Stop The ACLU Blogburst

Crossposted from Stop The ACLU

So, America voted for change? They should be careful what they ask for because they will get it. For those that voted or stayed home in order to send the Republicans a message on election day...congratulations! Your all important "lesson" will now backfire in your face. You just cut off your nose to spite your face. Not only have you helped to give both Houses over to the left, put Nancy Pelosi in as the Speaker of the House, and completely destroyed any chance of getting a Constitutionalist majority in the Supreme Court, but groups like the ACLU seem to think this election was a mandate for their insanities. Look, you can't say we didn't warn you.

Yesterday voters nationwide rejected candidates who failed to uphold civil liberties and rejected ballot initiatives that undermine fundamental freedoms of all Americans.

"American voters have reinvigorated our system of checks and balances essential to stopping the abuse of power," said Anthony D. Romero, American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director. "Voters finally had enough of the 109th Congress that repeatedly rubber-stamped legislation that violates our basic rights. Voters also rejected many state ballot initiatives designed to restrict civil liberties and meddle in our personal lives. The 110th Congress should take note - voters rejected political scare tactics and government power grabs in favor of civil liberties and policies that keep us safe and free."

Ah, the old "Safe and Free" banner! Since when did the ACLU care about us being "safe"? So now the ACLU is promoting itself as a champion of both safety for our citizens and of freedom. What a joke! When 9-11 occurred what measures did the ACLU take to ensure our safety? None, zip, nada. This organization has done nothing to ensure our safety; in fact it has chosen to sue our government on behalf of terrorists outside of their legal jurisdiction while they were located in prisons on foreign soil.

They have since then demanded that the government release and make public top secret security information regarding not only the activities of our military, but also that of our intelligence forces. They have also initiated one lawsuit after another against the government to stop the searching of individuals for security purposes in mass transit situations, and to stop the government from detaining and questioning or interrogating individuals who have ties or contact with known terrorist individuals and organizations. That is just naming their actions off the top of my head. The fact is that the ACLU is making America less safe.

If what the ACLU means by political scare tactics are the warnings about the NSA surveillance program being put into jeopardy and other liberal techniques of surrender and stupidity then I must disagree. Perhaps the American people fell for the scare tactics of groups like the ACLU. It isn't a scare tactic to state the truth about the threats we face from our enemies, and the threats still remain. The beat goes on.

In several congressional races voters rejected the strategy to paint national security as a polarizing issue. In Ohio, incumbent Senator Mike DeWine was defeated. DeWine sponsored legislation that condoned the president's warrantless wiretapping program.

Looks like that is exactly what the ACLU is saying. America voted against effectively listening in our enemies plotting to destroy us. "Safe and Free" once again. Pundits and talking heads take note...it wasn't about Iraq, the ACLU say it was civil liberties stupid!

As a non-partisan organization, the ACLU takes no official position in any race for elected office.

....except when they want to. Then they take out full page political ads opposing candidates that they do not like. They didn't hide the fact they wanted a Democratic controlled Senate to kill the NSA program.

"The American people have spoken," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The lame-duck session should not be used to ram through proposals that the American people have clearly rejected. The rule of law has been seriously compromised over the past five years, and lawmakers must now seek to reaffirm our commitment to fundamental freedoms."

Oh, that isn't the message you meant to send by staying home and pouting over overspending and the lack of immigration reform? Well, that is the message the left received as you handed them the power to speak on behalf of the majority. Their beloved ACLU says you clearly rejected the kind of proposals they wouldn't like. You wanted immigration reform? Ha! You just kissed that goodbye to hell. Say hello to amnesty.

As Ace says so simply:

"Punishing" politicians doesn't make sense when you wind up enacting the very policies that caused you to want to lash out in the first place.

Sure, the GOP are to blame for their many mistakes but the reaction to that was up to the individual voters at the end of the day. It looks like some Conservatives decided to punish themselves by punishing the GOP. The left's voting I can understand. What doesn't make sense to me that so many were willing to shoot themselves in the foot by empowering and emboldening the very party that will make sure the policies they were protesting continue and the ones they want will never happen. Well, the fight continues and now it we just have to fight that much harder.

This was a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay at Jay@stoptheaclu.com or Gribbit at GribbitR@gmail.com. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 200 blogs already on-board.

Goodby Rumsfeld

From The Washington Post:

With a wry smile, Donald H. Rumsfeld gently alluded to the controversies of his tenure as defense secretary, perhaps the most consequential since that of Robert S. McNamara during the Vietnam War.

Thanking the president for the opportunity to serve, Rumsfeld said in a brief Oval Office session yesterday afternoon that the experience brought to mind the words of Winston Churchill -- "something to the effect," he quipped, "that I have benefited greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof."

It was a rare melancholy moment for the alpha male and onetime Princeton wrestler who ran roughshod over the military brass, sparred bitterly with the media and mounted fierce rear-guard battles against the State Department during a six-year run that saw him become, first, an unlikely television celebrity and then the face of an unpopular war.

Though Bush affectionately patted Rumsfeld on the shoulder as he ushered him out of the Oval Office, there was little sugarcoating the reality that the defense chief, 74, was being offered as a sacrificial lamb amid the repudiation of Bush and his Iraq policy that the American electorate delivered on Tuesday.

All I have to say is if the President was going to do this why didn't he do it 3 months ago when it might have made a difference in the election?

Who will step up in '08?

Now that this election is over the speculation must now turn to who the Republicans will find to run for the presidency in 2008. I have no idea who this will be, but I do know what kind of man he needs to be, and just as importantly not be.

First of all he does not need to be a sitting Senator or House member. Men from the legislature do not make good candidates for the executive branch. If you need proof just look back on John Kerry. The nominee in 2008 needs to come from a governor’s mansion or the business world. In other words he needs to be a man with executive experience who is accustomed to being the place where the buck stops.

He also does not need to be a retired general, admiral or any other career military officer. I’m sorry but the military is a giant bureaucracy and career bureaucrats do not make good presidents. For this same reason the nominee should not be someone who has spent his entire adult life filling one government post after another. For examples of this see U S Grant, Dwight D Eisenhower and George H W Bush.

Now that we know what the candidate should not be what does the Republican’s nominee need to be?

Most importantly he needs to be an excellent communicator. One of the greatest liabilities George W Bush faces is his incredibly poor communication skills. The fact is that he is not a stupid man, but he often comes across as on because of his inability to express himself. Both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton could express themselves eloquently in a way that the average person could relate to. The Republican nominee needs to be such a man.

The Republican in ’08 needs to be a true conservative. George W Bush, George H W Bush and Richard Nixon were, to one degree or another, “small C” conservatives. We need a “big C” conservative. Like Ronald Reagan the next Republican presidential candidate needs to see himself as the leader of an openly and unapologetic Conservative Movement. He needs to be seeking the presidency out of a sincere and passionate belief that conservatism represents the best way to keep the United States a free and prosperous nation. Anyone other than a true conservative ideologue will be too likely to compromise away essential elements of the conservative agenda and wind up exactly like the Presidents Bush.

Next the Republican nominee needs to be squeaky clean in the ethical and moral sense. The last thing the Party needs is another scandal. The candidate needs not only to be honest, but to be seen being honest. This is another reason not to pick someone from the legislature. Legislative bodies are by their very nature corrupting.

This ethical vetting needs to be extended to the nominee’s family and his wife and her family as well. The nation does not need another Hugh Rodam, Roger Clinton or Billy Carter floating around.

The candidate needs to be physically attractive. Sorry, but in the age of television it matters. The public will not elect someone who is obese, or who looks decrepit or is generally “funny looking”. This is a sad commentary on the American people and it has cost them dearly (Steve Forbes would have been the next Ronald Reagan, except that he was “goofy looking”), but you have to live in the real world. As the maggot said to the king of France, “we live not as we wish to, but as we can”.

The Republican candidate needs to have a clear agenda which can be accurately and clearly expressed in sound bites. In the modern age of mass media the majority of the people get their political news via the sound bite. This is sad, but true.

