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

For some odd reason, Sarah Palin causes liberal elites to rabidly foam at the mouth. Professor William Jacobson of the blog Legal Insurrection wrote an insightful piece about how conservatives seem to reflexively defend Palin, because liberals seem to be perpetually attacking her. Furthermore, not only do liberals seem to revel in finding weird reasons to attack Sarah Palin, but they also seem to only be happy when they are attacking her family as well (probably because they see them as little “spawns of Sarah”). Now, why is this? I haven’t a clue. However, I can state beyond a reasonable doubt that it’s not helping them.

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[The above photo is of me and Tim Scott.]

[The above picture is of me and two of Tim Scott's aides (Brandon Rowland on the left in the white shirt and Dan Asdot on the right in the blue shirt).]

As many of you are aware, Tim Scott has been campaigning hard for many months to become the US congressman to represent South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District. Mr. Scott has recently endured a grueling primary battle in order to win the Republican nomination; however, there is a lot more to this man than just politics.

Mr. Scott has a very inspirational life story and has had to overcome a lot of hurdles in his life. He grew up in the projects of North Charleston and was raised by a single mother who worked two jobs to keep him and his brother off of welfare. Scott was failing out of high school until he found a mentor by the name of John Moniz (a local Chick-fil-A owner who told Tim that, “You can think your way out of poverty”). He then went on to become a successful businessman, a thirteen year member of the Charleston County Council, and a member of the SC State Legislature–all before finally running for congress in 2010.

Well, on Tuesday night, Tim Scott’s tenacity paid off because he made history by being elected the first African-American Republican US congressman to represent SC since Reconstruction.

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All politics are not local

Effect of D.C. party policies on the economy outweigh state policies and voting for “the man”

Even as a young Democrat in the 1980s, I disagreed with former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill’s supposed axiom, no matter one’s definition of “local”. Then, as now, Democrats were facing an electorate suffering the consequences of policies enacted by their super-majorities in both houses of Congress and signed into law by their President. Clearly guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of economic and national security malfeasance based upon the relevant facts, one can understand the trial lawyer-like resort to avert the gaze of the jury to “local” facts irrelevant to the job description.

I voted the party as a Democrat from 1980-1998 because I favored liberal policies. Since my 2000 conservative epiphany, I have voted for Republicans because I favor conservative policies. The job of a member of Congress is to vote on issues that affect my wallet and national security.

I base my votes on how they will vote on issues that impact my life and that of the nation, rather than who I “like” as a person; campaign ads; so-called “smarts”; or other irrelevant factors usually even including ethics and character, except for executive positions as will discussed below. I also choose my barber based on how well he cuts my hair rather than on the quality of the patter.

In short, I vote the party, not the man. This is true at the national and state levels, but more so at the national level given the structural constraints of cities and states that can’t print money. Character doesn’t matter so much, it seems to me, in legislative positions given the publishing of laws and recorded votes. Character does matter in executive positions given the discretionary power of such offices.

That said, what matters most are the policies favored by parties as that is what affects our lives directly. Poor policies that wreck the economy or invite aggression for foreign enemies aren’t made more palatable when enacted by “good people” or those we like to watch in TV.

Moreover, I have always considered Presidential and Congressional elections to be much more important than state and local elections due to the determinative effect of national policies on the economy that dwarf the effects of policies of states, given the emasculation of state’s rights and the near all-encompassing power of the federal government since the 1930s.

Rare are the states that can avoid a recession brought on by failed economic policies emanating from Washington.

I said all that to say this: Nothing has been more important to me in politics since 2000 than that the failed liberal policies of the Democratic Party be utterly discredited in the electorate’s mind once and for all, and that they be defeated at the polls.

I converted based on the success of Reagan’s monetary, economic, social and national security policies. When a liberal and a Democrat, it was always clear to me what both parties stood for. I was Democrat because I was a liberal.

These facts are why it is so frustrating to me that so many Americans have had to be re-educated away from the obvious lie that there has been no difference between them except by degrees. I suspect this is the case because of the domination of American politics by the Democrats for most of our history. It is has been the default party for too long. After all, it was good enough for Grandma and America has done all right, or so the thought process may go.

I would argue that America has done all right for so long due due to the conservative movement push backs made increasingly necessary by a JFK-less Democrat Party that started selling its soul to the Left soon after his assassination. Moreover, it seems we have reached a Big Government tipping point this past decade especially since ObamaDems tripled the deficit in two years.

