New Tone In Washington Says We Should Kiss Thugs And Flog Friends

Well, now that the news media is the official policy arm of the Democrats, it's nice to see all the punditry out there as well as several members of Congress saying that a) we have to play nice with the Syrians and Iranians and b) spank the Israelis for being big bad meanies.

The prime example has to be the media's new love affair with former President Jimmy Carter. The man was a failure of a President and was not only paralyzed by an inability to deal with the Islamic radicals that took over Iran in '79, but who by his own admission was caught unawares by something he thought inconceivable, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It is from Carter's presidency that we have his legacy of Stagflation economics. And yet, here is Blitzer interviewing him with the reverence usually reserved for a Clinton.

Carter seems to challenge what we actually know of Clinton's attempt to get Israel to acceed to the Palestinian's demand for territory only to both be rebuffed by the terrorist Arafat to tell all of us that that is wrong. We apparently will find in Carter's new book that Arafat actually wanted nothing but peace and love until those dirty Jews lied and said he rebuffed their peace offer. Oh, and Clinton didn't lie about anything else, but apparently he did lie about this. Again, I'm sure Carter will make sure we realize it was only the Jews that made him do it through their seductress and stereotypical "Jewish Princess" Monica Lewinsky.

I like writing conspiracy theories. They're effortless, take nothing to prove, and actually are just as entertaining if not moreso than Carter's historical rewrite.

Why couldn't he just stay on the peanut farm and occasionally build a home for Habitat for Humanity? At least there he was actually doing America some good.

As if President Carter being trotted as a the conscience of diplomacy isn't pure comedy (Orwell is just spinning like a jet turbine, I'm telling you) the recent spate of genuflections toward the terrorist regimes of Syria and Iran by the Left border on being the Rosetta Stone of why "Peace In Our Time" isn't just your grandpa's surrender slogan anymore. It's bad enough that "experts" are being dragged out to let us know we need to talk with the outlaw regimes of Iran and Syria, but now we are having it spoon fed to us daily that the "Iraq Study Group", a haven for leftists, "moderate" to liberal Democrats and country club Republicans who know foreign policy much better than us plebs thinks it could be a good idea as well.

I'd love it if someone could explain to me the benefit of this course of action. How does speaking with two countries that have American blood on their hands and a desire to have even more, especially more Israeli blood on their hands, and sit down at a table to "talk peace" with them. I don't know if that's or Ahmadinejad's "Letter to America" and it's Marxist-Islamist psycho babble is more ridiculous or less worthy of our taking it seriously.

On top of that, we simultaneously hear that Israel must play nice and give into the demands of the Palestinians. The madness of this is that somehow it's been the Israeli's who have been causing all this trouble for the last sixty years. Sort of like us selfish Americans refusing to roll over and die so the U.S.S.R. could run the world. The nerve of some countries.

I think I'd like to understand the logic of someone who believed these things, if there was any actual logic to it. If I have to listen to one more moral equivalency argument or a "who really knows who started things argument, I do believe I'll hurl. The Iranian and Syrian governments, Hezbollah, Hamas and most of the Palestinian leadership share in common the belief that Christian America and predominantly Jewish Israel need to just whither and die. They believed it before the U.S. supported Israel of Americans and they believed it of Jews before the U.N. formed the state of Israel. It's just a matter of making up ridiculous excuses, a task at which they excel.

To meet with a criminal on equal terms is to legitimate that criminal. To negotiate from a position of weakness shows you are weak and to treat our allies like enemies is to invite our real enemies to hover at our back, knife poised. My response to the idea of treating with such thugs is that I'll see them in Hell first.

Britain to U.S.: Rape and Assault Increases Show We're More Civil Than You

Actually, it wasn't the whole of Britain or Australia or any of the realm actually that said this. The true teller of the tale is Rebecca Peters, director of the International Action Network on Small Arms.

“Those two campaigns have now come together to bring the strength of both communities, the disarmament community, and the women’s rights communities together in order to stop armed violence against women, recognizing that the disarmament conversation, too often does not involve women, and that the women’s rights movement has too often not realized the importance of taking away the weapons.”

