Obama's House

From MPR:
Line for Obama rally exceeds a mile

June 3, 2008

Large crowds began forming early today to get a spot at tonight Barack Obama rally at the Xcel Center. St. Paul police initially reported more than 50,000 people were inline for the event. By 6:30 p.m. the line extended more than 1.5 miles.

St. Paul, Minn. — Many of the thousands who arrived several hours early for Sen. Barack Obama's appearance in downtown St. Paul said the wait was a small price to pay in exchange for watching history unfold.

The Associated Press is reporting that Obama has sealed the Democratic presidential nomination today, taking him one step closer to becoming the nation's first African-American president.

Look At That Shiny Object Over There...

"I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

Thomas Jefferson



"We, the members of the new Republican Party, believe that the preservation and enhancement of the values that strengthen and protect individual freedom, family life, communities and neighborhoods and the liberty of our beloved nation should be at the heart of any legislative or political program presented to the American people. . . . Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. . . .The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when? Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society."

Ronald Reagan
1977


"The rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason - to pass the tax bill on to you."

George W. Bush

Same Old GOP...Grand Old Plan

"My vision for renewing our party in 2008 is the same as it was when I ran [unsuccessfully] for leader after the 2006 elections: I believe the way back to a Republican majority is to the right. Our new Republican minority must rededicate itself to the ideals and standards that minted our majority in 1994. Only by renewing our commitment to fight for the principles embodied in the Contract with America can we hope to have the credibility to earn back the opportunity to lead this national legislature. We will only defeat the Democrat agenda by presenting a positive, conservative message in vivid contrast to the big government liberalism of the new majority. To renew our majority, we must offer this nation a compelling vision of fiscal discipline and reform. . . .We must again embrace the notion that Republicans seek the majority not simply to govern but to change government for the better."

Rep. Mike Pence
Indiana Republican

Message To GOP: "Don't Worry - Be Happy"

"Democrats Win Landslide Victory"

From: Senator Bill Frist, M.D.
Date: Thu, May 29, 2008 at 3:59 PM
Subject: "Democrats Win Landslide Victory"

Dear Republican Supporter,

I have a real fear of waking up to this headline after the elections this fall. [...]

In key states, news accounts indicate Democrats are outpacing Republicans registering voters. We also know Barack Obama's campaign is utilizing the Internet to raise record amounts of money to support his campaign and Democrats nationally ... all in the hope that new voters and record resources will produce a Democrat landslide victory this fall.

There's so much at risk, and conservatives I talk with from all across the country are feeling the rumblings of "what could be." [...]

[...] I ask for your immediate help in supporting Republican candidates running for U.S. Senate by making a contribution of $10, $25, $50 or even $100 to the NRSC [...]

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Don't Worry - Be Happpy - Send Money$

A Nose For News

"Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided. In these pages, I've tried to come to grips with some of the truths that life inside the White House bubble obscured. Many of the conclusions I've reached are quite different from those I would have embraced at the start of the process…”

“…Most of our elected leaders in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike, are good and decent people. Yet too many of them today have made a practice of shunning truth and the high level of openness and forthrightness required to discover it. Most of it is not willful or conscious. Rather it is part of the modern Washington game that has become the accepted norm.

As I explain in this book, Washington has become the home of the permanent campaign, a game of endless politicking based on the manipulation of shades of truth, partial truths, twisting of the truth, and spin. Governing has become an appendage of politics rather than the other way around, with electoral victory and the control of power as the sole measures of success. That means shaping the narrative before it shapes you. Candor and honesty are pushed to the side in the battle to win the latest news cycle.

Of course, deception in politics is nothing new. What’s new is the degree to which it now permeates our national political discourse.”

Scott McClellan
What Happened

At The Writers' Conference

by Bill Holm

After my rambunctious verbal assault
on two thousand years of Christian baggage,
three thousand of European mistakes,
a sprightly, pin-curled old lady with sad eyes
asks: “Why do you call it Christian baggage?”

This conversation can’t go on. We both know it.
How do I explain in three minutes
why everything has been dead wrong
since the beginning?
Authority made of paper, strategy in vestments,
charity wearing sidearms, risen corpses,
virgin mothers, just armies…Damn the logic!

