the "new kid" - Sarah Palin. Others, who honestly helped contribute to the loss have other things to say.

For all intents and purposes, conservatism--as a national movement--is completely and thoroughly dead. Barack Obama did not destroy it, however. It was George W. Bush and John McCain who destroyed conservatism in America.

However, the facts do not bear him out.

Barack Obama won the White House by campaigning against an unpopular incumbent in a time of economic anxiety and lingering foreign policy concerns. He offered voters an upbeat message, praised the nation as a land of opportunity, promised tax cuts to just about everyone, and overcame doubts about his experience with a strong performance in the presidential debates.

Does this sound familiar? It should. Mr. Obama followed the approach that worked for Ronald Reagan. His victory confirmed that voters still embrace the guiding beliefs of the Reagan era.

One of the things that grass roots activists have been hammering the National Republican Party on is just this - there has been no compelling narrative out of the national party. Every time some intrepid activist or elected Republican stumbles upon one, the RNC comes in and co-opts it into a negative narrative and voters want nothing to do with it!

What the voters want (when you talk to them) is a government that will apply a little common sense to the issues of the day. The message that came out of the Obama campaign was much better crafted than the one coming out of the McCain campaign. As a result, the voters understood it better and voted accordingly. If conservatives are going to recover (without years in the wilderness) the RNC needs to figure this out fast. Otherwise...

Veterans Day

Today is the day set aside to honor those valiant men and women who served our country in war and in peace - our veterans. So won't you take a moment today to find someone who served and take them out to lunch or in some other way just thank them for the freedoms that their service has given us today.

"It's the Soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.

It's the Soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It's the Soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to demonstrate.

It's the Soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trail.

And it's the Soldier who salutes the flag, who serves the flag, whose coffin is draped in the flag, that allows the protester to burn the flag"

Author unknown.

Say What?????

Ralph Nader on Senator Obama's historic win yesterday.



God bless Shep Smith for just hammering Nader on the "Uncle Tom" comment and shame on Nader for playing the victim here. I don't care who you are, you just don't use that word at all much less as flippantly as Nader just did in that spot. Then to callously sit there and try to defend using that word the way he did is just beyond the pale.

Ralph Nader.....you ARE the weakest link...GOOD BYE!

The Flag Still Stands.

I yield the floor to Logical Lady Twila Brase (from the inbox today).

Dear Friends,

Allow me to share some good news with you today.

As I stepped out of my car to walk into CCHC's office, something caught my attention on the top of a nearby building.

Blowing in the wind was an American flag.

here it stood - tall, unwavering, strong and true.

It was a reminder that the flag still stands for the freedom we all believe in.

Like our flag, we too must stand tall and strong.

Those who cherish our hard-fought rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" must hold high the flag and all that it stands for so that it can be seen from sea to shining sea...and farther still, across the sea.

Our freedom can be lost. But let's remember, it can also be taken back.

Proponents of big government ideas are very excited this morning. Perhaps we should be as well. This election provides an opportunity for all of us to rise to freedom's challenge.

We who believe in a government of the people, by the people and for the people must prepare now and in the days ahead to actively engage in the battle for liberty. When the bad ideas of the newly elected fail, we must be ready with freedom's response.

In the days ahead, as this new group of policymakers attempt to socialize your medicine, restrict your health care choices, claim ownership to your medical records and DNA, and confiscate more of your wages to pay for their intrusive "public health" agendas, I ask you to use your talents, your time, and your resources to support Citizens' Council on Health Care and other freedom-minded organizations in the battle to protect America and our endowed, inalienable right to be free.

We must never give in and never give up.

The flag still stands.

Barack Obama is our President elect. The people have spoken and the world has NOT come to an end. The sun rose and the flag flew and life goes on. Yes we will fight on the issues, but this conservative will not drink the hemlock kool-aid. THIS Conservative will work all the harder to make sure that we do better in 2010 and 2012 and all the while I will NOT stoop to the level of hatred toward President Obama that the progressive movement stooped to with President Bush. There will be no cries of "selected not elected", no bumper stickers calling for impeachment over any slight, no "Not MY President", no "Don't Blame Me I Voted McCain" or "Somewhere in Illinois a village is missing it's idiot". None of that. Yes I will argue against issues and ideology, but arguing issues and ideology are NOT THE SAME as the bumper sticker hate that we have seen from the left.

The sun still shines and the flag still waves and the Republic marches on. God Bless America.

Antics in Philly

Anyone who knows Philly at all is not surprised at this turn of events today.




Rick Leaventhal interviewed one of the two New Black Panther members after the one with the nightstick was removed by the police. I found it hysterical that the NBP member was comment on how "intimidated" he was by a guy who was at least a foot shorter than him who had a microphone.

Now to be clear there were no reports from VOTERS who said that these "gents" denied them access to the polls but the poll watchers did report that the presence of these two guys were indeed "intimidating".

There have been random reports today of irregularities...from poll watchers being denied access to polling facilities and random power outages, there have been hiccoughs and worse across the country. Let us hope, however that it does not escalate beyond this.

More Philly Antics....




Lovely......we have electioneering taking place IN POLLING PLACES (also in Philly)




The New Republic has a partial list of the Shenanigans reported so far.

Herewith a partial accounting of (unsubstantiated) chaos at the polls, as reported by callers to legal volunteers here at Election Protection headquarters:

St. Louis, MO: Voters are being offered $100 to leave the line and abstain from voting.

Warsaw, VA: The lights are out at the precinct and poll workers are using flashlights.

Aurora, CO: "Soiled ballots."

West Orange, NJ: The voting machine broke. Poll workers have paper ballots, but no pencils. Oops.

Market Street, Philadelphia: Voters are cutting in line; poll workers are threatening to shut down the precinct.

