Operation Old TEA Bag: The Democrat’s Hail Mary Pass

    The recent special election in New York’s 9th Congressional District did more than just elect a Republican to a seat that  hasn’t been in the hands of the G.O.P. since 1923. It also shed some light on the desperation of Democrats and what direction they will throw the ball in when they try to salvage their 2012 election fortunes with a last minute Hail Mary pass.

In the race that pitted liberal incumbent Democrat Assemblyman David Weprin against retired businessman, Republican Bob Turner, Democrats struggled to find the issues that their candidate could run on to win voters over. Initially they did not even do that. At first it was assumed that as always, whichever Democrat they ran, would sail to victory and succeed sex texting addict Anthony Weiner. But then in August, Democrat polling showed something strange. It showed that Democrat Weprin was not getting the amount of support that Democrats usually get. This then suggested to them that they actually had a real and competitive election on their hands.

So they got to work and started to develop the issues they would campaign on.

What they found was that Weprin and Democrats had no positions on the issues that would excite voters and convince them that Weprin was their man. Even in a relatively liberal district like the ninth, there were no issues which Democrats held a popular position on.

There was the issue of gay marriage which Weprin recently supported the passage of in the New York State Assembly. But with a heavy Hassidic Jewish population in the ninth, legalizing marriage between two people of the same sex was far from popular.

There was the issue of our national debt. On that issue, Weprin held a typical Democrat line which supported big government and big government social programs. But even in a left leaning district like the one that spans the working class neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens, voters know that our debt has become a deepening crisis for our nation and as such, they understand that more government spending is not realistic. That left Weprin with the opportunity to use the traditional liberal language of tax increases to pay for all the spending. But in the middleclass communities of NY-9, tax increases, even for those who earn $250,000 or more, doesn’t really go over well. The ninth congressional district is comprised largely of those people in the middle……the ones who get hit from both ends and are not poor enough to benefit from government social programs, but are not wealthy enough to take advantage of the tax loopholes and credits that the political establishment has arranged for. So these people did not want to hear the Obama “make the rich pay their fare share” rhetoric. Many of them are afraid that a liberal definition of “rich” would include them.

There was the issue of immigration. However on that issue, Weprin has a liberal “Dream Act” position that does not solve the illegal immigration issue that impacts on his district’s residents. They do not want their money going to fulfilling the dreams of illegal immigrants. These people, many of which remember seeing the World Trade Center from their windows and worked within its shadows, want our borders secured.

So like many other issues, that was out.

There was Israel. After all, with a population of Jewish voters that is disproportionately larger than in many other districts throughout the nation, as an Orthodox Jew himself, Weprin could certainly and convincingly argue his support for Israel and ride high on the popularity of that point. Unfortunately though, being a Democrat, most voters linked Weprin to President Obama’s unfriendly policies towards Israel. And Weprin’s argument to voters that they should trust him on israel because he would fight for Israel from within, didn’t have wings.

Short of a total condemnation of President Obama by Weprin, the Jewish vote in his district simply viewed Weprin as a congressional rubberstamp for Obama’s polcies.

The further Democrats went down the list of issues important to the middleclass voters of the ninth, the more they realized that there were no issues which allowed them to present a position that they could derrive district-wide support for.

So what is a candidate with a competitive election ahead of him to do?

Why, resort to the liberal playbook, of course!

That meant scare citizens. That meant to try and distort the Republican position to preserve Social Security and Medicare for those on it and those expecting to soon  be on them.  It meant denying the Republican position to preserve those programs for future generation with reforms that will strengthen Social Security and medicare. It meant do your best to make vulnerable senior citizens believe that if a Republican won, they would deny them the money that many seniors have come to rely upon.

That was a good start but Weprin and his Democrat strategists and Washington puppet masters needed something else to attract some voters outside of the senior citizen demographic. That’s when the orders from Washington came down. And that is when the strategy to run against the TEA Party came into play.

So in early August Operation Old TEA Bag went into effect. That is when Weprin campaign spokesperson Elizabeth Kerr first argued the following:

“Bob Turner’s doing anything he can to distract voters from his plan to end Medicare as we know it, which would cost seniors in Brooklyn and Queens an extra $6,400 every year,” .

And from there, the tactics to scare senior citizens began

Then when the news that Standard & Poor’s had downgraded the country’s credit rating because of fiscal uncertainty came out and  dominated the headlines, Weprin’s campaign defined Bob Turner as a TEA Party extremist and charged that because of their “irresponsible demands”, “Republican Tea Party extremists” facilitated the downgrade and the fallout from it.

From that point on, the Democrat campaign for Congress in NY-9 began.

It was a constant barrage of trying to make the TEA Party the enemy that voters had to unite against.  It was a never ending campaign to define Bob Turner as the TEA Party candidate. In Between those lines of attack was tossed in the same old scare tactics intended to frighten senior citizens that predate the Reagan Administration.

For his part Bob Turner campaigns argued;

“Career politicians like David Weprin have taxed and spent this country into a crisis. They have jeopardized the entire social safety network by irresponsibly borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend,”

And as one Turner campaign aide put it;

“Businessman Bob Turner is running to protect Social Security and Medicare for every American over 55 years old and to put those essential programs on a sustainable path for everybody younger than that.”

But Bob Turner didn’t just defend himself against Operation Old TEA Bag. He spent most of his time denouncing the Obama policies that even urban, middle-class Democrats have lost faith in. Like the days of Ronald Reagan, Bob Turner found himself addressing a new generation of Reagan Democrats. Democrats who do not appreciate the condition of our nation and do not have faith in the direction their Party is heading in under a liberal President.

Yet as the campaign continued and the polls tightened, D.C. Democrats from the DCCC, DNC, and from the state and local Party apparatus, double-downed on their last hope……Operation Old TEA Bag. Even when only days before the special election was to take and polls showed that Turner turned the tables and was now ahead of Weprin, Democrats found themselves desperately trying to make a success of their fear campaign of senior citizens and their efforts to make the TEA Party the common enemy.

The plan was perfect. It even concluded on a  high note…….a recorded phone call from former President Clinton which tied the TEA Party and Medicare together as he stated “and he’ll oppose the TEA Party plan to destroy Medicare” [see the video below].  But ultimately, what Democrats thought was the perfect strategy, proved to be as unsustainable and useless as their economic policies.

Like driving a car on empty it was a last ditch, desperate attempt to run a camping not on any issues,  just on fear. The only problem is that in the end, senior citizens were less afraid of distortions about Bob Turner than they were of the truth about the current direction our nation is headed. In the end, the voters of the ninth district decided that the TEA Party was not their problem. Democrats were.

Unless  Democrats start singing a different a tune, they will still be the problem in 2012.  And just as Operation Old TEA Bag did not work for them in CD-9,  it will not work for them in the 2012 elections.from the top of the Democrat ticket , to the bottom of the ballot.  However, with little else left in their playbook, I expect the Democrats to do little else but resort to scaring senior citizens and trying to run against the TEA Party. 

