If there’s a dominant theme to this Prager column, that title is it.

One repeatedly hears that some conservatives and Republicans will either vote Democrat or not vote at all out of anger at the Republican Party. According to these Republican holdouts, the Republicans have governed as Democrats-lite by greatly increasing government spending and doing little about illegal immigration. Accordingly, it is better to have liberal government under liberals than liberal government under Republicans, and the Republicans need to be taught a lesson so that in the future they will govern as authentic Republicans.
Conservatives should file this thinking under the heading “Cathartic,” but not under “Smart.”

Let’s face facts. Conservatives aren’t happy this election. They’re feeling surly right now. Who can blame us, right? Here’s a suggestion: Bottle that frustration. Save it for the next primary when it’s R vs. R, not R vs. D. Unleash that frustration when the stakes aren’t Justice O’Connor vs. Justice Alito.

Compared to you and your conservative principles, real-life Republicans are indeed a failure. But compared to real-life Democrats, they are almost giants.

Repeat those seventeen words so often that they become your mantra. Repeat after me: “Real-life Republicans are indeed a failure. But compared to real-life Democrats, they are almost giants.”

Let’s examine the wisdom of teaching RINO’s a lesson right now vs. teaching them a lesson in the primaries. When do conservatives have the most to gain with the smallest risk? Isn’t it when we’re letting word out that we’re fixing on whacking a Republican that’s acting too much like a Democrat? If the RINO doesn’t get religion in a hurry, we replace him in a primary. If he gets religion, then we’ve gotten what we’ve wanted without risking anything.

I prefer acting in win-win situations. That’s what unleashing our frustrations during primary season is.

Technorati Tags: Election 2006, RINO, Primaries

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

That’s what JF Kerry appears to have done with this statement. As if he hadn’t already done enough damage.

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.”

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy.

Did Kerry really think that we wouldn’t recall this testimony: (continue reading post »)

While Sen. John Kerry and others in the Democratic party think military service is only for rubes and rightwingers, and it’s not even worth mentioning the opinions of Hollywood, academia, and liberal media effetes elites, there’s only one perspective on this matter that really counts — and that’s coming from the soldiers themselves.

It is our great honor and privilege to share a timely letter we received this morning:

—
Subject: why I serve
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 11:56:57 -0500
From: “Washburn-Neal, Grace M SFC USAR”
To: entries@reportingforduty.org

Hello,

My name is SFC Grace Washburn-Neal. I have been in the US Army for just over 18 years.

I joined the Army for one reason. I love my country. From the time I was a small child I can remember, when my birthday would come around and my Mother would ask me, what kind of cake I wanted. I would always tell her a red, white and blue cake. My birthday is in August, so my Mom would always try to convince me to get a cake with summer colors and I would always refuse. I cannot imagine what it would be like to grow up in a country that women are degraded in. Children cannot go to school, your life being dictated in every way by one man.

It is very sad and frightening to know that the United States could possibly end up like this, if terrorism takes over this country. This is the seriousness and reality that American’s do not realize these days.

We have soldiers dying everyday for this country. No one wants to go to war, but if we do not have enough soldiers to fight for our freedom, then we will be destroyed.

I have a family and I know how hard it is for my family to go through what soldier’s families go through knowing they could lose a loved one and all those families who have already lost loved ones. As a soldier I choose to make these sacrifices everyday because I want to continue to have my freedom in the United States of America.

I will give my life for my country, if that is what it takes to keep the Democracy and Freedom in this country.

—

Publisher’s note: We are profoundly impressed by this letter and proudly recognize this soldier for being a great American. We also consider this just one great example of the strength and spirit of the men and women who serve our nation in the U.S. military. Read the letter again. Print it out. Pass it on. Share it with your friends.

God bless our troops and the freedom which they preserve for us.

