Conservatives

Received the following comment via email to a post over at Tapscott's Copy Desk. Just wondering what The Next Right readers think of the author's assertions:

"Having spent years organizing tech workers, make this comment. In the engineering fields (including computers) tech workers tend to be conservative with libertarian leanings. However, there has been complete disgust at the GOP.

"The GOP cannot distinguish tech voters from tech campagin cash. Every computer publication knows the two best ways to start firestorm is to run an article with any criticism of Linux or to mention H-1B visas. The idiots running the GOP simply do not get it.

"One of the best examples of this voter/money disconnect was the 2000 reelection campaign of the Senator from Silicon Valley Spencer "for sale" Abraham. Abraham's work to allow employers to replace U.S. tech workers with lower-paid foreign workers made him the face of the GOP for this voter group.

"Dittos to George Allen. I don't want to claim that his pissing off tech workers (not to mention Jim Webb's reaching out) was *the* thing that cost him reelection but it certainly was one factor.....one large enough to have made the difference.

"John McCain? Well his name is simply mud. As conservative as I am, I could not vote for him.

"Sen. Grassley is starting to become a here in the tech community for his efforts to look out for their interest. But for the most part, the GOP has done everything possible to alienate tech voters.

"Remember the Tech Contract with America the GOP came out with -- guarenteed to piss off tech voters?

"My phone rings and the e-mail starts flowing every night at 8 pm -- when the Lou Dobbs show ends. That's what the tech voters are watching. "I point out that the Democrats are no better. They are just not as "in-your-face" as the GOP is." 

Thoughts anybody?

As many call a truce in political negativity for the Christmas holiday, some politicians and political wannabes wont be focusing on Santa or practicing any piety over the birth of Christ.

No,……. I am not talking about atheists.

Whatever they believe or do not believe is their business, not mine, and as long as they do not try to stifle my celebration of the holiday, their not celebrating it doesn’t bother me.

That is their business, not mine.

I am referring to a group of organized political mobsters who unlike Santa are not stuffing any gifts in any stockings or under Christmas trees. No, these organized criminals are stuffing ballots and playing the role of the Grinch.

Up north, in cold and snowy Minnesota, almost seven weeks after Election Day, Minnesotans are still counting ballots.

Folks in Minnesota are not especially slow or particularly uneducated. They know how to count. Its just that every time Board of Election officials finish counting a district or town, Democrats supporting ultra, leftwing, liberal, lunatic, comedian Al Franken for the United States Senate, keep finding more ballots that election officials seem to have missed. They either misplaced them, or forgot to bring them in the counting room, or just plain didn’t count some machines.

The sudden appearance of this continuous stream of ballots out of nowhere is hindering the process. It’s understandable. I mean after all, once you think you finished tallying up the votes in one district and find out that incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman won it by 115 votes, you would assume that it was over in that district.

No not in Minnesota.

In Minnesota just as one district is done and they move on to the next, new ballots from the town that they just completed pop up, out of nowhere. Even more surprising is the fact that all of the votes that mysteriously appear happen to be for Al Franken and it just so happens that the number of newly found Franken votes is just slightly more than the plurality of votes that Coleman previously won by.

Hmmm……that is really funny, you might even say miraculous. I mean it makes you kind of expect a burning bush to appear and communicate the final vote, which Al Franken will no doubt win.

But day after day, these miracle ballots appear. Most of them, if not all of them are found by Democrat officials. In one case 100 votes on one voting booth in a heavily Democrat town were discovered. All of the 100 votes were for Al Franken and even more odd was the fact that the time stamp on each of the 100 votes read November 2nd, 2008.

Election Day was November 4th, 2008.

Whoa,…….. now hold on here. Now its getting spooky.

I mean this is almost as miraculous as the Virgin Mary giving birth.

Maybe this guy Franken really is special. Maybe he is the “chosen one” who will walk on water, split the waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior and transform mankind.

Or maybe this guy Franken is simply as freakish as Frankenstein.

