Savage Republican

Found the Democratic platform set to music (from “Horse Feathers”).(HT to Mike’s America).

It was a perfect late summer day. At 7 a.m. My Mom and I were on 35W going to downtown Minneapolis for me to have major foot surgery. In surgery the nurse came in to tell us that a plane had hit the WTC. The doctor commented that he and his wife had been at the top of the WTC that Sunday, 9 September, to say good bye to their daughter who was going overseas to study. A half hour later we heard of the South Tower. After surgery ,as Mom and I got off the elevator, I looked at the TV monitor in the Medical Arts Building hallway. I remember thinking as I saw the view from south Manhattan, the huge clouds of smoke and dust “Where are the towers?” And then saw the lower screen crawl “WTC Towers have collapsed”. Driving home, we were listening to Hugh Hewitt (he was on early in the morning). We heard of a plane crash in Pennsylvania. I told my Mom “That plane was part of this. I bet the pilot crashed the plane.” I wanted to hear Frank Gaffney’s thoughts as he was called on Hugh’s show. When we got home (my Mom was playing nurse for me) I got a call from the guy I worked with. He and his wife had just gotten off the phone with the FBI. His cousin is Chic Burlingame. Mr. Burlingame was the pilot on American Airlines Flight 77 that had hit the Pentagon. Late that night, we received a call from my college buddy John who lives in Brooklyn, has an office in midtown Manhattan. He let us know he was OK. I earlier had made two calls to New York-one to his office, one to his home, all without connecting. He told us he had heard the first plane hit, went outside and saw all the rest in real time.
I once heard a “journalist” (now a pejorative) refer to our “fear that day”. Fear. FEAR? I felt rage. A rage I had never, ever experienced before! That afternoon I asked my Mom if I could borrow the car for about twenty minutes. I drove down to Valley West Shopping Center. There were a recruiting offices at the Center. I walked in. Lo and behold, the only office open was the Marine Recruiting Office. I walked in, foot heavily bandaged, 52 years old and 60# overweight and asked if I could enlist. The recruiting sergeant was more than delicate and diplomatic. He was kind. I was as serious as a heart attack. But, I was angry. No, that’s too gentile a description. I was engulfed in rage. Walking out I realized I wasn’t going to be a Marine that day.

Hugh Hewitt has bumper music from “The Last of the Mohicans” called “The Courier“. For years afterwards, when Hugh played that selection, I was right back to that day, those memories, those feelings. And one day it occurred to me “I don’t want to forget. Ever. I don’t want to lose my rage. Ever. I want to have these feelings, never to lose them or have them lessened. Ever!”

Eight days later, I was opening Wednesday night Kid’s Club at church. Here in front of me were maybe twenty kids, ages six to ten. As I looked at them it occurred to me that those same men who had flown those planes and the spawn of their pig dog god could easily walk into this classroom, slit the throat of every single child, watch them as they tried to scream as they bled out, and walk away thinking they had done good.

Never forget who the enemy is. He wants you dead. He wants your neighbor dead. Your wife, husband, children,parents dead. He does not and will not discriminate. There are no negotiations, no compromises. There are no innocents. Not a one. And you will not be spared or shown any mercy.

And be grateful to those who stand watch. President Bush said that this is a very long war. The enemy has no real return address. I remember a thought from Victor Davis Hanson who said that if he had fallen asleep on 9-11-01 and did a brief Rip van Winkle and awakened on 9-11-03 and been told that Afghanistan was liberated, Saddam Hussein had been deposed and that over 50,000,000 people were free and voting and that America had not been attacked again by Islamic radicals,well, he would have found that hard to believe. And it’s now been five years. And the war is fought off the front pages. It’s fought in cyberspace. It’s fought by a boat squad or platoon of SEAL’s who go in and leave nothing but footprints, or by Force Recon, or Mossad. Quietly and effectively. Unless the New York Times gets hold of it and destroys that piece of strategy.

So, go and remember. Go and hug your kids. Call a friend. Read the Declaration of Independence. And thank God that He is sovereign.
And remember a rephrased quote from “Apollo 13”: “This is our darkest hour.” “No, I believe this will be our finest hour!”

And one last thought-Dave Barry is great humorist. On the first anniversary of 9-11, he got real serious and wrote one of the most poignant pieces I’ve ever read. It talks about United Flight 93. It’s an excellent read.

Father God, hear our plea. Thank you for keeping us safe. Thank You for those who stand a watch and walk the walls and risk all to keep us from harm. Remember them so kindly Father.We ask that You do not treat us as we so richly deserve. We have forgotten You. We have broken each and every one of Your laws. We chase after other gods. Bring us back to You. For Jesus sake. And in His name, the name that is above all names.

