RINO US Senator Olympia "Snowjob" Snowe To Retire

 

 

Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe to retire in blow to GOP

Posted by Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blakeat 05:09 PM ET, 02/28/2012

 

Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe will not seek reelection in 2012, she announced Tuesday.

 

In announcing her plans, Snowe, 65, emphasized that she is in good health and was prepared for the campaign ahead. But she said she was swayed by the increasing polarization in Washington.
“Unfortunately, I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term,” Snowe said in a statement. “So at this stage of my tenure in public service, I have concluded that I am not prepared to commit myself to an additional six years in the Senate, which is what a fourth term would entail.”
Snowe’s retirement represents a major setback for the GOP’s efforts to regain a majority in the Senate. As a moderate Republican, she may be the party’s only hope to hold a seat in the strongly blue state.
Republicans did get some traction in the state in 2010, including electing Republican Paul LePage as governor.
But in a more neutral political environment, and in a federal race, Democrats will be heavy favorites to steal this seat from Republicans — their best pickup opportunity in the country, for sure.
Snowe’s announcement took Republican leaders completely by surprise; she informed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) of her decision today, according to a person familiar with the decision.
The person noted that Snowe had given no indication that she was doing anything but planning to run an aggressive reelection bid; she had hired Justin Brasell, a renowned Republican operative, to manage her campaign.
One Republican said Snowe had sent an invitation for a fundraiser as late as Monday.
Among the names mentioned as possible replacements on the ballot for the GOP: 2002 gubernatorial candidates Peter Cianchette, 2010 gubernatorial candidate Steve Abbott, state Treasurer Bruce Poliquin, state Attorney General Bill Schneider, state Senate President Kevin Raye and Jock McKernan, Snowe’s husband and the state’s former governor. Businessman Scott D’Amboise was already challenging Snowe in a primary.
On the Democratic side, Reps. Chellie Pingree (D) and Mike Michaud (D) could run, as well as former congressman Tom Allen (D), who unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in 2008.
The filing deadline is fast approaching: March 15.
Snowe is known for her independent streak, often voting with Collins against many of her Republican colleagues. According to the just-released National Journal 2011 vote rankings, only Collins voted with Democrats more than Snowe last year.
The most moderate Democrat in the Senate — Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — is also retiring.

Commentary

Good News this dirt bag RINO is going going and gone Hey Sen.Snowe dont let the door hit you in the ass

Rasmussen Poll Man On Obama

Opinion

Obama's biggest loser

By Scott Rasmussen

As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama declared his support for green-energy development. "For the sake of our economy, our security and the future of our planet," he said, "we must end the age of oil in our time."
As president, Obama called for putting 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015. He backed that call with more than $5 billion in taxpayer subsidies to jump-start the electric car industry. The president also put in place a program that gave $7,500 to anyone who would actually buy an electric car.
Despite that support, sales were minimal in 2011, so his new budget proposes hiking that subsidy to $10,000 a car.
Voters are skeptical. Just 29 percent favor the $10,000 subsidies, while 58 percent are opposed. When people are told that the goal of putting a million electric cars on the road could cost taxpayers $10 billion in subsidies, the opposition reaches 65 percent. Voters are looking to reduce federal spending, not increase it.
But there's an important detail suggesting the president's plan could be an even bigger loser in the court of public opinion. The CEO of General Motors said recently that the average income of those buying Chevy's electric Volt is approximately $170,000 a year. That puts electric car buyers in the same league as BMW buyers or those who drive a Mercedes-Benz. It may not be the top 1 percent, but it qualifies in the top 7 percent of all American earners. That's a more elite group than those who buy Cadillac or Lexus cars.
Such trickle-down environmentalism is hardly appealing to voters. Seventy-three percent believe those who earn $150,000 or more should pay the full cost of the car themselves. Only 13 percent believe a government subsidy is appropriate.
While agreeing with the president on the importance of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, voters don't see providing subsidies to wealthy electric car buyers as the way to reach that goal. Instead, 75 percent say that the United States should be doing more to develop its own gas and oil resources. Most (57 percent) think the best way to do that is through free-market competition. Only 27 percent believe government subsidies and regulations represent a better approach.
The president views taxpayer subsidies for electric cars as an investment in "clean energy technology -- an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet and create countless new jobs for our people." But Americans are justifiably skeptical of political investments.
Only 11 percent believe that government officials are better than private investors at seeing the potential benefits of new technologies. Seventy-one percent think investors do a better job. If private investors don't see the value and pass on an investment, 64 percent of people surveyed think it's likely any government investment will be a waste of money.
One reason for this is that investors are most interested in producing things that consumers will buy. Political investments are more about headlines. When it comes to buying electric cars, the headlines may be about going green, but the reality is most Americans say they'll be motivated to go electric for a far more mundane reason: When the price of gas gets too high, they'll switch.


Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of Rasmussen Reports.

