Santorum's Anti-JFK Speech

Santorum's Anti-JFK Speech
By Quin Hillyer on 2.27.12 @ 11:45AM

The establishment media half-wits are now having a predictably crazy, breathless collective seizure about Rick Santorum's 2010 speech blasting JFK'sfamous "absolute separation" of church and state speech. Well, I actually wrote about Santorum's speech when he gave it. Read my take on it here, and Kathryn Lopez' equally timely report on it here. Alas, the link I had to the speech no longer works; if ANYbody can find a link either to a transcript or to a video of it, please send it to me at Qhillyer@Gmail.com.

Note that even then, one of the examples Santorum used about government interference against faith was this one: • The ACLU is currently pushing HHS to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions under the emergency care mandate of Obamacare.

He was ahead of the game on this issue.

Here was my key paragraph on the subject:

After JFK's bit of political jujitsu, the moronic cognoscenti taught as established doctrine that faith should be completely segregated from the public square. To which Santorum answers: "Our founders' vision, unlike the French, was to give every belief and every believer and non-believer a place at the table in the public square. Madison referred to this 'equal and complete liberty' as the 'true remedy.'" Repeat: The idea was not to divorce all faiths from the public square, but to welcome all faiths into it.

That said, there was something JFK said that Barack Obama should learn: "I believe in an America...where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all....It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you -- until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril."

To date, the Catholic church along with Baptist and numerous Evangelical or Pentecostal institutions has fought back against the Obamacare abortifacient mandate, but the "mainline" Protestant churches have been silent. Shame on them. Religious liberty is being infringed, and they stand silent. How pathetic.

Rick Santorum is right: The separation of church and state is not meant to be absolute. What IS meant to be absolute is that the state should be completely forbidden from infringing on the free exercise of religion. That's what the Constitution says. That's what it means. It is a right worth fighting for.
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To read another article by Quin Hillyer, click here.
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To read another article about Rick Santorum, click here.

Rick Santorum - My Economic Freedom Agenda

Rick Santorum - My Economic Freedom Agenda
We need bold tax reform, but Mitt Romney wants to tinker at the margins.
By RICK SANTORUM

America's budget process is broken. Our economy and American families are struggling, and the country needs bold reforms and major restructuring, not tinkering at the margins. Obamanomics has left one in six Americans in poverty, and one in four children on food stamps. Millions seek jobs and others have given up.

Meanwhile, my opponent in the Republican primaries, Mitt Romney, had a last-minute conversion. Attempting to distract from his record of tax and fee increases as governor of Massachusetts, poor job creation, and aggressive pursuit of earmarks, he now says he wants to follow my lead and lower individual as well as corporate marginal tax rates.

It's a good start. But it doesn't go nearly far enough. He says his proposed tax cuts would be revenue neutral and, borrowing the language of Occupy Wall Street, promises the top 1% will pay for the cuts. No pro-growth tax policy there, just more Obama-style class warfare.

By contrast, in my first 100 days as president, I'll submit to Congress and work to pass a comprehensive pro-growth and pro-family Economic Freedom Agenda. Here are 10 of its main initiatives:

• Unleash America's energy. I'll approve the Keystone Pipeline for jobs and energy security, and sign an order on day one unleashing America's domestic energy production, allowing states to choose where they want to explore for oil and natural gas and to set their own regulations for hydrofracking.

• Stop job-killing regulation. All Obama administration regulations that have an economic burden over $100 million will be repealed, including the Environmental Protection Agency rule on CO2 emissions that's already shut down six power plants. I'll review all regulations, making sure they use sound science and cost benefit analysis.

• A pro-growth, pro-family tax policy. I'll submit to Congress comprehensive tax policies to strengthen opportunity in our country, with only two income tax rates of 10% and 28%. To help families, I'll triple the personal deduction for children and eliminate the marriage tax penalty.

• Restore America's competitiveness. The corporate tax rate should be halved, to a flat rate of 17.5%. Corporations should be allowed to expense all business equipment and investment. Taxes on corporate earnings repatriated from overseas should be eliminated to bring home manufacturing. I'll take the lead on tort reform to lower costs to consumers.

• Rein in spending. I'll propose spending cuts of $5 trillion over five years, including cuts for the remainder of fiscal year 2013. I'll propose budgets that spend less money each year than prior years, and I'll reduce the nondefense-related federal work force by at least 10%, without replacing them with private contractors.

• Repeal and replace ObamaCare. I'll submit legislation to repeal ObamaCare, and on day one issue an executive order ending related regulatory obligations on the states. I'll work with Congress to replace ObamaCare with competitive insurance choices to improve quality and limit the costs of health care, while protecting those with uninsurable health conditions. In contrast, Gov. Romney signed into law RomneyCare, which provided the model for ObamaCare. Its best-known feature is its overreaching individual health-care mandate. But it shares over a dozen other similarities with ObamaCare and has given Massachusetts the highest health-care premiums in the nation, and longer waits for health care.

• Balance the budget. I'll submit to Congress a budget that will balance within four years and call on Congress to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution which limits federal spending to 18% of GDP.

• Negotiate and submit free trade agreements. Because many Americans work for companies which export, I'll initiate negotiations in the first 100 days and submit to Congress five free trade agreements during my first year in office to increase exports.

• Reform entitlements. I'll cut means-tested entitlement programs by 10% across the board, freeze them for four years, and block grant them to states—as I did as the author of welfare reform in 1996. I'll reform Medicare and Social Security so they are fiscally sustainable for seniors and young people.

• Revive housing. I'll submit plans to Congress to phase out within several years Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's federal housing role, reform and make transparent the Federal Reserve, and allow families whose mortgages are "underwater" to deduct losses from the sale of their home in order to get a fresh start in difficult economic times.

I'll work with Congress and the American people to once again create an economic environment where hard work is rewarded, equal opportunity exists for all, and families providing for their children can once again be optimistic about their future.

Mr. Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, is a Republican candidate for president.
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To read another article about Rick Santorum, click here.

Islam is different

Islam is different
The remaining details of submission can be worked out later.
by John Hayward
02/27/2012

Afghanistan continues to be torn by violence after the burning of Korans at an American airbase, including more attacks on American and NATO military personnel. A car bomber hit a NATO base on Monday, killing nine Afghans. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and specifically described it as revenge for the Koran burnings.

Also on Monday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for an attempt to poison the troops at a U.S. base by recruiting a cook to put bleach in their food. Fortunately, no serious injuries resulted from the tainted food.

This followed the murder of two American military advisors in Kabul on Saturday, shot in the back of the head by a Taliban gunman, who was sufficiently well-placed to gain access to “an office that only people who know a numerical combination can get into,” according to the Associated Press. International military personnel have been withdrawn from all Afghan ministries for their own safety.

So far, the Obama Administration’s response has been limited to profuse apologies for the Koran burning, delivered directly to the Afghan president so many American soldiers died to install and support, Hamid Karzai. The Most Transparent Administration In History still won’t release the full text of the letter it sent to Karzai, even as someone dressed in an Afghan military uniform was pumping bullets into American soldiers.

In response, Karzai went on Afghan television to announce he had discussed the matter with “jihadi leaders” and “prominent scholars,” and was demanding the U.S. government “bring the perpetrators of the act to justice and put them on trial and punish them.” He went on to “condemn this vicious act in the strongest terms,” and describe his people’s sensitivities as “right and laudable.”

Note: he’s talking about the American troops who burned the Korans, not the Taliban dirtbags who murdered U.S. soldiers, along with no small number of Afghans. As reported by CNS News:

"The US government says that such act was carried out because of ignorance and lack of knowledge,” Karzai said. “This incident happened as a result of the ignorance of the US military officer about our vision about Islam and not recognizing the Koran. It was not deliberate."

