My Dear Friends…

The following (fictional) op-ed was written on behalf of Senator John McCain, were he ever to actually tell the truth to Arizona voters.

My Dear Friends,

I’d like to introduce myself to you because many of you have moved to Arizona since the last time I ran for election to the United States Senate.  My name is John McCain.  I currently serve as your senior U.S. Senator.  I’d like to continue doing so.  Please.

Some of you may remember me from the few times I stopped by the state during my presidential campaign.  Some others of you may think I’m still running for president.  I sometimes get that confused myself.  Just kidding.  I know I lost.

I’m running for re-election to the Senate because I am not Bob Dole, my friends, and Pfizer is not breaking down any doors, begging me to be the next spokesman for, well, you know.  Besides, all the pharmaceutical companies are sending enough money my way as it is.  Which is why I was trying to kill the vitamin and nutritional supplement companies which compete with our honest, hardworking prescription drug companies that stand to lose a lot of money if people like you, my friends, keep buying vitamins to stay healthy.

Point of order, my friends.  I’m no longer for putting the vitamin companies out of business.  I know I wrote the bill, but I was misled.  I was for it before I was against it.  You can imagine the ribbing I’ve taken from John Kerry over that one!  Man, is he a sore loser!  But since we both lost to George Bush, I guess I know what he’s going through.  That’s why we both voted against those pesky Bush tax cuts.

Um.  Another point of order, my friends.  About those tax cuts I just mentioned?  I may have voted to kill them, but I support them now.  I’m really sorry I voted against them.  Twice.  We don’t actually read the bills much over in the Senate and I was very probably misled that they repealed the marriage penalty and eliminated the death tax.  Again, my bad.

I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to Governor Brewer, and to thank her for her gracious endorsement.  I know I was supposed to return the favor by endorsing the sales tax increase she’s putting on the ballot.  Ordinarily I would have.  It’s nothing at all like those tax cuts I opposed… oh, and which Congress is now repealing.  Welcome back death tax!  But the thing of it is, my friends, it’s an election year and I just don’t support tax hikes in election years.

Now, something else I’m taking a bit of heat over these days is my votes for what the press has callously called the “bailouts” of banks and auto companies and for supporting bailouts of big mortgage lenders who have been accused of taking advantage of people by selling them homes they couldn’t afford.  My friends, these aren’t bailouts.  These are strategic investments in the economic future of our great nation meant to stabilize our markets and provide for a steady flow of not just bonuses to disgruntled AIG executives but also PAC contributions to my campaign.

My friends, I’d just say this: the economy is very complex issue.  I’ve been in Washington for 28 years, and sometimes I don’t even understand it.  Do you know how small the national debt was when I was first elected to Congress?  Why, our government budgets weren’t anywhere close to a trillion dollars a year, and last year our deficit alone was more than $1.6 trillion dollars.  You see my point?  It’s very tricky business and not something you want to entrust to anyone but the most seasoned professional.

Me, I’m Washington through and through.  I’m senior on my committees.  I’ve been the Republican nominee for president, for Pete’s sake.  Why, I’d bet there isn’t a special interest, lobbyist, association or organization inside the Beltway that I don’t intimately know.  Which is why I don’t get home to Arizona so much, except in election years.  Being in the Senate is a lot of work!  Not to mention, it’s a really long flight each time from DC to Arizona.

So, as I’ve said, I would like you voters, my friends, to send me back to Washington for another term in the U.S. Senate.  And, as I’ve said, my campaign is not about whatever it is that I’ve done these past 28 years.  Rather, it’s about what you think I can do for you.  And, really, we’ve got a lot of unfinished business to tackle.  There are nearly 12 million illegal immigrants living in America, many of whom pay taxes and whatnot, but who don’t have much to show for it.  They can’t even vote!  You see my point?  Who will speak for them if not me?

And don’t even get me started on energy issues.  I’ve tried my darndest to get Cap and Trade passed, but the nay-sayers are screaming it’s a tax hike on families and businesses.  Let’s set the record straight once and for all: there is no tax increase in Cap and Trade.  When utility companies are forced by government to raise their prices, it is not a tax.  Just for once, I’d like to see some honesty in political discourse – or perhaps just none at all.  But apparently the Supreme Court isn’t with me on that one either.  Better luck next time, right?  Right?  You’re with me on this, aren’t you?

