Say Anything Blog

From the Century Code:

16.1-10-06. Electioneering on election day - Penalty. Any person asking, soliciting, or in any manner trying to induce or persuade, any voter on an election day to vote or refrain from voting for any candidate or the candidates or ticket of any political party or organization, or any measure submitted to the people, is guilty of an infraction. The display upon motor vehicles of adhesive signs which are not readily removable and which promote the candidacy of any individual, any political party, or a vote upon any measure, and political advertisements promoting the candidacy of any individual, political party, or a vote upon any measure which are displayed on fixed permanent billboards, may not, however, be deemed a violation of this section.

This law must be changed this session.

Our guys are dying in Iraq for the Freedoms the Constitution grants us; for the State of North Dakota to suspend my right as a private citizen to make calls or basicly do anything on election day is an affront to all that died for this nation.

Many of you know that I left my job with the IowaGOP in September, among other reasons we won't get into (due to a non-disclosure agreement I had to sign), to help a friend of mine run for the ND State House in Dickinson as a Democrat.

It is a very strange race.

On the Republican side there is a 2 term representative Nancy Johnson (R) who is pro-abortion and who has voted several times to raise taxes. Then there is Representative Frank Wald (R) who has fairly solid conservative 26 year record.

On the Democrats side is a candidate, Connie Kooren, who has received huge amounts of funding from Conrad, ND Dem-NPL, NDEA and others. Basicly bought and paid for by the Democratic Party. He is pro-life but hardly a conservative.

Finally there is a Stuart Savelkoul, who could best be described as a JFK Democrat. Fiscally conservative and pretty much abandoned by his own party (just like Mechtel and Grotberg were abandoned by the GOP).

The jist of this race comes down to the “re-education” campaign that I have launched targeting Republicans to educate them on the fact that the so-called Republican, Nancy Johnson, has no business calling herself a conservative.

Based on this re-education, my friend the Democrat’s success hinges on Republicans not voting for the pro-abortion/tax-hiking/fake-Republican.

Tomorrow we will see if the Republicans in this part of the country truely care if their representative stands for the conservative policies they do - or if all that matters is the R.

Brenarlo notes that the Republican Political Parties are, by Defintion, Non-ideological.

The results of this election will determine whether that is true or not.

If it is true, we have a problem because if it is true, it means that Republicans are not beholden to those that elect them.

There are many reasons to vote for a candidate.

The fact that they have been in office forever is not one of those reason.

We need to stop letting candidates sit in office till they choose to leave - this goes for members of both parties.

Politics is a “First Come - First Serve” system, there is no line, and challengers should never “wait their turn.”

And to the Dickinson Press: a change is always required, status quos are dangerous things.

Human Events:  If Democrats Take Congress, Bush Will Get His Amnesty for Illegal Aliens

Although the basic philosophy of conservatism is optimistic (a belief in the individual’s ability to succeed if left alone by government is at the core of the movement, after all), conservatives tend to be chronically depressed when it comes to politics and elections.

Not only does government seem to grow ad nauseum with each passing year (especially under Democrats or George Bush), but a healthy touch of pessimism is a natural consequence of responsibility. Imagining what can go wrong is how responsible adults plan for the future. And conservatives are, disproportionately, among the responsible part of the population—responsible for paying the taxes, fighting the wars, raising the children, and running the businesses. 

So it is not surprising that conservatives have a tendency to see the worst in every political event. This means that oftentimes conservatives completely overlook when they have actually won a major victory—concentrating instead on spotting the next potential defeat. This is what has occurred regarding the battle over illegal immigration and amnesty this past year.

At the beginning of 2006, the constellations were in perfect alignment for the forces of open borders and amnesty. Ready to push for amnesty—and the next flood of illegal alien interlopers it would bring- was the mainstream media, nearly all Congressional Democrats, President Bush and Karl Rove, John McCain and much of the Senate leadership of the GOP, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page and its disciples, sellout union “leaders,” corrupt corporations, every ethnic grievance group in the country, a number of imbecile bishops, academia, the rabid moonbat left, 20 million street-storming illegal aliens, and every weenie in America afraid of being called a racist.

