Archive for September 16th, 2008

It seems not all teenagers are drinking the Obamassiah koolaid as The One would have you believe. Two 19-year olds wrote this bit, and a reader of Angry White Boy posted it as a comment.

A new agenda called “shared prosperity” lures supporters in by offering a one fix solution to all of America’s economic and social problems. Although the enticing proposals of shared prosperity sound promising, the increased size and influence of government would result in several masked negative affects on the nation.

The title shared prosperity suggests a utopian society where all are equal and well-off. The concept of shared prosperity requires (?)is really a mixture of wealth redistribution and an increase in the government’s power and influence. As pointed out by Dave Hooper points out in his letter entitled “Democrats looking to redistribute wealth,” sharing should be voluntary, but in the case of shared prosperity it leads to more taxes and restrictions set by government for some people while providing free resources to others.

Shared prosperity plans also boast to provide health care, world class education, a fair and opportunistic workplace for all and manage the fiscal policy, but its ideals are rooted in a socialist economy. The American public as a whole is requested to contribute to the nation’s growth and well-being regardless of social, ethnic, or economic background. This would give the government extended influence on healthcare, education, work and the economy eliminating competition, the system our capitalistic nation thrives on, in these areas.

Shared prosperity could indeed solve several problems in America but only in the short term. Shared prosperity is a hidden method of wealth redistribution that would lead to the destruction of healthy competition is several areas of America’s society.

Well, if you played a drinking game with every mention of George W. Bush, the toll road, or Daylight Savings Time, you would be plenty tipsy right now. And it’s safe to say that Jill Long Thompson could give Nancy Pelosi a run for her money in a blink-off and Barack Obama a run for his in an uh-off. Even her references to the issue of the use of state planes were ham-handed, mangled, and ineffective.

The long and short of it is that this debate changed absolutely nothing. Jill Long Thompson landed no blows upon Mitch Daniels and she made no attacks on him that have not already been made–often more articulately–by Democrats over the past four years. Those failed arguments have left Mitch with a 15-20% lead in polling, and nothing that happened tonight will change that position.

Indeed, Mitch made convincing and persuasive arguments in favor of his policies and ideas, at least as much as he could given the time restrictions (which are at least more generous than those of his many paid television spots).

You had to love Mitch’s line in response to Jill Long Thompson of “so many falsehoods, and so little time.” She was a fountain of negativity in the debate, and continued to dredge up the past (slightly less focused on the past, Mitch entertainingly noted, than Andy Horning).

Perhaps the killer line of the debate was Mitch’s contention that we have seen all of Jill Long Thompson’s policies and ideas before; we have seen them in Indiana for the past sixteen years and we have seen them in our neighboring states. And we have seen that they do not work. They have caused Indiana to fall behind, a lag that we are only now, with four years of hard work and good government (sometimes bipartisan), starting to overcome. To go back to them now would be foolhardy.

The advantage, and the initiative, clearly and unquestionably remain with Mitch.

Luke Puckett, Republican candidate for Congress in Indiana’s 2nd District, called on Joe Donnelly to start being honest with 2nd District Hoosiers. “He has one line for those of us back home and he’s got a different line for those in Washington. He tells us one thing and then he goes to Washington and does another,” Puckett declared.

As a specific example of Donnelly’s inability to be honest with constituents, Puckett points to a letter Donnelly sent to a constituent in March of 2007 regarding the troop surge in Iraq. In the letter, Donnelly declares that he will not support legislation mandating troop withdrawals or de-funding of the War in Iraq. In the weeks that followed that pledge, however, Donnelly voted twice [Roll Calls 186 and 624 cast during the 2007 session] to set mandatory deadlines for withdrawal of all American military personnel from Iraq regardless of conditions on the ground and irrespective of the best judgment of commanders in the field.

“The most important commodity that an elected official has is the public’s trust and when he or she fails that trust by being dishonest and disingenuous about a particular issue, then the official shows that they don’t have what it takes to be a leader,” Puckett stated, “I will be honest with constituents whether it’s popular or not because honest disagreement is better that false and misleading agreement. Honesty will be a priority.”

On the broader issue of national security, Puckett declared “Our national security is strengthened when we build a strong and ready military and put the world on notice that we will use it only as a last resort. The highest duty of any Congressman, Senator or President is to protect this country by making sound national security related decisions. Such decisions involve far more than simply making a judgment call about when to go to war and when to not go to war, they also require an understanding of who our enemies are, why they wish to see our destruction, and what we must do to win the battle of ideas.”

(Congressman Mike Pence posted this over at Red State.)

I wanted to make sure you don’t miss the charade that’s being carried out on the floor of the U.S. House today. The Drill-Nothing Democrats finally brought their no-energy energy bill to the floor of the House today for a vote.

We need your help to defeat this bill. Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell the Democrats in your state delegation to vote “NO” on Speaker Pelosi’s energy bill.

They bypassed the entire committee process in order to do this. In fact, just last week, the drill-nothing Democrat Congress announced they would bring an energy bill to the floor that includes more drilling, and now they say Republicans have to take “yes” for an answer.

