contract from america (12)

 

 

T.E.A. Party Doubles-Down on Failed

Over-Involvement Policy and Social Conservativism

 

                In 2010 the remarkable effect of the T.E.A. (Taxed Enough Already) Party’s Anti-Big Government; Pro-Constitution; and Pro-fiscal Responsibility Platform was truly the news of the hour even if the lamestream-mainstream media were not willing to cover it and Time magazine refused to even consider it a newsworthy movement.  Besides the resurgence of conservatives in the U.S. House of Representatives, a shift of over 600 state legislature positions from liberal to conservative hands was an outstanding result by any fair measurement.  Only trouble?  Three shoo-in semi-conservative U.S. senators were defeated by three T.E.A. Party favorites each of whom proved to be unworthy and ineffective candidates . . . and the liberal Obama-supporting U.S. Senate under Harry Reid continued unbroken to obstruct citizens’ movements for responsible-responsive governments.  At present Reid’s Senate has NOT passed a budget in over 1,190 days just six days short of three full years.  Over the same time period, the House of Representatives under Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi also failed to pass a budget, but the Republican-controlled House after the 2010 “miracle-election” has passed two significant Paul Ryan budgets.  Just imagine how different things might be if the T.E.A. party had not interfered in Colorado, Nevada and Connecticut.  Now it appears that mistake in judgment is about to be repeated in the case of several well-respected Republicans; two quite prominent and most notably, Utah’s Orrin Hatch, a damned decent man in my not-so-humble opinion.

            Today rather than getting credit for the modern miracle they pulled off,  and almost pulled off . . . in many places the T.E.A. (taken enough abuse?) Party is villified and has lost much popularity.  Rather than being seen as the “savior of conservativism,” by Republicans, many moderate Republicans regard the T.E.A.s as a threat and a group of butt-inskies.  Has something gone wrong?  If so what?   What can we learn from the relatively few but remarkably stupid mistakes of 2010? 

  1. 1.       In each of these three cases, rather than emphasizing the T.E.A. Party “Contract from America,” the T.E.A. Party chose to become extremely involved in the early primary and election process itself.  In fact, today, the T.E.A. Party emphasis on the Contract from America has virtually disappeared:  a grievous error.
  2. 2.      In each of these three cases, the T.E.A. Party, rather than playing the role of impartial protectors of the Constitution emphasizing to voters how they ought to be making decisions, decided instead to immerse itself in the political in-fighting. 
  3. 3.      In two of the cases, Colorado and Nevada, the T.E.A. Party embarrassed itself by getting involved with virtually inarticulate SOCIAL-CONSERVATIVES who were easily maneuvered into ugly and untenable positions by experienced liberal politicians.  In Connecticut, their glorious candidate was a sorry excuse for a politician – who vetted that woman – witchcraft, indeed?   Looking at the Contract from America . . . where exactly are we to find any social-conservativism at all?  Or Witchcraft?   If the T.E.A. Party  wants its newly arisen social-conservativism to become the new replacement for the long ineffectual Republican litmus test . . . I guarantee that will be the end of the T.E.A. Party’s ability to create meaningful change in meaningful areas such as those 10 planks of the Contract from America.  In each of these three over-involvement instances, the candidates seemingly refused to mention the Contract from America, but were certainly not reluctant to talk about abortion, creationism in schools, and prayer in schools.  By the way, very little progress has been made on the Contract for America precisely because the U.S. Senate was not won by the Conservatives.  So what’s to be done?
  4. A.      Politics is very expensive, messy and often is NOT conducive to a climate of change.  Avoid actual politics.   Educate, proselytize, be missionaries for the Constitution; for fiscal-responsibility; for small, effective government.
  5. B.      Next to the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, the most remarkable document for freedom and capital R-type Republicanism from paragraph A before this was the T.E.A. Party’s Contract from America.  When the T.E.A.s virtually abandoned this key document, they abandoned their identity.
  6. C.      Right now 75% of the conservatives in politics are Republicans.  If and when, however, liberal Democrats cannot get elected and liberal Republicans cannot get elected and Progressive anythings cannot even win primaries, then the T.E.A. Party will need to shift to carefully monitoring both parties as fiscal- and Constitutional-Conservativism becomes a winning proposition in both parties.  Till then 75% of the time the T.E.A. Party should support the Republican and 25% support some version of a Blue-dog Democrat or Independent. . . but should NOT get involved with primaries, and elections directly.   Just help people learn about the Contract for America; and fiscal- and Constitutional-conservativism don’t interfere.  Also T.E.A Party volunteers can serve a very big role in 1) helping to get out the Conservative voters and 2) serving as watchdogs at election precincts (do the job of election volunteer, but remain alert to potential voter fraud situations).
  7. D.     The T.E.A. Party can learn a lot from the Libertarian father-son combo of Ron and Rand Paul.  The Pauls’ stance on small government, fiscal-responsibility, low taxes, welfare, abortion and military excursions away from America’s shore’s are well-known.  What’s worked for the Pauls?  1) emphasizing the T.E.A. Party positions found in the Contract for America more than any other approach which covers low taxes, small government, fiscal-responsibility, and to a  lesser extent 2) welfare- reform. 

What’s sort of worked for the Pauls?  3)  Lumping both major parties together as irresponsible (and they sure are) on taxes and big government and fiscal responsibility and 4) pointing at one as champions of an evil and counter-productive welfare-state and at the other of a bloated and almost-imperialistic warfare state? 

