Imagine there’s no Hillary

One of the stupidest songs ever recorded has to be Imagine by John Lenin. It is a ballad about the creatures finally ridding themselves of the implications of the Creator and setting up a “Worker’s Paradise” on earth.

Only people running from the Cross of Jesus Christ seem to relate to this song. Like the proverbial vampires with no soul doomed to live in eternal darkness, the fans of Imagine have a common bond of despair in this life and no hope of anything better in the life to come.

In the midst of the generation that gave us Imagine, is a shrill voice screaming for attention. A woman with no core values, only pompous words designed for the itching ears of her immediate audience. Yes, it’s the junior Senator from New York State, madam carpetbagger herself, Hillary Clinton.

Hillary, the woman who would be President in 2008, has tried to explain her humble path to a political life. According to an article in Newsday, Hillary had other ambitions but due to her lack of physical ability, intelligence and a hostile men’s world, she ended up going to law school to find her path in the world.

According to the Newsday account, Senator Clinton first imagined herself becoming an Olympic Athlete but she couldn’t run fast enough. Then she tried to visualize herself becoming an astronaut but NASA said they don’t take girls. Then she dreamed of the medical field but she got “woozy” at the sight of suffering (except for unborn children being dismembered on the altar of choice which is the blessed sacrament of Liberalism). Mrs. Clinton also pictured herself as a mathematician or a scientist but she didn’t have the grades. As a last result she opted for law school.

Now she gets to impose her version of Lenin’s utopia on the rest of us. She too will feel our pain because she will be the cause of it. Thus proving that Those who can work, those who can’t pass laws to get even.

Republicans: Heat and Light

While there is little hope that the majority of Republicans in Congress will see the light, there are signs that they are at least beginning to feel the heat. Some are at last beginning to act as if Hugh Hewitt’s warning in Painting the Map Red has been heard in the halls of power.

Following the return this week from the Easter Recess, the Senate has started to move several languishing judicial nominees to a vote and allocated more money for border security. Congress is trying to get more energy production under way and once again is looking to end the “Death Tax”.

Perhaps there is a glimmer of hope that the GOP can turn things around. Their best advantage is the incompetence of the Democrats. As long as Democrats are motivated by hatred of President Bush and opposing every Republican idea without offering any of their own they are a doomed party. They have nothing to offer but fear itself. Doom and despair don’t win elections.

Republicans need to give their base an incentive to vote or many will just stay home this year. It looks like this reality is provoking some politicians to take action to energize the base. If Republicans would start acting like the majority party then they would make gains in this off year election.

Unfortunately, senators like McCain and the Northeastern liberal Republicans are the worst enemies of Republican victory in 2006. My hope is that if Republicans can do well enough this year, these Senators will no longer be able to hold the rest of their party hostage to their stupid socialist ideology.

Meanwhile, President Bush is making hopeful changes in the White House. The realities of illegal immigration are being brought to his attention. He seems to be getting closer to making borders more secure before implementing amnesty for illegals that are already here. His personnel changes in the White House seem like good moves.

The most discordant sign has been Republican efforts to try to blame oil companies for the high costs of gasoline instead of the Democrats for their obstructionist policies and idiotic environmental regulations.

Bush’s Wasted Meeting with Hu

Yesterday President Bush apologized to China’s President Hu Jintao for a three-minute outburst from a woman in the photo gallery calling for freedom from the Falun Gong religious sect in China.

Having lived through the shame of the Clinton administration and becoming a father a few years ago, I know that there are several different ways to parse the words “I’m sorry.” They range from “I’m sorry, please forgive me, it was all my fault” to “I’m only sorry that I got caught.”

I think the President meant I’m sorry for this breach of protocol. But I think Bush should have qualified the apology to say something about our nation being stronger for allowing differences of opinion. Suppose he said, “President Hu, we honor freedom of speech even when we might disagree with what is said. Unlike your government we won’t torture and kill this dissenter as a lesson to others.”

I think that President Bush missed a golden opportunity to call for
·  releasing religious and political prisoners
·  ceasing forced sterilization and abortion
·  stopping the harvesting of organs from prisoners for use in transplants
·  ending subsidies of Chinese currency to falsely prop-up their trade balance
·  halting the proliferation of arms to Iran, North Korea and other nations
·  suspending saber rattling and intimidation of Taiwan
·  lifting government restrictions on the Internet

The meeting with Hu seems like a wasted opportunity to reign-in the tyranny of the Chinese government.

