The Savage Republican

Is the end really near for King Ron?

It's a rainy, dreary Saturday afternoon in Minnesota. With nothing better to do, I decided to do a little on line reading. I stumbled across this and immediately thought of my friend Savage Republican. From http://thefirstringblog.blogspot.com/.

This paragraph caught my eye (emphasis mine)....

By comparison, the GOP Chair for Party Chair between incumbent Ron Eibensteiner and Bill Pulkrabek is deathly quiet. Both sides are calling delegates and alternates for the GOP’s June Central Committee convention and lining up support. Pulkrabek continues to attack Eibensteiner’s leadership, releasing another letter suggesting the party’s fundraising has seriously dipped and needs to rebound. With Eibensteiner’s venture capital background, the fundraising issue is perceived as his strongest and Pulkrabek’s weakest. Whether this new line of attack does anything for Pulkrabek’s chances may be a moot point according to multiple sources close to the Eibensteiner campaign who are quoting internal polling numbers showing the current Chair with a large delegate lead. The Eibensteiner camp concedes a fair number of delegates remain uncommitted, but supposedly not by a margin that could significantly close the gap for Pulkrabek. How accurate the Eibensteiner camp’s assessment is will be known in a few weeks.

Given the conversations that I have had with the rank and file in the state Republican Party, Chairman Eibensteiner is not the most popular chairman. I find it a little hard to believe the Chairman's numbers, but if they are correct, he will have one last term to hopefully undo some of the damage done (to the State Party) in the last election cycle. However, if (as First Ringer hints) the Chair's numbers are not all that accurate...Hmmmmm - June 11ths Central Committee meeting should be wildly entertaining.

Well maybe I'm not the only one who noticed...

It appears that someone in the press also noticed the difference, between Jews, Christians and Muslims, in their reaction to the news that someone has "defiled" their holy sites/texts (see my post entitled "Outrage" from May 17). Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe - no less - picked up on the theme and expanded the discussion in his article here http://tinyurl.com/agumq

The paragraph that struck me the most was this:

Christians, Jews, and Buddhists don't lash out in homicidal rage when their religion is insulted. They don't call for holy war and riot in the streets. It would be unthinkable for a mainstream priest, rabbi, or lama to demand that a blasphemer be slain. But when Reuters reported what Mohammad Hanif, the imam of a Muslim seminary in Pakistan, said about the alleged Koran-flushers -- ''They should be hung. They should be killed in public so that no one can dare to insult Islam and its sacred symbols" -- was any reader surprised?

Well finally - someone gets it!

The End is near for King Ron!

Looks like the grassroots are finally going to rise up in MN and take back our party.
Here is an interesting link to what happened at the CD 4/5 convention.
The part that got my interest,

The interesting thing for me as an observer is the acute blame the party at this grassroots level accords to the State functionaries. Ron Eibensteiner is State Chairman and he is not appreciated in his role. Blame for disappointing losses last November to the DFL are not shrugged off as a reality of city political life, but are attributed to a disconnected leadership. Mr. Eibensteiner was in attendance, as were his opponents. They all gave speeches during the proceedings, asking for support when that office goes up for election this summer, I believe. Ron has very, very little support at this level and I do not see much chance that he will be reelected as State Chair. From where I sit it looks like the new Chair will be Bill Pulkrabek. He knows which side the toast is buttered on and talked an emphasis on grassroots politics.

I will lay out in the next few weeks my case for change and why Ron should not be chair.
But I think there is a statewide trend for change.
Stay tuned.

The Fight of our Lives

As I stated below (in the post entitled "Outrage") I am an evangelical Christian who has studied the "Big Three" of religion (Christianity, Judiaism and Islam). As such, I feel that it is important that someone (I guess that would be me) mention that we Americans are in the fight of our lives. The fight is against radical Islam. Some would say that all of Islam is our enemy. According to the Koran and the teachings of several Imams (both here and abroad) you would be correct, but I would argue that there are probably just as many "marginal" Muslims as there are "marginal" Christians. For the sake of this post, I am referring to the Wahhabist view point of the Koran and Islamic teachings (this is the Muslim sect that brought us Osama bin Laden and his followers and it is the primary sect of Saudi Arabia).

Wahhabist Imams teach that ALL people have 1 choice. Convert to Islam or DIE!!! Any who "coroborate" with the infidels (that would be us folks!) are to be killed as well. Don't believe me? Think I am exaggerating? Check out this news story from Yahoo http://tinyurl.com/7azlg. Or this one http://tinyurl.com/cvjxa In the first story, Abu Musab al Zarqawi said that it was ok to target Muslims who participate in the new government of Iraq. The second is a story about a Palestinian Imam who, in a televised broadcast, said that Muslims will one day "rule America". Think about this people. You think the evangelical Christians make life miserable for homosexuals? Care to guess what happens to "outed" homosexuals in an Islamic country? The same thing that happened to all of those who were kidnapped in the early days of the war - beheading! What happens to women who dare to want to go to work? They are killed for the sake of "honor".