She goes on to describe how her collection of "civil society organizations" are allowing women to live in a civil society by helping to ensure that they have no way to defend themselves.

Howard Nemerov in his wonderful article has done the math in a spectacularly plain way.

By 2005, the rate of sexual assault in Australia increased 36% from its pre-ban 1995 rate, while the U.S. rate decreased 14.6%. Women are now raped over three times as often in Australia as they are in the United States.

The rate of sexual crimes against women in the UK increased 63.0% since pre-ban 1995.[5] Women are raped and sexually assaulted nearly twice as often in the UK as the U.S. Meanwhile, British police ignore Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “civil,” as in: “orderly; well-governed.”[6] The detection rate for sexual offenses dropped from 39% in 2003-2004 to 34% in 2004-2005, indicating poor governance: a 13% lower efficiency by police in bringing perpetrators to justice.

Well, at the very least, though they may be assaulted, raped or dead, at the very least they can "be British" knowing that at least groups like Ms. Peters' have eradicated guns in their country, well except of course the guns the criminals are using. It turns out that criminals don't play fair and smuggle illegal weapons into the country to keep committing their crimes. Bad cricket old sports...Or, it could be that groups like Ms. Peters' are fascist, power-hungry and couldn't care an iota about the safety of one woman if it means they'll get the power they crave.

One could argue that it is insanity to insist upon a certain course even though the known quantity of that course is failure and death. Even as these advocacy groups try to spread their tendrils through the United Nations into the few remaining free nations (including ours), they willfully ignore these facts and assume that next time it'll be perfect. The next time, it'll work. The next time, their Chutes & Ladders Candyland world will emerge with them at the helm and all of us signing their praises. I think I found out why these sorts of folks aren't willing to bash Mohammed or radical fundamentalist Islam. Something to do with sharks and lawyers.

Their one overriding goal is to eventually limit your freedom and mine. That's all people like that want. They don't want anything "for the children". They want raw power and they'll squash any pathetic liberty or citizenry brazen enough to stand in their way, that is, unless we stop them cold and kick them back across the ocean to the lunatic asylum that is Western Europe. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Schumer Smoking Latest Herb Off The Boat

The only way I can think to justify Senator Chuck Schumer of New York's latest line of totally insane commentary is to assume he's rockin' the ganj. Check this from NRO.

Chuck Schumer went to visit the New York Daily News today, Ben Smith reports, and declared that the GOP doesn't comprehend the trouble it's in because "they don't realize that Reaganomics is dead, that the Reagan philosophy is dead."

According to Schumer, "The old Reagan theory which dominated — which is, 'Government is bad, it's out of touch, chop off its hands as soon as it moves.' — is over."Interestingly, he contrasted this supposed blindness with his party's own philosophical weakness: "We realize that New Deal democracy, which is still our paradigm, which is sort of appeal to each group ... that doesn't work any more."

Yes, that's the same Reaganomics that has given us the lowest unemployment in a decade, a period of growth that surpasses even the "Roaring '90's" and the largest tax receipts ever seen. Apparently, Chuck's version of "dead" doesn't quite square with the average coroner.

The Reagan philosophy of limited government, personal responsibility and increased individual liberty, which by the way was pretty much how we lived until his beloved "New Deal" is anything but dead and is more relevant today than it ever has been, even as people like Schumer try to strip it from us. Perhaps it is his threat to us, that we'd better kiss goodbye the thought of individual freedom, because now the Democrats are going to show us what a true nanny state really is.

Oh, but he said New Deal democracy doesn't work anymore, you say. Doesn't that mean he's turned over a whole new leaf? Looking at his leftist voting record, I'm left to conclude that he figures it didn't go far enough. Now you're going to see what their Real Deal will do to you. And if you think you had high payroll taxes, property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes and vice taxes before, wait til you see what they've got in store for you!

So, Michael Richards Hates Hecklers?

