Mike Huckabee: GOP frontrunner

Mike Huckabee: Presidential Frontrunner

One of the first rules they teach pilots is that during a crash landing you should not give up but keep flying your plane all the way to the ground.  There may be things you can do and even in the most hopeless of situations there may be little gifts, changes in the wind or the topography that can save your life.  Only one GOP pilot has been flying his plane toward that crash landing and the Barack Obama landslide re-election in 2012 and that has been Governor Mike Huckabee.  And now, thanks to a change in the winds, he just might land safely after all.

Yesterday’s election demonstrates that the GOP is not dead and when the electorate has even three more years to forget George W. Bush, they may just be sick of Obamanomics.

Sarah Palin threw away her chances and continues to do so daily, demonstrating to her most enthusiastic supporters that the Katie Couric interview may not be the fault of Katie Couric.

Mitt Romney all but announced that he was too important to waste on a run for the presidency unless he could be assured of that win.  For months he has been privately telling friends that all of Obama’s spending will likely prompt an economic spike and thus a Republican win in 2012 was unlikely.

Bobby Jindal has bowed out.  And Tim Pawlenty must first pass through the evangelical gateway of Iowa. Where his only hope of victory is if Huckabee and Palin devour each other.

That later is a very real possibility.  Huckabee is a street fighter.  And Palin will throw a punch first and talk about it later.  The Iowa caucus could turn out to be as messy as the Russo-German front in World War Two as the only two “born again” Christians duke it out.  The one left standing will likely get the nomination.  If Huckabee wins and he has already demonstrated that he will not give Sarah a free pass, then it will be hard to beat him in the South where he almost pulled an upset last time with the media arbitrarily writing him off.

Newt Gingrich was counting on being the FOX candidate but the emerging story of his hypocrisy in attacking Clinton-Lewinsky while he was having his own affair is hanging over him like Chappaquiddick.  Every day he must ask himself, “If I run, will that sword fall?”

Karl Rove, looking for a candidate, assures him that no one remembers or cares.  But Sarah Palin does.  And so does Mike Huckabee.  Yes Newt, it will fall.

Besides, Gingrich also hesitated, stopped flying his plane, and Huckabee slipped past him with his own FOX TV Show, debuting in the inglorious, lowly, awful, Saturday night slot.  He was too nice, critics said, there is no conflict, he cannot be both a successful entertainer and a political candidate, one make audiences laugh and cry and the other better not or he will lose elections.

But Huckabee did not forfeit his future for ratings and a paycheck, he kept flying his plane, he stayed nice and the audience came to him anyway and now he not only has a successful television show, he is the front runner for the GOP nomination for president in 2012.

Oh, how they would all like to relive the last twelve months.  Keep flying that plane Mike.  Anything can happen, including a safe landing.

Rasmussen

Mike Huckabee    29%

Mitt Romney        24%

Sarah Palin           18%

Newt Gingrich      14%

Tim Pawlenty         6%

Rand Paul Shakes Down the Thunder

 

Just when the national media and the elitist doorkeepers of the G.O.P. thought they had the wiry, incorruptible, troublemaking congressman Ron Paul of Texas locked tightly in their dungeon, never to see the light of day, excluded by their establishment magazines and television networks, well almost, and counting the hours until the old man kicks the bucket and lets them fight wars and spend money in peace, lo and behold, the congressman has a son.

 Rand Paul.  He is the third son to congressman Ron Paul, that troublemaker from Texas.  And believe me, the son is trouble too.  And that starts with “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool, as in Pool Hall.  I mean, Rand Paul.

 Rand is a 46 year old eye surgeon from Bowling Green, Kentucky and he is in the race for the Senate in Kentucky and yes, I mean “in the race.”  Not just running for money or a bestseller or the lecture circuit.  I mean running as in very possibly winning.  As in, look out establishment, here comes the real thing. 

