So the Dems manipulated Fannie and Freddie to back, with taxpayer money, a bunch of mortgage loans that they (and ACORN) pressed banks into making when the standards in place at the time would have laughed the applicants out of the bank.

And when Bush and other responsible individuals tried to stop, or at least regulate, this practice, Frank and Dodd and company continued to insist there was nothing wrong with Fannie and Freddie, right up until they collapsed.

We know the rest.  Market for homes destroyed, financial markets destroyed, any investors who have any money left are totally lockjawed in terms of investing it anywhere for any reason.  Even the banks with bailout money refuse to lend it, which was the entire PURPOSE of the bailout, unfreezing credit.

SO what do we do with the car companies?

First we give them bailout money from a fund, TARP, which Bush specifically forbade from being used by anyone but banks.  How did they get around this?  For one thing, GMAC (finance arm for selling GM vehicles) was declared a 'bank' by the Bush administration, so it was eligible for the TARP money.  Now it's getting some, around 5 billion to start.

This is where deja vu kicks in; the money is expected to stimulate sales by INCREASING LENDING by the finance arm of GM.  What if they just sit on it, hoarding for future needs, and don't lend? 

Don't worry, not gonna happen.  They've already announced a great increase in the breadth of the credit score scale which will be considered 'acceptable'.  Loans will be made to people who CANNOT PAY THEM BACK.

It's cars instead of houses, otherwise we are looking at deja vu all over again.  Lots of cars will sell, lots of car loans will go to default, GM won't want to repo the cars because they won't be able to sell them, and taxpayer dollars will 'pay back' the loans that should never have been made in the first place.  Meanwhile car sales might be temporarily boosted but in the longer term will go BUST as the actual qualified buyers are hoarding their OWN money and not making such purchases.

And the taxpayer gets hammered again.  And the industry fails no matter WHAT government does.  Because the only real answer is for car companies to get their costs down to the point that they are competitive with their non-union brethren in the biz.

But first, the flying pigs.  :-))

Most conservatives online now know that Chip Saltsman, candidate for RNC chair and accomplished Republican behind the scenes, recently sent a CD to the 168 members of the RNC who will be voting, he hopes for him.

The CD was the 'greatest hits' of Paul Shanklin, the impersonator/parody songwriter for the Rush Limbaugh Show.  And one of the songs on the CD was "Barack, the magic negro", a recent Rush parody which Rush used to mock liberals' complaint that our side is racist. i

It pointed out that inflammatory language like 'the magic negro' usually comes from the left, as it did in this instance when a black liberal columnist for the L.A. Times wrote a column in which he used that phrase.  The columnist was attempting to muster outrage that, in his view, white people were waiting for 'the magic negro' who was acceptable to whites, not 'authentic' as Sharpton or Jackson were, not from the hood and so forth.  He proposed the Obama was indeed the 'magic negro' but lamented that it took such a person to be a viable candidate.

Limbaugh picked up on this immediately, and used the song to point out that it was a liberal black newspaperman who used the racist phrase and discussed Obama's candidacy purely as a matter of race.  It always is.  Our side just doesn't talk that way or think that way.

But the song is now months old.  The media forgot about it, because their initial effort to tar Limbaugh as a racist failed miserably; he simply continued to point out the origin of the phrase, a liberal black newspaper guy.  It worked.  The media tried hard to overlook that part, to accuse Limbaugh of bringing the phrase into public discussion, but it didn't take.  Facts are facts.

Now, though, they get a second chance; Chip Saltsman is NOT Rush Limbaugh, who continually advises listeners, "don't try this at home; I'm a professional".  And Saltsman's use of this song as a gift to his potential voters, a jolly and genial yuckfest of a gift, was what I call a 'self-laid land mine', a softball that begs the left to just bash it out of the park.

Perhaps by itself it would have been innocuous enough (though no less of a failure of sense on Chip's part); add it to Katon Dawson's 'whites-only' club membership (also a current mini-scandal involving a candidate for chair of RNC) and you have even more of a chance for leftists/media (same thing these days) to make some hay of Chip's CD. 

