Q(s)OTD

There are soooo very many today……
Let’s start with Kim Strassel who’s whole column is worth a read:

ObamaCare is alive. And now we have us an election.

And in that vein is John Galt over at ThreeSources [bold and brackets are mine]:

Finally they [they being ‘regular folk’, though his thought is was more specific] may see a real difference between a country governed by Democrats and one governed by Republicans. Electoral politics is not just about guns and abortions anymore. The debate will finally be about whether or not our government can make its citizens do things whether they want to or not.

Thank you Justice Roberts for ripping off the Band-aid of liberty. Our polity may now either heal or bleed to death.

And of course the entire RNC new ad via Hot Air that is up and brilliant.

Yes, the RNC got themselves a ton of money yesterday along with Mitt Romney.
Andrew Saul on Twitter:

Thank you to everyone who donated at http://www.mittromney.com today! Raised $3.2 million online & counting! ‪#FullRepeal‬

3.2 million in one day!

UPDATE: The dollars raised yesterday by Mitt and the RNC were 4.6 million from 47,000 people.
Those were $100 donations my friends. NOT from the millionaires that the GOP theoretically have in their pocket. Go America.

And from our Attorney General in Colorado, John Suthers, who keeps the message basic:

“When you say this is a president who forces you to buy a product and tax you if you don’t, people understand that,” Suthers said. “I think it helps my party.”

….my rundown….Roberts may have made a brilliant move if and only if the election is so clear in November that we never end up with another Obama again. That’s a big if and his legacy will depend on it. Either way…it’s on and I, along with others are fired up. I even got into it on Facebook yesterday which I have not done in the past. No more holding back from me…nosirree. This is the fight.

And today in honor of the opinion and Eric Holder’s deep respect (ha) for his being in contempt of Congress, we’ll give you a nice Friday Calf blog.
Does that make it a calf pie?

UPDATE: Perhaps a more realistic view out of Commentary (ht JG), but really, do we need to be realistic. There IS something to that feeling of hope, no matter who co-opted the term.

Conservatives who are finding solace in potential political implications–that the decision will unite the Tea Party behind Mitt Romney, that Obama will get tagged for increasing taxes, etc.–are setting themselves up for disappointment. As of March, only half of Americans even knew that ObamaCare was still on the books. As of today, they’re going to be bombarded with the message that Obama won, that the Supreme Court signed on to ObamaCare, and that anyway, the issue is closed and we need to be talking about jobs.

The saddest thing I have seen in all of this comes from those with no real beliefs, only ‘what benefits them’ or ‘eh…it’s something to try’….or ‘it’s a step in the right direction’.
It must be empty to live without believing in anything. I’m not talking about God, I’m talking about any driving core belief on which you base your decisions and opinions. Like freedom. Or the Constitution. Or yes, God. Something.

Actually Commentary left jg with an actual realistic hope vs the unrealistic silver lining kind. Read the whole thing because it’s a good and accurate twist that brings up back to Kim Strassel and her “Now we have an election”.

Hopefully “the people” become engaged.

“It’s the right thing to do”

Per Obama, his decision on illegals who arrived before the age of 16, are under the age of 30, have been in the United States for five years, have no criminal record, and attend high school or college or be a military veteran is the “right thing to do”.

I don’t disagree, but for whom is it the “right thing to do”? He keeps setting up all of these new rules but they hardly ever seem fair to me.
I’m 31, came here when I was 5 and this doesn’t apply?
I’m 18, came here when I was 16 and this doesn’t apply?
I’m 21 and a citizen and can’t get a job….how is this right for me?
I’m the employee of 20 of these folks and paying them the prevailing wage, when they all quit because there are now better opportunities….is this right for me?
I’m the one who’s been waiting in line at the immigration office for 4 years to get into the US legally. I don’t really have skills, but can contribute. Is this right for me?

Obama has no idea how things work in the real world. These 1 million people can now come out from under the shadows….and maybe this is a good, for them. But they will no longer need to be yard crews, or vegetable pickers or dish washers. So we’ll need a whole new crew willing to work in the shadows and suddenly there is even more competition for that job opening at the factory.

Luckily Mexico’s economy is doing better, yet still I suspect there will be plenty of folks who think “5 years?….I can hide for 5 years until junior can become legal there….it will certainly be better than dealing with the cartel situation here!”. And we’re back to square 1.