With Hindsight, Armchair Generals Still Say Saddam Should Have Been Spared

    There are those who, till even this day, base their entire political being on the claim that the war in Iraq was wrong and had no legitimate foundation behind it . Some even join with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and claim that we lost the war.

These isolationists and leftists maintain, that there was absolutely no reason for the United States to focus any military attention on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the days, months and even years after 9/11.

With creative flair, they refer to 9/11 as a ploy and claim that supporters of Operation Iraqi Freedom simply used 9/11 as an excuse. Others delve deeper and extrapolate that the true reason behind the overthrow of Hussein was a corporate conspiracy spearheaded by oil interests led by Haliburton. Others say it was a family matter that involved the revenge of one presidential son of another President who Saddam once tried to assassinate.

Putting aside theoretical liberal reasoning for Republican support of the Iraqi war and their tendency to believe that Republicans do not care about the lives of those who carry the war out, what these people fail to realize and comprehend are facts. They fail to accept the reality of the time.

Most basic to the reality that they deny is the fact that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was the policy of the United States since 1991. Initially we urged the people of Iraq to do it. Unfortunately those we hoped to do so, such as the Kurds, are also the people we left hanging and they paid dearly for it.

In 1995, under President Clinton, the C.I.A. organized a covert coup to topple Saddam Hussein. It failed.

Three years later, still acknowledging the threat that Saddam Hussein posed, in 1998, President Clinton signed into law a congressionally approved bill called The Iraqi Liberation Act.

Through it all, Democrats and Republicans alike agreed on few things other than the fact that an Iraq led by Saddam Hussein was an Iraq that threatened American interests, Mid East peace and international security.

Other small factors included things like cease fire agreements and United Nations resolutions.

After the original Gulf War, Saddam signed treaties promising to stop the production and procurement of WMD‘s. He made a commitment to permit UN weapons inspectors to verify that he was not in breach of these treaties and he was also not allowed to oppose our enforcement of U.S. no-fly zones. Yet for the twelve years after the Gulf War, Saddam repeatedly violated the terms of the cease fire agreement that he had with the U.S.. Additionally, he denied weapons inspectors proper access to establishing proper inspections. He also repeatedly shot our aircrafts in the no-fly zones and violated seventeen Security Council resolutions regarding weapons development and procurement.

I would contend, that if the American word is to mean something in the world, we should have removed Saddam immediately following the very first time he violated the cease fire agreement that we had with him. That would have eliminated his threat back in late 1991. But we didn’t.

I would contend that we had reason to topple Saddam after he defied the very first UN resolution regarding inspections. But we didn’t.

Instead we allowed him to skirt the terms that were established to contain him and render his ability to be a threat ineffectual.

It wasn’t until after 9/11 that America realized that the risks we faced were great and the threats that exist are serious.

Up until 9/11, aside from shooting back on an Iraqi jet that fired at us outside of an established no-fly zone in Iraq, a failed C.I.A. backed coup, a continuous string of disregard for UN violations and inability to enforce proper weapons inspections and a signed congressional act calling for the liberation of Iraq, we did little more than provide lip service to the agreed fact that Saddam Hussein was a danger and needed to be eliminated.

President Bill Clinton said on February 4, 1998, “One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line”

On December 16, 1998 high liberal lord Al Gore said, “If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He’s already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons”.

Around this same time, based on information collected by the Clinton administration, long before anyone could even accuse the Bush administration of falsifying facts, Nancy Pelosi said ” Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of WMD technology which is a threat to countries in the region and has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process”.

According to liberal lion, Ted Kennedy in an interview on October 6, 2002…….”Saddam Hussein is a dangerous figure. He’s got dangerous weapons”.

Shortly after that, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd stated ”The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked upon on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities”

Before his campaign for the presidency of the United States was official, a previous liberal standard bearer of today’s liberal Democrat party, John Kerry said, ” Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime…..He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction….So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real”

It was rather obvious that Saddam needed to go and that fact never changed. Years later, even after there being no weapons of mass destruction found, other evidence of sinister intentions does exist. The discovery of over 500 degraded missile casings designed to carry deadly chemicals actually supports such conclusions.

Then there exists the evidence of what Saddam was known to actually be doing.

Leading Iraqi inspectors and figures with the International Atomic Energy Agency stated “there was evidence that the Iraqis continued research and development “right up until the end” to improve their ability to produce ricin. “They were mostly researching better methods for weaponization,”

They add “Iraq did make an effort to restart its nuclear weapons program in 2000 and 2001, but that the evidence suggested that the program was rudimentary at best and would have taken years to rebuild, after being largely abandoned in the 1990’s….”

All of this points to the fact that there was little disagreement regarding Saddam Hussein between both Democrats and Republicans and there was little to distinguish any difference between the Bush administration or the Clinton administration when it came to Iraq.

All except for one.

After the devastating results of 9/11 materialized, the administration of President George W. Bush decided to take action. President Bush decided that lip service was no longer a good enough strategy when it came to eliminating threats.

That explanation produces a knee-jerk reply from the left and isolationists. To that, like Pavlov’s dog, they jump to their feet and scream “but Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 or terrorists”.

An oversimplification of events might make their stale reply seem rational but a scratch of the surface of that shallow argument reveals the truth, which those who make that claim, refuse to accept.

Although there has been no connection between the 19 terrorists who participated in the hijacking of the airplanes that produced 9/11, there is no denying that they were terrorists and as a result, on September 20th, 2001, President Bush declared a War On Terror and in a speech to the nation he said, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.…”

Keeping that in mind, even though none of the 19, 9/11 hijackers came through Iraq, there is no doubt that, through Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a safe haven for terrorists with a so-called “global reach”. The list of terrorists that fall into this category includes, but is not limited to:

Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the conspirators in the 1993
Khala Khadr al-Salahat, who created the bomb for the Libyans that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland
Abu Abas, mastermind of the October 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and murder of Leon Klinghoffer
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, formerly a director of an al Qaeda training base in Afghanistan before he reentered the insurgency that followed the post Saddam days of Iraq”.

Given those names alone, bringing the overthrow of Saddam Hussein into the War On Terror was, and still remains, a legitimate part of the greater battle.

After 9/11, to have ignored Iraq and allowed Saddam to continue to rule with impunity would have been an irresponsible continuation of doing nothing more than offering dire warnings about what could happen and presenting legislation symbolic of what we should do to prevent it from coming to fruition.

In its wake, armchair generals, with more hindsight than foresight, took to calling this front misguided and a diversion. Yet what diversion was created? A diversion which attracted other terrorists to take up arms and flee to Iraq like flies to flypaper.?

