Conservative Outpost

How Democratic Congress threw away advantage over GOP

Drew McKissick — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:13:04 -0400

Many political observers were stunned by the new Gallup poll showing the Republican party with a 10-point advantage in the so-called "generic ballot" question. Now we have a better idea how that happened.

According to new, more detailed Gallup numbers, Democratic advantages on issues like health care, the economy, and handling corruption in government have simply disappeared. Democratic leads that were enormous when the party took control of Congress in 2006 have dwindled to nothing or have now become Republican advantages.

The most striking example is in health care. Back in October 2006, just before Democrats won control of Congress, Gallup asked the traditional question, "Do you think the Republicans in Congress or the Democrats in Congress would do a better job dealing with [the following issue]…" At that time, Democrats held a 64 percent to 25 percent lead on health care -- a 39 percentage-point advantage. Now, after Democrats passed their long-dreamed-of national health care bill, the result is 44 percent for Democrats versus 43 percent for Republicans -- a virtual tie. That is an enormous advantage to have thrown away during four years in power.

The news is just as bad for Democrats on the economy. In October 2006, Democrats held a 53 to 37 lead over Republicans on the issue. ...

He Has Nothing To Say.

Skip MacLure — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:34:18 -0400

To say that President Obama’s speech, marking the retirement of our last combat units from Iraq, was uninspiring… well, it was uninspiring. As usual, he’s taking credit for something that was planned back in the Bush administration. He did acknowledge former President Bush in an offhand sort of way, making it almost an insult.

We know Obama doesn’t do ad lib, so it makes you wonder about some of his writers. It’s like they are as far out of touch with the pulse of America as Obama is, maybe more so. The speech was short for Obama, but then he hasn’t much to say these days… just the same updated re-written garbage that he’s been spieling for two years.

The speech returned to his economy, and make no mistake about it, it is his economy… George Bush retired two years ago, though you wouldn’t know it to listen to some of the liberal backwash out there. There’s no amount of spin that can disguise the fact that George Bush left us with a budget deficit of 400 billion dollars plus, which was bad enough in the opinion of most conservatives.

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Red China Turns U.S. Human Rights Molehills Into Mountains

FMeekins — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:41:59 -0400

The United States and China discussed human rights at a round of high-level talks. One might be surprised that the meeting did not so much focus on the egregious atrocities that have gone on under this Communist tyranny from the time of its founding to this very day. Rather, Obama administration officials allowed America to be berated on issues such as homelessness and the new Arizona immigration law.

Before America as a nation takes this criticism seriously, perhaps we should consider what the law entails and how this compares with what goes on in Red China.

The Arizona law will permit police to ascertain an individual's identity and thus legality after initial contact. Essentially, this isn’t anything that isn’t already authorized by law and is perhaps an even better guarantor of individual liberty and dignity than what is already permitted.

In a number of decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that police could compel an individual to identify themselves even when it had not been established that the law had even been violated or that there was probable cause indicating such. Interestingly, there were no riotous mobs in the streets when it was thought these kinds of identity checks were only going to be aimed at actual Americans.

Even if scores of those with no legal standing in the United States are removed from the streets of Arizona as a result of the new law, they will still fair considerably better than those taken into custody in dictatorships. In Iran, several American coed tourists straying over the Islamic Republic’s border with Iraq were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

And unlike illegals here, those there are not fawned over with lavish government handouts with their bureaucratic benefactors hoping the outsiders will recast the entire society in a foreign image.

It could be properly argued that the American students deserved some kind of punishment for violating another country’s sovereign borders. What likely cannot be argued against is that the accommodations they languished in made Camp Gitmo look like a swanky New York City hotel. Guards there are not going out of their way to provide American delicacies or to treat our holy books and founding documents with a nauseating degree of deference.

In China, one house church pastor sentenced to prison was allowed to languish and suffer without access to his diabetic medicine. And it could be argued that he can be considered one of the lucky ones. It has been claimed that organs are regularly harvested from dissident Tibetans and Christians.

