Posts Tagged → political
PA Leadership Conference gets better and better every year
Thanks to the hard work of Lowman Henry, Dan Mosel and others, the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference was a resounding success.
Scott Davis did the straw poll (I have not been emailed the results; I voted for Cruz and Ben Carson), and despite running around on a million errands, he managed to keep a chipper air.
Chris Liliks was center stage Mister Organization, and USMC Col. Frank Ryan gave the most convincing Pledge of Allegiance ever. Frank and I were opponents in the 2009-2010 four-way congressional race for the then-Tim Holden seat, now gerrymandered into something unrecognizable. Frank is a great guy and it brought me a lot of pleasure to see him again and shake his hand.
Dauphin County Commissioner Jeff Haste had endless patience discussing with me the dynamics and aggravations of the establishment versus the grass roots, and although he was dead wrong on every single thing, he still kindly sat with me and provided great company (as well as thereby serving as the genesis of some great political rumors…).
Business guru Fred Anton provided opening remarks that impressed everyone at our table, as he succinctly hit on every hot political and economic issue in a Spartan speech that artfully blended politics and economy without sounding so dullingly or partisanly political. Vote for PA Supreme Court candidates who are going to fill out their full ten-year terms, Fred told us. That’s not bad advice. But remember that the legislature is considering raising the mandatory retirement age for judges, so candidates who might only serve for two years now could get on the court and then serve seven years, which is plenty long enough.
Rick Santorum gave a heartfelt, moving, extemporaneous speech about Iran that brought inspired tears to the eyes of many audience members. It was a stellar performance that reminded everyone in the packed ballroom why Santorum is still in the political leadership mix – he operates from the heart and from principle, not from from some shallow, meaningless political calculation. Iran’s danger to Western civilization was the topic of Santorum’s speech, where he pointed out that both Republicans and Democrats are failing to lead on this critical security issue. He also hit the Republican Party hard for not incorporating working people into their mantra of money and prosperity, suggesting that if the R’s miss this much more, then maybe it is time for everyone to become Independent or some other third party. Ouch! And he is 100% right, as can be seen from the machinations in the PA 15th Senate District, where yet another super-rich businessman with the articulate capabilities of a junk yard dog is the “chosen one.” If you ask me, and who am I to criticize (;-D), this looks like another one-dimensional effort to lose the seat to the Dems once again.
Senator Pat Toomey gave one of his trademark understated policy speeches where you’re half-way into it and falling asleep before you realize “Oh My God this is serious stuff.” Although I do not agree with Toomey that the senate Democrats should have been allowed to exploit all of the procedural niceties they did not allow the Republicans for five years. Recall that as US Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid conducted “the nuclear option” and dismantled 150 years of Senate procedural rules designed to let the minority have some say and have some votes. Recall that for five years there were something like a total of 16 actual votes on the Senate floor, a historic embarrassment and indication that American democracy was held hostage by the Senate Democrats. Despite suffering under Reid’s mismanagement, Toomey believes in being “nice” now with his Republican majority, somehow proving that the Republicans are nicer than the mean ol’ Democrats. I think he is mistaken. But I am not a US Senator, so I have little to say about it but what I write here. Let us not take away here from Senator Toomey his outstanding and laser-like focus on Iran’s nuclear threat to America.
Everything went as smoothly as possible, with the only unusual thing the large walk-out by a significant portion of the audience when Grover Norquist took the stage. A couple things struck me about Mister Jihadi Norquist. One, he is remarkably small in stature and frame, almost child-size with a squeaky high voice, like the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. This may explain his need for a larger-than-life personality and desire to dominate everyone. The second unusual thing I noticed was how Norquist required all kinds of security guys, and a big limo, and superstar treatment, in contrast to Santorum, Toomey, and other well-known speakers who just walked right in to the Radisson with a “Hey How are Ya?” attitude and hallos and handshakes and other casual chit-chat on their way to the podium.