Finally the Republican nominee needs to be an easy going man with a good sense of humor. He needs to have the ability to let criticism roll off his back and not be seen to hold a grudge. The left will come after him with everything they have and he needs to be able to stand up to this assault with grace. It is hard to smear a man who is quick to smile and never seems to lose his temper. This was one of Ronald Reagan’s greatest strengths.

Again, I don’t know who this man is going to be. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them.

One more thing I know is that the Democrats are very likely to help the Republicans in ’08 by nominating Hillary Clinton. With enemies like that – well, we’ll still need friends, but. . .

Tonight's video

This is the Irish group Altan preforming John Doherty's Reels.

Bully?

The other day Beth at Blue Star Chronicles was blogging about John Kerry's arrogant "apology" which was posted on his website in which he basically said that he was sorry that average Americans were just too stupid to "get" his humor.

I speculated that the reason he was so willing to be open with these kind of comments was that he had finally come to grips with the fact that he was never going to be president. With no political future outside of his position as a senator from a deep blue state he is at last free to be who and what he is.

I went on to speculate that he probably felt a great sense of relief. The mask which he had been forced to wear for the past six years was probably suffocating him.

I'm afraid that another mask has come off today.

I caught part of the President's early press conference on the Rush Limbaugh show today. Rush termed it the "what do you want" press conference because Bush seemed to be saying that since the Democrats won yesterday that they had the right to get whatever they wanted legislatively. In fact Bush seemed totally at peace with the idea and even became passionate when asked if this would make it more likely that he would get his amnesty for illegal aliens passed.

What we saw this afternoon and will continue to see for the next two years is the fact that George W Bush is not a conservative. He is a smart and principled liberal. He believes in big government because of what he sees as its potential to help people. Unlike the Democrat left which sees big government as a way to create a population in dependency who will be forced to vote for Democrats in order to continue to receive the basic necessities of life.

Unlike the modern left George W Bush does not hate businessmen and capitalism. If a person on the dole is able to better himself the modern left liberal curses the fact that he has lost another welfare slave, while George Bush rejoices at another person who is coming up in the world.

The left hates capitalism because it is a rival to socialism. They love high taxes because they are a hindrance to business, making it less efficient and dynamic. They are fully aware that high taxes lower total government tax revenue by slowing the nation's economic activity, but they don't care. George W Bush wants lower taxes because that will stimulate economic growth which will lead to higher tax revenues which will fund further expansion of government spending.

Unlike the modern left George W Bush loves his country and wants to defeat its enemies on the battlefield. He loves the military as an institution and he loves the individual soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, unlike the left which agrees with all of John Kerry's characterizations of them - from the ones he made of them in 1972 to the ones he made this last couple of weeks.

George W Bush is not sad at the results of the election. He is ready to proceed into the next phase of his presidency which will involve the greatest expansion of the federal government in the history of the nation. He is confident that he can use his approval of massive social spending as a bargaining chip to keep the war on terror alive. He is almost certainly correct.

When Republicans elected George W Bush in 2000 they hoped they were getting another Ronald Reagan. These past six years the lunatic left has been convinced that Mr. Bush is another Adolph Hitler. I'm afraid that they are both wrong.

George W Bush is another Teddy Roosevelt.

More of the post mortem

Hugh Hewitt's take on the Republican defeat:

We lost the House. We lost the Senate. As we struggle to get through the morning after, there’s only one thing to do – summon the circular firing squad. Don’t worry, I’m kidding. Sort of. For this is indeed the time to take a hard look at what brought us to this sorry juncture.

The first thing I want to do is enumerate a few things that did not cost us this election. It wasn’t the media. We faced the same media in 2002 and 2004 and prevailed. And it wasn’t the savvy campaigning orchestrated by a suddenly gifted group of Machiavellian Democrats. That one doesn’t fly either. The Democratic Party remains the organization that allowed John Kerry access to a microphone a week before the election.

Most importantly, we didn’t lose because our countrymen suddenly misplaced the virtues that make America great. It is a distinctly liberal trait to blame “the people” when they don’t vote as one would dictate. I’ll brook none of that from our side. The fact is, we thought our country would be better off with a Republican congress. We made a case to the American people. They didn’t buy it because they thought it was a weak case.

And you know what? They were right. In the closing weeks of the campaign season, I felt like I was a lawyer who had a bad client while writing this blog. That client was the Republican Party which had broken its Contract with America from 1994 and had become unmoored from its conservative principles. As its advocate, I couldn’t make a more compelling case for Republicans staying in power than the fact that the Democrats would be worse. I believed in that case, but when that’s all the party gave its advocates to work with, you can honestly conclude that Republicans got this drubbing the old fashioned way – we earned it.

THE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE past six years has been the White House’s ongoing inability to express the rationale for the so-called war on terror. For most of you reading this site, the rationale is obvious and well known: There exists an enormous segment of the Muslim world that seeks our destruction. Either we transform our malefactors, or the world’s fate will be unimaginably horrific.

This is a long war, and yet leading Republicans including the one in the White House have yet to articulate why it’s necessary. On the campaign trail, only Rick Santorum embraced the challenges that our country faces. Our other candidates and especially the Liddy Dole-led RSCC weren’t worthy of the era.

In the war of ideas, the White House has also been a disappointment. The president has never clearly acknowledged the stakes or even who our enemy is. At no point has President Bush called for sacrifice, or even encouraged more young people to join the military.

The president could have been using his bully pulpit to insist that all our universities welcome ROTC back on campus. He had an ally on that front in the departed president of Harvard who also happened to be a former Democratic Secretary of the Treasury. He eschewed this opportunity, and we can label it just one of the countless blown chances of the past five years.

The president could also explain, as Eisenhower did, that the economy has to stay strong for us to be able to prosecute this long war. Thus, tax policies that foster economic growth are not inconsistent with a call for sacrifice. Again, this is a case that has never been made.

You add it all up, and the people are right to wonder why our boys are dying in Iraq. Because the president hasn’t made the mission’s importance clear, it seems like a folly. It seems like vanity. It seems like pride. In truth it is a fight for our very survival, but this has been an argument left to the likes of the Weekly Standard, the National Review and Victor Davis Hanson to make. We’ve tried, but we preach mostly to the choir.

The president has had the chance to do more, but as of yet he hasn’t chosen to do so. Has he lost faith in the American people? If so, then he more than anyone else needs to look in the mirror this morning.

Gone shooting

I'm off now to the Henderson Co. Courthouse. When I'm done I intend to hit Rex's Indoor Range for some "good old boy" shootin'.

I'll put up a range report when I get back.

The autopsy begins

Philip Klein has an excellent analysis of yesterday's results up on The American Spectator:

In assessing last night's results it is important to note that it was not a defeat for conservatism; it was a defeat for Republicanism, or at least, what Republicanism has come to represent. In the past 12 years, Republicans went from the party that promised "the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public's money" to the party of the Bridge to Nowhere; it took control of Congress on a pledge to "end its cycle of scandal and disgrace" and went down in defeat as the party of Tom DeLay and Mark Foley.

Having abandoned its core principles, the Republican Party had nothing to run on this year, so its campaign strategy centered on attacking Nancy Pelosi -- a questionable tactic given that, according to some polls, more than half of the country had never even heard of her.

Republican strategists who projected optimism over the past few months cited as reasons for their confidence: fundraising, incumbency advantage, gerrymandering and new innovations such as "microtargeting." But as this election made perfectly clear, none of this can bail out a party that is bereft of ideas.

We will hear a lot of reasons for why Republicans lost this year. We will hear that they lost because of an unpopular war, an unpopular president, a culture of corruption, a traditional anti-incumbent six-year itch and a dispirited base. But one thing is for sure. Republicans did not lose on a platform of limiting the size and scope of government.