If Red China had the illegal alien problem plaguing the United States, do you honestly believe authorities there would do little than look over the papers of these transnational vagrants, whisper sweet nothings in their ears, and release them on their recognizance which many have very little of to begin with given their connections to the drug trade, human smuggling, and assorted gangs. And given the propensity of a certain atrocity to occur throughout Chinese history (be it during the Great Cultural Revolution or in rumors a few years back regarding what was being done to fetuses), if a wife in China told her husband that they would be having a little Mexican later that evening that wouldn't mean he should expect to have a taco or burrito for dinner.

Many infringements upon human rights stem from an improper understanding of the relationship between social institutions such as government and the individual. In America, the extremes of these have been minimized in part due to the assumption that the individual possesses worth of his own created in the image of God. The individual is not owned by the state.

As an officially atheistic socialist country, the Chinese Communist Party and state see themselves as the highest authority with these determining that it is not so much the individual that counts but rather the group as a whole. After all, if we are simply nothing more than animated primordial ooze as the Darwinian insists and upon which Marxist-Leninism rests, it is kind of hard to get worked up over one person when there are over a billion more walking around easily capable of taking the place of a defective cog in the machine of state.

Since in the Communist system you are less an individual, the more the system provides of those things deemed to be necessities by the overseers (under whom fewer things end up being defined as necessities than in a free market economy) in such command societies such commodities extended only so that the goals mapped out for you by the COMMUNITY might be achieved. In a constitutional republican system, it is believed that the individual is best suited to determine for themselves which needs and desires should take priority for oneself and one's family. Granted, the system is not perfect, but it is far preferable and more in line with what God intended for humanity.

Thus, that is no doubt why China would rank homelessness as a human rights violation while not batting an eye at putting a bullet in the back of the head of a House Church pastor so that his kidneys might remain undamaged for organ harvesting. In America, those who love liberty must first inquire as to why the individual is homeless before formulating an appropriate policy response.

Though it is not politically correct to mention it these days and even if they represent only a fraction of those without a domicile, frankly there are those that simply refuse to do that which is necessary to maintain a residence or they engage in behaviors that cause their homes to be lost. Of those that went into vapors when Glenn Beck critiqued the subject, tell me where is the social justice to take from those working and scrimping in order to hoe their own path to give it to those living irresponsibly and demanding a standard of living far above a subsistence level with a few basic comforts that they are not willing to exert the labor necessary to acquire?

One might feel sorry for the children of such deadbeats and somehow provide enough for the children to get by without hardly a single bread crumb going to such pathetic excuses for parents. It is preferable that such outreach come from the private sector free to point out the deficiencies of individual character and the blunt steps necessary to correct the situation. Often in these times where we must constantly walk around on eggshells for fear of offending some self-enlightened leftist do-gooder with a law degree or a bullhorn and definitely too much time on their hands, government is unable to articulate those steps necessary for complete restoration.

And while we are at it, perhaps something needs to be said about and to these women that fall for scumbag men. If you find the boozing and carousing attractive when you are young only to have it morph into not knowing how you are going to feed the five kids because he's blowing the milk money on beer and backhanded you across the face because you dared ask where he was the night before, other than for tossing his rear in jail, don't expect much pity and especially don't expect some behaved guy you wouldn't give the time of day to 15 years ago to take you in as if he has some obligation to provide for another man's progeny.

One of contemporary liberalism's most glaring intellectual deficiencies is that it assumes that the remainder of the world, when you come down to it, lives no differently than the people of the United States. Before we pull out the sackcloth and ashes to belittle ourselves embarrassingly on the world stage, let’s at least make sure we don’t waste the effort on autocrats, thieves, cutthroats, and homicidal mass murderers.

by Frederick Meekins

Murkowski Loss Underscores Trend: Appropriators Are Biting the Dust

Drew McKissick — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:52:20 -0400

Now that Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has conceded, she has become the latest victim of a growing trend: Appropriations Committee members who have lost this year.