The circumstances surrounding the astonishing finding of votes, that are all for him, is funny. Much more funny than any of Franken’s offbeat humor and comedic routines.

I can’t wait for Saturday Night Live to do a segment on this situation.

That could be a truly hysterical skit. I could just see SNL cast members portraying blind election board officials counting ballots as liberal Democrat operatives keep passing them the same ballot over and over again and declaring it for Al Franken each time.

SNL scriptwriters could have a field day writing that segment. It would really be funny. Unfortunately the reality of the situation is not funny. It is sad. Sad but true.

Liberal Democrat operatives are stuffing ballots. They are counting illegitimate votes for Al Franken that they would never consider to be legitimate for Norm Coleman if the circumstances were reversed.

But true to form, liberal hypocrisy abounds. Hypocrisy reigns supreme in liberal la la land. These are the people who try to combat discrimination by implementing forms of discrimination.

They are the people who want everyone to pay their fair share, but refuse to pay it themselves.

They sit in private jets writing press releases that denounce some for speeding up global warming by driving an S.U.V. without thinking twice about how much more damaging their flight is than any S.U.V..

Liberalism is rooted in hypocrisy. So it should not surprise anyone to know that Democrats accept a lower standard for themselves than they do for Republicans. Just like Florida in the election fiasco of 2000 when Democrats wanted a higher standard for approving vote counts in some districts than in others. In 2000 they wanted higher standards in counties that Bush won and lower standards in counties that Gore won.

Then they decided that they didn’t want all disputed votes reevaluated and recounted, only some votes.

Let’s face it folks. Democrats are now in control. Total control. From the White House to the U.S house and the senate.

If Coleman wins this thing it will really be a miracle.

The way I see it, even if Minnesota’s liberal Democrat Secretary of State certifies Norm Coleman as the winner, the Democrat led Senate may refuse to seat him. Under senate rules, that is something they can do. It happened as recently as 1974 when in New Hampshire a Republican won a close election and despite certification of that victory, by the state of New Hampshire, the U.S. Senate called for a new election.

Democrats in the House of Representatives did the same thing with a close election in Indiana. Here again the Republican won. The state certified the Republican winner but Democrats refused to seat him. They ordered a recount and the Republican won again but by an even larger margin than before. Democrats still refused to seat the Republican winner. House democrats conducted their own recount, with their own standards and declared the losing democrat, the winner.

This stuff didn’t happen in the “old days”. It happened during the most recent past decades. And liberals haven’t changed very much in that time. If anything their hypocrisy has increased over time.

So it doesn’t look good for Norm Coleman.

Even if a preponderance of legitimate votes for him overcomes a preponderance of illegitimate ballots for Franken, liberal senate leader Harry Reid and his henchmen will probably ignore it and refuse to seat Coleman.

It may not get that far anyway. Minnesota liberals are pretty ruthless. They will probably spend Christmas falsifying any piece of paper that isn’t wrapped around a Christmas gift and submit it to blind Board of Election officials who will count it as a vote for Al Franken.

You have to remember that these are the liberal Democrats who, six years ago, did everything they could to prevent Norm Coleman from winning the first time he ran for the Minnesota senate seat.

Back then he was running against incumbent, liberal, firebrand, Paul Wellstone.

As popular as Wellstone was, the race between him and Coleman was tightening up. Then suddenly in a truly horrific and tragically sad turn of events, while campaigning, the plane carrying Wellstone, one of his sons and a campaign worker crashed and killed them along with the pilot of the plane.

As tragic as it was, Minnesota Democrats pulled out another corpse, Jimmy Carter’s vice stooge and a former landslide-losing, Democrat nominee for President in his own right, Walter Mondale. They asked him to fill the vacancy and become the Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate in Wellstone’s place. He accepted and Democrats held a nationally televised memorial service for the senator.

As sad as the the occasion was, with the body of Senator Wellstone, his son and campaign associate still warm, Minnesota liberals launched Walter Mondale’s campaign to replace Wellstone in a spectacle as raucous and celebratory as the Democrat’s national convention.