Commentary

You can see Rasmussen's Obama Approval rating at realclearpolitics.com

Dowd Just Dead Wrong As Usual



Maureen "the Ditz" Dowd

Maureen Dowd / The last-gasp party

The GOP lets the future slip away while it rolls back the clock

 

 

WASHINGTON -- It's finally sinking in.
Republicans are getting queasy at the gruesome sight of their party eating itself alive, savaging the brand in ways that will long resonate.
"Republicans being against sex is not good," the GOP strategist Alex Castellanos told me mournfully. "Sex is popular."
He said his party is "coming to grips with a weaker field than we'd all want" and going through the five stages of grief. "We're at No. 4," he said. (Depression.) "We've still got one to go." (Acceptance.)
The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane candidate they can be. They pounce on any traces of sanity in the other candidates -- be it humanity toward women, compassion toward immigrants or the willingness to make the rich pay a nickel more in taxes -- and try to destroy them with it. President Barack Obama has deranged conservatives just as W. deranged liberals. The right's image of Mr. Obama, though, is more a figment of its imagination than the left's image of W. was.
Newt Gingrich, a war wimp in Vietnam who supported W.'s trumped-up invasion of Iraq, had the gall to tell a crowd at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., that defeating Mr. Obama -- "the most dangerous president in modern American history" -- was "a duty of national security" because "he is incapable of defending the United States" and because he "wants to unilaterally weaken the United States." Who killed Osama again?
How can the warm, nurturing Catholic Church of my youth now be represented in the public arena by uncharitable nasties like Mr. Gingrich and Rick Santorum?
"It makes the party look like it isn't a modern party," Rudy Giuliani told CNN's Erin Burnett, fretting about the candidates' Cotton Mather attitude about women and gays. "It doesn't understand the modern world that we live in."
After a speech in Dallas on Thursday, Jeb Bush also recoiled: "I used to be a conservative, and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective."
Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, recently called Mr. Santorum "rigid and homophobic." Arlen Specter, who quit the Republicans to become a Democrat three years ago before Pennsylvania voters sent him home from the Senate, told MSNBC: "Where you have Sen. Santorum's views, so far to the right, with his attitude on women in the workplace and gays and the bestiality comments and birth control, I do not think it is realistic for Rick Santorum to represent America." That from the man who accused Anita Hill of perjury.
Republicans have a growing panic at the thought of going down the drain with a loser, missing their chance at capturing the Senate and giving back all those House seats won in 2010. More and more, they openly yearn for a fresh candidate, including Jeb Bush, who does, after all, have experience at shoplifting presidential victories at the last minute.
Their jitters increased exponentially as they watched Mitt belly-flop in his hometown on Friday, giving a dreadful rehash of his economic ideas in a virtually empty Ford Field in Detroit, babbling again about the "right height" of Michigan trees and blurting out that Ann "drives a couple of Cadillacs."
Mr. Romney's Richie Rich slips underscore what Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist, told the Ripon Forum: "If we are only the party of Wall Street and country clubbers, we will quickly become irrelevant."
Mr. Santorum, whose name aptly comes from the same Latin root as sanctimonious, went on Glenn Beck's Web-based show with his family and offered this lunacy: "I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college," because colleges are "indoctrination mills" that "harm" the country. He evidently wants home university schooling, which will cut down on keggers.
His wife, Karen, suggested that her husband's success is "God's will" and that he wants "to make the culture a better culture, more pleasing to God."
The barking-mad Republicans of Virginia are helping to make the party look foolish and creepy. A video went viral on Friday in which Delegate Dave Albo comically regaled his fellow lawmakers on the floor of the Statehouse with his own Old Dominion version of "Lysistrata": He suggested that he was denied sex with his wife because of a Republican-sponsored bill that would have made ultrasounds, often with a vaginal probe, mandatory for women seeking abortions. With music, red wine and a big-screen TV, he made a move on his wife, Rita, while she was watching a news report about the bill. "And she looks at me and goes, 'I've got to go to bed,'" Mr. Albo said as his colleagues guffawed.
The Republicans, with their crazed Reagan fixation, are a last-gasp party, living posthumously, fighting battles on sex, race, immigration and public education long ago won by the other side. They're trying to roll back the clock, but time is passing them by.

Commentary

Please give me a break Ms.Ditz you and the left are the ones in a frenzy and fixation not the right/tea party you people are the ones in the leaders of the lamestream media e.g. New York Times and left wing socialist Democrat Party you all are ruining the country