All amnesty opponents had going for them was the wishes of a majority of the American people and the rank-and-file Republicans in Congress. And yet amnesty was defeated in a spectacular fashion. Many conservatives, who were angry that the victory had to be achieved over the political carcasses of our own President and Senate leaders, did not appreciate the scale and significance of this victory at the time. An army that has to mutiny just to be able to fight the enemy is inherently demoralized by that fact.

Given such circumstances, it’s easy to resort to jaded and safe clichés such as “there’s no difference between the two parties.” But the simple fact is there’s a huge difference between the parties on the amnesty issue: Republicans are divided over it, with most opposing amnesty. For Democrats there is no such division—they wholeheartedly support amnesty.

H.R. 4437, the bill establishing increased border security efforts and rejecting amnesty, was supported by 203 of 231 (88%) Republicans in the House—only 17 voted against it. By contrast, only 36 Democrats (18%) voted for the bill, 164 voted against it, hoping to pass an amnesty instead. In the Senate, the only opposition to amnesty came from Republicans—60% of them opposed it. 93% of Senate Democrats supported amnesty.

That’s the choice this election presents for opponents of open borders: support the Republicans that rose up against their leadership to oppose amnesty, or support the Democrats who will gleefully pass an amnesty just as soon as they are sworn in and able.

And here’s the real kicker: booting Republicans from control of the House to punish George Bush and John McCain for their ludicrous border policies will have the ironic effect of ensuring they finally get the amnesty they want. If Democrats win big next week, the Senate will resurrect their amnesty bill, a Democrat controlled House will pass it, and there can be no doubt that President George W. Bush will sign it with far more fanfare and enthusiasm than he displayed when he signed the bill initiating construction of 700 miles of border fence—a bill that Republican Congressman forced on him in response to voter pressure.

In short, voting Democrat, or not voting at all, merely amounts to cutting off our Tancredo to spite our Bush. It would be throwing away the tremendous victory we have won this year and, worse, set in motion a tsunami of increased illegal immigration.

Today’s illegal immigration problem is a direct result of the 1986 amnesty. Far from “solving” the relatively small illegal alien problem America had then (3 million), it made the problem far, far worse by sending the message out to all the world that the secret to a better life in America was to just get here: sneak in, lie your way in, buy your way in, but just get here and we will let you stay, forgive you, and eventually make you a citizen.

And the world heard the message. Today the population of immigration criminals hiding in America waiting for the next amnesty is 12 million to 20 million. We cannot afford another such amnesty solution. The only way to undo the damage of the 1986 amnesty is to put aside talk of new amnesties or guest worker scams and begin to vigorously enforce the laws on immigration.

In the long term, illegal immigration may be the biggest threat facing the United States. Americans are only 5% of the world’s population. If the borders are thrown completely open by another amnesty, we face the very real prospect of being made a minority in what used to be our country.

If, as a voter, you are concerned about illegal immigration and border security, then a Republican Congress is currently the best insurance policy you can buy—not just against Democrats in Congress, but against the Republican in the White House as well.

The next battle for our borders occurs Tuesday, November 7, at a polling place near you. Vote. Or you can spend the day in Spanish class.

This election is about the future, not the past.  We need to change the people that represent us both on the state and federal level for the exact same reason.

For some reason politicians today believe that what they did in the past matters today and that they deserve credit for everything that is right in the country and the state, but none of the blame for what is wrong.  That attitude creates a stagnant environment that is not conducive to future growth.  To point to the past and say “look what I did for you there” and act like that is why you should be re-elected is akin to calling the voters stupid and laughing at how you are pulling the wool over their eyes.

It’s time to change our leadership in this state.  It’s time that Kent Conrad and Earl Pomeroy retire and we send a couple of guys – Matt Mechtel and Dwight Grotberg – to take their places.  These men have been cast aside by their own national party for the simple fact that they can’t raise millions of dollars in out-of-state cash like the current incumbents have.

In the same vain, it is time to send some new faces and some younger eyes to Bismarck that will have a fresh perspective on common sense.  If the best reason you can come up with as to why you should be re-elected is that you have been there 20+ years then your time is done, let someone else with a little more energy and a little more passion give it a shot.