My baggage is her furniture; she lives
in my fire sale, serves tea every day in thin
blue porcelain cups that she imagines me
smashing one after the other
with arrogant clumsiness, tossing them into
the fearful darkness outside her parlor window.

Local Borderline Cult Praises Their Fearless Leader

Even Libertarians See Randists as a Cult:

The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult by Murray N. Rothbard

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995), the founder of modern libertarianism and the dean of the Austrian School of economics, was the author of The Ethics of Liberty and For a New Liberty and many other books and articles. He was also academic vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Center for Libertarian Studies
" Astonished that the Rand cult had any position on smoking, my friend pressed on: "They have a position on smoking? What is it?" The Randian replied that smoking, according to the cult, was a moral obligation. In my own experience, a top Randian once asked me rather sharply, "How is it that you don’t smoke?" When I replied that I had discovered early that I was allergic to smoke, the Randian was mollified: "Oh, that’s OK, then."

Republican Spin "McClellan -Stooge With New Masters"

American Spectator Story



A lot of these Republicans defections are predictable and self-inflicted: a Republican administration, seeking to curry favor with the press, brings in a liberal Republican or semi-conservative Democrat (like Dilulio) and then lo and behold this person finds he objects to that administration and later criticizes it. In this case, the Bush administration's self-inflicted wound was to hire a stooge who it first manipulated and then released into the world to be manipulated by others. They handed him talking points and he read them to millions; then his new masters handed him talking points and he wrote them up into a bestselling book.

This is the McClellan they knew.

Public Education Not Preparing For The Future

The education system is failing to prepare children and young people for climate change!


It seems almost obvious that children of school age should be well informed about climate change, an issue that will increasingly influence and shape their future way of life. For businesses trying to lower their carbon emissions and adapt to a changing climate too, it is essential that the education system equips the next generation of employees and employers with a fundamental and reasoned knowledge of climate change. In the UK, however, the government is responding slowly and cautiously to the growing pressure to improve climate change education in schools.

A government survey back in 2005 revealed that climate change was the issue of most concern to schoolchildren in the UK. These results coincided with the launch of a government-backed programme focused on youth involvement in the issue, the J8 Global Citizen Programme, first launched at the G8 summit in Gleneagles 2005.

Read more @Climate Change Corp.

And The Official Smear Word for Scott McClellan Is...

"Disgruntled"



Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan has a new book out titled "What Happened." The White House has labelled him "disgruntled." Follow the smear word as it travels through out the vast right wing conspiracy network.

Click here for the latest on Scott McClellan + Disgruntled.

Ponder This

An elderly man in South Carolina, named Tom, had owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond in the back, fixed up nice; picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees. The pond was properly shaped and fixed up for swimming when it was built.

One evening old Tom decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been there for a while and look it over. He grabbed a five gallon bucket to bring back some fruit.

As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond. He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end. One of the women shouted to him, 'We're not coming out until you leave!'

Old Tom frowned and replied, 'I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked.'

Holding the bucket up he said, 'I'm here to feed the alligator.'

Moral: Old men can still think fast.

I Know Where You Can Stick It

Your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little wars.
Now Jesus he don't like killin'
No matter w hat the reason if for,
In addition, your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
---
John Prine

Russian Communist Party Calls To Boycott Indiana Jones

Moscow, Russia (CNS) - The latest "Indiana Jones" has angered the leaders of the Communist Party of St Petersburg in Russia over the film's negative portrayal of their country's communist party.

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," the newest installment of the successful film franchise, centers on Indiana Jones, played by Harrison Ford, and his race against an evil Russian KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to track down a legendary crystal skull. The film was set in 1957.

Apparently, Blanchett and her entourage's portrayal of the Russians didn't sit well with the real-life Russians. They are calling for a boycott of the film and even told Ford not to visit their country.

In an open letter quoted by Fox News, the Communist Party's ideology committee writes:

"Your work in this film is an insult to the Soviet and Russian people, who remember the difficult Fifties when our country was concluding its reconstruction after the Great War, but did not send merciless terrorists to the U.S.A."