Howie Carr Goes Off On Massachusetts Gov.Deval Patrick and Lt.Gov Tim Murrary

Crash dummy and dumber

By Howie Carr Boston Herald Columnist

Here’s the question I’d like to see Gov. Deval Patrick asked this morning on network TV:
“Gov. Patrick, what exactly are you and your pint-sized lieutenant governor trying to cover up by refusing to release his cellphone records from the morning he wrecked a state car at 5:20 a.m. while driving 108 mph, after which your scandal-ridden state police began a massive cover-up as your minion gave a series of preposterous explanations, each one more unbelievable than the last?”
But the interviewer will be George Stephanopoulos, a notorious Democrat rumpswab. So Deval will get a pass in his tryout as an anti-Mitt Romney “pit bull,” an odd miscasting considering that the dog breed the governor more closely resembles is a Chihuahua, or maybe a toy poodle.
But once Deval returns to Boston, it’ll be back to business as usual — stonewalling all legitimate inquiries about what really happened that November morning. Deval said the other day that releasing Crash’s cellphone records would set a “terrible precedent.”
That’s exactly what Richard Nixon said in 1973 about releasing the White House tapes during Watergate. So, how’d that work out for him?
Then Deval said, “I think asking him to prove a negative is wildly unfair and unreas-onable.”
Well, no, it’s not. Because it would only take a few seconds to call up the cellphone records in question on the Internet and prove once and for all that Murray is finally telling the truth, that he was not calling or texting anyone in the moments before the Crown Vic achieved liftoff.
It would be one thing if the little fella had been leveling with the public all along, but he hasn’t. Remember when he said he was going the speed limit? First he claimed he lost control on some black ice — no, he fell asleep. He was out getting a Herald — no, he was conducting a storm inspection.
If there was nothing to hide, why did the state police immediately try to broom the whole accident without even checking the black box? Why did Murray demand to take a Breath-alyzer — or so he claims?
Consider what would have happened if Mitt Romney’s lieutenant governor, Muffy Healey, had gotten herself into this kind of jam. Forget seconds, Mitt would have given her up in nanoseconds.
Why is Deval engineering this entire cover-up? Is there something so toxic in those phone records that Deval is as much at risk as the Pillsbury Doughboy? Politically, Murray is a dead man walking, but Deval has a future, or at least he’d like to think he does.
For once, the St. Patrick’s Day breakfast may be interesting this year.

Commentary

The Great Howie Carr great as always

Michelle Malkin In Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Opinion

Preachers of junk science

By Michelle Malkin

Pushing back against Democrats' attempts to frame him as a religious menace, Rick Santorum forcefully turned the tables on the White House: "When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones."
Scrutiny of the anti-science brigade couldn't come at a better time. It's not just big-ticket scandals like the stimulus-subsidized Solyndra bankruptcy or the Keystone XL pipeline debacle bedeviling America. In every corner of the Obama administration, the radical green machinery is hard at work -- destroying jobs, shredding truth and sacrificing our economic well-being at the altar of environmentalism.
Take President Obama's director of the National Park Service, please. While serving as the Pacific West regional director of the NPS, Jon Jarvis was accused of at least 21 instances of scientific misconduct by Dr. Corey Goodman, a high-ranking member of the National Academy of Sciences. Extensive information about Jarvis' alleged role in cooking data about a California oyster farm's impact on harbor seals at Point Reyes was withheld during the 2009 nomination process.
And given Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's role in manipulating science while building his case for the White House offshore drilling moratorium -- actions for which several federal judges spanked Salazar in the past two years -- it's no wonder he's looking the other way. Two years ago, Salazar and former Obama eco-czar Carol Browner falsely rewrote the White House drilling-ban report to wholly manipulate the Obama-appointed panel's own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict.
Then there's the war over Delta smelt. The endangered fish and its environmental protectors continue to jeopardize the water supply of more than 25 million Californians. Federal restrictions have cut off some 81 billion gallons of water to farmers and consumers in Central and Southern California. Previous courts have ruled that the federal biological opinions used to justify the water cutoff were invalid and illegal.
Last September, the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of California admonished two federal scientists for acting in "bad faith." The judge's blistering rebuke of the Obama administration scientists concluded that their slanted testimony about the Delta smelt was "an attempt to mislead and to deceive the court into accepting what is not only not the best science, it's not science."
In Siskiyou County, Ore., officials and residents have announced that they intend to sue Salazar and Team Obama over the potential removal of dams on the Klamath River.
Salazar is expected to make a decision by the end of March on environmentalists' demands that four private hydroelectric dams be demolished to protect salmon habitats and "create" demolition and habitat-restoration jobs. Opponents say Salazar already has predetermined the outcome. Green activists blithely ignore the massive taxpayer costs (an estimated half-billion dollars) and downplay the environmental destruction that the dam removals would impose.
People of faith aren't what's bedeviling America. Blame the high priests of eco-destruction in Washington who have imposed a green theocracy on us all.


Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2009).

Commentary

Michelle Malkin laying it out as it should be

David Brooks Supposed NYT Right Wing Columnist On Rick Santorum

David Brooks: Santorum "Thinks Theologically" And "Dwells On The Negative"

“He’s always been a little didactic on the stump,” Brooks said. “But he believes that. He believes — he thinks theologically. There are some odd things about Santorum. A., he thinks theologically. And very few Americans, even regular churchgoing [people] … think theologically," David Brooks said on Friday night’s broadcast of the “PBS NewsHour." (via Jeff Poor/Daily Caller)

“The second thing — and this always interests me about it — most of us when something bad happens, we sort of skirt by it and want to think about some positive thing,” Brooks said. “Santorum, through the whole course of his career, has always looked at the tragedy in the face and dwelt upon it. And that is sort of an unusual personality trope, but I think it is a personality trope. It was most serious and most tragic for the death of his son Gabriel. But, also, in the campaigns, he dwells on the criticism, dwells on the negative, sometimes even in international affairs, dwelling on the threats.”