On Tuesday, vote to send Matt Mechtel to the United States Congress, Dwight Grotberg to the United States House, Stuart Savelkoul (Dickinson) to the North Dakota House, and Chad Berger (Dickinson) to North Dakota Senate.

Let’s change the faces of North Dakota politics in one unified way. 

Let’s send the message that we the voters will set your term limit and all the money in the world won’t change that fact.

As I reported in August The Tax Foundation has ranked North Dakota #31 in Business Friendly Climate.

Well Human Events has officially validated the rankings.

Human Events - Top 10 States With the Best Business Tax Climates for Fiscal Year 2007

Human Events - Top 10 States With the Worst Business Tax Climates for Fiscal Year 2007

Congrats to South Dakota once again for its #2 ranking - take care of the jobs you are sucking away from North Dakota.


Too bad the Republican Majority in ND isn't mostly conservative.

Human Events

The newspapers are suddenly full of hypothetical plans to sextuple the federal gasoline tax, with well-timed insinuations that this might be a post-election Republican ploy. On Oct. 8, The New York Times ran a story called, “Raise the Gas Tax? Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Republican,” citing half a dozen Republican economists and a token Democrat. On Oct. 20, The Wall Street Journal ran “Raise the Gas Tax” by former Bush adviser Greg Mankiw.

As taxes go, a tax on motor fuels (including ethanol) is not one of the worst. Mankiw thus argues that, “An increased reliance on gas taxes over income taxes would make the tax code more favorable to growth.” Yet he does not propose to reduce reliance on income taxes. And a tax-induced increase in the cost of transportation of goods, workers and shoppers is surely not favorable to economic growth.

Whether or not a dollar increase in the gas tax would be less damaging to the economy than, say, raising the minimum income tax rate from 10 percent back to 15 percent is not obvious.

Mankiw’s most telling argument is that “a $1 per gallon hike in gas tax would bring in $100 billion a year in government revenue.” By 2016, however, taxes will be up to $4.1 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), so Congress might just misplace an extra $100 billion.

Mankiw hopes to use that loot to pay Social Security and Medicare benefits for his generation. But two flat taxes on payrolls were intended for that purpose, and delinking those taxes from the benefits will not boost public support for those collapsing programs. A big problem with phasing in a gas tax increase over 10 years is that young motorists vote.

New York Times columnist John Tierney had a more viable idea a year ago. He proposed raising gasoline taxes by 50 cents, but only if and when gas prices fell—“an extra dime of tax per gallon whenever the retail price falls by 20 cents.” He also proposed that every dime of extra revenue would be tightly earmarked to go into private savings accounts for every adult citizen (or perhaps children, too) with a Social Security number.

When economists speak favorably about an increased gas tax they are often saying, correctly, that it would be more effective and less damaging than corporate average fuel economy (CAFÉ) standards and the gas-guzzler tax (on cars, not SUVs).

A 2004 Congressional Budget Office paper concluded that if CAFÉ standards were raised by 3.8 miles per gallon, it would take 15 years for gasoline consumption to fall by just 10 percent, and the economic cost would be high. Raising the gas tax by 46 cents would also cut fuel consumption by 10 percent, but do so much more promptly.

Mankiw’s other arguments are expressed in high-sounding terms as a case of “Pigovian taxes,” named for economist Alfred Pigou. A Pigovian tax assumes politicians and their economists have the knowledge and motivation to discern when people are buying too much of something, because they fail to take account of the “social costs” their purchase imposes on others. Assuming such wisdom exists, the government can supposedly use selective sales taxes as a tool of behavioral modification. Yet the CBO noted that a 2002 National Research Council estimate of the Pigovian “external costs” of consuming gasoline amounted to just 26 cents a gallon—less than the average federal-state tax of 41 cents.

The real motive behind high taxes on liquor, tobacco and gasoline is more plausibly related to “Ramsey taxes,” named for philosopher Frank Ramsey. Pigou might have argued that we should tax wine to discourage excess drinking. Ramsey would argue that we should tax wine precisely because the demand for wine is relatively unresponsive (inelastic) to a higher price. Because a tax on wine, tobacco or gasoline does not have a strong effect on consumption, such taxes are “efficient” in the sense that they yield the most revenue with the least distortion of the way resources are used (unless they result in black markets).

