Savage Republican

And to show that we are true multi-culturalists we have this.
And I’m sure that the ACLU will soon enter suit to have “Mexicanos, al grito de guerra” sung BEFORE The Star Bangled Banner at all “appropriate” events.
All in the name of multicultural/non-offense/acceptance/empowerment/I’m-on-the-left-and-though-I-say-I-love-America-I-really-hate-all-that-is-America- ism.
Gag!

As Lady Logician intimates, it just doesn’t stop.
At Captains Quarters The good Captain Ed writes about Jimmy Carter and his observations on the Hamas elections. And what does Jimmy say about Hamas and funding? Don’t cut it off but rather funnel it through the UN. Funnel money to Hamas through the UN.Hhmmm…
Perhaps not a bad idea as that means that Hamas will not get a dime, BUT it also means that money will all go to the UN and Saddam Hussein.
Decisions, decisions….

Stumbled across this great link from Little Green Footballs . Also click on this link and then click through on the link at the top and to the right.
Great stuff. And perspectives you more than likely won’t see in Prairie Pravda.

On Tuesday night I and some of the members of Scott County Republicans Executive Committee were priviledged to be able to hear and enjoy Michael Medved, courtesy of my friend John Hunt, GM at AM1280 The Patriot . As the State of the Union (SOTU) was scheduled after Michael Medved was scheduled, John told me that we were going to hear the SOTU with comments after by Mr. Medved. BTW, I had the opportunity to talk to Michael briefly before and after the SOTU, and he is gracious, polite and as attentive as a very short and rushed schedule would allow. He is the personification of his own description of conservatives as kind (and kinder) more well mannered and truly compassionate than our left wing opponent’s. Back to the SOTU.
I also had the opportunity to be seated with the NARN and right next to King Banaian (SCSU Scholars) during the SOTU. And we groaned and clapped pretty much on cue.
And then we got to the “Initiatives ” part of the speech.
A “Competitiveness Initiative” from the GOVERNMENT????? This is an example of either GWB’s humor or the irony is absolutely lost on him and all the dolts who applauded.
And just where did GWB go to exemplify the “Competitiveness Initiative”? Did he go to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission? No. Did he go to the EPA? Uh uh. How about the FDA? Wasn’t there. Perhaps the Department of Energy? Typical day at the DOE. Well, what about the Department of Education (an oxymoron if ever there were one)? Thankfully, no, he didn’t go there. Nope to all. Where did he go? PRIVATE INDUSTRY! 3M! One of the most innovative large companies on the planet! And how does 3M do it?
There are no top down dictates. They give the divisions much latitude to be innovators. They fund all those small entrepreneurial enterprises within the company. My Dad worked as an engineer for 3M for over forty years. And he talked about that creative spirit that pervaded the entire company.
And if 3M were not competitive, the free market would spank 3M. And they are incredibly competitive in spite of the EPA, EEOC, FDA, FEMA and the all other alphabet soup agency drags on the economy.
How about the “Get Government the He** Out of the Way Initiative”? And which could also be renamed the “Ronald Reagan the nine most scariest words in English ‘I’m From the Government and I’m Here to Help’ Initiative”.
And the “Compassion Initiative”? $450,000,000 for mentors for compassion? How about cutting our taxes by 80% or more (much more ) and we’ll spend our own money in our own compassionate way.
70,000 new teachers? Sounds like the 100,000 police on the streets that never appeared from one of Clinton’s SOTU.
And just one more laugher? Federal jobs training. Has never worked. Never will.
You want REAL jobs training and competitiveness initiative? How about from the free market by eliminating the capital gains tax and all taxes on dividends? Watch the huge investment numbers into small and innovative companies that ensues. It would be breathtaking!
Oh, and energy independence- ethanol? Also another real bad idea from government. The ethanol subsidy is also called “the food burning subsidy” here and here. Oh, and the producers of ethanol can not afford to burn ethanol to produce ethanol.
So, I was fairly impressed with the first part.
And I never,ever want to hear “XXXXXXX Government Initiative” again. One of the NARN heard me say that as we were walking out and replied “Initiative must be the new Blue Ribbon Panel or Commission”.
SOTU…another missed opportunity.