This seems to be consuming a lot of talk radio and blogger time these days. The whole video of Michael Richards blowing up at his mediocre stand-up act and usually racial slurs to heckle his hecklers is cute and all. I never liked the guy. I never liked Seinfeld. I wasn't even real crazy about the SNL-lite show Fridays he was part of back in the 80's. And so now we find he knows how to use ethnic slurs. SO WHAT?

Well, money's to be made, so that's so what. Professional racists and hucksters like Al Sharpton need incidents like this to stay relevant and pretend that they speak for anyone with any melanin in their skin pigment. That is obvious to anyone who doesn't buy into the fairy tale that only whites can be racist. However, one thing out of this did escape me.

Why should anyone have to apologize to hecklers? If anything, the hecklers should apologize to all the people who paid to get into the comedy club and then who, instead of listening to Richard's act, had to listen to these pathetic losers make total jackasses out of themselves. They should also apologize to all of America, because we have been forced to listen to this crap day in and day out. They should apologize to all those people who are going to be forced to hear or read stories in the news and magazines about how they can be more racially sensitive than Richards. And they should get a gift basket from Mel Gibson who is thanking Yahweh that he's not the only one in the doghouse anymore.

Should it impress me that a bunch of certified geniuses went to a club and acted like the morons they were and then were attacked by a semi-stable performer for treating him like garbage? Not really. Do I care to see the video? No, I need those couple minutes of my life for something important like waiting in line at the BMV.

It's times like these I wish we still had public floggings...

The New Congress

Already, the new Congress is making waves and they're not even sworn in yet. You'd have thought power has already changed hands to hear it in the antique media. Still, we see the fallback to the same old tired way of doing business that the Democrats were known for pre-1994. It seems, in addition to the Republicans not learning from their defeat by electing the same failed doing-business-as-usual House leaders, the Democrats think the last 12 years didn't happen, or at the very least were not a reflection of the nation's desire NOT to be inflicted with their age-old socialist claptrap.

The antique media acts as always as their eternal cheerleader. Peripherally related is the "Big 3" auto manufacturer meeting with the President. They sought and did not receive help in bailing them out from their pension and health concerns. The industries long ago let themselves be bullied in to every expensive contracts that they are finding it almost impossible to dig themselves out of. Their solution, and one they hoped the President would help them with (being that he is such a big government fan and all) is to get you and I to pay for their liabilities. Honestly, I like Ford's product line and have owned nothing but, but I'm not going to subsidize, nor do I think anyone else should, their compact with the UAW. They made their bed and now they and their workers can lie in it together. Don't invite the U.S. taxpayer for some sort of sordid, kinky threesome. We're not interested.

Getting back to Congress, though, let's look at some of the items being proposed, though. Charles Rangel (D-NY), is once again trotting out his Draft nonsense. Not only is his own Party trying to distance themselves from his ridiculous rhetoric and blatant canard of only poor and minorities serving (he'd have been very much at home in the USSR's propaganda departments), but even he has trouble admitting if he's serious or not. And wasn't it those self-same Democrats who only two years ago SWORE that Bush would reinstitute the Draft if he won reelection? Wow, Nostradamus they ain't. The security of this nation is something that the Democrats do not now, have not and will not take seriously. That's why they throw up political issues like "the Draft" to try and score a few points against the opposition, then accuse the opposition (in this case, Republicans) of the very same tactics they just used. Hypocrites.

Rangel also wants to see ALL the tax cuts of the last five years repealed and he thinks he now has the votes to do it. That includes the child credit and repeal of the marriage penalty. But they said they wouldn't hurt the middle class! If you believe that I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. They live for hurting the middle class.

Carl Levin wants all U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq, because if it's anything to do with the military, that's the one area of spending that a Democrat can't and won't tolerate (unless it's for a useless unneeded defense contract in his or her district).

Barbara Boxer wants an American "Kyoto Accord" as she single-handedly tries to save us from global warming. First, prove to me that global warming is man-made or even different than it has been through the late Cenozoic and we'll talk. Second, she wants to cripple U.S. industry in the face of burgeoning Asian juggernauts like China and India, who by the way will NOT be cutting any emissions anytime soon and who will soon be surpassing the U.S. in same.