Commentary

NYT Blowhard David Brooks self righteous RINO big time

We Need To Drill Period NYT End Of Story

Opinion/Editorial

 

 The New York Times and their little cronies just cannot get it or wan tto get it it seems.We as a nation need to get off our addiction to foreign oil.The only way to achieve it is to drill for our own oil/gas.
 This mornings NYT second lead OPED entitled "Getting Arctic Drilling Right" is more of the same whining and complaining as to why we can't drill and the alleged effects to the environment.
 It begins "Oil drilling off the North Slope of Alaska now seems virtually a sure thing. This month, the Interior Department gave tentative approval to Shell’s plans for responding to a potential spill in the Chukchi Sea, an important step toward approval of the company’s plan to drill six wells in the Chukchi’s frigid and forbidding waters. The company still needs a permit, and before the administration grants one it must be absolutely sure that Shell can meet the safety conditions stipulated in the approval.

The costs of a mistake could be very high. Many environmentalists have argued against any drilling in Arctic waters, given their value to wildlife — and given weather conditions that would make cleaning up a spill especially difficult. We believe this particular project is worth the effort, but only if done right. Estimates of recoverable reserves in the Chukchi and nearby Beaufort Seas range as high as 30 billion barrels of oil, about four years’ worth of consumption in the United States.

Shell must meet two main conditions. The first is to complete and test a well-capping system that can quickly contain a blowout in a harsh and unfamiliar environment. Among the most searing memories left by the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico was the complete helplessness of industry and government officials as a runaway well spilled nearly 5 million barrels, or 206 million gallons, before it was finally capped.The other condition is that Shell, along with the Coast Guard and other agencies, conduct extensive spill response drills — in the open ocean, not “tabletop” exercises — to test the booms, skimmers, support vessels and all the other moving parts necessary to collect whatever oil escapes before a blowout is plugged."

 So now all of a sudden the NYT are experts now in drilling for oil as they think they are in everything else.Keep defending the environMENTALISTS NYT they are your religious left wingers.Oh and by the way I thought Alaska was warming oh ok change of story now to fit your leftist agenda.

 It appears that the NYT is still suffering from what the rest of the far socialist communist left is BBDS (Blaming Bush Derrangement Syndrome) "President George W. Bush recklessly proposed opening just about all of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas to drilling. The Obama administration canceled that plan in favor of what it says will be a more modest and scientifically rigorous proposal, due in midsummer. Environmentalists are urging the government to put particularly sensitive areas off-limits entirely, and we agree. The most important thing right now is to get off to a credible start by making the Shell project as mistake-proof as possible."

 Yeah right recklessly and the blame game continues to reveal its ugly head.But the Obama administration will listen to the real so called experts the enviornMENTALISTS along with the NYT.Yeah environMENTALISTS that believe in global warming no wait cliamte change or whatever they call it today a made up BS agenda and a religion of the left

Richard Miniter Great Writer

The Problem With Intellectuals

By Richard F. Miniter

Isn't it long past time that conservatives take a pitchfork in one hand and a flaming torch in the other, and then, after mustering up the like-minded, simply burn Frankenstein's castle down?  Especially since as far back as 1942 George Orwell pointed out just how combustible the Left-Wing Liberal edifice really is?
After all, it isn't as if we haven't tried reasoned argument, but it's dismissed by the Left-Wing Liberal, often with vicious personal attacks.  Evidence of the idiocy or unintended consequences of left-wing laws, regulations, and redistributions haven't mattered at all either.  Neither have appeals to tradition, the Constitution, the concept of individual responsibility or rights.  It's true that the left received a bloody nose in 1946, 1994, and 2010, while the Reagan years covered his aggressively pro-American foreign policy in glory, but ever since that long-ago Supreme Court wilted under FDR's animosity, government has continued to metastasize, individual rights have continued to shrink, and this once-magnificent Republic has continued to lose ever more substance and color.
So all in all, what choice do we have other than to go after the one individual whose horrible vulnerability Orwell pointed out?  The one individual upon whom the entire Left-Wing Liberal movement depends, and must depend for its galvanic power -- the liberal intellectual?
And what is an intellectual?
Well, the dictionary definition is one thing, but what we commonly mean by the term isn't a Ph.D. in physics.  And neither do we so call those highly educated in such disciplines such as engineering, math, chemistry, quantum mechanics, metallurgy, and medicine intellectuals.  Instead, we usually hang the label on those really, really smart people who pursue advanced degrees in social work.  Or, for that matter, art history, leftist helpless economics, women's studies, community studies, and education (I'm leaving a lot out here).  Although it should be pointed out that David Mamet throws the net much wider with his "increasingly affluent and confused"  definition, and "confused" is often a dead giveaway.  However, with Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous French intellectual, once describing human history as "a long and arduous road which led to me," perhaps confusion accompanied by an exorbitant sense of self-importance might be a better rule of thumb.
Be that all as it may, almost the first thing we learn about intellectuals when we examine them a bit more closely is that they are not historically important.  They didn't for example fight the American Revolution or write the Constitution.  They also had little or maybe nothing at all to do with the Industrial Revolution or with English Common Law (except recently in its corruption).  Left-Wing Liberal intellectuals didn't write Shakespeare, paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or teach us how to can peas.
They are, in point of fact, a relatively recent phenomenon in Western civilization which Paul Johnson wonderfully describes in his eye-opening book Intellectuals as:

... [a group of educated] men who arose to assert that they could diagnose the ills of society with their own unaided intellects: more, that they could devise formulas whereby not merely structure of society but the fundamental habits of human beings could be transformed for the better.