"Today,” Karzai said, “we had a detailed session attended by jihadi leaders, prominent scholars, speakers of both houses--the lower house and the senate--the esteemed chief justice, vice presidents and other dignitaries and our government. We discussed the matter of the burning of the Holy Koran. Representing the Afghan nation and their pure sentiments, in fact the Islamic world, once again we call on the US government to bring the perpetrators of the act to justice and put them on trial and punish them."

Karzai also asked his people to “calm down” while they wait for that trial to get started.

Outrage spread well beyond the borders of Afghanistan. Iran, for example, asked that the United Nations Human Rights Council condemn the Koran burnings. Said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi, “Undoubtedly, this deplorable act of incitement is a gross violation of human rights, hurting sentiments of Muslims worldwide.”

Iran’s Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami went much further, declaring that the Koran burning was “not a mistake,” but rather “an intentional move prompted by the hatred of America for Islam.”

Wow, those Iranians are sure fired up about this outrage against Islam! Say, you know what else happened in global religious news last week? Iran sentenced a Christian pastor, held prisoner for over 800 days, to death by hanging because he left Islam. As of this writing, it is believed Nadarkhani is still alive, and may be used as a political bargaining chip with the Western world. As a Fox News report notes, “death sentences in Iran can be carried out immediately, or dragged out for years.”

Funny that you haven’t heard a lot of global outrage about Nadarkhani. No one is demanding a groveling letter of apology from the Iranian head of state. Christians are not rising up in arms.

The Koran burning incident in Afghanistan marks one more surrender of the West to the basic tenets of Islamic supremacy. Islam is different. It is not treated like other religions, officially or by Western popular culture. Having accepted that principle, the remaining details of submission can be worked out later.

Rep. Allen West (R-FL) published a statement on Facebook in which he explains the true nature of the situation in Afghanistan:

I want to extend my sincere condolences to the families of the Army Colonel and Major who were killed by Afghanistan security forces over this “burning Koran” episode.

If we had resolute leadership in the White House, we would have explained that these Islamic terrorist enemy combatants detained at the Parwan facility used the Koran to write jihadist messages to pass to others.

In doing so, they violated their own cultural practice and defiled the Koran and turned the Koran into contraband.

The Islamic cultural practice and Parwan detention facility procedures support burning the “contraband.”

Instead here we go again, offering apology after apology and promising to “hold those responsible accountable.” Responsible for what?

When tolerance becomes a one-way street it leads to cultural suicide.

So these Korans were already defiled by the jihadis, and burning them would be consistent with accepted Islamic practice… if the proper disposal of defiled holy books was really the issue. But it isn’t. The real issue is the second-class status of the unbeliever. The rage in Afghanistan was sparked because infidels burned those Korans.

By issuing a quick public apology, and indulging fantasies about sending our soldiers to face trial, and probably execution, in Afghanistan, the Administration concedes the point that Islam Is Different, and accepts the dim view of unbelievers held by the distressingly large number of “extremists.” (Curiously, Western media doesn’t seem very interested in referring to the rioters in Afghanistan as part of that “tiny minority of extremists” who always seem to be "hijacking" the Religion of Peace.)

There is no sense that violence has compromised the ability of the rioters to air out their grievances in supposedly civilized circles. There doesn’t seem to be much outrage about the fairly large amount of Koran destruction that must occur during the frequent Muslim factional warfare, or the outright pogroms against particularly unfashionable sects.

When a series of cartoons deemed offensive to Islam was published by a Danish newspaper, the formerly courageous defenders of irreverent free speech across Europe and America suddenly muzzled themselves in an orgy of self-censorship, turning handstands to come up with noble-sounding reasons not to reprint the Cartoons of Doom. There’s a new show premiering on ABC in March called “Good Christian Bitches,” based on a novel of the same name. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the edgy free-speech adventurers of ABC to green-light a comparable show about Muslims, with a comparably disrespectful title.

Thus does a weak Western culture that generally prides itself on being agnostic, or actively hostile to religion, accept the tenets of the one religion that it knows will violently resist such disdain. It will be interesting to see if our shiny new Total State flexes its ObamaCare powers against Islam with anything like the casual arrogance it demonstrated toward the Catholic Church. I doubt it. Islam is different.
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To read another article by John Hayward, click here.
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To watch a video about Islam, click here.

The Democrat Gas Hypocrisy

The Democrat Gas Hypocrisy
February 27, 2012
Rush Limbaugh Show

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Michael Janovsky at the New York Times, April 24th, 2006, about six years ago: "Democrats Eager to Exploit Anger Over Gas Prices." This is back in 2006. The Democrats were running for office in the midterm elections trying to talk us into a recession. This is after they had failed at trying to talk us into failure in Iraq. "Democrats running for Congress are moving quickly to use the most recent surge in oil and gasoline prices to bash Republicans over energy policy, and more broadly, the direction of the country. With oil prices hitting a high this week and prices at the pump topping $3 a gallon in many places..." We're now over $5 in California. In 2006, with "prices at the pump topping $3 a gallon in many places Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic Senate candidate in Minnesota, is making the issue the centerpiece of her campaign. Ms. Klobuchar says it 'is one of the first things people bring up' at her campaign stops. To varying degrees, Democrats around the country are following a similar script that touches on economic anxiety and populist resentment against oil companies."

Yep!

"'It's a metaphor for an economy that keeps biting people despite overall good numbers,' said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York..." What else do we have a Chuck-U? Oh, Chuck-U is in the news today, folks. Chuck-U tells Clinton to pressure Saudi Arabia to pump more oil. Senator Chuck-U Schumer "wants Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to press..." She's got her own section in the program today for her own rampant hypocrisy. (We'll get to that in due course.) Chuck-U Schumer "wants Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to press Saudi Arabia to boost output as rising prices are hitting consumer at the gasoline pump." Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

Wait a minute. More oil? Chuck-U wants more oil? Is that what asking the Saudis to do, pump more oil? Is that right? Is that what that means? Senator Schumer tells Clinton to pressure Saudis to pump more oil? He wants more oil? Then how come this regime vetoes the Keystone pipeline and has a drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico and makes fun of/mocks the concept of producing more oil in the United States? So Senator Chuck-U Schumer is asking Senator Clinton to make us more dependent on foreign oil! That's what he's doing when he's asking her to pressure the Saudis, pump more oil. He wants us to be more dependent. He doesn't want to use our own oil. Obama doesn't want to use our own oil.

How come Chuck-U is not out there saying, "Everybody go buy a Volt?" How come Chuck-U's not saying, "Hey, everybody go buy a Prius, go buy a hybrid"? How come Chuck-U's not out there saying, "Get your tire gauge out and make sure the pressure is right and get a tune-up"? That's what Obama do. So the Democrats want more oil. They want the price to come down with more supply. Funny how that never works domestically. So 2006, New York Times: "Democrats Eager to Exploit Anger Over Gas Prices" -- at $3 a gallon. From BigGovernment.com Wynton Hall with the story: "Seven Gas Facts Obama Cannot Escape -- 1.

"In September 2008, Barack Obama’s 'Nobel-prize winning physicist' of an Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, told the Wall Street Journal: 'Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,'" which is much higher than what we pay. Obama has said he wants high prices. Why don't these guys come out and say, "This exactly what we want"? Steven Chu, the energy secretary, Nobel-prize winning physicist has advocated for higher prices. So has Obama. Now they're getting higher prices. You know why? They want higher prices so you'll have to go out and buy a Volt or a hybrid or get on a bus or get on a subway or take mass transit and become like a number.