Mitt Romney: Spanking McCain and Challenging Evangelicals

The Southern Republican Leadership Conference held in Nashville over the weekend took a much-publicized “straw poll” of potential presidential contenders. Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, who bussed in many supporters, won the poll, but to the surprise of many, Mitt Romney, the governor of Massachusetts can in second.

Media darling and Republican Brutus of the Senate, John McCain had a poor showing. This so-called “Maverick” (apologies to James Garner) got spanked by the Republican base in this symbolic vote. The Senator—who is a legend only in his own mind—has no chance of winning anything nationally.

As a result of his strong showing, the issue that has again been raised is Romney’s religion. Romney is a member in good standing in the Salt Lake branch of the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). Eric Hogue spent much of his program today on this topic.

Hogue’s basic question is will the Evangelical Base of the Republican Party support a candidate that is active in a non-Christian cult? No, he didn’t word his question this way but this is what he was looking to explore with his callers.

Other than to stipulate that I agree that the Mormons are not Christian because they deny the historic tenants of the Christian faith, Hogue asks a question worthy of analysis.

I think that much of Romney’s presidential effort will depend on what candidates are competitive in the early going and also on what baggage can be found during his time as governor of Massachusetts. Abortion and gay marriage will be high profile issues when people look at Romney.

If the traditional Republican Platform on social issues, Romney’s faith and his actions as governor are in agreement then he should be ok. However, if he could have stopped gay marriage from becoming implemented in Massachusetts or has any hypocrisy on the Life issue he will not get the support from the base that he needs to survive the primaries.

There are two practical questions that must be asked about any candidate but especially Romney; first, how would his policies as President compare to Ronald Reagan and George W Bush? Second, what type of people would Romney appoint if he is elected?

I would expect Romney to spend lots of time courting James Dobson and other evangelical leaders to either stay neutral in the primaries or support him because he is in agreement with them on issues like gay marriage, abortion and the Supreme Court justices. If Romney can make a case that he would be like an evangelical on social issues and act as a fiscal conservative then he just might pull this off.

My Shot at Dick Chaney

1. While the Vice President will no longer be known as a straight shooter, the real question is was he leaning to the Right when he fired?

2. Did he have a campaign flashback and think he was in Cambodia?

3. When Dick Cheney says his beer is “Less filling”, don’t argue and say, “Tastes Great.”

4. If Dick Cheney has you in his sights, you’re in big trouble.

5. I bet young men will think twice before dating the Vice-President’s daughter now!

Bureaucrats Criminalize 21st Century Lifestyle

When can you tell that government is out of control? When government makes law abiding citizens into criminals just for going about their daily lives, the government has overstepped its rightful boundaries.

If you are a gun owner, smoker, motorcycle rider or other persecuted minority in California for doing something that is legal, you now have company. Every citizen in California has been made a criminal today. That’s right! Effective today, if you throw a dead AAA battery into the trash you are criminal. If you put a burned-out light bulb into a dumpster you are an evil doer. If you toss a disposable cell phone you are scum. So says the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (also called CalEPA).

A summary article can be found at the KCRA-TV website.

Other banned items include some tennis shoes made before1997, greeting cards that play music, freezers, washing machines, space heaters, radios and disposable lighters.

The real lessons to take from these Liberals are these:
excaim  We cannot listen to terrorists talking on disposable cell phones but we can imprison them for tossing the phones into the trash when their calling minutes are expired.
excaim  Our State legislature is more fearful of the batteries in my baby’s electronic toys than the possibility that thermonuclear weapons might be detonated in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Musings on Mail-in Voting

Eric Hogue was exploring the merits and shortfalls of California holding “mail-in” elections for the June primary and possibly other elections in the future. This idea is being floated in some recently introduced legislation that is expected to be debated later this year.

This idea is bad for a variety of reasons; some which exist now and others that could arise if the system is implemented.

Currently, once you register to vote as a permanent absentee voter, your ballot is automatically mailed to you in perpetuity or until the county clerk has some reason to drop you from the voter rolls.

This creates two problem areas. First, as with any other kind of voter registration, there is no requirement to prove citizenship or eligibility to vote. Secondly, your ballot can be disqualified and your vote may never be counted if someone at the county clerk’s office says your signature does not match the one on file from your voter registration card. This rule disproportionately impacts many senior citizens and results in many of their votes never being counted. If your ballot is disqualified for this reason, there is no requirement to notify the voter of a potential problem with their vote. Without such notification, the voter will continue to cast ballots which are subsequently disqualified.

A new area of abuse in the voting system should this proposal ever become law would be voters giving blank signed ballots to special interest groups in exchange for some perceived benefit to them or some group to which they have membership. The interest group would then punch the ballots and return them to the clerk’s office in their county.