It isn't about 'letting the left set our agenda" or "playing their game"; it's about common sense.

If a candidate for leadership of the RNC cannot see that such a move might be a self-laid land mine that will blow up on him later, after he wins, after he is now the public face of the Republican party, then what ELSE does this man fail to see?

I'll write the lede for this dead-tree story--

"RNC Chair candidate Saltsman distributes "magic negro" song CD to party insiders as joke; party still stinging from 'whites-only' club membership of another RNC chair candidate". 

it's not false, and it's incredibly easy for them to write.  Think about the millions of Americans who don't pay much attention to these things, who simply scan headlines and believe themselves informed.

Yeah.  It's not pretty.

It's simple judgment.  If he cannot use common sense to see when he's giving the media a free pass to accuse Republicans of latent racism, an accusation which will carry some weight amongst the millions of American people who don't listen to Rush and don't know the song until they hear it in THIS context, then he doesn't have enough common sense to lead MY party. 

I just demand more from my leaders.  Accepting this level of cluelessness is what got us where we are.

And while I can appreciate the desires of some of the TCOT members to tamp this down and change the subject, I would hate to see this pass from our group discussion without our leadership, and those who aspire to it, learning the lesson.  Chip's CD has yet to cause any real damage, and it may never do that.  But the kind of thinking that opens up the chance for a lefty victory, even the smaller ones, has to stop.

It is not a surrender to simply think more about what we're doing and how the left will play it in the press.  It is a REQUIREMENT for future success on our part, and I hope everyone involved now understands that. 

Sadly, I think some are just rankled that we brought it up.

At this point I expect these things.  People who worked with Bush and for Bush are beginning to do what McCain's campaign aides did, which is plunge the knife between the shoulder blades of the people they were supposed to be helping.

Here's an example--

"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."

History will eventually remember that Bush repeatedly begged Governor Blanco to declare disaster BEFORE Katrina hit, so that he could legally deploy federal troops of the National Guard to preposition themselves and even help transport people out.  (he was on the phone with her while she was escaping on her airplane the night before, STILL begging to no avail).

Blanco, the Democrat, of course said NO.  She did not want the loss of face that comes with such a 'please help me' declaration, or perhaps she even wanted to be in a position to blame Bush somehow... who knows..  but one thing is certain, President Bush did not 'fail', and he CERTAINLY did not "break his bond with the public".  

First the Mayor of N.O. opened the 'emergency evacuation plan' folder in the city files and discovered there was nothing in it, much like the fund of federal dollars that were sent to N.O. to strengthen the levies over the years.  

Never happened.

If Bush failed at anything, it was anticipating incompetence from people who appeared to be professionals.  Brownie, for instance.  And of course the entire Democrat establishment in Louisiana and particularly in New Orleans.  Good grief, the local cops even PREVENTED truckloads of SUPPLIES from driving into town to deliver them to the Superdome!  People waited in the heat with no water, while truckloads of it were detained at the edge of town!  

Evacuation plan prepared and practiced?  Nope.  

Thousands of available buses put in play to help transport people away from the city? Nope.  

Governor declares disaster in advance, like others have, to secure federal assistance in fastest possible time?  Nope.  

So when that little old lady on the roof, seeing the rescuer dangling from the helicopter to save her, shouted "what the **** took you so long!!?!?!" at him, he could have answered "ask the mayor, ask the governor!" if he had but known these things.

And now the aides are past being harmed by their treachery and are trying to salvage their inside-beltway reputations by lobbing a few stones at Bush while he's buried up to his neck in other people's failures.  Nothing like the appearance of the true colors, as with McLellan, the pudgy little son of One Tough Grandma. (Carole Keeton Strayhorn, Texas independent gubernatorial candidate who probably holds grudge against Bush for supporting his old lt. gov Rick Perry instead of her).  Scottie was probably writing his Bush basher before even resigning as Bush spokesman.  (Li'l Scottie's perpetual appearance of being overwhelmed, of not being up to the job, is fully explained by the fact that he was a political appt rather than a professional one.) 