A robot. An interchangeable part of the system, like a Chinese citizen taking orders and dictates from the state and their command-and-control economy. The truth is, they want higher prices. The problem is it's an election year. Can't advocate for higher gas prices in an election year. "2. In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama admitted that, like his future Energy Secretary Mr. Chu, he believed that high gas prices would be a good thing because they would force Americans to ween [sic] themselves off of oil, but that he would have 'prefered [sic] a gradual adjustment.'" We had the sound bite last week. We reminded you of it when gasoline hit four bucks and Obama said: It's okay; it's okay. I'm just a little upset how fast it got there. 3. On January 19, 2009, the day before Barack Obama [immaculated] gas prices were $1.84 a gallon. As of February 20, 2012 a gallon of gas cost $3.59," and now it's close to $5 a gallon. And don't forget, in 2006 it was $3 a gallon, and the Democrats are out exploiting it and trying to turn it into a big political issue. "4. As Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson points out, 'Offshore drilling permits are being issued at less than half the rate of the previous administration. The average number of leases issued on public lands is less than half than during President Clinton’s term.' 5. In 2008, Barack Obama seemed perfectly comfortable with soaring energy prices if they meant curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

"As Mr. Obama confessed: 'Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.'" In their hearts and minds, Obama and the left are LOVING gas prices go up. They just can't say so. But they love it. And that's why there's not a huge effort to bring them down. There's a huge effort to make you think they want to, but how many stories have you seen where Obama says, "Ah, there's really not a whole lot the president can do"? And Jay Carney says, "Well, there's not a whole lot the president can do." In 2006, don't forget, Chuck Schumer and John F. Kerry (who, by the way, served in Vietnam) were mocking Bush for asking the Saudis to pump more oil! Arabs producing more oil makes prices go down, but somehow the US pumping more oil won't make any difference.

That's what they tell us. "Nah-nah-nah. That's the stupidest thing we ever heard of! That's a tired, worn-out cliché. 'Drill, drill, drill,' and for 30 years they've been saying that. That's what the Republicans always say. Just drill, drill. That's gonna take us two to three years!" Well, where would we be if 30 years ago we had just started drilling, drilling, drilling? Chuck-U Schumer in 2008: "Schumer to Bush: Stop 'Coddling' Big Oil, Saudis," and get on 'em and make 'em pump more. And Chuck-U wants Hillary to do the same thing now. Obama, he can lower the sea level but he can't lower the price of oil. "7. Try as he might, President Obama’s campaign will try to distance themselves from the fact that a central pillar of Mr. Obama's 2008 campaign was a pledge to reduce the 'pain at the pump' caused by high gas prices."

We can go back and we can get all of that audio that was a centerpiece of his campaign, a pillar, to reduce pain at the pump. But missing no opportunity to invoke class warfare, Obama said, "For the well-off in this country, high gas prices are mostly an annoyance, but to most Americans they're a huge problem, bordering on a crisis. Here in Indiana gas costs $3.60 a gallon," he said in 2008. Now it's 2012, we're over $5 a gallon, and there's not much we can do about it.

And from MSNBC: "8 Reasons Why Gas Will Hit $5 a Gallon This Year." I'll just read through them. Not gonna give you details. Number one, Strait of Hormuz. Number two, Iran. Number three, refiners raising prices. Number four, other geopolitical risks. Number five, the European Union may save itself. Number six, the US economic recovery means higher oil prices. Number seven, summertime. Number eight, supply risk. In all eight of these reasons, not one of them mention Obama or his energy policies. So we have every effort in the world being made to shield Obama from any relationship to high gasoline prices, despite what the Democrats did all during '05, '06, '07, and '08. We even have some Republicans now saying, "We really don't want to try to tie the president to this, market forces no president can control."

We said back in 2006 there's nothing Bush can do about it. The president does not have a magic wand. Releasing from the strategic reserves doesn't make a significant long-term difference in the price of oil. And people who said that back then want us to say something consistent now. "Well, come on, let's not jump on Obama for this. We all know honestly that presidents can't do anything about it." Bush was not choking the supply, however. Obama is. Obama is a factor in the price of gasoline. See, that's the difference, Obama is a factor in the price of oil. Obama wants higher oil prices, his energy secretary and he have both said so. They want higher oil price. This is not making it up. They want higher oil prices. It's less freedom. It's less mobility. It forces you into alternative buying decisions when it's time to get a new car. So Obama does have something to do with high oil prices.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Eric in Glenn Arbor, Michigan, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Long-time listener from the early Clinton years.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: The reason why I'm calling is about the oil prices and what we're paying at the pump. Lots of news about it, and if we go to five, six-dollar-a-gallon oil, that's gonna sink the economy, and I think it's time to fight back, and I think we can fight back by several perspectives. One, we as a consumer can cut back slightly on our fuel usage. And, two, instead of just releasing 30 million barrels of oil from the strategic energy reserves, we need to do it in a strategic manner. For example, release seven million barrels of oil at, say, $89 a barrel. It's about 109 bucks a barrel today. Release it at below the market price and then make several subsequent releases without telling anybody --

RUSH: There's not enough oil there to make any difference. The real question is what is the rice of algae by the gallon because Obama has suggested pond scum as the next alternative fuel for oil. We cannot, by the way, and I appreciate the big-heartedness here in wanting to conserve, but there's gonna be forced conservation at five dollars a gallon. There was a four. People will drive less because they can't afford it. By the way, the economy's already sinking. But you get to five or six dollars a gallon, the choice to conserve will not be something you have to force on people, it'll be happening naturally. But even at that, conserving is not growth, and growth is what our economy needs. Growth and supply, growth in expansion, demand, all these things, that's what this country and this economy needs. We can't conserve our way to growth of anything.

END TRANSCRIPT
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Santorum and the Silence of the Shams

Santorum and the Silence of the Shams
By David Catron on 2.27.12 @ 6:10AM

Why is Rick Santorum the only GOP candidate talking seriously about Obamacare?

In a recent column, Charles Krauthammer laments the undeniable reality that Obamacare is fading as an issue in the presidential campaign, and calls it "a huge failing of the opposition party." He points out that the Republican presidential candidates have all promised to repeal the Potemkin "reform" law, but asks if any have been "making the case for why?" This is a surprising question, coming from a man of Krauthammer's credentials and erudition. He obviously hasn't been listening as closely as one might have expected. Three of the four remaining Republican presidential candidates have indeed failed to give the issue the attention it merits. Rick Santorum, however, has been all over it.

Santorum has not merely explained why Obamacare must be repealed but has repeatedly declared it the most important issue of the campaign. In fact, he did so during the most recent GOP debate in Arizona, where he called it "the biggest issue in this race" and later went on to explain why: "The real fundamental issue here is government coercion." Likewise, during the Florida debate, he implored Republican primary voters not to "give this issue away in this election [by supporting Romney]. It is about fundamental freedom." And Santorum doesn't reserve such comments for big events with large television audiences. He delivers precisely the same message in the smallest of town hall meetings.

The reluctance of the other GOP candidates to follow suit is odd. It certainly can't be explained by the popularity of Obamacare. The latest Rasmussen survey shows 53 percent of likely voters favoring repeal while finding only 38 percent who oppose sending it to the death panel. A CNN poll indicates that half of all Americans oppose the latest of Obamacare's assaults on individual liberty -- the anti-conscience mandate -- and Gallup finds that nearly half of America's small businesses are deliberately not hiring new workers because of worries "about the potential cost of health care." And yet Santorum continues to be the only Republican presidential candidate left who has made Obamacare's repeal central to his campaign.