 Rand Paul has all of the most popular positions of the libertarian-Republican movement and none of the baggage and he is a power house of a fundraiser.  The last bomb has grossed over $700,000 and is climbing as I clack at the key board.  (Want to contribute? Goto  http://www.randpaul2010.com/ )

This news must make the establishment desperate.  And terribly frustrated. There will be summits at Camp David, the Greenbrier, the Cheney Ranch in Wyoming and Kennebunkport.  The Skull and Bones will retreat to their island for a barbecue and some serious discussion.  The network chiefs will dine together in white pants and blue blazers with golden buttons at a nice fish restaurant on Nantucket and brainstorm on how to get Roger Ailes back in the stable and cooperating in keeping the Pauls’ out of the green room at FOX.  While their sun blackened, anorexic wives will talk about how to benefit the poor, which will seem to them to be just about everybody else who is not at their table.

It must be tough to be in the conspiracy these days. No one reads your newspapers or listens to your high paid correspondents.   All of your secrets are published online.  Is there no end to the mischief that freedom of speech can do in this country?  What is the establishment to think? With the multiple television networks making it nigh but impossible to keep the ornery truth from occasionally rearing its head and with the Glenn Beck cannon rolling like thunder from one end of the ship to the other, breaking the furniture as it goes.  And then there is that darn internet, Al Gore, a traitor to his class, providing facts at the most inappropriate times.  And people asking common sense, irritating questions about stupid government decisions, and comments popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

Questions like, “Well, okay, why DON’T we audit the Federal Reserve?  What is so onerous and evil about that?  Would the Soviets launch missiles if we did?  Would it cost too much?”  And comments like, “The government has spent more money this year than it has in the first 100 years of the Republic.”  Ugh, I hate it when my side gets their history wrong.

And now here comes Rand Paul, sounding reasonable and looking like a movie star.  Oh groan.  But asking the same reasonable questions that his father asked.  Where’s the change?  We still have the war bigger than ever, we still have lobbyists bigger than ever, we still have the debt bigger than ever, we still have political favoritism and cronyism bigger than ever. New president, new lies. But same direction.  Down.  Is this change you can believe in?  Yes, sadly, it surely is.  This is the kind of change some of us feared.

And Rand Paul, the son, has captured the angst of the electorate.  He is right on the issues, right on the solutions, and he has even more of something that Ron Paul, the father, doesn’t have.  Time.  At least one hopes so. 

So what will the establishment do with Rand Paul if he gets into the U. S. Senate?  Six years?  Can you imagine?  Believe me, they will do everything, EVERYTHING, in their power to keep him out.

Wanta have some fun?  Wanta protest the insanity in government?  Wanta let the world know that you are alive and kickin?  Wanta let those powerful journalists who think you can be manipulated know that you are no longer limited to their spoon fed half truths?  Then punch that button one more time.  Here it is.  http://www.randpaul2010.com/  And add your dollars to the most exciting political game in town. Protest this change in government.

And in the meantime, a memo to Dr. Rand Paul?  Don’t you be flying in private planes, ya hear?

 

ALSO SEE…

Is Ron Paul too old to run for president?

Obama Stimulus Bill, Doug Wead on Fox.

Doug Wead on CBS last week. Talking about Presidents and families traveling together.

Is Ron Paul too old to be President?

Ron Paul Shall Rise Again

Yesterday on Meet the Press they reviewed the declining prospects for the Republican Party.  And the yawning conclusion was that no one can really challenge Barack Obama in 2012 and no one can revive the G.O.P.  They assessed the prospects of all the possible candidates but there was one glaring omission.  Guess who?

Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham were the Republican guest commentators.  Romney has already made it clear that only an Obama owned recession will allow him back in.  And if Obama can’t get a temporary bump in the stock market, after trebling the money supply, well, we might as all start selling apples right now.  And one by one, on the Russertless Meet the Press, they ticked off all of the reasons why Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee won’t be returning after all.

Of course, the weekly news dominated and they bemoaned the loss of yet another possible G.O.P. standard bearer for 2012.  Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, is now out.  His dalliance in Argentina means he is damaged goods.  Can’t you just see the governor sitting at a side walk café in Buenos Aires, with this nagging worry in the back of his head, “What if they are looking for me right now?  What if I am on CNN? Naaa.”  Indeed, the Sanford episode brings back all the painful narrative surrounding the infidelities of Newt Gingrich and Rudolph Giuliani. Is there no one left to lead the G.O.P.?