Is the GOP perfect? No, and as a conservative I have to accept that all choices since Eve bit the apple are between lessers of evils. But liberals have made the Democratic Party their home for decades. They aren’t leaving it.

The GOP would be better with a responsible opposition. There has been no responsible opposition party for many years and I think the electorate is beginning to realize this after the past 20 months of rule by leftists.

The path to redemption for the Democratic Party can only be trod after a deserved liberal comeuppance election that is likely next Tuesday.We need good liberals. They are good at spotting fires that need putting out. Its too bad they didn’t declare victory 35 years ago on civil rights and the safety net for the truly needy, rather than going to seed.

The present duty is to rebuke them utterly. I will be voting, with but one or two exceptions for Republicans only, at the local, state and national level. America can only begin to heal after the Democratic Party is rebuked.

The Rule: Vote out the Ds!

Now, I hope my exception proves the rule, as I now lean toward voting for Democrat Roy Barnes for Georgia governor based upon his performance in the office before his re-election defeat soon after the turn of the century; lack of any great differences in policy proposals with Republican Nathan Deal; a general liking of divided government and the fact of a Republican General Assembly in the Peach State; and the fact that Deal has been in Washington for the past 28 years.

But I remain persuadable on this race, so committed to the proposition that party trumps the man. Feel free to persuade me.

Mike DeVine

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

Charlotte Observer, The Minority Report and Examiner.com archives

www.devinelawvista.com

It’s become apparent as of late that the Left has a new obsession. Christine O’Donnell’s dabbling in witchcraft in high school and her 1995 stance against masturbation (when she was a conservative activist) have truly captivated her critics. Whether it’s Bill Maher, Maureen Dowd, Richard Cohen, or Frank Rich, all the Left can talk about is witchcraft and masturbation.

However, as I have noted, all of this creepy talk from the Left is actually a sign of weakness. Why? Because there is no way on earth they would be talking incessantly about witchcraft and masturbation if unemployment wasn’t so high and their poll numbers weren’t so low. If you read the tea leaves properly by really taking a look at popular culture–and even the so-called liberal media–it is painfully obvious that victory just isn’t in the cards for the Democrats this November and a few of them are slowly starting to realize it.

So, without much fanfare and ado, I would like to share with you five bad omens for the Left’s prospects in November.

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Most people who don’t live in a cave are probably somewhat familiar with the left’s recent attacks on Christine O’Donnell. First, it was that she was against masturbation in 1995, now it’s that she dabbled in witchcraft when she was in high school. (No, seriously, I’m not making this stuff up–these people are just that pathetic.)

Now, granted, Bill Maher (the man who first engaged in this attack on O’Donnell) is obviously trying to paint Christine O’Donnell as crazy or out of the mainstream, by implying that she’s some sort of a secret witch. (Wait–I’m confused. First she was a radical Christian who was against masturbation, and now, she’s a witch? Which one is it?) However, Bill Maher is one to talk about others being out of the mainstream. First of all, this guy is perpetually surrounded by a coterie of skanks, and his look is free-clinic chic, to say the least. Second of all, Maher dressed up as the Crocodile Hunter for Halloween, after the guy had tragically died from a stingray piercing his heart. To say that was “in bad taste” is the understatement of the millennium. And finally, Maher referred to Bristol Palin as a “Hillbilly Heroine” on his TV show (see embed below).

So, my response to people who say that we should take Bill Maher’s accusations of witchcraft seriously: really? We should listen to this degenerate with regard to which candidates we support?! (No I’m not shouting–I’m growling.)

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It’s official. Every liberal pundit with an ounce of credibility is either ignoring the latest Vanity Fair column about Sarah Palin, or is running like heck from it. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Hill have all ignored the story. And now, many noteworthy progressives, such as Kirsten Powers, Ben Smith, Julia Baird and David Weigel are panning it as untrue, disgraceful, sexist blather. In fact, only the far left nutter websites, like Crooks and Liars, see it as any sort of plus for the progressive cause.

So, why the mad dash away from this column by the leftist elites? It’s bashing Sarah Palin, so one would think that they would love it. Well, without much ado and mincing any words, I can tell you the four major reasons why liberals can’t seem to distance themselves from this column fast enough.

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