Largo, FL: Voters are being booted from line for wearing partisan clothing.

Manassas, VA: A woman is told she has to choose between local and national elections--a volunteer insists she can't vote in both.

Hamilton County, OH: When a scanner broke, the ballots were placed in an envelope and sent downtown. Voters were told the ballots would be counted "tonight or tomorrow."

More from Philadelphia: Partisan volunteers are escorting voters into the booth.

Ingham County, MI: The A-K line is moving slower than the L-Z line.

Pittsburgh, PA: Machines are down, down, down!

Bartow County, GA: Only Republicans are on some ballots; Democrats have to be written in. Also, the booths face open to the line, so your neighbors can see who you're voting for.

Baltimore: Voting machines are stuck in "audio" mode. Elderly woman reports "mass confusion."

There is much much more.....

Election 2008 MSR Style

Jazz and I will be running two Blog Talk Radio shows today - the first at our regular 1pm Eastern (11am Mountain) time and then a special 90 minute show starting at 6:30 Eastern (4:30 Mountain). This morning we will be talking about the final couple of days worth of campaign news. The second show will focus on early poll results, exit polling (and why you should not trust it) and what ever else comes up between the two shows.

Plus we will be over at the Ed Morrissey Show in the UStream chat room for the better part of the day.

Links to both shows are in the right sidebar so won't you join us and let us know about your Election Day experience.

RIP Madelyn Dunham

Senator Barack Obama's grandmother has lost her battle with "the Big C" today. Senator Obama was told of his grandmothers passing this morning. It is a pity she could not see her son's bid to make history through to its conclusion, but I am glad that the Senator was able to take time off of the campaign to see her before she died.

Whatever differences you may have with either candidate over issues, as humans we should pull together in their hour of grief to lift them up in prayer. Our families thoughts and prayers are with the Obama family tonight.

What Is Really Necessary?

Chief already pointed us to the comments that Senator Obama made (last January) to "bankrupt" the coal industry, but I think that these comments are more pertinant - especially to any of us who happen to live in an area where the snow flies and it gets below freezing for 3-5 months a year.

The problem is not technical, uh, and the problem is not mastery of the legislative intricacies of Washington. The problem is, uh, can you get the American people to say, “This is really important,” and force their representatives to do the right thing? That requires mobilizing a citizenry. That requires them understanding what is at stake. Uh, and climate change is a great example.

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

They — you — you can already see what the arguments will be during the general election. People will say, “Ah, Obama and Al Gore, these folks, they’re going to destroy the economy, this is going to cost us eight trillion dollars,” or whatever their number is. Um, if you can’t persuade the American people that yes, there is going to be some increase in electricity rates on the front end, but that over the long term, because of combinations of more efficient energy usage, changing lightbulbs and more efficient appliance, but also technology improving how we can produce clean energy, the economy would benefit.

If we can’t make that argument persuasively enough, you — you, uh, can be Lyndon Johnson, you can be the master of Washington. You’re not going to get that done.

Ed Morrissey has the audio linked up at Hot Air (where I got the transcript) emphasis is mine.

So Minnesota - are you really willing to pay even more (on top of the increases that the Minnesota Legislature already burdened you with last session) for electricity to heat and light your homes this winter? The "acceptable" alternatives to coal and gas (the Democrats and their green allies will never allow more nuclear even though it is the cleanest and safest AND CHEAPEST available NOW) will not be ready for another 10 years or more. In the meantime, you will have to sacrifice even more so that the government can tell you what to do. Is that really the life you want to lead? If so then by all means vote for the Democrats tomorrow. However, if you would like to be able to afford to heat your home AND feed your family, you may want to think twice about voting for someone who thinks that skyrocketing costs of electricity are "necessary".

Attention PA, OH, IN and VA Voters

This weekend, audio surfaced of an interview that Senator Barack Obama gave the to editorial board of the San Francisco Gate newspaper. In it, Senator Obama had some interesting things to say about a major industry in your states - coal.



The money line is this

"If somebody wanted to build a coal fired plant they can - it's just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all of the greenhouse gas that is emitted."

Now think about this...suppose your electric company is like most in the country - they get a majority of their power from coal fired plants. Demand for their product is going through the roof - so much so that it is becoming impossible for them to keep up with the demand. They have two choices - they can either build an expanded plant thereby hiring contractors to build the new plant and then hire the employees to staff the plant and thereby boosting the local economy OR they can charge more for the limited supply in order to suppress demand for their product. Their costs would not necessarily go up and all of that increased money would go straight into the utilities bottom line. Oh sure, the investors would be happy - their stock dividends would go up big time. The Board of Directors would be happy - happy enough to most likely give that CEO a big fat raise. In fact the only ones who would be taking the financial "hit" would be the employees (some of whom would get laid off in order to cover the costs of the cap and trade taxes on the existing plants) and the consumers! And the already fragile economy teeters on the brink of total collapse!

The Ohio Coal Association "gets it":

Regardless of the timing or method of the release of these remarks, the message from the Democratic candidate for President could not be clearer: the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America's coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it.

"These undisputed, audio-taped remarks, which include comments from Senator Obama like 'I haven't been some coal booster' and 'if they want to build [coal plants], they can, but it will bankrupt them' are extraordinarily misguided.

"It's evident that this campaign has been pandering in states like Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana and Pennsylvania to attempt to generate votes from coal supporters, while keeping his true agenda hidden from the state's voters.

Oh and for those of you who think that this only effects PA, OH, and VA......take a look at this...

Colorado coal producers purchased over $363 million in services and
supplies during 2007.
Coal severance taxes contribute millions of dollars for local/state governments.

It hits the Intermountain West (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada and Idaho) just as hard.

Change we can believe in....indeed!