And I'm sure this is just the beginning.  As for Bush and Katrina, it is Matthew Dowd whose words will be the ones that 'didn't matter'.  History will eventually bear out Bush's innocence in these matters.  He did all a president could, should, and is legally PERMITTED to do.

This would have been encouraging along about February 2008, when there were candidates in the Republican primary who talked this way and when the party could have been 'led' to coalesce around these values.

But now, it's just sad.  The RNC has woken from its Duncan-induced slumber and realized the base is furious and the likelihood of permanently losing large parts of it was closer to reality with each passing day.  They're working up an essentially anti-bailout, anti-socialism, and unsubtly anti-Bush resolution.

But hey, better late than never.  Time to stand up, RNC, and speak proudly of conservative principles!  sigh....

The author quotes a notable as saying we need to articulate conservative principle now, not just every four years when there's an election.

NOTE TO RNC-- you didn't do that IN THIS ELECTION.  Were you gonna shoot for every EIGHT years?

But this part is my favorite-- "This is based on the thinking that articulating political philosophy is equally important as applying it consistently." 

Reminds me of the scene in North Dallas Forty, when the assistant coach (Charles Durning) shouts at a rookie in training camp, "we drafted you because they said you were fast, strong and smart.  At this point I'd be delighted if you were any ONE of those things!"

The RNC has been AWOL in both areas, articulation and application.  I will NEVER forget that I, voracious consumer of all things conservative and most things Republican (constantly in search of that glimpse of actual conservative principle in action), spent the last two years unaware of who my RNC chairman WAS.

The first time I ever heard the name Mike Duncan was AFTER I joined TCOT.  Two weeks ago.

A very wise pastor and longtime bible student and teacher once explained to me his take on 'turn the other cheek' and why pacifists are wrong about it.

Jesus was teaching not total pacifism but self-control and restraint.  If you are struck and you are able to 'turn the other cheek', it means you have not responded out of temper or anger but are measuring and examining what has happened, what is happening. 

"turn the other cheek" means "do not be easily provoked". 

Jesus never taught that we should always choose nonviolence.  He Himself was violent for a good reason, in the temple overturning the tables of the moneychangers.  He even took the time, likely hours, to braid a whip for the occasion before going inside.

On the subject of violence, He was consistent; it is appropriate sometimes, but not because you have 'given in' to anger or embarrassment or any of the emotions one feels upon being 'struck'.  His advice goes to our own responses, and not primarily to the events which can cause them.

Restrain yourself.  Take your time, think it over.  If someone hits you, don't 'hit back' right away; do it because it's the RIGHT THING.  And take the time to be sure before you do.

I've never forgotten this take.  I believe it's the correct one.

I've been wondering for a few weeks now when we would see signs of a real drop in the value of a dollar.

We cannot just keep printing trillions of new dollars without losing the value of a dollar.  It's basic economics. 

Our currency is based loosely on the combined per-capita productivity of the citizens of this country.  It's how we exchange value for value, by buying and selling what we produce and what we do, goods and services.

When you double the number of units of currency but there is no change in productivity, each dollar is worth half what it once was.  That's basic math.

Our congress and president are presiding over the printing of vast new quantities of dollars without any increased value of productivity to support their value.  In fact circumstances are DECREASING productivity, making a fall even more likely and precipitous.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the dollar fall ten percent or more over the next couple of months.  And what the fans of Hopey McChange don't realize is this:

When the dollar drops in value, you have to spend more of them to buy the same old thing.

Now, when my lunch goes from eight to twelve dollars, I'm going to grouch about it and maybe brownbag from time to time.

But when those on low incomes, the poor, find their food has gone up 50%, THEY CAN"T JUST PAY MORE. 

They're the ones who are hurt the most by the deflation of the dollar.

Remember that when Obama prints ANOTHER trillion dollars for his 'economic stimulus' plan.  Think of a gallon of milk going to $7 at the Kroger.  Or a loaf of bread going to $6. 

You've already been introduced to the $4 gallon of gasoline, and it will make a comeback too, but not because of the 'high price' of oil; it will be the LOW VALUE of the dollar.