Santorum's willingness to engage the enemy on health care is easier to explain than is the reticence of his rivals. He is well suited for the Obamacare debate for a couple of reasons. First, unlike his primary competitor, Mitt Romney, he's a genuine conservative. Thus, he actually understands that it constitutes a very serious threat to individual freedom, and this conviction has no doubt been reinforced by the Obama administration's recent assault on the religious freedom of those who share his faith. Second, he clearly understands health care in a way that the others, including the egregious Dr. Paul, do not. Santorum has done his homework on the issue and talks about its nuances with a fluency that eludes his competitors.

I recently wrote about a demonstration of this fluency that occurred at a town hall meeting held on the campus of Dordt College. After Santorum had outlined his objections to Obamacare, a student blindsided him with a 2009 "study" purporting to show that "50 to 100,000 uninsured Americans" die every year for lack of health insurance. This study, though notorious among health policy wonks for its dubious methodology, is relatively obscure. The likelihood is remote that an advisor-dependent candidate like Mitt Romney would have been aware of its existence. Santorum, however, immediately rejected its tendentious conclusions in terms that made it obvious he was familiar with the study and the biases of its authors.

And Santorum's grasp of health care isn't limited to familiarity with bogus studies. Aware that countless surveys have shown lower cost and greater access to be the main things Americans wanted from health reform, Santorum constantly reminds his audiences of Obamacare provisions that will increase the price of care while reducing its availability. The February speech he delivered in Rochester, Minnesota, was typical. During that event, he explained how "benefits" like the elimination of lifetime and annual caps from health plans and guaranteed issue of medical coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions have already driven up costs in states like Massachusetts without improving access a whit.

So, Krauthammer's query should be reframed thus: Why is Santorum the only GOP candidate "making the case for why" Obamacare must be repealed? Is Santorum alone among the four in believing it can actually be done? Perhaps the pledges issued by the others amount to nothing more than perfunctory rhetoric meant to mollify the Tea Partiers. Maybe they think it's too late and are merely shamming their commitment to repeal. This would explain some of the signals we have seen coming from the Romney camp. Recently, one of Romney's closest advisers said, "You can't whole-cloth throw it out." And this lines up with comments Romney himself has made about keeping the "good" parts of Obamacare while we "repeal the bad."

This is little more than what the Democrats have promised to do. It's obvious, of course, why Romney tap-dances around the issue. He, as Santorum put it in last week's debate, "used federal dollars to fund the government takeover of health care in Massachusetts." The reserve of Gingrich and Paul is harder to explain. The sporadic attention the former devotes to Obamacare can perhaps be put down to his ad hoc campaign style, but the latter's refusal to address it is utterly inexplicable. As a physician and ostensible libertarian, Ron Paul is the candidate one would expect to be screaming his head off. Instead of hammering Obamacare, however, he has spent nearly $30 million attacking conservative challengers to Romney.

Whether this "huge failing of the opposition" is due to a lack of genuine commitment to repeal or not, it certainly plays into Obama's hands. As Grace-Marie Turner wrote last September, "The White House is quietly implementing a shrewd new strategy of silence on Obamacare." And the "news" media, having joined the administration's effort to activate this "Cone of Silence," rarely cover Santorum's comments on the subject unless they can find a way to misrepresent his position as hopelessly doctrinaire and irrational. Politico, for example, began its report on his Rochester speech as follows: "How much does Rick Santorum hate President Barack Obama's health care law? So much that he even opposes the parts a lot of Republicans like."

Thus, Santorum is a veritable voice crying in the wilderness about what Krauthammer calls Obamacare's "constitutional trifecta." Meanwhile, the other GOP presidential candidates confine their opposition to sporadic and formulaic calls for repeal that not only lack passion but cause one to wonder if they are merely faking it for the cameras.
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To read another article by David Catron, click here.
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To read another article about Rick Santorum, click here.

Femi-Regulars For Rick Santorum

Femi-Regulars For Rick Santorum
By Lori Roman
2/27/2012

Left-leaning elitist pundits are scratching their heads. After two weeks of liberals trying to convince women that Rick Santorum wants to rip the birth control out of their hands and put them in the kitchen, more and more women are supporting Rick Santorum. “How could this be?” they ask. Answer: We are smarter than you think.

Let me offer a little primer on American women to the liberal elitist folks who spend too much time in New York and Washington DC and not enough time where Femi-regulars live. “Femi-regulars” is a term I coined during the 2008 election when leftists just couldn’t grasp the appeal of gun-toting Sarah Palin. Palin, I explained, like most women, was a femi-regular, not a femi-nazi (a tag coined by Rush Limbaugh to label rabid, man- hating feminists).

Most women are femi-regulars. They are strong women who are too busy accomplishing important things to worry about the divide and conquer strategies of leftists. They are more interested in voting for principled, honest, strong, America-loving folks who will stand up to evil, advance liberty and let our free enterprise flourish—all things that they see in Rick Santorum. They don’t vote as women; they vote as Americans. Sure it doesn’t hurt that Santorum is obviously a loving and supportive husband and father, but they are voting for the person who will get the job done--they are not picking a husband.

Liberals constantly underestimate, ignore or demean such women—women like those I knew growing up in Michigan. I am proud to be the daughter and granddaughter of strong women who loved their husbands, nurtured their children, served their community and loved their country. The kind of women who had a spirit of giving and selflessness those elitists might deride, but that those who truly love their fellow citizens would applaud. The kind of women who didn’t feel it a sign of weakness to put others first and the kind of women who don’t feel that they must put men down in order to build themselves up. The kind of women who realize time spent whining is time wasted.

Femi-regulars are the kind of women who are smart enough to know the difference between a fight about religious liberty (the Obamacare mandate on religious institutions offering abortifacients) and a cocktail party discussion about the benefits of birth control. And the lefties and elitists will be shocked to know that more than a few femi-regulars like Rick Santorum because of his A+ rating with the National Rifle Association. You see, femi-regulars like me are not always easy to spot. My evening dress may not be hunter orange or camouflage, but don’t assume I don’t love the Second Amendment… or that I’m not a damn good shot.

They are also smart enough to know that it is the elites who have let down the country while regular folks have been doing their part. The cocktail party elitists with their Ivy League diplomas and matching egos got us into this mess, while the majority of Americans would do just fine if the high-brow economists and Washington and New York brains would stop meddling with the free enterprise system and redistributing our hard earned wealth.

Elitists (Republican and Democrat) always trash the leaders who emerge who connect with the regular folks. They trashed Reagan and Palin and now Santorum. They probably thought we were too dumb to notice, but we “commoners” out here are on to the fact that the so-called intellectuals don’t generally look out for us. Oh, they pretend to, but it is all for show so that they can be puffed up with pride for their work on behalf of the common man…and get our vote. Then they turn around and demean our values, diminish our freedoms and steal our money.

Every once in awhile we regular folks rise up and storm the establishment and try to sneak in one of our own. Yes, sometimes we support someone who is (gasp) not an Ivy League graduate, not a member of a political power family, and not a power-hungry egomaniac who thrives on the sound of their own voice. Sometimes we get the real deal—like Ronald Reagan.

They said his view of the world was too simplistic because he had a concrete belief in good and evil. Even the Republican elitists didn’t like him. But regular folks loved him. And regular folks are increasingly flocking to Rick Santorum. And so they are mocked. And in the case of femi-regulars, the elites imply that they are just too dumb to know any better. Liberal elitists seem to think that women should choose the leader of the free world based on whether they support abortion and, if male, are willing to do their share of the dishes and take care of whatever baby the woman decides not to abort.