Meet the Press cannot be blamed for omitting the one man who is still on everyone’s lips, as in “you know, I think he may have been right, after all.”  The one man who predicted the economic collapse, who suggested that the Federal Reserve needed an audit itself, who warned that electing a Democrat or Republican was pretty much the same thing; there would still be a war where we don’t need one.  The lobbyists would still rule.  The government would still intrude.

On May 18, 2009 Time magazine ran a cover story on the Republican Party, entitled “Endangered Species.”  They had a Michael Grunwald article on “How the Republicans Lost Their Way.”  And an article by Joe Scarborough on “How They Can Come Back.”  Not once did the magazine even mention the name of the man who raised $32 million with a single call.  The man who was first to recognize and announce that Republicans had lost their way, their heart, their soul.

What made the Mark Sanford loss so regrettable to many in the press was the fact that he was emerging as a bit of a populist figure.  He had been able to articulate some of the views and the ideas of the one man whom Meet the Press and Time Magazine and the rest of the establishment so studiously ignore.  And Sanford had been able to pick up the mantle without all the odious, dangerous extra baggage that makes the people at the television networks recoil in horror.  Like actually auditing the Federal Reserve.

The fact is that Mark Sanford was never really a true clone to that man, who like Lord Voldemort, cannot be named.  The man who would shake Wall Street and Capitol Hill to their foundations.  I am speaking, of course, of Congressman Ron Paul of Texas

No, he is not dead, much as Meet the Press and Time would have you believe.  Tim Russert is dead. Michael Jackson is dead.  Farrah Fawcett is dead.  And now even, Billy May is dead.

Ron Paul lives.

And as long as Ron Paul lives, the heart of the Republican Party beats strong and an alternative to the new Socialist Republic of America still exists.

Make sure you read…. Is Ron Paul too old?

And see Reagan and the age issue.

Mark Sanford: It was a woman

It was a woman.

GOP, South Carolina, Governor Mark Sanford was on the brink of greatness.  As one of the nation’s emerging political stars he was so principled that he turned down federal money for his state, saying it was wrong.  Some said he was in the process of inheriting Ron Paul’s massive insurgent army and taking it all the way.  And then?

He disappeared last Thursday.  When someone asked his wife she answered, “I have no idea where he is.”  Some staffers covered for him saying he was alone, writing.  A former press aide says he often disappears.  Others in his office said he was hiking in the wild.  By June 24, Wednesday afternoon, the governor was spotted disembarking from a plane in Atlanta.  It had flown in from Buenos Aires.

I disappeared once.  I was on staff as special assistant to the president at the White House and decided that the pace was driving me crazy. Without telling a soul I walked out of the White House and slipped into a cinema in downtown Washington.  I was gone from the office for exactly two hours.  And you would have thought that all hell had broken loose.  The world can change in two hours, especially at that level.

So what has the governor been up to?  Was he only looking for a moment on Walden’s Pond?  Don’t count on it.  Was he stealing money?  Settling his offshore accounts?  No, not the man who turned down billions from the government.  We all know what it is, or think we do.  We have all known what it had to be all along… a woman.

He must have recoiled in horror as the John and Elizabeth Edwards saga unfolded, with Elizabeth painfully  parading her feelings on the national stage while the rest of us squirmed uncomfortably on our couches.  He must have thought he could steal away a few minutes of peace.

And the women?  Likely a staffer.  Why?  Because some in his office were covering for him and obviously others not.

So, we are now only minutes away… we will see.

Postscript:  Yes, it was a woman.  But not a staffer.  And, in fact, an e-mail partner from Argentina.  And it appears he is still in love because he could not stop himself from talking about her.  Those last days and hours in Argentina must have been bittersweet.

Cheney for president?

Well, we now know that Dick Cheney is positioning himself for a presidential run. His challenge to Barack Obama on Gitmo will cast him as a “conservative” alternative and his position in favor of gay marriage will cast him as a “moderate” on social issues. If there is a major terrorist act on American soil between now and November, 2012, Dick Cheney will sound prescient and he will definetly be in the mix for the presidency.