Filled with music and cheerleading speeches, the event only lacked the traditional balloon drop.

The blatant disrespect for Senator Wellstone and the astonishing exploitation of his death actually ended up hurting more than it helped. Even non-activist, left leaning, Minnesota voters were appalled by the political spectacle.

It wound up making history. Up till then, Walter Mondale never lost a statewide election in Minnesota. In fact even when Mondale embarrassed himself and Democrats in his landslide loss for President against Ronald Reagan, Minnesota was the only state in the union to still vote for Mondale.

Well after turning the somber funeral of a sitting senator into a boisterous campaign rally, even Minnesota rejected Walter Mondale.

Liberals in Minnesota are still feeling the sting of that debacle. Walter Mondale won’t even show his face anymore and others are still bitter. That is why you can bank on their not spending this Christmas celebrating. They will spend it stealing. Stealing an election that they were not able to steal six years ago.

This Christmas, Minnesota Democrats have no visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, they have visions of ballots falling from the heavens. Ballots that are all marked in support of Al Franken.

So tonight, don’t be surprised if Santa is a little late to your house. Democrats will be forcing him to stuff ballots instead of stockings at Minnesota’s State Board of Elections headquarters.

If they are successful, all that the voters of Minnesota will find in their carefully hung stockings tomorrow morning will be a couple of lumps of coal.

Just before Christmas, there was an honest politician, a kind lawyer and Santa Claus traveling in the elevator of a very posh hotel.

Just before the doors opened they all noticed a five dollar bill on the floor.

Which one picked it up??

Santa of course, the other two don't exist!

It's always tempting for those who study the American Conservative Movement to brush us off as a bunch of situational ideologues held together by anticommunism, and who were doomed to collapse with the Berlin Wall. Much as I believe this narrative to be wrong, it has an interesting point with regard to the fundamental nature of conservative criticism. That is, conservatism aims to "conserve." It has historically been a defensive ideology, which tries to beat back encroaching hordes by its nature. It was this defensive nature of conservatism which repelled the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, who once wrote that conservatism was "a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change" while also noting, perhaps sadly, that "There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of the United States, because what in Europe was called "liberalism" was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense."

We can quibble with Hayek's usage of the word "liberal" to describe the American tradition, but even if he is correct, by his definition, even "liberal" conservatives seem to still fight with their backs to the proverbial wall. Thus, when there is nothing to fight, conservative ideology runs into the difficulty of flailing at phantoms. As such, along with the question of what we are fighting for (what to conserve, in other words), we also have to ask what we are fighting against.

In this regard, I believe the modern conservative movement has become confused. Stripped of  communism, we have reverted to the most obvious option and decided that liberalism is not only an enemy, but the enemy. This is an absurd belief. Liberalism is not the enemy. Liberalism (or progressivism, depending on your choice of words), at least in its modern form, has neither the spine, the principle nor the conviction born of that principle to be the enemy. Indeed, even in the days of communism, liberalism was never the enemy, even domestically. The Alger Hisses of the world, the Owen Lattimores of the world, the Stalins, the Kruschevs, the bought-off newspaper columnists who opined about how they'd "seen the future, and it worked" - they were the enemy, and whatever else they were, they were not liberals. The liberals were men like Edward R. Murrow, who was too busy being angry at Joe McCarthy to spare a few nasty words for the real traitors in our midst. The liberals were men like Dean Acheson, who famously said "I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss." To be sure, these people were counterproductive, but they were only useful idiots, not the puppet masters pulling the strings.

The same goes for the strife on campuses that occurred in the 60's and 70's. The Eldridge Cleavers, the Huey Newtons, the Bill Ayerses, the Bernadine Dohrns and the Tom Haydens - these people were many things, but if you think they'd ever call themselves "liberals," you'd be mad. These people were radicals reacting against liberalism. They hated it. The only reason they got away with so much when attacking it was because of who the liberals actually were. They were the tolerant university Presidents, like Clark Kerr and Kingman Brewster, who dutifully caved in to every demand the radical exponents of negation made. Again, these people were not only counterproductive, but spineless and pathetic in their worst moments, but they were by no means the primary threat.