Chucky Schumer is vowing to never see another Justice like Sam Alito on the Supreme Court. Kiss any hope of having Constitutional Constructionists on the bench again. At best, we'll get another Kennedy. Yay. Another vacillating "moderate" is not what we need. Unfortunately, the American voters ensured last Election Day that that's the best any of us can hope for. At worst, we'll get another Breyer or Souter.

And let's not forget Madame Hillary. Mrs. Clinton says "Health care is back on the table." This is a woman who almost single-handedly wrecked health care when she wrested the job from her husband's administration thirteen years ago. Clinton may be using her husband's old tactic of fake right and then run left, but she's got 20 years of quotes dogging her regarding just what a rank socialist she has always been. Any person who lives their life by Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" is someone we should be very concerned about having a place at the table to decide Senate policy.

So, that's a glimpse at what we have to deal with for the next few years. We fight the battle from the bottom of the slope again, perhaps a little wiser and perhaps better armed and maybe this time we can counter some of the Left's agenda.

Update: Although not entirely related, some of the numbers are in and, SURPRISE, there's more to state that it wasn't Democrats flashing their gams that won them the election and it certainly wasn't a voter embrace all of a sudden of Democrats' bread and butter issues. Emily's List candidates, those who strongly favor the courts telling the states what they can and can't legislate (in this case, abortion) faired quite poorly.

Read A History Book Other Than "Hug A Commie For Mommy" Howard Zinn's Please!

So I heard Keith Olbermann on Monday mouth off this little ditty regarding Bush's visit to Vietnam. In the middle of yet another in a long line of vomitous diatribes designed to mimic the bogus "Have you at long last no decency, sir" line of the McCarthy hearings, Keith chided Bush on his "failed policy" and linkage of war on terror by trying to link it to the old "Domino theory" of the Cold War by saying this.

"That stable, burgeoning, vivid country you just saw there is there because we finally had the good sense to declare victory and get out! The domino theory was nonsense, sir. Our departure from Vietnam emboldened no one. Communism did not spread like a contagion around the world."

I think, after reading that, I nearly spit up my tea. You heard it from Keith, master of history (at least the Howard Zinn version of it). Vietnam is a thriving, "vivid" country because we left. No mention of course of the dissidents still under house arrest or forbidden from communication from the outside world, the political prisoners whose only crime is disagreeing with the communist oligarchy in Vietnam, the 100's of thousands who were sent to reeducation camps and many of whom who did not make it back, the 1-2 million Cambodians who were exterminated like insects when the Khmer Rouge, in "DOMINO" fashion toppled Cambodia's government or the thousands who lost their lives in Laos for the same reason.

No, none of that happened, you see, because the U.S. left and the Domino theory was wrong and communism was really "agrarian reform". Oh--My--God. And this man has a TV show, on MSNBC granted but still. Dozens of people get their news from Keith. You think he'd at least have the good sense to give them honest history instead of communist agit prop. Or maybe he's just a historical idiot himself and doesn't known any better. Too bad ignorance is not a viable defense when it comes to history.

How anyone could be this blatant or this blind is beyond me. What aids him is our failing educational system, which produces like-minded drones who gobble this up as "the way it was". It's always U.S. = bad and leftist killers = good in the minds of such individuals and that would be sad if it wasn't so detrimental to our country as a whole. We need to become more mindful of teaching real U.S. history over much of this 60's and 70's leftist revisionist garbage that has infiltrated the schools where the next generation of citizens is being "educated". Start early and start often. It's the only true way to combat simpleton's like Keith.

Passing Of A Giant

Much has been written in the past week of the passing of a true economic genius, Milton Friedman. The man who had tirelessly and at some times almost single-handedly led the charge against the New Deal/Keynesian style of government interference in the economy helped define much of what is considered modern conservative and libertarian philosophy. He was as much the economic father of our philosophy as Barry Goldwater was the political father, if not more so.

