Savage Republican

Well we finally heard from Al Franken again. It has been a long time since we had an appearance by the man who would be Senator. This one comes to us courtesy of Scott at Powerline.

Senator (want-t0-be) Al was on the Today show with fellow talk show host Michael Smerconish on Friday.

Now Powerline, Expose the Left and Newsbusters are all focusing on Al’s “screw-you” comment (directed toward Michael Smerconish) but the remark that I found to be stunning was this little throw-away from the very end of the interview (in response to Matt’s question about what to do with the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the US).

“We have got to make the Law reflect reality and reality reflect the law.”

So I guess by this logic, if reality is that people are going to drive 100mph on the Interstate highways, we should change the law (the speed limit) and make driving 100mph on the Interstate legal? Or if criminals are shooting up Block E in Minneapolis, killing innocent bystanders, we should make that activity legal? Or if TSA screeners are using racial profiling to decide which travelers to screen then that’s ok too Al? Is that what you really wanted to say Senator Al? Gee I guess that I am not smart enough, good enough or savvy enough to be a Senator like you Al.

And do we all remember from 1997 the pictures of downtown East Grand Forks on fire while the entire town was flooded? And the cry that the Feds (meaning you and me) needed to pay all those people to build AGAIN on those flat areas on either side of the Red River (and those flat areas are called, uh, FLOOD PLAINS because it’s quite plain to anyone with a room temperature IQ that that’s where the river plainly floods!!!).
And so, it goes again. And some of these people have rebuilt multiple times, in the same spot that flooded before.
Well, kids,may I recommend that this time they’re all on their own. Build on a flood plain, expect floods.
Build your house in a area below sea level that experiences hurricanes, expect to be flooded by hurricanes and all the consequences therefrom.
I have absolutely no desire to subsidize stupidity and or foolishness.

The protests and complaints of people who whine about being here in America but say they want to be here in America has finally, I hope lanced the boil. Victor Davis Hanson has written another great piece on the subject where he asks is anyone seeing the inconsistency of the protests? And another article was sent to me from a friend asking what does American citizenship really mean? However, that being said, as I listened to the firestorm this has ignited, few people are seeing the larger picture. Politicians see only leaves, never trees and certainly not the forest.
I’ve listened to a number of people tell how and why it’s difficult to compete in the markets where manual labor is necessary. One man in particular was talking about his berry farm. To be legal, he had to file with the EEOC, EPA, INS (to name three), get a license, file with all local and state agencies and if he hired legal employees he would have to charge another 50% on to his wholesale price. And he was barely competing the way it is. Another man stated essentially the same thing when trying to open a landscaping business. That the cost of compliance meant that he was uncompetitve. Therefore, with all the laws, regulations, taxes,fees it became untenable to hire Americans. Does anyone see the parallel with American companies sending jobs overseas because it’s just too expensive to hire Americans? And the stories from my friends who want to hire American and get bigger, but have chosen not to because it’s just not worth the hassle and problems. And so once again, the American economy and American citizens groan and fail to prosper due the government legislating in our best interests.
And I’ll let you fill in the wholesale welfare benefits open to all people who hit American paydirt.
And it gets worse. I was talking to a friend of mine who is in law enforcement. He stated how incredibly upset he was that Norm Coleman has thrown in his lot with Teddy Kennedy on the immigration issue. My friend states that the caseload for meth in his county has grown 20% in the past year. And that the large majority of those cases were illegal immigrants. Whenever I hear Kennedy and McCain agreeing on anything it’s time to flee for your lives. And that Biodiesel Norm (no drilling in ANWR because he supports biodiesel…yah.Right.) has put himself with these two bookends tells me that the Republicans are in real danger.
This stance is going to cost them big in seven months. Real big.
And I’m reminded of William Buckley’s quote from many years ago where he said that he would rather be governed by the first 537 people in any phone book in the United States than the current group of politicians.
And with the exponential growth of the Federal Register, why do we as Americans keep thinking that these 537 in both houses of Congress people making political decisions are wiser and more capable than millions of Americans making independent decisions on the spot, with all the facts in front of them on what’s good for them and their families?