So the next time you hear someone say that evangelical Christians are just as bad as the radical Islamists, remember which side beheads homosexuals and which side kills women who have the audacity to step out of their prescribed roles.....

Nancy Pelosi, Oath of Office, Amendment X and me.

I caught just a snippet of CSPAN last night. There was Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, the House Minority Leader, with an easel and a list titled "Ethics..." plus something else in the title line. She of course was raging about Tom Delay, R-TX, House Majority Leader. I saw the Ethics presentation and left CSPAN.
For ANY House member, Repub or Demo, to even mention ethics and not murmur "Mea culpa..." is comic relief. The VERY first thing they do after taking their oath of office is to break their oath of office. What part of the phrase "Congress shall make no law..." do these people not understand?
I will now reveal why I call myself Amendment X:

"Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

This means Article 1, Section 8. Look it up.
This Amendment from the Bill of Rights was meant to guarantee that we would remain a republic, not a democracy.
It was meant to guarantee that Congress would not mandate how much water would flush from a toilet, outlaw the selling of oranges that were smaller than 3 1/8 inches in diameter, Social Security, tatoo removal programs, funded studies on the length of flight attendants noses and any of a myriad of other laws and regulations.
It was meant to trust that a citizenry could, and would run their own lives quite nicely, as long as they were protected from violence and fraud. Including violence and fraud from the government.

The other day I was stopped at the lights at Cty 42 and Hwy 13 looking north. It occured to me that there wasn't anything that I could lay my eyes on that was not taxed or regulated in some way shape or form. And I thought of this:

HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of
Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance. From the Declaration of Independence

Ethics...PUHLEASE!!! Just start with keeping your oath of office.

Gas taxes hurt working poor and families

Gas prices are at an all time high with no relief in sight and the Minnesota House decided that we need to add another $.10 in gas taxes to the mix. Their reasoning is that we need more money to build new roads and fund mass transit. While I understand their budgetary need, I would like them to stop and think about how their actions adversely affect the rest of us – especially the working poor who are just barely able to afford to get to work as it is now.

Because of increased gas prices, bus fares will go up. For those that are fortunate enough to have a car, the added $2-$3 a week (depending on how far they have to drive to their job) is money that they don’t have to buy things their family really needs – like milk for their kids. For those that buy goods that are shipped into the state, expect the costs of those goods to go up as shipping companies are going to pass these additional costs on to retailers, who in turn pass them on to consumers! This does not even include the increases in registration fees for vehicles.

“Real wages” for the average hourly worker in the US actually FELL in 2004 (after adjusting for inflation) according to the US Dept of Labor statistics. Workers can not go to their employers and DEMAND an increase in pay in order to cover their budgetary “shortfalls”. Why should the MN House be any different? If roads need to be worked on, prioritize that needs to be done based on what is in the budget Do we really need more mass transit right now? If not, we should not be spending the money for it. These are the same real budgetary questions that working families have to ask themselves every month. Until the economic recovery is complete, the state should not be punishing struggling citizens by raising taxes on a product that is already too expensive for many to afford as it is.

Outrage?

Let me start this off by stating, upfront and for the record, I am a Christian. I am (according the the leftists) one of those evangelical right wing nut-jobs because I do believe that the Bible is the word of God and that we should live our lives according to the teachings of the Bible, in other words, I hold the Scriptures as sacred. However, I am not a typical (again according to the leftist defination) evangelical Christian inasmuch as I have studied the major Christian "sects" and the other 2 major world religions (Judiaism and Islam). Having said that, here is what I wanted to say today.

The internet is all abuzz over the Newsweek "Periscope" item of May 9, 2005. As you all know, Newsweek stated (and has since retracted) that American soldiers "desacrated" a Koran by sticking it in a toilet. Now we don't know if that really happened or not, former detainees at Gitmo have long claimed it but there has yet to be any proof of these allegations. Because of this printed rumor, radical Islamists rioted and people DIED! Now others have discussed (at great length) the irresponsible behavior that Newsweek exhibited. I would like to, instead, focus on the "excuse" for the riots.

So you are mad that someone MAY have desecrated your holy book? Where was your "righteous" anger when the Buddhist temples and statues and holy documents were destroyed by your friends in the Taliban 10 years ago? What about when that the Palestinians defiled the tomb of Joseph when the Jews pulled out of Nablus(in 2002)? What about when Christian Holy Symbols are defiled in the name of "art" (a la "the Piss Christ")? Where was your "righteous" anger over that desacration? Please tell us Newsweek....where was your outrage over the desacration of THESE sacred items.....

The Savage Republican

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Saturday, May 21, 2005