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin: “Bush rises to the occasion”

Technorati Tags: John Kerry, Military, Democrats

Jubilant Iraqis carry a flag of Iraqi militia Mahdi Army and a national flag after US troops dismantled checkpoints around Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City Tuesday Oct. 31 2006. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday ordered the lifting of joint U.S.-Iraqi military checkpoints around the Shiite militant stronghold of Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad.
(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)

AP reports: “U.S. troops on Tuesday abandoned checkpoints around the Shiite militia stronghold of Sadr City on orders from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the latest in a series of moves by the Iraqi leader to assert his authority with the U.S. administration.”

“More insurgent violence was also reported against civilians, with at least 11 people killed, including four children, and 21 others wounded when a suicide car bomber struck a wedding party in Baghdad.

U.S. forces disappeared from the checkpoints within hours of the order to remove the around-the-clock barriers by 5 p.m., setting off celebrations among civilians and armed men gathered on the edge of the sprawling slum that is under the control of the Mahdi Army militia run by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.”

In related news…

Saddam trial witness describes massacre

AP reports: “A witness testified at Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial Tuesday that he survived a massacre by feigning death when Iraqi soldiers shot at Kurdish detainees lying at their feet.”

The witness, who testified from behind a curtain to conceal his identity, said he was one of dozens of prisoners who were taken in buses to an execution site in western Iraq in April 1988 during the crackdown by Saddam’s regime on the Kurdish population.

Saddam and six co-defendants are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the Operation Anfal crackdown, which the prosecution says killed some 180,000 Kurds. Saddam and one other defendant are also charged with genocide.

Ahhh, the good ol’ days. That’s what some must be thinking.

Right? Those folks that are calling for troop withdrawals, and suggesting that it’s America’s fault for creating hostility in the Middle East. That before Iraq, it was just a bed of tranquility. The U.N. was handling things, y’know. Like in Darfur.

Who would be saying that?

The day we hear a Democrat utter the words: “Maybe going into Iraq was a bad idea because these radical fanatics are blood-thirsty animals, they reject democracy, they resent Western culture, and perhaps it took a ruthless butcher like Saddam to keep them in line.” (And he preferred to wear Italian-tailored suits, too!)

The day we hear something like that from a liberal’s lips, then, maybe, we can all debate the issue from a fresh perspective.

But until then, we expect they’ll just keeping blaming Bush.

It’s politics, and it’s election season.

John Kerry, speaking at Pasadena City College at a rally for the losing Democratic contender for Governor, said the following:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Read Michelle Malkin’s roundup of comments from members of the Armed Forces and links to the audio and other comments on the absurd statement by Kerry here and watch the video here.

Keep in mind this idiot came very close to being our Commander-in-Chief.

Have you heard this reported in the LA Times, or in any of the old media? You won’t.

Technorati Tags: John Kerry,Angelides,Democrats

Cross-posted at Bear to the Right

My friend, Bob Rosebrock, makes an excellent case in an article about the how the HOV lane on our freeways not only causes more traffic and congestion, but is clearly undemocratic, gives preferential treatment to a special class of drivers and denies equal access to public transportation. He calls for opening the HOV lane to all drivers on election day - November 7th to allow voters a free flow of traffic so they can make it to the polls.

I agree. Let’s all get behind opening the HOV lane to all drivers on Election Day and see how traffic is really improved. Read his article below. It makes a lot of sense.

NO VOTER LEFT BEHIND

“Freedom of the Freeway”

By Robert L. Rosebrock

Of the many privileges we enjoy as a democratic society, ‘freedom to vote’ is paramount for our country’s survival. Equally important for our personal survival is ‘freedom of movement,’ because without it we could not travel to and from work or accomplish a multitude of our endeavors, including going to the polling station to vote.

To ensure that our citizenry has accessible maneuverability, it is a primary function of government to facilitate our public freeway system so that all motorists have uniform liberty to mobilize his or her self in their pursuit of happiness. To the contrary, our individual mobility has been seriously curtailed under California’s Transportation Control Plan that was implemented more than thirty years ago. As a result, our freeway traveling is unjustly regulated with an ideological‘wall of separation’ that discriminates against millions of motorists based simply on passenger or vehicle preference.