Once thought of as a powerful committee for members wanting to "bring home the bacon," in today's political environment, sitting on an appropriations panel seems to be an albatross.
"Earmarking is a corrupt practice, plain and simple," says Andy Roth, a vice president at the conservative Club for Growth. "Voters understand that, but insecure politicians do not. And that's why the old adage that pork buys you votes doesn't work. It costs you votes."

Earlier this year, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who also sits on the committee, lost her primary challenge to Gov. Rick Perry. Perry's strategy was to run against Washington spending -- and it worked.

t's also worth noting that U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, who was ousted at a Utah GOP state convention earlier this year, also sat on the panel.

Other committee members are leaving the Senate on their own. New Hampshire's Judd Gregg is retiring, as is Ohio Sen. George Voinovich. And Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback recently won his state's GOP gubernatorial primary. ...

Murkowski Out In Alaska.

Skip MacLure — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:51:41 -0400

Another incumbent, this time a Republican, has fallen by the wayside. Lisa Murkowski becomes the the seventh incumbent to fall to the wrath of the voters this year.

Joe Miller and Lisa Murkowski

Murkowski was defeated by conservative lawyer Joe Miller of Fairbanks for the Republican primary. Miller came out of nowhere, backed by the Tea-Party groups and aided as well by an endorsement from Sarah Palin.

I’m thinking that even the thickest of the Democrat faithful must be aware of the upcoming shellacking that the DeMarxist government of Barack Hussein Obama is going to take in November… only 62 days away now.

We as Conservatives must now rededicate ourselves to the final drive to the November 2 elections. Mark Levin calls the upcoming elections “the most important of our country’s history”, and I have to agree. Never have I seen and felt so much intensity on the run up to an election. read more »

Two or Three Things I Know About the Iraq War

scottspiegel — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:58:10 -0400

In anticipation of President Barack Obama’s primetime address to the nation last night on the Iraq War, columnist Eugene Robinson wrote, “Now that the Iraq War is over… only one thing is clear about the outcome: We didn’t win.”

Actually, I can think of about 12 things that are clearer about the outcome of the Iraq War than the conclusion that we didn’t win: (1) Obama was wrong about the surge, (2) Vice President Joe Biden was wrong about the surge, (3) President George W. Bush was right to ignore Congressional Democrats and the Iraq Study Group and order the surge in 2007, (4) insurgent violence dropped precipitously after the surge was implemented, (5) if Democrats had had their way on the surge in Iraq, per Harry Reid’s declaration that “this war is lost,” it would have been lost, (6) Biden was wrong about dividing Iraq into ethnic partitions, (7) Biden is a loon for claiming that the Iraq War could be one of the great successes of the Obama administration, (8) Iraq is now the fourth-most politically free Middle Eastern country, after democracy Israel, republic Lebanon, and constitutional monarchy Morocco, (9) General David Petraeus’ Iraq surge set the model for beating back insurgents and winning in Afghanistan, (10) despite liberals’ bleating about its expense, eight years of the Iraq War—including training and preparation for the March 2003 invasion—now turn out to have cost less ($709 billion) than Obama’s useless trillion-dollar stimulus bill, (11) Bush’s popularity didn’t sink to the level that Obama’s is at now until late 2005, two-and-a-half years into the Iraq War and well into Bush’s second term, and (12) Obama’s address last night was full of bromides, revisionist history, and platitudinous prescriptions for the future that have little relation to what will actually need to be done in the War on Terror according to a fair evaluation of conditions on the ground. read more »

Judges, marriage and self-government

Drew McKissick — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:40:52 -0400

In referring to our form of government, Alexander Hamilton once said, “Here sir, the people govern”. But given the actions of some of the more arrogant members of our judiciary, there seems to be room for doubt.

In 2000, the people of California approved a statewide referendum defining marriage in that state as the union of one man and one woman, but in 2008 their state supreme court threw out that law (by a four to three vote of the court). So in November, 2008 voters approved a state constitutional amendment to overturn their supreme court’s decision and again take control of the definition of marriage in their state, just as voters in over thirty states have done.

It has been a mass expression of sovereign will on a single subject unlike few (if any) others in our nation’s history – and one at which activists judges continue to thumb their noses.