Well, my friends, that’s my campaign in a nutshell.  I hope this letter cleared up any questions you might have had.  I’ll do my best to write again soon.

Your friend,

John Sydney McCain

Give the people the home-court advantage
By Ralph Benko

We send our elected representatives far from home to conduct The People’s business. We send them to Washington, D.C. where they form what our flyboys (and flygirls) call “a target-rich environment” for the lobbyists and for the political party leadership.

We send them far from us … to conduct our business. There was no other way in the 18th, 19th, and most of the 20th century. In the 21st century, of course, this is absurd.

As things now stand, it is too easy for lobbyists and party leadership to “get at” our elected legislators. And too hard — impossible, on a concentrated basis — for voters to spend “face time” with their representatives.

We plain folks, and our representatives, would be well-served by changing the rule requiring our legislators to vote from the floor of Congress. And this could be done by a simple rule change, no legislation or constitutional amendment required.

The Constitution simply provides that “a majority of each [chamber] shall constitute a quorum to do business” and does not even specify “present,” much less what that would mean in the 21st century of webcams, Skype, videoconferencing, broadband internet or other technologies out there. The rules of both the House and Senate provide that a quorum is assumed unless a quorum call shows that it is not.

Sheer proximity is a very powerful thing. Lobbyists consider “face time” the crown jewel of their pursuit. Proximity is a soft force, but a powerful one. In sports parlance, it’s called “the home court advantage.”

By a simple rule change, our legislators could give themselves permission to vote from their district offices. Not require it. Simply permit it. From there, they could tele-speak, by Web, and tele-listen, by Web.

Now, they listen by closed circuit TV and speak rarely enough. They could speak more conveniently, and thus more often, by Webcam than they do now, and from home.

In fact, they could invite their constituents to form a “studio audience,” changing the chemistry rather dramatically.) They could make a district office home-base for most of their staff, instead of doing it backwards, as now. (Jobs for constituents! What a concept!)

Travel is such a hassle, the cost of maintaining two homes beyond the reach of most of our legislators. Under such a rule, it is highly likely that a lot of members would vote, more and more often, from their district offices. (Many of their wives, or husbands, would see to it!)

More time in the District means less in D.C., and it would be a lot harder, and more expensive (all that travel!) for the lobbyists to smooth talk them and for party leadership to twist their arms.

At home, they would be much more in touch with the people who they represent. With much less wear and tear.

Of course, they would still come in to “the office,” to confer with one another whenever useful, attend major ceremonial occasions, committee meetings when important issues are genuinely at stake, hear out the lobbyists, raise money, get on TV, even play poker or attend prayer breakfasts (depending, of course, on party affiliation) with their colleagues. This would tip a balance. Right now, it’s easy for the lobbyists to get at them in concentrated doses and hard for constituents to get heard.

Legislators! Give yourselves permission to vote from your district offices: Amend Rule XX. Only the (unfairly maligned) lobbyists and the (fairly maligned) party leadership lose.

For them … our pillows will be soaked with tears. For the people … and for you … it’s win-win. Give the home court advantage back to your homies!

Join the People Powered Congress social site here.

Ralph Benko, a principal of Capital City Partners, of Washington DC, is the author of The Websters’ Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World, the eBook of which may be downloaded without charge from www.thewebstersdictionary.com. He has given himself permission to work from a home office, where he gets far more accomplished than at “the office.”

From the Washington Examiner

Big Government had a recent column on ClimateGate, offering that it wasn’t the only Progressive Science scam pushed on the public, and states that “Eugenics” is one major global Progressive-produced catastrophe, but there is another example of Progressive Left political maneuvering that crippled a nation and brought the weight of an oppressive centrally-controlled bureaucracy on the heads of honest and diligence scientists, now known as “Lysenkoism.”

The roots of ClimateGate, with falsifying date, suppressing data that didn’t’ support the theory, and intimidating scientists as “skeptics” or even the more blatant, “unbelievers,” is found in the Soviet Union’s past, their embrace of a junk science called “agro-biology” or as Elof Axel Carlson described it, “a toxic blend of politics and pseudo-science.”