They might want to think twice before they continue to insult the bulk of the electorate. In most of America, having grit is more important than being slick. Speaking your mind is more important than rehearsing your lines. Living by your principles is more important than parroting the principles your high paid consultants put in your talking points. This is why elitist pundits cannot understand femi-regulars. And why many femi-regulars are supporting Rick Santorum.
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To read another article by Rick Santorum, click here.

The 99% That’s Not You Gets a $7,000 Cash Bailout Bonus

The 99% That’s Not You Gets a $7,000 Cash Bailout Bonus
By John Ransom
2/27/2012

Hey, good news everybody.

Remember that $23 billion that the US government –a.k.a. you- is never going to see back from General Motors?

Well, General Motors has done so well this year- in fact, they have enjoyed record-breaking $9 billion profits- that next week they’ll be giving out $7,000 in bonus checks to 47,500 UAW workers who already make about $116,000 dollars per year in total wages and benefits (with about $58,000 of that in just wages and the rest in benefits).

It’s good to be the 99%: You get a fat $7k bonus, plus $100k+ a year. Too bad GM is so broke that they can’t afford to pay the US government back the $23 billion they still owe us. Maybe the next time they make record-breaking profits? I guess some get to be more 99% than others.

“The rebound in carmaker profits is putting money into the pockets of U.S. workers after years of belt-tightening,” writes Bloomberg. “GM yesterday reported a record $9.19 billion in net income for 2011, which will mean profit-sharing bonuses of as much as $7,000 for 47,500 eligible UAW members. That’s an all-time high for GM, and up from an average of $4,300 for the company’s U.S. union workers last year. The payouts, scheduled for March 2, come on top of similar bonuses at Ford Motor Co. (F) and Chrysler Group LLC.”

Only unions would complain that the UAW’s 99%'s average wage of $60,000 per year (*2 for benefits) is “belt tightening.” The average wage including benefits for the rest of us 99%ers comes out to just 54 percent of what the bailed out, union auto workers make.

Let that be a lesson to you: Every industry can have record profits too if they just get an $80 billion, largely forgivable, tax-free “loan” from the Obama administration. Resistance is futile.

If regular suckers like you and me tried to skip out on the tax liability of a $23 billion gift, we’d have to get the best advice lawyers can give. But GM and Warren Buffett get notes from the school nurse. “Please excuse Warren and General from attending to taxes. They are too well to attend.”

Oh, but the good times don’t stop there either.

Thanks to your generous contribution to Public Auto-Making, the United Auto Workers is training 100,000 people for what they call “The 99% Spring.”

“From April 9 to 15, ‘100,000 Americans will train for non-violent direct action,’ promises a new website called The 99% Spring,” reports the Daily Caller. “But while the 43 organizations co-signing a letter on the ragtag-looking site indicate the sort of leaderless resistance characterized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, a series of files The Daily Caller downloaded from the United Auto Workers website indicates that the organized labor powerhouse is behind the effort.”

Maybe you’ll get one of their free, eco-totes to carry your groceries in while using public transportation or a poncho that can double as a tent when you occupy the local city park.

“This spring we rise!” promises the 99% Spring. “We will reshape our country with our own hands and feet, bodies and hearts. We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time.”

And also apparently one exclamation point at a time too!

But wait, there’s even more to it than that. These guys are really good stewards of your money. That bailout money goes a long, long way.

According to Bloomberg:

Union workers at the Corvette factory in Kentucky will probably use their profit sharing checks to put a down payment on the $49,600 sports cars they build, said Eldon Renaud, president of United Auto Workers Local 2164 at the Bowling Green, Kentucky factory that builds the cars.

Renaud himself “plans on using his $7,000 profit-sharing check to take his wife to Italy to celebrate her new doctorate and his survival at GM.

“Things are finally starting to look up and we’re just excited that we still have jobs,” said Renaud. “I’m sure my wife will be excited. I owe her a trip to Italy.”

No word yet whether the Renauds will be organizing austerity strikes in Italy on their trip, or just saving the days of rage for the USA.

Maybe they can just Occupy some mimosas by the pool.

When in Rome.
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To read another article by John Ransom, click here.

Despite Attacks, Conservative Support For Santorum Will Grow

Despite Attacks, Conservative Support For Santorum Will Grow
By Star Parker
2/27/2012

New Gallup polling shows the clearest picture yet of the great divide in the Republican Party that has been pushing Rick Santorum to the head of the class.

Behind Santorum’s eight point national lead over Romney is a yawing gap in ideological support for the two candidates.

Conservative support for Santorum stands at 42 percent, compared to 24 percent for Romney. Among those who attend church frequently, support for Santorum is at 44 percent and for Romney 22 percent.

In the nation’s heartland in the Midwest and South, Santorum leads by 19 and 8 points respectively. It is only on the more liberal East and West coasts where the two are running neck and neck.

The poll also challenges conventional wisdom that Santorum is too conservative for the tastes of independent voters. He is leading Romney among Republican leaning independents by 8 points.

With Santorum establishing himself as the candidate of choice among conservative and church going Republicans, Romney’s tactic, manifest in the debate in Arizona, is to try and discredit Santorum’s credentials that is drawing conservative voters to him.

Having served two full terms in the U.S. Senate, there are enough party line votes on Santorum’s part to expose him to the attacks he got in Arizona as being a business-as-usual party politician.

I don’t believe this approach will dissuade those generally attracted to Santorum’s traditional values conservatism.

Even in the case of the most ideologically disposed candidate, politics will always be the art of the possible. Particularly in a nation as big and complex as ours.

Consider, for instance, that the Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear a challenge to racial preferences in college admissions policies at the University of Texas. There is a good chance that the court decision will overturn the Grutter v Bollinger decision of 2003 in which racial preferences were upheld.

That decision, arguing that the nation needed to continue racial preferences in college admissions, was written by Sandra Day O’Connor, who was President Reagan’s first Supreme Court appointment.

Given Reagan’s legacy as conservative hero, it is hard to believe that his first Supreme Court appointment was a pro-choice moderate.

It is also worth recalling that shortly into his first term, Reagan convened a commission under the leadership of Alan Greenspan to fix Social Security. Rather than proposing bold changes in the structure of Social Security, the commission simply slapped temporary patches on a broken system, raising taxes and cutting benefits. By avoiding addressing the core structural problems of the system, the Greenspan commission allowed the problem to get worse, and bequeathed to us today an even more difficult challenge to confront.

Do the Sandra Day O’Connor appointment and the Greenspan Commission challenge Reagan’s legacy as a great conservative leader?

Certainly not. Leadership is art. Even the most principled leaders must set priorities and choose which battles to fight. It is impossible to do it all.

A leader must identify the biggest, most immediate challenges and where compromises are unthinkable.

In the case of Reagan, this was cutting taxes, shrinking government, and taking a hard stand internationally against communism and the Soviet Union.

The most immediate challenge for our nation today is understanding that our hobbled economy reflects erosion of the cultural pillars that make possible a free society.

When Reagan became president, 18 percent of American babies were born to unwed mothers. This has grown today to over 40 percent.

The way to stop runaway government today is to understand that it reflects the collapse of the core values which define personal responsibility and form the glue that keeps American families intact.

There is no candidate today clearer on this than Santorum. It’s why I think, despite the expected onslaught of attacks, he will not only not lose his attractiveness among conservative voters, but the attraction will strengthen.
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To read another article by Star Parker, click here.
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To read more articles about Rick Santorum, click here.

