Savage Republican

Whoever said all politics is local was very wise indeed. What makes me think back on this bit of wisdom? I spent the better part of 2 hours this evening, meeting with some very passionate people discussing the direction of the city I live in. Yes, dear readers, it is City Council election time. Off year elections are always tough – people are not motivated to get out for City Council elections as they are for Presidential elections. However, this time may be different.

I live in a small, semi-rural town. It is the type of town people move to in order to raise their families and escape the pressures of their work day. It is a quiet town on one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. Recreation is a vital part of life in our town. Our town, however, is located in one of the top 5 fastest growing counties in the entire United States. That growth has been effecting our community if good ways and bad ways. As a result the mayor and the current city council have had to address how to handle the growth. One of the things that the current mayor and city council have been managing (if that is the word you want to use) has been housing growth. Housing growth is a natural by-product of population growth. Their idea of managing housing growth is to rezone areas from single family homes to high density housing and from environmental set aside lands to high density housing. Now this flies in stark contrast to what the citizens of the city want. According to a survey that was conducted by consultant that the city council itself hired, 53% of the residents of this town want to keep the small town/rural feel of the community. I have a hard time seeing how high density housing fits into that mold.

While I am just one vote and what is important to me may not be the most important issue to my next door neighbor, the common theme I took away from this meeting was that the city leaders were unresponsive to the citizenry. The phrases that I kept hearing was that the people had “no voice” in city government and that there was no sense of “accountabilty” within City Hall. Those two phrases, in a nutshell, reverberated in my mind. While the voters say they want their state and federal governments to be more accountable, they demand it from their city governments. A city government that is unresponsive and unaccountable is going to face an uprising at the polls. Will it happen this time? I can’t say for certain, but it will eventually happen. However, if it takes too long to happen, the city may be doomed…..

When Norm Coleman ran for office – as conservatives objected we were told – We need his vote in the Senate so we can get our conservative judges confirmed.
When Arlen Specter was being supported by the White House against the wishes of conservatives – We were told – We need his vote in the Senate.

And now the President had a chance to nominate someone to be a true constitutional Judge and instead gives us an unknown who we are told can get confirmed because she has no record – So why did he need the votes?

We wanted a candidate who a record of Constitutional writing and judgment.
We have had other justices who were not judges, but they had a long and distinguished careers and writings in Constitutional Law. Something this candidate lacks.

Some say it is because she is not from an Ivy League School or because she is a woman, but many of the other candidates being suggested are not from Ivy League Schools and many are women – It is sad to see a “conservatives” play the gender and eliteist card.

And what does the nomination of a stealth candidate tell conservative legal scholars, judges and law students?
That even when we have a “conservative” President and control of the Senate – you had better not stand up and show your conservatism – because only those who say nothing can get appointed.

But the thing that worries me the most is we are told to not worry because the president knows her and trust she will be a “constitutional” judge.

The same President who told us he believed in a limited government – and then signed the Campaign Finance Law – A direct attack on the First Amendment.

The same President who talks about fiscal conservatism then went on TV to tell me how much money the Federal Government was going to transfer to New Orleans.

Conservatives have said – She will be the swing vote we need on “Roe”.
I don’t want a vote – I want a Judge.

She may turn into a reliable conservative vote on the bench – but the outcome does not justify the selection.

As a conservative, I seek excellence and for the Supreme Court I want an excellent Constitutional Scholar – We did not get it with this candidate.

As another nominee said, the Supreme Court is about calling Balls and Strikes.

On this one President Bush was told the swing away and instead we have a called strike – with the bat still on his shoulder.

I have been holding my tongue on this issue, because so many others have been going off emotionally on the nomination of Ms. Miers. The conservative punditry was quick to condemn the President on his choice and the ensuing noise from the echo chamber has been deafening. From the National Review, to Michelle Malkin, to the Powerline gents (whom I have great admiration for), the conservative world is abuzz with disappointment. Those who take a more positive approach (Hugh Hewitt for one) are sometimes taken to task for their “blind support” of the President. The hue and cry has been so overwhelming that President Bush had to hold yet another press conference today to try to calm the base a little bit….