In this light, we can turn to the intellectual's intellectual, Karl Marx, for a more detailed illustration.  A man who is to this day renowned by a vast fawning claque for his insights about capital and factory systems.  But yet a man who, insofar as can be determined, never had an acquaintance or a source with any experience in the capital markets except an uncle he tried to borrow money from and never, again insofar as can be determined, ever once visited a factory, mill, shipyard, mine, or foundry in order to find out firsthand what was going on there. 
Instead, Karl Marx spent a tantrum-laden lifetime relying on his "unaided intellect" to arrive at what conclusions he did about these things.  Close to thirty years hidden in a library intellectualizing about how a rapidly industrializing society could and should be "transformed."  (Not in the best humor, I might add, because  he invariably screamed "I will annihilate you" at anybody who even timidly questioned one of his ideas.)
A man who raped (the actual term I'm interpreting here is "made her his mistress") the middle-aged, mentally challenged, and unpaid servant of his wife, whose two of three daughters committed suicide, who never supported his family other than by begging or running out when the rent was due and whose work product proved an absolute disaster for numerous peoples.  Cost millions of them their lives and wrecked vast nations.  Yet a man whose theories are lauded and applauded for their insight in hundreds of university faculty lounges across the world, including our own.
But, one might ask, Karl Marx is one thing -- we can all agree he was a nutcase (or at least we should) -- but don't any of these intellectual folk ever come up with a good idea?  After all, there's an awful lot of them with an awful lot of ideas. 
Both the short and long answer to that question are no.  And the reason is because despite all of the propaganda about "scientific" socialism, few of the left-wing intellectuals practice the scientific method.  They don't posit a hypothesis and a null hypothesis; their results can't be replicated by disinterested parties; in fact, they don't even have any results they want verified.  Instead, what they want you to do is accept their insights without any tangible proof at all, and if you don't?  Well, they might couch their response in somewhat different terms, but it boils down the same message Marx screamed at slackers: "I will annihilate you."
Of course, the use of the personal pronoun is misleading because while intellectuals might want to annihilate you, they're not exactly men of action themselves.  Instead, like when Lenin called in the Letts to murder the sailors at Kronstadt or certain unnamed leaders of a certain unnamed political party called in SEIU things to beat up a black Tea Party vendor, they always have somebody else handle the wet work.
Indeed, intellectuals are so distant from the fray that they don't operate in the same world with the same rules as yours and mine.  In an intellectual's magic mind, there isn't necessarily any force of gravity, any love which binds families together, any individual incentives -- no rights or obligations which can't be magically transformed to suit his visions.  In fact, the intellectual complains, "but that's not the way we want it to be" (hat tip to David Mamet again) when forced to confront certain facts or facts of life.
Because, and this is very important, the intellectual honestly believes that he's smarter than all that.  Smarter than the tidal pull of the moon, smarter than market forces, smarter than Ben Franklin, smarter than your mom.
And the reason why the intellectual is so blithely uncaring about the opinion of the untermenschen is because he also believes that once his theory is in force, you will change.  Be transformed.  You and your habits.  Your loves and affections, your values and beliefs. 
Hmmm?  Change?  Transform?  Who does that remind you of?
Am I overstating the case about the truly awful hollowness of these people?  I don't believe so -- indeed, I may be understating it, because some really bright people like Dr. Thomas Sowell make the same point in an even more sweeping manner (see An Ignored 'Disparity': Part II).
But then where is their weakness?  Moreover, how could they possibly have any weaknesses when facts don't count,  morality doesn't count, history doesn't count, and what the average person believes or wants or desires out of life doesn't count? 
Which is our cue to turn to exactly what George Orwell wrote in 1942 in "H.G. Wells, Hitler and The World State 1941":

The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions -- racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war -- which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.