Just as this election wasn't a defeat for conservatism, it wasn't a victory for liberalism. Democrats intentionally avoided a publicized "Contract With America"-style platform advancing a progressive agenda in favor of making the campaign a referendum on President Bush. The closest thing they had to a platform, "A New Direction for America," was not a sweeping ideological document, but a laundry list of initiatives such as making college tuition tax-deductible, raising the minimum wage, and negotiating drug prices. Though a Democratic majority will likely roll back President Bush's tax cuts, they didn't advertise that in the "fiscal discipline" section of their platform. (It is a testament to how enamored Republicans became with big government that they enabled Democrats to run as the party of fiscal discipline.)

After controlling the House of Representatives for the last 12 years and the White House for the last six, a lot of pent up anger developed toward Republicans. If the GOP had to lose an election as a result of this sentiment, better this year than in 2008, when Americans will choose who will lead the War on Terror into the next decade.

The Democratic Party will take power in January. Either they'll demonstrate to Americans that they have no governing philosophy, or they'll play to their anti-war base by pushing for a premature withdrawal from Iraq and go overboard with investigations of President Bush.

While the exposure of the Democratic Party during the next two years will help Republicans, the GOP should not head into the next election thinking that running against Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton will ensure victory. Instead, the Republicans need to differentiate themselves by returning to their small government roots and once again becoming the party of ideas.

In 1994, Republicans swept into power by signing a contract with America. That contract has been breached, and unless they want to lose the big prize in 2008, it's time for that pact to be renewed.

Illegal Immigration Takes a Hard Hit in Arizona

Cross posted from CommonSenseAmerica:

Something that may be lost in all of the speechifying today is that the people of Arizona came out swinging against illegal immigration with their ballots yesterday.

From the Arizona Daily Star:

Arizona voters took a machete to the dense jungle of ballot propositions and cut a path to broader restrictions on undocumented immigrants. . .

Passage of Prop. 100 prohibits bail for illegal entrants charged with a serious felony, and Prop. 102 prohibits an undocumented person who wins a civil lawsuit from receiving punitive damages. Likewise, the passage of Prop. 103 hammers home the message that all official business be conducted in English. Prop. 300, which restricts access to public services to illegal immigrants and their children, makes it clear that the majority of voters have no tolerance for the undocumented.

These propositions didn’t pass narrowly, they passed with overwhelming margins of over 70 percent in most cases. This is not a Democrat or Republican issue, this is an American issue and Americans in Arizona united across the party lines.

We’ve already heard President Bush insinuate that perhaps he’ll be able to jam his amnesty program through a Democratic House but politicians, on both sides of the aisle, should learn to listen to the American people, not the lobbyists.

2008 is not far away.

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let me know at what level you would like to participate.**

The post mortem begins

The Washington Post sets the MSM tone for reporting on the election:

Democrats recaptured the House last night, defeating Republican incumbents in every region of the country, and were close to gaining control of the Senate in midterm elections dominated by war, scandal and President Bush's leadership.

By early this morning, Democrats had picked up more than two dozen Republican-held House seats without losing any of their own, putting Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) into position to become the nation's first female speaker.

[Snip]

The upheaval in the House and the changing balance in the Senate signaled a dramatic power shift in Washington that will alter the final two years of Bush's presidency, with resurgent Democrats expected to challenge the administration on its domestic priorities and the Iraq war.

The media line is going to be that the public rejected not just the war in Iraq or the leadership of President Bush but conservatism in general.

Don't believe any of it. The fact is that Bush was able to close much of the gap in the polls by aggressively defending the war in the weeks leading up to the election. If we had seen this aggressive, confrontational Bush in the past 2 years much of the trouble Republicans had on election day would have been avoided.

The prescriptions for how to fix the GOP are already being written. Patrick over at Born Again Redneck has decided that the Republican Party needs to purge out all the religious and social conservatives and go forward as a liberal/libertarian party in the pattern of Rudolph Giuliani.

Sorry but that is a recipe for disaster. The fact is that despite some early reports that turnout was heavy with an edge going to Republicans the end results showed that turnout was about average with an edge going to Democrats. Republican turnout was suppressed to some degree.

The question is why. Why? Was it that the republican public was disgusted with the degree to which the religious right has gained control of the Republican Party? Then why did all of those ballot measures supported by the religious right pass with wide margins? And why are leaders in the religious right angry at how little they have actually gotten from the Republican majority?

The GOP took a beating yesterday for a number of reasons none of which alone would have been enough but acting together they guaranteed its defeat. For one thing the President's "new tone" in which he attempted to bring civility back to Washington failed miserably. Democrats weren't having any of it and the Bush's refusal to go on the attack amounted to unilateral disarmament in the face of a heavily armed and aggressive enemy. It may be an unpleasant reality, but it is reality nonetheless, that Bill Clinton was correct in his "perpetual campaign" mode. The campaign never ends and future presidents, if they wish to be successful, need to learn that.

Another reason that Republicans lost is that they let down the people who voted for them. They ran for office as conservatives and they governed in all too many ways as liberals. Instead of making government smaller they grew it even more than Bill Clinton had. Instead of making government less expensive they spent money like Ted Kennedy in a liquor store. And, perhaps most importantly, they let the voters down on the issue of immigration and border security. Instead of kicking out the illegals who are already here and closing our southern border to unlawful crossing they only narrowly defeated an amnesty measure. They did vote to build a border fence, but then decided not to fund it.

The fact is that Republicans deserved to lose because they failed to live up to the expectations of the conservatives who elected them. If the Republican Party wishes to regain power in two years it needs to learn that lesson and apply it aggressively.

Final thoughts of the night

OK, one more thing.

I see from my sitemeter that I'm getting more hits than usual and that a large part of them are not bouncing over via links from other bloggs or search engine hits. They are people who have Hillbilly White Trash bookmarked.

Thank you for making me one of your stops for news and opinion on this election night. I will post my analysis tomorrow and over the long holiday weekend.

To close for tonight I'll say this. As a Republican I see good cause for optimism in the long term and as an American I see good cause for pessimism in the short term.

I'll 'splain tomorrow afternoon.

Goodnight and God Bless.

More news

Fox News has just called Democrat control of the House of Representatives by a narrow margin.
This is a disappointment, but not an unexpected one. I'll have more on this tomorrow as I'm too tired now to organize my thoughts.

In other developments the Washington Post has retracted its call for Ben Cardin in the Maryland Senate race and Michael Steele has refused to concede.

I don't know what this will mean, but it sure does make things more interesting.

Talent is ahead of McCaskill. The question is this, will the lead he has built up be enough to overcome the massive voter fraud which will committed in St. Louis?

Only time will tell.

Now I'm going to bed.

Comfort food for the soul

I've been posting Capercaillie videos but since I want to make them last all month tonight I'm offering you the video for Alison Krauss' Let Me Touch You For A While.

In addition to being an incredibly talented singer/fiddler that woman is so pretty that it just about hurts to look at her.

Bluegrass evolved directly from Celtic music. As the Scots and Irish immigrants came to the US they brought their traditional music and dance with them. However as they lost touch with the Old Country and began to evolve their own culture their music and dance began to take on its own character.

Irish step dancing became clogging and Scottish jigs and reels became square dancing. The fiddle and mandolin were kept, but the bagpipe, accordion and pennywhistle fell out of use and were replaced by the banjo and guitar.

However you only need to listen to traditional Bluegrass to hear the Celtic roots.

Liberman Wins!!!

I just heard Liberman's victory speech. He was triumphal and he had a gorram right to be. His victroy means that the nation probably isn't doomed.

Georga steps up!

Powerline has this tidbit:

Republican challengers Burns and Collins both lead 52-48 with almost 60 percent of the votes counted.

Bad news from NC

It looks as though 8 term congressman Charles Taylor has lost his bid for reelection to carpetbaggin sack of crap Heath Shuler. This is a tragedy for the people of NC.

The incredibly corrupt North Carolina Democrat machine has thrown everything they had at Taylor for the past 16 years and been unable to knock him off. They have lied. They have committed voter fraud. They have tried gerrymandering his district more than once and not been able to defeat him, until now.

