Say Anything Blog

I’m a conservative here in California and what the Governor said makes sense to me.  There are many like me.

It’s one thing to reach out to the moderates, it’s another thing to abandon the principles of conservatism.

The Republican party has been doing just that and look what it brought it 2006.

One caveat is that the press has been lying about the extremism of the Republican party.  Many people probably believe that.  That’s why the Republicans have to express what conservatism means.  Don’t let the enemy define us.

1% of Americans pay 40% of the income tax.
5% of Americans pay 60% of the income tax.
10% of Americans pay 70% of the income tax.

The whole thing is just getting too weird. It’s like the government is crumbling.

There was a time when the Democrats and Republicans were not really that far apart and you knew that they both had the country’s interests at heart - just different opinions about how to get there.

Now, it’s not even clear who is what with people like Boxer and Feinstein supporting Republican agendas.

To top it off:

Senator Craig is suddenly and abruptly dumped by his party for basically doing nothing. They wanted to get rid of him for some reason.

It is not possible to accidentally transport nuclear weapons to Barksdale which is a Middle East staging ground. The controls are too fail safe. Nuclear weapons are decommissioned at Kirkland and have their own bunker at Minot. The chain of command and amount of paper work and number of sign offs make this fail safe. You can’t just go get the wrong missile. They have not been loaded onto B-52s since George Sr. was president. Their presence at Barksdale was leaked by military officers. Bush threatened Senators with lie detector tests over this one.

USNORTHCOM is planning a 5 day martial law exercise in October. They have announced that they are more prepared since they used Katrina as a staging ground. This is where military personnel went into homes, escorted the occupants outside, and removed weapons people had for defense, when they needed them the most, after Katrina had hit. One of the soldiers involved said on national TV, “I don’t want to think about what we’re doing today”.

A fake Ben Laden tape.

Billions of dollars worth of stock deals are rumored to be dependent upon a severe stock market drop or crash by Sept 21.

Better hang onto those guns.

First off Arnold is a RINO and not a true conservative, so I am sick and tired of him trying to make the GOP what it isn’t…

Check out:
Goon’s North Dakota Red Neck
Goon’s World

ews: Better stock up on tinfoil.

If govt control of the economy were the way to go, the Soviet Union would be the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Thanks to Obama, America remains the only country where it is illegal to drill our own oil!

Unfortunately, Arnold is a perfect illustration of that most pernicious of leftie lies: Republicans are “on the right”, and so trying to be in the “middle” between Republicans and Dems is some type of “moderation”.
In fact, the Dems are very far left, with their desires for govt control over every aspect of our lives, and conservatives are the true moderates.  Republicans moving left is just more leftism, it isn’t moderation at all.  We are already in the middle, so moving left causes us to be less moderate, in truth.

If govt control of the economy were the way to go, the Soviet Union would be the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Thanks to Obama, America remains the only country where it is illegal to drill our own oil!

ews48…..

Stop it!

ews….

Do you think we need some underhanded sneak job to get nukes into play when we have a fleet of nuclear armed submarines out there that could fire undetected? And they have enough firepower to turn Iran into a sheet of glass. Our bombers would never have to leave the hangar. Please. Whatever it is you’re smoking, stop it.

The future ain’t what it used to be…..

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It tradition with keeping California a big joke, when I was in college I voted for Arnold so that when I graduated his signature would be on my diploma. I also shook his hand once at a rally, he was shorter than I’d imagined. But yes in hindsight there were better choices I could have made.

ews,

Stick to what you know.

Out Here
Rodney G. Graves
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Ceterum censeo Parthia esse delendam
Latin: “Furthermore, Parthia (Persia aka modern day Iran) should be destroyed.”

Arnold is right. 

I have a California voter registration form sitting here on my desk, which I requested to change my voter registration from “Republican” to ....well, to what I don’t know yet.  Democrat?  Independant?  I don’t know.  I am beginning to despair at ever reaching an answer.

I’ve been a Republican since 1976, when I first voted, and I voted for Gerald Ford in that election.  I have never voted for a Democrat for President.  2008 may be a first. 