And so here is the Left-Wing Liberal intellectual's weakness.  His one horrible vulnerability: the fact that for all practical purposes the fairy castle in his mind is surrounded by a moat of extremely volatile liquid energy.  The energy which "actually shapes the world" and which he pretends can't even see and certainly doesn't have any "power" over.  Genuine emotion. 
After all, consider what two emotions consistently hand the Left-Wing Liberal the occasional defeat he does suffer in America: religion and patriotism.  The Evangelicals and the patriots almost all by themselves represent the only two forces the Left-Wing Liberal has no power against.  Love of God and love of country.  Two emotions destroyed so completely in Left-Wing Liberal intellectuals that they don't even understand them any longer.  Can't explain them and, in truth, can only fear, ridicule, and try to marginalize them.
But is that it?  Luckily, no, because there are any number of other emotions conservatives can unleash.  Other pools of genuine emotion conservatives can out alight.  Love of life.  Love of place, fair play, and justice.  Revulsion at vote-buying with your money, incompetence and arrogance in public education, character assassination.  Fury at losing the ability even to choose a toilet or light bulb.  Hatred of the judges and lawmakers who embrace social theories which release horrible criminals to prey on our sons and daughters.  Umbrage at being talked down to.  The list is endless in its specificity.  In truth, there's an ocean of angst and rage and love and imagination on issue after issue out there on the hustings, more than sufficient. 
All we have to do is put a match to them.
Even if an appeal to emotion seems counter-intuitive for the reasoning party.  Even if we will inevitably be labeled a "bomb-thrower," a "racist," "homophobe," callous," "uncaring," "partisan," or "extreme."
So in that spirit I offer the following list of  emotion-laden talking points and bumper stickers for the November election:

• POVERTY IS A DECISION
• HELP US STOP PLANNED PARENTHOOD FROM KILLING BLACK BABIES
• TEACH GAY KIDS ABOUT STRAIGHT SEX
• WHY WON'T THE OCCUPIERS OCCUPY THEIR OWN MINDS?
• HIGHER SCHOOL TAXES EQUALS LOWER PROPERTY VALUES, MORE TEACHERS AND DUMBER KIDS
• THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS SOCIALISM'S MIGRANT DAY LABOR
• WELFARE RECIPIENTS CONTRIBUTE NOTHING TO SOCIETY EXCEPT A BODY TEMPERATURE OF 98.6
• HE THAT DOESN'T WORK, NEITHER SHALL HE EAT
• LIBERALS ARE BY DEFINITION ANTI-AMERICAN
• THE NATIONAL DEBT EQUALS THE AMOUNT OF MONEY SPENT ON THE "POOR" SINCE 1964, SO MAKE THEM PAY IT
• JESUS OFFERED INDIVIDUAL SALVATION NOT A UNION DEMANDING INCREASED BENEFITS
• NANCY PELOSI CAME FOR YOUR TOILET BOWL AND LIGHTBULBS, NOW OBAMA WANTS YOUR TOILET PAPER AND FLASHLIGHT
• REQUIRE PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS TO PASS A LITERACY TEST
• YES THERE ARE TOO DEATH PANELS
• TOO BAD THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION MADE LEFT-WING STUPIDITY CHEAPER AND MORE ABUNDANT TOO
• BAN SOCIAL WORK
• EVER MEET A PSYCHOLOGIST WHO DIDN'T HAVE BIG ISSUES HIMSELF? THINK ABOUT WHAT THAT MEANS
• THE EPA HAS NO VISION OF THE FUTURE THAT INCLUDES ANY HUMAN BEINGS
• PUBLIC ASSISTANCE LACKS INDIVIDUAL PRIDE
• PRESERVE LIBERTY FOR OUR CHILDREN, NOT FOOD STAMPS
• POSTURING LIBERALS ARE ONE THEORY SHORT OF A THOUGHT
• NO SAFETY NET, SOME PEOPLE NEED THE IMPACT
• PRAYER IS FREE SPEECH

Richard F. Miniter is the author of The Things I Want Most, BDD, Random House and about to be released on Amazon and Kindle Conversations With My Granddaughter.  He writes in Stone Ridge, New York and can be reached at miniterhome@aol.com.

Commentary

What can I say nice piece

Great Giving A Speech

President Ronald reagan Evil Empire Speech

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Commentary

Just Pure Greatness From God

Liberal David Brock Ignores Legitimate Questions

Media Matters' David Brock Ignores Question On Allegations

Daily Caller reports: Media Matters for America founder David Brock refused to answer a question Tuesday morning regarding his group’s relationship with the Obama White House.

Video of the exchange was posted by Kerry Picket of The Washington Times. In the clip, an unidentified male with the “America’s Morning News” radio show asked Brock, “How accurate are reports that Media Matters and the White House coordinated efforts to investigate Fox News employees?”

Commentary

Unlike biased media outlets want to create the news this video shows a journalist doing his job by investigating a news story that is probably true more than likely

Media (MSNBC) Still Can't Get Over Right Wing Conspiracy

Andrea Mitchell: Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Exists

ANDREA MITCHELL (via Newsbusters): Well, I was struck by a couple of things. First of all, the nostalgia of seeing the '92 campaign, and the way, as Dee Dee Myers put it in your film that he viewed, Bill Clinton viewed, every opportunity as an opportunity to reclaim himself to come back, the "Comeback Kid" as he defined himself even after coming in second in New Hampshire.

But also the anger and the sort of vicious nature of the opposition. You had an interview, bit of an interview, with Lucianne Goldberg, who of course played such a big part in the unravelling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And she talked about, so viscerally, about how the wife was so horrible, and the wife had no sense of humor. Anyone who has known Hillary Clinton then and now knows that despite everything that they went through, that's not who Hillary Clinton is. And it was just this, I hate to revert to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, but there was really a group out there who were not going to let him succeed, and he of course played in to that with his own mistakes. But there really was an enemy group out there who just wanted to take him down.