I’ll say it again.
There is a line of folks wanting to be here in the US. Give these people who were dragged here as young people a pass towards the beginning of that line, but don’t skip the whole thing.
And change the requirements, but keep the dang line. Those who have patiently waited have been screwed again.

UPDATE: Hey someone agrees with me!!! Thank you SooperMexican for writing this post. It’s must clarer than all of mine.

Other People’s Money

This is most hilarious. It has to be Friday, right?
E.J. Dionne, concerned about Citizen’s United and all that money, on the right, is asking that millionaires and billionaires on the left agree to price match for candidates getting slaughtered from money on the other side. I’m not kidding.

A small group of billionaires, aided perhaps by a few super-millionaires, should form an alliance to offset the spending of the other billionaires and super-millionaires. They might call themselves Billionaires Against Billionaire Politics. These public-spirited citizens would announce that they will match every penny raised by the various super PACs on the other side.

In principle, they could commit themselves to balancing off whichever side — conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat — is dominating the airwaves and the fundraising. The idea would be to destroy the incentives for the very rich to buy the election. If shrewd wealthy people realized that every $10 million they put up would be met immediately by $10 million from the other side, they might lose interest in the exercise.

And why would they do this? Apparently because EJ doesn’t realize that people work hard, make good decisions, accomplish things and get paid in order to use their money for what they think is good. EJ would just like to go ahead and spend it for them, because, well, it’s only fair. And wouldn’t it be “shrewd” in the end?

ROFL

In other election news, at the Bethesda Elementary School in very Liberal, Montgomery County Maryland, where politicians go to get out of DC, the student body election is being held. And what are the kids running on? Who knows….they can’t say lest the election get too exciting.

“Candidates at the affluent, 500-student school, where many parents have political connections of one sort or another, can’t give out buttons. They can’t wear T-shirts bearing their names. They can’t talk about their competition. And they can’t make promises. Not even about school lunches.”
A 9-year-old candidate for vice president told the Post, “We can’t say certain things because the kids would get too excited.” Of course politics should be purged of excitement. But lest you get the wrong idea — that liberalism would, if it could, so firmly restrict political speech that elective offices might as well be allocated by lotteries — the school authorities do permit candidates to post signs. Just six per candidate, however, and only as long as the signs say nothing about promises or rivals — or perhaps anything else.
The Post says the “constraints” were first imposed “in the 2008 election cycle to keep campaign expenditures from spiraling out of control.”

With this just being Thursday, I’m excited for the news tomorrow! How much more fun can it get?

Obama’s Bad Week

So the Washington Post has one, two, three, four columns about Obama’s bad week.
These do not include the news stories.

The coup de grace though has got to be this editorial from the Wall Street Journal.
The writing itself is a work of art. Here’s the intro:

On Friday House Republicans released more documents that expose the collusion between the health-care industry and the White House that produced ObamaCare, and what a story of crony capitalism it is. If the trove of emails proves anything, it’s that the Tea Party isn’t angry enough.

Over the last year, the Energy and Commerce Committee has taken Nancy Pelosi’s advice to see what’s in the Affordable Care Act and how it passed. The White House refused to cooperate beyond printing out old press releases, but a dozen trade groups turned over thousands of emails and other files. A particular focus is the drug lobby, President Obama’s most loyal corporate ally in 2009 and 2010.

The business refrain in those days was that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. But it turns out Big Pharma was also serving as head chef, maître d’hotel and dishwasher. Though some parts of the story have been reported before, the emails make clear that ObamaCare might never have passed without the drug companies. Thank you, Pfizer.

Go, read. Remember. “The Tea Party isn’t angry enough”.

The conclusion:

The lesson for Republicans if they do end up running the country next year is that their job is to restore the free and fair market that creates broad-based economic growth. The temptation will be to return for the sake of power to the methods of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff. If they do, voters will return the GOP to private life as surely as they did the Democrats in 2010.

The warning to business is also fundamental. Crony capitalism undermines public trust in capitalism itself and risks blowback that erodes the free market that private companies need to prosper and that underlies the productivity and competitiveness of the U.S. economy. The political benefits of cronyism are inherently temporary, but the damage it does is far more lasting.

Amen.

UPDATE: Kudos to JG – yes, my big sister – for getting those emails and the information out on the crafty ways Obama got his health care act to pass.

Here is a nice link to numerous articles on the subject. ht jg
And Video!

UPDATE 2: Comment of the day from the Ed Morrissey version of this story:

UPDATE 3: His bad week has definitely moved into this week as Univision, yes, Univision, complains that the Obama campaign used images that made it look like they were for Obama.