And even today, at the close of the war of culture and at the beginning of the war on terror, the liberals still cannot rightly be called the primary threat for a very simple reason - liberals are just too darn reasonable to threaten anyone intentionally. They're too obsessed with their own sophistication. Too blinded by their own (often imagined) intellectual superiority. Too "scientific." Too morally apathetic. These characteristics make them great toadies, but are poor qualities indeed to have in muscular ideological leaders. Throughout history, liberals have been at worst the battered wives of the enemies of conservatism, constantly protesting that their bedfellows are just misunderstood and that they don't hurt them that badly, while ignoring the bruises which slowly accumulate all over the body of civilization. If you want to look for the roots of this gutlessness, look at one of the founding members of contemporary liberalism, John Stuart Mill, whose faith in the power of rational discourse to change minds was perhaps the defining nature of his political philosophy. It's no surprise that his wife, a much more principled radical socialist, eventually ended up defining her husband's worldview.

To explain why liberals tend to assume this role would take too long, though I will suggest one option: for all their claims not to be superficial, liberals do have a shocking shallow and naive vision of human nature. For evidence of this, look at the contemporary liberal view of Sarah Palin, or the constant sneers that liberal comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert threw at George W. Bush for "thinking with his gut." For liberals, human beings are defined by two things - their capacity for reason and their capacity for empathy. Sarah Palin, who believed in such seemingly absurd things as creationism, and who could argue with a straight face that she supported small-town values while arguing for economic policies which were (in the liberals' view) shamelessly royalist, appeared so severely challenged in both regards that she was unacceptable. It was inconceivable to a liberal that a woman who couldn't rattle off Supreme Court cases she disagreed with could ever claim to be a fit potential leader of a country, because liberals simply don't understand any concept of superiority other than the purely intellectual. Some conservatives have this problem too, but it's much more pronounced among the "reasonable" exponents of center-Leftism. Their sense of morals, being defined primarily by emotive urges, is far too underdeveloped for them to use as an argument against someone, though they may mutter about it among themselves at cocktail parties.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that an emphasis on intellectual capability and knowledgeability is at all wrong. It's entirely  reasonable, and quite desirable, and its absence  can be potentially disastrous. But it's not the only thing that matters, and making a fetish of it is sheer stupidity. Liberals tend to side with the enemies of western civilization for a very important reason - frequently, the people supporting it are just too...well, vulgar. Worse yet, tradition is very difficult to defend intellectually as an end in itself (I've tried), and most liberals don't like the idea that something as potentially irrational as human experience could or should be allowed to trump scientific rationality. Sometimes (see also: segregation) they have a point. But that doesn't mean you should throw out tradition entirely. In fact, as postmodern radicals are far too fond of pointing out, the rules of logic and reason themselves are traditions which have evolved with time. Liberals are thus trapped in a completely self-refuting argument - they are trying to defeat tradition using tradition.

But if liberals aren't the threat, then what is? Unlike communism, there's no concrete "evil State" for conservatives to oppose, so the confusion is understandable. The threat we conservatives face today is something much more abstract, much more insidious, and doubly dangerous, especially in the age of international terrorism and postmodern education. This threat, much like communism (the "second oldest religion," according to Whittaker Chambers), is also timeless.

With all due respect to Mr. Chambers, communism is not the second-oldest religion (the oldest being worship of God and his Creation). It's actually the third oldest. God, in creating the universe, had to do it by forcing an amorphous, "formless and void" existence into patterns. To put it bluntly, God created the world from Chaos, and as such, the worship of Chaos is actually the oldest religion. It is this force - Chaos - that conservatives now have to  fight.