I would suggest that they look at the fine print. The drill-nothing Democrat Congress has brought a bill that actually includes basically “drill-almost-nothing” provisions.

They say “yes” to drilling, but not in Alaska, not in the Eastern Gulf and not within 50 miles. They say “yes” to drilling but states must decide, even though they get absolutely no revenues for choosing to drill. I guess states are just going to allow drilling out of the goodness of their hearts. They say “yes” to drilling but litigation rules will allow environmental lawyers to tie up all leases from the very day they’re filed.

It’s time to end the charade! Stop playing politics with American energy independence! Bring a full and fair debate to this floor, and we will achieve a bipartisan result.

We need your help to defeat this bill. Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell the Democrats in your state delegation to vote “NO” on Speaker Pelosi’s energy bill.

Yesterday I noticed a link on the Drudge Report to a CBS editorial talking about the diminishing “Sarah Palin Phenomenon”. The piece wasn’t talking so much about Palin’s political status so much as her star status. And frankly, while it had some decent, but truths to swallow, in the end I felt like Charlie Gibson during the Palin interview and lost in a blizzard of words. Mostly, because it was laughable at best.

This charade of an editorial seemed to view Governor Palin, not as a vice presidential candidate, but as a celebrity like that of Britney Spears or Michael Jordan (their words).

The primary reason why the Palin bubble will burst is that the media will decide that they are bored with her. They’ll need to move to shine a light on a fresh issue or individual.

This is how the world works in the age of 24/7 news cycles. Whether the subject is Britney Spears, Michael Jordan or Sarah Palin, we inevitably raise stars to mythic levels, out of all reasonable proportions. Then we knock them down.

Forgive me as I almost spit out my food while writing this. Did that just say they raised Palin to mythic levels only to knock her down? Am I missing something here? She was never raised, but was knocked down to begin with and continue the process by repeating stories that originate out of the lefty loonisphere only to be proven wrong once the media is put on the defense and actually has to do real digging.

Or how about that interview with Charlie Gibson:

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The NWI Times has an article about the AG race:

Democrat Linda Pence on Friday accused the Republican Indiana attorney general and his chief deputy, Greg Zoeller, of dragging their heels on a region corruption case in furtherance of their political careers.

Pence, who is battling Zoeller to become the state’s next top lawyer, sharply criticized the progress GOP Attorney General Steve Carter has made in a 2004 federal civil lawsuit he filed to hold former East Chicago officials financially responsible for a 1999 sidewalks-for-vote scheme.

“If there’s a corruption case in Indiana, it will not take me nine years and still not have it done,” Pence said in a meeting with The Times. “I could have had this done in two years, easy.”

Linda Pence either just doesn’t get it, or she’s deliberately trying to be misleading. I’m disinclined to think she is stupid, so the latter must be operative here.

The East Chicago corruption case, involving Democrat Bob Pastrick’s “sidewalks-for-votes” scheme, has 27 defendants and is being pursued under the RICO statue. That’s a lot of defendants, and RICO cases tend to be more complex than the sort of average case that can be solved in an hour on Law & Order or be the subject of pithy snark by William Shatner on Boston Legal.

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Hoosier Access will host an interactive live blog of the Governor’s debate this evening, just  like the ones we host on the days we record the Hoosier Access Radio podcast.

Make sure to come back tonight to check it out.

Click Here To Participate in the Gubernatorial Debate Live Blog

(Details on what time and where to watch the debate after the leap) (more…)

As they say timing is everything. In 2007 I purchased a diesel powered vehicle, because at the time diesel fuel was about 50c cheaper than gasoline. Heh. No sooner than the paper plate expired the reverse occurred with diesel being much more expensive than gasoline.

The timing couldn’t be worse for the financial markets to soften. In the midst of one of the most spirited elections in recent memory featuring candidates of polar opposites - The “maverick” Republican in John McCain and the socialist Democrat in Barack Obama.

B.H. Obama was quoted by Reuters the current financial situation is the result of “hands-off Republican policies” Hands off policies? As opposed to heavy-handed economic micromanagement by a socialist Obama government? If you think things are bad now… Does anyone here remember a fella named Jimmy Carter? He also believed in economic micromanagement. Does anyone remember double digit unemployment and interest rates in excess of 20%? If you’re under 40 you may not remember the Carter years - and some of you weren’t even around back then.

The Obamassiah gave a sermon on Monday claiming Monday’s stock market losses were “Worse than the Great Depression” (seen in video footage on CNBC) - Ummm I do believe October 1987 and the post 9/11 market drop were far worse that Monday’s 500 point drop in the DJIA. What doubled the issues in 2001 was the backside of the dot-com bubble (Mainly on NASDAQ but washed over to the NYSE - eBay for $500 per share - can you say “overvalued”?) and many dot-coms were finished off by the financial backlash post-9/11. DJIA is still above 10,000. Even at its worst in 2001 the Dow only sunk to just north of 6500 or so. The markets came back, in spite of what the folks in the seats on the left would claim.

I’m waiting for some moonbat to bring up a comparison of G.W. Bush to Herbert Hoover and B.H. Obama to FDR. If BHO is really going to emulate FDR if he gets elected, get ready for 4 years of government financial mismanagement.