If I haven’t spelled it out enough in the last few days of posting, let me be blunt, if the current crop of candidates represent what the Party will be left with in 2012, we have little hope. Oh and you can add Tim Pawlenty to the list of people endorsing McCain. That is all.
Yesterday I lamented the lack of faith I have in the current class of clowns we have headlining the Republican Party. If you thought I was in any way harsh or just being down, check out the latest from our worthless leader Michael Steele. Not only is he using his time to promote his book, he and the RNC are taking donations and living large!
From Politico::
Just last week, RNC officials touted a January fundraising haul of more than $10 million. But after hosting the sun-filled winter meeting in Hawaii, paying for the holiday party and taking care of other bills, the committee spent almost all of it. Consequently, the RNC added only $1 million to the committee’s $8.4 million in cash, the reports show…
The RNC’s fundraising problems could have real consequences in the fall, since the RNC typically acts as a bank in midterms, swooping in to help cash-strapped candidates. It also is responsible for running the party’s vaunted 72-hour get-out-the-vote program…
The 2005 committee spent $1.35 million on lodging, compared with $1.5 million last year. The locations also improved. There were overnights at Ritz-Carlton hotels in Chicago, Denver, Marina del Rey, Westchester and Boston. The committee dropped $8,000 for two stays at Hotel Vitale, which boasts panoramic views of the San Francisco Bay.
RNC meal costs are among the categories that saw the biggest increases under Steele’s leadership. In Beverly Hills, Calif., the RNC spent $10,600 on food and lodging for a fundraiser featuring former Speaker Newt Gingrich at Spago, the flagship restaurant of the Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group. In total, the Wolfgang Puck enterprise has collected more than $94,000 from the RNC for catering services, compared with zero dollars in 2005.
“It’s symbolic of the way they are looking at the building and the way they are spending money,” said one donor. “It’s a culture. During the Bush administration, Karl Rove would bitch if there were flowers on the tables.”
Nothing makes the conservative fiscal message sparkle more than a private jet and fresh flowers!
So far 2010 has seen Sarah Palin, newly elected Scott Brown and Mitt Romney endorsed John McCain a man who now claims he was duped into voting for the massively corrupt bailout of financial institutions. Perhaps he and Hillary Clinton, who like many other Democrats claimed she was duped into voting for the Iraq War, can gather together and whine about it over wine. Yesterday Scott Brown voted for a “Jobs Bill” loaded with the same terrible spending and useless solutions as the stimulus he campaigned against. What is different? This bill has “Jobs” in the title, so you can undoubtedly cue the “I was duped” argument for Brown sometime later this year. “It had jobs in the title, what was I to do?”
If all that isn’t enough for you, this weekend Mike Huckabee attacked the Conservative Political Action Conference and the big government hating libertarians who gathered there. Meanwhile Newt Gingrich declared Republicans need to work with Democrats to pass The Health Care reform that was basically created, loved, and now awkwardly distanced from by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts just a few short years ago. How exactly do you spot a RINO? I just gave you a nice list of examples.
The media and pundits routinely pontificate over the question of how the Republican Party can join together for electoral victory. The answer? They can not do what they have been doing.
RNC Chairman Michael Steele is a bit too busy to pay much attention to the mood of the country, he has a book to promote afterall. Still, at least one leading Republican should get it, the public doesn’t want what they have been selling. I fear 2012 could be a John Kerry year for the Republican Party. A time when a small band of party elites decides to pick a “consensus” candidate without consulting with the consensus. It would be a massive blow, especially considering we already did that in 2008.
In a time when every Republican, conservative, and independent is screaming for something different, we keep getting handed the same. I know some call me a stick in the middle over Brown and Palin endorsing McCain, but we should all be outraged. Yes McCain did them a political favor, most of us agree though that repaying favors over principal is a major part of the problem. Brown and Palin’s appeal was that they were two candidates without a long history of favors to repay. How quickly that has and will change!
The Republican Party gave McCain, a progressive who has failed said Party in almost everything but defense, the nomination as almost a return of favor. He put in his time, he sacrificed large for his country and did the bare minimum for the Party. Then he almost seemed to give up for awhile there in 2008, he even suspended his campaign in a confusing and embarrassing moment of supposed national crisis. How did he spend that suspended time? He sat in an office and went along with every bad choice handed to him then passed it off as leadership. Now he seems like he wants to run again. Cannot wait for that!
Sorry, but courtesy or not, McCain owes more to Republicans than we owe to him. Yes he chose Palin as a running mate and launched her career, but without her he would have been crushed by an even larger loss. His staff repaid her by doing all they could to tarnish her name in tabloids and ruin her credibility with an already demented media. Where is the need to lend what seem like conservative credentials to a man who is still fighting for a progressive cause?