In our wierd and wacky two party system, the way things work is that anybody with a special interest has to find some sort of a niche in one of the two political parties or else risk being marginalized. 

And, unfortunately, the way that you get one of the two major parties to pay attention to you these days is to either deliver winning vote margins on election day, turn out workers passionate to help the party, or raise money, lots of money.  Thus the primary election system tends to force the two parties to attract special interests like flies to honey.

So, on the Democrat side are the gays, the pro-abortionists, the feminists, the nanny state people, labor unions, Hollywood liberals, environmentalists, world peaceniks, African Americans, and the majority of Jewish voters.

On the Republican side are the anti-abortionists, conservative Christians, pro-gun lobby, oil industry, pharmaceutical industry, insurance industry, the military industrial complex, and the anti-tax, minimal government people, and the right-wing pro-Greater Israel Jewish voters.

Whatever happened to poor people?  No one speaks for them anymore because, you know what, THEY DON’T VOTE AND THEY DON’T GIVE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS!!

Everything these days is about micro-targeting special interests, and raising money, and delivering votes.  Whatever happened to good government?  Whatever happened to doing the right thing for all Americans?

When I think about all things that California and our country ought to be doing, very little of it has to do with any of these special interests.  Very little of it has to do with spending one more dime or one more American soldier’s life in Iraq.  Very little of it has to do with continuing to fund Israel’s military so that they can keep bashing the Palestinians and make America look like Israel’s pet ogre in the eyes of the world.  Very little of it has to do with putting the U.S. into an enormous debt.

And most of all, very little of it has to do with whether to keep fighting over this idiotic litmus test of abortion.

I used to be anti-abortion (awwww….babies are SO CUTE….how could anybody KILL A BABY!!!!), until a lightbulb moment clicked in my head one day when I read an article in Scientific American that quoted a study which correlated the marked drop in violent crime in America to the onset of widely available abortions in this country due to Roe vs. Wade.  And it was then I realized, hey, do these conservative Christians realize just whose babies they are trying to save?  These babies that are being aborted are not coming from well meaning, nurturing parents; no they are being aborted because the mother and father screwed each other and then screwed up their lives, royally…...so these babies are hardly going to grow up in the best of environments and become ministers or rocket scientists.  Far more likely they are going to grow up to be some crackhead criminal carjacker…....maybe carjacking MY CAR even,.....  yep, that does it for me, stick that sucker in and abort this guy right now.

When Clinton was President, I derided his sleazy politics, and yet, now, in retrospect, George Bush Jr. makes Clinton look like a political genius.  Really, I mean that. 

For all of you fiscal conservatives, Clinton actually left office with the Federal budget balanced and with the total accumulated federal deficit slowly being REDUCED.  Bush Jr. has put the nation back into deep hock once again with his tax cuts and huge spending on the Iraq War, the Medicare drug program, and now the children’s healthcare program, all of which are not funded by enough new revenue in the Federal budget.

Anyway, enough ranting.  I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in both parties.  But I am especially disappointed with the Republicans, and especially in George Bush Jr., who has really, really sold the country out to all sorts of special interests and has made the United States a much, much worse country to live in than when he first took office.

Whatever happened to poor people?  No one speaks for them anymore…

They don’t know how to speak for themselves? You’re not giving them a lot of credit vrmgi.

I used to be anti-abortion (awwww….babies are SO CUTE….how could anybody KILL A BABY!!!!), until a lightbulb moment clicked in my head one day when I read an article in Scientific American that quoted a study which correlated the marked drop in violent crime in America to the onset of widely available abortions in this country due to Roe vs. Wade.

Correlation does not equal causation.

And it was then I realized, hey, do these conservative Christians realize just whose babies they are trying to save?

How callus. I’m sure they look at these babies as individual people who deserve life regardless of how much a fuckup the parents are.

...so these babies are hardly going to grow up in the best of environments and become ministers or rocket scientists.

Actually, many of humanity’s greatest people have come from less than ideal childhood homes.

Far more likely they are going to grow up to be some crackhead criminal carjacker…....maybe carjacking MY CAR even,.....  yep, that does it for me, stick that sucker in and abort this guy right now.