They add that while they like the 65-year-old actor's other roles, they hated this newest one. They say Ford will be beaten if he ever comes to the country again. The letter continues: "You have no future in Russia any more. Speaking plainly, it is better for you not to come here. You will be beaten and despised."

What Do We Do Now?

"Our instructors at the Marine Officers Basic School were handpicked from among the finest young officers in the Corps. Almost all had been in combat, and many bore visible scars. As the months at school went by, they repeatedly and unendingly challenged us with an age-old mantra: What do you do now, lieutenant?

Just before we graduated, a tough but insightful lieutenant colonel who had fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam gave us a speech, a warning that echoes in my memory almost every day. He recounted a story of a fight in Korea that went incredibly bad—where, for all his experience, he made an error in judgment.

“I had the enemy pinned down on a ridge,” he said. “I set up a base of fire and sent 13 Marines into the tree line in order to envelop the enemy. Thirteen Marines went into the tree line, and all 13 were killed. And, gentlemen, there is not a day that goes by when I don’t think of that.”

The colonel then spoke of the inalienable bottom line of combat leadership: While all Marines are equally in harm’s way, it is the leaders who must make the decisions about what to do, then live with the results. What he may not have realized is that he also spelled out the responsibility that sits on the shoulders of all leaders."



"...Our country is in the middle of a profound crisis. This crisis has many causes, but much of it has been brought about by poor leadership decisions at every level of government. In addition, our electoral process is dominated by financial interests that are threatened by the very notion of reform.

Elections shouldn’t be media circuses, nor should they be auctions where a candidate sells himself to the highest bidder. They should be moral contracts between those who wish to lead and those who are consenting to be led.

What, then, must we do?

In one form or another, this question is asked daily in every community and in almost every household around the world. In authoritarian societies, it’s whispered; in others, it is debated. In America, we quite frankly find ourselves doing a little of both.

Our challenges lie in improving the way we’ve been selecting our leaders. To the American voters, I offer this advice: Be as shrewd and ruthless in your demands on our leaders as the wizards running campaigns are in their strategies to get your vote. Do your part to send to Washington people who truly want to solve the problems of this country from the bottom up.

You won’t regret it. You will benefit from it. And the stakes could not be higher. Sometimes the business of politics seems silly. It can also be infuriating. But you must stay in the game, because you and your grandchildren will be the inheritors of both our successes and flaws."

Senator Jim Webb
A Time To Fight


Rollingstone: Virginia Senator James Webb: Washington's Most Unlikely Revolutionary .

Parade: What It Means To Be a Leader by Jim Webb.

Can Afford To Smell The Stinking Roses

"We are so anxious to be prosperous, we can't see the effect on nature and on us. I see pictures of the faces of the Delta and Northwest (airline) executives and listen to what they have to say. My God, it's awful. They say they can be a more prosperous company if they merge. Who cares? What we need is for them to be broken into five different competing airlines. We need more little airports and fewer shoe X-ray machines."

Bill Holm
Minnesota writer

"Duct Tape Bandit" pleads guilty

Just In Time For Annual Hudson School District Meeting

Kentucky's infamous "Duct Tape Bandit" is heading to prison.

Last August Kasey Kazee gained international notoriety after robbing a liquor store with his face wrapped in duct tape.

Tuesday was the final chapter in the story. With a clear face, Kazee pleaded guilty to second degree robbery. Gone are the scars that once existed from duct tape that wrapped his face.

Kazee walked into Shamrock Liquors in Catlettsburg with his face wrapped in duct tape and his shirt pulled over his head. He then threatened to kill the clerk, telling her he had a gun.

Kazee was the one who ended up on the short end of the stick when store manager Bill Steele chased him out the door with a club. Even after getting caught tape-faced, Kazee denied the act in his now world famous tirade.

"Look at me. Do I look like a duct tape bandit? I'm not no duct tape bandit," Kazee said in a jailhouse interview.