This morning, my daily Bible readings took me to Joshua, specifically Joshua 24:14-24. As is my want, I read beyond verse 24. Chapter 24 is the last chapter of Joshua. Joshua warns and provokes the people by saying that they are unable to serve the Lord.He says that they must choose to serve either the Lord or the gods their forefathers worshipped in Egypt (before the exodus) and the gods of the Amorites. And Joshua states quite clearly,simply and directly “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
And the aged general and successor to Moses passes away after exhorting and warning the Israelites.
I was thinking that with his death, one of the two last “old men” from the slavery in Egypt, the Exodus and the entry into the Promised Land had passed away (Caleb’s death is not recorded). That Joshua’s audience was those who were under twenty years old at the beginning of the Israelites forty years in the wilderness (but still had experienced the slavery and Passover and resultant liberation from Egypt), those born in the wilderness who knew nothing of the slavery in Egypt and those who had been born in the newly conquered Promised Land. And it occurred to me that there came a time when the last of those who had experienced all of this history of slavery, liberation, wandering and the Promised Land, those who had heard Moses, those who had heard Joshua, there came that time when the last of them passed away. I thought there came a time when the last of the Founding Fathers passed away (James Madison 1836).The last American citizen who experienced the oppression of King George III and the Parliament, the Revolutionary War, the wilderness of the Articles of Confederation and the promised land of the new Constitution and the Bill of Rights- there came the time the last of those citizens passed away.And the words of warning from the Founding Fathers were forgotten just a surely the warning words of Joshua and Moses were forgotten.And the ringing promises to follow the Lord were forgotten as fading echoes by the generations who came later.
And so it is here in America.
And so when I hear this morning GWB talk about the founding values from the Declaration of Independence, that liberty comes from God, I scratch my head and ask: then how can he pile on more and more programs to a country where it takes OVER half the year to pay for Government ? That he seems to think that liberty from God is being forced to work OVER half a year to support government? And that at least 90% of those programs and departments are illegal under the Supreme Law of the Land, not to mention ineffective AND counter productive!
Liberty from God as slavery and forced servitude?
I don’t get it.

Went to Captains Quarters (CQ) and typed out the Coleen Rowley url. One of the comments in CQ was about Ms. Rowley pointing to circles in circles to determine how to make ethical decisions. OK. And there she is holding her granddaughter and pointing out that at birth her granddaughter owed $36,000 to the “Bush/DeLay” deficit. OK again.
I perused her website to see what she had to say about Social Security reform (nah, strike that. Social Security, according to economists, can not be reformed nor can it be saved). Well, there wasn’t anything about Social Security. Well, what about Medicare? Nope. Closest I got was a call for universal coverage, single payer system. I guess kinda like the medical miracle in Canada (and elsewhere) where it takes months to get a bypass and just as long, or longer to get an MRI.
Well, with Ms. Rowley’s solutions (or lack thereof), that $36,000 bill for granddaughter Olivia will be just the interest on the down payment for her portion of the $61,000,000,000,000-$75,000,000,000,000 unfunded liability (in present value dollars) of the government of the United States that will start to come due when little Olivia is in her 30’s.
Well, I wonder what Ms. Rowley’s ethic’s circles say about that?
BTW, what the above figures of unfunded liability proves is that as I said before, Social Security can not be reformed or saved. Click on the link, and read where President Bush’s 2% solution to reform is not going to work. At all. Ever. And a real solution? Read here .

When I debate with my friends on the left, I have to consistently remind that that, while they may be entitled to their own opinion, they are not entitled to their own facts! That said, Hugh Hewitt posted this last week.

“Facts are stubborn things.” That’s John Adams speaking. The Left doesn’t care about facts. Facts are inconvenient to them, especially in matters of national security and politics.

Kerry/Pelosi/Murtha/Clinton/Reid/Moore/Dean –they’d rather imagine a world in which al Qaeda didn’t exist, and Iran didn’t want nukes. They’d rather imagine a North Korea that wasn’t a treaty-breaker in 1995, than a North Korea in 1995 hell-bent on making nukes-for-sale.

They’d rather imagine a “greatest danger” in the person of George Bush than in the persons of even 1% of the Muslims on the globe who are intent on the destruction of the West.

That’s why the voters have to defeat the Dems in November. The Democrats aren’t serious.

They aren’t candid. They aren’t even familiar with the basic facts.

And facts are very stubborn things.