Some will falsely claim that our efforts in Iraq gave opportunity to a resurgence of Taliban forces in Afghanistan. They will falsely claim that our decision to fight in Iraq put us in the position of fighting two different failed wars.

Those who make such claims are not just wrong, they are lying.

First of all, neither war has been lost. The coming fulfillment of our goals in Iraq has enabled President Obama to continue the same policy set in motion by the previous administration. Secondly does anyone believe for a minute that our efforts in Afghanistan would be any further ahead than they are now, had Saddam Hussein still been an active protagonist in the region?

Given his history, his continued intentions, ever present risk and consistent defiance of the international community and agreements with the U.S., no effective attempts to combat terrorism beyond mere words, could have been undertaken without neutralizing and removing Saddam Hussein from the equation. After more than a year of trying to achieve that goal through diplomacy, force was resorted to. That was a decision Saddam Hussein made. The opportunity to avoid military action was always there for him and he was the one to reject it.

In the end the United States had two choices. Either finally do something about Saddam Hussein and eliminate the threat he posed and the proliferation of terrorism that he afforded opportunity to, or, once and for all put action behind our words and eliminate the threat and reduce the risks that we spoke so much about for over a decade.

In a post 9/11 government our government chose to act. Rather than risk having to react to another disastrous terrorist plot that claimed more innocent lives, we chose to prevent it.

The benefit of that decision is immeasurable, at least to us. We will never be able to count the lives spared by the removal of Saddam Hussein. We will not know how many future surprise attacks were prevented from occurring but what we do know is that there will be no more assisted or arranged terrorist or state sponsored attacks by Saddam.

We do know that a beachhead for democracy is developing in the heartland of intolerance in the Middle East. We do know that millions of Iraqi are now tasting freedom and for the first time in generations are living either in less fear or no fear. We do know that in addition to all the previous facts which gave reason to removing Saddam Hussein, others existed as well. Such as his support of Palestinian suicide bombers and his prompting of two regional wars. But in addition to that, Hussein’s oppression and extermination of his own people is justification in and of itself. Such humanitarian reasoning justified our actions in places like Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Haiti during the Clinton years. Why that alone is not enough cause for our actions in Iraq is an example of liberal hypocrisy.

Yet till this day, there are those who try to paint our actions as irresponsible, imperialistic forays of greedy, misguided political folly. They try to claim the Republican party who nominated a President that carried this action out is a party that has lost sight of its purpose.

Well to them I make it clear that the Republican party has not lost sight of our purpose, our beliefs or of what is important. The decision to include Iraq in the War on Terror is one that we stand by today as steadfast as we did on the day that Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched.

We are proud of the fact that Republicans finally achieved what, for too long, many only spoke about. We are proud to not excuse away the abuses of Saddam Hussein and ignore his treaty and cease fire violations. We are proud of the fact today, we are not having to add Saddam into an already complicated enough risk equation that involves Iran, North Korea, China, an erratic Russia and the still existing sources Islamic radicalism and terrorism.

Utopian romantics may try to argue how better off we would be had we ignored the facts and allowed Saddam Hussein to remain a player. They will calculate the immediate financial cost of the war and claim it to be the source of our great economic debt. In doing so, what they leave out of their equation is the long term cost that we would still be paying to continue countering Saddam Hussein. They also leave out the price we would be paying as it relates to the lives at risk or lost had Saddam continued with his ambitions.

What these deniers of truth fail to do is acknowledge the fact that America can no longer simply talk about what needs to be done to protect ourselves. We must do things to protect ourselves. What these liberal leaning, apologists for jihad refuse to do is admit that they would have been the first to crucify a Republican President had he not prevented Saddam Hussein from successfully enabling or carrying out any other terrorist related event. But we did, so now their need to point fingers of blame to anyone but themselves causes them to point blame, not at he who made such events possible, but at he who made them less likely.

Such people may continue to call opposition to their denial of facts extremists and they may try to evangelize their message by exploiting those whose lives were lost in the War On Terror but they do so at the risk of taking responsibility for the next terrorist attack that their ways fail to thwart.

TALIBAN TV GUIDE

6.00 G-Had TV. Morning prayers.
8.30 Talitubbies. Talitubbies say “Ah-ah”. Dipsy and Tinky-Winky repair a Stinger missile launcher.
9.00 Shouts of Praise. More prayers.
11.00 Jihad’s Army. The Kandahar-on-Sea battalion repulse another attack by evil, imperialist, Zionist backed infidels.
12.00 Ready, Steady, Jihad! Celebrities make lethal devices out of everyday objects.
12.30 Panoramadan. The programme reports on Americas attempts to take over the world.
13.30 Xena: Modestly dressed Housewife. Xena stays at home and does some cooking.
14.00 Only Fools and Camels. Dhal-Boy offloads some Chinese rocket launchers to Hamas.
14.30 Green Peter. The total of Kalashnikovs bought by the milk bottle top appeal is revealed.
15.00 Madrasah Challenge. Two more Islamic colleges meet. Bambah Kaskhain asks the questions.’Starter for ten, no praying.’
15.30 I Love 629. A look back at the events of the year, including the Prophet’s entry into Mecca, and the destruction of pagan idols.
16.00 Question Time. Members of the public face questions from political and religious leaders.
17.00 Koranation Street. Deirdrie faces execution by stoning for adultery.
17.30 Middle-East Enders. The entire cast is jailed for unislamic behaviour.
18.00 Holiday. The team go on pilgrimage to Mecca. Again.
18.30 Top of the Prophets. Will the Koran be No.1 for the 63,728th week running?
19.00 Who wants to be a Mujahadin? Mahmoud Tarran asks the questions.
Will contestants phone a mullah, go ‘inshallah’, or ask the Islamic council?
20.00 FILM: Shariah’s Angels. The three burkha-clad sleuths go undercover to expose an evil scheme to educate women.
21.30 Big Brother. Who will be taken out of the house and executed this week?
22.30 Shahs in their Eyes. More hopefuls imitate famous destroyers of the infidel.
23.30 They think it’s Allah over. Quiz culminating in the ‘don’t feel it the Mullah’ round.
0.00 When Imams attack. Amusing footage shot secretly in mosques. The filmers were also secretly shot.
00.30 a.m. The West Bank Show. Arts programme looking at anti-Israel graffiti art in the occupied territories.
01.30 Bhuffi the Infidel Slayer. 
02.00 A book at bedtime. The Koran. Again.

IT’S A SAKI ECONOMY FOR THE JAPANESE TOO

Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa

     Proof that the United States is not alone in a struggle for economic leadership was made quite evident today in Japan.

The already unstable government of Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso just took another hit and it is one that does not add to any sense of economic security.

Aso’s Finance Minister, Shoichi Nakagawa resigned today after apologizing for attending a string of seven news conferences while drunk.

A series of scandals and accusations and a plummeting popularity rating ,due to Prime Minister Aso’s mismanagement of the Japanese economy, has brought him and his ruling “Liberal Democratic Party” under fire and to the point of no public confidence.