Remember when I said here that the attempt to marginalize the blogosphere (in wake of blogs being given the “media expemption” to McCain/Feingold) had begun? Well the LA Times came out swinging this morning.

“BLOGS HAVE BEEN A POTENT force in U.S. politics since, oh, 2004, when they helped bring down a presidential candidate or two and at least one TV news anchor.”

Can you feel the love? The editorial gives a brief synopsis of this weeks FEC ruling and then it jumps back into attack mode.

“That leaves amateur politicos and volunteer partisans who don’t run ads free to create “Vote for Smith” websites, write blog entries and send mass e-mails without coming under the FEC’s purview. “

Amateur politicos and volunteer partisans? As opposed to what? Professional politicos and the legacy media? What is wrong with the average Joe having an opinion and (God forbid) expressing it!

“More important, anyone who wants to publish his or her views online can do so. Unlike television and newspapers, there are no barriers to entry online. “

And again – what is wrong with that? Yes anyone can launch a blog easily, but (as has been shown time and time again) if the blog is posting nothing but rumor and innuendo it will not have the readership. Blogs like Powerline and Captains Quarters have the success that they have had because they DON’T publish rumor and innuendo. These bloggers put their individual reputations on the line on a daily basis. Even anonymous bloggers (like those of us here at Savage Republican) have to make sure that what we are posting is accurate – if we want to be taken seriously. Contrast that with the NY Times which was shown to have misreported a story about FISA judges that testified before Congress this week. With blogs, anyone left or right has equal access to put his/her opinion out for people to find and read. That levels the playing field – unlike the legacy media which gets to pick and choose which opinion to display and where to display them!

Also, unlike television, you have to activly search for a blog in order to read their opinions. The world wide web is a big place and if you don’t know what you are looking for, it can be hard to find anything. Newspapers and television news are more “user friendly” (to borrow a computer term) than the web. That means that readers of blogs are generally more informed and more actively searching for the information that they are seeking. To me, that makes the services supplied by blogs and bloggers to be more selective and yes, more partisan. Even though it is harder to get this information (from blogs) John McCain and his friends at the Los Angeles and New York Times, would like to make that an impossibility by completely shutting down the blogs.

This is good news for the people.

“A federal judge in Washington ruled yesterday that the Federal Election Commission acted arbitrarily in 2004 when it decided not to regulate so-called 527 political organizations, but he declined to force the commission to impose such regulations.”

I say that it is good because the judge has order the FEC to either make a regulation on 527’s or to better explain it’s exemption of 527s – handling complaints on a case by case basis only.

The lawsuit in question was brought by President Bush’s re-election campaign and Representatives Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Martin Meehan (D-MA). Both lawmakers have advocated for tighter campaign finance reform.

This is excellent news for the people of America, however I fear that the FEC will drag this out so that we will not see relief (from 527 advertising) this year. Right now these “special interest groups” are the only ones that can run campaign ads in the last 60 days of a campaign. As we saw in the last election, these ads are nothing but slime campaigns. It would be best if we could repeal McCain/Feingold and thus restore free campaign speech to all, but if we can’t have that we’d be better off just letting a trained chimp choose who the next President will be. The chimp certainly can’t be any less informed than a voter who relies on America Coming Together for his campaign information.

It is an old adage, but true none-the-less. Everything our politicians do trickles down to effect our daily lives. However, I still had to think twice about this article when I first read it for it to really sink in.