Governments like to claim they raise these “sin taxes” to discourage drinking, smoking and driving—as though driving to work is a sin. In reality, governments like these taxes because their effect on consumption is weak. And the real reason the federal government has not pushed this tax much higher is that doing so would pre-empt and reduce an important source of state revenue.

Mankiw wants to raise the gas tax twice as much as the CBO estimated, which might cut gasoline consumption 20 percent from where it would otherwise be a decade from now. But that would be only a 5 percent cut from current consumption. That couldn’t make a noticeable difference in global warming because U.S. passenger vehicles account for only 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. Even a 20 percent cut in 20 percent is only 4 percent, and the United States is only part of the globe.

It would not make a huge difference in domestic oil consumption either, because passenger vehicles account for only 40 percent of U.S. oil demand. A 20 percent cut in 40 percent is only 8 percent. From such a trivial change, Mankiw imagines “the price of oil would fall in world markets.” But that undermines his environmental arguments. If the world price of oil fell, then China and India would use more oil and global emissions would not decline.

Claiming to remedy social costs with higher taxes is a game with no clear rules. Using Pigovian logic, I would argue that wine purchases should be tax-free and tax-deductible, because wine is so beneficial to public health and sociability that private demand fails fully to reflect it social value. Nobody could prove me wrong because all such analyses of social benefits and costs are incurably opinionated. Yet I will never be asked to testify on the Pigovian merits of a tax break for wine because federal and state governments crave the money a wine tax brings in.

This, too, is all about the money: If you have some, the government wants it. But they aren’t doing such a great job with what they have are they?

We need to scrap the gas tax - it’s a tax on the poor and it stiffles growth at the bottom of the socio-economic scale.

More taxes = More Government.

Dickinson – Stuart Savelkoul, candidate for the North Dakota State House of Representatives from District 37 Dickinson, has announced a job-creation plan that would wisely use a portion of the projected $550 million surplus and seek to stem the problem of out-migration at the same time.

“We need to find new ways to keep our graduates in North Dakota, and we need to spur new business to employ other graduates.  By setting aside $50 million of the $550 million state surplus as low-interest small business loans for entrepreneurs that are graduates of North Dakota colleges and universities we are creating sustainable reasons for young people to stay in North Dakota after graduation. These loans would come with the same repayment terms that low interest student loans carry,” Stuart Savelkoul stated.

In addition to the business friendly terms of repayment, an added incentive for these entrepreneurs is that if they employ three (3) other graduates of North Dakota colleges and universities, full-time (2000 hours per year), at a wage of at least $10 an hour, the remainder of the loan will be forgiven.

“It is true that half of all small businesses fail within the first two years, but if 500 successful new businesses can be created for a $50 million investment on the state’s part – that is money well spent.  We can only hope that each of those 500 businesses retains four graduates in the state and that we can forgive those loans. The economic impact of 2,000 productive taxpayers who would have otherwise left, in the long run, will far exceed the $50 million price tag.  And if it doesn’t work after a two year trial, we can try something else.  Government programs that do not work should not be kept around, but that should not stop us from trying,” Stuart Savelkoul explained.

Outline of the Plan

- $50 million over two years (2008-2009)
- 1,000 - $50,000 loans with a 6-month grace period and an interest rate tied to that of Stafford Student Loans (max. 8.5%) to graduates of North Dakota Universities who create a standard business plan.
- Loan forgiveness upon two years of full-time employment of three other North Dakota graduates.

Dickinson – North Dakotans for Change has announced that it has endorsed Stuart Savelkoul for the North Dakota State House for District 37 in Dickinson.

Stuart Savelkoul has displayed an understanding that pro-growth policy is the only way North Dakota can move forward.

“North Dakotan’s for Change was founded on the principle that conservative fiscal policies are needed for the state to succeed. We also are interested in promoting pro-youth policies and candidates that will look beyond the next four years, and to the next forty years – Stuart Savelkoul fits this bill perfectly.”

“We looked at the voting records of each of the representatives in from Dickinson determined that incumbent Nancy Johnson’s claim to be a conservative does not stand up to the test of her actual voting record.