This from Day by Day by Chris Muir (www.daybydaycartoon.com )

Time to update the site and make some changes.

Stay tuned in the next month as we roll out the new site.

Also be patient as features will go up and down as I move the new site over.

Just keep repeating:

“Technology is our friend, Technology is out friend!!!”

Ya gotta admit, you just can’t get one by Prairie Pravda.
Yesterday, the headline read that the Winona killer of a woman, her daughter and her unborn child was sentenced to prison. The article went on to say that this evil cretin murdered two people. OK. But the story stated one woman, one little girl, and one unborn child. And today, the article reads “Winona killer of mother, girl is sentenced to life.” And yet, in the story you read that the killer was sentenced to three life terms. Yesterday the description was an unborn child. Today, it’s a fetus. And three life sentences. Oh the judge, being sworn to justice, made sure that those sentences were to be served concurrently, not consecutively. Murder a little girl, eligible for parole in thirty years. Oh, and he sexually assaulted the little girl before he killed her. That also amounts to torture.
And thirty years before parole…Yup-There’s justice for you! But! Be NOT dismayed! He will have to serve an additional three year sentence for the subsequent arson. THAT sentence will, of course, be served consecutively. Of course.
And the reason he gave for killing ten year old Taylor? Because she woke up as he was killing her mother and came out of her bedroom, and he didn’t want any witnesses. And after all, he had nothing to lose by killing a ten year old girl. Nothing at all.
This is where a review of the death penalty enters in. For years I was opposed to the death penalty. Last December when the lefty wienies were crying for Tookie Williams, I read and blogged an article by Captain Ed. He refers to an L.A. prosecutor who lays out why the death penalty works:”A few examples to make my point: Suppose we have a career criminal with a long record of violent felonies, what we in California would call a “three-striker”, who knows that he will be sent to prison for the rest of his life if he is ever caught committing a new offense. When he goes to rob the local convenience store, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone – he just wants the money. But he also knows that, as there is no death penalty, he will face the exact same punishment (life imprisonment) whether or not he kills the clerk, the only witness to his crime. He would be a fool not to do so. If he happens to bump into a police officer on the way out, he may as well kill him too – there is no extra charge, so to speak.” Now substitute the name of the heinous Winona child torturer and killer and for the clerk insert Taylor and you’ll see that he also had nothing to lose. Nothing at all.
The only real justice I can hope for in this is that he somehow gets put into the general prison population. Child killers don’t last long amongst prisoners.
Time to re-think hanging.

I got another interesting email the other day. This one got me to thinking…

“The wealthy are the last people you might expect to see leading movements that claim to support the working class, but the strange thong is that without the wealthy leftists the liberal movement in America would be dead. The money from George Soros and the wealthy people who voted for Lieberman’s challenger (the poor voted for Lieberman) are typical examples of how the liberal left has become the creation of elite billionaires and millionaires.”

When you consider that the patrons of today’s modern left (George Soros, Barbra Streisand, Microsoft co-founder Paul Lewis, entertainment mogul Steve Bing or locally the Patricians from Growth & Justice) you have to admit, my correspondent has a very valid point.

Why is this?

“Let me posit a few ideas:
1. The rich like to enjoy a lifestyle free from moral encumbrances and they are loath to see their personal behavior ruin their reputation and hurt their wallets. By promoting moral relativism they escape serious scrutiny and can behave as they please.
2. The rich know that the poor, upon whose work their fortune rests, are less likely to complain or be a problem is they are both entertained and materially sustained. Using moral relativism they can keep the poor focused on self indulgence rather than their sorry state, using hand-outs they can keep them still too poor to ever compete but not so poor that they riot, and using class or race warfare they can keep the poor focused on “the others” rather than their actual plight and the failure of the leadership.
3. The rich find nation-states to be quite an inconvenience. By reducing or eliminating trade barriers and by reducing the dominance of one or a few nation states they can raise the importance of non state entities, such as their corporations and foundations AND they can get around any national laws that curtail their ability to “buy low and sell high.”
4. The rich want to be able to control the political scene rather than being accountable to government or the will of People, so they tend to support judicial activism, top-down control of education, a liberal monopoly of the media, and keeping the poor in a state of ignorance.”

Again, given what we have seen from the actions of those wealthy benefactors of the left, my correspondent has a point. There is an old Biblical saying “you can tell them by their fruit”. Well the fruits of the labors of the wealthy leftists are there for all of us to see.