Commentary

The media give me a break cant get over it there is no vast right wing conspiracy but there may very well be a left wing conspiracy I mean what are we to expect

Rasmussen Nails It On Santorum

Opinion Editorial

Rick Santorum gains steam

By Scott Rasmussen

In a campaign defined by Republican reluctance to embrace Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum has emerged as the latest not-Romney candidate to surge ahead. While it’s impossible to predict what will happen in this volatile election season, the data suggests that Santorum might be more of a challenge for Romney than earlier flavors of the month.
The latest Rasmussen Reports poll shows that Santorum leads Romney by 12 points, 39 percent to 27 percent. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are far behind. In and of itself, that’s nothing new. The man from Massachusetts has at times trailed Michele Bachmann, Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Gingrich.
What is new are the numbers from a head-to-head matchup with no other candidates in the race. Santorum leads Romney 55 percent to 34 percent. None of the earlier Romney alternatives could manage better than a toss-up in such a contest.
Those numbers show that Santorum picks up 16 points when other candidates drop out. Romney adds just seven points to his column. Santorum makes huge gains among conservative voters when others drop out of the race. Among non-conservatives, Santorum and Romney gain roughly equal amounts. For the first time the numbers show that if one of Romney’s challengers drops out, the other challenger will overwhelmingly benefit. Gingrich supporters, by a three-to-one margin, would vote for Santorum over Romney if that was the final choice.
There is a huge passion gap favoring Santorum. Forty percent of Republican primary voters have a very favorable opinion of Santorum. Just 18 percent are that enthusiastic about Romney.
The one thing keeping Romney afloat is that he is still perceived as the strongest general election candidate. But to survive the Santorum challenge, Romney needs to give primary voters something more, something positive. GOP voters want a reason to vote for him beyond the fact that he has the most money and the best team.
Team Romney needs to acknowledge that Republican voters are not only strongly opposed to President Barack Obama’s agenda but that they don’t think much of Washington Republicans, either. They want a president who would shake up the good-old-boy network in Washington rather than join it.
Santorum must convince Republican voters that he can win in November. Electability is still the most important factor for Republican voters. If Santorum can neutralize the electability argument, he could become Romney’s worst nightmare.
The next primaries are slated for Feb. 28 in Arizona and Michigan. If Romney wins both states, the race will probably be over. However, if Santorum can pull off a victory that day, he will be far more than the latest flavor of the month.

Scott Rasmussen is the founder and CEO of Rasmussen Reports and its polling
organization.

DevildogDave

Santroum is not the flavor of the week he will beat this RINO fraud Mitt romney once and for all I am tired of hearing about the establishment being behind Romney

My comments on this article in todays Boston Herald

Typical Harvard Professor Leftist On Constitution

Opinion

    