"Even though it's kind of comical, Mr. Kazee is a very dangerous man. He had a previous robbery charge from 2001 and was out on parole on that when he committed this crime," said David Justice, Commonwealth Attorney.

Has The GOP Boogieman Gone Flaccid?

"Today's GOP spends so much time fretting about how to relive the Reagan heyday, it has failed to do him credit by laying out its own plans for today's unique challenges. It remains in hock to interest groups, running ads about sanctuary cities as Americans curse over gas prices. In a repeat of 2006, it spends more time trying to scare voters about Democrats than defining itself. It refuses to give up the earmarks that are a symbol of its worn-out reign."

Kimberley Strassel

A White House Of Cards

Another Fine RNC Whine - Not Enough Tax Dollars for Their Convention

RNC Hosts Disappointed With Lack Of State Help

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ― The local committee hosting the Republican National Convention says it's disappointed the state didn't follow through on a promised financial guarantee.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Jeff Larson, chief executive of the Minneapolis Saint Paul 2008 Host Committee, told Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislative leaders the state's failure to offer financial backing in the event of a cash flow shortage "creates a serious risk of breach of our agreement with the RNC."

Larson asked state and local leaders to find an alternative way to fulfill the state's commitment. In a phone interview on Friday, he didn't offer suggestions but said he hoped "creative minds can come together."

As the host committee was trying to lure either the Democratic and Republican National Conventions to St. Paul, it negotiated a package that included a state commitment to back the committee's fundraising with a letter of credit that would be executed if there's a cash flow shortage.

"The commitment of this guarantee by the State was a critical element in the Republican National Committee's decision to award the 2008 Convention to Minneapolis and Saint Paul," Larson wrote in the letter, dated May 21. The convention will be held at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul from Sept. 1-4.

The Legislature didn't pass a bill seeking a $39 million letter of credit in 2007. And in the 2008 session that ended Sunday, a smaller amount of $14 million wasn't approved, either.

Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said in an e-mail Friday that the governor had "repeatedly and directly" asked the Legislature to secure financial backing for the committee.

"Those requests were rejected by DFL legislative leaders, including when the request was made during the final negotiations to close up the budget," McClung wrote. "This was particularly frustrating because the Department of Finance said that the transaction would be revenue neutral and would not impact the state budget."

Through a spokesman, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, a Minneapolis Democrat, said: "The line of credit for the Republican National Convention was included in the House tax bill. In the end, the House, Senate and Governor's office could not reach an agreement on this issue."

Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, said the line of credit was included in a tax bill that Pawlenty vetoed during the 2007 legislative session. "We didn't see any reason to do it again," Pogemiller said.

The host committee is obligated to raise $39 million for the convention; but the committee has an end goal of $58 million to cover operational costs. Larson said fundraising is on track, and the committee anticipates it will raise 80 percent of its $39 million contractual commitment by June 15.

Larson said the state's inaction isn't likely to have financial consequences for the convention; the last two Republican National Conventions have had letters of credit that weren't drawn upon.

But Larson takes issue with the principle behind the commitment. In his letter, he wrote: "Minnesotans are well known for honoring their commitments. It gives us grave cause for concern when the five highest ranking public officials in our State are unable to make good on a commitment of this importance and significance."

The convention is expected to bring $150 million to $160 million in economic activity to the area and create 2,800 jobs, generating over $100 million in wages, Larson said.

Matt Burns, convention spokesman, said in an e-mail that the convention will be successful in September, but it's unfortunate that the state didn't meet its obligation.

There's No "US" in "Utopia"

"Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers' productivity has increased by 60%. What's more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven't read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what's happened to workers' health insurance and pension plans..."


"...What has overtaken America's working people is not a natural disaster like "globalization," and not even some kind of societal atavism in which countries regress mysteriously to their 19th-century selves. This is a man-made catastrophe, a result that proceeded directly from the deliberate beatdown of organized labor and the wrecking of the liberal state."