A death sentence over a pre-crime.

For all of you fiscal conservatives, Clinton actually left office with the Federal budget balanced and with the total accumulated federal deficit slowly being REDUCED.

The 1994 Republican Revolution came in and controlled the legislature for the first time in decades. They promptly lowered taxes and grew the government at a less hectic pace.

Bush Jr. has put the nation back into deep hock once again with his tax cuts…

Wrong. The cut in tax rates resulted in both higher economic activity and higher revenue for the government.

...huge spending on the Iraq War…

The war’s cost is just a fraction of the Great Society programs.

You’re no Republican vrmgi. You get too many basic things wrong.

ews, Stick to what you know.

And that would be????  Almost nothing….

One of the most important talents for success in politics is the ability to make utter nonsense sound not only plausible but inspiring. Barack Obama has that talent. We will be lucky if we escape the catastrophes into which other countries have been led by leaders with that same charismatic talent.
-Thomas Sowell

My entire point about the two party political system is that neither party is really consistent anymore about what their true core values are.  Both political parties have become corrupted by the need to form coalitions with fanatics and the need to raise money, money, money.

Here’s just a few examples:

Democrats have the pro-abortionists.  But, they also have the anti-death penalty groups.  OK, so which is it, are you or are you not in favor of saving ALL PEOPLE, whether little tiny bits of protoplasm, or a six foot tall bit of protoplasm that raped and killed twenty people? 

Left confused by this issue are the true believers in right to life - the Roman Catholics, who are actually fairly consistent in that you should neither have abortion or the death penalty.  I guess I’m in the opposite camp of the Roman Catholics, but I do admire them for their ideologic consistency.

Republicans are supposed to be more in favor of law and order, stricter sentencing penalties for criminals, etc.  Virtually every single police agency in this country has come out in favor of stricter gun control laws.  But the Republicans also have the pro-gun lobby, and so have always been the ones to try to water down or reject these gun control laws. 

Left confused by all this are the original law and order Republicans, (e.g., people like Nancy Reagan, that well-known confused Republican), who favor both.  I’m with Nancy on this one.

Republicans are supposed to be pro-business, pro-economic competitiveness.  But one of the biggest factors in the non-competitiveness of American businesses is inefficient healthcare delivery. 

This is entirely because among the Republican Party’s biggest contributors have been the insurance industries and pharmaceutical industries.  As a result, Americans pay the HIGHEST PRICES IN THE ENTIRE WORLD for prescription drugs, have the HIGHEST HEALTHCARE COSTS in the entire world, and still get, by all worldwide performance standards, only very, very mediocre to poor health results.

And forget that crap about American medicine being at the cutting edge of technology.  Most of the latest antibiotics are being developed in Japan (American pharmaceutical companies having abandoned this area as not profitable enough), the CT scanner was invented in England, the current state of the art MRI scanners are now being built by European companies (Siemans and Phillips). 

American carmakers actually find it cheaper to manufacture cars in CANADA (that great befuddled icon of socialist almost-America) than in the U.S., simply because they do not have to pay for the health care of their workers.

Health insurance companies typically have an “overhead” of around 30%  - that is the money they spend on the very high salaries of their executives, promotions, dividends to stockholders, slush funds to politicians, etc. rather than on the health care of their patients.

Medicare administrative costs are only 2% of the money taken in.  The rest is spent on payments for patient care.  Medicare works reasonably well, especially compared to insurance companies.

And so it would seem instantly reasonable to take in all of the huge amounts of money currently given to the health insurance companies and give it instead to Medicare to take care of all Americans, and use the 28% savings to fund the healthcare of the currently un-insured Americans in this country.

But nooooo…..that will never happen, not because this is some sort of socialist evil, but because the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies spend huge amounts of money lobbying against it.  This is, after all, a matter of life or death for those industries.  Screw the rest of American business and economic competitiveness.(Dennis Kucinich, the midget Democrat, is the only presidential candidate advocating this right now).

Those industries are even contributing to Hilary Clinton to hedge their bets. 