Of course, the American public is getting good at reading mediaspeak. They know, for example, that Cheney’s position on Gitmo doesn’t really make him a conservative at all. A true conservative, having proven himself a loyal vice president, would now officially break with the policies of George W. Bush, whose off the books Iraq War bankrupted the country. Nor would a “conservative” engage in massive bailouts and the printing of trillions of dollars in new paper money, resulting in the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the Republic. No, Bush did not raise taxes, he just dilluted the value of the dollars in our pockets giving billions of his new money to Wall Street bankers. At least Obama will give some of his new monopo;y play money to the lower middle classes through armies of laborers rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure.

Nor is Dick Cheney a moderate on social issues. Cheney made it clear that he will challenge the Evangelical Christian hold on the party and on any and all social issues he will be liberal.

What does all of this mean to the other players in the GOP? For example, will Karl Rove finally have a horse to ride? Insiders say no but Cheney could overrule his own staffers who are telling reporters that Rove is radioactive, with high negatives. Cheney would be exactly Rove’s kind of man, the latter privately insisting to some GOP leaders that the party must shed its relationship with Evangelical Christians. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee will presumambly split that vote giving Cheney an opening. At least, that is the scenario painted by Cheney advocates. Where Mitt Romney fits is not stated.

What is impressive is how dramatically Vice President Cheney reemerged in public this past week. He challenged the untouchable, ultra popular President Obama on the very subject that had been his first success. In his first act as president, Barack Obama had signaled his end to the culture of torture by closing Gitmo. Obama received international applause for the decision and the Republicans totally caved on the issue. Yet Dick Cheney, with one well written and well argued speech, won respect and wide coverage for his views. It was the logic and the power of his arguments that thrust him back into the spotlight. It is something seldom seen in modern politics.

 

Screwed Again: How the national media ignored Ron Paul and why it will be their undoing

Once again, Ron Paul deserved to be in the headlines and once again the national media totally ignored him. Wednesday, the nationwide “Tea Party” protests of big taxes and big spending was the number two story in the nation on most television networks and number one on some. And how could they avoid it? Thousands showed up from coast to coast to express their dismay. What is Obama doing? How can we keep printing paper money? Doesn’t he know that a wave of inflation will hit the shore?

The fact is that the first, notable, Tea Party since Boston was launched at a Ron Paul campaign rally in Austin, Texas in December of 2007. The second was the famous “money bomb” fundraiser for Ron Paul on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in the middle of the 2008 presidential run. And most of the crowd and organizers of yesterday’s event were Ron Paul supporters. But congressman Ron Paul, the Nostradamus from Texas, who predicted the crisis we now face, was not mentioned once by the national media.

Credit (or blame) for the event was given to former Texas congressman, Dick Armey, a nice guy but not THE guy or to Newt Gingrich, or to Washington conservative think tanks that mine for Ron Paul money but never give him any respect or credit, or FOX television who actually blocked him from an early debate in 2008, or from sinister “corporate interests.” Huh? Gee… I wonder what corporation could possibly be interested in lower taxes and less government spending? General Motors? AIG?

The fact is that many in big business switched to the Democrats in 1964 when they learned how Lyndon Johnson’s new regulations could wipe out their small business competitors and gain them monopolies. And it gained momentum, even in Republican administrations where powerful corporate lobbies ponied up for their share of government largesse. McDonalds, for example, wanted and received government subsidies to compete with French hamburger joints. Chuckle, chuckle. Now you try that. Go ahead. Open a hamburger stand and ask the government for money. Good luck.

Wall Street and big business have been in bed with the Democrats for years. Republican corporate greed is not just a myth, it is true too, but most corporate leaders give to both parties. Silicon Valley is solid Democrat. In 1992 the CEO’s of Apple, HP, Xerox all opposed the Republican incumbent administration.

With this coming Obama inflation the rich will lose half of their wealth but they don’t seem to care. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet keep asking for more taxes. What is the difference for them between $300 billion and $200 billion when they can’t spend or give away fast enough the wealth they have accumulated? And anyway, they will get a big chunk of that paper play money since it will cause an inflationary spiral on the stock market. (That will be nice. It will give the illusion of prosperity. The stock market is finally up. Yay.) But keep in mind, that while you own thousand of shares in your 401 k, the rich own gazillions of shares and can legally print more and give them to themselves as “compensation.”

