Allahpundit is shocked — shocked — that Tea Party activists are going after Ron Paul by putting up primary challengers. He sees Paul as a small-government libertarian that should fit right into the Tea Party movement. In fact, Paul looks at himself as the founder of the movement (incorrectly so). While Paul may appeal to some wacko libertarian-minded nuts who want to abandon our monetary system in favor of gold-backed greenbacks (which would be problematic from a growth standpoint), he is not a friend of small-government conservatism in other ways. He is an earmark king, and he is a complete wack job. He espouses conspiracy theories such as birtherism and the idea that Bush was trying to create a North American superstate with Canada and Mexico. He is also dangerous in the arena of foreign policy, taking an isolationist view. He is bad for the movement, and plays into the worst stereotypes about Conservatism. We would do well if he were primaried.
The story referenced by Allahpundit also contains something else that does concern me about the Tea Party movement. It states that Paul has “multiple challengers” who claim the Tea Party banner. For the movement to be successful, I think that it needs to function as a sub-party within the GOP. The Tea Parties in districts should organize, and choose one particular candidate to back in the GOP primary. That way, they don’t risk the possibility of splitting the vote among those who claim to represent the Tea Party, much like what happened in the Illinois primaries. In any case, the Tea Party should back a candidate in this race, and Ron Paul should not be that candidate.
Audi paid the big bucks for this commercial in last night’s Super Bowl in order to promote their “green” cars:
To most it’s just Super Bowl silly, but I couldn’t help but think about a particular Liberal friend whose hyperactive about everything green. I’m pretty sure that’s his perfect little Eco-Nazi world!
Personally, while a few were pretty good, I laughed out loud at this Snickers commercial with Betty White. Check out those you may have missed at the NFL which was cool enough to have them all on their site for easy access.
Representative John Murtha (D-PA) died this morning as a result of complications from surgery. John Murtha was a war hero and a fairly moderate Democrat – up until about 2004 when he stated his opposition to the War in Iraq. He then tilted fairly hard left, and has remained so to date. There is much to criticize about John Murtha, but from my point of view now is not the time. Our thoughts and prayers go out for him and his family in this time of loss. May he rest in peace.
The willingness of liberals to look you in the eye and tell you “night is day” can be astounding. Take the National Association for Gals (Rush’s term) response to the pro-life ad featuring Tim Tebow that ran during yesterday’s Super Bowl. Apparently we pro-lifers are too stupid to notice that the ad was really a celebration of violence against women.
As you just saw, the ad features a mother and son who cherish each other having a little bit of fun as any loving family would. But don’t believe your eyes. Believe the NAGS who claim that Mrs. Tebow is advocating violence against herself because she allowed herself to be fake tackled during a playful moment with her son.
I wonder what the NAGS would call an innocent child who is killed in the womb during a saline abortion? A victim of . . .? The fact is that NOW can’t even mention the violence they advocate against the most innocent among us because they would lose all credibility. With so little to squawk about, the best they can up with is desperately calling a fun ad a celebration of violence against women. I’m not one to give advice to the pro-abortion movement, but I think silence would have been a better strategy.
Economic Growth could raise the revenues to cover the deficit. However, government spending typically depresses economic growth, so Tully does not see this as viable.
Reducing spending would obviously be the best solution, but is not foreseeable with the current administration and makeup of congress.
A value-added tax, which is essentially a national sales tax (in addition to our income tax) would be able to feasibly cover the current deficit projections.
Since the closest thing to immortality is a government program, and the Democrats control the White House for at least another two years, a VAT is not inconceivable. What is inconceivable is the burden it will put on our economic system and on working families. If a VAT is implemented, it may be decades before we again see the prosperity in this country that we knew from 1980-2008.
Our government is filled with incompetent people who have no regard for the taxpayer’s money and will waste it on ineffective, inconsequential drivel that accomplishes nothing. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this ad for the U.S. Census that cost the taxpayers $2.5 million dollars, that aired during last night’s Super Bowl.
If the government absolutely had to spend $2.5 million on an ad for the Census, don’t you think they could have done a better job? Couldn’t we have had some kind of clever premise, or some humor, or some flashy special effects? Couldn’t we have had something that actually made sense? It illustrates perfectly why the government is inferior to the private sector in accomplishing almost anything. I don’t see what this ad accomplished or what the message even was. It If anyone has any clue, please let me know, because for the life of me, I have no clue.