It seems that Mister Muslim Brotherhood Secret Operative Blow Up America From The Inside Grover Norquist requires lots of marching band accompaniment to look and feel good. I was happy when I looked around and saw the steady stream of audience members heading for the doors with me, while my colleague remained behind at our front-and-center table “so I can say I got to hear Grover lie in person to a whole room of people.” In other words, it does not appear that Mister Ollie Snackbar Nukem Norquist enjoys much political cover any longer. He was asked to suspend himself from the NRA board of directors four days ago, an indication that his weaseling ways and sneaky days are numbered.
So that is my brief round-up and I could write so much more, but why should I? Really, you should come to next year’s PLC and see how grand it is for yourself.
A lot of work, buried under the Internet
For about a year I wrote for watchdogwire.com, a professionally led citizen reporter-fueled website that exposed a lot of local issues the mainstream media will never write about. Then the website changed, a few months ago, and my favorite editor, Jana, left to find another job. All of the essays I wrote for Watchdogwire remain enshrined there, cryogenically frozen in some Internet deep-freeze visible only to those who really want to dig around. Here is the URL to those essays.
What is in a political “party”?
The Communist Party.
The Democrat Party.
The Republican Party.
What is the difference between these three and many other active political parties?
Their party agenda is what defines them.
Their cause, their unifying principles, their policies and political platforms, these are the things that separate political parties from one another.
All political parties have their own structure, their functionaries, their own bureaucracies, lawyers, and bosses. All have become self-interested organisms, influenced by a constellation of special interest groups. At a certain point, the party exists simply for its own benefit.
But what happens when these parties begin to bleed into one another, when they begin to blend across their boundaries and blur their boundaries? When they lose their distinctive appeal?
When political parties lose their way, do they lose their reason for being?
Although my own Republican Party has pledged overall to serve the taxpayers, plenty of fellow Republicans hold personal and official positions contrary to the interests of taxpayers, voters, and citizens. Their positions are subtle, often only visible in the important background decisions they make.
Many times in recent history, the Republican Party has been used as a weapon to silence voices of political activists who sought to return the brand to its more basic principles and its more elementary purpose, which would naturally be defined as the cause of liberty.
It is my own hope and the hope of many other dedicated citizens that the Republican Party, also known as the establishment, will stay out of any upcoming elections around Central Pennsylvania.
It is one thing for a candidate to ask, say, State Rep. Ron Marsico for his individual support, or to ask individual party committee members for their support. It is entirely another thing for the Dauphin County Republican Committee to endorse a candidate so that the Pennsylvania Republican Party can spend money to challenge a Republican candidate’s nomination ballots, because he (or she) is too independent-minded. Or too “conservative.” Or not enough in the pocket of some party boss.
My experience tells me that this controlling, anti-freedom behavior has happened so often that many political activists are inclined to become political Independents, which means that the Republican base, the most passionate Republican voters, become driven away from the party and become less interested in its success. We saw this with the past election, where former governor Tom Corbett had little street game. The people with the most passion were not going to do door-to-door for Corbett.
Even more worrisome is if the one-time Republican becomes an Independent candidate, or mounts a write-in campaign. Sure, these efforts may hurt the Republican Party’s nominee, but if the party didn’t want that independent-minded candidate in the first place, what right does anyone have to expect him to stay loyal to them?
Put another way, if some political boss doesn’t want a certain candidate to get elected, then what expectation does that political boss have of earning the support of the candidate he opposed?
Put another way, if you don’t want John to get elected, then why would John want you or your ally to get elected?
Do the Democrats have this problem? Sure. But that political party has become overrun with foreign policy extremism and anti-capitalism. Wealth redistribution is completely contrary to American founding principles, but it is nevertheless now a core of the Democrat Party.
That is sad, because at one time, the Democrats just wanted more opportunity for everyone. Now they want to take from one person and give to another person, which is theft.
But I am not a Democrat, so this is not my political problem.
My problem is with so-called Republicans who actually share a lot in common with liberal Democrats, but who stay in the Republican Party.