And some conservatives - not the ones I usually like best - have recognized this threat, albeit incorrectly. Rod Dreher has written that "Today, the greatest threats to conservative interests come not from the Soviet Union or high taxes, but from too much individual freedom." With respect, I obviously disagree that individual freedom is to blame. The threat today comes not from too much individual freedom, but  from the wrong individual freedom. To explain this, I offer the following hypothetical:

Suppose that, in a hypothetical society, people had the legal right to murder each other, but no right to free speech, or property, or assembly. Surely we couldn't criticize this society for having too much individual freedom. Rather, we would reproach it for protecting the wrong freedoms. Mr. Dreher's argument essentially boils down to the idea that because corporations are behaving irresponsibly, economic liberty is a dud. He's wrong. What is at fault is that we have rampantly deregulated some elements of corporate life while keeping other regulations in place which punish small businesses and shield larger corporations from competition. In other words, we've created an economic system where wealthy "philanthropists" can defund peoples' entire life savings using fraud, but where banks are still required to give bad loans to people who can't pay them back because of a redundant, obsolete economic policy from about three decades ago. This is not a system that protects too much individual freedom. This is a system that protects the wrong freedoms. And a society that protects the wrong freedoms is doomed to slide into chaos, which is what Dreher seems to be rightly reacting against.

The market is a wonderful tool for social improvement, but like most competitive games, economic action only improves the world when the rules make sense and in our rush to deregulate, we haven't considered the effects on the whole system, which has made the market an unwitting agent of chaos and caused it to become the scapegoat for all sorts of undeserved blame. I'm no friend of regulation, and I defy most people who tell me it's necessary, but it's only wrong situationally, not conceptually. Most free market economists support antitrust laws, for instance.

But as instruments of chaos go, financial deregulation is the least of our worries. There are much more conscious agents of chaos floating around. I have already alluded to two - postmodern education and terrorism. But these topics are so big (and this post is already so long) that I will save them for later. For now, it suffices to say that conservatives need double their usual amount of creativity to fight these threats, and more than anything else we need unity. As I did in a previous post, I will close on a plea to all those who use this site to think about how this unity might be achieved.

Crossposted at The Rockefeller Republican.

Right Wing News asks whether this Scott Adams Dilbert comic might be a "Comment About the Incoming Obama Administration"...

I wonder if it might not apply more to the conservative movement over the past 40+ years.  It looks like planning for the second week is already underway.

While I'm unwilling to concede just yet that Barack Obama will be the next President of the United States, it would be foolish to deny that possibility. Even if John McCain wins, the status of Conservatism in the GOP and politics generally is troubling at best.

Politicians and The People, with few exceptions, seem determined to abandon sound, proven truths for the warm, fuzzy rhetoric of the Economic and Social policies of "Hope!" and "Change!" It's difficult to blame The People. They gave the GOP a shot at letting Conservative ideology work it's magic on the country for years. Turns out the Pols weren't as Conservative as advertised.

The years after the Reagan era are defined by a GOP wanting more to breed and less to lead. GOP strategy was "What must we do to increase our power and get re-elected?" instead of "What must we do to serve the people and earn our re-election?"

The nominations of Bob Dole, W and now John McCain coupled with the strategy of many GOP House and Senate candidates has reinforced that approach. A notable exception, AZ Representative John Shadegg, says even at the height of 1994's Republican Revolution the GOP's advice was his most important job wasn't to represent his district or promote his constituents' values; it was to get re-elected.

This approach has tainted Conservatism in the minds of the people. It has become identical to, or at least wed to the GOP. Thus the sins of the Party become the sins of the Principled. Even if Conservatives object, pointing out they never countenanced bad behavior by the GOP (The Bailout, No Child Left Behind, Medicare Reform) The People still see them as part of the problem and not the solution. How else to understand what happened to Rick Santorum, George Allen and others?

Such losses make the Democrats' job easier. Each defeated Conservative frees up time, energy and moneyto defeat those remaining. Squishy GOP members voted with Democrats enough to permit them to establish portions of their agenda and to regain solid Congressional majorities. Two things will follow: those who believe the Left can be reasoned with and appeased will be rudely awakened and the country will suffer. To date, only the second is happening.