The Fairness Doctrine is an odious relic of the 1980s which ties the hands of broadcasters by insisting they cover both sides of issues with equal time (thus destroying whatever audience was enjoying program A as soon as program B comes on).  Rather than shatter and drive off their audience by forcing disagreeable programming on them, broadcasters chose to chase a different audience by avoiding politics, and thus avoiding the restrictive compulsions of the FD.  This gave us the classic talk shows of yesteryear, psychologists and happy hosts and lots of local feelgood programming, all of which struggled to break even. 

As a longtime radio guy and former station owner, I can say the most important thing a broadcaster can have is LISTENER LOYALTY.

The Fairness Doctrine is designed to destroy it.

But now we know the Fairness Doctrine is NOT in the gameplan, and we're wasting our time worrying about it.

The left wants MORE than fairness; they want a say in station programming, and VETO POWER OVER LICENSING.

They'll get it without a single legislative initiative.  The FCC is completely free to alter licensing requirements, including term of license and input of local communities.

The plan is that 'community organizers' (love that phrase) will present demands to stations about what programs they want, and DON'T want.  And if stations do not 'please' these street-level future tyrants, licenses will be REMOVED and station owners forced out of business.  The good Reverend Wright's church has already done this once.  That's the model.

If the FCC reduces the term of license to two years from the current eight, and forces station owners to please local groups (who are learning their craft from Obama and his communist mentors like Alinsky), this will mean the end of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and all the local conservative programs too.

There is only one way to fight this. 

OUR SIDE MUST ORGANIZE, and in larger numbers, and with greater purpose.  We must outnumber and outwork these Alinsky types, so much so that even their 'minority status' (meaning excessive influence) will be swamped by sheer numbers and single-mindedness.

This will all be covered in the righteous language of 'service to the community', a longtime staple government requirement for broadcasters.  And of course it is not the programs that have changed; it is the community organizers who have seized the power of the 'spokespeople' and are exercising it in new and dangerous ways.

Not so long ago, we met our requirements by running weekend 'local issue' shows and by reading lots of PSA's (public service anncmts) about local events and needs and such. 

These people will redefine public service as "all the programming" instead of a reasonable part of it.  And this will all happen without a single legislative shot fired, without any presidential declarations or acts.  The FCC is already amenable to Obama, and this is on their to-do list.

We need to organize.  YES, WE CAN.  :-))

I'm working on the reference manual for conservative principles, as seen by the common man, the ordinary guy, ME.

Here's the first part of the manual.

***********************************************************

Fiscal conservatism--

1) taxation is a 'necessary evil'.  We cannot run government without funding it.  But the primary obligation of government is not to become as large as possible or to serve as many people as possible, it is TO TAKE AS LITTLE OF THE HARD EARNED MONEY OF A TAXPAYER AS POSSIBLE.  This is a MORAL DUTY of government.  Ours has failed miserably at this test of fiduciary responsibility.

This moral aspect of taxation and spending cannot be overstated; the act of seizing the hard earned money of free citizens is morally wrong, and it is endured by them only because it is the 'least bad' way of funding government.  Citizens accept it grudgingly, but do not embrace it.  I can think of nobody, even a very wealthy liberal, who brags of volunteering to pay more tax than he owes.  Warren Buffett famously points out that his secretary pays MORE taxes than he does.  

Liberals may make noises about being proud to pay taxes and so on, but they still hire accountants to make sure they don't pay a nickel more in tax than necessary; this is a reasonable proof of the general rule that people can be depended upon to act in their own economic self interest.  And that leads us to--

2) History proves that when taxes are raised, the activity which is being taxed is REDUCED, and the normal result is that the government brings in LESS revenue.  People do not blindly continue to do something that costs them more and more; the risk/reward ratio is altered for the worse by increased taxes, and the higher risk and lower reward reduces the number of people who participate in the taxed activity.  (example-- the brilliant liberal idea of a 10% "luxury" tax on yachts back in the early '90s, which destroyed the yacht-building industry and cost thousands of middle class jobs but raised almost no money.  Buyers simply switched to used yachts to avoid the tax, and the builders were devastated.  The liberal thinking was along the lines of 'those rich guys, they won't even notice ten percent, they can afford it, it's easy money', etc.  But changes in tax cause changes in behavior, always.)  