The Federalist Patriot has a very thoughtful and well-written reflection of his life and I would encourage anyone to read it to get a better understanding of the man and his legacy. His most notable legacy, what won him the Nobel Prize, was his prediction of a failing of the Keynesian style of economics that would eventually produce the phenomena that would be coined stagflation.

Amazing that, despite the historical evidence, and the realization that Keynes' model worked only successfully only when all competitor's markets were devastated by the Second World War. After those economies has spent the better part of 20 years pulling themselves back up and the U.S. began facing real competition for its markets and goods, only then did the folly of a government bureaucracy trying to manage something as dynamic and fast-paced as the economy come to light. And still, liberals refuse to learn this lesson. Still, they assume that just enough control, not too much, but just a pinch here and a smidge there, will make for a utopia.

Their utopia also exists in the vacuum of magic money that falls from the sky and a benevolent government that can do no wrong. The reality of the onerous nature of taxation and human fallibility seemingly escapes most people who have stood against Friedman's principles and beliefs. Sadly, with him gone, it makes it all the harder to combat their like, but he does leave a rich legacy of writings and thoughts that we can delve back to. We can never replace him. We can only hope to succeed him and learn from what he has left us.

The Republicans Got What They Deserved...And So Did We.

Last week, the Republicans received the whipping that had been forecast and in many cases assisted by the antique media and its punditry. In many ways, it was a whipping of their own making. Historically, of course, it was to be expected and it would have taken a far different Congress to buck the trends of history.

However, even though the Republicans lost control of Congress, we got exactly the comeuppance we deserved by the Democrats taking control. It is widely acknowledged by those who don't have a donkey emblem and portrait of Mao tatto'ed on their rear that the Republicans biggest losses came from scandal and big-government spending. Exit polls showed that many voters actually saw the Democrats as the party of fiscal responsibility and smaller government as well as the less corrupt of the two arms. Yay for the rest of us.

How did a party that has defined itself since the Reagan Revolution as the party of limited government, fiscal responsibility and usually the more ethical choice fall so far? Again, you will hear a myriad of reasons.

The ones you should ignore are any stating that the voters felt the Democrat message was better, because the Democrats purposefully didn't have one. Well, they did, just not one they were willing to crow about too loudly. How many votes do you think the Democratic challengers would have gotten if people fully realized that their Party wanted to abolish all the tax cuts of the last five years, raise additional taxes on everyone (especially the Middle Class they pretend to adore), adopt a defeatist and appeasement-based foreign policy, treat our enemies as mere "criminal problems" to be dealt with by a politically correct law enforcement apparatus that spends more time looking at Americans than foreign terrorists (if you don't believe me, simply review the FBI, IRS, and BATF actions under the Clinton administration) and pour more money into failed socialist programs designed to further eradicate the individual and herald the growth of the State.

Think that'd get a lot of votes outside New York, Massachusetts or California? I'm guessing it'd be on the shy side of accepted.

Now, back to the wherefore's and the why's. Consider that in the '94 Republican sweep of Congress, those who came in as freshmen were in no way capable of influencing policy. Those spots were reserved for the new Chairmen, because that sort of thing is seniority-based. All the '94 revolution did was ascend to the Chairmanships Ford and Rockefeller-style '70's Republicans who tended to be of the liberal country-club variety and more in agreement regarding policy with their Democrat brethren than the new Turks. To this day, I think perhaps one Congressman from that wave ascended to a Chairmanship. Their "Contract with America", while a good start, never stood a real chance against Congressional bureaucracy.

Also, all Congressmen regardless of party affiliation tend to become "institutionalized" after a few years in Washington. With some exceptions, the bulk tend to identify more with their Washington brethren than those in their home districts. It's the old "1 tyrant 1000 miles away or 1000 tyrants 1 mile away" motif. You trade a absolute monarch for an elected oligarchy that generally (again with exceptions) loses touch with the voters and values that got them elected. This argument works best on moderate to conservative members of Congress. Liberals are in their natural habitat as Washington since the New Deal has been decidedly Leftist in its bent and bureaucracy, perhaps even before that.