"...It is, in other words, a political disaster, with tax cuts, trade agreements, deregulatory measures, and enforcement decisions all finely crafted to benefit one part of society and leave the rest behind. Few of the voters who gave Ronald Reagan his landslide victories, it is fair to say, intended for this to be the outcome. They wanted their country to stand tall again, certainly; they wanted the scary regulators off their backs, maybe; but I can recall no conservative who trumpeted those long-ago elections – or any of the succeeding contests, for that matter – as a referendum on plutocracy."



"...So let us have one now. Instead of pleasant talk about "change" and feats of beer drinking at the corner tavern, let us hear our candidates address this greatest issue of them all: What kind of country are we to be? A land of equality? Or a bankers' utopia – where the law of the land has achieved mystical oneness with the higher law of classical economics, and devil take the bottom 80%."

Thomas Frank
Fighting Words
Read more @Wall Street Journal.

Counter point to Frank's column by James Pethokoukis @ US News & World Report.

Chris Matthews Tears Up Kevin James on Hardball

"...(Kevin) James goes off like fireworks, blasting Obama's willingness to talk to the nation's enemies and accusing him of policies detrimental to Israel. And Matthews asks him a simple question: What did Chamberlain do? You're defending a speech that equates Obama with him, so what was his sin?

James couldn't answer. He could bluster, sputter and spread fertilizer like a gardener, but he couldn't answer. This became painfully obvious each time Matthews doggedly repeated the question.

What Chamberlain did — he gave Hitler a chunk of Czechoslovakia in exchange for what he thought was "peace in our time" — is not some "Jeopardy!" obscurity. It is, rather, a pivot on which turned perhaps the bloodiest tragedy in human history. Yet Kevin James knows nothing about it.
If anything more aptly symbolizes the regression of conservatism since the age of Reagan, I am not aware of it.

Some will say it's unfair to paint thoughtful conservatives with the same brush one uses to tar this blowhard. I would suggest the very need to use that modifier speaks volumes..."

Leonard J. Pitts, Jr.
Read more.

There's No "Pragmatist" in "GOP"

"Consider independents, that key voting group and bellwether of the national mood. Analysts have pointed to the growing number of registered independents as proof the country is moving toward the "middle." But as pollster Whit Ayres notes, what primarily defines independents is that they are all "cynical about politics and politicians." They aren't ideological in any particular way – left, right or center. They are "pragmatists," says Mr. Ayres. "They want solutions to problems."

This is what Republicans haven't yet understood. Their failures in office kicked off this anger, and they remain its target. Yet they've been doing a remarkable impression of 1980s Democrats, who engaged in trivial warfare even as Ronald Reagan laid out his vision for the future.

Today's GOP spends so much time fretting about how to relive the Reagan heyday, it has failed to do him credit by laying out its own plans for today's unique challenges. It remains in hock to interest groups, running ads about sanctuary cities as Americans curse over gas prices. In a repeat of 2006, it spends more time trying to scare voters about Democrats than defining itself. It refuses to give up the earmarks that are a symbol of its worn-out reign."

Kim Strassel
Potomac Watch
Read more @ Wall Street Journal.

McCain's Spiritual Guides

The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; and each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion; and, if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.

Edward Gibbon
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire


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"Some Christian ideals change with time and culture. Today, we do not share many of the assumptions of medieval Christians. The modern world exalts democratic individualism, religious liberty, and the separation of church and state. Urban II and the crusaders lived in a world with different ideals. Still, we consider it unfortunate that the crusaders never understood two basic truths: Christianity’s highest satisfactions are not guaranteed by possession of special places, and the sword is never God’s way to extend Christ’s kingdom."

Dr. Bruce Shelley
Christianity Today

Prosperity! What Is It Good For?

"We are a crazy country. The scariest idea we have is of success, prosperity and victory. Nobody wins wars. We have to finally get over that idea. Who gives a s— who wins a high school football game? I am not a competitive person, maybe because I was an only child, so I never had to fight for the second pork chop. I think it's bad manners to compete. Hillary Clinton's greatest vulgarity is her competitive spirit."

Bill Holm
Minnesota writer

Getting Hosed By Idealism

"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. ... Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt."

Martin Luther King, Jr.