In an era when we are going deeper and deeper into debt, with no signs of reversing course, why are we spending $2.5 million dollars on this piece of crap? How much waste and crap is there in the Federal Budget like this that can be trimmed?
The rank hypocrisy of the left never ceases to amaze me. At this very moment, the liberal blogosphere is salivating over the fact that Sarah Palin had a few bullet-point notes written on her hand while she delivered her speech to the National Tea Party Convention. Of course these same liberals rarely utter a peep over the fact that President Obama cannot deliver a speech without every single word fed to him by a teleprompter. That’s probably because Palin’s ability to do what Obama cannot, deliver an intelligent speech without a teleprompter, actually proves that the woman they’ve looked down upon for a year and half is actually smarter than the President they adore.
The Huffington Post is trying to spin the story by claiming that the notes (one-word bullet points) weren’t to organize the speech but were answers for the Q&A session. Although the absurdity of that spin is self-evident, Gay Patriot nevertheless gives us the obvious response:
These aren’t the answers to questions. They’re not even questions. And such scribbling is much less newsworthy than. say, the Commander in Chief mispronouncing corpsman.
Annually, the most watched sporting event in America is the Super Bowl, leading many to want to make the Monday after the Super Bowl a holiday. I mean, who needs a day off to pay homage to the Presidents anyway (it’s kind of monarchical isn’t it)? Plus, lately most have been bums one way or another. Think about all the lost work tomorrow — people calling in sick, people hungover not working as hard, all the time divvying up office pools, and all the general time wasted talking about the Big Game. It could cost the economy billions as it has in years past! I’m just sayin’.
But, onto the Big Game itself! The Indianapolis Colts (16-2) look to win their second Super Bowl in four seasons as they take on the New Orleans Saints (15-3), a team everyone seems to be rooting for in their hearts, who are making their first appearance ever in a Super Bowl. However, Vegas sees the Colts as six-point favorites over the Saints when they play tonight at 6:25pm EST in Miami.
While I’d like to see the Saints keep it competitive (and wouldn’t lose sleep if they won), I just don’t think that’s going to happen. In fact, I’d take the Colts by 10 after a pretty close first half. Heck, I even think the Saints will probably score first! However, the Colts’ Peyton Manning is humming on a different level than most quarterbacks and after settling down, will carve up the Saints’ defense aptly.
So, go to the party, check out the wacky commercials and The Who halftime show, call in sick tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll have a competitive game!
UPDATE:Boy was I wrong!!! I guess that’s why they play the game: 31-17 Saints!
British economist John Maynard Keynes had a number of theories that the Left loves because Keynes finds a nice cozy place for big, powerful government in free markets. Keynes was an advocate of the government taking a huge role in investment, something corporatists everywhere could cheer! So, while I do not agree with the benefits of Keynes’ demand-side economic theories, which takes money from one part of the economy and merely shuffles it somewhere else with the government at the helm, the Left has taken much of his approach over the years and tweaked it to do their populist bidding.
Keynes believed that government stimulus during economic recessions should be temporary to make the business cycle less harsh on investment, giving people more confidence in spending. Makes you feel nice, but not very good math. Also, spending like Obama (and Bush before him) which creates “structural deficits” was also something Keynes likely did not condone; instead he wanted deficits to be temporary during the tough times and paid for during the good. Raising taxes on anyone to raise government revenue during the economic downturn was something he believed to be nearly suicidal to an economy — even Keynes knew that was dumb!
Carnegie Mellon economist Allan Meltzer believed that even Keynes would “roll over in his grave if he could see the things being done in his name.” Considering Obamanomics uses failed Keynesian theories as its premise while including damaging structural deficits does not bode well for our economic future — whatever Frankenstein-like economy emerges from this latest Keynesian plunge will not be pretty. Obamanomics will take the world’s biggest economy and pull it back to the 1970s — and who wants to go back to the ’70s!
Ronald Reagan (February 6, 1911 — June 5, 2004) would have turned 99 today. As a rallying point to both Conservatives and Republicans, Reagan’s legacy continues to grow as the years go by. Many historians have had to move on from their original “amiable dunce” interpretation of Reagan to grudgingly admit or contemplate the importance of both supply-side economics to rejuvenating a flailing economy and the “peace through strength” approach to foreign policy as lessons for future and current Presidents on how to deal with both domestic and foreign affairs.