And the country, as a consequence, shouldn’t care about the Left.

And most certainly shouldn’t vote for it or its candidates.

Not much you can add to that but “AMEN”!

I know I am a little late in this. Many others have already posted their reactions to the State of the Union speech. Rather than simply add my 2 cents, I thought I would give you a sampling of some reactions from the legacy media.

We’ll start with the Grey Lady. The reporting of the speech was here, but the op-ed here is even more telling. Given all of the ground that the President covered in his speech (health care, tax cuts, cutting spending, immigration, more programs etc) the Times chose energy to be the core of their daily attack on the President.

“If Mr. Bush wants his final years in office to mean more than a struggle to re-spin failed policies and cement bad initiatives into permanent law, this is the place where he needs to take his stand. And he must do it with far more force and passion than he did last night.”

Sigh….so predictable. The Washington Post review of the speech here, couldn’t make up it’s mind if it liked the speech or not.

The Age (Australia) declared that the President offered a “modest” menu of proposals but was overall more temperant in it’s treatment of the speech.

The Globe and Mail (Canada) ran with this AP recap of the speech which said that the President was “weakened” after what was the toughest year of his Presidency.

The LA Times disagreed with it’s corporate sister in New York on the impact of the speech, saying that the President “hit all the right notes” and found it “refreshing” that a President and Texas oilman would admit that the country is addicted to oil.

Closer to home, the Chicago Tribune echos the President’s call for health care reform and offers some ideas where we can start! Great work.

The Star Tribune, not to be outdone by the NY Times used this op-ed to just trash the speech. I don’t know what they were watching, but it was not the same speech that I saw….

Lastly, for a laugh, comes this from Arianna Huffington. Posting on her blog HuffPo, posted this on the Democratic response to the speech:

“All my worst fears about the Democratic response to the State of the Union address being given by Virginia Gov Kaine were realized tonight when he completely failed to take on the president on his greatest vulnerability — the war in Iraq,”

Well, if the fever swamp on the left is reacting this badly, it must have been a hum-dinger of a speech.

Colleen Rowley has chosen to make “ethical decision making” a central part of her campaign to unseat Congressman John Kline. That makes this weeks mess over her campaign weblog (where an “unnamed volunteer” photo shopped Congressman Kline’s face over a studio stock photo of Col. Klink from Hogan’s Heroes) so amusing. According to press reports, Ms. Rowley “approved” the blog posting, picture and all, and did not “make” the Nazi connotation. How can we trust Ms. Rowley to make any kind of decision if she can not discern the repercussions of these actions? It almost makes you wonder what drove her decision to go to the press regarding Zacharias Moussawi. Was it an altruistic, ethical decision or was it a decision driven by personal ambition as this one was?

Yes, I know that Ms. Rowley’s campaign has removed the offending picture and has apologized to Congressman Kline for the transgression, but I think that this whole incident brings serious judgment questions to the fore. If Ms. Rowley does not have the discretion to realize that this kind of photo is not acceptable in civilized discourse, what is she going to do if, heaven forbid, she reaches the pressure cooker of Washington DC where each decision has more serious consequences? I think the citizens of the 2nd District deserve a better candidate than this.

Oh no….this can’t happen. Drudge is reporting that my very best blogging friend in the world, Howard Dean may be out of a job. I certainly can’t imagine why… Could it be that everytime he goes before the cameras he puts his foot in his mouth like he did on Sunday? Or could it be (as Drudge says) DNC fundraising, the thing that got Howlin’ Howie the job in the first place, is abysmal! After yesterday’s crack up in the Senate, something will need to be done or 2006 will be another lost cause for the Dems. The Kos Kidz are already screaming that they are going to quit donating after the filibuster went down to ignomious defeat and the adults in the DNC (like my mother) have already quit sending donations to the DNC because the Kos Kidz are in control.

Meanwhile, Redstate is reporting that Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader from Nevada, may be stepping down due to his Abramoff troubles (remember though – Howie told us that no Dems took Abramoff money or if they did they didn’t act on it or if they did…)

I’m going to be hard pressed to maintain a healthy sense of dread for this campaign with the way that the DNC just keeps self destructing! It should be an interesting year, to say the least. Meanwhile, could someone do me a favor and throw Howie a bone. We can’t loose him yet – it’s too soon!