"Like other American heroes -- Thomas Jefferson, for example, combined a disturbing tolerance for the violence of the French Revolution with the lifelong ownership of slaves -- King was not a simple figure. He inclined toward democratic socialism as the answer to poverty. In his opposition to the Vietnam War, he called America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and thundered that God might "break the backbone" of American power. Toward the end of his short life -- after years of water hoses and attack dogs, wiretaps and bomb threats -- King became increasingly isolated and depressed.

...Under King's leadership, the civil rights movement affirmed several principles: a belief that Providence favors justice and forbids despair; a belief that even the most bigoted white people have a core of humanity that might be touched and redeemed; a belief that American ideals were the ultimate answer to America's sins."

Michael Gerson
Read more @ Washington Post.

GOP Stands For Family Values

Fossella Is Said to Be Ending Re-election Bid

After more than two weeks of damaging and scandal-filled headlines, Representative Vito J. Fossella of Staten Island has decided not to seek another term in Congress, according to several people close to him.

Mr. Fossella, 43, has been the object of intense scrutiny since he was arrested in a Washington suburb on May 1 and charged with drunken driving. At the time of his arrest, his blood alcohol level was reportedly 0.17 percent, twice the legal limit in Virginia. Under that state’s law, he faces a mandatory five days in jail if convicted.

A week after his arrest, Mr. Fossella, the only Republican representing New York City in Congress, disclosed that he had been on the way to visit Laura Fay, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. He acknowledged that he and Ms. Fay had had an affair and that they were the parents of a 3-year-old daughter.

Read more @New York Times.

Bush Makes Ultimate Sacrifice for Our Troops

From Washinton Post:

By Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 14, 2008; Page A02

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Bush said in a White House interview with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Bush said he decided to stop playing golf on Aug. 19, 2003, when a truck bomb in Baghdad killed U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and more than a dozen others.

He said he received word of the attack while playing golf during a stay at the family ranch near Crawford, Tex. Press reports at the time indicate he took the call from Condoleezza Rice, then his national security adviser.

"They pulled me off the golf course, and I said it's just not worth it anymore to do," Bush said in yesterday's interview.

President Bush made further sacrifices for our troops by taking up drumming and dancing.

"I've always thought anyone can make money. Making a life worth living, that's the real test."

Robert Fulghum

Populist Pitchforks Of America Arise!

"The state of the union is angry. Citizens are furious about gas prices and health-care costs, broken schools and property taxes. These are the leaky hydrants, the constant reminders that government hasn't done much for them lately. Their fury has bubbled as they've watched Washington obsess over itself – dealing out earmarks, paying off constituencies, launching probes into political enemies. Accomplishing zip.

This anger is the best way to describe today's political landscape. Ever since Republicans were routed in 2006, and more recently with their loss of three special elections, the party has been in a debate about what changed in the country and what to do in response. In the primaries, as Mike Huckabee pitched to evangelicals, Rudy Giuliani pitched to fiscal conservatives, and Mitt Romney pitched to anything that moved, some went so far as to declare the "death" of the Reagan coalition."

Kimberley Strassel
Potomac Watch

Read more @Wall Street Journal.

A Mellon For You Thoughts...

"(Andrew) Mellon's exceptionally long tenure as treasury secretary, from 1921 until 1932, serving three of America's most pro-business presidents, showed him adept at using public office for private gain. Like Dick Cheney, a continuing beneficiary of Halliburton largesse, he saw no contradiction between the two. An early proponent of the theory of supply-side economics, that cutting taxes on the rich would spur economic growth, Mellon anticipated by 60 years the pro-plutocrat policies of Reagan and Bush. As secretary, Mellon continued illegally to remain actively engaged in his business affairs, lobbying for tariffs to protect his firms and contracts to help expand them, while repeatedly lying to Congress and the press about his involvement.

In keeping with his distrust of government intervention (except in his favour) and fervent belief in inequality and social Darwinism (strains of thought used today to justify America's porcine corporate salaries and feeble social insurance system), Mellon chillingly rejected any notion that the government should intervene to help those ruined by the Crash of 1929, or those whose jobs and businesses were annihilated in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Speculators "deserved it"; while the unemployed "will work harder, lead a more moral life". Around this time, as criticism of Mellon grew, his son Paul saw this ditty written in a urinal: "Mellon pulled the whistle/Hoover rang the bell/Wall Street gave the signal/And the country went to hell." Cannadine perhaps fails to draw out how much Mellon's (lack of) policies towards the Depression discredited Republican laissez-faire economics for two generations, until their current vogue."