“It has become common wisdom that the Democrats mean to make the 2006 elections a referendum on President Bush and the Republican Party. Republican congressional candidates, in turn, will seek to counter this strategy by emphasizing local issues and seek to make the election about the choice between themselves and their rivals. “

The piece tells the story of a Congressional race in Iowa, but it could just as easily have been in Minnesota. Democratic candidates (like Coleen Rowley) have gone out of their way to attack anything and everything President Bush has done in the last 5 years. Meanwhile, their Republican counterparts are talking about how what is done in DC affects those of us back home in the district. Bridges to nowhere in Alaska mean no spending on airports in Minnesota. Tax cuts mean more take home pay for the average worker. Social Security Reform means that a 40something taxpayer might actually see some Social Security checks after all…the list goes on.

So I guess this election (if things play out as they are going now) is going to be a choice of 2 things….a vote against President Bush or a vote for new roads in Scott County. A vote against President Bush or a vote for more cops in Minneapolis…a vote against President Bush or a vote FOR the future. Is that really where the DNC wants to go? Apparently so, according to Corey over at dreckless.

This week has been full of them. From the Saddam WMD/al Qaeda connections, to the NSA “wiretapping” (see the posts at Powerline for details) liberal memes have been falling rapidly by the wayside. Today’s meme is an oldie, but a goodie…the meme that tax cuts cause tax revenues to drop.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported (article is subscription only) that tax revenues for the first 5 months of fiscal 2006 is up 10.3%. This article in Townhall (by Herman Cain) explains why this is not a fluke.

“Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge significantly cut tax rates in the 1920s, which caused both the national economy and federal revenues to grow. Harding repealed the World War I excess profits tax, dropped the top tax rate on individuals from 73 to 58 percent and set the capital gains tax rate at 12.5 percent. Coolidge further reduced individual tax rates and inheritance taxes. The Harding and Coolidge tax rate cuts caused income tax revenues to rise 61 percent from 1921 to 1929. At the same time, the economy grew by 59 percent. Additionally, the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans grew from just over 44 percent in 1921 to over 78 percent by 1928. “

Closer to home, the state of Minnesota went from a $4.2 billion deficit to a $337 million surplus thanks to the economic growth spurred by tax cuts on the state and federal level!

Tax cuts work – it has been proven historically time after time after time. What we now need to reign in is the out of control state and federal spending.

“The other lie liberals perpetually tell is that low tax rates cause budget deficits. History proves just the opposite – that cuts in income, capital gains and dividends tax rates increase the amount of federal revenues available for Congress to spend. The only thing that can cause a budget deficit is when Congress spends in excess of available revenues, and the president at the time signs off on that spending. Members of Congress who blame tax cuts for causing deficits might as well argue that gun manufacturers cause homicides, fast food restaurants cause obesity and cigarette makers cause lung cancer. Surely no one would agree with that flawed logic.”

There I might argue with the author. I know too many people here in Minnesota who think that houses cause crime and SUVs cause accidents and guns cause murders. Such is the thought process of todays liberal Democrat.

I ran across this over the weekend. I found it to be an interesting take on the “worth” of pre-emptive strikes.

“Consider the prophet Mohammed himself. According to Muslim history, God’s own messenger engaged in pre-emptive action against those whom he suspected of plotting against Islam. “

Uh oh…..you mean that the founder of the religion of peace engaged in unprovoked attacks on others?

“Self-defense, my fellow Muslims will insist.”

As the author of the article states, President Bush felt the same way and yet the Muslim world doesn’t seem to be willing to accept that.

“Honesty demands that Muslims in the USA judge the doctrine of pre-emption by a single standard. That requires making a choice. We can accept what the prophet did as necessary and guided by God, in which case we can’t be shocked when the president makes a similar case for his policy. Or we can acknowledge that the prophet Mohammed’s pre-emptive assaults on Jews were morally wrong, in which case we’ve got credibility when slamming the Bush doctrine”

And that dear reader is wisdom that we should all remember when we are engaging in discussions with others.