And the only reason that they were able to defeat him now was the national level anti-incumbent, anti-Republican trend. That and the fact that moonbat Asheville is growing in population.

I'm calling Virginia

With around 90% of the vote in Allen is ahead by around 30,000 votes. The networks and cable news aren't calling it for the GOP because the fraked up exit polls showed Webb winning by a large margin and the media is clinging to that straw like Ted Kennedy with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue.

So based on the actual votes I'm calling Virginia for Allen. This makes it very unlikely that the Democrats will wind up controlling the Senate.

Before all of this Allen was a serious contender for President in 2008. This is no longer true. He ran a poor campaign and only won because the voters in every part of Virginia except the northern part, which is nothing more than a suburb of DC, just aren't stupid enough to elect a Democrat.

The bottom line is that Allen has proven himself not ready for primetime when "primetime" is defined as a national level election. He can rehabilitate himself, but it is going to take longer than two years.

More election news

This was posted on Hugh Hewitt's blog:

Rick Santorum has lost. No matter what good might might come out of tonight, Santorum going down is a body blow. Let's offer a hope that Santorum stays active in politics.

When Santorum stabbed his fellow Pennsylvania conservatives in the back by putting himself on the line for liberal RINO Specter I knew that his career in the Senate was over. There are some betrayals which one can not, and frankly should not, come back from.

Also on Hugh's blog:

On the bright side, Fox has labeled Lincoln Chafee a loser. I mean in the literal sense, that he's lost his bid to muck up the Senate for another six years. In other good news, Ned Lamont has lost.

Good news on both counts. Chafee, the man Ann Coulter described as "too stupid to know that he's a Democrat" was one of McCain's "gang of seven" who didn't need to be in the Senate.

Tennessee Senate

Neither Fox nor CNN is calling this one yet, but it looks to me as though Corker's lead over Ford is too big for Ford to come back from so I'm calling it for Corker. This is a Republican hold.

The news so far

It's 6:30 and I'm poking around the 'net looking for anything interesting about the election. So far all I've found is predictions written before any votes were cast. Except for Hugh Hewitt, who is publishing some tracking data that looks good for the GOP. But remember it is still way too early.

Turnout is reported to be higher than expected.

Exit polls are being cooked to show the Democrats in the best possible light.

There are massive problems in Pennsylvania with the voting machines.

Some good news from TN. Democrat lawyers are going to court to attempt to keep the polls open later than the law allowes. This can only mean that their internal numbers show that Ford is toast.

A good point

Thomas Sowell has an observation about this election cycle:

Democrats have learned to avoid admitting to being liberals and this year are running a number of moderate candidates.

If these new moderate candidates are elected and give the Democrats control of Congress, that control will be exercised by senior Democrats who will hold leadership positions -- and all of them are liberal extremists, whether people like Nancy Pelosi in the House or Ted Kennedy and John Kerry in the Senate.

Getting people to vote for moderates, in order to put extremists in power, may be the newest and biggest voter fraud.

I Voted!

How about you?

UNCLE SAM SAYS:

DO YOUR PART

TO DEFEAT THE LEFT!

THE FOUNDING FATHERS

RISE WITH ONE VOICE

TO SAY:

DON'T LET OUR WORK HAVE BEEN IN VAIN.

DEFEAT THE LEFT!

I'm off to the polls

I'm going to go and vote now and if you are a Republican you do the same.

This is going to be a hard day. Be prepared for bogus exit polls like we saw last time that will be cooked to show a commanding lead for Democrats. This is nothing more than another mainstream media trick to suppress Republican turnout.

Remember what happened in Bush vs. Gore when the media called Florida for Gore while the polls in the panhandle were still open, causing thousands of Florida Republicans still standing in line to vote to give up and go home? It didn't change the untimate outcome but remember the trouble it caused.

Don't pay any attention to the media. Just go and do the right thing.

And if you are a Democrat then go back to bed. Its raining and cold and you don't really need to go out and vote. After all the Republicans don't stand a chance. Just stay home, shoot up and have sex with your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/same sex life partner or barnyard animal of your choice.

I'm afraid it's only going to get worse

From The Washington Post:

As the 2006 campaign staggered to an angry close, national security and the Iraq war dominated the final-day debate of midterm elections in which national themes, not simply local choices, have framed the most competitive races. Democrats said a vote for them would force change in Iraq strategy, while President Bush led the GOP charge in warning that the opposition party cannot be trusted in a time of war.

Dozens of too-close-to-call House and Senate races finished on a surly tone, as the traditional political strategy of shifting to a positive message at campaign's end gave way this year to a calculation that the best chance to tip the balance was through continued attacks over personal character and alleged corruption.

The divide between the parties seems to be growing wider by the day. It is now very hard to see how any reconciliation is possible. I, for one, believe that the time is approaching when the two sides will find it impossible to live together in peace.

Civil wars are always the most savage. Tens of millions of people will be slaughtered in the most horrible ways imaginable as the two sides vent decades of pent up rage upon one another. A trillion dollars and more of wealth will vanish as entire cities and the bulk of their populations are wiped from the face of the earth.

It would be greatly to the advantage of all the peoples of the United States to keep this from happening. As I see it the best option would be for some kind of division with the red states and the blue states forming separate governments. I know that this would inconvenience large numbers of red state liberals and blue state conservatives, but the alternative is having people drag you out of your house in the middle of the night and hack you apart with machetes so I think they can deal.

I would do almost anything to stop the coming civil war. I would see the blue states split from the United States and join Canada. I would see them form their own independent nation a "Union of Soviet Socialist American Republics", so to speak. I would see all the liberals pack up their belongings and move to France.

But the one thing I would not do to stop the coming storm is see things go on as they are now. I am tired of living in an house divided against itself. I am tired of having every election be a referendum on the very survival of the Republic. I am tired of having people like Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry hanging over my and my nation's head like the Sword of Damocles. I'm tired of living in a country whose colleges and universities turn out class after class of brainwashed zombies whose ability to think for themselves has been destroyed by years of leftist indoctrination by venomous intellectual lightweights like Noam Chomsky and Ward Churchill.

I am frankly tired of sharing my living space with beings whose humanity I am finding it harder and harder to recognize and who, I'm coming to believe, would best contribute to the future of humanity by serving as fertilizer for someone's corn field.

Let's figure out an answer before it comes to that.

A new Hillbilly joins the family!

Perri Nelson's Website has joined the Hillbilly Ecosystem. From what I can see they are going to fit in right nice around here what with their conservative politics and football blogging.

Go over and give them a big hillbilly howdie.

A good laugh

Hillbilly Ecosystem member 7.62mm Justice has a great post about the "Absolute Moral Authority Cards".

Who gets them and who doesn't.

Tonight's feel good moment

Kenny McDonald's Jigs a traditional set of highland jigs with the Capercaillie touch.

To my Democrat readers

Ok, it’s all over and you win. You so totally have a lock on this election that the Republicans don’t have prayer. After tomorrow Chimpy and his evil puppet masters Cheney and Rove will be toast!

It’s a done deal and there ain’t nothing nobody can do about it. If fact it is such a dead-bang cinch that you don’t even need to go and vote.

That’s right dude. You can just sleep late then get up around 1:00 and roll a big doobie with that weed you scored with your old lady’s last welfare check (you know the stuff you bought instead of baby formula) and lay back and think about how totally cool it’s going to be when all the other Democrats go out and vote all the RepubliNazis back into the gutter where they belong.

So just sit back and enjoy your victory; the fix is in and you ain’t got to do a damn thing.

To my Republican readers

A good many races in this election cycle that the Democrats thought that they had a dead-bang lock on have turned around on them and their candidate is either tied neck and neck or is actually behind.