Actor and non-scientist Ed Begley, Jr. had a micro-climate-change of overheating when arguing that the only climate authority was “peer-reviewed” scientific journals. He was quite adamant, repeating “peer-reviewed” as often that it seemed to be a talisman, but about two hours too late to have heard the “thud” of the next shoe to drop from what appears to be a ClimateGate centipede, that the supposedly independent and non-partisan peer-reviewed” journals were under heavy pressure and manipulation of editors and selection of papers to refuse to publish anything that countered in any way the ClimateChange narrative, a total usurpation of the scientific process of open review – the system of checks and balances.

“Peer-reviewed,” the world has just discovered, has been nothing of the sort when it comes to the pseudo-science of “global warming”.  Actor Begley’s position of “peer-reviewed” turned out to not have been spoken from standing on solid rock, but from a tree, a precarious perch on a dead limb that was being sawed off as he spoke. http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/11/24/ed-begley-jr-loses-it-on-fox-news/ 

But there is nothing new under the sun, and those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. This combination of politics, science and public policy machinations can be found in the career and wreckage left by one man, Trofim D. Lysenko of the Soviet Union.

T.D. Lysenko (1898-1976) was a half-educated man of science; he didn’t finish his studies and remained defensive through his life towards those with better credentials and experience than he. One might say he learned just enough to be dangerous, developing a new theory, “agro-biology” which mixed known processes of agronomy and plant genetics, with theoretical and unproven evolutionary concepts. His theory appealed to the Soviet “New Man” thinking, upending the old orders, a “political” view applied to agriculture.

The Soviets had a problem; most of Soviet agricultural land was more north than America – of the latitudes of Canada, not the reliable American breadbaskets of warmer Iowa or Illinois. They have a short growing season, with no room for error, therefore much of Soviet agricultural plant research was focused on developing hardier and more productive strains of wheat. Lysenko caught the attention of the Soviet central planners when he proposed a radical method that he claimed would shock wheat into developing new characteristics that appealingly would produce a sort of “revolutionary” wheat fit for the “revolutionary” Soviet Union. And, like Lysenko’s education, “agro-biology” had just enough grounding in proven science to be convincing, especially to people who didn’t know anything about agriculture, agronomy or plant genetics. Soviet scientists who worked in those fields took a look, did some of their own peer testing and began demurring.

Lysenko used his rising political power to enhance his data to promote his theory, reduce criticism, remove scientists from their positions, chase them from the field and in several cases, most notably Lysenko’s chief critic and professional competitor, Nikolai Vavilov, the man arrested, stripped of his position and literally sent to a Soviet prison where he died, a broken, innocent man. The rest of Soviet science took note, and shut up. They had to eat, after all. But there wasn’t much to eat after Soviet Central Planning decreed that the debate was over, “the science settled” and the “consensus” was that Lysenko’s methods were to be applied to all Soviet agriculture. Harvests dropped, the Lysenko-processed wheat didn’t produce the results Lysenko had predicted, had published and had promoted – a national, policy-contrived disaster.

The parallels between the Soviet centralized commitee promotion of Lysenko because his rhetoric fit the Soviet Progressive ideology, and “Climate Change” are ominous – the bullying, the falsification of data and the outright professional, political and bureaucratic smothering of dissenting opinions should be an important lesson to recall when presented with ClimateChange data, claims and computer modeling that fly in the face of observable reality. That the environmental movement has such luminaries as former Soviet President Gorbachev who after losing the free election for Russian president with an abysmal 3% of the vote, morphed into a “green” advocate, after stating that the “environmental movement was the last best hope of communism.”  A strategy of going “Green” that would lead to “Red,” should be a reason to closely examine the claims, the direction and the veracity of anything presented by people who have no backgrounds in science whatsoever. The mountain of emails discussing elimination of dissent, hijacking the peer-review process, collusion and obfuscation, and the exposure of the faulty computer codes written for climate modeling shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it’s welcome and concrete proof that “Global Warming” and “ClimateChange” are politics and power, not science or actual weather. This fraud as it still unravels with almost daily exposure of yet more admissions of hiding data, manipulation to produce desired outcomes, is becoming more and more suspicious as a way to create a basis on which massive taxation and redistribution of wealth was going to be justified, negatively affecting billions of people around the world, arguably the biggest single planned theft in human history.