Oddly, the resignation of Aso’s drunk Finance Minister coincided with a press conference by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who has made Japan the first stop on her first foreign mission.

What a welcome that must have been.

According to some insiders, the resignation could be the straw that breaks the back of the LDP and cause it to crumble. That could also give need for Secretary Clinton to do this trip over again, when she can discuss things with Japanese leaders who will be sober and in control of the Japanese government.

In any event, the fate of disgraced Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa is still up in the air. Some have suggested that the drunken antics which have led to his resignation from the Japanese government, might make him a perfectly suitable replacement for ailing Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy when and if he ever retires.

Others have suggested that since he is now available, Nakagawa’s government experience and impeccably clean tax record could make him the perfect person to nominate for the hard to fill, vacant Commerce Secretary spot that still exists in the Obama administration. What a better way to demonstrate our free trade desires than by having an Asian commerce secretary oversee our markets?

However; sources close to WordPress.com believe that although Nakagawa’s future fortune does lie in the United States, it is not in government employment that he will find it.

Apparently, Nakegawa will be signed onto a two year contract with a new American reality television show that will be produced by and aired on C-Span. The show is called Political Rehab and it will feature an array of political leaders, each of which are trying to deal with their political afterlives while coping with various addictions and fetishes.

The show will take place in Washington, D.C.’s trendy Georgetown section where the political rehabilitants will live together for eight weeks in a three story brownstone. Producers of the program say the show will “take us through the lives of everyday politicians who have fallen from grace and out of power and are struggling to find their place in the world while also coping with the problems that brought them down and out of power”

The shows creators promise that Political Rehab will be an emotional journey, jam packed with the intensity and passion of politics along with twists born of the human frailties and addictions that all people bring to the table.

Currently, producers are still negotiating contracts with a list of stars that include former Congresswoman and Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney , impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich, former Senator Larry Craig as well as former Governors Elliot Spitzer of New York and Jim McGreevey of New Jersey. Word is that former President Bill Clinton has already been signed on but arrangements regarding where Cynthia McKinney can safely sleep without fear of Mr. Clinton are still being worked out.

The show’s producers stated that the addition of Nakagawa and his drinking problem is just what they were looking for in order to round out the other addictions being dealt with on the show such as sex and violence.

So it is nice to know that when one door closes another one can in fact open, and after Nakegawa’s resignation in Japan, it is nice to know that not everything applies to the phrase “only in America”.

AND YOU THOUGHT BERNIE MADOFF WAS A CRIMINAL

       Maybe, just maybe Republicans are getting back on track.

Not a single Republican in the House of Representatives voted for the $819 billion so called economic recovery package.

For that I am proud.

I am proud of the fact that Republicans objected to what is the largest bill of its kind in history. A bill that is suppose to be considered a stimulus package but is actually a liberal spending program that is filled with pork, patronage and pathetic excuses.

More than 70 percent of all the spending that was approved in this bill should have been individual expenditures that were taken up, debated and voted on in their own right.

Most of the spending in this historic bill is not at all related to stimulating the economy and that which is designed to stimulate the economy will not take effect for years as is the case for monies dedicated to highways and school construction.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office states “much of the stimulus may not come until after the economy has begun to recover”.

According to the C.B.O. $5 billion of the $30 billion set aside for highway spending would be spent within the next two years. About $2.6 billion of $18.5 billion for renewable energy programs would be spent by then. About $907 million of a $6 billion plan to expand broadband access in rural and other underserved areas would be spent by 2011.

In the mean time where is some of that money immediately going?

Well $335 million is going towards the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, $2.4 billion is going to a cap on carbon transmissions, $16 miliion for a smoking cessation measure, $50 million to the National Endowmnent for the Arts, $1 billion to Amtrak, $7.7 Billion to federal buildings, $600 million to federal cars and $400 million is going into the studying of global warming.

That does not include a myriad of personal pet projects that Democratic lawmakers are pumping into their own districts to help assure their reelections nor does it include the overnight doubling of the department of Educations budget.

This is not stimulus it is social engineering.

Under the auspices of an economic emergency Congress just approved the delivery of the worlds largest Christmas gift. Of course like everything else Congress does, it is late but to make matters worse it is defective.

For those of you who thought that Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme was a scandal of epic proportions, well you just witnessed a government ponzi scheme that makes Madoff’s offenses seem like petty theft.

Very little of what this program was meant for is what it is going towards. Very little.

So I am proud of congressional Republicans. They stood together and they stood on principle and voted against this federal economic scam. I only wish they kept their principles when they were in control of Congress and held the majority. If they had, perhaps today they would still be in control of the house.

As for liberals, had they scaled this scam back and put the money into infrastructure development and other operations that would have trickled out into the private sector and created jobs through the private sector, it would not be a scam and I might say that they were on the right road to recovery. But they didn’t. Under their leadership and design this stimulus package has little to do with stimulus and everything to do with expanding the size of government, expanding government programs and increasing government control .

On top of that, does anyone not see how much of this money will be wasted and unaccounted for?

The government is going to spend it. The same government that could not monitor the lending practices of their own FannieMaes or FreddieMacs. The same government that loses 20 cents on every dollar that they spend .

Ladies and gentlemen, we have just witnessed the world’s greatest and most elaborate crime. Without a single call to the police we just wittiness 244 Democrats in the House of Representatives rip us all off.

Those of you liberals who approve of this crime may claim that Republicans created the need or opportunity for this scandal to arise. You will claim that Republican policies got us here but I can assure you that Republicans did not create the crisis and after this vote, we did not make it worse.

Much of the economic crisis that we are experiencing was ushered in not because of the low unemployment rates that existed for the past 6 of the last eight years. This problems was ushered in by a banking crisis that largely began after an over inflated housing market bubble burst. The inability to pay back loans in this area created a tightening of the lending markets and that tightening cut off the flow of money as we knew it.

Much of the problem could have been avoided if Barney Franks and Chris Dodd took John McCain’s advice and reevaluated our lending practices and if we put a stop to the Clinton initiatives which forced banks to hand out sub prime loans to people who could not afford to pay these loans back, but they didn’t.

So here we are today, witnessing the same people who created the problem offer up their solution to the problem.

Well ladies and gentlemen they didn’t solve anything, they simply made the problem worse and robbed us blind in the process.

It just goes to show you that even getting screwed these days costs a lot more than it used to.

Dear Abby, My husband is a lying cheat. . . .

. . . He tells me he loves me, but he has cheated our entire marriage. He is a good provider and has many friends and supporters. They know he is a lying cheat, but they just avoid the issue.

He is a hard worker but many of his co-workers are leery of him.

Every time he gets caught, he denies it all. Then he admits that he was wrong and begs me to forgive him. This has been going on for so long, everyone in town knows he is a cheat. I don’t know what to do.