This election is going to depend on turnout. If we get off our butts and go to the polls we will keep control of both the House and the Senate. This means that we will not cut and run from Iraq. We will not see terrorist attacks follow us home as the Islamofascists press their advantage and give us what they believe will be the final push into the mass grave of failed cultures by blowing up American buildings and hijacking airliners over US soil and by sending suicide bombers into our shopping malls and movie theaters.

If we keep control of the legislature we will not see the final two years of the Bush presidency eaten up with useless impeachment hearings and endless congressional investigations into decision which has been made by the Administration for the past six years.

If we beat the Democrats we will see at least one more Supreme Court Justice of the caliber of Roberts or Alito nominated and confirmed rather than a compromise like Sandra Day O'Connor or David Souter.

If the left loses tomorrow we stand a very good chance of seeing the odious death tax permanently repealed and the upholding of the other Bush tax cuts. This will mean that the economy will stand an excellent chance of continuing its recovery with the low unemployment and high stock prices we are currently enjoying.

If we win tomorrow the futures market will not panic and send gasoline prices skyrocketing due to fears of chaos and civil war in Iraq.

If Republicans keep the House and Senate tomorrow we will have the immense pleasure of seeing the Democrat Party implode into an internecine bloodbath of mutual recrimination, finger pointing and bitter feuding between the various interest groups which make up the Jackass Party.

So get up early and go out to the voting place and cast your vote. Then when you get home leave me a comment here and tell me about it.

What conventional wisdom?

Today's online American Spectator has a couple of atricles which challenge the conventional wisdom that tomorrow will be a cakewalk for Democrats.

Quin Hillyer writes a piece called, "Republicans Will Hold On".

When Congress convenes in January of 2007, Republicans will be elected both as Speaker of the House and as Senate Majority Leader.

The new Republican speaker, who will not be Dennis Hastert, will enjoy a margin of only one vote. But in the Senate, where Republicans currently control 55 of the 100 seats and where many pundits are now saying they teeter on the brink of losing their majority, the GOP instead will lose no more than two seats.

And Mr. Conventional Wisdom, who is the lackey of the mainstream media and the supposedly nonpartisan election "experts," again will have enough egg on his face to make omelets that feed multitudes.

Go read the rest for his reasons.

And Patrick Basham pens a piece called, "Wednesday's Headline: GOP Keeps House Majority".

What could be more fun on election night than witnessing America's faux conservatives punished for their domestic overspending and foreign overreach? How about the Invisible Woman of the 2006 campaign, Nancy Pelosi, stranded on her liberal beachhead, her gaze fixed upon a Speaker's gavel that lies within her reach but beyond her grasp?

The latter image constitutes both the nightmare Democratic scenario and a Republican wet dream. It also illustrates my think tank's projection that Republicans will retain control of the House of Representatives by the razor-slim margin of a single seat.

As before go read the rest for his reasons.

A plea from the battlefield

From The Washington Post:

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SYKES, Iraq, Nov. 5 -- For the U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, the war is alternately violent and hopeful, sometimes very hot and sometimes very cold. It is dusty and muddy, calm and chaotic, deafeningly loud and eerily quiet.

The one thing the war is not, however, is finished, dozens of soldiers across the country said in interviews. And leaving Iraq now would have devastating consequences, they said.

With a potentially historic U.S. midterm election on Tuesday and the war in Iraq a major issue at the polls, many soldiers said the United States should not abandon its effort here. Such a move, enlisted soldiers and officers said, would set Iraq on a path to civil war, give new life to the insurgency and create the possibility of a failed state after nearly four years of fighting to implant democracy.

"Take us out of that vacuum -- and it's on the edge now -- and boom, it would become a free-for-all," said Lt. Col. Mark Suich, who commands the 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment just south of Baghdad. "It would be a raw contention for power. That would be the bloodiest piece of this war."

The soldiers declined to discuss the political jousting back home, but they expressed support for the Bush administration's approach to the war, which they
described as sticking with a tumultuous situation to give Iraq a chance to stand
on its own.

This is as close as soldiers on active duty can come to making an outright political endorsment. But make no mistake that is what they are doing. They are begging the folks back home to not to stab them in the back by voting for the party which is on their enemy's side.

An eco-loon to boot

It seems that disgraced preacher Ted Haggard was a global warming activist as well as a meth using homosexual.

From News Busters:

In light of the recent scandlous allegations regarding evangelical leader Rev. Ted Haggard, many news outlets have been referring to Haggard as a "conservative." Only a small number are mentioning that Haggard also sees himself as a global warming activist -- and definitely not one of the "skeptic" variety.

Some liberal activists seem to be delighted at the prospect of Haggard's possible professional suicide, but liberals promoting the global warming theory know better. Temporarily at least, they've lost a major -- and perhaps irreplaceable -- ally.

Do you think that the newspapers tomorrow will be full of speculation on how this might cause the eco-Nazis to sit out Tuesday's election?

I don't either.

This should serve as a warning. If someone is an environmentalist they are almost certainly messed up in other ways as well.

Hat Tip: Reformed Chicks Blabbing

A prediction

Stand back, I'm going to issue a prophecy.

If the Democrats win on Tuesday in either the House or the Senate the appeals panel which must review Saddam Hussein's death sentence will find some reason to overturn the sentence.

They will know that with the cut-and-run party in power in one or both of the houses of the American legislature that they will not be able to count on the US to continue backing up the Iraqi democracy. They will hedge their bets by keeping Saddam alive.

Tonight's feel good moment

This is a music video of the song Waiting For The Wheel To Turn. This song glorifies the resurgent Scottish nationalism which led to the re-establishment of the Scots parliament which held its first session on the anniversary of the victory of William Wallace over English forces at Stirling.

The "clearances" referred to are the "Kelo decision" type evictions of small landowners in the highlands.

The "storm to come" is the full independance of Scotland from the United Kingdom. This would make me happy except for the fact that the modern Scots are nothing like the Scots of Wallace and The Bruce. Today they are so left liberal that they make Tony Blair look like Ronald Reagan.

Keeping things in perspective

The Ornery American has reprinted an excellent essay by Orson Scott Card about the upcoming election:

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the party I joined back in the 1970s -- is dead. Of suicide.

As difficult as it is to believe nearly all of the polls now suggest that the American people are poised to hand the planners of the 9/11 attacks a victory far greater than anything that they could ever hope to win on the battlefield. The American people seem on the verge of offering unconditional surrender in the face of Islamofascism.

Make no mistake about it. A Democrat victroy will be surrender in the face of men like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. If the party of surrender wins Tuesday the terrorists will know that they will only have to be willing to kill innocent people for a few years and our will to resist will melt away like a snowball in July.

And furthermore they will be right.

Good questions

I found these pictures on A Keyboard and a .45:

What kind of nation are we to be?

Also from The Brussels Journal:

Paul Belien spent Halloween in Hollywood watching the media's reporting on the upcoming elections and offeres this analysis:

Americans can already see what their country’s future will be if they vote for Pelosi and her band. They only need to watch Europe. That is what America will be like 20 years from now if the Liberals succeed in turning the U.S. into a European-style welfare state. The latter is the cause of all Europe’s problems. It has led to secularization, because people who are catered for from the cradle to the grave no longer need God. It has led to the immigration debacle, because Europe has attracted welfare immigrants who only come for the benefits and not to contribute to the host country’s wealth creation. It has led to the loss of the citizens’ ability to care for themselves, because they expect everything from the state.

However, the current American elections are relevant for Europe, too. If they lead to the American withdrawal from Iraq, Europe will face a widespread intifada. The withdrawal will be perceived as a defeat of the West and the Muslim “youths” in Europe’s cities will become even more arrogant. They utterly despise the Europeans, whom they perceive (not entirely without reason) to be men dressed up as ballerinas, and they hate America because it fights back. In a world ruled by men who only understand the language of power it is better to be hated than despised. If America withdraws the Islamist fanatics will despise America for it. They will take this as a sign that the West has been defeated and that the world is theirs.