Therefore increased taxes cannot be seen simply as a method of increasing revenue, but rather as a force that changes behavior in the market.  And liberals often acknowledge this, as did Tom Brokaw in a recent Obama interview, when he suggested to Obama that taxes be raised on gasoline in order to compel people to alternative energy and alternative kinds of transportation.  Punitive taxes change behavior, and liberals are quick to use this principle whenever they want to DISCOURAGE an activity.  But they never acknowledge that lowering a tax on an activity can increase the activity, and thus increase the amount of earned money subject to taxing, which increases revenue to government.

3)  Liberals respond to the idea of tax cuts to increase revenue with a scoff, "what, are you going to cut them to zero?  How can you have revenue then?"  But that is a specious argument of extremes.  IT's like arguing that because slower driving uses less gasoline, you should stop the car and turn it off, thereby saving ALL your gasoline.  It works, but you get nowhere.  Stupid argument.  I say stick to reality-- 

History proves that lower taxes increase government revenue, as a general rule, by increasing the activity that is taxed.  

After the Bush tax cuts, the following five years all set records for government revenue.  When you remove some of the penalty for a business activity (like reducing cap gains from 27% to 15%), you alter the risk-reward ratio for the better, and more people thus do more business (buying and selling stocks and assets), because they can keep more of the income.  This increase in activity more than compensates for the reduction in percentage of the tax, and the overall result is an increase in government revenue.

(aside-- recently, BHO was interviewed by Charlie Gibson, and the question was put; if increasing taxes reduces revenue, why would you want to do it?  Obama's response?  "it's not about revenue, it's about fairness."  Obama believes the tax code exists to punish people for being too rich, apparently.  There's no other way to interpret his answer.  He is willing to subject America's poor to privation in the form of less money to go around, less money to help, all in the name of bringing down the rich by increasing their tax burden.  Honesty, breathtaking and appalling.)

The Irish have a 12.5% business tax as opposed to our combined rate of over 40%, and the Irish economy has boomed while others languished.  This is because so many businesses moved to Ireland to take advantage of this low tax. 

The Russian government recently adopted a 12% flat tax, because so many people were not PAYING the higher tax that it caused government to have a revenue crisis.  This new, lower, affordable tax brought a lot of people back into 'legal' status,  because they knew it was riskier to continue to dodge taxes than to simply pay the 12%.  Russian government revenues have increased dramatically by LOWERING their tax rate and removing the graduated rates.

You would think these lessons would be learned and absorbed by our intrepid legislators.  And you would be wrong.  Or perhaps they do know these things and simply do not care; the point of tax law appears to be for government to control the actions of various groups of people.  

IF liberals were serious about 'helping the poor', you would see tax cuts across the board, so that government revenue would increase and there would be more money for those poor people.  

But instead, the poor stay poor, and government is in perpetual motion trying to find ways to INCREASE taxes.

(aside- Charlie Rangel was recently asked what would happen if the rich had their taxes increased, and said he figured they'd just work harder to stay even.  Nauseating disregard for the principle of ownership, disrespect for the American tradition of hard work and reward, and I'd even say he feels that earners and taxpayers are rightfully slaves to government, obligated to produce so that government can be funded.)

A recent anecdote about what happens when liberals are in charge of taxation and spending sheds light on these truths-- 

California faces a budget breakdown.  Over the past four years California government spending increased almost 100%, faster even than federal government spending.  They have, of course, been spending more than they took in for years, and are now on the edge of being broke.  Some press wonk recently wrote, without awareness of the irony, that it would be hard to raise taxes on the rich in California, as the top 1% already pay 50% of the taxes.

Nationally, the top half of earners pay more than 97% of taxes.  The top 5% pay 50%.  The rich pay far more than their fair share.  California's ceaseless beavering at the rich, trying to get ever more of their money, is backfiring; the rich are LEAVING.  The top 1% of Californians are only 150,000 people, a very small number to be responsible for half the state budget.  Even a hundred or two leaving the state has a colossal impact on its future revenues.