It would be interesting, if she gets elected president, to see if she turns around and screws them and puts in a national health care system.  That would be justice.

...whether little tiny bits of protoplasm…

With a complete human DNA sequence.
The real hypocrisy is advocating the killing of innocent young humans while trying to prevent the just punishment of evil criminals.

If govt control of the economy were the way to go, the Soviet Union would be the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Thanks to Obama, America remains the only country where it is illegal to drill our own oil!

Republicans are suposed to be pro-business, pro economic competitiveness.  But one of the biggest factors in the non-competitiveness of American business is inefficient healthcare delivery.

vrmgi,

To say that American business in not competitive is foolish drivel.    To then assert that the reason for any such (imaginary) non-competitiveness is the American healtcare system borders on world-class idiocy.  American business can compete with any other in the world, given a level playing field, and the American worker is far and away the most productive.

If you have any serious, substantive documentation to support either assertion, by all means share it with rest of us.    Paul Krugman, of course, counts as neither serious nor substantive.

Your argument, such as it is, is predicated on the notion that employers ought to be forced to pick up the cost of their employees’ healthcare.  Republicans, particularly the conservative ones, are pretty much agreed that self-sufficiency is a far better course of action than forced anythging.

“Capitalism is optimism monetized.”

vrmgi rambles on aimlessly, Republicans are supposed to be more in favor of law and order, stricter sentencing penalties for criminals, etc.  Virtually every single police agency in this country has come out in favor of stricter gun control laws.  But the Republicans also have the pro-gun lobby, and so have always been the ones to try to water down or reject these gun control laws.

Left confused by all this are the original law and order Republicans

You’re still trying to talk for Republicans. The “original law and order” Republicans are against gun control laws because we can all see what happens to cities that try such ideas. Check out Washington DC and Chicago and then examine their gun control laws. Such laws didn’t help; instead they only empowered the criminals.

This is entirely because among the Republican Party’s biggest contributors have been the insurance industries and pharmaceutical industries.  As a result, Americans pay the HIGHEST PRICES IN THE ENTIRE WORLD for prescription drugs…

“Entirely”? Do you think that this may have something to do with the situation?

...have the HIGHEST HEALTHCARE COSTS in the entire world…

We also produce the most research and development. It’s no wonder we have the “HIGHEST HEALTHCARE COSTS” given that reality.

...and still get, by all worldwide performance standards, only very, very mediocre to poor health results.

By “all”? Name a couple.

And forget that crap about American medicine being at the cutting edge of technology.

Yeah. Let’s just forget reality so that we can indulge in this fantasy of yours.

Most of the latest antibiotics are being developed in Japan (American pharmaceutical companies having abandoned this area as not profitable enough), the CT scanner was invented in England, the current state of the art MRI scanners are now being built by European companies (Siemans and Phillips).

But where does most of the research come from? Answer carefully.

Medicare administrative costs are only 2% of the money taken in.

This shows your gullibility. The facts are quite different:

Some of the administrative costs that are factored into private sector calculations, but not Medicare, include:

  1. Collecting Revenue. What it costs employers and the IRS to collect the payroll tax needed to fund Medicare is not included in Medicare’s administrative costs.

  2. Company Policy. While the salary cost of executives and boards of directors who set company policy are included in private sector administrative costs, the salaries of members of Congress and their staff members who set Medicare policy are not factored into Medicare’s administrative costs.

  3. Management. The salaries of the folks who run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the costs of the buildings where they work are excluded from Medicare’s administrative costs. No such luck for the private sector.

And so it would seem instantly reasonable to take in all of the huge amounts of money currently given to the health insurance companies and give it instead to Medicare to take care of all Americans, and use the 28% savings to fund the healthcare of the currently un-insured Americans in this country.

No. We don’t need to glob onto yet another socialist government program simply because you’re fooled by the government’s administration cost claims.

But nooooo…..that will never happen, not because this is some sort of socialist evil, but because the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies spend huge amounts of money lobbying against it.

The system is already half-way there. What are you bitching about?

It would be interesting, if she gets elected president, to see if she turns around and screws them and puts in a national health care system.  That would be justice.