With her vote in favor of House Bill 1512 during the 2005 session to raise the income taxes on corporations and individuals by 33% clearly was not based in any sort of pro-growth agenda on her part. We need lower taxes, not higher taxes, and we know based on this vote that she just does not understand this basic economic reality.”

Another vote that played into our decision to oppose Nancy Johnson was her opposition to House Bill 3004, that was co-sponsored by Sen. Rich Wardner incidentally, to require a 60% majority vote on any and all state tax increases.

“We fully support any legislation that makes it harder to raise taxes and increase the size of government. By making it harder to raise taxes, it makes it very hard to increase the burden of government.”

While social issues do not play into our official ratings of incumbents, it is important to note that Nancy Johnson voted against a 1999 ban on partial-birth abortion, and a 2005 resolution supporting the idea of a Federal Constitutional Amendment protecting the right to life.

“The voters of District 37 need to know that her claims to be a conservative are flat wrong not only on fiscal matters, but on social matters as well.”

They have refused to print this letter.

Whether in favor of Democrats or Republican, biased media is a problem.

They claim they do not have the manpower to research the votes, yet they have been provided with printouts of the bills, printouts of the voting rolls, and even printouts of stories that ran about the bills in other papers.

The truth, regardless of party, is not allowed on the opinion page of the Dickinson Press.

Who actually pays to read this paper?

Leave it to the Forum to oppose Measure 2, which is truely a bi-partisan measure.

I don’t know much about Measure 3, Rob says it’s good so I will go with that.

The Forum Editorial Board is just stupid, and not worth any fancy language defining just how stupid they are.

New York Times

Some conservative leaders have often been quicker in the past to turn on Republican officials and one another than their rank-and-file supporters. But this year polls show broad disaffection at the grass roots, prompting some Republicans — including former Speaker Newt Gingrich — to worry that the public sparring could dampen turnout.

This year’s antagonists also include some new critics, including Mr. Gingrich’s one-time lieutenant, Dick Armey, the former House Republican majority leader.

In recent weeks, Mr. Armey has stepped up a public campaign against the influence of Dr. James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and an influential voice among evangelical protestants. In an interview published last month in “The Elephant in the Room,” a book by Ryan Sager about splits among conservatives, Mr. Armey accused Congressional Republicans of “blatant pandering to James Dobson” and “his gang of thugs,” whom Mr. Armey called “real nasty bullies” — arguments he reprised on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal and in an open letter on the Web site organization FreedomWorks.

In an interview this week, Mr. Armey said catering to Dr. Dobson and his allies had led the party to abandon budget-cutting. And he said Christian conservatives could cost Republicans seats around the country, especially in Ohio.

“The Republicans are talking about things like gay marriage and so forth, and the Democrats are talking about the things people care about, like how do I pay my bills?” he said.

Mr. Armey also pinned some of the blame on Tom DeLay, the former Republican House majority leader, who “was always more comfortable with the social conservatives, the evangelical wing of the party, than he was with the business wing.”

Mr. Armey, who identifies himself as an evangelical, said he was tired of Christian conservative leaders threatening that their supporters would stay away from the ballot box unless they got what they wanted.

“Economic conservatives,” he argued, were emerging as the swing voters in need of attention, in part because they had become more likely to vote Democratic in the years since President Bill Clinton was in office. “A lot of people believe he brought us from deficits to surpluses, and there is a certain empirical evidence there,” Mr. Armey acknowledged.

In a statement on Thursday, Dr. Dobson said Mr. Armey was “still ticked” over a long-ago House leadership race in which Dr. Dobson endorsed someone else, and he restated his warnings to Republicans that social conservative voters “would abandon them if they forgot the promises they had made.”

At the 2006 CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington DC this last February, Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana spoke of the state of our party.

“Two years ago, when I presented the keynote address here at CPAC 2004, I likened the state of the Republican movement to a tall ship at sea – a ship that had drifted off-course from essential conservative principles.

I said we had lost our way. But I believed we could get back on course — would get back on course. We could make the corrections. We needed only to keep our eye on True North — our core principles of limited government and traditional moral values.