"Tax the rich" is not the answer.  The answer is to reduce taxes.  It's the practical and moral thing to do.  But Democrats will fight to the death to prevent this from happening. 

The rich, as we know, are fleeing California.  Options?  Make it illegal to move out of California if your income is above a certain amount?  Make a 'trailing tax' that people have to pay even after leaving California?  Is there anything California can really do to increase its revenues and stop the tide of productive people flowing out of the state?

Of course.  They can institute drastic reductions in taxes on small business and on individuals.

But they won't.  And they will be broke, and the slack will again be taken up by the seizing of ever more of the hard earned money of those who DO make prudent, sensible decisions on finances, who DON'T buy more house than they can afford, who save and who pay taxes and who work to make a life for themselves and their families.

Our reward for acting in a financially responsible manner is to be billed for the losses of those who do not.  It's true for responsible Californians, and it's true for the rest of us as well.

No wonder those Californians are heading east.  But where do the rest of us go to escape federal government's rapacious, counterproductive and foolish excess taxation?

Lacking refuge to which we can flee, the only other response we can muster is the Rand response-- shrugging off our burdens, producing less, giving up our American dream of prosperity, learning how to 'barely get by' and enjoy other aspects of life.

Some are doing it now; many more will follow.

The only government response to THIS?  Well, that's to make productivity 'mandatory', otherwise known as SLAVERY.

Think about it.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:SN02092:@@@D&summ2=m&

On that site, you will find the summary of a new bill (actually a major alteration to an old one) about bankruptcy.

The bill is S2092, "Protecting Employees in Business Bankruptcies Act of 2007", is getting marked up nice and juicy for the UAW and all the rest of the unions.

It amends the law to increase the amount of allowable claims made by unsecured persons (i.e. employees for wages, salaries, commissions, etc) which currently fall into fourth 'rank' in importance at the time of distributing assets.  It includes within the scope of such a claim the equities held in a defined contribution plan if the employer or plan sponsor committed fraud regarding the plan.

It permits within 'administrative expenses' certain severance pay for termination or layoffs.

It prohibits certain senior executive compensation from being 'disproportionate' in light of economic concessions by debtors' nonmanagement workforce.  (after this, my question will be 'what concessions?')

It disallows as administrative expense specified executive compensation enhancements.

It REVISES REQUIREMENTS GOVERNING REJECTION OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENTS, INSURANCE BENEFITS FOR RETIRED EMPLOYEES AND THE STATUS OF CERTAIN EMPLOYEE BENEFITS IN A SALE OF BUSINESS ASSETS.

And there's more.  Much more. 

Basically, this revision of S2092 gives the unions (employees, but of course unions are driving this) something like 'first pick' at the carcass of a bankrupt company, and orders courts to create the bankruptcy proceeding with this in mind.

Now you see why the BRIDGE LOAN, the SHORT TERM FINANCING, is so popular with the Dems and the UAW.

They're just trying to stagger across the finish line to the new congress and new president, at which time letting the big three go bankrupt will be JUST FINE. 

This is a giant flim flam on the part of the libs in congress, and I have to believe the president at least KNOWS about this. 

But there is NO public discussion of it, and there will not be.  The public's understanding of the negotiations between government, management and UAW is totally flawed, and the taxpayers are being led to believe they're 'lending' the money on the basis of making the companies viable so they can at some point pay it back.

But the UAW and the leftists DON"T GIVE A D@MN about the taxpayers, and have no intention of giving back a dime.  It's all about how much flesh there is on the corpse to redistribute when it finally dies.  This new legislation, S2092, radically changes those rules of redistribution.

Cue the taxpayer to quit his job, sit home and collect welfare, folks.  Atlas is bound to shrug if much of this is in our future.

Colin Powell is a lost soul.

Famously 'republican' but infamously unwilling to tell anyone anything about what he believes as principle, he is now speaking out against those who do speak about their principles, among them Rush Limbaugh.

"Can we continue to.. listen to Rush Limbaugh?" he asks rhetorically, complaining that the Republican party is 'shouting at people' instead of listening to them. 