“Justice” is Hillary “screwing” the insurance companies.

No thanks vrmgi. Your “justice” is more about punishment than anything else.

vrmgi - you talk a lot of shit and respond to nothing. That’s very telling…

Good response lik.  I do need to point out the the politicians that are appointed by the big city mayors are in favor of gun control.  There are many surveys that show the cops on the street are not.

Even that’s not a great measure as the police deal with the worst people and often have a distrust of the public.  A better question would be do they encourage their family to be able to protect themselves.

And of course what the government employees think about the rights of the people isn’t really all that important either.

1% of Americans pay 40% of the income tax.
5% of Americans pay 60% of the income tax.
10% of Americans pay 70% of the income tax.

This is entirely because among the Republican Party’s biggest contributors have been the insurance industries and pharmaceutical industries.  As a result, Americans pay the HIGHEST PRICES IN THE ENTIRE WORLD for prescription drugs, have the HIGHEST HEALTHCARE COSTS in the entire world, and still get, by all worldwide performance standards, only very, very mediocre to poor health results.

The high prices are a result of new medical discoveries and research. These things cost a lot of money.

Check out:
Goon’s North Dakota Red Neck
Goon’s World

The high prices are a result of new medical discoveries and research. These things cost a lot of money.

Not entirely.  The high prices are also due to the high taxation and oppressive regulation imposed by the govt interference in healthcare.  Get the govt out of healthcare and watch costs go down, availability go up, and affordable healthcare become the norm.

If govt control of the economy were the way to go, the Soviet Union would be the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Thanks to Obama, America remains the only country where it is illegal to drill our own oil!

Republicans are supposed to be more in favor of law and order, stricter sentencing penalties for criminals, etc.  Virtually every single police agency in this country has come out in favor of stricter gun control laws.  But the Republicans also have the pro-gun lobby, and so have always been the ones to try to water down or reject these gun control laws.

Precisely.

Republicans are supposed to be more in favor of law and order, stricter sentencing penalties for criminals, etc.  Virtually every single police agency in this country has come out in favor of stricter gun control laws.  But the Republicans also have the pro-gun lobby, and so have always been the ones to try to water down or reject these gun control laws.

The right to own and possess fire arms is a right protected by the constitution. It’s called the second ammendment.

Check out:
Goon’s North Dakota Red Neck
Goon’s World

goon: You are right and yet Guiliani and many localities have violated the 2nd Amendment without any penalty whatsoever. Further, if most of the people in this country are for gun control, the Congress needs to send an amendment to the states or the states must call for a Constitutional Convention to amend the Constitution.

This is not a states rights issue in the sense individual states or communities can amend the 2nd Amendment, it is a right guaranteed by the Constitution and only an Amendment repealling it is lawful.

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it deep within us, so that it appears nowhere on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago

Neiman, your right but I won’t vote for Hillary. If Rudy is the nominee I will plug my nose and pull the lever for him. But your right shall not be infringed upon. That is what the 2nd ammendment says.

Check out:
Goon’s North Dakota Red Neck
Goon’s World

Goon: Let most of us agree - Hillary don’t get our vote! NEVER! Okay? I have never taken a position on who I would or would not vote for, even though many here have attacked me thinking I had decided not to vote at all and thereby allow Hillary in by default. Wrong!

I sent Rob and Whistler a questionaire about key issues and based on that and the candidates known positions it indicated who the person answering the questions would most likely vote for: My choices were Fred Thompson and Hunter. Another questionaire said it was Romney.

All that being said and my extreme dislike of Giuliani’s liberal social preferences aside, I cannot feel comfortable about him as long as he has such a causual disregard for the Constitution regarding the 2nd Amendment. I should note here - I don not now nor since I left the Marine Corps have ever owned a gun. If it is him and Hillary, he would probably get my vote but not my support. I still would not vote for Hillary!

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it deep within us, so that it appears nowhere on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago

Neiman: That’s good to know.  The reality of the next election is going to be if you don’t vote Republican, it will effectively be a vote for Hillary, which is a moral dilemma for some.