“There are probably other reasons you can cite for the trend amongst the really wealthy to be really liberal, but the point is that the very class that seems to be target of liberal rhetoric is the very class that is actually funding that rhetoric, which begs the question, “why?” For the answer to that question I refer you to the above reasons plus any you may see. What we must remember, however, is that when liberals talk about the rich not pulling their fair share and all that what they are doing is nothing more than a smoke screen: their policies tend not to hurt their rich patrons but, rather, the poor who are misled into believing the rhetoric.” (emphasis mine)

WOW – that is probably the most succinct explaination of the whole “the rich need to pay their fair share” that I have ever heard!

Do not despair dear friends….there is some good news. The liberal benefactors appear to be sitting this election out, according to this report from “The Hill”:

“This year, those well-heeled donors have yet to join the fray. Soros has given less than $2 million, Lewis a paltry $1.1 million, and the others even less. Some are eschewing election-year operations in favor of long-term efforts such as the Democracy Alliance, a group of more than 80 high net-worth individuals funding projects to amplify the liberal message, identify future leaders and conduct research.”

Why are they backing away? Well it is a classic lesson in why you don’t want to trust the Democrats with your tax dollars.

“These and other large donors bankrolled America Coming Together in 2004, a 527 organization devoted to turning out Democratic voters in 17 states. Although the group did make significant gains, it was outpaced by Republican organizing in key states like Ohio, leading some big donors to feel burned by the 2004 election, upset that they shelled out millions only to see Kerry lose, Democratic fundraisers said.“There was a lot of questioning about where money went and was it spent properly,” said Andy Spahn, an advisor to Hollywood donors. “In some part that led to disillusionment and cynicism about 527s.” (emphasis mine)

It would be nice to think that the bloom is off of the 527 rose, but I would not count on that yet! Until such time as the odiuos McCain-Feingold BCFRA is history, the 527’s will dominate our political landscape. BCFR gave birth to the 527 movement and only its repeal will return politics to the people.

I am probably going to stir up a hornets nest with this but here goes anyway…

Here in the Savage Lands we have Indian gaming and a fairly successful mid-size horse racing facility. I have long admired the tribes use of gaming profits to develop non-gaming related business interests. They have built a health club, a daycare center, a strip mall that includes a gas station run by the tribe, a hotel and a golf course. If the day comes when the casino profits dry up (not likely to happen anytime soon) well they can still provide for themselves. BRAVO for free enterprise!

Well now the race track wants to add slot machines (run by the Minnesota Lottery commission) and expand their card club (in addition to their live and simulcast horse racing) in order to do the same thing. They want to build an equestrian/agriculture center and hotel complex that would bring world class equestrian competition to the Twin Cities. Now I will admit my bias up front – I used to show in the type of equestrian competitions that would be brought to the area! I still know people in the business who would be coming up here should this facility be built.

This plan has opposition from the tribe and from conservatives. Now the tribes opposition I can understand. They feel that this will cut into their “action”. The conservative opposition is what I am puzzled by. Here we have a regulated business who is wanting to expand the non-regulated part of their operation. Yes it will be funded by their gaming operation, I get that. The conservatives that are blocking this say that they do not want an “expansion” of gambling. The problem is, the tribe can expand their gaming operation at will and we have nothing to say in this, we have no say in the matter. The race tracks expansion would be tightly regulated by the state (which I am not horribly fond of but I understand the reasoning why) and it will ultimately benefit the county in the form of more jobs (and thus more employment taxes paid to the state) and more tourists (in the form of the horse show people who have unreal amounts of money) and in the form of property tax relief. It is a win/win for the area, as far as Ic an see…

However, I want to try to understand the other side. Why should conservatives object to racino at Canterbury Park?

Discuss in ccomments.

Oh my friend Amendment X is going to LOVE this one…..

“A couple of weeks ago, I checked into a hotel in Bloomington, a Minneapolis suburb framed by the airport and the Mall of America. On the hotel door was a sign: “Firearms Banned on These Premises.” The next day I drove to St. Joseph, an hour west of the Twin Cities, where I saw the same sign. Slowly the logical conclusion sank in. If firearms are banned on these premises, then they must not be banned in other places. Sure enough, a year ago the State Legislature passed a “concealed carry” law, which means that it’s legal to carry a concealed weapon if you have a permit. So that no one misses the point, the Legislature has also turned Minnesota into what is called a “shall require” state. If you apply for a concealed-weapon permit, the local authorities must grant it to you.”

What I found to be highly amusing (and so totally expected….this is the Grey Lady after all) was this:

“I asked one of the state coalitions opposed to these laws whether it would attack them in the Legislature this year. The answer was no. It is too busy trying to defeat a “shoot first” bill, which would give gun owners the right to fire away instead of trying to avoid a confrontation. The way I see it, Minnesota is only one step away from requiring every citizen to carry a gun and use it when provoked.”