The poor would love to see the system shaken up. We will be giving them as much of the Obama paper money as we can. In some cases we will be paying them to rebuild the infrastructure, and they will deserve the money, but in other cases we will be paying them to watch television and snort coke because they are “disadvantaged.” But their play paper money will be as good as anyone else’s and it will compete with the paper money of producing, working people for goods and services and food.

The price of everything will rocket up except for houses, which will also increase but not even enough to keep up with inflation. They are still overbuilt and they hold the life savings of the middle class. And in spite of all the campaign rhetoric about helping the middle class, it is the middle class that Obama is wiping out.

Oh my, doesn’t he realize? What will happen to us? Somebody tell that nice man. Yep. He knows what he is doing. And he doesn’t care. We had generations to change things for the poor people in the inner cities who endured gun battles every night, when no one should have to experience that once, let along every night. He knows what he is doing. He is shaking things up. American will never be the same again.

The problem is that the middle class is what has made America different from other countries, wealthier than other countries. China and India are about half the world’s population and neither one has ever, ever, ever had a middle class. There is only rich or poor and you know which is the most likely. That’s where we are headed. I’m not saying we will get there, I hope we won’t. But that is surely where we are headed.

So the Tea Party was a protest by some of our more informed citizens who think that the biggest budget in history is a little too big. And Ron Paul, who was virtually ignored, except when the networks interviewed ordinary citizens and found that they all couldn’t stop talking about him, is the man who started this protest.

ABC’s charming, but condescending, Charles Gibson, the one who sternly rebuked Sarah Palin when during one perilous week he thought that St. Obama might possibly be in jeopardy, opened his second segment with this amazing paragraph…

“And across the country today thousands of people protested over the tax system, demonstrating against what they called big government spending.”

Oh, really? They were calling the government “big spenders”? Who are these people, this fringe, this freaky group who think that there is “big government spending”? Where would they get that idea? What right do they have to draw that conclusion?

Obviously, it will take much more spending than this for ABC to state as “a fact” that the government is spending big. Now, what would that amount be? I wonder? How many trillion before a network news writer will allow that there is big spending? Remember, this is not about whether the spending has efficacy or not, ABC will not even admit that the amount is “big.” Kinda lets you know what we are up against – don’t it?

ABC blamed the tax revolt on Fox television and talk radio and said that Democrats blamed corporate interests, none of the corporate interests were named but ABC reported it anyway, gotta be fair and give the other side. But I was watching ABC, not Fox and I never listen to the radio and I, too, think that we are spending big. Gee, how did I get that idea? Come to think of it, it must have been ABC. Maybe they are part of the very fringe they fear and don’t yet know it.

Ron Paul’s name was not mentioned. Well, I am told that it was mentioned once on Fox by the good Judge Andrew Napolitano.

That’s okay. Keep it up. Makes us mad. Real mad. And we will take over the GOP and we will give the American people a choice, and when the economy is good and shaken, and the middle class has lost 70% of its wealth, and is no longer middle class, then there just might be enough new poor people out there to elect Ron Paul.

Go on, no really, keep it up, keep it up. Give us another news story that ignores the only person in America who saw this coming and the only one who is talking sense and the only one who has the answers. Go on.

See:  How Ronald Reagan handled the age issue

See: Is Ron Paul too old to run for president?

Only Stupid Republicans Pay Their Taxes

Hello, let me introduce myself. I am a stupid Republican. I pay my taxes. I support my neighbors who are defaulting on their loans and I support the political friends of Barack Obama whose new stimulus plan is full of pay offs to the groups who endorsed him early. Hey, I even support the discrediting of my own faith, which has already begun with the Obama gutting of Charitable Choice, a program that was so mainstream that even Joe Biden supported it, along with 80% of the Senate and Bill Clinton signed it into law.

And I am doing all of this because I am stupid.

Now, not all Republicans are stupid like me. For example, there are smart “liberal” Republicans. They not only don’t pay taxes – they actually GET money from the government. They develop lobbies in Washington DC who beg congress for money for their favorite educational non-profits, whose board of directors are buddies, who in turn hire their cousins and others in the family who can’t provide for themselves.