If govt control of the economy were the way to go, the Soviet Union would be the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Thanks to Obama, America remains the only country where it is illegal to drill our own oil!

Robert108: It is still a moral conflict for me! I would much rather vote for someone that substantially shares my Judeo-Christian beliefs and by my personal estimation has strong core values which I can trust him/her to act upon in a crisis.

It is not helpful that some commenting here and many other secular conservative Republicans have all but told Christians to butt out of the public square and they don’t care if evangelical Christians vote or not, some even inviting evangelical Christians out of the party unless they shut up and stop pushing their social/moral issues. Look at the California Governor thread as an example and if that trend continues, would you really blame evangelical Christians for trying a third party or opting out because the moral conflicts grow to major proportions?

We will not get a really passionate Christian in the White House anymore, the current political climate will not allow such a candidate. But, I would much rather not have to choose between two evils, rather I would prefer a candidate to vote for that in some large or major degree honestly shares my Christian values. Is that wrong?

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it deep within us, so that it appears nowhere on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago

Robert said: Neiman: That’s good to know.  The reality of the next election is going to be if you don’t vote Republican, it will effectively be a vote for Hillary, which is a moral dilemma for some.

I see no reason to vote to for hillary or a third party candidate to make a point, very bad… That is a very dangerous point we may never recover from. I would rather see Rudy Gulliani in office than Hillary Clinton. If Fred doesn’t get the nomination I am voting for ever the Republican nominate.

Check out:
Goon’s North Dakota Red Neck
Goon’s World

...if that trend continues, would you really
blame evangelical Christians for trying a third party or opting out because the moral conflicts grow to major proportions?

No blame, but the inevitable consequence of allowing the lefties to divide us with their evil propaganda is to hand the country over to Hillary.  That is the reality; it’s not symbolic, it’s the stark reality.
I utterly reject the artificial divide between “fiscal” and “social” conservatives, btw.  If you’re conservative, that’s it.  It’s just more “divide and conquer” stuff, as far as I’m concerned.
Here’s what I think: The continuation of this nation, as Constituted, is more important than any religious beliefs or political beliefs.  Without the “matrix” of our unique social/political/economic system, the world is plunged back into darkness. We need a combination of personal, economic, religious and political freedom, working together to produce the miracle in human history that is the United States of America.  If we try to make one of those elements superior to the others, we fail, IMO.  It’s a juggling act, and always will be.
Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty.

If govt control of the economy were the way to go, the Soviet Union would be the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Thanks to Obama, America remains the only country where it is illegal to drill our own oil!

We need a combination of personal, economic, religious and political freedom, working together to produce the miracle in human history that is the United States of America.  If we try to make one of those elements superior to the others, we fail.

Very right, but to leave out the religious freedom, I sincerely believe is death to this nation.

I see no reason to vote for Hillary or a third party candidate to make a point, very bad… That is a very dangerous point we may never recover from.

I’ll never get you people to understand that I am not advocating anything in particular, what I am doing is trying to get people to understand that Judeo-Christian morality and a recognition of Natures God is at the core of every true Christian; and when they must vote against one great evil (Hillary) by voting for a lessor evil (Giuliani) it is a very hard decision, knowing that it is matter of losing moral ground in small increments versus in large chunks. It is, as Robert108 said, a great moral dilemma and that needs to be appreciated, if some evangelical Christians at one time or another in the future just stop voting.

I am getting tired and must get ready for bed, 4:30 am comes along quite early. But, I will check back tomorrow on this thread and the other one wherein Robert108 and I are having a discussion.

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it deep within us, so that it appears nowhere on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago

Very right, but to leave out the religious freedom, I sincerely believe is death to this nation.

That’s pretty much what I said, no?

...if some evangelical Christians at one time or another in the future just stop voting.

What’s that old saying?  Something about “cutting of your nose to spite your face”?
The issue is much more important than acting the jilted lover, IMO.

If govt control of the economy were the way to go, the Soviet Union would be the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world.

Thanks to Obama, America remains the only country where it is illegal to drill our own oil!

The Governator speaks again, lol.