So far our list of realistic candidates are Romney, Huckabee, Palin and Newt. Then we have a bush league of governors that has been almost destroyed by personal scandal. Those who haven’t been rocked by adultery seem absent. Has anyone even heard from Bobby Jindal lately? Does anyone care what he is up to? The few actual “leaders” in our Party left are busy spending stimulus money and shrugging their shoulders.
I like many still hold out hope for some of these people but I have been let down too often by too many politicians on both sides to really believe. We have a class full of clowns but sadly, none of them are even funny or interesting. I long ago gave up on expecting to find the next Ronald Reagan in our current crop, sadly I am just hoping for a candidate capable of reaching Walter Mondale heights of glory. We need a better class of clowns and we need it fast.
Three great things happened on this day:
#1) George Washington was born
#2) In 1980 a rag tag group of Americans trounced the Russians in Olympic Hockey in what is now known as the “Miracle on Ice”
#3) I was born (on the exact date as #2)…
OK, I know, one of those things is slightly the lesser of the others. I will let you decide which one.
Birthdays are a wonderful time for reflection and ones thirtieth is a time like no other. While I am and will always be the person I was born in my core, a lot of things have changed me over my life. Some of the more profound have occurred in just the last few years. Life has dealt me some wonderful blows and some very humbling experiences.
While they have been difficult I am so very glad for the moments of tribulation. They have made me who I am. My coming to conservatism and to be the person I am was not an easy journey. It is rewarding though in ways I never thought possible. I am happy in my skin, happy in my life and while the past few months have been especially difficult, I have relied greatly on a network of support both offline and on. People are amazing beings. I am astounded at how warm they can be even at great distance and over the bits and bytes of an Internet connection.
I want to thank you for coming to this blog, talking with me on Facebook and Twitter and for those who know me in analog life for being there. I hope in some small way I can give to others through these forums a small percentage of all I take out.
To another year, a new decade in my life, a new decade in all of our lives and to friendship!
Glenn Beck closes out CPAC 2010
h/t Hot Air
Letter written from Monticello by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams on April 11, 1823.
DEAR SIR,
– The wishes expressed, in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of `mon Dieu! jusque a quand’! would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5. points is not the God whom you and I acknolege and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god. Now one sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians: the other five sixths then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without a knolege of the existence of a god! This gives compleatly a gain de cause to the disciples of Ocellus, Timaeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D’Holbach. The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is that, in every hypothesis of Cosmogony you must admit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice. They say then that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may for ever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or Creator of the world, a being whom we see not, and know not, of whose form substance and mode or place of existence, or of action no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or comprehend. On the contrary I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it’s parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to percieve and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it’s composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it’s distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it’s course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed thro’ all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to Unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a creator, rather than in that of a self-existent Universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable than that of the few in the other hypothesis. Some early Christians indeed have believed in the coeternal pre-existance of both the Creator and the world, without changing their relation of cause and effect. That this was the opinion of St. Thomas, we are informed by Cardinal Toleto, in these words `Deus ab aeterno fuit jam omnipotens, sicut cum produxit mundum. Ab aeterno potuit producere mundum. — Si sol ab aeterno esset, lumen ab aeterno esset; et si pes, similiter vestigium. At lumen et vestigium effectus sunt efficientis solis et pedis; potuit ergo cum causa aeterna effectus coaeterna esse. Cujus sententiae est S. Thomas Theologorum primus’ Cardinal Toleta.
Of the nature of this being we know nothing. Jesus tells us that `God is a spirit.’ 4. John 24. but without defining what a spirit is {pneyma o Theos}. Down to the 3d. century we know that it was still deemed material; but of a lighter subtler matter than our gross bodies. So says Origen. `Deus igitur, cui anima similis est, juxta Originem, reapte corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum ratione corporum incorporeus.’ These are the words of Huet in his commentary on Origen. Origen himself says `appelatio {asomaton} apud nostros scriptores est inusitata et incognita.’ So also Tertullian `quis autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi deus spiritus? Spiritus etiam corporis sui generis, in sua effigie.’ Tertullian. These two fathers were of the 3d. century. Calvin’s character of this supreme being seems chiefly copied from that of the Jews. But the reformation of these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those more worthy, pure and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of Jesus in his discources to the Jews: and his doctrine of the Cosmogony of the world is very clearly laid down in the 3 first verses of the 1st. chapter of John, in these words, `{en arche en o logos, kai o logos en pros ton Theon kai Theos en o logos. `otos en en arche pros ton Theon. Panta de ayto egeneto, kai choris ayto egeneto ode en, o gegonen}. Which truly translated means `in the beginning God existed, and reason (or mind) was with God, and that mind was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were created by it, and without it was made not one thing which was made’. Yet this text, so plainly declaring the doctrine of Jesus that the world was created by the supreme, intelligent being, has been perverted by modern Christians to build up a second person of their tritheism by a mistranslation of the word {logos}. One of it’s legitimate meanings indeed is `a word.’ But, in that sense, it makes an unmeaning jargon: while the other meaning `reason’, equally legitimate, explains rationally the eternal preexistence of God, and his creation of the world. Knowing how incomprehensible it was that `a word,’ the mere action or articulation of the voice and organs of speech could create a world, they undertake to make of this articulation a second preexisting being, and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe. The Atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness of such a God, and the simpler hypothesis of a self-existent universe. The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.