Answering Planned Parenthood's Grand Deception

Answering Planned Parenthood's Grand Deception
By Alan Sears
2/27/2012

Although popular opinion has been turning steadily against Planned Parenthood and their allies over the course of the last 20 years, the culture of death continues to seek and proselytize new adherents in pervasive and destructive ways. With their success, human life has been cheapened to such a degree that news stories about sex and death which our grandparents would have found heinous, don’t even make us blink today.

For example, in April 2005, a 19-year-old teenager in Canada became pregnant. She hid the pregnancy from her parents and secretly gave birth to a son in her parents’ basement. Immediately thereafter, she strangled the child to death so he wouldn’t make any noise. She then went outside and threw the body over the fence, where it was later discovered.

In that same year, a 16-year-old Michigan boy repeatedly hit his pregnant 16-year-old girlfriend in the stomach with a small baseball bat in hopes of killing their baby: he succeeded. Eric Smith, the county prosecutor in the county where the crime happened, said, “The length at which these two 16-year-olds went to abort this unborn child is disturbing.”

Of course, what’s profoundly troubling is that representatives of the culture of death were more disturbed the abortion was done externally with a bat instead of internally via Planned Parenthood scalpels and vacuum devices. As Lori Lamerand, president and CEO at Planned Parenthood of Mid and South Michigan put it, “It’s always tragic when people resort to such drastic measures, when there are appropriate, safe medical measures available.”

The actions of the Canadian mother and the Michigan couple demand more than sorrow over how they killed their children. They demand sorrow over the fact that death was even viewed as solution by these young parents to begin with. Yet Planned Parenthood and its fellow travelers encourage our youth to view fetal death as a good “option” via web-based propaganda outlets like Teenwire.org and the texting campaign Planned Parenthood has undertaken to reach out to children as young as 14. Or, as one Planned Parenthood affiliate did, launching a “Tell a Friend” marketing program that offered free movie tickets and a chance to win an I-Pod as a reward for teenagers referring friends to Planned Parenthood for their “services.”

At Planned Parenthood’s Teenwire.org, the assumption is that young mothers will choose abortion. So, after a little lip service to those who “think [they] might continue the pregnancy,” the tone on the site quickly switches to, “If you’re considering abortion, you should make a decision as soon as possible. Abortion is very safe, but the risks increase the longer a pregnancy goes on.”

In that one sentence, vulnerable, young women, desperate for truth and open to the power of suggestion, are essentially told carrying a live child is risky but “abortion is safe” without any caveats or stipulations. No mention is made of the ties between abortion and breast cancer or abortion and depression, nor is mention made of the lifelong torment of post-abortive women after it’s way too late.

There is no excuse for taking a human life in cold blood, but there must be sympathy for teenagers in crisis who find themselves thoroughly seduced by the Planned Parenthood mantra—the mantra that the only value humans possess is the value other humans place on them, not the intrinsic value they have as a human person.

We must remain relentless in our fight against Planned Parenthood and its grand deception on the one hand, yet compassionate in outreach to those whom Planned Parenthood has misled on the other. The lives that need to be protected from these abortion profiteers are both inside and outside the womb.
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To read another article by Alan Sears, click here.

Troublemakers and Dunderheads

Troublemakers and Dunderheads
Monday, February 27, 2012
by Burt Prelutsky

Sometimes, I’m amazed that I know as many decent, intelligent, law-abiding, people as I do. Because the fact is, a disturbingly large number of Americans are simply up to no good and should not be trusted anywhere near heavy machinery, sharp tools, voting booths or me.

For instance, look at someone like Sarah Palin, the woman with the most annoying voice in the world, who was rescued from anonymity by John McCain, and who, $20 million later, is scolding Republicans, including Sen. McCain, for not prostrating themselves at the feet of Newt Gingrich.

Then, for good measure, we had Herman Cain endorsing Mr. Gingrich. If only Mr. Cain could have convinced Bill Clinton and Mark Sanford to join him, Newt would have tied up the entire membership of the Political Hound Dogs of America.

Democrats insist that green energy is the hope of the world. Their favorite president cancels the Keystone XL oil pipeline on behalf of environmental fascists. But just how sincere are they? We see one federally-subsidized green energy company after another going bankrupt, taking billions of tax dollars with them. And do you know anyone who’s shopping for a Chevy Volt? Rich liberals talk a lot about their love of renewable energy, but even when I drive around Beverly Hills and Bel Air, where so many of them live, I don’t see solar panels on their roofs, and I mainly see SUVs and Mercedes sedans in their driveways.

For sheer lying power, you can hardly beat Al Gore, who has been lining his pockets with millions of dollars, repeating the same lie about global warming at least since 1997, which was the year when the earth started cooling down, as it has done periodically since long before the invention of the internal combustion engine. Talk about your inconvenient truths! Even the folks at the University of Anglia, which had been at the center of promoting the global warming hoax, now claim that we might be heading for a mini-ice age rivaling a 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th century. So, gentlemen, start your engines. Everyone else, start burning oil and coal before we all freeze to death!

But when it comes to lies, it’s hard to beat homosexual males. In the 80s, they lied about AIDS being a major heterosexual problem in order to co-opt federal funding for medical research. Who cares about kids with leukemia? Let folks suffering with cancer, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, go fly a kite. These days, they rant and rave about same-sex marriages, but even in those woebegone states where judges and legislatures have shoved it down the throats of the people, the number of such marriages is negligible. And most of those involve lesbians.

For sheer audacity, possibly nothing compares to Tom Brokaw’s objecting to the Romney campaign using a segment from a 1997 NBC newscast in which he announced that the House Ethics Committee would punish Newt Gingrich for ethics violations. The reason he gave in voicing his objection is as funny as anything that’s been said on TV this year: “I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for gain by any campaign.” Everyone knows that this huckster for the Left had given up any pretense of being an objective journalist a long time ago. After all, he spent the 90s cheerleading for Bill Clinton; he ignored the story about John Edwards and his doxy long after the National Enquirer broke the news; and, finally, Brokaw carried so much water for Barack Obama in 2008 that, from outer space, he was often mistaken for Hoover Dam.

Joe Trippi pops up so often as a political pundit on Fox News that you might actually think he’s some sort of authority. The only thing he’s an expert at is losing elections. He has run presidential campaigns for Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt, Jerry Brown, John Edwards and Howard Dean. Over the past 40 years or so, if you wanted to get rich betting on elections, all you had to do was find out which left-wing numbskull had hired Mr. Trippi. An interesting sidebar is that, he studied aerospace engineering for three years at San Jose State College before dropping out, 14 credits shy of graduation. But I guess it provided him with the all-important capacity to spot guys like Mondale, Brown and Howard Dean, space cadets with money to burn on inept campaign managers.

Hillary Clinton, whose business cards read “The Smartest Woman on Earth,” and whose mirror has been trained to say, “I swear you’re the fairest one of all!” was recently heard to say, “I looked around our world and I thought we are in just so many deep holes that everybody had better grab a shovel and start digging out.” Well, God knows we have enough shovels lying around going to waste, thanks to all those non-existent shovel-ready jobs Obama promised us three years ago, but if Secretary of State Clinton thinks that the best way to get out of a deep hole is to dig a deeper one, I think it tells us all we need to know about this administration’s brain trust.

For sheer stupidity, however, it’s tough to compete with those black Americans, including the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali, who gave up their perfectly fine birth names, Lew Alcindor and Cassius Clay, in order to show their kinship with Arabs and Muslims. You have to wonder how anyone gets to be that dumb without getting an advanced degree in Stupidity.