Reagan also showed that a conservative candidate (running as a conservative) can win 49 states and change the direction of American politics, which had by 1980 veered too far off to the Left. By 2012, I think the nation will have the same feeling about how far Left we’ve veered, and Reagan’s message of hearkening back to the real strength of America (her people, not her government) will sound very nice to the public once again.
By the way, only three other Presidents have been born in the month of February aside from Reagan: two of them are Lincoln and Washington… I’m just sayin’.
In fact, most of my 10th graders know that “corpsman” is pronounced “core-man.” And this guy’s supposedly really smart? Saying “57 States” is a snafu during a long campaign, but the Commander-in-Chief needs to know that while the Obamaprompter is spelling his words correctly, he still has to say them right. Here’s the clip from yesterday:
Why am I picking on Dear Leader today? I just downloaded John Legend’s cover of U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love).” It’s a great cover and worth putting on my iPod, but something happens towards the end I did NOT anticipate (fast forward to 3:40 and let it play), nor was present in the original version of the song I heard! While I can’t take the song back, I’m going out of my way to pick on Obama for something silly in order to adequately balance out the karma.
Ok, there is VERY little news out there today. Sure, there are a few stories about the economy and about Obama’s budget, but they are just expansions on earlier stories. Since it’s almost 5:00 here on the east coast, we may as well just get on with the weekend. Because all of us here at Axis of Right grew up in the 1980s, we frequently post nostalgic 1980s pop culture references. Here, simply because I am bored and there is no news worth talking about, is a video of 1980s television commercials. Brings back a lot of memories. Which one is your favorite?
Yesterday, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) got a challenger in his bid for reelection from state representative John Loughlin. Loughlin may seem like just another ill-fated challenger to Kennedy (there have been many over the years) but this race is one to watch for two reasons:
Update: It was pointed out to me that I incorrectly cited the poll done in RI. The poll stated that 60% of voterswould consider another candidate, not choose another candidate as I originally stated.
Some members of the GOP in the House are introducing a balanced budget amendment, which would prohibit the federal government from running an annual deficit. While it doesn’t have a chance in hell, the GOP would be wise to make noise about this, and call Obama and the Democrats to take a stand on it, illustrating Obama’s calls for fiscal responsibility as the farces that they are.
Just a few moments ago, Scott Brown was sworn in as a United States Senator, replacing interim Senator Paul Kirk. Liberal interest groups everywhere (labor unions) are fuming. Congratulations, Senator Brown. Do us proud. Stay true to yourself and your principles, and don’t let Washington change you.
Note to the Democrats: your super-majority is over.
Update: Video added. Joe Biden doesn’t look too happy.
No, I’m staying, but a recent study just found that from 2004-2008 $70 billion did leave the Garden State, while the amount of money donated to non-profit organizations dropped $1.3 billion — that’s partly due to the fact that charitable giving in New Jersey is NOT tax deductible!
Yeah, we suck. Especially when MTV’s Jersey Shore is our latest ambassador to the world! Ugh.
By the way, that show is basically an honest representation of what really happens “down the shore” all the time in the summer: mentally-deficient “Guidos” getting drunk, resorting to shirtless fist-pumping by midnight, and trying to hump every nasty thing that moves imploring their friends to justify the “hotness” of the trash they just picked up. When a girl (“Snooki”) getting punched is the centerpiece of next week’s promo, you’ve got reality gold even Hitler could like. Like all train wrecks in slow motion, you can’t look away and must watch!
It’s very sad, but that’s all we got right now — billions of dollars leaving and a Guido Revival.
If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as a group, you’d say you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First Amendment right of association. If you all then formed a partnership to speak, you’d say we still have that First Amendment right to speak and of association. But what if you put yourself in a corporate form?
Can it get any easier to understand? How is this, as Russ Feingold says “one of the worst decisions in the history of the Supreme Court?“ It is simply, as Thomas points out, extending freedom of speech to a collection of individuals who happen to incorporate. Of course, in Liberal loony- land, corporations are evil, and not worthy of free speech.
Sixteen days after the fact, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin has finally certified Scott Brown’s January 19 election victory over Democrat Martha Coakley. In doing so, Galvin urged Brown to “respect the rights of the majority.”