Combining abandoment of your principles, what got you elected in the first place with a decided lack of ability to really change direction of the Congressional Titanic made for a combination few seemed willing to acknowledge until now. Conservatives and libertarian types were doomed from the start. The big government machine has proven, for this round at least, to have better staying power.

And although we did throw much of the baggage out, it was mostly Republican baggage. The most corrupt of the Democrats, from ABSCAM Murtha to Freezer Cash Jefferson are not only still in Congress, many of them are jockeying for leadership positions.

This more than anything makes Pelosi's claim that she will bring ethics and integrity back to Congress make me want to vomit Day-Glo. Sorry for the visual. It's about the only way I can truly capture my disgust with her hypocrisy. And yes, a woman who's probably one of the richest if not the richest PERSON in Congress who professes to be for the working man and Union labor (and who won the 2003 Chavez award from the fruit workers union) while using only non-union labor in her $25 million Napa vineyard, 30+ restaurants and hotel (most of which is likely illegal immigrants) should have her picture in the dictionary next to the word. To spell it out for those who haven't been beaten enough over the head with it yet, she DEFINES hypocrisy.

Now, going back to us getting what we deserved, that the liberal Democrats control Congress is entirely our fault. We didn't demand better acountability from the Republicans and we didn't support the alternatives like Libertarians enough to make a dent. We tolerated their corruption and the money and the scandals enough that these guys stayed in office long enough that we'd have no choice but to toss them out on their ear. Notice, of course, again that corrupt Republicans were sent packing by their constituency, not the myriad of corrupt Democrats. Just a reminder. What's that say about those Democrat constituencies?

And because we didn't weed out these corrupt schmucks in the Primaries and the Left doesn't mind corruption if it gets them power, we got exactly what we deserved. The interesting thing will be to see if anyone of us learns from this and either reforms the Republicans into a leaner and more conservative party or uplifts and supports the more conservative Midwestern Libertarians.

Your alternative is to have a Left-leaning Congress with perhaps a Left-leaning president who sees your freedom and individual liberty as an impediment to their agenda. Sure, you'll be able to marry if you're gay and you'll still live off the government teet if you're a welfare bum, but you'll be as free as a caged lab rat. It's not like you'll have to conform to government rules of behavior or do what they tell you if you take the stolen tax money they offer you(oh wait, that already happens) or have to fork over billions for fraudulent research (embryonic stem cells) or bogus junk science (man-induced global warming), surely. Is it? And for those of you working, surely another 10% or 20% increase in your payroll tax is something you can tolerate "for the public good", right?

Or...we can all get our acts together and go about fixing the mistakes we allowed to happen on our watch from our chosen representatives. Time to roll up the sleeves.

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

That old colloquialism is something you should keep in mind as you go to the polls today. In fact, it's good to remember every Primary and Election Day. Though candidates may promise you the moon, they will rarely deliver even a piece of green cheese. We routinely hear of better funding for more social programs designed to give us just enough, but not too much money or sustenance. We hear of keeping money from greedy defense contractors. We hear about the millions our Congressman or woman has brought home to our district from the Feds. The bottom line is, none of it is free and neither are you or I, because of it.

As we are taxed for these things, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Ted Kennedy's drink umbrella budget, and as these taxes derive from our productivity, we will never be free. Those who don't want to be productive, we must pay for. Government has mandated that they will be our primary charity, assuming they get their "cut".

There really ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Government programs are funded by someone else's hard-earned dollars and we all are a little guilty in being complicit with the government as it does that. Listen to the biggest proponents of more programs, more money and more social welfare. They are eyeing your pocket book as they sing that song and they will use the force of a gun to get it from you. Remember, the IRS has more powers to seize and strip you of your assets than any other arm of the federal government. The only other group that comes close to being as good at stealing as the IRS is organized crime.

So, remember, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch and if someone tells you there is, make sure their hands aren't lodged firmly in your pocket.

More Election Thoughts

Well, it's getting close to the wire, isn't it? I'm starting to see campaign ads on almost every channel and certainly the news shows are giving the event their full attention. Take Good Morning America, this morning, which pulled a "random sampling" (one might imagine they would have used the words "Heartland" and "mainstream" if they thought they could get away with it) of voters to pose questions to representatives of both the Republican and Democrat parties.

