Big government "conservatism"...

I am trying to put my finger on when and/or why the Republican party became supporters and proponents of expanding the size of the federal government.

It has become clear that concept of States rights is not a part of the Republican platform, but rather a strategy of the minority party in Congress. Even Justice Scalia voted against State's rights in a recent medical marijuana case heard by the Supremes.

I suppose that the reason the Republicans shifted to favoring bigger government is that the left was able to further its agenda through ever increasing federalization of land, policy making, and funding appropriations. Since the left was able to advance and hold power for many years by using the federal government to implement their marxist philosophies.

However, the GOP does not seem to realize that there really are still Americans who want the United States to operate as 50 separate republics, known as States, which agree to cede certain limited and specifically enumerated powers to the federal government without creating a womb to tomb nanny state.

I am praying that a real patriot like Alabama Chief Justice Judge Roy Moore gets the GOP nomination in 2008.

Senator Bill Nelson...

Rick Santorum wants to privatize the national weather service according to MSNBC.

The highlight of the incompetence of Florida Senator Nelson is evident by the following exerpt:

• Nelson said the man who introduced the bill, Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, only did it to help his own state.

This illustrates to me just how far we've fallen from the days of George Washington when States were actually represented entities in the US government.

The press conference...

I gave up at 8:32 p.m. after hearing that the President wants me to be "given the right" to control my own assets.

I was under the impression that the right to own private property has been mine since the passage of the Bill of Rights. Through the IRS, unconstitutional searching of homes and eminent domain abuses, the government has gradually transformed into one lead by a man who wants credit for giving me something that should have always been mine.

Walmart parody...

Here is an interesting site, according to its author, Walmart is attempting to shut the site down for copyright violations. The site creator claims that the suit is really an attempt to suppress negative publicity against Walmart.

Will this site be the next to suffer the wrath of expensive corporate lawyers and anti-free speech judges?

Minority status..

Are leftists so entrenched in their group think that their biggest fear is to accept the fact that their ideas about atheism, socialism, progressive taxation, centralized power, and globalism are actually minority view points?

Nothing else makes sense to me as to why these leftists can't or won't wake up and admit that their policy proposals are failures which the majority of American voters want no part of.

As for me, I will just say that I pity people who are afraid to stand up for what they think is right despite the opinions of others, in so far as the conclusion has been reached honestly with a fair analysis of factual information.

War of aggression...

If I discovered that someone in my neighborhood were abusing his wife and children and I believed that he had an intent on hurting my family in the future, would I be justified according to Christian principles in taking preemptive action, including the use of deadly force, to protect my family and my community?

What if it were determined that the neighbor had neither the means nor was any tangible evidence discovered that he had an intent to harm me, would I still have been justified to use preemptive force to defend myself from a threat that didn't actually exist?

In light of recent reports regarding WMD in Iraq, I believe the aforementioned scenario is a close analogy to what George Bush, the "far right, Christian extremist" according to Air America and the NY Times, did in Iraq.

I believe that the teachings of Christ limit a man to only using force against another in actual self-defense as opposed to preemption waged to prevent a real threat from materializing in the future.

It continues to amaze me how the die-hard Republicans and the Christian right continue to believe that George Bush is a trustworthy man who executes his responsibilities well and in accordance with Christian principle.

Since when did "conservatism" include a provision about "trusting" government? What happened to the days of the anti-federalists when the general public had an inherent skepticism of all government officials, especially those in the highest positions? What happened to Ronald Reagan's doctrine of "trust but verify"?

Hopefully GOP faithful begin to wake up before the oligarchs tell us that Hillary has been elected with 45% of the vote because 20% of traditional Republican voters finally chose to hold principle over politics and vote for a 3rd party candidate who actually represents their views.

Extremist judges...

If the judges being blocked by Senate Democrats really were as extreme as Chuck Schumer wants you to believe, wouldn't they be voted down by the full Senate with Sens. Snowe, Collins, Hagel, Chafee, McCain and Specter to side with the Democrats?

Obviously the Democrats are using this attempted filibuster to establish a precedent for the soon to happen Supreme Court nomination so that when it happens, the American people supports a minority party imposing its will upon the majority in the name of "moderation".

Fascist States of America

From Billboard:

• Air America Radio is being investigated by the Secret Service over a skit that aired during Randi Rhodes show on April 25, according to the Drudge Report.
  
  In the skit, which focused on the ongoing debate over Social Security, a character, purportedly from the American Association of Armed Retired People, said , "A spoiled child is telling us our Social Security isn't safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us.” While not named, it's obvious the “spoiled child” is President Bush.
  
  “Well, here's your answer,” the character continues, “you ungrateful whelp.” At this point there is audio of four gunshots.
  
  “Just try it, you little bastard,” the announcer concludes, followed by the sound of a gun being cocked.
  