A few weeks ago, federal district Judge Vaughan Walker gave us the latest example of contempt for popular sovereignty by overturning California’s state constitutional amendment. It’s only the latest round of what has been an ongoing battle with activist judges.

The problem is that we have too few real judges in our country, and far too many would-be judicial oligarchs who see themselves as the “supreme” branch of our government, rather than just one of three. It’s the product of a philosophy that sees our constitutional structure as an eighteenth century anachronism, rather than the law of the land. read more »

Tidal wave? Record 10 point edge for GOP on generic ballot

Drew McKissick — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:31:48 -0400

Democrats thought things couldn't get much worse on the electoral front — and then they went home to campaign.

A new Gallup poll released Monday shows Republicans with a record 10-point edge over Democrats on the "generic ballot" test — the question of whether voters prefer a Democratic or Republican congressional candidate. It’s the largest GOP polling edge at this stage in the 68 years of the generic ballot poll.

While party optimists say Democrats may cling to a small majority after the November election, an increasing number of Democratic strategists now say privately that they fear the House is already lost.

The Gallup poll, coming at the end of a brutal August for Democrats and President Barack Obama, reinforces the rapidly forming prevailing view that the horizon is as bleak for Democrats as it ever has been.

Indeed, the Republicans' 51 percent to 41 percent for Democrats on the generic ballot poll represents the largest Republican edge heading into a midterm election since the poll was first conducted in the 1942 election cycle, giving them greater reason for optimism than in the weeks leading up to their 1952 and 1994 House takeovers. It also represents a stunning reversal from the 6-point lead Democrats posted in the poll mid-July.

Worse for Democrats, the news comes after they've spent most of the last month on the campaign trail, touting their accomplishments for local communities and trying to remind voters of what life was like when George W. Bush was president. ...

Sixty Three Days!!!

Skip MacLure — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:57:21 -0400

In the five day news cycle of politics, that’s the blink of an eye. Liberals got a good look at the real America when Glenn Beck’s call to God and country caused a mere 600,000 or so of you to pay your own way to travel to Washington DC.

I wrote in February 2009 that there was a ‘different’ feel out here… people were visibly, and more importantly audibly, upset at Barack Hussein Obama’s abrupt shift to the left. I said, that in this day and age of instant communication, he wouldn’t be able to hide who he really is for long.

I was gratified to be right, as layer after layer of spin, cover and distortion were stripped from Obama’s public persona, and people were able to see beyond the glitz and canned goodies into the frightening, gray world of deprivation and poverty that would be the inevitable result of the triumph of the left.

The people came together, first in town hall meetings and then at the Tea Parties which sprung up all around the country like mushrooms after a spring rain. Their message was remarkably consistent, though they had no apparent leadership on anything other than a local volunteer level.

Conservative values, the defeat of the Obama agenda and the reversal of health care, smaller government, tax cuts and preservation of the Republic are consistent messages throughout.
We The People… we’re coming to take our country back. Then we’re going to be asking some very pointed questions. read more »

Education department pushed employees to attend Al Sharpton's Rally

Drew McKissick — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 10:23:09 -0400

President Obama's top education official urged government employees to attend a rally that the Rev. Al Sharpton organized to counter a larger conservative event on the Mall.

"ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the 'Reclaim the Dream' rally and march," began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.

Sharpton created the event after Glenn Beck announced a massive Tea Party "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial, where King spoke in 1963.

The Washington Examiner learned of the e-mail from a Department of Education employee who felt uncomfortable with Duncan's request.

Although the e-mail does not violate the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from participating in political campaigns, Education Department workers should feel uneasy, said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute.

"It sends a signal that activity on behalf of one side of a political debate is expected within a department. It's highly inappropriate ... even in the absence of a direct threat," Boaz said. "If we think of a Bush cabinet official sending an e-mail to civil servants asking them to attend a Glenn Beck rally, there would be a lot of outrage over that." ...