GOP snubbing of Conservatives has produced much soul searching. The choices are stay in the GOP and work internally for change or leave to found or join a third party. I'm not advocating either choice. But enabling the status quo is not an option. We each must decide what the best use is of our time and talents. To decide, regardless of who wins the White House, a few things should be influential.

Christopher Arledge at Red County has written 'The End of American Conservatism?' and at The Minority Report, Civil Truth has penned 'A Time for Choosing: Even Truer 44 Years Later'. They are as good a starting place as any for Conservatives asking where they go from here. I commend them to you. If you find, or if you have written, posts with similar themes, let me know and I'll aggregate them here as a resource.

It is impossible to predict the consequences of next week's election. It is, however, quite possible to predict what will happen if Conservatives do nothing. Surrender and chains being unacceptable options, regrouping and fighting on will have to do for now ...

Blue Collar Muse

I don’t remember first hearing the term “9/11 Conservatives” to describe those with post 9/11 epiphanies. Realizing Liberal degradation of the US was destroying it in people’s minds, 9/11 Conservatives abandoned the Left in droves. I do remember I didn’t need the term explained to me. Its meaning was instantly grasped. The concept has been applied to different specifics over the years but it’s still clear. A big enough event can break through indifference, and even opposition, forcing us to deal with it and its consequences. Given that, perhaps it’s possible to learn something from attacks on other American institutions.

Free Market Capitalism is clearly under attack in the wake of recent financial woes. Listening to Democrats, and more than a few Republicans, Capitalism and Free Markets produced those problems. They were so bad, Government had to put Socialist bandages on Capitalist wounds. The Truth is otherwise. An objective evaluation show Government Market meddling and Watergate style Government cover-ups behind the current financial ravaging. The same is true of the subsequent bailout.

People are not as stupid as the Left needs them to be. Citizens will see Big Government, not Free Markets, caused the problem. They’ll understand the Government’s solution, as in 1929, made the situation far worse than it would have been had it let the Market work. They’ll recognize a prime Government weakness is needing to be seen doing something, even something bad! And they’ll realize one can’t eliminate Bear Markets if one also wants Bull Markets. Uninterrupted growth is unrealistic. There will be Market corrections and they are healthy. Public understanding of Governmental responsibility for the problem as evidenced by the bailout, the Community Reinvestment Act and more will ultimately push more people towards fiscal conservatism than towards centrally planned Socialism. Call them CRA FisCons.

Equally large is the assault on the sanctity of the voting process. We have peaceful transitions of power due to public confidence in the electoral process. While there have been many charges of vote fraud over the years, in the last decade, Democrats have stepped up efforts to destroy confidence in the system in order to acquire legislative power. In 2000 Al Gore retracted his concession, forcing the Florida recount nightmare on the country. Eight years later I still see “Bush was selected, not elected!” bumper stickers. The Left refused to accept a certified vote because it showed them losing. This obsession fueled efforts to ensure it never happens again, even if they need to cheat.

Ask Democrats if the GOP engages in vote fraud and twenty minutes later you might get a word in to ask for evidence. There is, no doubt, evidence of GOP vote fraud available if one looks hard enough. But the truth is the GOP behaves better than Dems in respecting the sanctity of the process. John Ashcroft didn’t demand the special election to which he was entitled following his loss to a dead man in 2000. In 2002, John Thune refused a recount to which he was entitled by South Dakota’s Constitution despite significant evidence of vote fraud by Democrats.

Ask Democrats about New Jersey illegally putting Frank Lautenberg on the ballot in 2002. Ask them about ACORN being investigated and charged with vote fraud across the country. Ask them about ACORN execs fired, resigned in disgraced or fined for vote fraud. And if you ask why Democrats continue to support such a tainted and disgraced organization, you’ll get non-answers delivered with a straight face.