  "Let's not do that while I'm here in Florida," Rhodes, who is currently broadcasting from West Palm Beach, said following the skit."Let's not arm the old people until I leave. What is with all the killing?".
  
  "Even joking about shooting the president is a crime, let alone doing it on national radio . . . we are taking this very seriously," a government source told Drudge.
  
  An Air America official tells Billboard Radio Monitor that they have no comment and are conducting their own internal investigation.

Aren't these Air America leftists the same ones who told us pre-election that George Bush is a fascist who uses government to punish his opponents?

If that were even remotely true, wouldn't Randi Rhodes and the producers of this skit already be on a one-way trip to Gitmo?

Good call on Rush...

Someone just called and posed a great question to Senate Democrats.

How can they run around complaining about voter "disenfranchisement" in Ohio and Florida during the past 2 Presidential elections, yet at the same time threaten to shut down the Senate, thereby disenfranchising 55% of the American people, if the majority wishes to exercise its Constitutional obligation to advise and consent to federal judicial nominations.

International law...

The Supremes recently decided that people convicted in foreign courts may still own guns under U.S. law. Justice Breyer wrote:

• "We have no reason to believe that Congress considered the added enforcement advantages flowing from inclusion of foreign crimes, weighing them against, say, the potential unfairness of preventing those with inapt foreign convictions from possessing guns."

Yet, these are the same people who cite foreign legal and cultural standards when deciding that minors in America may not be given the death penalty.

Though I am amazed that I saw a day where the left Supremes voted to protect gun rights, I am struggling to find any objecive standard as to when and how foreign laws carry weight in our own federal courts.

Did I miss the day when Article I Section I was amended to include Supreme Court justices among the legislative bodies in our republic?

Extremists...

As Pat Buchanan suggests, Pope John Paul II would have been filibustered as an extremist had he ever come up for a vote in the United States Senate for a federal judgeship.

When will the left begin labeling Martin Luther King Jr. as a religous extremist whose faith drove his political beliefs?

How to destroy America...

Michelle Malkin has blogged about an 8-point methodology for the destruction of American civilization.

It looks like the anti-America left is well on its way to transforming this once great republic to the next fallen civilization.

At the crossroads...

Here is a great column by Newt, which goes along what I've been thinking about this week having listened to Rush and Laura Ingraham hammer the Republican party day after day.

Despite an obvious growing number of Americans who want center-right government, the Senate Republicans are not getting the message. I fear they may be stuck in years past where the MSM had a greater impact on public perception, and therefore Congressional Republicans were forced to do the eggshell two-step trying to avoid front page coverage by the NYT or the Washington comPost.

However, times have changed, and the old Republican dinosaurs are as unwilling to embrace current reality as are the old media outlets. It's time for the GOP leaders to wake up and recognize that the younger generation is rejecting the ilLiberal left and that we want traditional, conservative leadership instead of endless debates about filibuster rules for the Senate or some controversy concocted by the media about John Bolton's "temper".

The American left is reeling having lost the American election in November, seeing a democratic election happen in Ukraine with a pro-western man victorious, watching elections in Afghanistan and Iraq materialize, reform taking place in Lebanon, the Catholic church sticking to its guns while refusing to give in to those who think the message of Christ should be "living and breathing", and most recently the stories coming from France where the people want Chirac to reject the EU Constitution that he's been crafting for a decade or more.

If American politics were a boxing match, I'd liken it to Rocky IV in the mid rounds of the fight when the crowd begins cheering for Rocky after he has taken the best that Drago has to offer but has refused to stay on the mat when he gets knocked down. Slowly but surely, as Rocky bobs and weaves, he takes more punches than he lands but he manages to stay in the fight. Drago begins to consider the possibility that he is fallible, and that he may not be able to win the fight on strength and intimidation alone. In the end, it was the guts and heart of Rocky that gave him the ability to defeat the heavily favored Soviet fighter.

I can only hope that the GOP does not cave in to the NY Times editorial board and the anti-American propoganda from the American left, and that it wakes up soon to the reality that it has an opportunity to knock out the far left for a long time by taking advantage of the opportunity it has in front of itself right now.

The American left has been moving further and further left, faster and faster, since the 60's and the dawn of the sex and drugs culture. Conservatives have had a long, hard slog to fight their way back from that time, finding opponents at every turn. Because of my firm beliefs in individual freedom, personal property, limited government, and the existence of a Christian God, I am desperately hoping that the GOP reaffirms the principles once vocalized by Barry Goldwater and partially realized by Ronald Reagan instead of giving up after having fought this far back from the days of FDR, LBJ, McCarthyism, Hanoi Fonda/Kerry, and the national embarassment that was Jimmy Carter.

As Jim Valvano said, "Don't give up, don't ever give up."

Rocky, Rocky, Rocky...