Inconvenient stem cell facts

Drew McKissick — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:44:55 -0400

When he announced his policy expanding federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, President Obama was not timid about proclaiming its benefits. It would, he announced, hasten "a day when words like 'terminal' and 'incurable' are finally retired from our vocabulary."

You thought Obama wanted to establish death panels? Actually, he seems to think he can confer immortality.

That announcement, made in March of last year, dismantled the limits imposed by the Bush administration. The change, in Obama's view, was a triumph over ignorance and ideology.

His executive order was, the president claimed, "about protecting free and open inquiry" and letting scientists "do their jobs, free from manipulation and coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it's inconvenient." When science wins, he led us to believe, we all win.

Conspicuously absent from those declarations were facts that Obama would prefer to omit because they are -- well, inconvenient. But those facts did not elude U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who on Monday said the revised policy violates federal law.

What facts? A restriction approved by Congress in 1996, and repeatedly renewed, says federal money may not be used for "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed." But the point of Obama's new policy was to pay for experiments using stem cells harvested from embryos that are killed in the process. ...

Obama’s Retreat.

Skip MacLure — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:25:58 -0400

It’s not his Waterloo… that comes later… it’s more like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. It’s like Obama is absolutely overwhelmed with the job of the presidency. Nothing in his background, or training, had prepared him for the reality of the biggest job in the world.

I think Obama was fascinated by the idea of being president. I don’t think he, or the cabal of leftists he has gathered around him, have a clue as to how to run anything, much less this country. The Marxists have managed to unite this country as perhaps nothing else could have.

Obama has had a tin ear from the outset. He has proven to be so ideologically driven that not even the impending Conservative tsunami looming in November will sway him from his vision of fundamentally changing American life and values. This is not a Bill Clinton, with someone like Dick Morris to convince him to move to the center in this center-right country.

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Bulking Up: US Fuels Israeli War Machine.

Skip MacLure — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:37:40 -0400

And a thirsty one it is indeed, as they all are. The United States has sold Israel two billion dollars worth of military fuel stocks. That’s about 444 million gallons of JP-8, unleaded and diesel fuel.

Israel’s air force would use prodigious quantities of fuel in an all-out air assault against her enemies that could last for days. The tanks and mobile artillery won’t be slow consuming huge amounts of fuel either. This, right in the face of Barack Obama’s biggest push to neuter Israel, by promising a ‘nuclear shield’ to protect her from her enemies… if she promises not to attack Iran.
Note to our Israeli friends: Barack Hussein’s promises are as empty as his economic policies.

It’s remarkable that the administration that has done everything in its power to prevent the Israelis from defending themselves against the real and present danger that is fundamentalist Iran, is the same one that is supplying the one strategic assurance Israel needed to prosecute a sustained military effort.

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That Was The Week That Was #4.

Skip MacLure — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 12:37:17 -0400

After the excitement of the primaries at the start of the week, it was pretty much back to business-as-usual. The same old rhetoric, blame-shifting and outright lies from the doomed Democrats.

Joe Biden

The howler of the week was courtesy of none other than Joe Biden, gaffe-master extraordinaire. Stating that the economy recovery was slower than he would like, he insisted that we are headed in the right direction. So was the Titanic, Joe. It doesn’t take a master cartographer to read the economy map. If you take the Cartesian coordinates of unemployment, private sector expansion and market confidence, you’ll probably find yourself somewhere in the Bermuda triangle of failed stimuli.

I’ll give Joe one thing… his timing was impeccable, the mark of a gifted comedian. A few days after his remarks, a GDP figure of 1.6% was announced which, in any known universe except the Democrats’, is hardly a move in the right direction.

On Wednesday, it was revealed that former GOP Chairman Ken Mehlman had announced to family and associates that he was gay. While his reluctance (or should I say hesitancy?) to ‘come out’ earlier was perhaps due to possible reactions of Republican colleagues, it was the liberals who supplied some vicious character attacks. While I do not agree with Mr Mehlman’s now open support of gay marriage (not to be confused with civil partnerships, the legal implications of which I have no objection), I applaud his courage and his remarks on the dangers that Islam poses to minority groups. read more »