It would have been nice if Galvin simply followed his own advice. The majority of voters, in Massachusetts of all places, rejected Billy’s candidate over two weeks ago. The role of the Secretary of the Commonwealth is really similar to that of a data entry clerk. All he had to do was sign the certificate once it was clear that Scott Brown won. While Galvin sat on the results, a Senator from the party rejected by Massachusetts voters continued to vote on legislation while the winner was forced to sit on the sidelines. Galvin discussing the virtues of respecting the will of the majority is kind of like a Kennedy talking about the virtues of sobriety and safe driving.
New jobless claims “rose unexpectedly” to 480,000, for the week ending January 30. Economists are concerned that the bottoming-out of the labor market that they all thought had occurred has simply not occurred. Unemployment shows no signs of abating, and all the Democrats want to do is spend more. Their mantra “jobs, jobs, jobs” can be translated “spend, spend, spend.”
Gov. Charlie Crist (RINO-FL), who is vying for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate against conservative Marco Rubio (R-FL), tried to compare himself to Ronald Reagan, saying:
“If I’m a RINO, then so is Ronald Reagan. I’m [a] less taxing, less spending, less government, more freedom kind of guy and I just take a pragmatic common sense approach to government. And if that’s not what the people want, they’ll let me know. But I’m confident that it is,” he told “Early Show” co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez.
The American people “don’t want bickering and some ideologue on one end or another to sort of be a standard bearer,” he said.
Really, Charlie? You’re like Reagan. Right. Would Reagan have supported the $787 billion stimulus that you campaigned with Barack Obama for? Would Reagan have raised state taxes to the tune of $2.2 billion, while only “cutting” $720 million in taxes? Charlie, you did, and now you have to live with that result. You can’t just pretend to be a fiscal conservative when you raise taxes and support the Obama slush fund. Charlie Crist, you are no Ronald Reagan. To prove my point, here are two clips that illustrate the differences between you and President Reagan beautifully.
I’ve always been a skeptic of the concept of the medical “Persistent Vegetative State.” A lot of my skeptesism came from my father’s battle with brain cancer, which he ultimately lost back in 2002. About a month before he died, my dad suffered a seizure that left him unable to breath on his own. The doctors in the ICU at the time attempted to convince us that he was in a “persistent vegetative state,” that he’d never recover, and that we should terminate life support. And this was only 24 hours after his seizure! My mom, sister, and I were not ready for that, and stubbornly refused to do what the doctors wanted us to do. We were pressured into trying to make that decision, and it wasn’t one we were ready to make.
After another 24 hours, my dad opened his eyes. The next day, he was off the ventilator. Two days later, my dad was back in the rehabilitation center. Because of his disease, he couldn’t talk with us, but he communicated with us through his eyes, through holding and squeezing our hands, and other non-verbal communications. That last month was special, and we felt it was a gift from God that he did rebound and give us one more month to be with him.
Since that day, I was skeptical of the concept of persistent vegetative state. I did some research, and found that there is really no clinical, scientific basis for it, but rather it is based on symptoms and a doctor’s “best guess.” Following the case of Haleigh Poutre, the young girl from here in Massachusetts, whom the state wanted to remove from life support because she was supposedly in a “persistent vegetative state.” Poutre is now writing and feeding herself, and doing better by the day.
Yes, this is already everywhereintheblogosphere, but how could I not do a post about this? Yes, this is an actual political ad created and put up by the Carley Fiorina Campaign for U.S. Senate in California, about her opponent in the GOP primary, Tom Campbell (skip to about 2:15 if you get bored):
Umm…What? What political strategist thought this was a good idea? Already, it’s become one of the top trending topics on twitter, and DemonSheep even has its own Facebook group. Whatever happens to Carley Fiorina in this election, she’ll go down in history for having one of the strangest ads in campaign history.
Sen. Judd Gregg schooled White House Budget Director Peter Orszag over the White House’s plan to reuse repaid TARP funds for other purposes. Gregg points out that the law requires that repaid TARP money be used to pay down the debt, and pushes Orszag on that point. Fun to watch.
Be sure to thank the people of Massachusetts for pushing the proverbial snowball down the hill when they elected Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat and showed Republicans across the country that this was the year to run for office if you wanted to win an election. Thanks to the Democrats’ unpopular liberal agenda and political malpractice in Massachusetts, Republican recruitment has been on a major upswing in recent weeks. Today the upswing continues as former Senator Dan Coats has signaled his intention to challenge Evan Bayh later this year.