Jorge Ramos is not a happy man. (click on cc for the subtitles, or click through to SooperMexican for the translation)

Data

I love this data blog.

I’ve been reading more of the Scott Walker recall election coverage, and was struck by the frequent references to Walker being “the first governor to survive a recall election”. Of course this made me curious how many governor’s had been recalled. I remembered the California governor a few years back, so I had been imagining it would be at least a dozen or so.

Click through to see the number.

Puritanism-or one big run-on post

Jeff Goldstein is pointing out today that Romney supporters got played. How? Romney just selected Mike Leavitt as his transition leader. Mr. Leavitt was Bush II’s head of HHS and now is pushing for Obamacare’s state exchanges, and making money doing so.
Conservatives are worried.

Romney was a big proponent of exchanges and supported them as governor, and now has named a leading Republican advocate of them to a key post. The Romney campaign still insists to Matt Lewis that they still plan on repealing Obamacare. But even if we trust that’s the case (something that deserves greater skepticism given the Leavitt news) the question is what replaces Obamacare. Romney has been incredibly vague about how he would reform the health care system in the absence of Obamacare. The danger is that he could end up replacing it with a system that still has exchanges, but exchanges that are billed as having fewer regulations, lower subsidies and giving more flexibility to states. The problem is that this would still put the basic exchange infrastructure in place that a future Democratic administration could build on so the country would eventually wind up with Obamacare anyway – or something worse.

No one was played. Romeny-Romneycare. Obama-Obamacare. Newt-Mandate. The GOP has been for mandates for years. It wasn’t until the Tea Party awoke that mandates became the mantra that was going to kill Obamacare and oust Obama.

Until/unless we are willing to not treat poor people, there is a problem with health care in this country. Am I a pure conservative? Not even close. I don’t believe in the mandate, however, I do believe that unless we give hospitals leeway to oust patients who can’t pay, then we need to be taxed to cover things like the catastrophic circumstances of the poor. I’m good with them having no choices, and going to the cheapest hospitals possible, but I doubt we’ll ever get back to those halcyon days or yore when a privately run hospital could choose who they would treat or not.

Moving on to other subjects like marijuana. As a good libertarian I should think that dope should be legal. As a caring person I definitely think medical marijuana should be allowed. As a realist, I know that 1 in every 41 people in Denver does not need a prescription for dope. And as a person who just wants to mind their own business, I do not want my neighbors smoke in my summertime open windows.

Longmont decided to allow dispensaries for a short time and the city exploded with dispensaries. My friends were figuring out how to refit their garages with grow lights. Should I approve? Officially yes and if I get to vote on the issue I probably would vote yes, but I despise it. I’m uncomfortable with dopers on the road (and yes, we all know that THC is in your system long after the joint is gone) and I want people in my town to have more energy and drive than the majority of people who smoke dope have.

Moving on to the farm bill.…should we have one? Nope. Let the free market decide. BUT….I don’t want to rely on Chile for all our food stuffs. Maybe we need a few incentives just to keep people learned in farming here.

Jonah Goldberg has recently been chastised for being a cranky old/young man. But I kind of agree….I am not pure. I want tattoos to go away and for people to rely more on family than government.

Jeff, I will vote for Romney. Not because he’s the perfect candidate, he’s not. But he’s a far better person than Obama is and his ideas at least lean my direction. This country is not pure. Half are lefties (or rather less than half but still close). They want this country to move European or Canadian or New Zealandish. They’re angry and they’re wrong. How many times recently have we heard this country is over because things aren’t going our way. This dude feels the same. [ht Darleen Click]

We can stay pure, and stay bitter, and angry and dejected and defeated, or not.
Romney is not the death of conservativism. Vote for him, or live with 4 more years of Obama. Are they birds of a feather? No.

Liberty on the Rocks

An open invitation that sounds like fun! ht John Kranz, who I may finally meet tonight after all these years.

Join us on Monday, May 21st, for our inaugural meeting to kick off the Flatirons chapter of Liberty on the Rocks. After you’re personally welcomed by co-founders Mike Shelton and Bryan Cutsinger you’ll be treated to the keynote speech, Why Freedom Works, delivered by none other than Representative Donald Beezley. You’ll then have the opportunity to network with other local liberty supporters. Come for the event, stay for the food and networking – you’re guaranteed a great evening no matter what!

This event is open to the public, you’re welcome to invite friends!