In this scenario Europe has more to lose than America. That makes it all the more surprising that Europe’s politicians refuse to support America. They seem to be hoping that the Muslims, although they despise the Europeans, will leave them alone so they can carry on paying the taxes that the immigrants live off. I fear it will not turn out this way. Moreover, the funds are running dry because the welfare state hampers wealth creation.

All true. Every last bit of it. If the party of the Left wins control of the House and/or the Senate day after tomorrow they will use every last bit of power that they have to get US forces out of Iraq. This will have the result which Mr. Belien predicts. When the Islamofascists no longer percieve the US as a threat they will explode.

Europe will bear the brunt of the explosion, at least at first, as the European Muslim population rises to take the control which they will believe has been handed to them with the defeat of Europe's protector. This will serve Europe right for being the weak effiminate socalist cowards that they are.

And frankly it will serve the US right too for being so blindly stupid as to hand control of the legislature to the party which can hardly be bothered to hide its hatred of America any more.

Democratic nations get the government that they deserve. What does America deserve?

Yet another chruch scandal

From The Brussels Journal:

It looks like not everyone in the Norwegian Lutheran Church has accepted homosexual clergymen yet. Yesterday, the Norwegian Association for Lesbian and Homosexual Emancipation (LLH, Landsforeningen for lesbisk og homofil frigjøring) said that it wants quota introduced for them. Another organization, the Open Church Group (Åpen kirkegruppe), stated that dioceses with a positive view towards homosexual clergymen should actively go out and recruit them for their parishes.

The LLH notes that homosexual clergymen are not welcome everywhere. sometimes their applications are not considered when a new vicar has to be appointed. The spokesman of the association, Nils Riedl, compares the fight for homosexual clergymen to the fight for female clergypersons. Therefore the association wants to improve the position of the lesbians and male homosexuals within the Norwegian Lutheran Church by imposing quota. In a reaction to the proposal both the social democratic Labor Party (Ap, Arbeiderpartiet) and the conservative (H, Høyre) emphasized that they support the organization's objectives, but not the demand for quota. They think the latter would damage the interests of homosexuals in the long run.

Will there soon be a demand for quota for atheist clergy too? The latter do exist. Remember the story of the Danish vicar Thorkild Grosbøll a few months ago. He
caused a row when he said he did not believe in God. He was briefly suspended but was immediately allowed to resume his job when he declared that he had regained his faith in God.

So what will come next in this surreal tale of female, homosexual and atheist vicars? Muslim vicars perhaps? Believe it or not, but in Sweden there is already a debate about removing the word "Swedish" from the name Svenska Kyrkan [Swedish Church] because it is perceived to be hostile to immigrants. Some say that in a multicultural society the Church should become multicultural too, and hence include immigrants. References to the Swedishness of the Swedish Church should therefore be avoided. I assume that once they start to go down that road, Muslim vicars should not be excluded either.

Two thousand years ago, Christianity was founded by a young, religious Jewish man. If He took his religion seriously (and if there is any truth in The Da Vinci Code) Jesus was a heterosexual. If the Open Church Group achieves its aims soon vicars like Him will be the exception rahter than the rule in "enlightened" dioceses. Next time God tries to save the world, He had better send His lesbian daughter who does not believe in Him or in her brother.

I wish that I had some kind of humorous or profound comment to make about this but I confess to being at a loss. All I can say is that this is always where you will end up when you go down the road of having a state church. You may think that you are turning the government into an arm of the Church, but it is the reverse which will happen.

Another thing is that even though these apostates don't know it and it would probably infuriate them to hear it they are fulfilling Biblical prophecy. A falling away before the end is predicted in more than one place. Jesus even asked if he would find faith on the Earth when he returned.

Goodby Saddam

From The Washington Post:

BAGHDAD, Nov. 5 -- Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was found guilty by a special tribunal Sunday of crimes against humanity for the torture and execution of more than 100 people from a small town north of Baghdad 24 years ago. He was sentenced to death by hanging.

This is good news. He may not be the worst person to ever have lived but he is in the ballpark.

I hope they hang him soon. I think that his death will take the wind out of the sails of a big part of the "insurgency"

I wonder what the Iraqi people think of this?

Celebratory gunfire rang out over Baghdad as jubilant Iraqis expressed their happiness with the outcome by racing to rooftops, front yards and windows to fire into the air. National television showed smiling Iraqis dancing in the streets of cities around the country, including in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad, which technically was under an all-day curfew.

About what I thought.

What exactly was this trial about?

Hussein was convicted of ordering the killings of 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, following a failed assassination attempt against him there in 1982. Hussein's presidential convoy was passing through the town when it was shot at. In response, he and other top Iraqi officials at the time order the round-up of hundreds of people, and the town's buildings were razed and its orchards destroyed.

Ten of the people executed were boys ranging in ages from 11 to 17 at the time of the incident. The government held them in jail until they were 18, then hanged them.

Saddam's supporters had this to say:

Hussein's defense attorneys warned that a guilty verdict and sentence of death would sparked renewed attacks against U.S. and other coalition forces in Iraq and lead to a wider civil war. They also accused the Bush administration and the Shiite-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki of colluding to scheduled the verdict so it came two days before crucial mid-term elections, hoping to give Bush's Republican party an electoral boost. Iraqi and U.S. officials have denied the charge.

Isn't it interesting how Saddam Hussein's defense team as well as Osama bin Laden and his terrorist cronies all seem to be reading off the list of Democrat talking points? Let's spend some time thinking about this before we enter that voting booth. Do we really want people running the country who seem to be making the provision of aid and comfort to the enemy the centerpiece of their party?

Your feel good moment of the day

Capercaillie.
Skye Waulking Song or a song to sing while working (waulking) from the Isle of Skye.



I found several more videos of Capercaillie on You Tube. I'll try to post one per day till they run out.

Glock update

Yesterday I posted about The Glock Sport Shooting Foundation's decision to offer Glock pistols to their members at reduced prices. The example I used was the Glock m21 which is being offered for $464.20. The offer is good until Dec. 31, 2006 so you have a little time to save your pennies.

I checked with Rex's Indoor Range in Hendersonville, NC (828-696-9838) when I went there to shoot. They will process a mail order transfer for $25.00. This is a fair price and they are to be commended for taking this attitude as many gun stores will either refuse or charge an excessive price.

Rex's is a great place to shoot and a great place to buy your guns. They only stock a small selection, but will order anything you want at a very reasonable price. Their ammunition and targets are as reasonably priced as you are likely to find them and the range is clean with all equipment in good working order.

I cannot recommend them too highly for a place to shoot and a place to purchase guns, ammo or accessories.

Range Report

This is my Glock m23. There are many like it but this one is mine.


Rapid fire at 15 yards. I can do better when I practice regularly. I have been too busy the past few weeks to shoot.


These are not mine. I rented them from the range because I wanted to try them out. On top is the new S&W M&P (Military and Police) in .40S&W.

On the bottom is the Glock m21 in .45 ACP.

I liked both of them. The S&W fits the hand very well. The Glock is a bit big for my hand, but the larger frame spreads out the recoil making it very controllable.

I think that the Glock 21 would fit my hand well enough if it had the grip reduction offered by the Cylinder & Slide Shop.

The M&P has the awful internal lock that Smith is putting on all their pistols now. I hate the very idea of those things, but it seems that all of the gun companies are going in that direction. So far Glock is offering the lock as an option. They are not trying to shove it down the public's throat. Another reason why Glock is one of the best gun companies out there.





This is the S&W at 25 yards. I shot that gun first to warm up so I wasn't as good with it as I was with the .45.

The picture of the target that I shot with the Glock didn't turn out well so you'll have to take my word for it.

The lake and the leaves

On my way to the range in Hendersonville I stopped at Lake Lure and took some pictures. The color may be mostly gone in the High Country but the lower elevations still are at or near their peak.

The colors are better this year than they have been for at least the past 10 years or more.

You wouldn't think that anything could live on the rock this way, but the roots dig in.

Lots and houses near the lake command very high prices.

I love the colors here.

Thanksgiving is almost here. They'd better keep their heads down.