Signed Frustrated

————————————-

Dear Frustrated:

You should dump him. Now that you are a Secretary of State, you don’t need him anymore.

Submitted by Marianne, Columbia, Md.

 

ALSO

Help Shape New Jersey’s Republican Comeback In Jersey. Draft Senator Jennifer Beck for Lieutenant Governor.

Welcome To The George W. Bush Presidential Center

       President George W. Bush may be out of office but the benefits of his leadership will last forever, at least that is what the George W. Bush Presidential Center hopes.

Keeping in tradition, the Bush Presidency will have itself a modern version of a presidential library. The tradition of such facilities can be dated back to 1885 and the wife of President James A. Garfield, who added a Memorial Library wing to their family home in Mentor, OH, four years after his assassination. But the presidential library system was officially launched by Franklin Delano Roosevelt after he donated his personal papers and federal documents to the federal government and pledged a portion of his Hyde Park, New York  estate for the purpose of housing them.

The George W. Bush museum will be housed on the campus of Southern Methodist University, near Dallas in the heart of Texas.

Among other things, it will house the official archive of President Bush’s presidential and gubernatorial records. It will also include the papers of key policy makers and cabinet members from his two terms in office.

As explained on a web site for the development of the museum “it will tell the story of the Bush presidency within the context of the historic challenges of the first decade of the 21st century and how President and Mrs. Bush worked to advance the core governing principles of freedom, opportunity, responsibility and compassion.”

Of course liberals will laugh at that mission statement but those of us who are not falling on the left side of the political spectrum, understand exactly what they mean. We understand that freedom is not a government program and that President Bush, although he had his lackluster areas of governance, did know the importance of freedom and recognized the challenges to it.

We understand that the freedom has a cost and that we must pay a price to achieve it and keep it.

Many of us appreciate the fact George W. Bush made the hard and sometimes unpopular decisions that history will show we were the beneficiaries of.

Unlike the caretaker leadership of Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush advanced the cause of freedom and defended it at home and abroad. Unlike some, President Bush never backed away from the tough decisions and although many offer him nothing but blame, many more understand that in our less than perfect world, less than desired efforts must be undertaken.

The multi purpose center will not only house a museum and library it will be the home of a policy institute that “will capitalize on the personal involvement of President and Mrs. Bush, its location on the campus of an important national university and its unique relationship to a presidential library and museum to attract scholars, intellectuals and leaders with experience in government, politics and various professions. It will invite a select number of Senior and Visiting Fellows and former world leaders to research, write and teach on important policy issues of the day and to work with task forces charged with generating practical policy initiatives on specific subjects.”

The policy institute will focus on such things as the promotion of freedom throughout the world and it will encourage the promotion of freedom as well as social entrepreneurship

Areas of focus will include the promotion of freedom throughout the world, encouraging through faith- and community-based organizations, and “reforming fundamental institutions of government to keep our country safe and our economy competitive and strong. The work product of the task forces and Fellows will be published by the Institute and promoted through lectures and seminars, with important task force topics coordinated with temporary exhibits at the museum.”

The Bush Presidential Center’s design will incorporate space for archival material, exhibition space, classrooms, social functions and a cafe.

The George W. Bush Policy Institute will house up to 25 Senior and Visiting Fellows and will also include conference facilities, a media studio, and offices for the Institute and the George W. Bush Foundation.

Groundbreaking on the facility is anticipated for late 2010. The dedication and opening of the facility is scheduled for 2013.

Donations to help fund construction of the George W. Bush Presidential Center you can simply click here .

 The entire web site for the developing project can be viewed  by clicking here .

For those of us who believe in George W. Bush and appreciated his time in office now is our chance to help insure that the good work he has done and the direction he set us on is not ignored. Now is our chance to insure his rightful place in history as time sheds light on his efforts.

 

G.W. Bush And Bill Clinton Somehow Ended Up In the Same Barber Shop

As they sat there, each being worked on by a different barber, not a word was spoken. The barbers were both afraid to start a conversation, for fear it would turn to politics. As the barbers finished their shaves, the one who had Clinton in his chair reached for the aftershave.

Clinton was quick to stop him saying, ” No thanks, my wife Hillary will smell that and think I’ve been in a whorehouse”.

The second barber turned to Bush and said, “how about you?”

Bush replied, “Go ahead, my wife Laura doesn’t know what the inside of a whorehouse smells like.”

Submitted by Brian, Idaho Falls, Idaho

 

 

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FAREWELL PRESIDENT BUSH – THANK YOU FOR SERVING WELL

There remain only a few hours left in the presidency of  George W. Bush. For eight years he has given us his best. There were some low points but there were fewer than the media and liberals would have you believe.

Katrina was a low point but even that, President Bush really can’t take all the blame for himself . But for liberals, President Bush was there scapegoat.

Hurricane Katrina ravaged Mississippi every bit as much as it did Louisiana, yet Mississippi, under the leadership of Republican Governor Haley Barbour, did not encounter the same long duration of recovery or mishandled evacuations that  Louisiana  did.

Mississippi’s local leaders did not decide to park their buses on low lying surfaces as did New Orleans’ Democrat Mayor, Ray Nagin.

No, Mississippi’s first line of defense in natural disasters, their local governments, the governments closest to the people, came through and were every bit as prepared as they told the federal government that they were. Not so in New Orleans though.

But a liberal bias from the media helped to make Hurricane Katrina President Bush’s fault.

Shortly after the events of Hurricane Katrina many left leaning conspiracy theorists also claimed that Hurricane Katrina and a few of its devastating predecessors were the product of Japan where the Japanese government was inventing a new weapon that increased the intensity of tropical storms into category 5 hurricanes and directed them to land masses that they targeted.

Many of the same people who made this claim gave blame to George Bush. That should tell you something.

Although Katrina may not have been Bush’s fault, the recovery effort in Louisiana does get blamed on him and to a degree that is acceptable. But I guess, on the other side of the coin, the successfully rapid recovery in Mississippi warrants some credit for President Bush?

Putting aside the blame game of Hurricane Katrina, there are two things that when grading this presidency, bring his average down.

The first is his delay in approving the surge that his own Secretary of State urged for a year before he finally accepted it.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice  had been advocating for more troops in Iraq. It was a strategy called “clear, hold and build”. It was also the same strategy that Senator John McCain called for.

Clear, hold and build was successfully used by Col. H.R. McMaster in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar. The strategy called for door to door operations that cleared insurgents from the city along with an ongoing troop presence in each neighborhood that was cleared. Once this was achieved residents felt secure, and U.S. troops were able to begin rebuilding there. Wherever this strategy was conducted, it worked. The resurgents were gone and our continued presence there, prevented them from returning. As a result, citizens no longer lived in fear and life began to flow unimpeded by terror and violence. To carry out clear, hold and build, more troops were required. But increasing the number of troops was not something the administration wanted to advocate for. Although it was required in order to successfully carry out clear, hold, build the administration was afraid of the reaction to such a call.