The fallout for Republicans has started. As I said last night, I have talked to lots of grass roots activists who are so disgusted with the Senate Republicans and their handling of the immigration issue that they are ready to:

First I am going to address A & C. I understand your frustration. There are days when it seems like our Republican Senator (Norm Coleman) is leaning back toward his Democrat roots (he was elected Mayor of St Paul as a Democrat and switched parties in mid-term). It is frustrating as all get out to campaign hard for a candidate/issue (like drilling in ANWAR/Immigration reform) only to have your Senator vote against it! It is frustrating to fight hard for a Republican president to be hit with things like corruption scandals, out of control spending, amnesty, Harriet Myers and Dubai Ports World. Those of us who thought “this time will be different – we learned our lessons in 1994” have seen the bitter reality that in DC it is ALL POLITICS AS USUAL! However (and I really hate to say it this way) we must not fall to the temptation of with-holding our votes, unless there is a better Republican standing up to take the incumbents place! If you think things are bad in DC now, just wait to see what happens if the Democrats regain the House and Senate. Impeachment, Hillary care, an abandonment of Iraq to the terrorists and record spending like you’ve never seen. You don’t believe me? Take a look at the website of any of your local Dems running for Congress or the Senate. They are filled with such catch phrases as “universal or single payer health care”, “making the wealthy pay their fair share”, “culture of corruption” – the list goes on. Do you really want that to be in control of your taxpayer dollars?

The Dems are currently acting like petulant children, throwing a temper tantrum because they didn’t get their way (winning the White House in 2000 and 2004). To all of you disgruntled voters, take a good hard look at what is pushing the DNC and tell me….do you really want to give them running the show in DC? Is that what you want to do to this country?

For the Republicans running as “centrists”/democrats I have a couple of questions. First, why should we vote for a pseudo Democrat when we have the real thing running against you? We want a candidate that is different from the Democrat – not DFL Lite! Second, why should we “trust you” to be different, when you have already shown that you are a “politics as usual” Republican.

B is by far our best option to express our displeasure with the Senate. The RSCC is sending out fundraising letters and making fundraising calls. My suggestion would be to (nicely) tell the telemarketer that you will no longer make any donations to the RNC, the RSCC or the RCCC until such time as our Republicans start governing as Republicans! If you get a letter, send it back with a polite note stating the same thing! Nothing hurts a politician more than a loss of campaign contributions. Time to bring back the “Not one Dime” campaign!

When the FEC announced (on Monday) that they were giving blogs the same exemption from regulation that the MSM got, I said to a friend “This will not sit well with the media – watch them lash out!”

Yesterday the NYTimes printed this article.

“But now, an unusual experiment in public access is giving anyone with a computer a chance to play intelligence analyst and second-guess the government. “

Well gee….hasn’t the Times (and the rest of the media) been doing that for 3 years now??? I mean come on!

“Under pressure from Congressional Republicans, the director of national intelligence has begun a yearlong process of posting on the Web 48,000 boxes of Arabic-language Iraqi documents captured by American troops. “

Congressional Republicans were not the ones pressuring to get the documents released. Journalist Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard has been the one man dervise behind the release. It was Mr. Hayes that filed the Freedom of Information Act requests to get the documents released. It was Mr. Hayes that lobbied said Congressional Republicans. It was Mr. Hayes who did all of the heavy lifting to allow us to read these documents. Oh and did I mention that Mr. Hayes was a journalist????

“Intelligence officials had serious concerns about turning loose an army of amateurs on a warehouse full of raw documents that include hearsay, disinformation and forgery. Mr. Negroponte’s office attached a disclaimer to the documents, only a few of which have been translated into English, saying the government did not vouch for their authenticity. “

Now I will admit that I am an amateur when it comes to things like this. However, because I am an admitted amateur, I rely on what people in fields that do have that expertise.

“No offense, but the mainstream media tells people what they want them to know,” said Mr. Robison (a blogger), who worked in Qatar for the Iraq Survey Group, which did an exhaustive search for weapons in Iraq.”

Those people seem to think that there was something in those documents to indicate that the President was straight with the American people on the reasons for war – in spite of what the media would have us believe.