Here is the truth about Colin Powell.  He is a liberal.  He was pleased that McCain, also a liberal in many ways, became our candidate-- THEN HE VOTED FOR OBAMA.

Why in Heaven's name we should listen to HIM about the future of the republican party I don't know. 

But he is exactly wrong.  The party is where it is because we have NOT been listening to Rush.  If we were, McCain would not have been our candidate.  If we were, we would not have been voting for all the excess spending of the past ten years.  If we were, we wouldn't have so many in our party so eager to spend buzillions of dollars on global warming crud.

Powell seems to be personally offended by Christians and by foreign policy hawks and by fiscal conservatives; in short, by the entire Republican party.  Yet he claims to be a Republican, even while voting for Obama and endorsing him.

The truth about the Republican party is this:

when real, sound conservatism is tried, it works.  When it is a campaign platform, the candidate wins.  What Powell says is we should water it down and weaken it in favor of a gigantic tent in which Democrats would feel comfortable.  But his recommendations have largely been followed, even by Bush over the past couple of years, and the result has been the decimation of the Republican party in elections.

We are not Democrats, and we should not talk like them. 

Conservatism is the answer.  Speak strongly for lower taxes, on the principle that the person working hard for his money is entitled to keep as much as possible, and the officeholder is obligated to take and spend as little as possible.  Speak strongly for family values, and explain them.  Marriage is the joining of two opposite genders; to alter the participants is to destroy the meaning of the word.  Foreign policy is simple-- be strong enough to easily defend one's country against ANYTHING, and then be magnanimous and genial and helpful in foreign policy.  It's an easy decision to shake an offered hand if a large and powerful weapon is in the other hand.

Republicans need to do the opposite of Powell's recommendations.  Tighten up.  Talk loudly, speak clearly about principle.  Be conservative, and be proud of it.

We've lost because we've not done these things. 

Names?  Too many to bother naming.  Bush is the ringleader.  Since about 2006 he's forgotten whatever he knew about conservatism.

No doubt about it, that evil horrible terrible global warming is going to KILL US ALL.

Heh, earliest snow in RECORDED HISTORY in some of these deep south burgs.  Some even have never had snow in December AT ALL.

It has come to my attention that Oprah Winfrey weights 2/3rds as much as I do.

Big deal.

But she seems to think it's an occasion for a mea culpa of colossal (200 lb?) proportions. 

Oprah, for God's sake, MOVE ALONG.  You don't owe it to anyone to make weight.  You're not a prize fighter, you're not a Jenny spokesgal, nobody CARES what you weigh.  Just go have a sugar free latte with Valerie Bertinelli and Marie Osmond and cry a little and move along.

And aside--  how can she be so depressed as to eat for comfort?  Didn't 'THE ONE' win his election?  Isn't he president in January?  What on earth is depressing to her?

Not so long ago, when times were good, wallets were fat and nobody could see the crash coming, even the Associated (with leftists and Islamists) Press was not embarrassed to admit that trickle down economics worked just fine and Reagan was right, although they didn't mention him explicitly.

If you looked today for an article similar to that one from two years ago, you'd fall asleep long before your search yielded fruit of any kind.  It ain't there. 

Nobody on the left, or in the press (but I repeat myself) is about to admit that all those highly paid executives of evil corporations actually and directly cause employment and even prosperity way down the food chain of economics. 

Nobody will ask this question--  what about the pilots of those Big Three corporate jets?  What about the crews that clean and prep the planes?  The hostesses?  The supply companies who have those contracts?  The guy who drives the truck that fills up the fuel tanks of those evil corporate jets?  The desk guys and traffic controllers at the smaller executive airports?  What about all these ordinary, UNRICH people who have jobs only because there are rich guys around doing what rich guys do?  If acting like a rich guy and spending lots of money is so evil, is it then equally evil to deliberately cause the loss of so many blue collar and middle class jobs by forcing rich guys to stop being and acting rich?