They get money for their corporations, usually for a “do good” social justice reason like “making an even playing field for the handicapped” or some other irresistible cause. Of course, they hire their wife or nephew to implement those “do good” policies at the corporation. And the new regulations drive out the little, small business competitors, who must do all of the same things, spend all the same money, but without the massive government subsidies, since they cannot afford the lobbies. This is what Ron Paul complains about.

Now Democrats? They’ve got it made. They earn widespread acclaim for standing up for the poor but it turns out that they not only don’t donate to charity, as we all learned in that recent study, but now we know that they don’t even pay their taxes. Wow, what a win-win. They go on television with earnest faces and tears in their voice, talking about what government should do and how the private sector cannot bear the whole burden alone, and volunteerism isn’t enough, we need government too, while they give to neither one! Ha. Clever.

Note the recent list of seven Obama nominees to cabinet level offices who cheat on their taxes? What can we learn from this? There are only a few choices…

One. That Barack Obama is extremely unlucky.

Two. That so many of his friends are corrupt that he can’t find any who pay their taxes.

Three. That Democrats don’t pay taxes anyway and so the pool he is fishing from is stacked against him.

Well, the first one is preposterous. Statistics just won’t support it. How can we say that every nominee from Washington to Bush paid their taxes but suddenly seven major appointees of Obama haven’t? I mean nominees have withdrawn for protecting illegals, for not paying social security to nannies, (which is close, at least a tax issue,) for smoking marijuana, and as recently as George Herbert Walker Bush, they have even withdrawn for such quaint issues as alcoholism and adultery. But not for cheating the government out of taxes. Who would hire someone to enforce laws that they themselves flaunt? Who would hire someone to run a government that they don’t respect?

And the second choice? Oh… say it ain’t so. Obama cannot be corrupt. Like many people, I am so pleased with myself, that we have at last elected an African American president. I am going to pass on the second one. Although, I am getting a bit nervous. The joke on Leno about handicapped people bothers me. The Secretary of Interior under Reagan was fired for referring to “a cripple.” And the Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon, lost his job over a tasteless, racial joke. In eight years of Bush he never said anything so politically insensitive. Kinda makes ya wonder, who’s dumb?

And then Obama’s famous campaign pledge to go “line by line” has already entered that notorious lexicon. There is “We did not exchange arms for hostages.” Or “Read my lips.” Or “I want you to listen to me, I did not…” Or those frightening words in that famous State of the Union address, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Oh, those clever Brits, found something our billions couldn’t find. It just seems a little too early for Obama to betray the public trust. I mean he could have at least finished his first 100 days.

But then, all of that leaves me with a very unsettling conclusion. Why does Obama end up with so many tax cheats among his nominees for top positions in government, when all the governments before him hardly had a one? Well, it means that Democrats just don’t pay their taxes. For if the public figures in the Democrat Party don’t pay their taxes, the ones who are expecting to be appointed to powerful positions, then why would the “average” Democrat pay? In fact, let’s face it, most “average” Democrats are getting money FROM the government. They don’t have to pay taxes at all, and if they are unproductive “takers” not “givers” at least they are not breaking the laws that the liberal Democrats in congress have passed but can’t seem to keep themselves.

Hmmmm, I wonder where Bill Gates and Warren Buffet stand on this? They like to pay taxes. But they are silent. I guess they think that the ends justify the means. If the best “tax getters” are “tax cheaters” well, ya gotta do what you gotta do. That’s business.

Hey, here’s a great idea. Since Barack Obama says he will raise much of his budget from tax cheats, and since the Democrats are big on profiling, like the recent suggestion to the Missouri Highway Patrol that anyone with a Ron Paul bumper sticker should watched, why not audit the taxes of any Democrat who submits a resume to work for the new administration? Maybe Obama is really onto something after all. We could balance the budget and eliminate the national debt by catching Democrat tax cheats on a massive scale. But then who would serve in government? Oh, yeah. I forgot that.

The real measure of integrity is that after finding those nominees to the highest positions in government who have filed false or incomplete tax returns or haven’t paid what they owe, many are still being pushed for confirmation. The Obama vetters are not saying, “OMG, another one. This is too politically sensitive. We can’t have another tax cheat nominated.” Nope, they just plow right ahead and stick it in our faces. “We don’t pay taxes. We’re liberal Democrats who care about people, but you? You are conservative, selfish Republican swine and you must pay taxes. And we will put you in jail if you don’t.”