The questions, unsurprisingly, were as one-sided as the chosen "voters". The last one slickly asked how she, a working woman holding down three jobs, could be helped in health care coverage by Congress. The Democrat of course pushed raising the minimum wage and using the federal government as a negotiator for the umpteen million uninsured Americans. It almost looked like an SNL skit it was so comical and I'd have sworn it was staged if I didn't think GMA would be so blatant. The Republican just talked about saving the tax cuts, because as she rigthly pointed out, the Democrats have already indicated they want all those cuts and credits, many for middle income people, to go away. She didn't get to say much more, though, as the host cut her off.

This is what we get every election cycle. The same assinine questions posed the same trite way skewing the issues so that Left issues equal good and Right issues equal bad. It's not a wonder they're losing viewership and credibility by the month. Our mainstream networks act as propaganda arms for anyone who follows their line of bigger government, more taxes on anyone they deem "rich" (read: holding down a job) and more giveaways to their special interests. It amazes me that anyone buys this stuff after all these years.

On a different "already picked the horse" note, Mike Kole mentions on his site how the Indianapolis Star not only disregarded him in their "Voter's Guide", but every Libertarian candidate. Now there's no telling as to why, but my guess would be that the gods of the Star have in their wisdom already decided that since no third party has a chance in Hell of winning, they don't need to list them. The paper copy of the Star definitely left them out, but I see now they've got Mike and others on the online version. Ok, so either it was an oversight or they got enough negative feedback to make them clean up their mess. Either way, very shoddy work.

Please be courteous and provide feedback to the would-be overlords of the Star editorial board and remind them that it is the citizenry and not the media that controls the elections in this country. This behavior is nothing short of disgraceful. I would've expected such a tactic from Pravda back in the Soviet Communist Party's heyday, and not from a local paper allegedly providing accurate election coverage.

I hear Julia Carson is still chugging along in the 7th District. Probably the best editorial I've yet seen on her asks how she can be the helpless innocent soul when it comes to attack ads approved by her campaign wailing and even drawing first blood from her opponent Dickerson and in the next breath be the strongest Democratic politician in Indiana. Folks, she didn't get to be Jacobs' hand-picked successor for nothing. She was the iron-fisted tyrant of a Trustee in Marion County and has used it effectively over the years to roust the welfare rolls to get out in sufficient numbers to vote for her. Not that she needs it as much in the continuing to grow Democrat bastion of the 7th, but there it is nonetheless.

Most of my amusement has been in watching the major media outlets call the race weeks before it happens, but the true test of their prognosticative skills will be Tuesday. If what we already know of their current polling is taken into account, we don't really know what's going to happen on Election Day. Oversampling Democrats, not always polling likely voters, sampling heavily from urban and largely liberal districts all lead to incorrect or skewed polling data. The American electorate has never been more than minority self-described Democrat and is certainly not very liberal leaning. Still, expect the news media to push their canard for all its worth until the last poll booth closes. All the easier to suppress the vote in areas that are heavily contested.

Something to keep in mind is that rarely will you get the whole story and unfortunately it takes a lot of reading and a lot of research as well as being exposed to a lot of bipartisan BS before you can even begin to make sense of it. Still, if you're questioning what information you've been given and are trying ot sort the fact from fiction, perhaps just over your morning coffee, then you have a good chance of making some sense out of your vote on Tuesday.

General Thoughts On The Election

Well, if you watch ABC or CBS, even CNN, it appears the election has already been decided and the Democrats apparently control both Houses already. There's already talk of Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid. I suppose a more paranoid person might call that "bias", but that's such an overused term these days.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the media telling me how the election will occur months before it happens, but I expect it. The Fourth Estate has made it clear, although they've been somewhat schizophrenic in their admission of it, that they will consistently side with the far left elements of the Democrat Party and if they have to sacrifice one or two of the pet liberal Republicans to do it, then so be it (that means you Chaffee and McCain).