The President flinched in this area. It was one of the few instances where he allowed public perception to make him second guess his policy judgment. After Viet Nam, we should have learned that if you are going to enter into a fight, throw everything you have into it from the onset. Otherwise don’t get into the fight.

In the case of Iraq, we held back. Had we went along with the surge from the beginning, we would have avoided the upsurge in violence that led to the waning of support for the war effort.

The other area of deep negative impact on this administration was the financial collapse that brought on the current economic crisis.

President Bush does not get blamed for causing the collapse, but it happened under his watch and it should not have.

The President, through his advisers, should have seen this coming and helped to avoid it.

He should have aggressively turned back some of the policies which led to the overextended loan practices which ultimately tied up loans and the markets.

Many of the policies that brought us to this point were from Bill Clinton’s administration.

Clinton‘s National Homeowners Strategy was a financial scheme that promoted insanely low down payments and coerced lenders into giving mortgage loans to first-time buyers with unstable financing and incomes.

It was a way to increase home ownership. That is an admirable motive but as usual, the liberal mentality, forced government to do that which it should not have done. Essentially, the Clinton era initiatives that forced government action on private sector interests led to the need for government to take over FannieMae and FreddieMac. This is not to say that private sector greed and bad business practices did not add to the wrong minded government policy, it did, but what happened here is that government solutions to one problem, created another . Now, ironically, the government which helped to create this problem is having to solve it
.
As for George Bush, this all came to a head under his watch. For that he must be blamed.

So we have the recovery effort in Louisiana, delaying the surge in Iraq and not avoiding the economic crises that we are in, all helping to lower the average of this administrations grade.

I have two more things to add though.

One is immigration.

On immigration President Bush was most inept. On this issue his positions were no where near appropriate for the leader of a sovereign nation.

The Presidents refusal to accept that illegal immigrants are participating in illegal conduct that needs to be prosecuted was a horribly blundered policy and it is one that has not helped to solve our border security problem or alleviate the continued problem of illegal immigration.

The other issue I hold against President Bush is his administrations inability to articulate their cause in a way that appealed to the people convincingly.

The administration had been doing quite well in it’s first two years when the voice of the President came from then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Once Ari Fleischer left and Scott McClellan entered the picture, the White House lost any sway with the press or the public.

This President was great with messages when we were in crisis and he had the people’s attention, but in between crisis his message was jumbled and unconvincing. That, for this administration, was half of the battle and after Fleischer left they lost it.

On the upside President Bush has many, much wrongly maligned, initiatives to help bring his grade up.

Their was his “Faith Based Initiative” which allowed government to accept the involvement of religious institutions in helping out. Faith based initiatives were no longer penalized or denied by the federal government because of religion. It was something long over due in America, especially in an America where religion is not to persecuted against.

There was “No Child Left Behind”.

This policy was one which had universal support except for some extremist fringe players and teachers union.. But not willing to give credit where credit was due, liberals charged that President Bush backed out of his No Child Left Behind policy by under funding it.

Truth be told, federal education spending is at record levels so that argument doesn’t swim.

There are many other policies such as the Medicare prescription drug benefit, enacted in 2003. It triggered competition between drug companies and wound up costing less than expected.

The Bush tax policy is also to his credit. He didn’t ask for lips to read on this issue, he simply created no new taxes and when he did not reduce them he held the line on them. I only wish he could have added drastic spending cuts to that.

Another high point in this administration was the appointment of two supreme court justices, one being the chief justice.

The appointments of  John Roberts  and  Sam Alito  were remarkably good choices. Neither had any judicial or personal blemishes and neither see the role of the judiciary to be one that makes law but rather interprets it. Add to that their relative youthful ages and the Roberts and Alito appointments to the bench will have a profound on our great nation for decades to come.

The next greatest achievement of the administration was twofold. It involves The War On Terror and Iraq.

Despite charges that Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, the two are entwined together as violent threats.

Pre-Saddam Hussein Iraq did not send to us the pilots that took nearly 3,000 Americans in one day but it had intentions just as dire.

Saddam did not have any tangible links to 9/11 but he did have links to terrorist, including several who dabbled with Al Quaeda and he did continuously break and defy the cease fire agreement that he signed after the first Gulf War. Combine that with the fact that everyone from  Bill Clinton  and  Al Gore  to  John Kerry  and  Ted Kennedy  swore that Saddam was a threat and you had every reason in the world to eliminate Saddam Hussein.

After 9/11 George W. Bush realized that we must eliminate threats before they eliminate us and so he took out the threat known as Saddam Hussein.  In doing so not is democracy being brought to the Middle East but the power and richness of freedom is being delivered to a people that have long since forgotten what independence offers.

Add to that that you can say what you want, but we no longer have to worry about any threat Saddam intended, and for that I thank the President.

I also Thank him for the second part of this  War On Terror  effort.   Under his watch not another single attack occurred on mainland territory since 9/11.

Now if you want to blame Katrina on Bush because it happened during his watch you must also credit him for there being no more attacks under his watch. And when you think about, more attacks occurred under Bill Clinton then George Bush, so I thank President Bush for that as well.

The final most valuable thing brought to life under President Bush goes back to exactly four years ago.

In his inaugural address , after being sworn in for the second time, President Bush stated:

“America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home – the unfinished work of American freedom. In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty.”

He went on to articulate a policy that directed the United States to end tyranny in the world as we know it.

Now some may have seen that as a declaration of war by him but most read it the right way.

He went on to say………“We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.”

“All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.:”

The speech has since been forgotten by most but it has not been forgotten by me and hopefully President Barack Obama will also remember it..

In its entirety, the address presented the essence of what it means to be an American and it captured the most important role that America must play in this world as its current, last remaining superpower.

For me it Bush’s second inaugural address was the foundation for our greatest doctrine ever, the doctrine to achieve and true freedom and peace.

When you have the time, click here and read the speech. You will be moved and you will understand our place in this world.

The bottom line…….

President Bush is a good man and was a good President. He will not go down in history ranked along side of Washington or Lincoln nor will he be lumped together with Franklin Pierce or Jimmy Carter.

Ultimately, I believe George W. Bush warrants a B-.

Many on the left will now assault me for giving that grade but I base George Bush’s presidency on the truth of reality not on the lies and distortions that they have spent the last eight years perpetuating and when you add that to the retrospect of history, I believe George W. Bush’s name  will slowly rise to its proper placement among American presidents.

That is something that will take time.

As President Bush recently put it, “they’re still debating and writing about how good or bad George Washington was, so I assume the same will happen to me”.

Once upon a time, in a village, a man appeared and announced to the villagers…

… that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort.

He further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms.

The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.

In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. ‘Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.’

The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys.

Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!