It’s no secret that Bayh is a formerly safe Democrat who is now vulnerable thanks to his liberal tendencies being exposed for everyone to see. His re-election hopes were already hanging by a thread against Rep. Hostettler. With Coats (Bayh’s predecessor) entering the race, Bayh will now face a well-known, well-financed, conservative opponent who is popular both with the Republican base and the State of Indiana as a whole.
The President’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used the phrase “f*&%ing retarded” during a strategy session last August, which has only recently come to light. So, here we go — the Politically-Correct Police are on the move!
Some in the news media are making a HUGE deal about this. So Rahm needed to get the obligatory knee pads out to apologize to the offended interest group in question, this time the Special Olympics. Sarah Palin has even chimed in, so the “fire Rahm” drumbeat has been initiated. While Rahm should not have used such an inappropriate colloquial statement at the session and deserves all the interest group ridicule he gets (especially after Obama’s tasteless Special Olympics joke last March), we really need to get a handle on political correctness.
I will not call it the “R-word” because clinically, those to whom it refers are mentally “retarded,” meaning they process much slower than the rest of us. It’s a real word with a real meaning. Call them “slow,” and pretty soon we’ll have another “S-word.” By contrast, the “N-word” is a bastardization of the French word “negro” which means black. The terrible history and connotation behind the “N-word” puts it in a completely different realm than “retarded” in my opinion.
Do you know where the popular term “sucks” originally comes from? I’ll give you a few guesses… right. But all the time I hear people say: “That [fill in the blank] sucked” or “This State of the Union Address completely sucks.” It’s in our popular vocabulary.
However, common sense and general etiquette say that “sucks” and “retarded” are not words one uses in front of the boss on formal occasions, especially if that boss works in the Oval Office. Rahm should be ridiculed, but I don’t think he should lose his job over it — get rid of him for a million other reasons. Let Palin and crew score all the political points they deserve from Emanuel’s flap, but I still don’t like the Politically-Correct Word Police out there controlling our vocabulary by creating a swear out of a mere colloquialism — trust me, calling it the “R-word” will only encourage kids to ask what it means and it’ll just get more of them saying it!
Now, I know it’s a drop in the bucket of Obama’s $3.9 trillion budget, but if the Government is in the process of tightening the purse strings and cutting waste, why does the Census Bureau need to spend $2.5 million on a Superbowl ad to tell people to fill out their census forms? That $2.5 million price tag is only a fraction of the $132 million the census bureau plans to spend on advertising in 28 languages as part of a campaign to get people to fill out their census cards. So…why can’t this be cut?
After Obama’s Q&A with the Republican Congressional caucus last Friday, people as diverse as Markos Moulitsas and Ed Morrissey are calling for a regular Q&A type session, similar to the British Parliament’s Prime Minister’s Questions. I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it would give the opportunity for the President to face some tough questions; on the other hand, the President is not part of Congress and not subject to Congress, unlike the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who is a member of Parliament. In the end, I think separation of powers should rule the day, and this tradition should not be introduced into American politics.
Jim Geraghty has an amusing video on how Obama is making the unemployment numbers go down – by turning unemployed workers into discouraged workers.
Geraghty talks about the discouraged workers as not being counted by the unemployed, but misses the other classifications of workers, including those who are open to work but not looking (marginally attached workers) and those who are working part time because they can’t find a full-time job. The department of Labor divides the unemployment rate into six classifications:
So now we are left with Mark Kirk. Kirk who voted for cap-and-trade (which he now claims was a mistake), although he voted against the stimulus. He’s pro-abortion, pro-gun control, and pro-amnesty. As Michelle Malkin says, lame. Yet we’re stuck with him, and should support him in the general both because of the larger cause of decreasing the Democrat majorities in the Senate, and because his opponent, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, is far worse. In fact, within moments of Giannoulias being declared the Democrat nominee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) put out this ad, which outlined the weakness of Giannoulias’ candidacy.
The state-run Washington Post is now claiming that abstinence-only education works. Kids actually have less sex when told about the truths of pregnancy and disease, even with contraception. What I don’t see is why sane people can’t get behind something like this, and rally behind the simple truth that kids having less sex is a good thing (as Ace argues in a very well-formulated and forceful post). Then again, since when is the left sane?