I believed that we were off course not because we’d abandoned these principles, or forgotten the shining city on the hill. We’d simply made honest, but flawed calculations on how to get there.
I no longer believe that. It’s one thing to drift off course…It’s quite another thing to continue that course when half the crew and passengers are pointing out that nothing looks familiar … not to mention the tens of millions of Americans lining the shoreline screaming, “You’re going the wrong way!”

In short, we’re no longer adrift. We might’ve been when we started but now “off course” is the accepted course. 

The evidence for this is overwhelming … while President Bush has called for increases in non-defense spending of 4 percent for the last five years, Congress has delivered budgets spending more than twice that each year … Congress has spent $380 billion more than the President requested under Republican control.

Whether it’s called “compassionate conservatism” or “big government republicanism,” after years of record increases in federal spending, more government is now the accepted Republican philosophy in Washington.

We are in danger of becoming the party of Big Government. And for the sake of our party and for the sake of the nation we must say, here and now, to all who would lead us in this new century, “the era of big Republican government is over!"”

We can’t allow this national phenomenon to expand to state and local politics.

(more...)

Michael Shutze at Save the GOP

As we slowly approach election day there is a heated debate going on within the conservative camp regarding “what is to be done”. Do we stay home? Do we cross the aisle and vote for a fairly conservative guy like Harold Ford Jr.? Do we hold our nose and vote Republican anyway?

I hear the party guys whispering in my ear. “Nancy Pelosi will impeach Bush.” “The Democrats will grind the war effort to a halt with hearings and redtape.” “They will raise taxes, increase anti-growth legislation and cripple the economy.” “Do you really want to be responsible for the collapse of Western Civilization itself!”

Maybe that last one is rhetoric, but that seems to be closest to the tenor of the warnings I am being given daily from the blogosphere and talk radio. You know what? They are right. All of the awful things they are warning us about could very well happen. The war effort could be hampered or even worse, ended. Taxes will certainly go up if the Democrats take the House since all that is required for them to do so would be inaction. Sunset clauses in the current taxcuts, included to get the Senate on board, will ensure that pre-2003 tax levels will return. If Bush is impeached, what does that mean for the national political dialogue? He would be the second president in a row to be impeached, unheard of in our nation’s history. What little confidence is left in the Republic would collapse and who knows where we go from there.

So yeah, things could ugly; with the war ended or drastically curtailed in Iraq and possibly even Afghanistan Al-Qaeda could get its feet under itself again and attack. Is a nuke attack on New York City out of the realm of possibility? With Speak Pelosi calling the shots would China feel emboldened and make a play for Taiwan as the Olympics approach knowing that the Bush administration would never get the go ahead from the House to honor our treaty obligations?

Serious stuff to think about huh? Now shift gears and think about this little tale. There is a guy, a good guy and he is dating a pretty good girl, in fact she is fantastic. She is gorgeous, smart, funny and really likes this guy. Sounds perfect, but there is one little problem, every few months she gets drunk at a party and cheats on him with some random guy.

If you can’t guess by now, conservatives are the guy and the GOP is that hot girl who seems so perfect for him but for this one minor flaw. Dump her you say? Could this guy even get a girlfriend like this ever again if he dumped her? She is so right, maybe he can fix this one little problem and make everything alright. So he forgives her and she professes her love for him and promises never to make a mistake like that ever again. Of course she doesn’t keep her promise and cheats on him again and it hurts all the worse this time, but he has never needed her more. Guys are so envious of him when they see him with her, she claims she doesn’t want any other guy for a boyfriend and their sex life is freaking awesome. Is this really all that bad? The guy looks around at all his single friends and they would kill to have a girl like he has. So what would you do?

I can tell you what I would do. If I truly loved her I would forgive her . . . the first time. The second time I would dump her ass and never speak to her again. As conservatives we exist in a sort of abusive relationship with the GOP. They promise to love us and be faithful, but they cheat on us with abandon because they know we could never get a deal as sweet as we have now. And besides would the guy rather be single and alone? Yes. At least he would have his dignity and you tell me what matters more in this life than that.

So don’t tell me about all of the horrible shit that will go down if the GOP loses. You are probably right. Don’t I even care about my country though? Of course I care, that is why I write on this blog! That is why I give my hard earned money to candidates, that is why I spend so much time trying to understand the myriad of issues that confront us as a Republic!