Now you have a better understanding of how the stock market works.

Submitted by Dick, Williamsport, Md.

 

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JACK KEMP – A POLITICAL ICON BATTLES CANCER

It has been reported that Jack Kemp has cancer.

His office released the following statement:

“Mr. Kemp has been undergoing tests to determine the origin of the disease and the options for continued treatment. He will continue to serve as Chairman of Kemp Partners and plans to remain involved in his business, charitable and politically related activities. Mr. Kemp and his family are grateful for the thoughts and prayers of friends and appreciate respect for their privacy at this time”.

The disturbing news hits POLITICS 24/7 hard. For me Jack Kemp, has been a shining example of the type of leadership we expect, want and need in government and the news causes reason for me to pause.

As a young man Jack F. Kemp spent 13 years in professional football, playing quarterback for the San Diego Chargers and Buffalo Bills. He led the Buffalo Bills to the American Football League championships in 1964 and 1965 when he was named the league’s most valuable player. He also co-founded the AFL Players Association and was elected it’s president for 5 consecutive terms.

After a period working for the Reagan gubernatorial campaign in California during 1966 and as special assistant to Reagan when he was Governor, Kemp in 1969 worked for the chairman of the National Republican Committee. In 1970 Kemp was elected to Congress where he represented the people of Buffalo, New York in the state’s 38^th district and served their until 1989.

Barely in my teens, my political interests were inspired by Ronald Reagan. They grew each day for the eight years that he was President but during the mid 80’s I also came to appreciate a Congressman from my home state of New York.   My own Congressman was Scmuck Schumer and not exactly a heroic political leader. But Jack Kemp was and  although Kemp was from Buffalo and I was from Brooklyn, the distance did not takeaway any sense of the Congressman’s impact on me.

Many casual voters outside of Buffalo may not have heard of him at the time but those involved in the issues shaping America sure did. Especially those who considered themselves “movement conservatives“. They considered Jack Kemp a leading figure.

A movement conservative is one who supports all or nearly all conservative principles with a coherent philosophy, and who advances broad conservative goals both individually and through teamwork. At the time, I did not know it, but I was one and Jack Kemp was one of the movements leaders.

Kemp’s credentials increased in In Congress where he became increasingly interested in economic ideas and was a keen supporter of supply-side economics and especially of large cuts in direct taxes, which he argued, would pay for themselves. Kemp was also a strong and vocal advocate of deregulation and enterprise zones. In 1978, together with senator Roth of Delaware, Kemp sponsored a 30 percent across the board tax cut which was in large part enacted in the 1981 Reagan budget. It is said that he sold Reaganomics to Reagan. Kemp’s vigorous promotion of supply-side economics made him a well known, if not controversial, politician and earned him a popular following among the Republican rank and file.

In addition to being a fiscal conservative Kemp has also been conservative on cultural and foreign affair issues. In one debate with Mario Cuomo, Kemp said of himself, “I am not a hawk but actually a heavily armed dove“.

Over time, I came to appreciate Jack Kemp more and more. I followed his voting record and read the speeches he offered on the floor of the house in the congressional record. His words were always inspiring to me. Although those speeches were often intermingled with words that I needed to lookup in the dictionary, once I did, they made sense and they were supported by all that freedom in a free nation meant.

On top of that, his voting record always matched his rhetoric. Jack Kemp meant what he said and said what he meant.  With jack Kemp it was not rhetoric, it was reality.

Later, while working on Kemp’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, I learned that I was not alone in sometimes having to look up the meaning of something Kemp said. While gathering the mornings news clippings for the campaign’s press secretary, I stumbled upon a piece in a local paper that wrote “although very passionate about economic policy, Congressman Kemp often finds himself speaking to an audience of reporters and voters alike, who have a glazed look in their eyes that is brought about by his discussion of intricate policies and use of technical terms that Kemp uses with the familiarity that we have with the alphabet“.

After reading that I was actually relieved to know that I wasn’t quite as ignorant as most. I was just as ignorant as everyone else.  As the Reagan years were winding down I geared up to take the Reagan revolution to the next level and I prepared to make sure that Jack Kemp became our next President. The man to carry the torch into the future. I even developed a report which proved that Jack kemp would be the Republican presidential nominee and that Jean Kirkpatrick would be tapped as his running mate.

I was also a fan of Ambassador Kirkpatrick and the relatively close ties that she and Kemp had at the time, seemed to me, to make them a perfect and likely ticket.

As the 1988 campaign began, I found myself traveling to campaign for Jack Kemp in New Hampshire and eventually became a low level field director. I will never forget sitting on campaign busses traveling to every Notch from Dixville to Zealand and relaying between the state’s North White Mountains and Great North Woods to its southern sectionss of Portsmouth and Seabrook in the Seacoast region and Nashua, Concord and Manchester in between. I was often honored beyond belief to sit next Jack Kemp on the campaign bus and have the opportunity to brief the would-be-President on events at our next stops and update him on how the door-to-door events at previous stops went.

Although Kemp did win in Dixville Notch, when all of New Hampshire’s votes were counted, Kemp came in third behind then Vice President George H.W. Bush and Kansas Senator Bob Dole, but ahead of evangelist Pat Robertson, Reagan’s former chief of Staff, General Alexander Haig and Delaware’s former Congressman and Governor Pete DuPont, respectively.

Suffice it to say, I was devastated.

In 1989 President George H. W. Bush appointed Kemp to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development when he formed his administration. In this role Kemp was perceived by many as a maverick rather than a collegial member of the administration. Yet he successfully implemented many policies and programs which won over friends and foes alike. One of Kemp’s most effective creations was the introduction of urban enterprise zones.

With his maverick image in place, in 1996 the Republican nominee for President, Bob Dole picked Kemp to be his Vice Presidential running mate. The selection was something of a surprise, not least because Kemp and Dole had policy disagreements in the past and had been rivals in 1988. Dole had generally been skeptical of massive tax cuts preferring to emphasize deficit reduction but the electoral dynamics of 1996 converted Dole to the merits of tax cuts. In this context Kemp was an ideal vice presidential choice. He symbolized vigorous tax cuts and was able to generate enthusiasm among Republican activists. Kemp was well known nationally because of his football career and visionary economic and defense policies; and it was hoped that Kemp’s energetic style and manner would balance Dole’s age.

Maybe it did or maybe didn’t but either way Americans wanted a second term of Clinton and Gore and whether they ended up liking it or not, they got it.

Just as was the case in the 1988 primaries, I was disappointed but just like before, I remained a fan of Jack Kemp.

I feel that there are few people who have actually been involved in politics on par with Kemp. Sincere, principled, hard working, innovative, persistent, consistent and scandal free, Kemp and his leadership has influenced our nation much more than your average politician and he helped take what was once a fringe wing of American political thinking and turned it into mainstream policy.