The U.S. Constitution is a bad model

By Noah Feldman

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter had a close shave with public embarrassment recently -- which might seem impossible for a man who has been dead for almost 33 years. Here's why:
In the late 1940s, Frankfurter advised B.N. Rau, the chief draftsman of the Indian Constitution, not to include a due process clause such as the one that the U.S. Constitution cribbed from Magna Carta. The concept was viewed as an inspiring-yet-vague term that had plagued arguments of the U.S. Supreme Court for two generations.
Rau listened, omitting the clause, which had previously enjoyed support from the other drafters, and India was better for it.
At the time, this sort of advice was considered a service to democracy. Today, however, such advice is treated as a national scandal.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has spent the last several weeks in hot water for telling an Egyptian TV interviewer that Egypt might do better to emulate the up-to-date South African constitution rather than our 223-year-old model.
Why the uproar? It is not only that shameless politicians today will take any opportunity to criticize any public figure identified with the other party -- even a 79-year-old justice who is a legitimate national hero. The worry goes deeper, to the roots of America's current insecurity and fear of its own decline.
A study to be published this summer in the New York University Law Review shows that the U.S. Constitution is now copied less frequently by countries writing new constitutions than in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the peak measured by the study's authors, David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.
The implicit fear, made manifest by a posse of commentators, is that our constitutional "soft power" is in decline -- much as our hard power is perceived to be faltering.
Fortunately, this worry is unfounded. A better measure of the influence of the U.S. model would be to study how much other countries copy our constitutional system -- not the literal text of our Constitution. By that standard, the Philadelphia consensus is more influential than ever.
Consider judicial review, undoubtedly the fastest-growing trend in new constitutions around the world. The practice of justices reviewing legislation and being able to overturn measures they deem in violation of the constitution was born in the U.S. It represents a radical innovation in constitutional design.
And everyone seems to love it -- even Islamists who think that their constitutional courts should review legislation to make sure it conforms to the values of Islamic law.
But the words "judicial review" appear nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. The practice is an innovation introduced in 1803 by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall in the now famous case of Marbury v. Madison. Marshall claimed that judicial review was required by the very structure of a written constitution with a judiciary charged to "say what the law is."
Yet this itself was an act of interpretation, one that has not been uncontroversial in our history. And the Supreme Court exercised this power extraordinarily sparingly until the modern era.
Once the court was in the business of policing constitutionality, it developed a set of rules for doing so. The most prominent -- the bane of law students everywhere -- is the "balancing test," which asks if an abridgment of constitutional rights is justified by a compelling government interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.
Constitutions all over the world require similar balancing. But the newer ones typically copy the Canadian constitution, which provides more detailed (and very useful) instructions for how this balancing should take place.
Countries might prefer to follow the U.S. model -- but they couldn't even if they wanted to. Balancing tests are never mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, the document presents our rights as absolute -- even though common sense dictates that it must be possible to abridge the free speech of someone who falsely shouts fire in a crowded theater.
So why are some Americans worried if the language of the U.S. Constitution is copied less frequently than it once was? The answer lies in the very thing that drafters of new constitutions are trying to avoid -- the fight among the Supreme Court justices about originalism.
Today's analogue to the old wars over due process, the originalism debate pits those who claim it is possible to recover and apply the Framers' intended meaning against those who believe that the document must be treated as a living thing, growing and developing in keeping with changing needs, institutions and circumstances.
The truth is that no sane constitution-drafters would want the future court of their country to spend its time arguing about what they really meant -- or even about public perception of what they meant.
Debates about what the Constitution originally meant become proxies for arguments about what the Constitution ought to mean.
Today, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas regularly find that the original meaning leads to conservative conclusions. Yet Frankfurter's antagonist, Justice Hugo Black, was an originalist who used history to generate liberal results. None of these justices was making up the past. But none was engaged in "objective" history, either.
This is why Ginsburg was telling the Egyptians to borrow from modern constitutions -- because they spell out the answers to contemporary problems. If a constitution is fresh from the box, judges don't have to channel historical figures to decide whether violent video games are a form of free speech or whether owning handguns is covered by the right to bear arms for the purposes of preserving a well-regulated militia.
When Ruth Ginsburg was a brilliant young law school graduate, she was recommended to Frankfurter as a law clerk. Frankfurter had hired the first black Supreme Court clerk. But he turned Ginsburg down -- because she was a woman.
In retrospect, one suspects, Frankfurter would have acknowledged his mistake. And he would have applauded Ginsburg's advice to new drafters. When it comes to constitutions, the lesson is do as we do, not as we say.

Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard University, is the author of "Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices.

Commentary

It's quite obvious that this Feldman guy needs his brain examined for major malfunctions.but wait this is the usual crap that has been coming out of Harvard for the longest time

Obama On Manufacturing Jobs

Obama Weekly Address: Continuing To Strengthen American Manufacturing

Commentary

Ok Obama if this is the case stop taxing these companies back into the stone age in fact cut taxes so businesses can hire more workers and be more profitable but wait that goes against the socialist agenda of Government being the big brother.dreamliner sounds like a another Big Government in your face waste of tax payer $$$$ program bound to fail

NYT Board Member Bent Out Of Shape On NY Redistricting

Eleanor Randolph

                                                                                                                    

 I just love it when one of these New York Times Editorial board members gets their panties tied up all in a knot over politics because you see their true colors come out.Especially when it come to the blame game as in the piece written this morning by NYT Editorial board member Eleanor Randolph entitled "Down to the Wire on Redistricting."
She begins her rant "It is crunch time for New York lawmakers, who are required to draw new maps for Congressional and legislative districts in time for the 2012 elections. The Congressional primaries are supposed to take place June 26, and as usual, the mapmakers are extremely late. It’s possible that they will release the Congressional maps, which have been drawn up in secret, this week since the Legislature is hoping to approve the new district lines by March 1."The inexcusable delay has prompted the federal courts to get into the act. A three-judge panel is expected to decide — maybe this week — whether a special master should take over the whole redistricting fiasco. That could be the best hope the public has for fairer election districts."
 As usual the far left at the NYT want to play politics and use the fairness crap of course favoring Democrats and RINO Republicans to keep their seats.Now federal courts have to get involved which the far left always loves to get invloved the courts.      
 She continues "Albany legislators in charge of redistricting first created their own districts — outrageously contorted maps designed to keep Republicans in power in the Senate and Democrats in the Assembly. They have not unveiled maps for 27 Congressional districts — down from 29 districts because New York has not added enough people compared with other states. When those maps come out there will be no public hearings."If these politically skewed districts are approved by the Legislature as expected, Gov. Andrew Cuomo should veto them. That would give a court-appointed special master a better chance to create independent maps that might actually allow for competition in political races."
 Wow from 29 Congressional districts down to 27 it seems New Yorkers are getting smarter by moving away the same happened in my home state of Massachusetts where the citizens of Massachusetts were tired apparently of the far left representation in the US House so the same thing in NY in Massachusetts it went from 10 Congressional districts down to 9.I do have to agree with Randolph on one thing there should be public hearings.But we all know well as Conservatives that the left leaning courts and legislators in NY will make sure that the incumbents are taken care of as usual this is politics.


Eleanor Randolph A member of The Times editorial staff since 1998 covers New York City and State, Media, Politics