Now I will not pretend to be an expert on Consitutional Law. That is why I admire the Powerline gents and Hugh Hewitt so much. They know the law and they can translate it so that a lay-person like myself can understand it. I would (however) like to comment on the hysteria that has been coming out of the vast right wing conspiracy (of which I am a card carrying member) over the last 24 hours. It seems to me like we are doing it again….we are fracturing ourselves over an issue where we simply do not have all of the facts. Yes, Ms. Miers is a judicial unknown. However, the days and weeks leading up to the Senate Confirmation hearings is where we will get to know her judicial temperment better. The nay-sayers say she has no judicial experience. True enough – but neither did 19 other seated Supreme Court justices. She has had the administrative experice of running a large legal enterprise that has to make tough decisions and do it in a way where all parties feel that they were given the opportunity to make their side heard. That is a good thing in my book.

All I am saying, dear readers, is let’s back away from the feeding frenzy of self destruction and wait until we have all of the facts, before we make a snap judgement on whether Ms. Miers is an acceptable candidate or not. We have time, let’s not jeopardize the 2006 mid-terms over an unknown.

Colleen Rowley, former FBI whistleblower of 9/11 fame, has been in the news a lot lately. She was in Crawford Texas last month with Cindy Sheehan and she has been giving speeches all over the state lately. Her most recent was in Brooklyn Park and is reported here. About the only place where she has not been giving “stump” speeches has been in CD 2 and that is the district that she is supposedly running to represent! You hear reports of her speaking in lots of places outside of CD 2 including Washington DC where she spoke in support of Representative Dennis Kucinich’s proposed “Department of Peace and Non-Violence”.

Hey Colleen – why don’t you save your money and speak a little closer to home. Say, anywhere in CD 2 where the people that you want to represent live…..Just a thought.

I’m going to step into Anti-Strib’s realm here. The folks over there have posted numerous stories about the adverse effects of the smoking ban that Hennepin and Ramsey counties instituted this year. According to this story in today’s Star Tribune, charitable gaming revenues are down 22% in Hennepin county for the 2nd quarter of 2005 (the last quarter reported) and Ramsey county is down 10%. Metro counties (where there is no ban) are more mixed with a few counties gaining minimal revenue and others loosing minimal revenue. This should surely add to the pressure to both counties to reconsider their smoking bans.

This adds to the economic bad news that the smoking bans have brought to the counties. I would encourage you to go read the archives over at Anti-Strib. They have put a ton of research into this and they deserve all the credit for keeping this issue front and center.

My dear friend in New Orleans send me this today. I think I have read and re-read it a dozen times since then. Two passages hit me the hardest. First was this one:

“The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an “almost animalistic state.””

I was stunned by that statement. I can not help but wonder what the collective press corps’ reaction to that statement would have been had the mayor been someone like Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago or Mayor Randy Kelly of St Paul – white men.

The second striking paragraph was this one:

“One widely circulated tale, told to The Times-Picayune by a slew of evacuees and two Arkansas National Guardsmen, held that “30 or 40 bodies” were stored in a Convention Center freezer. But a formal Arkansas Guard review of the matter later found that no soldier had actually seen the corpses, and that the information came from rumors in the food line for military, police and rescue workers in front of Harrah’s New Orleans Casino, said Edwards, who conducted the review.”

Remember the game “telephone”. I whisper a sentence into one person’s ear and that sentence is whispered, one person at a time, until the last person in the room to hear the sentence gets it and then he/she is supposed to say it out loud and never resembles the initial sentence. This one was that this widely ciruclated story was reported as gospel by the various media outlets around the country and it turned out to be nothing more than the results of a game telephone! These same people who denigrate certain news bloggers as being rumor mongers and unreliable because they don’t have editorial boards looking over their shoulders. Well folks you all have the editorial board oversight – why didn’t you catch this?

I guess that just goes to show that even with editorial board oversight, just knowing stuff isn’t enough. You have to be willing and able to chase a story down – to get to the truth! The legacy media, in their hysterical rush for disaster of the week ratings, ran with stories that now, in the cold, hard light of reality were not what they claimed to be.