So much for your quotation of Calvin’s `mon dieu! jusqu’a quand’ in which, when addressed to the God of Jesus, and our God, I join you cordially, and await his time and will with more readiness than reluctance.
May we meet there again, in Congress, with our antient Colleagues, and recieve with them the seal of approbation `Well done, good and faithful servants.
Dick Cheney visits the Conservative Political Action Conference.
H/T Freedom Eden
With the “science” behind Global Warming disappearing before our eyes faster than the warmth itself, I keep focusing on what could have been with the loss of time and money invested in this made up problem. Just imagine if “scientists” had instead developed robot butlers. If they had, I would have awoken to the smell of sizzling bacon and freshley brewed coffee. Instead I woke up cold because it is freezing outside.
In truth I believe the money and time would have been best spent by the people to whom both belong, the American citizen. Our government had no right to embark upon the crazy quest to “save the planet” robbing us blind in the process. This is what differentiates a conservative from a liberal, robot butlers aside, while I think about how the individual could have spent their money better, liberals are busy plotting the next scheme to steal more.
For an example of this difference look at the Iraq War debate. Never did I hear someone on the left complain that the money spent in Iraq would have been better in the pocket of taxpayers. Rather they complained the money could have gone to domestic programs or the war machine better utilized in more deserving places like Darfur. “How can we spend so much money in Iraq when it could go to {public schools, the environment, health care} and really do some good.” The fact that funding War is in the Constitution but universal health care and other massive programs are not, never phased them.
This is, in fact, the root of our global warming mess. The issue has little to do with true love of nature, everything to do with redistributing wealth. Progressives have wisely reframed their argument to one of “clean air and water” countering that anyone against their spending is for pollution.
No one is against clean drinking water. Having clean water run from the tap doesn’t cost hundreds of billions to trillions more in spending. Neither does clearing up some smog. These goals don’t require thousands of pages of new laws or giving up power to global government. They just require slight changes, most of which local communities can get their people to support.
In the beginning there were undoubtedly a few people on the warming bandwagon who truly cared about conservation of nature and a clean environment. Those now in power have a much different agenda. Every proposal for the environment contains an action that takes money from one group and passes it to another. The enforcer of these transactions are of course the bodies and the leaders proposing the exchange.
The argument is classic socialism and progressivism. The assertion is that global warming is produced by large nations with wealth. Their actions have a reaction that effects smaller nations without weath. The solution? Take wealth from large nation, give to poor nation and everything will work itself out because poor nations have better natures than wealthy ones.
What does this actually do to solve the asserted problem? Absolutely nothing and since there really is no problem when the weather evens out, as it is doing now, they can claim success. Best of all these individuals and groups have found ways to transfer a bit of that wealth to themselves. How nice for them!
“The single solution to (these problems) is a green economy that is inclusive, that’s strong enough to lift millions of people out of poverty.” – Van Jones Obamas former Green Jobs Czar
The wealth of democratic nations comes from the labor of the people. Progressives are not taking money from some shadowy group of evil people known only as “the rich” they are taking our money. We the workers and taxpayers fund the United States and it is our money they seek to redistribute. Do you consider yourself evil? Do you not deserve the money you earn? Are poorer nations more deserving of your own money than you?
Warming has become a global money laundering scheme. Our money is taken and funneled into nations that have less money with the notion that it will aid the collective. Remove for now the reality that many of these nations are run by corrupt dictators and gangsters. Even if the money went to other individuals, no government has the right to engage in the wealth redistribution from one to another. The government cannot take your house and give it to a “more deserving family” any more than they should be allowed to take your income with a similar intent.
In historic times this type of action was taken by nations through invasion and War. Progressives using Global Warming have actually convinced leaders like President Obama that the looting of the United States is necessary for our survival. Think about that for a moment. Our leaders want our nation’s wealth to be given to others, many of which are hostile to us. Rather than come to our shores with guns drawn, the rest of the world has found a way to convince our nation to just give them our treasure and we are convinced we should feel good about it. Is that not absurd?