Since I don't have them, I'll have to rely on other sources, likely just as biased, but a bit more open and obvious about their agenda. I'd advise you all do the same and take in a few of the left and right sites out there once in awhile. It's an eye opener no matter how you slice it.

For example, a popular topic seems to be that Libertarians will spoil the November election for many Republicans, even in more conservative areas. How dare the Libertarians, it is said, just handing the election to the more liberal Democrats. There's a point to that. It has happened before and it will likely happen again. The same happened on the left-leaning Democrat side of the aisle with the Greens. For the Republicans, I will only say this, if you had been half as conservative in your actions and your rhetoric as the Libertarians in the MidWest, you'd be worrying not one iota for your jobs come next week.

Sadly, the Libertarians have proven the far more conservative of the two between them and the majority of Republicans. When it comes to tax cuts, smaller more efficient government and things like "the Constitiution in exile", you'll find a lot more Libertarian candidates supporting it than Republicans. Well, I'm sure many Republicans and even some Democrats will tell you they're for such things, but their record doesn't bear it out. And it's insanely easy to get ahold of a voting record these days. Worse, the alternative is even more left-leaning nanny-state-loving and tax-friendly. So the dilemna, do you try and keep the devil you know or the devil you don't? Not much representation if you ask me.

I do have one thing still puzzling me about that, though. Why, if both Republicans and Democrats have to run right to get elected do we end up with so many damn left-leaning politicians? Politicians who believe the state should be running our lives from cradle to grave and who believe we should pay for the priviledge are the norm on Capitol Hill. How the hell did they get there? If the country is so ready and so enamored with the prospect of a Democrat Congress, why then are they all running to the far right of what they've been railing on about for the past two years? Because it's all a con job. Democrats and the antique media and even Republicrats can argue that the people want all this nanny state garbage, but read how they run if you want to know the real will of the American people. They'll only speak truth when they think they're among friends and if what they say is going to get a wide audience, then they all want to be the reincarnation of Barry Goldwater. What a joke, but then again, we all seem to vote for the jokes, don't we?

Then there's the whole trend lately of showing how "middle class mainstream Heartland voters" are all jumping ship and going to vote Democrat (LEFT) now that the Republican-controlled Congress and White House has disillusioned them somehow. I've had my suspicions that most were in left-controlled strongholds in said "red" states, and ABC proved it for me when they visited LaPorte for their latest piece. It's geographic and political ignorance to think that conservative-leaning states in general don't have bastions of liberal power. Indiana has Bloomington, Indianapolis and the ancient Democrat fortress of Northwest Indiana outside of Chicago. LaPorte is in that control zone. Republicans up there in general tend to be the old liberal Rockefeller-kind and not quite the hard-nosed conservatives you find in the northeast and north central parts of the state. So, finding people who don't like the President isn't too hard in such areas.

It's like going to Chihuahua, Mexico and asking the transients heading north if they're upset with the conservatives' stand on illegal immigration to the United States. Look, conservative leaning districts will likely vote conservative again and liberal districts will do the same. It all depends on who gets more people to the polls. Every unbiased survey for the last 30 years has shown the country in general to be almost evenly split between conservatives and liberals with a slightly larger "moderate" or "undecided" population. That hasn't changed. What changes from election to election is who has a better get-out-the-vote system and who has more money. That's all politics ever boils down to.

I can safely guarantee you this, though. Regardless of my feelings regarding this President and the areas I believe has has succeeded and the areas I believe he's failed, I wouldn't vote for a Leftist to replace him or sit in Congress ever or for any reason. Their agenda is to further erode and destroy the America I really want to protect. They want to drastically increase the withholding and hidden taxes to fund their pet socialist programs, which means even less money for us and our families, they want to grow the nanny state, let illegal immigrants in ahead of legal ones, strip the government of one of its most basic functions (defense) and give it a bunch of new ones never authorized it by the Constitution. Not to mention, you won't see another conservative Supreme Court justice for at least the next decade. Yeah, count me out on that agenda. The media has it about as right as a dime store horoscope can tell you your winning lotto numbers.