Reliance on and allegiance to ACORN will ultimately cost them. The Democratic Party and individual Democrats should denounce ACORN. They should demand investigations to produce confidence in the process. They should vote to end public funding accounting for 40% of ACORN’s budget and advise private donors putting up the other 60% to cut ACORN off. Democrats should call for trials and harsh sentences for those convicted of manipulating the voting process to disenfranchise others. But they don’t and they won’t. ACORN is doing exactly what Democrats want them to do. They want distrust of the process in the public mind.

Once again, Americans are not that stupid. The Left cannot spin ACORN as part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy or even the Right in general. ACORN is clearly both intentionally engaged in vote fraud and an obvious Democratic tool. As Americans grasp this truth, look for ACORN Republicans to make themselves known.

Finally, it never ceases to amaze how Democrats spin relationships. GWB was in the oil business so he must be a shill for Big Oil. Dick Cheney served on Haliburton’s board so the GOP must be funneling no-bid contracts their way. Yes, some Government decisions benefit Big Oil. Yes, Haliburton gets some Government contracts. But are these events in the natural course of business or is the GOP linked to them in nefarious ways? No evidence exists that it is anything other than the simple natural course of things.

Democratic relationships and connections are, however, demonstrably contaminated. Bill Clinton had more than a little baggage heading into the White House. There were bimbo eruptions; Whitewater and his wife’s part time day-trading job; questions about misuse and abuse of state troopers under his authority and more. This was all known before Clinton was elected. It either didn’t matter to Democrats or it didn’t get enough press to make a difference before election day. After the election, even more misdeeds came to light and it got worse. 16 years later, it’s happening again.

Well before election day, Barack Obama’s association with terrorists, foreign and domestic, is being revealed more clearly. Obama’s connection to ACORN and its crimes is being reported more widely. His support for Socialist regulation is becoming more widely known. The questions about Obama have been answered.  He’s a known quantity.  If demonstrable past performance is an indicator, Barack Obama will damage this country in ways my worst nightmares can’t foresee. Fraternizing with our enemies, championing destructive economic plans and ignoring illegal acts for personal benefit combine to make Barack Obama more than dagerous to our country. He could destroy it altogether.

Obama dismisses these truths. He even paints them as positive. I’m not in bed with terrorists! But what’s wrong with talking to people? I didn’t push ACORN’s radical agenda, I was a community organizer trying to involve more people in the political process! I’m not a Socialist! But shouldn’t everyone be able to own in a house? Can’t a nation as great as America make that happen?

For Bill Clinton to be right, scores of people had to be branded as liars. Democrats took up that challenge. For Barack Obama to be the President Democrats claim he’ll be, thousands must deny they saw what they saw and heard what they heard during the campaign. Thousands more must suffer from Obama policies as disastrous tomorrow as they were in a thousand yesterdays. No matter, Democrats still rally behind him.

However, sooner or later, just as 9/11 moved folks from Liberal to Conservative, the CRA will move folks from Socialism to Free Markets, ACORN will move folks from Democrats to Republicans. Like Jimmy Carter gave the country Ronald Reagan, an Obama presidency will illustrate the lie and curse that is Liberalism and reveal the Truth and the blessing, howevermuch discomfort it produces at times, that is Conservatism. The Left may argue things like Individual Liberty, Free Markets, Conservatism and the like aren’t perfect. I agree. But they are also far superior to any other option available.

Remember this when you step into that booth over the next few weeks.  There’s no need to wait until 2012 to show you’ve made the move from Left to Right.

Blue Collar Muse

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I, Mr.L, subscribe to the Newt Gingrich philosophy regarding the bailout plan. That is, simply, I think it sucks. The main reason that I'm against this bill is because there's no proof that the billions will actually solve the problem. A friend of mine recently reminded me of the old saying which applies to this economic problem at hand.

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help"

The punch line to that is, if anyone says that to you, run and don't walk from them.