I mean, did these numbskulls never pause to wonder how their ancestors became slaves in the first place? After all, the owners of Georgia cotton fields didn’t go to Africa and round them up. As for New England sea captains, they merely collected the unfortunate captives at African ports and sailed them across the Atlantic; they certainly didn’t wander into the jungle and chase them down. No, it was Arabs and Muslims native to Africa who handled that end of the dirty stick.

You know, those guys with names like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Muhammad Ali.
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.

Anti-Semitism on U.S. College Campuses.

Anti-Semitism on U.S. College Campuses.

Click here.

These people are teaching our children. These people our spreading hate. These people are spreading lies. These people are distorting history.

Obama - Biden Kodak Moments

Obama - Biden Kodak Moments

enjoy...

Santorum on Obama Pushing College for All Americans: "What a Snob"

Santorum on Obama Pushing College for All Americans: "What a Snob"
By Erika Johnsen
2/25/2012

Well said, Santorum -- well said. At a campaign stop in Michigan on Saturday morning:

View it here.

"Not all folks are gifted in the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands... and want to work out there making things. President Obama once said, he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob. There are good decent men and women, who go out everyday to put their skills to test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college -- he wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his."
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To read another article about Rick Santorum, click here.

Ron Paul: Stalking Horse

Ron Paul: Stalking Horse
By Steve Deace
2/25/2012

At this point donors to the Ron Paul campaign should just go ahead and make out the check to Mitt Romney instead in order to cut out the middle man.

And I’m only half-kidding when I write this.

That’s because it has become obvious that that Paul campaign is more interested in aiding and abetting the Republican Party nominating its weakest and least principled candidate then it is trying to promote its own candidate. The latest prima facie evidence to support this premise is the Paul campaign’s decision to invest money running a 30-second negative ad about Rick Santorum in Michigan, despite the fact Paul has never actually campaigned there.

Now the negative ad the Paul campaign is running against Santorum is basically true. Santorum has voted for too much big government during his legislative career, which is one of the reasons I didn’t endorse him and why conservatives en masse have taken so long to warm up to him. Where I come from, it’s not an attack if it’s your record.

But that’s beside the point.

Why is Paul investing resources in a state he’s not actually campaigning in? And why just invest those resources to go after Santorum and not Romney, who (according to Townhall.com finance editor John Ransom) represents the very crony capitalism Paul rightly criticizes?

The media has been noticing for weeks the strange symbiotic relationship between Romney and Paul, with Paul’s campaign running interference for Romney on the campaign trail. I’ve even witnessed pro-Paul activists on Twitter re-tweeting tweets and articles that are pro-Romney. Funny thing is Paul and Romney are probably the two Republican candidates that are the most diametrically opposed philosophically if you look at the records and not just the rhetoric.

Which begs the question: what in the world does a crony-bailout-stimulus capitalist like Romney – who is also the father of government mandates and advocates the sort of timid targeted tax cuts the Democrats typically push – have in common with a professor emeritus of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute such as Paul?

The answer is pure Realpolitik.

Either the Paul campaign is engaged in the dumbest strategy to promote a presidential candidate since Lyndon LaRouche’s disciples handed out pamphlets in airports, or it’s time to admit the Ron Paul campaign of 2012 is really the Rand Paul campaign of 2016. Since I know Paul's campaign people are not only not dumb, but some of the best political operatives in the business, I’m going with the Rand Paul option.

The Paul people are smart and don’t lack for resources. He’s been the best consistently funded candidate in this race other than Romney, yet they’re using those resources in a way that helps Romney more than Paul. And that’s because they’re smart enough to know that a quirky near-octogenarian whose stage presence makes William Hung look like Cary Grant isn’t getting elected President of the United States—no matter how great some of his ideas may be.

The Paul campaign also doesn’t believe there’s any way Romney can win a general election. I know, because some of them have actually told me this. They believe Romney (like election losers Ford, H.W. Bush, Dole, and McCain before him) is a malleable establishment candidate that won’t fire up the conservative base, and his history of firing people as a successful businessman will be successfully exploited by the class warfare tactics of the Left.

The Paul campaign sees another four years of Obama as just the prescription for what the nation needs, because they believe the country needs a radical paradigm shift that it probably won’t be willing to embrace until there’s no other alternative but insolvency.

They might actually be right about that last part. It’s doubtful the country can afford another four years of Obama in the short run, but it’s also doubtful the country can afford to carry this much debt and phony money in the long run regardless of who is in the White House.

The Paul campaign is taking the long-term view, seeing the more charismatic, likeable, and socially-conservative Rand Paul as the superior standard-bearer for their revolutionary message. The movement surrounding Paul sees Ron Paul 2008-2012 as analogous to Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Rand Paul 2016 as analogous Ronald Reagan 1980. Goldwater’s defeated 1964 campaign was where Reagan’s conservative star first shined nationally, remember, laying the groundwork for future victory.

This is why the Paul campaign has become a stalking horse for Romney. It’s why they blistered Newt Gingrich in Iowa, and now they’re doing the same to Rick Santorum in Michigan. They want Romney to be the nominee and lose to set the stage for Rand Paul in 2016. If Iowa remains the first in the nation caucus state for that cycle Rand will be step ahead of other GOP future stars, because he’ll inherit his father’s outstanding organization in that state. Furthermore, one of Paul’s top political operatives was just elected chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa.

Regardless of whether you view this as a cynical or sound strategy, the Paul campaign owes its donors and supporters an answer as to why it applies Laissez-faire to the Romney campaign as well its fiscal philosophy.
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To read a related article, click here.

The History Of Barack Obama

Here's a good video to watch. It's called...

Video: Illegal Obama Propped Up By Congress.

Click here.

I posted this video somewhere else but can't remember where. Oh wait a second, it's right here.

I mean besides Obama presenting us with a phony long-form birth certificate, this video just shows that the lies run very deep and our country has been hijacked by the democrats. It involves the democrats, some republicans, Supreme Court Justices, and complicity with the mainstream media. One of a thousand reasons Barack Obama should never have been, nor should he be elected again.

Listen to this 3 Part You Tube audio in the History Of Barack Obama.
by Bill Whittle

Part 1 - click here.
Part 2 - click here.
Part 3 - click here.

And now for your musical enjoyment...
STFU Barack Obama

Texas to administration: Never mind your threats, we’re cutting Medicaid to abortion providers

Texas to administration: Never mind your threats, we’re cutting Medicaid to abortion providers
posted at 7:38 pm on February 24, 2012 by Tina Korbe

At CPAC, Texas Gov. Rick Perry quipped, “I haven’t left the fight; I just went home, reloaded my Mag and am fighting on a different front.” Clearly, he wasn’t kidding. Texas today cut Medicaid funding to abortion providers — even though the administration threatened to cut the state’s funding if it did so. The Daily Caller reports:

On Thursday, Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Thomas Suehs signed a rule at the behest of lawmakers and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott that will formally ban Planned Parenthood affiliates and other abortion providers from participating in Texas’ Women’s Health Program.
The administration had threatened to revoke federal funding from the state-federal Medicaid program if Texas went through with the ban.

“The Obama administration is trying to force Texas to violate our own state laws or they will end a program that provides preventative health care to more than 100,000 Texas women,” said Allison Castle, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry told The Texas Tribune. “This boils down to the rule of law — which the state of Texas respects and the Obama administration does not.”

The ball is back in the administration’s court now: Does Obama want to actually cut funding and potentially jeopardize the Texas Women’s Health program, which might not be able to survive without federal funding? That sends the message that Obama cares less that women have access to health care than that they receive health care from certain providers — namely, providers that also offer abortions.