This restrictive barrier is the preferential-treatment carpool lane, also known as the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) law, which rewards special driving privileges to motorists that have a single passenger or drive alone in a hybrid car. And for those motorists who do not or cannot conform to this doctrine, they are unfairly penalized with inferior driving conditions. Such laws are inequitable, divisive and contradictory to the basic principles of democracy and violate America’s trusted creed of “With Liberty and Justice for All.”

We must never forget that there’s a big difference between equal opportunity and equal treatment. In his book “My American Journey,” former Secretary of State General Colin Powell rightfully declared: “Equal rights and equal opportunity mean just that. They do not mean preferential treatment.” But why doesn’t our government practice this?
(continue reading post »)

Diversity is another word battered beyond recognition by liberals and progressives. Orwellian NewSpeak has made the word diversity into a bangalore torpedo to undermine the defenses guarding civilized society.

Liberal-socialists, with our educational system in the vanguard, have made diversity into an end in itself, a principle of materialistic social justice.

In education, for example, the goal of diversity is elevated to a higher status than providing the best possible education for students. Diversity is, not an educational principle, but a correlate to Lenin’s program to create the New Soviet Man via material factors imposed by intellectuals. Students are somehow to be made better by the corruption of a system that supposedly is devoted to academic excellence.

As economist Thomas Sowell has so articulately observed many times, poorly prepared students, of whatever race, gain nothing by being admitted to colleges with academic standards beyond their reach. Either the better students are held back, or the poorly prepared students are discouraged and eventually drop out. Nothing is gained by the mendacity of liberal-progressive educators giving every student a minimum grade of B. Victims of grade-inflation have simply been set up for failure and embittered cynicism in real-world job competition.

Less well prepared students can get a good education at colleges with less stringent academic standards. Students who earn Bs and As in those colleges can have the priceless gift of real self-respect based on their own hard work.

Diversity of the liberal-progressive stripe has disastrous consequences for the survival of the United States. Economically we see its results in the widening gap between linguistic, mathematical, and scientific competence of average American graduates and their overseas counterparts. In an increasingly technical world, the United States is suffering, not only from inflated production costs arising from the welfare state and unionism, but from falling behind in the innovation curve.

We can celebrate the diversity of our student bodies, but at the cost of fewer and fewer Nobel Prizes for science awarded to Americans in the future, along with more and more manufacturing transferred overseas.

At a more fundamental level, diversity is moral relativism masquerading as virtue. Liberal-progressives paint diversity as a democratic principle of equality. It is, in fact, the opposite. Rather than supporting an equal opportunity on the basis of merit, the doctrine of diversity confers special privileges based on non-essential factors such race and ethnicity.
(continue reading post »)

Lynne Cheney walked into the belly of the beast - CNN - this week to talk about her new children’s book, “Our 50 States”. Wolf Blitzer, knowing that she was coming to talk about her book, decided he would ambush her with loaded questions about the War on Terrorism, the current elections and Iraq in an aggressive adversarial tone.

Mrs. Cheney gave back as good as she got. I thought it was great how, even though she expected the interview to be about her book, she was prepared for Blitzer’s outrageous and partisan onslaught.

Here is an excerpt:

LC: But what is CNN doing running terrorist tape of terrorists shooting Americans? I mean, I thought Duncan Hunter asked you a very good question, and you didn’t answer it. Do you want us to win?

WB: The answer, of course, is we want the United States to win. We are Americans. There’s no doubt about that. You think we want terrorists to win?

LC: Then why are you running terrorist propaganda?

WB: With all due respect, with all due respect, this is not terrorist propaganda.

LC: Oh, Wolf…

WB: This is reporting the news, which is what we do. We’re not partisan…

LC: Where did you get the film?

WB: We got the film…look, this is an issue that has been widely discussed, this is an issue that we reported on extensively. We make no apologies for showing that. That was a very carefully considered decision, why we did that. And I think, and I think, of your…

LC: Well, I think it’s shocking.