I am a member of a moderately priced country club.  I'm not rich, but when I add up the price of playing golf and compare it with the price of this membership, the comparison is favorable.  It SAVES me money.  All the same, it's a nice club, and lots of people there are much wealthier than I am.  (It's always fun to hit the ball fifty yards past a guy who could BUY you. :-)

Lots of lefties act like country clubs themselves are evil, wicked manifestations of the evil rich and their 'play while others work' attitude. 

But at my club, there are lots of people working THERE.  Lots of greenskeepers who speak Spanish and drive old pickup trucks, lots of waiters and chefs and assistants and bartenders and secretaries and supply clerks and underpaid overworked golf 'professionals' and their even more underpaid interns and driving range attendants, every single one of these people gainfully employed and making a living for themselves and their families BECAUSE THE RICH ACT RICH. 

If country clubs are to suffer the glare of the leftist media, to be made unacceptable and a blight on the community by the image-twisting 'equality snobs' of the left, what will happen to these jobs?  And what about jewelers, exotic car dealerships, spas, resorts, high end restaurants, all the other categories of business whose existence is owed to the rich behavior of the rich guys?  WHAT ABOUT THOSE JOBS?

Wake up lefties.  Capitalism is the engine that drives the whole train.  In order for everyone to have an opportunity to have the dignity of serving themselves and their own families with their efforts, to be responsible for their living, YOU"RE GOING TO HAVE RICH GUYS.  It's part of the system.  And without them, lots of ordinary people would suffer. 

If I am to be taught a lesson about how charitable I should be, I'd prefer the lesson come from someone who is giving HIS OWN MONEY, not just casting votes that result in the giving of OTHER PEOPLE's money. 

Because that's not charity, just theft motivated by jealousy.

I've heard this story countless times, and yet I seem to be the only one in my circle who has.

It's the TRUE story of Thanksgiving.

When the boats were on the way over from England in the seventeenth century, plans were made for 'a common store' of goods, so that all that was produced would go into it and nobody in the New Colony would lack for what they needed.

Nowadays this is called 'communism'.  As Marx himself famously stated, "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need."  And of course it always SEEMS to be a good idea, until it is actually put into practice, at which point the imperfections of the human condition assert themselves and disaster looms.

And so it was, in the first several years of the new American colony.  Each year productivity diminished, and finally it was clearly understood that the young, strong men were not MOTIVATED to work only in order to feed 'other men's wives and children'.  And too many people understood that they could eat WITHOUT working. 

St. Paul said "he who does not work, neither shall he eat" (2nd Thessalonians 3:10).  This is the biblical injunction that in God's view NOBODY OWES YOU A LIVING, now famously forgotten by American politicians in their endless quest to spend other people's money to purchase the votes of those whose living they 'provide'.

Bottom line?  After several increasingly desperate years, the colony adopted a new rule; each family gets its own plot of land and gets to keep whatever is produced there, without having to share it with others.  No produce?  No eating. 

The result was nothing less than astounding; in very short order, the entire colony had so much, it couldn't consume it all. 

And quite literally, the first 'Thanksgiving feast' was an invitation to the local tribe to come and share the bounty.  Come, eat, because we can't eat it all and don't want to waste it.

The thanks given sincerely to God by a relieved colony is thanks for having given them the idea, the option, to save themselves from starvation.  Capitalism was the idea.  The starvation was the looming consequence of communism.

And in the more modern history of the world, the song remains the same.

Funny, isn't it, how so few people know this story?  Read the whole thing at the link above.

It appears to be documented, but I still can't believe it.

Man loses class ring on fishing trip 21 years ago.  Fast forward to present, stranger catches big fish and cleans it, discovers class ring, does name search and returns it to original owner.

I'm a bass fisherman, and I have great difficulty believing one fish lived 21 years and only grew to eight pounds.  Not to mention it would have had to be almost a year old to eat the ring in the first place, probably as it was falling slowly, flashing, glittering, wobbling not unlike a lure.

The other possibility, that a fish was eaten by another fish, is equally difficult.  The predator would have to be larger, you see, than its victim.  It would then also be OLDER.

I'll have to look up more on this.  I have not heard that a bass can live this long, or at least not without growing to twenty pounds or more.

But what a story, eh?  :-)