Mark Bearn
Book review of Mellon: An American Life by David Cannadine
Read view @ News Statesman

Too Much...

"After a while, the United States is simply too much: too much religion and not enough gods, too much news and not enough wisdom, too many weapons of mass destruction ... too much entertainment and not enough beauty, too much electricity and not enough light. ... And the worst excess of all: too many wars, too much misery and brutality — reflected as much in our own eyes as in those of our enemies."

Bill Holm
Minnesota writer

Politics Is Only Slogan Deep

"Of all of the presidential contenders’ slogans this year, Barack Obama’s have been the most interesting. His campaign creed is: “Yes, we can.” To which any reasonable person would ask: “Can what?” The answer, of course, is: “Hope.” But again, a reasonable person might ask: “Hope for what?” To which the answer confidently comes back from the Obama campaign: “For change.” Indeed Obama’s signs say: “Change We Can Believe In,” as opposed, one supposes, to the unbelievable changes. But the elementary problem with this—which any student of logic might raise—is that change can be for the better or for the worse.

Democrats in general, I would submit, confuse change with improvement. They fail to weigh the costs and benefits of change, to consider its unintended consequences, or to worry about what we need to conserve and how we might go about doing that faithfully. They ask Americans to embrace change for its own sake, in the faith that history is governed by a law of progress, which guarantees that change is almost always an improvement. The ability to bring about historical change, then, becomes the highest mark of the liberal leader. Thus Hillary Clinton quickly joined Obama on the change bandwagon. Her initial claim of “experience” sounded in retrospect a bit too boring—indeed, almost Republican in its plainness. So “Ready on Day One” signs morphed into “Ready for Change.”

Republican slogans have not been much better. Mitt Romney’s was: “Washington is Broken.” This populist refrain echoed, among others, Ross Perot’s from 1992. Romney, of course, was less a populist than an expert offering his skill as a businessman-consultant. He appealed to the old Republican fantasy that if only Washington could be run as efficiently as a private business, all would be well. But government is a very different thing from business: Elected officials can’t hire or fire government employees at will, are responsible to an electorate at regular intervals, and, above all, must try to persuade people about goals that-—unlike, say, pursuing higher profits—are amorphous and disputable.

As for John McCain, he doesn’t really have a slogan, unless we count “Mac is Back.” McCain differentiated himself from Romney by saying that he is a leader rather than a manager. A leader, McCain argued, appeals to patriotism rather than self-interest. Certainly McCain’s leading characteristic is his personal honor, which—unlike many republican men of honor—he talks about a lot and in public. He fits the traditional category of a war hero-turned-politician, but with one important difference. Usually war heroes are victorious generals, whereas McCain is famous as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a war that ended in defeat. This fact helps to explain the somewhat prickly and self-referential quality to his sense of honor. He despises self-interest and likes to say so frequently in public, whether it’s the self-interest involved in campaign contributions (which he wants to regulate), attitudes towards illegal immigration (he imputes to its critics the most selfish motives), or even something like waterboarding (a kind of selfish act, motivated by an urgent sense of national interest). McCain stands against all considerations of low self-interest—or maybe any self-interest—in favor of doing the honorable thing, which sometimes turns out to mean simply doing the thing that John McCain wants to do."

Charles Kessler
Editor, Claremont Review of Books

Read more of “Limited Government: Are the Good Times Really Over?”