Facing facts

Republicans are going to have a very difficult time getting reelected to House and Senate seats so long as our national debt continues to explode and the Mexican border remains a sieve.

George Bush is doing his best to increase annual deficits and ignore the illegal alien problem.

Just as I believe that Bill Clinton voted for George Bush last election, I fully believe that the Bush family wants Hillary Clinton to be the 44th President of the United States.

Oklahoma City...

I just watched a special on FNC about the Oklahoma City bombing and a thought entered my mind. Even though there seem to be credible witnesses and leads which suggest a connection to muslim terrorist groups, President Bush has never come out and made closing the Oklahoma City case a top priority in his "War on Terrorism".

Again, if he is willing to send hundreds of thousands of Marines and soldiers into the middle east to fight "terrorists", wouldn't a logical element of the same effort be about solving the largest mass murder in America before 9/11?

Sadly, this seems to me to be just one more piece of circumstantial evidence pointing to some sort of Bush/Clinton cabal, in which they have agreed to work together in their quest for global domination over the sheeple.

The "Castle" doctrine extended...

The Florida legislature recently passed a bill eliminating the legal obligation of a person in Florida to retreat when attacked by an aggressor. Instead, people in Florida are now legally permitted to use deadly force when their individual rights are being violated in any public place.

Of course, not everybody thinks this law is a good idea, including this leftist who says:

• Anyone who values human life should find a big problem with government-approved retaliation.

In other words, a dead or raped woman is preferable to a dead rapist or would-be murderer according to the "progressive" minded leftists.

Eric Rudolph...

In keeping with their tradition of holding nobody accountable for their own actions (other than holding conservative politicians culpable for everything that goes wrong in the world), I predict that leftists in the media, likely to be among them Chris Matthews, will attempt to blame "hateful" (read: exposing liberal lies) talk radio, saying Rush Limbaugh and Hannity were at least partially to blame for the bombings carried out by Eric Rudolph.

When the oligarchy that is our federal government installs Hillary as President in 2008, she and her fellow leftists (who scream about free speech rights of traitors like Ward Churchill) will doubtlessly attempt to restrict and/or ban talk radio as "hate speech" (read: media outlets she cannot control).

Whoopi Goldberg...

The other night, I happened to watch a stand-up routine by Whoopi Goldberg during which she said something to the effect that even though America is quickly going down a negative path, she still believes that people are "good" and that she still remains hopeful for our future.

I found it odd that a liberal can simultaneously profess to believe in the goodness of people and the necessity of a welfare state. After all, if the People were really as good as Whoopi says, wouldn't we have no problem taking care of the sick and helpless among our ranks without interference from the state?

Ironically, it seems that conservatives and limited-government types are the true optimists because most believe that private individuals and charity efforts would be more than adequate to provide the aid to our brethren that really is needed, while the Democrats who claim to have a bold and positive view of the future are the ones who repeatedly insist that only government can show compassion for individuals.

Hillary hypocrisy...

Recently at a fundraiser in Minnesota, Hillary Clinton slipped in a reference to the 2000 Supreme Court decision which gave the Presidency to George Bush in a way meant to confer disdain for the ruling.

But wait, I thought last week the left was telling us how important it was to accept judicial decisions and to move on.

Class warfare...

The Democrats tell us they are for "the little guy", but are they really?

The social system in America, for which they are largely responsible, may in fact accomplish just the opposite. Consider a corporation which pays minimum wage and offers no benefits and the employee who works that job.

If the employee didn't have the safety nets of Section 8 housing, Social Security, food stamps, WIC, et al, he would have to demand better compensation from the employer.

In order to cover the increased labor costs, the corporate executives would have to slash their own salaries. Increasing prices to cover the added labor costs would be a zero-sum game because the employer would be no better off financially.

Instead, since the corporations can rely on the government programs to pick up the slack, they are able to put money in their pockets at the expense of the "middle" class who gets hit hardest by FICA and federal income taxes (since they cannot afford lawyers to set up tax shelters).

Schiavo spinoff...

What if a Down's Syndrome child was starved to death and the parent was acquitted of murder because a judge accepted the notion that the child would not have wanted to live "that way" or that the child's quality of life isn't "good enough"?

I believe that bridge will soon be crossed as America slides down the slippery slope toward legal euthanasia.

Your opinion is meaningless...

The sad realization that I've just come to is that my political viewpoint is meaningless. The authors who write political opinions and blogs are inconsequential. The research centers and policy thinktanks are useless. Talk radio may as well be broadcast in sign language.

The people who decide elections in this country are the ones who pick their heads out of the sand a week before an election and vote for whichever candidate had the most signs between their home and their place of employment or whose 3-word slogan resonates better emotionally.

America's future hangs in the balance, and it will be decided by the dangerous portion of our population which takes the time to vote but yet does not take the time to educate themselves as to the substance nor the weight of that for which they cast a ballot.