“In other words, the primary task of the politics of science was to ensure that science served the political end of the people and its government.”     The Lysenko Effect, by Nils Roll-Hansen

Resources:  The Lysenko Effect, by Nils Roll-Hansen;    The Lysenko Affair, by David Joravsky
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When J.D. Hayworth begins his stump speech, he reminds voters he applauds the years of service of Arizona’s senior U.S. senator. He reminds voters that he thanks Senator McCain for his sacrifices and his patriotism. Often, these tributes elicit respectful applause for McCain.

Conversely, McCain’s campaign has been on a ruthless, seemingly-desperate attack since before “day one”. When J.D. was not yet a candidate, and was still hammering away on his radio show against supporters of big government bailouts (the likes of whom include John McCain, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi), already the McCain Machine was purchasing advertisements with cash from their campaign war chest – some of the ads against Hayworth running during Hayworth’s own radio program.

…sort of like sending hate mail against Santa Claus to the North Pole elves.

This wasn’t the first, or the last, low blow of the McCain campaign. From the top down, the entire organization is still stinging from the defeat handed to them by America’s now-vastly unpopular president, Barack Obama. After just a year in office, suburban voters have abandoned Obama. Youth voters are abandoning Obama. Independents have abandoned Obama. The list goes on, and it’s not surprising that McCain is getting tired of criss-crossing Arizona where the question frequently arises: “How did you manage to lose to this guy?”

Frustration aside, the McCain team seems to delight in taking their angst and anger out on Hayworth. Voters and pundits alike are noticing.

Not long after Ron Paul won the CPAC Straw Poll (a month or so after J.D. Hayworth had cruised to a solid victory over McCain in the Arizona GOP Straw Poll), McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers taunted both the Paul and Hayworth camps for their ability to win straw polls. Why? No general election was ever won based on height of arrogance.

And, of course there is the latest breakdown by Anthony Miller, paid political operative of John McCain and chairman of the LD20 Republicans. After J.D. Hayworth dropped by McCain headquarters to invite the senior senator to a series of public debates, Miller lost his cool, and launched into an expletive-laden tirade against Hayworth on Facebook that included calling the former congressman a “fool” and an “a**hole”.

While J.D. Hayworth would never keep someone on his staff who acted with such disrespect toward his opponent, the McCain campaign seems to be making it a requirement. And that’s a terrible disappointment for this campaign and the debates which should be occurring. We hope that McCain will start reprimanding staff and consultants who act in this disrespectful way, and that McCain himself will rein-in the negative attacks for a real debate on the issues.

…And if McCain knows he can’t win on the issues, perhaps it’s time to retire rather than lose.

A m e r i c a n P o s t – G a z e t t e

Distributed by C O M M O N S E N S E , in Arizona

Maricopa County Supervisors running amok Scheming to block mandated election By Laurie Roberts, Arizona Republic

Apparently, the good folks who run this county don’t have a set of Arizona Revised Statutes. If they did, Andy Thomas and his top aides wouldn’t be wheeling around town in cars paid for with the public dime.  But that outrageous transgression pales in comparison to what it appears the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors may be contemplating. As everybody on the planet knows by now, Thomas is making plans to abandon his office in order to seek better digs over at the state AG’s office. To do that, he’ll have to resign by May. State law allows the Board of Supervisors to then appoint another Republican to replace him.Of course, there is no way the Sups should touch that job, given that two of its five members are under indictment and would essentially be selecting their own prosecutor. Thomas is correct to assert that neutral party (retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor maybe?) should take over that job. But even if the supervisors do go against good sense and appearances of a conflict, it seems there may be some private talk under way about how to get around state law – and those pesky people who might want a say in who will run prosecutions in this state for the next two years. Voters, I mean. In a story this morning, Wade Swanson, the county’s director of general-litigation services, hinted that the supervisors may not be putting Thomas’ job up to a public vote this fall. Here’s an excerpt from the story, by Republic reporters Mike Kiefer and Yvonne Wingett: “Swanson said county officials are concerned Thomas’ successor would not have enough time to gather thousands of signatures necessary to appear on a ballot. Swanson also confirmed that attorneys are looking at the succession matter but would not release related documents to The Arizona Republic, citing attorney-client privilege. Swanson said contract attorney Tom Irvine has been asked “to find an appropriate expert in this area.” I don’t know what “an appropriate expert is”.  I do, however, know what the law says. ARS 16-230. Vacancy in certain state or county offices; election If a county office becomes vacant, the board of supervisors shall appoint a person of the same political party as the person vacating the office to fill the portion of the term until the next regular general election. If the vacancy occurs within the first two years of the term, and before the date on which a nomination paper is required to be filed as prescribed by section 16-311, a primary election shall be held as otherwise provided by law to determine candidates to fill the unexpired term. At the next regular general election, the person elected shall fill the remainder of the unexpired term of the vacant office. It doesn’t say if a vacancy occurs within the first two years of the term, a primary election can be held.  It says it shall be held.  If Thomas resigns before the date on which nomination petitions must be filed, the supervisors must let voters have their say. If Swanson believes Thomas is gaming the system to get his own guy in there, well I’m pretty sure the county sups know how to play games, too, with their own guys. Or, they can do the sane thing and turn this particular appointment over to someone who doesn’t have a dog in this fight. Now, can I send the county a bill for this studied legal opinion? Laurie Roberts is a columnist for The Arizona Republic.