Do "Libertarians" Equal Limited Government

"From a certain point of view—let’s call it, for shorthand purposes, the libertarian point of view, or the view associated this year with Ron Paul—every dollar that government spends comes at the cost of freedom. The premise of this view is that government and freedom are opposites—that all government is oppression. By this way of thinking, limited government is simply limited oppression, differing in magnitude but not in kind from tyranny. Interestingly, this notion does not come originally from any libertarian thinker or friend of freedom. It comes from Machiavelli, the great analyst of open and hidden power, of force and fraud. From Machiavelli’s point of view, there’s no difference between just and unjust government, which are the same phenomenon called by different names. All government, whether considered to be just or unjust, is oppression. Just government is the kind we happen to agree with and profit from, and unjust is the opposite kind.

Against this view stand the American Founders and the greatest statesmen, who have always sharply distinguished between just and unjust—or between free and tyrannical—forms of government. What is the Declaration of Independence but a great meditation on the difference between the absolute despotism contemplated by King George III and the freedom that the Americans hoped to enjoy under their own form of self-government? The Declaration does not proclaim that just government is merely less oppressive than unjust government—as if the American republic and, say, Nazi Germany were separated only by degrees of tyranny. Our ancestors thought that republican governments like ours were good because, grounded in human nature and operating by law and consent, they affirmed human liberty. Though fundamentally devoted to the protection of our natural rights, such governments, especially at the local level, might also provide instruction in morality, because republican habits and customs are needed to shape a republican citizenry who can keep government limited, and who have the character to make liberty something good and enduring."

Charles Kessler
Editor, Claremont Review of Books

Read more at Imprimis.

A Cold Day On The Border Line:

McCain Embraces Climate Change!!!


PORTLAND, Ore. — John McCain launched a green-tinted courtship of West Coast swing voters on Monday, with a call to action on global warming and an indictment of the Bush administration's "failed" policies to combat it.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee visited the wind-power technology firm Vestas, near Portland International Airport, to decry melting polar ice, vanishing glaciers, changes in animal migration and "rising temperatures and waters," all products, he said, of a reliance on fossil fuels that threatens America's economy and security.

Read more Chris and Curt.

The Cleverly HillaryBillies

Architect of the Roaring '20s

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system...and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

Andrew Mellon

US Secretary of the Treasury during the Republican administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations



In the darkest days of the Depression, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, one of the richest men in the United States, opposed any government action to stem the tide of plunging business activity and soaring unemployment. Instead, he urged a policy of supreme indifference.

John Maynard Keynes, for one, thought that prescriptions like Mellon's were preposterous. The economist called those who held such views "austere and puritanical souls" who believed that it would "be a victory for the mammon of unrighteousness" if general prosperity were not "subsequently balanced by universal bankruptcy." Keynes perceived too much good in prosperity to treat it as the enemy, and he revolutionized economic theory to prove his point.

Read more...

"One of the prevailing theories at the time of the Depression was the so-called "liquidationist thesis" - which said basically "let's let the system return to normal. Let's liquidate banks; let's liquidate labor." This was Andrew Mellon, the Treasury secretary [from 1921 to 1932]. It was partly on the basis of that theory that the Federal Reserve stood by and let a third of the banks in the country fail, which caused the money supply to drop sharply, and prices to fall rather sharply, and led ultimately to the severity of the financial crisis.

I think financial instability, which was not addressed by government or anyone else, was a major contributor, both to the Depression in the US and abroad. I believe the difference today is that we will address financial issues and try to maintain the integrity and stability of our financial system. We will not let prices fall at 10% a year. We will act as needed to keep the economy growing and stable. So, I think there are some very significant differences between the thirties and today, and we learned a great deal from that episode."

Ben Bernanke
April 2, 2008
before Congress' Joint Economic Committee

Liquidation is the only answer.

Andrew Mellon: Father Of Trickle Down Economics

Another Reason To Fear Caribbean Communism

Cuba gives raises to retirees, court employees; says more salary increases on way



Cuba's government on Sunday announced sizable raises for retirees and court employees, and promised future pay hikes for other government workers, saying the increases would target lower-income islanders in a bid to reduce inequalities.

The pay increases — which will affect almost one in five Cubans — were the first since 2005 and the first since Raul Castro replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president. Since taking office in February, he has done away with some of Cuba's most-despised restrictions on daily life, bolstering his popularity and sparking rumors that more changes are coming.

Read more comrades.

Daddy's Little Girl