WB: If you’re a serious journalist, you want to report the news. Sometimes the news is good, sometimes the news isn’t so good.

LC: But Wolf, there’s a difference between news and terrorist propaganda. Why did you give the terrorists a forum?

WB: And if you put it in context, if you put it in context, that’s what news is. We said it was propaganda. We didn’t distort where we got it. We didn’t distort anything about it. We gave it the context. Let’s talk about another issue in the news, and then we’ll get to the book.

If you notice, he first says it isn’t propaganda, and then he admits it is.

You can read the whole transcript here, and you can see a portion of the interview in video here.

Hugh Hewitt comments that: (continue reading post »)

Simply put, Sen. Schumer has to say outrageous crap like that even though he knows it isn’t true. Why am I confident that he’s lying? Simple. Momentum has shifted onto the GOP’s sideline. BIGTIME. Menendez is faltering as Kean presses him on the attack. Ford’s ‘Memphis Meltdown’ revealed him to be a spoiled brat with a temper. McCaskill’s hopes died when the Democratic voter fraud scheme was uncovered.

That’s before we get to Michigan’s Mike Bouchard ridiculing Dangerously Incompetent Debbie Stabenow or Michael Steele beating Bland Ben Cardin like a drum.

Ford even had the audacity to tell FNS’s Chris Wallace this:

One of the reasons we believe and feel so confident about our chances here — and don’t get me wrong, we can’t let up these last 10 days — we feel confident because you can feel and sense the momentum all across the state. The sizes of our crows, wherever we may go — our internal numbers show a small lead, and although there’s a fund- raising disadvantage in other parts of the country, we’ve been very blessed here.

“We feel the momentum”??? After his series of meltdowns, starting with the Memphis Meltdown, then continuing with him calling Australia a nuclear threat to his outrageous statement that Republicans fear the Lord; Democrats fear AND love the Lord, it’s amazing that he’s within low double digits of winning.

The bottom line on Sen. Schumer is that he’s now recruited candidates that have positioned the Democratic Party for losing seats in the Senate.

The only way that Sen. Schumer should see reason for optimism with the Senate is through rose colored glasses or if he’s been on a Ted Kennedyesque bender.

Technorati Tags: Election 2006, Schumer, Memphis Meltdown, Harold Ford, Michael Steele, Tom Kean

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

Powerline has an interesting post about what Tradesports is ‘predicting’ about this year’s election. To be honest, I was more interested in what they said about various individual races than about anything else. Here’s what I’m refering to:

What about individual races? From the perspective of the GOP candidate, I’ll divide them into Favorites, Underdogs and Long Shots. As of this moment, here’s what the money says (per the last traded futures contract) in the Senate races that have attracted most attention (ours and others’):

Favorites:
George Allen, Virginia (72)
Bob Corker, Tennessee (65)
Jim Talent, Missouri (59)
Underdogs:
Tom Kean, New Jersey (37)
Michael Steele, Maryland (30)
Conrad Burns, Montana (25)
Long Shots
Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania (12.7)
Mike DeWine, Ohio (8.5)
Mark Kennedy, Minnesota (7)

The Tradesports betting line also places our favorite governor, Minnesota’s extremely successful Tim Pawlenty, in my Underdog category (33), trailing Democratic challenger Mike Hatch. It is a line that indicates to me how strongly the headwinds are blowing against Republicans this year.

I’ll respectfully disagree with Scott’s interpretation of what this is saying, especially with regards to Gov. Pawlenty. To me, this isn’t an indication of “how strongly the headwinds are blowing against Republicans this year.” It says more about how many people have bought into the Agenda Media’s storyline.

Based on real events on the ground, it’s impossible for me to put Michael Steele in the underdog role. He’s on his way to victory. PERIOD. Dean Barnett’s saying that Steele mopped the floor with Ben Cardin’s backside on MTP this morning (continue reading post »)