“I am sure Ahmedinejad is thankful.”
Indeed he is. The Progressive Liberal Left is helping wage his war of breaking down of will to stand up against him, garbling debate and employing boilerplate stereotyping tactics to encourage people to ignore the warning signs and berate anyone who raises the alarm – at a time when a number of actions – not necessarily war – are still available to help counter this aggressive and brutal regime. All this running interference for free! Ahmedinejad is not just thankful, he’s delighted.

Ignore, ignore means the Iranian regime can carry on without disruption, and steadily increases the probability of total war, the worst case for everyone. We may be quite unperturbed and complacent here in Arizona, but have we checked the European press lately? They are very very very worried. The UN has three sets of sanctions on the books now which Iran is blatantly ignoring, and with the rising anxiety from the Iranian Regime’s announcement regarding achieving their benchmark objective to enrich uranium to levels required for weapons applications – not even a shock – there is heavy pressuring for more sanctions.  (  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8522910.stm   ). Europe will be in the target zone and they do not have a missile shield. Because of the expense and development required, they’ve been long banking on the USA to provide that – and Obama by his rebuffing of Poland, is sending out a clear message to our allies they cannot count on that, as long as the Democratic Party holds on to power.

Because of its size, even ONE nuclear warhead detonating anywhere in Israel would be far more devastating than two or three in a nation the size of Iran. They’re worried. What good does it do Israel to have “300 warheads” it can rain down on Iran when the one can’t be stopped? Iran will not launch one, they will launch multiple. Only one has to get through. Iran knows it, Israel knows it. It’s an intolerable situation. When Iran announced this week that Israel wanted war by this summer, Israel coolly replied, “No we don’t.” But the inclination of the press is to admonish Israel, not Iran for provocative nuclear talk.(   http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100216/twl-israel-mulling-a-spring-or-summer-wa-3cd7efd.html )

Why focus on just Israel? Iran and Iraq are traditional enemies; Iranian Revolutionary Guards were infiltrating, training and heavily funding the insurgency in Iraq against US troops. Iran could easily choose to drop a nuke on Baghdad as payback for Saddam’s invasion of Iran and the resultant 9 year war during which over a million people were killed, and by that also eliminate an inconvenient democracy on their border. On Iran’s other border, a nuke to destroy Kabul and by that, the Afghan government there would make it easy for Iran to invade and conquer that nation in order to spread Iran’s form of radical Revolutionary Islam.

It doesn’t HAVE to go to war, but the way the Obama Administration is not handling this, aggravated by Obama reaching his hand out to the Anti-American Ahmedinejad, hugging the America-hating Hugo Chavez, in the room with American-murdering Ghaddafi, and nothing extended to the pro-freedom Iranian people has sent a terrible message across the globe. Allies and enemies alike are downgrading their traditional assumptions about America’s reliability for the worse, a weakness that our enemies will exploit, and greatly increasing other nations resorting to war to stop Iran before it can attack them.

America is not helpless. Citizens have every right to expect and insist that our elected leadership represent our national interests of security, which includes our allies. That’s their JOB. These representatives are supposed to be stewards of our military and our foreign policy, maintaining capacities; working at all levels of diplomacy and using all available established mechanisms to make every  reasonable effort to keep the conditions that produce war from not developing.