Either Rick Perry just called Obama’s bluff or this is about to be an interesting issue. Planned Parenthood has already retorted with its typical demagoguery: “No one’s politics should interfere with a woman’s access to health care,” Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast President and CEO Peter J. Durkin said in a statement. “It is shameful that Governor Perry and Commissioner Suehs continue to politicize lifesaving breast cancer screenings and birth control access for low-income women.”

Would Planned Parenthood stand by that statement as it applies to President Obama, too? Surely other providers in the Texas Women’s Health Exchange provide breast cancer screenings and birth control access. Eliminating abortion providers from the exchange doesn’t jeopardize women’s health access — but eliminating the exchange altogether would. It’s obvious why Planned Parenthood would care more about which organization women turn to — they’ve got a business to run. Why don’t they just admit that and stop the rhetoric about “women’s health”?
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To read another article by Tina Korbe, click here.

Social Conservatism: Winning Right

Social Conservatism: Winning Right
By Quin Hillyer on 2.24.12 @ 6:08AM

No reason to be embarrassed -- a plurality if not a majority of Americans support its positions.

Now let us speak of "social issues." Now let us show how extreme and antediluvian we are. Now let us be horribly insensitive. Now let us give "the vapors" to the coastal elites. Now let us drive the establishment media batty.

Now let us win an election while sticking to our well-considered principles.

In fact, now let us win an election because we stick to our well-considered principles. And then watch the heathens howl.

Okay, we should take back the word "heathens." That was just puckish alliteration. But the rest of the above litany should stand. The howling "elites" can bay at the moon all they want. We're right substantively, and we're right politically. Social conservatism is a winning philosophy.

Majorities of Americans (or in some polls, clear pluralities) call themselves "pro-life." Every state that has held a referendum on recognizing homosexual relationships as "marriages" has voted not to do so (or, more precisely, has voted to define marriage as being only between a man and woman). Wholesome movies regularly do better at the box office than sleazy ones do. Americans prefer being "tough on crime" to being lenient. Americans tend to like local control of schools, parental involvement and choice in education, and traditional curricula. Far more Americans feel strongly in favor of gun rights than in favor of gun control. Americans treasure families and neighborhoods, and oppose governmental intrusions into them. We don't like governmental racial preferences. We are deeply patriotic. We far prefer conservative judges to liberal ones. And we still are a faithful people, with churches and belief in God a very important part of most of our lives.

Also, we know deep down in our cores that candidates who draw a connection between family breakdown and out-of-wedlock births, on one hand, and cultural and economic ills like crime, delinquency, and lack of economic mobility, on the other, are absolutely right. Statistically, the case in favor of this argument is irrefutable. Psychologically, we know it is right. And we've known it is right for nearly half a century. We didn't even need a "conservative" to make that case for it; we relied, quite correctly, on the social-science findings of the politically liberal (or center-leftist) Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Finally, we believe with every fiber of our beings that voluntary associations, churches, and local associations are better at ameliorating social ills than are governments, especially the federal government. When we talk about cultural values and social concerns, we usually do not do so because we want government to impose our values on others through government programs; instead, we either want government to get out of the way of these intermediary institutions (or of the family), or else we want the government to do no more than make it easier for those institutions to act.

About the only issue on which we would indeed have government "interfere" is on abortion -- but that's only if one accepts the liberal line that it is only the mother's interest, not the child's, which is being interfered with. "Choice" is fine, of course, unless the choice involves taking a human life.

On one level, there is a simple and straightforward logic to protecting the child. If governments exist for no other reason, they exist to protect the innocent from external, physical harm. If the child in the womb is human (which, of course, it is, scientifically speaking), and if it is life (again, by definition it is), then it is irrefutably human life. The only questions involve concepts such as "viability," "ensoulment," and the value of human life at a pre-born stage. Those who want to forbid abortion are doing no less than protecting human life from what they regard as murder -- a job (stopping murder) which is a moral imperative for every legitimate government that ever existed.

Now this does not mean that the sympathies of pro-lifers can't be with the mothers affected. In fact, it is far easier to sympathize with the mother than with the less-than-physically developed, certainly not intellectually or emotionally developed (to say the least), accumulation of living tissue fully dependent for sustenance on the mother inside which it grows. And the mothers deserve our sympathies. The very trajectory of their lives is at issue. They have a right to be scared. They have a right to have doubts. More than that, they may well have legitimate moral concerns of their own. Not all mothers considering abortion are morally serious, but some are. It's just that their moral system of values puts more emphasis on quality of life than on "mere" existence of human life. That value system might itself be seen as immoral, but it is not an unserious or unconsidered position.

All of which is why the issue of abortion is so difficult -- and why the various positions on it merit more respect from all other positions, for all other positions, than just about any issue in the public realm today. It also means that it is incumbent on pro-lifers to do whatever is in our power to treat both mother and child humanely and to help ensure the best pre-natal care and the best post-birth opportunities for both of them. It would do pro-lifers good for us to express these concerns more openly, and to act in accord with them.

One big problem, though, is that the establishment media tends to show far less respect for us than we do for the mothers. Our entirely valid moral concerns are pilloried, belittled, and even treated as if those concerns are flat-out hateful. The "elites" often show no moral reflection at all, but rather a sneering and sometimes vicious set of double standards.

Newt Gingrich was absolutely right, indeed profoundly so, in Tuesday night's debate when he said this:

"I just want to point out, you did not once in the 2008 campaign, not once did anybody in the elite media ask why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide. OK? So let's be clear here. If we're going to have a debate about who the extremist is on these issues, it is President Obama who, as a state senator, voted to protect doctors who killed babies who survived the abortion. It is not the Republicans."

The lack of media attention to this bizarre and lonely "stand" of Obama's speaks volumes about media values. It makes the establishment media into moral reprobates for refusing even to understand that this is, or should be, an area of controversy.

Nonetheless, the lefty media has a big and powerful megaphone that is good at drowning us out. That's why it is admirable that Rick Santorum has never backed off from a discussion of social issues. He knows his words will be distorted, taken out of context, and harshly criticized by the media minions of the Left. Yet very little of what he says is, in full context, the slightest bit objectionable or "extreme."

Moreover, if the economy continues to improve, even slowly, so that its weakness no longer hobbles Barack Obama's re-election campaign, then conservatives need a presidential candidate who is willing to champion these issues and our values, and who knows how to turn his championing of them into votes. They are, after all, majority- or plurality-positions that we hold.

Some of us have usually been more squeamish than not about social issues. (For decades, I always mildly agreed with "socio-cons" but was driven far more by economics and defense needs than by social issues; and indeed as a college freshman I had the temerity to tell a conservative-movement leader that I agreed with Barry Goldwater that Jerry Falwell's moral hectoring merited a good "kick in the a$$" -- even though I supported Falwell's basic positions.) Some of us (myself included) would still prefer to talk about free-market economics and the virtues of limiting government. But none of us should fail to rise to the defense of our social-issue positions, because the only way we lose on them politically is if we act embarrassed by them and thus give credence to the leftist attacks.

It is the left that wants government to co-opt, or steamroll over, the mediating institutions we hold dear. It is they who seek to impose their values on us by force of law (and thus by force of the gun, wielded by the jailer) -- not we who seek to impose our values on them. Leave our families and churches and voluntary associations alone, and we'll all be fine no matter how the less-socially-conservative people want to conduct their own private affairs. Even if we are of the evangelizing (small "e") persuasion, our bailiwick is moral suasion in the open public square, not coercion. If this makes the leftists howl -- so what? While they are howling, we'll defeat them, fair and square.
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To read another article by Quin Hillyer, click here.