But not in the way that the left has envisioned it…There is no military quagmire, only a protesting quagmire…

I have been reading and watching the coverage of last week-ends Anti-American (and Pro-American) protests in Washington DC. While watching (and reading) the coverage, I had a flashback to Chicago 1968 and the Democratic National Party Convention that year. For context, I grew up in Chicago and in 1968 we were innundated with live coverage of the anti-American protests there. The protests themselves (and the City’s horrible reaction to it) are indelibly etched into my memory. I would sit, alternately transfixed and horrified, as I watched my beloved city collapse into lawlessness. The fact that the City reacted with such overwhelming brutality was even more frightening to me than the riots were.

Fast forward 37 years to 2005. Watching the protesters and seeing their signs, I could not help but think that I was having a deja vu moment because the people that I saw were the same people I watched back in 1968. The only difference was that the protesters were a lot grayer (aren’t we all) than they were then. They only thing missing (thankfully) were the riots and the chants of “THE WHOLE WORLD’S WATCHING”. The rest was the same…the same tired chants, the same socialist speakers and the same tired ideas that died when the Cold War ended.

More importantly, I remembered something my father said to me one night (while we were watching the chaos unfold). He said, never forget that people died in Europe, people died in Korea and people are dying today in Viet Nam in order for these people to have the right to protest today! Never forget the sacrifices of our soldiers. Now my father was not a “military” man. The closest we got to having a family member in the service was one uncle in the Navy and a great uncle in the Air Force (both during Korea), but even then he knew what was right. It’s amazing how smart my parents got as I got older. I hope I am that “smart” when my son gets older too…..

UPDATE: From my lips to God’s ear. According to this story from the Washington Post, Cindy Sheehan was arrested today in front of the White House. She was arrested for blocking a public sidewalk. As police led her away, her follow protesters were heard chanting “the whole world’s watching”. I can’t help but marvel at the narcissism and total lack of a sense of history that these people (protesters and reporters) have. When the 1968 protesters were chanting that, they were being trampled by police horses and beaten bloody by baton weilding police officers and gassed with tear gas while being dragged to waiting police vehicles. Not one tear gas canister, not one baton, not one horse and not one dragging was in sight in the pictures I saw of the arrest.

A Texas friend forwarded this to me today. To say that this was an eye-opener is an understatement, but not totally surprising when I think back on conversations that I have had with the rabid anti-war left. Their statements puzzled me and saddened me at the same time for I was always told how accepting of others these people were (granted they were usually the ones telling me how accepting they are but that is another story). I have heard, out of supposedly intelligent, well meaning people, that the Arab culture could not handle democracy. That they don’t understand it, that it is not workable for them. These are the very same kind of justifications that people used when trying to justify slavery, opposing women’s sufferage and opposing the Voting Rights Act of 1968!!!! The very people who today say that “liberating Iraq is not worth the sacrifice that my son (white) made” would not be caught dead saying that the life of a black man or woman and yet they feel quite comfortable saying that about a brown (or “yellow”) man or woman.

Are they truly that blinded by their hatred of President Bush that they can not see the hypocrisy of their own statements? Or are they willfully that hypocritical? That is the million dollar question. For if they are blinded by their hatred of President Bush, well then maybe there is hope – hope that when the next Administration is in place they will see the error of their ways. However, I fear that they are that willfully hypocritical….take a look at the leadership of the “loyal” opposition. They are the ones whose voices are calling for our withdrawl from Iraq the loudest! Leaders like Senators Clinton, Kennedy or Kerry are demanding that our troops be brought home now because of the quagmire that Iraq has become. So supposedly “color blind” people are using race to score political points! That to me, is the lowest of low. Whatever happened to having a “color blind” society? It was sacrificed on the alter of political power! When will the people of America wake up to the hypocrisy of the anti-war movement??????

This morning, while getting ready for church, I was listening to George Stephanopolis interviewing Senator John McCain (R-AZ). Now Senator McCain is more of a liberal than he is a true conservative and as such, has taken much scorn from the hard core Republican base. However, what he had to say this morning made a lot of sense. He was saying that if we are going to spend billions of dollars on rebuilding the hurricane ravaged areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas we must find other areas in the budget to cut the spending. Sen. McCain’s idea was to cut some $26 billion out of the Highway budget that was just passed. So far, the only governmental “leader” to get behind this idea was Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca). The Republican leadership in both the House and the Senate are dead set against this, as is the White House. This is a shame as the Republicans are supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility…at least that is what the grass roots activists are all about!

