Tuesday night, President Obama gave his State of the Union Address. Then afterward, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan gave the official GOP response to the president’s SOTU address, and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann gave the unofficial Tea Party response. Most in the political world expected fireworks from Ms. Bachmann’s response, but, in the end, her speech proved to be highly unprovocative. In fact, many Republican pundits, like Redstate’s Erick Erickson, wrote that they were pleasantly surprised at how well Congresswoman Bachmann came across. As Da Tech Guy pointed out, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, there was “not a single word of snark from the panel” when the topic of her speech came up. However, perpetual GOP critic, Meghan McCain, found a way to say something, not just critical of Ms. Bachmann’s speech, but over-the-top and mean-spirited as well. To be specific, Ms. McCain said the following to Laurence O’Donnell when he inquired as to whether Michele Bachmann giving the Tea Party response to the SOTU was “your worst dream come true” :

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Say yes to conservative Obama job-creation proposals, one issue/bill at a time while singing Tom Petty’s The Waiting

The state of our union circa 2011 need not be so dire.

Was it going to take years to climb out of the wealth-destruction hole wrought by the bursting of the housing bubble coupled with decades of accumulating national and personal debt? Yes, but after President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address soon after his Inauguration and proposed Stimulus Bill why he had proposed so little job-creating public works/infrastructure spending and that what little was proposed was back-loaded to only kick in 18 months later when unemployment was near double digits and rising.

The excuse seems to be that Lawyer Obama never organized communities to build anything and so he was naive about shovel-readiness, but since the lack of readiness is caused by oppressive environmental regulations and trial lawyers and since Obama has shown that he will waive regulations at will to prevent foreigners from helping with oil spills and will ignore congressional action and court orders to wage EPA war against Texas on land and oil drilling at sea, we aren’t accepting the excuse.

Ground was ready to be shoveled in 2009, hence we have had to conclude that he and the Democrats don’t care about the poor, unemployed and underemployed, or at least that they care more about the transformation of American society into a post-Rule of Law political/corporate crony economy and socialist, cradle-grave European-like society dependent on ObamaCare for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Michelle says hold the fried chicken. She knows best?

So, more hearts have broken, because much like Petty’s Heartbreakers:

The waiting (in poverty) is the hardest part.

We were also told that Obama was a centrist in 2008, and that the appointments of Clintonistas named Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers and Christina Roemer were the proof. Yet, instead of the triangulating presider over balanced budgets and the end of big government, we got a gargantuan government and prosperity stealing deficits and debt. So, why should we believe that the replacement of three former Clintonistas with a different set augers change?

Well, I do think that Obama has shown some change in strategy based on the shellacking in the Lame Duck and do believe that he will propose some things conservatives favor as real supply-side and other types of real stimuli. Of course, he can be expected to try and use the issues for 2012 purposes of keeping wool pulled over eyes through tried and true devices of compromise that would induce Republicans to water down the policies that work in exchange for conceding for Liberty and power to Obama and the government generally.

The GOP must resist compromise. Tea partiers were sent to Capitol Hill in revulsion to big government failed liberal economic policies. They were not sent up there to get along with liberals. The GOP must not give the Dems an excuse by introducing multi-issue bills designed to gain more votes. rather, they should take each and every issue proposed in the SOTU speech and propose them in single issue bills. As I recall, one of the matters emphasized tea partiers was also the demand that bills be short enough to read.

The message that needs to be sent to Obama by the GOP is that we will say yes to correct policy, no to bad policy and will share credit for the recovery.

Is there a danger that a growing economy might re-elect a still radical leftist and prevent the repeal of laws out in place over the last two years while also keeping in office  a weak on defense appeaser of Iran that would be given more opportunities to weaken America at home and abroad? Yes, but we have to take that chance due to the level of suffering in this recession.

Jobs and the Post-State-of-the-Union GOP House Strategy

We can still defeat Obama in 2012 if we will take the gloves off on the moral reality that while Republicans favor job-creation policies every day of every year, ObamaDems only favor them when the public gets re-educated in how their liberal dependency policies don’t work and have to do things like triangulate closer to elections.

Most elected Democrats in D.C., especially including Obama, don’t care about the quality of life of We the People in any absolute way. They care about gaining more and more power over us, as is clear from the “reform” policies of the last two years when the only jobs they sought to save were state and local public sector union cronies or the private sector equivalent at GM and the only jobs they created were tens of thousands of federal government regulators.

The GOP will have to be about the business of fixing the economy and the budget; FIRING those hired by Obama; and getting Obama and Harry Reid fired in 2012, but only in that order.

Single issue bills are the ticket.

Mike DeVine

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Charlotte Observer, The Minority Report and Examiner.com archives

www.devinelawvista.com

[H/T Toby Toons for the image.]

This past week in the wake of the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by Jared Lee Loughner (that killed six people and wounded nine others–including the congresswoman), the mainstream/liberal media instantly pounced on “the violent rhetoric” by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party as the cause of Loughner’s mad shooting spree. Oh, and they did this within half an hour of the victims being shot, before any of the facts of the case had come in. To be specific, the likes of Andrew Sullivan (he of “Trig Truther” fame), Markos Moulitsas, Matthew Yeglesias, Paul Krugman, The New York Times Editorial Board and just about everyone at MSNBC immediately implied that “right-wing rhetoric”, and specifically Sarah Palin, were accessories to this tragedy. In fact, Markos Moulitsas even went so far as to tweet out “Mission Accomplished Sarah Palin” immediately after the shooting, and blamed her based an obscure map that she had put out almost year ago on her Facebook page “targeting” certain districts for the 2010 election. To quote Alex Knepper, according to liberals, “Guns don’t kill people, Sarah Palin’s metaphors do”. (See an image of her Facebook map below.)

Except that it didn’t take conservative bloggers long to learn that the Democrats had put up a similar “target” map in 2009 (before Palin did) stating which Republicans they wanted to “target” for opposing the now infamous stimulus bill. Read the rest of this entry »

Ted Williams was all the rage these last couple of days in the blogosphere and on cable news. In case you happen to be living under a rock this past week, Ted Williams is the homeless man who was a former radio announcer with a “golden voice” who fell into trouble with drugs and alcohol. Williams lost everything in 1993 and became homeless, only to have his life change this week when a video of him demonstrating his God given talent on the side of a Columbus, Ohio highway went viral.

Well, within a couple of days of the above video getting national exposure, Mr. Williams was offered a job as an announcer for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and was even invited on The Today Show and asked to do the opening voice-over for the show.

So, why has America fallen in love with Ted Williams? Simple. Read the rest of this entry »