Ahhh, it would be so nice to be a liberal Democrat. To watch Hollywood films and television shows about presidents who fight for the school milk program. To cry when Michael Douglas curls up with Annette Benning and says he is going to do the right thing. Or when Martin Sheen gets a tear in his eye in West Wing. And best of all NO TAXES! Think of what you could do with that money? How much you could do for your family and for charity. But alas, my conscience won’t allow it.

The gutting of Charitable Choice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opi-pxJlxfI

Study shows liberals don’t give to charity http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2682730

What would Reagan Do?

“But we are not going to simply kill some people to say, ‘Oh look, we got even.’ We want to know when we retaliate that we are retaliating with those who are responsible for the terrorist acts.”

- President Ronald Reagan, 1984.

This is the first in an ongoing series on what Ronald Reagan would be doing. On war, on the economy, on spending. Of course it is all speculation but we have his words and deeds to reference and we can juxtapose some interesting possibilities.

For example, if 9-11 had happened on Ronald Reagan’s watch what would the Gipper have done?

In fact, it is very likely that Ronald Reagan would have invaded Afghanistan. After all, they were harboring Osama Bin Laden and by Reagan’s thinking that would have made it a legitimate war. Leading up to his election he sent strong signals that he would attack Iran if the hostages were not released.

But it is very unlikely that he would have invaded Iraq. Reagan didn’t believe in collateral damage for thousands of innocent people. It was not his style or a part of his belief system. He walked away from Lebanon not because he was a coward but because he would not risk killing thousands of innocent people in order to get a few who were guilty. And he wanted to make sure that he was targeting only the guilty people.

Listen to his own words from 1984….

Reagan on terrorism and collateral damage.

And ah yes, I have my own reasons for admiring the former president:

Reagan on Doug Wead

Only Ron Paul can save us now

For the last few weeks Republicans have been ranting about the Democrat raid of the U. S. Treasury. They were using the financial crisis like the Reichstag Fire, we were told, as an excuse to consolidate their power, paying off political constituencies and pushing through spending bills that are loaded with extras totally unrelated to any resolution of the crisis. Even moderates have been alarmed.

To be sure, there is still good will toward our new President Barack Obama. Everyone is too pleased with the idea of an African American president to blame him for anything. The tomatoes are usually tossed at Nancy Pelosi and her partisan gang in the House. Surely the president who firmly promised he would end ear marks and examine each spending bill, line by line, has not lied to us already, this early into his term in office?

But now it turns out that the whiney Republican Party’s own leaders are right in the thick of it all. Six of the top ten pork barrel spenders in the U. S. Senate are in the GOP. Here is that inglorious list.

1. Thad Cochran, R-Miss.: $474 million

2. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.: $391 million

3. Mary Landrieu, D-La.: $332 million

4. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa: $292 million

5. David Vitter, R-La.: $249 million

6. Christopher Bond, R-Mo.: $248 million

7. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.: $235 million

8. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii: $225 million

9. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.: $219 million

10. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa: $199 million

(Source http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/thread/2557139.aspx)

Just making the cut, you’ll notice, is Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa who was upset last summer at Pentecostal-Charismatic television preachers, calling for an investigation, because evangelists like Joyce Meyers, who earns $250,000 a year, are too extravagant with donations. At a time when America is on the verge of the Second Great Depression and unemployment is mounting, he bagged almost $200 million in pork barrel goodies for his buddies back home. At least the people who give to Joyce Meyers’ ministry do so voluntarily.

(By the way, maybe we should have the government run the Churches too, that would make a clean sweep of things. Banks, Insurance, Autos and Churches, as well. Hmmm.)

Is there anyone who can save us from this insanity?

There is really only one option left. Ron Paul. It is a long shot, but if the madness goes far enough and the reaction sets in, the Paulistas just might stage a takeover of the Grand Old Party and Ron Paul would offer America a real choice. It’s a long shot. But four more years of this and America may actually be ready.

Note: Here is the link of Doug Wead appearing on FOX NEWS talking about the Stimulus package.