It is time for the Republican grass roots to speak up to their leadership! N.Z. Bear, over at www.truthlaidbear.com has started a new project called Porkbusters. He is asking that all concerned citizens, regardless of political party, write to their respective represenatives in both the House and the Senate demanding that they take a stand against this continued deficit spending. I suggest taking it one step further. Send the message to the White House as well! I did. I hope to hear from my representatives (Senators Dayton and Coleman and Rep John Kline) soon and if I do, I will be sending that information on to N.Z. Bear like others have. With the 2006 elections right around the corner, now is the time to make your voices heard. Because if they don’t hear and they don’t respond, they know that we the voters will take our voices elsewhere.

UPDATE: I sent a letter to Congressman Mark Kennedy (who is running for the Republican nomination to Senator Dayton’s seat). I noticed on his website he talks about a $2.5 million grant to a regional airport in his district. I wonder what his reaction to my letter will be in light of that grant. I will keep you all posted.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get ANY sillier, comes this gem from Washington. It seems that my esteemed Senior Senator, Mark Dayton, has decided that our federal government needs yet another Cabinet level position (he obviously hasn’t learned any lessons from the fed’s reaction to Katrina has he?). So he has introduced legislation to form (sit down for this one) a Department of PEACE AND NON-VIOLENCE! Yep, the same Senator who closed his office and ran back to Minnesota to hide in his mansion on Lake Minnetonka because he heard that Washington DC might be a target for terrorist attacks is proposing that we form a department of Peace. The budget for this new department is supposed to come out of the DOD budget, but we all know how that works. Give the federal government a penny and they’ll steal a dollar! Cover your wallets friends.

In a related note, on 9/11 Colleen Rowley (former FBI whistleblower and candidate for congress in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District) was the featured speaker at a Washington DC conference that was being held to support a similar bill in the House (sponsored by Rep Dennis Kucinich). The bill, H.R. 3760, (which can be found here) calls for the creation of a “Peace Academy” that would be modeled after military schools such as West Point, would rename January 1 from “New Years Day” to “Peace Day” where citizens would “be encouraged to observe and celebrate the blessings ofpeace and endeavor to create peace in the coming year.” and would develop such needed bureaucratic offices as the “Office of Peace Education and Training” and the “Office of Domestic Peace Activities” (not to be confused with the “Office of International Peace Activities” and positions such as the “Assistant Secretary for Peaceful Coexistance and Non-Violent Conflict Resolution”.

I wish, dear reader that I could tell you that this is satire, but sadly it is all too real. The resolution already has 60 co-sponsors in the House. Some of the co-sponsors are the usual Minnesota suspects – Rep Betty McCollum, Rep Martin Olav Sabo and Rep Jim Oberstar – but it also includes some of the usual national suspects such as Rep. Cynthia McKinney (GA), Rep. Charles Rangel (NY) and Rep. Maxine Waters (CA).

My dear friends and readers know that I despise the inflammatory rhetoric (using such words as “moonbat” and “chickenhawk”) as it detracts from the debate, rather than adding to it, but I really have to wonder seriously about the mental health of the people sponsoring this legislation. Do they not understand that the world is full of dangerous people who see this kind of nonsense as weakness? Are they really that out of touch with reality that this seems “sensible” to them? I have to ask in all honesty for I simply do not understand their logic in this.

Dear, dear readers…..this is why elections are so very important. Trivial issues like this should not be the focus of our elected leadership at a time when we are facing multiple crises (Katrina and Rita clean-up, Iraq elections pending and Afghan elections just finished). Serious times demand serious leadership and I desperately hope that my friends here in CD2 reject Ms. Rowley’s bid for Congress, that my neighbors in CD4 (Rep McCollum’s district), CD5 (Rep Sabo’s district) and CD8 (Rep Oberstar’s district) find serious leaders to replace them with and that the good people of Minnesota elect a serious leader, like Rep Mark Kennedy, to the Senate seat that Mr. Dayton will soon be vacating.