Also, this proposal would allow illegal aliens, non-citizens and others without voting rights to be more insulated from any efforts to weed them off of the voting rolls.

If we want more voter involvement, a better way of doing that would be going to a system similar to Texas where they allow “early voting”. Early Voting is a system of consolidating precincts and allowing voting at a regular poling place several weeks before a scheduled election. The poling places are open five or six days a week to allow as many people as possible to vote.

The other reform worth looking at is having each county cross-check their voter rolls with other counties to remove duplicate registrations. This would require some type of state issued identification. This would be a step toward preventing such things as college students from voting twice (once at school and once at home) or people registered to vote at addresses where they no longer live from voting faithfully in every election.

Mail-in voting is just another opportunity to create more voter fraud in a state already full of tainted votes.

Senate Betrays America

Senate Democrats have decided that if they can’t run the United States then no one will defend us.

For them it is better to destroy this country than to keep it safe from terrorists. Today they appear to have destroyed the Patriot Act and its renewal.

This treasonous act forces the blinders upon the intelligence agencies entrusted with defending this nation. This is a violation of the oath of office that these blusterous politicians take every few years to defend this country from all enemies foreign and domestic. Unfortunately for us, these politicians are the domestic enemies, which threaten our very existence as a nation.

If Congress doesn’t stop leaking every nation secret and black ops project while simultaneously leaving us naked and defenseless to our enemies, tens of thousands will die. How much blood must be spilled before they are held accountable?

Like ancient Rome, the barbarians are storming the walls and the Senate is too busy wetting themselves to protect the people. They either need to do their job or make way for Caesar to take over their responsibilities.

John McCain: Manchurian Republican

Insane Senator John McCain, the Manchurian Republican, is trying to negotiate with the White House to get his stupid torture amendment passed before the end of the year. He is holding a military spending bill hostage to try and force this stupid idea onto the military. If his fellow senators had any backbone, they would tell him to sit-down and shut-up. We don’t need any more full employment provisions for anti-American, ACLU lawyers. Instead Senators are cowering in fear of McCain.

Senator McCain, like others such as John Glen, have milked the valor of their youth much too long. They need to be relevant here and now. The Arizona Senator has been in office at least a decade too long. If he had any honor left, he would go quietly into that good night and let a real Republican serve his state.

Unfortunately McCain is following the path of Barry Goldwater. The more senile he gets, the more he undoes what should have been a conservative legacy. The longer McCain serves, the more he becomes like Teddy The Swimmer Kennedy.

Face it John, you are way past your usefully life as a politician. Do the other 49 states a favor and fade away quietly. If you want to hang out with Chris Matthews, do it away from the cameras at the corner pub.

The Myth of Mileage Taxes

This morning Eric Hogue was asking how you would like to be taxed to pay for road improvements in California. He was asking about a per mileage tax versus an increased sales tax. This discussion was due to an upcoming ballot initiative related to this issue.

I reject any proposal for an increase in taxes for this purpose. A mileage tax however well intended would be in addition to any existing taxes and engineered to eliminate privately owned vehicles. It is just another avenue for trying to socially engineer my life and yours and take away our freedom to travel.

Previous attempts to increase spending on roads have resulted in no increase in spending. The new tax revenue simply replaced other revenue that was then diverted for other purposes. Remember the temporary earthquake tax that was made permanent to help with roads? It didn’t make any difference anywhere in the State.

Gasoline taxes diverted for public transportation are a waste of time and are used to subsidize unprofitable modes of transportation. Diverting money for this purpose results in even less money available to maintain and improve existing roads.

If you want to fix the roads then stop the Legislature from putting the money from gas taxes into the general fund. Only a fraction of State and Federal money collected for this purpose is actually used on roads. Most just ends-up in the general fund and is spent on social programs.

If you want to fix the roads put all money collected from gasoline taxes into a separate fund for fixing roads and keep it out of the general fund. If these tens of billions of dollars won’t get the result that you want, then get rid of the Davis-Bacon Act and similar mandates for prevailing wages on highway projects. I know in construction of public schools that prevailing wages increase the cost of construction by 40 percent. Even members of my local school board conceded that point when pressed about the economic cost. I suspect that eliminating prevailing wage requirements on road construction and maintenance would result in similar savings.

The truth is that transportation taxes are a great source of general fund revenue and have nothing to do with road improvement. If the money went to the purposes for which it is collected then we would not even be discussing the quality of our roads. Instead we might be discussing how to rebate the extra revenue collected by the State.