As the Global Warming nightmare ends, progressives will not stop seeking ways to perform their wealth redistribution. Right now they are experimenting domestically with “public health epidemics” like H1N1 and childhood obesity to divert money to communities they say are most effected and so most deserving. They seek behavior modification through government and with every taxpayer dollar spent another level of control appears.
There will be a new global epidemic too. When the last ounce of credibility is lost for Global Warming, they will find some nightmare scenario polluting our planet that must be addressed.
We must be vigilant in attacking these schemes from the start, a difficult task because so many of them are cloaked by issues nearly everyone can agree upon. Everyone wants healthy children just as they want clean drinking water. We must question why federal taxpayer funding should be used to secure the things we want and why so much of it, when personal responsibility and a few dollars spent by local government is the better option.
We must also patronize only those charities and organizations that do not take federal government welfare. This was made more difficult with President Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives, a ploy that put many honest organizations on the government payroll. Still there is a great deal being done without federal help. We must solve our issues on our own in order to disprove the notion that the ever expanding federal government is needed.
We must present solutions community solutions to community problems.
Conservatives must do better at explaining and embracing state and local rights. If New York wishes to bankrupt itself with welfare programs, that is our right. The line in the sand is expanding these programs to the federal government. In 2008 Mitt Romney, for example, proposed taking his Massachusetts health care system to the federal government. His plan is now basically Democrat health care reform. We should not race to simply scale state or local projects to the federal level believing that what works for a local community will now work across the nation and then the globe.
We must, in the most simple terms, return to the Constitution and the founding documents of our nation. We must recognize the role of government and ward off those who propose grand schemes to usurp individual liberty and steal wealth. Global Warming is falling apart faster than the Obama presidency. In its place, Democrats will attempt to build something new. Conservatives must work tirelessly to fight this replacement while rebuilding our government to be at one with the Constitution.
I still think all of the money spent could have procured the people some pretty cool robot butlers. Still, I would rather make my own bacon and hold onto my own money rather than embrace the socialist nightmare being created through plots like Global Warming.
Update: The cost of Michelle’s plans? $400 MILLION
The other day in her crusade against jelly bellies, Michelle Obama said childhood obesity is a threat to national security. Her reasoning? Obesity is now a major disqualifier for military service. No really, I cannot make this stuff up!
Let me start with the obvious. Her husband, who wants terrorists to have American citizen style rights, is a threat to national security, obesity is just another issue. Also NOT a threat to national security? Global warming, but that is a whole other post.
I am tired of this notion that every issue we face is an epidemic. Obesity is an issue, the black plague was an epidemic. A few years ago anorexia was considered by the left to be an epidemic, now it seems like a solution to the obesity issue.
How are we supposed to take our leaders, let alone doctors and scientists, seriously when they descend to this level of insanity? A few studies and some news articles with faulty reasoning get published and the establishment runs around screaming about the end of the world. Then we waste billions fighting something that is governed by personal choice, never actually solve the problem and move onto the next thing.
I have to throw some honesty in here. I just lost a family member a few weeks ago who struggled with their weight. A gastric bypass only delayed the inevitable and they were found dead, unexpectedly, from a heart attack. Having battled diabetes and other ailments related to weight, it was not hard to figure out what had happened.
It wasn’t the eating. McDonald’s did not force their way into their stomach. It wasn’t from lack of education about calories or scorn from society. There were deeply rooted reasons why they ate and for whatever reason, the solution did not come.
They made a choice. It wasn’t the job of the government to step in and force their hand. Family tried that, friends tried that. Doctors and others tried that. In the end, we all are responsible for ourselves.
Children are the only beings largely not responsible for their own actions and their parents, again, must make the choice. It is not the job of the federal government to step in for these parents.
State and local government already play a large role in the life of children’s through education. They fail miserably as surrogates. Government, in many areas, cannot get 50% of their schools to graduate. Why would we ever expand their responsibilities when they do such a terrible job with their current workload?
In the end the ISSUE of obesity will solve itself. People will either eat less, their bodies will adapt to what they are eating or they will die. If individual private organizations want to spend their time running PR campaigns and heaping scorn on people who eat too much, great have at it. This is not, however, the domain of the government and it is NOT by any means an epidemic. Trust me, at the rate this economy is tanking and the rest of the world keeps gearing up for a battle, liberals will go back to worrying about the population starving soon enough. Then we can look back upon this moment when people were fat and miserable longingly, just like many in D.C. are no doubt currently looking at the multiple feet of snow and wishing for a little Global Warming.