All of his leadership and accomplishments led me to pick up the moniker ‘Kempite”. On the internet, one must often come up with a user I.D. and since all of my online activity involves politics, I felt there was no name better to choose from other than Kemp’s.

So today, from the bottom of my heart, I offer my wishes for a speedy recovery for Secretary Kemp and it is the greatest hope of all of us that he defeats this bout with cancer with the same level of energy and success that earned him his victories and honors in the N.F.L. and that moved America over to his way of thinking in politics.

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U.S. Senate Employment- ABILITY NOT REQUIRED

CAROLINE KENNEDY - The Most Qualified New Yorker forthe Job?

Does anyone really believe that Caroline Kennedy is the most qualified person in New York to represent the interests of New Yorkers in the United States Senate?

Assuming, for a moment, that she was not a Kennedy, would the replacement Governor of New York, David Paterson, be considering her for the position?

I think not.

But politics is a strange and twisted business.

Take for example David Paterson’s ascension to the Governor’s office.

Paterson was the son of a locally well known New York State Senator, Basil Paterson. Before Basil resigned from his senate seat, he pulled some strings and positioned his son David in the District Attorney’s office in Manhattan.

In 1985 David resigned from the D.A.’s office to work on the campaign of David Dinkins for Manhattan Borough President. Dinkins later became one of the city’s worst Mayors ever, served one term and was ultimately defeated for re-election by Rudy Giuliani.

After Dinkins’ campaign for Borough President, Leon Bogues who succeeded Basil Paterson in the state senate died. Subsequently a hastily prepared special election to fill the vacant seat was held.

With fifty eight percent of the districts Democrat County Committee behind him, David Paterson received the nomination for his fathers senate seat.

This senate district covers parts of Manhattan including Harlem, so it is staunchly liberal.  As such,  the Democrat nomination is tantamount to winning the election and David did.

In 2006, the state’s Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer sought the Democrat party’s nomination for Governor. With many high profile, Wall street crimes successfully prosecuted by Spitzer, he was the party’s rising star. In fact many saw him as a future national leader for Democrats. His race for the nomination was anything but a race. With one opponent Spitzer won the nomination in a landslide and with a Republican of little recognition and even less money, Spitzer was assured of winning the Governor’s race.

That in mind, he selected David Paterson to be his running mate. The selection of Paterson helped to win favor with minorities and the liberal wing of the party. As an African -American who established an ultra liberal following, the addition of Paterson to the ticket allowed Elliot the freedom to not have to campaign too far to the left. Thereby allowing him to speak to those in the middle without turning them off  by publicly addressing liberal concerns.

With Paterson on the ticket, Spitzer knew liberals would be behind him.

And they were. As expected Elliot Spitzer won in a landslide election.

But that landslide victory quickly turned into a even quicker and more dramatic fall from grace as the earth shifted again and Spitzer was forced to resign from office after it was discovered that he was hiring call girls for, shall we say,  nongovernmental business.

And that is how David Paterson became Governor.

Now as Governor, David Paterson finds himself in the position of appointing  someone to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate.

That situation, in and of itself, is another stroke of luck for David Paterson.

After losing the nomination for President, New York Democrats wanted assurances that Hillary would not challenge David Paterson for the nomination for Governor of New York in 2010.

They never got that assurance until Barack Obama took care of that for them and nominated Hillary for Secretary of State.

Of course Paterson could  feel that a challenge to his nomination for re-election is not yet resolved with Clinton out of the picture.  Andrew Cuomo’s desire for the job could pose a threat but if Paterson appointed Cuomo to the U.S. Senate, he too would be taken out of the picture thereby assuring Paterson the nomination.

So what of her replacement?

Well a look at David Paterson’s rise to power would indicate the rationale behind choosing Caroline Kennedy.

Paterson did little to get the job that he now has.

He entered politics through the political strings pulled by his father and came to political office through his fathers name. And ultimately he became a governor because of a vacancy in the seat.

So why not select Caroline Kennedy?  She has the Kennedy name and there is a vacancy.

So putting qualifications aside, there is absolutely no reason not to select her but quite a few reasons for Paterson to do so.

The first being, by appointing Caroline Kennedy to the U.S. Senate, Paterson will be winning the favor of Kennedy’s allover the country. That means plenty of money in his bid for re-election.

The second reason is perception. As a Kennedy, Caroline is adored. Regardless of issues or her positions on the issues, the public perceives her as a symbol. As the last surviving child of an adored, martyred President, Caroline Kennedy is a figure few want to oppose. So she is a safe choice that spares Paterson a great deal of criticism.

 Additionally, after choosing Caroline for the senate seat, a race against Andrew Cuomo probably would not be a much of race. Paterson would have the backing of both U.S. Senators form New York, Chuck Schumer and Caroline Kennedy. He would also have their organizational and financial support as well as that of all the Kennedy’s.

So given the logic of politics, whether Caroline Kennedy is qualified or not, really doesn’t matter. Qualifications are not a factor. If they were David Paterson might be considering New Yorkers with expertise in areas that need leadership like our economy. Why not consider New Yorker Donald Trump? If Mike Bloomberg is such a great Mayor of New York City, why not appoint him to the senate? Why not replace one Clinton with another?  Bill is available.  It is not unprecedented for a former President to serve in congress and if he is so great, why not him?

I am not saying I want any of those characters in the U.S. Senate but why not consider them?

The answer simply is that qualifications are not a factor.

As Peter King, a New York congressman from Long Island said “ if name identification is a qualification, why not pick J-lo?”. Jennifer Lopez has plenty of name recognition.

He’s right.

I do not know where Caroline Kennedy stands on the issues. I do know that of all the Kennedy’s she is my favorite. There is nothing to dislike about her. So she comes to the table with a clean slate with me. But is her name really a reason to suggest that she is the most qualified New Yorker to help shape the future of our nation?

Realistically, no, but politics has little to do with the reality of national concerns. Politics is personal and it revolves around the personal ambitions of individuals in government, not the people who are effected by government.

So why not Caroline Kennedy? It could be worse. MoveOn.org founder and liberal lunatic, George Soros is a New York resident.

Considered the 55^th richest person in the world and one of the three wealthiest in New York, with a net worth of 7.2 billion dollars he could certainly finance the success of a political careers including David Paterson. But who will assure the success of our nation?

While some play name games and others try to auction off elected offices, who will assure us that the best people represent us?  Certainly not those who are already in office.

At the height of a political corruption trial, the prosecuting attorney attacked
a witness.

“Isn’t it true,” he bellowed, “that you accepted five thousand dollars to compromise this case?”

The witness stared out the window as though he hadn’t heard the question.

“Isn’t it true that you accepted five thousand dollars to compromise this case?” the lawyer repeated.

The witness still did not respond.

Finally, the judge leaned over and said, “Sir, please answer the question.”

“Oh,” the startled witness said, “I thought he was talking to you.”