There are different ways a Republican can share values with a liberal. For example, a Republican staffer who believes in the supremacy of bureaucracy….despite bureaucracy being the enemy of freedom and individual liberty. Working from within the party, these functionaries stamp their own flavor on policy and principle alike, often softening edges and blurring lines, giving the voters fewer choices, more government intervention, and ultimately less liberty.
The same could be said for certain “Republican” lobbyists, whose connections to money, political funding, cause them to promote bad policies such as Common Core, which strikes deep at the heart of liberty. They would rather ally with liberals than support a conservative Republican candidate. People like this have great influence in the Republican Party. They influence its agenda, and the kind of decisions the apparatus supports.
If you stand for everything, you stand for nothing. I myself will stand for liberty, freedom, and opportunity for everyone. If that puts me and others like me at odds with some political party, then that says everything a voter needs to know about that party: It does not have your interests at heart.
I am a Republican because I hold old-fashioned, traditional American values, the kind of values that created America and kept her great for so long. I will vote for and support only those candidates who hold similar values. Regardless of what a party spokeswoman may say, a Republican Party that has no conservativism in it isn’t really a Republican Party any longer, is it?
Obama admin flees from Paris free speech rally
Neither Obama nor VP Biden, nor Sec. of State Kerry, nor any other high ranking US figure attended the free speech and anti-terrorism rally in Paris. Over forty heads of state participated.
Why would the Obama administration make no attempt to have high level representation at a historic rally for free speech and against terrorism with America’s oldest ally?
Simply put, for six years Obama has punished America’s allies, he has rewarded our enemies, he does not believe in free speech at home or abroad and instead has done all he can to undermine it (IRS and NSA scandals), and finally, he will not lend his hand to anything that might appear like criticism of Islam.
Obama is not ham-handed or tone deaf about this, as his friends in the US media have complained. Rather, he is utterly opposed to the very things that the people marched for in Paris.
No matter what Obama says, his actions always speak louder, and his actions on the subjects of protecting free speech and stopping terrorism say loud and clear that he is not on the side of America or its allies. Obama identifies with Muslims to such an extent that he cannot bring himself to admit that it is Muslims who are committing atrocity after atrocity. He keeps denying that they are Muslims at all, which is just silly, and if he really were forward-thinking, he would join Egyptian president Al-Sisi, who recently called for Islam to undergo a dramatically needed reformation.
Under Obama, the NSA spied on Americans exercising their basic rights to free speech, and the IRS was weaponized to suppress and even criminalize political free speech with which Obama disagrees. Of course, free speech is a threat to his agenda, so the Obama FEC is now trying to control political speech on the internet, too.
And no matter what someone does in the name of Islam, Obama will permit no official criticism of Islam, a logic he abandons when he blames legally owned guns for criminal behavior (what if the staff at Charlie Hebdo or the police protecting them had had guns to defend themselves? The whole attack could easily have been over in seconds). The civilized world says “Je suis Charlie,” and Obama says “Je suis Muslim.”
How the heck did Obama ever get elected to be anything more than dog catcher in the first place? His values are diametrically opposed to those of all but a very small fringe percentage of the American people. For those who disagree with this statement, just open your eyes and look at the sad facts. Obama should never have been president of the United States. He cannot even pretend to represent our nation any longer, and he is a disgrace. He should resign, or be impeached.
Hey, Obama, a storm is coming this Tuesday…
Mister Obama, your War on America, your deliberate opening of our southern border to whomever and whatever disease can walk, fly, or drive across it, your profiling and targeting of politically active citizens and those on your “enemies list” with government agencies like the IRS, NSA, EPA, Homeland Security, and others, have finally caught up with you.
You have ignited a righteous firestorm, and this coming Tuesday, Election Day, that storm is coming back atcha, as Americans of all colors, religions, and regions wake up and realize that you are doing everything possible to destroy America. You and your allies have used democracy to achieve non-democratic ends.
Well, democracy is not a suicide pact. There are limits, and you have crossed them all.