The house hiding behind the trees here recently sold for more than a million dollars. I know that doesn't seem like much to people from San Francisco where a 10' x 20' garage apartment sells for $850,000, but around here that it a hell of a lot.

There is no truth in Pravda. . .

From The Washington Post:

Republicans entered the campaign's final weekend yesterday desperately trying to keep control of the Senate, with three or four tossup races likely to determine whether the GOP can cling to power there even as it sees its hold on the House eroding.

Get ready to have this shoved down your throat today, tomorrow and Monday. The mainstream media has given up even the pretence of objectivity and is functioning as the PR Department of the DNC. This is all part of the effort to suppress the Republican vote.

The fact is that the GOP has a far better get out the vote machine than the Democrats and that will be the key to victory this election. Many Republicans are disappointed with their elected Republicans this time around. But they are disappointed with them for ACTING LIKE DEMOCRATS!. Especially on spending and immigration.

Republicans angry with their congressman for spending too much money and not being hard-line enough on the borders will not go out and vote for a Democrat who will go into office promising to raise taxes and grant amnesty to illegals.

Republicans will also not sit home and fail to vote either because they know that amounts to a vote for the Democrats.

The next phase of the GOP voter suppression effort will be seen on Monday. Polls are being taken even as I type this which will show a large swing in the Democrats' favor. This is because Republicans tend not to be at home on the weekends (I'm getting ready to go to the shooting range right now) so polls taken on the weekend oversample Democrats and give a distorted result.

The media knows this, but they do not care. They will report the tainted weekend polls as gospel in order to discourage Republicans.

Don't let it work.

Cox & Forkum

The joke isn't just on Kerry it is Kerry.

Another church scandal

I was so busy this past week that I failed to notice the flap over Ted Haggard until it was already a day or two old. Of course the timing of the revelation is political. The gay male prostitute who came forward admits as much.

In catching up on the details of the scandal I came across a post on Patrick's blog, Born Again Redneck in which he quoted and linked to a post by Ben Witherington:

Before we ask-- has the world gone mad, it might be good to reflect for a minute on the leadership climate in the rarified air of big time Evangelical mega-churches. of course it will vary from church to church, but there are a few things in common with most of these churches which needs to be rethought:

1) most of these large churches are not part of denominations which have a connectional enough system to hold the individual church leadership accountable through peer leaders in other churches. By this I mean there is little outside accountability. There are no covenant relationships with other church leaders, no covenant relationships with other churches, the leadership structure is entirely controlled INTERNALLY between influential lay persons and the ministers. There is normally an overseeing board of some sort. But how do they work? Are they rubber stamps? Do they contain professional counselors and ministers to whom a minister in crisis could turn? Usually not. And sometimes there is only a once a year "accountability moment". For example there is a large mega-church in California which does accountability this way--- the pastor gives the congregation in an open meeting the chance for an up or down vote on his ministry once a year. So far as I can tell this is not done by secret ballot, just by a public acclamation or vote. What's wrong with this picture? If something objectionable shows up in the ministry plans etc. during the year and the time for the accountability moment is not near, then there is no accountability. It is handled internally.

One thing that I could have predicted before this all began is that a scandal of this type would lead to finger pointing by everyone with a theological ax to grind. Mr. Witherington makes the point that a "mega-church" lacks accountability at the highest levels. This is true, but before we go into the details let's stop and define exactly what a "mega-church" is.

A mega-church, as Witherington is using the term, is a large independent church. That is, a church which does not belong to a larger denominational organization such as the Southern Baptist Conference or the United Methodists. Often the "mega-church" will have a senior pastor who has some degree of fame outside of his congregation as an author and/or as host of a radio or TV show. Usually the church will have grown to such a large size because of the "star power" of the minister.

Now, back to Mr. Witherington's point. Yes the mega-church lacks the kind of external accountability to an outside hierarchy which a church belonging to a larger denominational structure has. However to balance that it should be pointed out that the independent church (mega or micro) is not subject to corrupting influences from a denominational hierarchy which has been infected with apostasy.

There is not a denomination in Protestant Christendom which has not already compromised or is not under extreme pressure at the highest levels to compromise important doctrines or practices. In my own denomination, The Church of the Brethren, we have seen our own seminary fall under the control of the forces of theological liberalism to the degree that my own local church (and many of the Brethren congregations in the Southeast) will not allow any of the money we send up to the District and National organizations to be used to support it and we will not consider a graduate of it for a pastoral post at our church. At least now someone who graduated in the past couple of decades.

The same thing can be said of Mr. Witherington's Presbyterian Church which has been ordaining women pastors for years and defeats efforts to begin ordaining homosexuals by smaller and smaller margins every year. In fact I am reminded of a story told by R. C. Sproul, the great Presbyterian theologian, about his experience at a Presbyterian seminary. When he came home for the first time and told his family and friends about the professors who denied predictive prophecy, miracles, the deity of Christ, the resurrection and Second Coming everyone refused to believe him. They said that all of those professors were ordained ministers and could never teach such things. Sproul said that he wanted to grab them and shake them and yell in their faces, "who do you think murdered Jesus?".

It has been more than 30 years since Sproul was in seminary. If it was that bad then how bad do you think it is now?

Other denominations are even further gone. An author reported going into a large Methodist book store in a large city about 20 years ago and finding it full of books teaching the transmigration of souls and other New Age/Hindu beliefs. When she pointed this out to the elderly lady behind the counter the response was, "yes it's terrible, but that's all the young pastors what nowadays".

My point is not to attack Presbyterians or Methodists. There are many churches in both denominatins which are good rock-solid, Biblical churches. But their numbers are shrinking due in part to the influence which is trickling down from the top.

Because human beings are fallen sinners there is no way in which we can organize our churches which will guarantee that things like this will not happen. Independent or denominational. Episcopal or Congregational. Dispensational, Covenant or Charismatic. All are made up of sinful men and women and all will find their own way to fail.

When this kind of thing happens the task before us not to use an event like this as a club to beat other Christians for not being exactly like ourselves. It is, rather, to emulate the Amish who recently went out of their way to include the family of the man who had murdered some of their children in their grieving.

As Christians our priority should be offering aid and comfort to Mr. Haggard's family and congregation who have been grieved by these events and bringing about the restoration of Mr. Haggard's shattered relationship with God which is the only way to bring healing to his soul.

Some good news

The Glock Sport Shooting Foundation is offering special prices for its members. For example the G-21 (full sized .45 ACP) can be had for $464.20 for the basic model.

I am happy.

Reflections on the week just past

This was taken on Halloween morning in Newland, NC. The town businesses were having daylight trick or treat.

I think it sucks that Halloween is becoming so dangerous that the evening trick or treating that I enjoyed as a child is becoming rare.

The reason that posting has been light for the past week is that a friend has been visiting from the New York area. I have been keeping up with my work and spending time with him and his brother (who lives down here).

He brought some guns down with him, there not being many places in New Jersey to shoot any more.

He prefers that I not post a picture of him on this blog due to his surpassing ugliness (the same reason I don't put up any pictures of myself). That is why I cropped him out of this shot taken at the Pond Mt. Range in TN.

This is the road leading up to the range, which is across the road from Watauga Lake.

This is one of the guns he brought down. It was custom built by Bill Laughridge at the Cylinder & Slide Shop. I would put up a better picture, but he is afraid that the government men would come and take it away from him if they got a good look at it.

Stop The ACLU Blogburst

Crossposted from Stop The ACLU

I was going to talk about the dishonest argument the ACLU made in its attack on Hazelton, PA for trying to crackdown on illegal immigration problems. They argued that it was not the place of small communities to create laws fashioned to their own unique problems on illegal immigration, but the Federal government's responsibility. Of course this argument does not reflect the ACLU's true beliefs on the topic. If the Federal government created a similar law as Hazelton the ACLU would find a different argument to oppose it. The argument was, however, good enough to convince a Clinton appointed judge to temporarily block their ordinances.