The question isn’t do I care, it’s do the Republicans care? If all of this is so damned important why did this congress increase non-discretionary spending by 9%, the highest increase since 1992? If it was so damned vital that the wheeling dealing Democrats didn’t get their hands on the public treasury then why the hell didn’t the Republicans pass major legislation ending earmarks? If national security is such a chief concern of theirs then why is the border so damned open Raj can march two elephants and a mariachi band across the Rio Grande for an hour and half and no boarder patrol shows up?

The answer is simply that they don’t care and that earmarks, pork and power are more important to them than reform and good governance. So what the hell does it matter if the Democrats get into power, how much worse can it really get? My message to my fellow conservatives is just this: be a man. Stand up and stop letting your girlfriend cheat on you. She is either with you or not. I have no problems dumping the hottest girl in the world. (I know, I have dumped a few hotties in my time for a lot less than cheating on me.)

You want real change? You want to believe in your government again? You don’t want to be lied to anymore? It’s simple, stop letting the GOP walk all over you. Let them go. Dump them, they will never respect you until you do. After you dump them they will beg to get back with you just like the girl in the story. Without a respectable boyfriend she is just another slut without anybody who truly cares for her. The truth is, without her boyfriend her life looks pretty grim, who else but someone equally twisted and cruel would put up with her behavior? She needs a nice guy. The nice guy may think he needs her, but that is because he isn’t ready to stand up for himself. When he is, the relationship is over. The GOP and conservatives are over as well; they just don’t know it yet. The only way this relationship can be saved is if the GOP is rebuilt and purged from top to bottom but keeps the same name.

You wouldn’t let a girl treat you like a fool. Why do you let a bunch of worthless politicians play you for a fool? In the first case all that is at stake is your personal honor, in the second case what is at stake is your country that is sinking down the tubes because you don’t have the stones to do the hard thing and stand up to the abuse.

It is not the Democrats fault that we are in this position, they may be despicable traitors but they always were and are simply being true to their nature. It is not the RINOs fault, they are hypocritical deceivers but again, they are being true to their nature. Mike DeWine has never been a conservative after all. It is not even the GOP party tools’ fault, they are greedy cowards without an ideological bone in their body but we knew that at the beginning of the deal, especially those of us who have met any of them in person. Is it the system, is it our political system that is at fault for this sad state of affairs? The system needs reform, no doubt about it, but look at a man like Senator Coburn. He seems to defy the system what stops others from doing the same? The fault seems to be then with society, why can’t our society produce more leaders like Tom Coburn? Sure our educational system is broken and maybe our amoral society doesn’t bring out the best qualities in a man these days but that doesn’t mean we are bereft of leadership. Herman Cain wanted to represent the state of Georgia in the United States Senate but was denied that chance. It would seem then that something else is keeping leaders like Cain from the roles in our society they have earned by the merit of their numerous qualities.

What’s the problem then? Who is at fault? Look in the mirror, it’s you. You and me. We may have every card in the deck stacked against us but that doesn’t relieve us of our ultimate responsibility as citizens. The buck doesn’t stop at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it stops with us. We get the government we elect. We elected every single problem in this country today. We put up with taxes today that our Founding Fathers would have started a bloody revolution over. We put up with abuses of Constitutional liberty that our Founders rebelled against even though they didn’t have a powerful, respected document to legally justify it.

If we were half the men our Founding Fathers were we would cast our fortune to the wind and live our lives the way our God-given liberty allowed us to. Instead we are debating about whether or not to vote for Bob Corker to the Senate.

Pop Quiz:

Which District 37 (Dickinson) legislator has done the following:

-voted to increase the income tax by 33% (2005 - HB 1512)
-voted to increase sales tax from 5% to 7% (2005 - HB 1512)
-voted to increase the wheat tax on farmers by 5 mills. (2005 - HB 1518)
-voted against against requiring a 60% majority vote on tax increases. (2005 - HB 3004)
-voted against a ban on partial birth abortions. (1999 - SB 2254)
-opposed a Federal Constitutional Amendment to protect the unborn. (2005 - HCR 3017) (more...)