Here is a song dedicated to you this Tuesday: You Can Kiss My Country Ass
Forget sexy issues like “climate change,” let’s solve real environmental threats
By Josh First
Pennsylvania’s forests are suffering from a one-two punch-out by both invasive bugs and pathogens that kill our native and very valuable trees, and then by a following host of invasive vines, shrubs, trees, and other plants that are filling the void left after the big natives are gone.
Today yet another bulletin arrived from PSU plant pathology / forestry researchers, noting that ‘sudden-oak-death disease’ was detected on a shipment of rhododendron from Oregon.
Oregon got it from Asia.
Pennsylvania’s forests are becoming full of non-native, invasive plants, bugs, and pathogens. Each of our valuable tree species now has its own specific attackers. God knows what our native forests will look like in ten years.
The Asian emerald ash borer is literally making ash trees go extinct as a species. I see whole stands of forest, hundreds of acres, where not one ash tree is healthy. Dutch Elm disease killed off most of our elms in the 1980s. An Asian fungus killed off the once incredible and mighty American chestnut tree. Forget pathogens and bugs, because lots of aggressive, fast-growing invasive plants are taking up room on the forest floor, pushing out and overwhelming needed native plants. Few if any animals eat the invasives, which are often toxic and low value.
Human-caused climate change? It is a sexy political issue, and it is highly debatable. But forest destruction from non-native invasives is a real, tangible, non-debatable, non-politicized issue we need to address immediately. So many people and wild animals depend upon our native forests, that without them, our rural economies could dramatically fall and our wildlife could disappear.
Forester Scott Cary had this to say, tongue somewhat in cheek: “With the 1000 cankers disease in Walnut now in southeast Pennsylvania, that area is quarantined…maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on black birch and red maple [low-value native species long observed to be acting like aggressive, non-native invasives, and therefore harvested aggressively by responsible forest managers], that may be all we have left to choose from. Of course, Asian long-horned beetle may get the maple, so that leaves us black birch, the tree of the future.”
That is a sad place to be, folks. And to think that so much money is wasted selling the phony issue of human-caused climate change, while real environmental disasters are actually happening…it shows you just how dedicated the environmental Left is to political dominance, not useful solutions to environmental problems.
The war against America, right under your nose
Obama has gone rogue.
He is on a lawless tear across American borders, shipping in, trucking in, and flying in people from other nations who have not gone through the most rudimentary health or criminal background checks. This is a painfully obvious effort to change America demographically, and politically, without the acquiescence of the American citizenry.
While truckloads of people from other countries are brought in daily under federal guard without any scrutiny whatsoever, actual tax-paying American citizens are subject to NSA spying and IRS legal harassment, and a Department of Homeland Security that has become America’s standing domestic army ready to pounce on anything minor.
Posse Comitatus prohibits the use of military forces on domestic soil, for an obvious reason. But never mind all that – if you have a Land Rover that might or might not comply with US EPA smog regulations, truckloads of armed DHS agents will descend upon your home to quarantine that vehicle. Look it up. It just happened. Great use of taxpayer money!
Is this the role of government? Not before now, it wasn’t, and it probably should not be the role ever again. America will end this little Soviet Union experiment one way or another. It will be remembered as Obama’s War Against America. The “re-making of America” he bragged about has been a catastrophe, a loss of personal liberty on a titanic scale.
Incidentally, who was not surprised that Obama took the side of Hamas, and demanded an immediate, unilateral ceasefire by Israel? Only Hamas would benefit from that, as it would leave Israel with no security and Hamas with the ability to bomb and murder Jews as much as they want.
And just the other day, Obama actually claimed that Muslims built America.
I know Obama is like the messiah to a lot of people, but aren’t you beginning to wonder who and what he really is? The guy loves Islam so much, and hates Christianity and Judaism so much, that he is engaged in a war against America, and apparently also Israel. He gives crazy Islamic countries and actors like Iran and Hamas free passes over and over. He says crazy things for finger-in-the-eye propaganda purposes.
Forget what Obama says, watch his actions. At some point Americans will wake up and see this fraudster for who he is: A power hungry tyrant at war with America. At war with you, and your family.