Help? It's a four letter word.  It is how we got here. The "I gotta help" mentality of liberalism. Jimmy Carter and the Community Reinvestment Act. Bill Clinton and the so called Clinton "changes" in his administration in 1995 which advocated for subprime loans. Liberals like Barack Obama who worked for law firms Miner, Barnhill & Galland who were hell-bent for leather trying to get minorities in homes. These firms "helped" by suing the banks with discrimination charges if they didn't lend money to unqualified black or Hispanic buyers.  You know, the mentality of giving them the home due to the color of their skin and not the color green in their wallets!

The same liberals, Obama, Pelosi, Boxer, Frank, Reid, who wanted to CUT AND RUN in Iraq are now trying to CUT AND RUN from their own irresponsibly horrid ideologies and economic policies. They want to CUT AND RUN from the blame and pawn it off on Bush, Republicans and Wall Street Tycoons. Now, I'm not saying that the Wall Street money honeys and daddies don't deserve the blame, but what about the ordinary irresponsible average asshole? They are not immune from being corrupt. They are just as much to blame for running the country's economy into the ground. They did so by taking bad loans, buying "McMansions", not understanding the terms of loans, having bad credit and then, for some close to 1 million illegal immigrants, literally walked away from their responsibilities and went back to "their country".

None of them are mentioning the average citizen. They keep saying "rich bankers", "wall street tycoons" etc. They're actually advocating for more bad lending practices and offering MORE HELP to distressed homeowners.

Do you personally know anyone who has been forclosed on? I don't. Not only do I not know anyone but, I don't know ANYONE who knows anyone who has.

It's liberals & even Bush who are using fear and leaving behind reason by bascially claiming that, if this bill doesn't pass, the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride up on America. According to them, business won't be able to make payroll, people won't be able to buy cars and home prices will drop. Bullshit!

I would think that actions could be taken to help small business owners make their payroll if need be. I think most will agree with me when I say that home prices NEED to come down. Currently, in the suburbs of New York, a two bedroom co-apt or condo in an good area goes for roughly a cool 300k. That's absurd. And a homeowner can't come and cry to me that they want to sell and "can't get what they want for it" . There's a owner on my block who bought his 2 family house in 1970 for 50k and wants 800k for it. Wake up! The days of "flipping" are over.

And what about liberals like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi who, all of a sudden, care about the automotive industry and whether or not you can buy a car? I would think that liberal greenies wouldn't give a crap whether or not the auto industry could go under. After all, that would mean less cars on the road would help global warming, right?

What exactly did people do before credit when they wanted to buy a car or a house? They had to save money. Put their own money into the deal. You know, something called a down payment. It might be that Americans will have to be introduced to an old concept that they don't quite like and that is, fiscal conservatism. You want a car? Well, you're going to have to save for it. If you can't make a down payment, well, you're going to have to buy a shabanger instead of a Lexus and fix that baby up until you can buy a better car.

It's clear that fiscal liberalism has run a muck. Fiscal conservatism will save the nation. It's going to take time. But just like this crisis began took over ten years to come to a head, it will take that long to fix it. No quick fixes. No easy solutions.

No more help.

http://mrltavern.podomatic.com

I have a brief break at the airport on my way back from RightOnline, a conservative summit focusing on technology and new media for the Right, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, the Sam Adams Alliance, and the Leadership Institute. It was a solid conference, featuring some excellent keynotes by Barry Goldwater, Jr., Michael Steele, and Robert Novak.  Also featured, and perhaps even most prominently, was commentator Michelle Malkin.

As a quick aside, it was a very good conference.  There were a lot of excellent discussions – including a lot of throught-provoking analysis by The Next Right co-founder Soren Dayton – and generally speaking, I felt that the conference offered a lot of useful information for people right of center who are trying to get involved in the new media world.

At most of the conference, the discussion focused on how the Right desperately needs to catch up with the Left at many levels – grassroots organization, appeal to young voters, and most importantly (at least in terms of the focus conference), technology and new media.  After a great deal of discussion on the first day of the conference as to how the Right can catch up technologically, Michelle Malkin, one of the keynote speakers on day two, threw a huge curveball.  I didn't write down the exact words that she said, but this is more or less her statement:

"Conservatives aren't actually behind technologically, we're just doing it differently."