But the United States Government today, controlled monopolistically by the Democratic Party, is presiding over not national security, but a massive political fete, featuring a pinata of American wealth, loading it up with taxpayer money, and tinsel goodies bought on debt – with entitlement groups swinging blindly to smash the bird while special interest groups fight over the “free money” sweets that spill to the ground.

That is NOT the role of good government. That is NOT the behavior of a responsible citizenry.

When the favors have run out, the money gone, the taxpayers broken, the hangover begins. The national wealth blown on an out of control binge fueled by greed; frivolous pursuits indulged while national security was neglected. Our irresponsible government will stagger off like the dissipated Belshazzar of Babylon who feasted and partied, squandering the wealth of the people instead of attending to his duty of guarding the city while the king was away, leading the army to defend the nation, drunkenly blinking incomprehensively at the words written before him on the wall that condemned him: Mene Mene Tekil Parsin.

“Because of your arrogant and irresponsible behavior, your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.”

As we consider the many candidates who are lining up for 2010 and 2012, for a chance to be the ones chosen to represent our state, and our nation, as representatives, senators and president, those who understand this grave duty and can stand firm despite political attacks and pressure to capitulate should be the ones selected to move to state and national seats. Citizens have a responsibility to each other to chose wisely, to consider well the character, the experience and the abilities of each candidate. Shallow and uninformed decisions will reward representatives who are unequal to the task of representing and governing.

The Persian leadership is poised to test America as it has never been tested before; they are but one of our enemies, so we need to select men and women who will be able to provide informed and solid leadership, and who will always vote for the best interests of the American People and their rights as derived from the American Constitution.

Conservatives in Arizona and across the states were left shaking their heads in doubt when Grover Norquist, head of the vaunted Americans for Tax Reform, announced he was backing John McCain’s re-election bid for the U.S. Senate. While most observers assume McCain would garner much of the Beltway/establishment endorsements, Grover has (like McCain) tried for years to fashion himself something of a maverick, seemingly putting principles ahead of party when push came to shove. Were he defending some newly revealed transgression of, say, Ronald Reagan’s, we’d likely give Grover the benefit of the doubt while rushing to defend the Gipper ourselves. But, Grover, we knew Reagan. Reagan was a friend of ours. And John McCain is no Ronald Reagan.

What makes the Grover-McCain endorsement so strange is that it was painfully obvious Grover clearly didn’t entirely believe what he was saying when he said it. On this Tuesday past, Norquist (calling into Mike Broomhead’s show) explained his rationale, saying he supported McCain’s signing of ATR’s pledge, opposition to federal earmarks, and that McCain “consistently votes against tax increases and for spending restraint.”

Here are the problems: McCain’s opponent in the primary, J.D. Hayworth, has also signed the ATR Pledge (and faithfully kept it while serving in Congress). While McCain is a vocal critic of earmarks, just last year he voted for $180 billion in earmarks (by comparison: the annual General Fund budget for the entire state of Arizona is approximately $10 billion). And as for voting against tax increases and for spending restraint, John McCain was the Republican “maverick” who voted AGAINST the Bush tax-relief bills of both 2001 and 2003 (these are the same tax relief packages we hear so much about today that, if Congress lets them expire could cost American small businesses millions of additional jobs).

As for Mr. Hayworth, it is noteworthy to add that as the only Arizona member of Congress on the tax policy Ways and Means Committee, he helped draft the 2001 and 2003 tax relief acts. Senator McCain called these bills tax cuts for the wealthy, but in reality they reduced taxes for low-income earners from 15% to a new, low 10% tax bracket. They eliminated the marriage penalty. They dramatically increased the child tax credit. They reduced taxes on dividend investment income and capital gains. And, of course, they provided for sunsetting the federal death tax this very year: 2010. Of course, John McCain voted against these important, landmark tax relief measures and now the Congress in which he serves is determined to undo it all.

Why Grover Norquist believes John McCain, who spends hundreds of billions bailing out banks, tries to spend hundreds of billions more trying to bailout crooked mortgages, and on top of it all, wants to spend over $2 Trillion to finance the retirement plans of illegal immigrants, is the right man for the job, is beyond us. Unless it’s just another case of the Washington establishment taking care of their own once again.