I was going to show the ACLU's real agenda for illegal immigrant. Well, they just showed a lot of it themselves in press release.
ACLU

The American Civil Liberties Union, the National Employment Law Project and the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law today filed a petition urging the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to find the United States in violation of its universal human rights obligations by failing to protect millions of undocumented workers from exploitation and discrimination in the workplace.

The ACLU is basing its argument on stating the United States has violated a vague International Human Rights Treaty signed in 1948 called the AMERICAN DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF MAN. This treaty states that, "Every person has the right to work, under proper conditions, and to follow his vocation freely, insofar as existing conditions of employment permit." As I said, the treaty is vague. Nowhere in the treaty does it define what proper conditions are, however another section does state that the duty of every person to obey the law of the country in which he may be.

Current immigration law provides criminal sanctions for employers who hire illegal aliens. In other words it is a crime to hire an illegal alien...period. The ACLU tries to hide this fact by omitting the word "illegal" and replacing it with "undocumented". Illegal aliens are criminals and hiring a criminal to work is a crime also. In essence the ACLU is attempting to grant the same rights and benefits that a law abiding citizen enjoys to international criminals.

“The most poorly paid and least desirable jobs in the United States are filled by undocumented immigrants, yet the government increasingly limits the safeguards available to this population, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and workplace discrimination,” said Claudia Flores, an attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “The United States government has an obligation under universal human rights norms to protect vulnerable populations, such as immigrant women, and has failed in this regard.”
Undocumented immigrants make up nearly five percent of the U.S. labor force. However, employment and labor protections under state laws have been either eliminated or severely limited for undocumented workers in some states. These include such basic workplace protections as freedom from workplace discrimination and entitlement to hold an employer responsible for a workplace injury.

The ACLU ignores the fact that these "undocumented workers" don't have a right to work here in the first place, and that those hiring them are breaking the law. The United States can not enforce or provide protections for criminals in the work place. They can't even enforce laws against hiring them in the first place. If any illegal immigrant is being exploited it is from an employer that is providing them with much more of an opportunity than they could ever find in their own country and at the expense of American jobs and law. The real way to stop the exploitation is to stop the illegal hiring.

“International human rights law requires the United States to apply its workplace protections equally and without discrimination based on immigration status. We bring this petition to cast a global spotlight on the U.S. government’s poor human rights record in protecting undocumented workers from discrimination and to demand accountability from states and the federal government, all of whom are obligated to protect and defend human rights,” said Chandra Bhatnagar, a staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program.

What a load of bull! The ACLU goes on to list the individuals on their petition which includes illegals that want handouts for injuries in jobs they acquired illegally instead of accepting the responsibility they knowingly took upon themselves by breaking our laws.

The ACLU fights every effort the U.S. attempts to secure its borders and enforce illegal immigration laws. Their hostility towards the Minutemen's efforts to enforce the border is all too telling. They align themselves with open border advocates and even help illegals get into the country.

The head of the ACLU is also an adviser to the IFC and of course, ACLU is among the most important and dangerous members of the open borders combine, using its considerable resources in support of causes that will encourage illegal aliens to enter the US and facilitate their remaining here: granting them drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens, granting instate tuition to illegals, welfare and free health care etc. The ACLU has even opposed rules to speed the deportation of illegals convicted of violent felonies.

Front Page Magazine has a lot on this issue. Here is more on the ACLU's opposition to fighting the illegal immigration problem.

The ACLU has opposed any Department of Justice plan to fingerprint and track immigrants and foreign visitors to the United States. “The ACLU has long opposed immigrant registration laws, saying that they treat immigrant populations as a separate and quasi-criminal element of society and that they create an easy avenue for surveillance of those who may hold unpopular beliefs,” read a press release, “The fingerprinting and tracking proposal is only the latest Bush Administration action targeted at Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent since September 11. Other discriminatory measures have included round-ups, dragnet questioning, the detention of more than a thousand young men and the targeting of Middle Eastern communities for heightened enforcement of minor immigration law violations.”[20] The ACLU also opposes the use of immigration law violations as the means for holding or deporting suspects with ties to terrorism, and the use of secret or classified evidence in deportation hearings.

The ACLU is attempting to circumvent our current laws with a vague international treaty all in the name of granting criminals rights and benefits at the expense of law abiding Americans. If you think that illegal immigration is a problem now, just imagine how it will increase if the ACLU is successful. In the process the ACLU is threatening our very sovereignty.

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Paiging Senater Carry

I got this in my email and then saw it at Stop The ACLU. It seems that the troops don't have any trouble figuring out who Kerry was talking about.

But then they're just a bunch of ignorant losers, so what do they know?

Post Halloween Report

I went with two friends last night to downtown Asheville for the Halloween festivities. It was an unseasonably warm night with clear skies so a good many people were out.

We saw plenty of witches and warlocks. People dressed as street people (bums and bag ladies). We saw women with fairy wings and magic wands. We saw men dressed as leather queens and other kinds of flamboyant homosexuals. We saw women in tiny leather dresses which left them essentially naked. We saw evil clowns and men dressed as vampires.

In other words it was a pretty normal night for Asheville.

Damage Control!

From The Washington Post:

President Bush last night accused Sen. John F. Kerry of disparaging U.S. troops in Iraq, echoing the 2004 strategy of ridiculing the Massachusetts senator to raise anew questions about Democratic leaders and their commitment to the troops. The highly coordinated White House effort came as Republicans sought to shift the focus away from an unpopular war and GOP scandals that are putting their congressional majorities at risk.

The controversy erupted after Kerry told a California audience on Monday: "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

First of all notice how the first paragraph covers all of the Democrat talking points. Clearly the primary thrust of the article is to assist the Democrats in doing damage control. Damage control which is needed because the blockhead Kerry violated the DNC's endgame strategy of "going dark" in the final two weeks of the campaign.

As I noted in a previous post the Democrats have figured out that they have lost the nation. They cannot win an election (outside of a few left liberal strongholds like the left coast and the Northeast) by being honest about who and what they are.

To aid in their efforts to hide their true natures Democrat bigshots like Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean have crawled back under their wet rock for the final days of the campaign. Kerry just blew this strategy out of the water. I don't know whether he got so comfortable in front of an audience of fellow leftist wackjobs and forgot there were cameras or if this was his brain-dead way of setting up his 2008 presidential run but all he succeeded in doing was putting Democrat hostility to the military back front and center in the public's mind.

Kerry is now attempting to excuse his remarks by saying that they were directed at the President and not the troops in Iraq. This despite the fact that he never mentioned the President. It might be possible for another leftist moron to weasel his way out of this but it isn't going to work for Kerry. The reason is that Kerry is already on record, more than once, denigrating the nations fighting men.

Kerry first gained the public spotlight when he came back from his truncated tour of Viet Nam and testified before Congress, accusing his fellow servicemen of a veritable cornucopia of atrocities of a kind not seen since the Rape of Nanking. Not content to rest on those laurels he recently accused our troops in Iraq of conducting Gestapo-like midnight raids on the homes of innocent Iraqis in order to terrorize the woman and children.

So this latest outburst of hatred for the men and women in uniform is just another day at the office for the Senator from Massachusetts. The question is what will the affect will this have (other than ending whatever forlorn hope Kerry ever had of becoming president). Rush Limbaugh speculated yesterday that the mainstream media would be doing everything in its power to protect Kerry, not because they care about him (they do not) but because of the potential to derail what they believe (hope) will be the giant "Blue Wave" of Democrat victory next week.

If this WaPo article, which could have been written by a DNC flack (and for all we know actually was) is any indication of what the MSM has in store for us Limbaugh was right - again.


UPDATE:

Kerry issued a statement this morning that he was stopping all campaign activities and returning to Washington so as not to be a distraction.

Translation - The Democrat leadership knocked Lurch down and stuffed a sock in his stupid pie-hole because the moron was proving himself genetically incapable of doing anything other than dig himself in deeper.