___________

Liberty on the Rocks Flatirons is a group of individuals who gather to discuss political and economic topics in an effort to continue the ever-growing movement to promote freedom and individual liberty.

That Disappearing Tea Party

I just posted the other day about the Tea Party NOT having disappeared.

JK over at Three Sources today noted the same thing along with this…..

……we are demonstrating a superb mix of idealism and pragmatism. We have less time to march now that so many of us are State Delegates and Precinct Committee Chairs.

Unlike the “99%” who block traffic, cost taxpayers money, sing, chant, insist that we’re apparently part of them by claiming to be the “99%”, and then don’t bother to vote, Tea Partiers love the way this country works, realizes that over the years we’ve all become a bit lax and that it’s time to step up. Thank you to all of them, delegates, chairs, primary voters, bloggers, leaders of new Facebook groups, etc, etc.

Breitbart lives.

The Election

There is so much today that makes me want to try to convince you NOT to vote for Obama, but I will not insult your intelligence. You wouldn’t vote for the guy, would you?

I mean, this is the man who suggests to grown up adult women that yes they can be both fashionable and powerful. ahh, thanks.

This is the man who, continued with that speech by acknowledging he’s a loser, while suggesting everyone should vote for him.
Which of the things in bold did he work to reduce?

“This recession has been more brutal, the job losses steeper,” he said. “Politics seems nastier. Congress more gridlocked than ever. Some folks in the financial world have not exactly been model corporate citizens.

“No wonder that faith in our institutions has never been lower, particularly when good news doesn’t get the same kind of ratings as bad news anymore,” Obama said. “Every day you receive a steady stream of sensationalism and scandal and stories with a message that suggest change isn’t possible; that you can’t make a difference; that you won’t be able to close that gap between life as it is and life as you want it to be.

This same man has an ad out now dissing Romney for a plant closing that happened at Bain Capital while a different Bain guy who is now an Obama bundler was handling the business.

This is the man who’s White House leaked information about how the CIA stopped the latest underwear bomber. Turns out the guy was recruited by British Intelligence who also ran the operation!

The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as “despicable,” attributing them to the Obama administration.

What a disgrace.
But we’re not done.

This story of Obamacare mandates, this time mandates for agreement for governmentthought, has come to fruition and the law has passed forcing CEO’s to sign their names to letters (read again: sign their name to letters) crediting health care rebates and internal efficiencies to Obamacare.

ps this is AFTER threatening health insurance companies from letting people know their rates are going UP due to Obamacare.

Obama administration officials, who have expressed frustration that Americans don’t know more about consumer-friendly parts of the law, hope that tapping insurers and doctors to spread the word will help lift public opinion of the law. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in a speech to doctors last month, urged them to use their authority “to educate people” about the benefits of the law. “We don’t need to tell them that the Affordable Care Act is going to change the world. We just need to tell them how the law can help, right now,” she said.

Oh let’s not forget the digging up dirt on those who contribute to his opponent.

Or Fast and Furious or……oh wait, here is a nice list of “firsts” for the President.

I need to end on something funny because all of the above has risen my blood pressure and I’m sure yours too. So here is a great QOTD from Michael Gerson regarding Obama and his use of religion for his own purposes.

Even when Obama changes his political views, Jesus somehow comes around to agreeing with him.

Vote Romney!! I can’t take 4 more years of this current President.

The Tea Party

In my mind, and in many other people’s minds, no matter who “claims” tea party leadership, the Tea Party is a name to rally under for those of us who realize where this county may very well be headed if those of us who don’t want don’t start standing up and getting loud.

American Thinker [ht Scott] has a column up suggesting that the Tea Party is not as dead as many have said.

Here’s the end of “Attack of the Tea Party Zombies”:

Before the week was out, Michael Barone observed that Obama’s re-election was far from inevitable.
My friend, Rick Ballard was predicting “Just as 2010 was much worse for [the] Democrat Party than 2006 was for the GOP, 2012 is going to [be] far, far worse for the Democrats than 2008 was for the GOP.”
By Friday, Rasmussen, the pollster I most highly regard, indicated Mitt Romney had a 7 point lead over Obama.

If Obama wins this next election and the house and senate are lost, then perhaps us Tea Partiers will just quietly retreat to ask “Who is John Galt?” as the country changes in ways that are not sustainable. I’m not sure if this would be that kind of definitive election or not, but it sure can feel that way at times.

What is clear is that the “Tea Party” is not dead. I’m still here.