You hear that, dear readers???? The streets of Minneapolis are one step away from being Dodge City again….OH WAIT…they already ARE!

Those who have followed the goings on in Amy Klobuchar’s Minneapolis (like Rambix and the KvM guys) know that the streets are already awash with guns and gangbangers and gangster wanna bes. Any one of them are looking for the chance to prove themselves to their “peeps”.

“This is what I’d expect of Florida, which recently passed a “shoot first” — also called a “shoot the Avon lady” — bill. I’d expect it of Texas too. But Minnesota? I grew up thinking of Minnesota as a socially progressive state. After all, it was home of the D.F.L. — the Democratic Farmer Labor Party — and a place where local control and common sense had strong roots. Like my family in Iowa, Minnesotans were gun owners because they hunted pheasants and rabbits and deer. But then I’m thinking of a time when the leadership of the National Rifle Association resembled a band of merry sportsmen and not the paranoid cabal it is today. Whether this was also a time when a legislator could vote his conscience, and not his gun lobbyist’s orders, I was too young to know.”

You want to know what’s changed? Here’s a hint. In Minneapolis in 2006, the animals are roaming the streets of the city and not foraging in the forests “up north”.

One thing that the folks like this author fail to recoginze is what happened AFTER the Florida conceal carry law was passed. Contrary to the nay-sayers prediction of “blood in the streets” crime actually DROPPED in Florida.

Then again, facts are something that the writes for the old grey ghost seem to disregard if they don’t fit the the preconceived conclusions.

Amendment X, AAA and I have all writen about the false promise of ethanol and how, by their blind allegiance to the ethanol industry, our Senator and several of his colleagues in the House (including the man who wants to be our next Senator) are setting the consumers up for continued high gasoline prices. Well now Consumer Reports has chimed in on the Ethanol Myth and the high price that comes with it. If you have read any of our prior posts on the subject, you will not be surprised at what CR says.

“But after putting a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe FFV through an array of fuel economy, acceleration, and emissions tests, and interviewing more than 50 experts on ethanol fuel, CR determined that E85 will cost consumers more money than gasoline and that there are concerns about whether the government’s support of FFVs is really helping the U.S. achieve energy independence. Among our findings:

The fuel economy of the Tahoe dropped 27 percent when running on E85 compared with gasoline, from an already low 14 mpg overall to 10 mpg (rounded to the nearest mpg). This is the lowest fuel mileage we’ve gotten from any vehicle in recent years.

With the retail pump price of E85 averaging $2.91 per gallon in August, according to the Oil Price Information Service, which tracks petroleum and other fuel prices, a 27 percent fuel-economy penalty means drivers would have paid an average of $3.99 for the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline.

When we calculated the Tahoe’s driving range, we found that it decreased to about 300 miles on a full tank of E85 compared with about 440 on gasoline. So you have to fill up more often with E85.

The majority of FFVs are large vehicles like the Tahoe that get relatively poor fuel economy even on gasoline. So they will cost you a lot at the pump, no matter which fuel you use. Because E85 is primarily sold in the upper Midwest, most drivers in the country have no access to the fuel, even if they want it. For our Tahoe test, for example, we had to blend our own (see The great E85 fuel hunt).

The FFV surge is being motivated by generous fuel-economy credits that auto-makers get for every FFV they build, even if it never runs on E85. This allows them to pump out more gas-guzzling large SUVs and pickups, which is resulting in the consumption of many times more gallons of gasoline than E85 now replaces. “

I realize that the government has put a lot of stock in ethanol and they are working hard to make it pay off. However, the Consumer is the one that is stuck paying the higher prices that this blind allegiance to ethanol production has saddled us with. Yes, it is time to find alternative fuels, but let’s make sure that the alternative fuels are fuels that will be cost effective AND good for the environment.

Did any of you hear about this story?

“More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.”

Apparently, this theory is so prevalent that a FAQ site has been developed in order to debunk these theories. It is an interesting real – both from the conspirace theory phase and from the answer to those conspiracy theories. I work in the same building as a gentleman who firmly believes that the 9/11 attacks were actually a result of US government actions! He can tell you all the theories and when you point to facts like those listed at the FAQ site, he will tell you that it is “all lies”. That is his pat answer – no reasoning….just claims that it is all part of the “vast governmental conspiracy”. Given that there are many people in this state that are firm believers in handing the government that much control, it should not be surprising that they believe that the government can be responsible for this (or for the rise and fall in the price of gas).

Which is just one more reason why these people should not be given control of the State or US legislature.