At least Bill Bennett was more honest: “Hayworth’s views, if you put them both on paper, are probably closer to my own, but I gotta support John McCain because he’s the man.” Google Bennett and listen to a clip of the 30-second endorsement. It’s the least enthusiastic endorsement ever recorded, suggesting he was paying back a debt owed or, even possibly, he or a member of his family was being held hostage at the time of the taping.

Final thoughts… It’s very early in this campaign. J.D. has not even announced yet. In fact, John McCain was running attack ads against J.D. (on J.D.’s own radio show) even before J.D. began to make plans about the race. Said one PC at last night’s LD21 meeting, “Why couldn’t McCain have run like this against Obama?” The point’s a good one. The McCain folks have frequently proven their willingness to attack fellow Republicans, whether on in the Senate during amnesty debates or here in Arizona in, well, any debate. At this rate, it’s unlikely here in Arizona he’ll be starting every other sentence during the present campaign with the phrase “My friends…”

As for Grover, he may come to find on August 24th that principles still matter most… now more than ever.

- Conservative Name Withheld

Iran announces today that they are a nuclear nation.

Total FAIL for the Obama Administration.

Obama spoke on numerous times during the campaign about his goal to REDUCE nuclear weapons. Evidently, he meant only evicerating America’s defenses while Iran is on full speed to OFFENSIVE weapons manufacturing.

Iran has long publicized its intention to wipe Israel off the map. It is now a critical step closer. It has already been launching missles and rockets to gain experience in developing a reliable nuclear weapon delivery system. We only know what they’ve told us, they are certainly NOT telling us everything, but what we know is suffiicent:  they are poised to put it all together for the purpose of exporting mass destruction.

Iran is a well-educated, modern, and oil-prosperous society with a brutal and idealogically-driven regime that is staying in power solely by raw, lethal force against its own people. Today’s internet is full of videos of the Iranian people being beaten today for the crime of demanding freedom from tyranny.  We don’t need even today’s raw footage of the clubbings in Tehran to know the character of the brutal men in charge of the radical Revolutionary Iranian Regime; during the Iraq-Iran War, the mullahs gave children a piece of Koranic scripture, promised them a place in heaven and pushed them across fields ahead of the troops … to clear the landmines.   What worse can we expect if they treat their citizens that way, while they consider us, “The Great Satan?”

So, evidently it isn’t scattered global strikes today, but the achievement of a Revolutionary Iranian Regime military objective that guarantees total WAR, and soon.

Why war?   And why soon? The threat of nuclear destruction is so serious that Iran’s neighbors cannot hold or they will be effectively held hostage or forced to capitulate the moment Iran can deliver a bomb to Cairo, Baghdad, Tel Aviv, Amman, Ankara, Kabul, New Delhi, Rome. Any American troops in Iraq would be in harm’s way. America could easily be blackmailed by a threat of nuclear strike to pull out all troops, leaving newly Democratic Iraq at the mercy of their neighbor and arch enemy, Iran.

But not to worry, the Democratic Party has assured us we are ‘post-war’ and no longer require a military capable of defending America, nor do we  require a functioning missile shield. As Rep Kirkpatrick (D) said, representing the Democratic Majority Party Congress and the Democratic Party Controlled Administration’s policy:

“Our military will have to make due with less.”

As if the military’s purpose to provide national security was at the same strategic level of multimillionaire Nancy Pelosi’s U.S. Taxpayer funded jet, which she needs more than our troops need support, the U.S. government owning General Motors, which the White House needs more than reinforcing our troops, nationalizing student college loans which is more important than enhancing our intelligence capabilities – despite the debacle of the Christmas bombing attempt,  TARP bailouts, massage parlors, schools buying iPODs with stimulus funds, all of which trump national security issues as recipients of taxpayer-derived funds.

So, after tripling national debt, into beyond the next generation, then raising the debt ceiling so they can keep spending on everything BUT our military, the Democratic Party in the White House and the Congress insists that Americans will have to make due with LESS SECURITY.

“Belt-tightening,” Obama intones weekly, “Everyone has to sacrifice.”

They need the money for Democratic Party national priorities like buying up $50 million beaches in the Virgin Islands.

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