What’s absolutely failed to work for the Rands?  5) Social-liberalism on matters like drug-legalization;   and abortion; and 6) any hint of criticism of the American military in war zones.  <when Ron Paul talks about military bases in 156 countries and 120 troops in Gemany and Japan combined – he finds many more sympathetic ears than when he criticizes military missions>.  The Libertarian position on items 5 and 6 virtually guarantees a maximum of 20% support and as little as a 10% following anywhere in the nation – very ineffective.  Ron Paul should realize where his power lies and refuse to comment ever on items 5) and 6).  If he did that, he’d largely be a T.E.A. Party man and find high-receptivity among 45% of the voters minimum.  I love the T.E.A. Party, but have been embarrassed by its gaffs with the three Senators in 2010 and with virtually everything since then.  What works for the T.E.A. Party?   The Contract for America.   Make a new one quickly that reflects 2012 reality.  Refrain from picking candidates until they are nominees.  Refrain from any and all social-conservativism.  Fiscal- and Constitutional- and small-government-conservativism is not only a winner . . . it’s also precisely what the nation needs right now.

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

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For the last three months the two strongest and most consistent Republican candidate debate performances have come from businessman Herman Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Rajjpuut’s preferred G.O.P. ticket is Cain-Gingrich. The current surge in Cain’s popularity shows that Republican voters as a whole are starting to honor TEA Party principles and repudiate the G.O.P.’s former ugly movement toward bigger, more irresponsible government during the G.W. Bush years. Rajjpuut suggests that Herman Cain needs to outline a "platform" and begin to accentuate his ties to the TEA Party’s Contract from America and to educate American voters upon that document’s principles.  To that end  . . . .
 
Rajjpuut’s Suggested Herman Cain
“Contract with America’s Voters”
 
Preamble: 
 
Government is growing too fast, too much, too expensively, too expansively, and too destructively . . . crowding out cherished economic freedoms. This great country will never fulfill its long-run potential to prosper, create jobs and lead the world unless constitutional limits to government are restored. America’s greatness, exceptionalism and historical allure to the oppressed people of Planet Earth is tied to three founding documents the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the United States Constitution (and most importantly: within the American Constitution the first ten Amendments known as the Bill of Rights). A Herman Cain presidency will return to these documents as the inspiration and playbook for America’s return to greatness and exceptionalism emphasizing Individual Liberty, Limited Government and Economic Freedom.
While critics of recent Constitutionalist movements (such as the TEA Party) have called these fine Americans “racists,” “haters,” “Nazis,”  “devils” and other slurs without any actual evidence to back up their words, these well-behaved and thoughtful citizens have created a 10-point Contract from America which a Herman Cain presidency would be based upon. The first ten of the eleven main principles “PLANKS” of my presidency are based upon the TEA Party Contract from America.
 
#1 Protect the Constitution:
by requiring each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.
 
#2 Reject Cap and Trade and all overstepping by the EPA destroying businesses, jobs and incentives: 
by stopping all costly new regulations and repealing old regulations that have increased unemployment, raised consumer prices, and weakened the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures; and institute a sensible American energy independence policy.
 
#3 Pass a Balanced Budget and Citizen Tax Freedom
 
 Amendment:
 
requiring a balanced budget and a pay-down of the debt and funding of heretofore UNFUNDED liabilities. To preserve balanced budgets for posterity require a 2/3 majority in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate to pass tax increases or to run a temporary deficit;  but only a simple majority in both chambers to reduce or eliminate taxes; or to eliminate a temporary deficit or to pay-down or eliminate national debt.
 
 
#4 Enact Fundamental Tax Reform:
 
by scrapping 100% of the present tax code and replacing it with a 0-0-9-9-9 tax plan. The 0-0-9-9-9 tax plan means that after the first $20,000 of personal income which is NOT taxed (0%); and all inheritance which is also not taxed (0%). . . institute a 9% personal income tax; a 9% corporate tax; and a 9% capital gains tax. To preserve tax freedom for posterity require a 2/3 majority in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate to pass tax increases but only a simple majority in both chambers to reduce or eliminate taxes.
 
#5 Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally-
 
Limited Government in Washington, D.C.:
 
by creating a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying FRAUD, MALFEASANCE, duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning.
 
#6 End Runaway Government Spending and eliminate
 
federal government-caused-inflation:
 
by pegging the price of Gold in America at $4,000 per ounce and imposing a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of  1/2 the rate of inflation until the budget is balanced all national debt is eliminated and all now UNFUNDED liabilities are paid for. Once our fiscal house is in complete order, federal spending can be raised by the yearly percent of population growth added to 1/2 the rate of inflation. (Note: by limiting federal budget increases to ½ the rate of inflation, lawmakers will mainly be hurting their ability to spend and not the populace by inflating the currency.)
#7 Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health
 
Care and the Dodd-Frank Financial Act:
 
Repeal the Dodd-Frank Financial Act. Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enacting national tort reform and enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries.
 
#8 Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy:
 
by authorizing exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs.   Add a 1% tax upon all profits from energy resources which will be set aside for funding green-energy innovation. All green energy innovation grants will be under control of a blue-ribbon committee of responsible scientists and not bureaucrats. Remove the most burdensome of taxes upon; and 100% of subsidies to all energy businesses.
#9 Stop the Pork:
 
by asking my party to eliminate all earmarks until our nation’s fiscal house is 100% in order; by vetoing ANY bill which contains earmarks placed before me; and then passing a bill into law requiring a ¾ majority in both the Senate and House to pass any bill with earmarks for the future.
#10 Minimize Taxes:
 
because a revolt against uncontrolled government, uncontrolled spending and irresponsible attacks upon economic freedom has taken place since 1989.  No intelligent person NOW trusts Washington and its bureaucracy to be good and responsible stewards of our money who put we citizens, voters and taxpayers first . . . a strong emphasis on constitutional limits and restraints on legislation, spending, taxing government interference and government control of the economy must replace business as usual in the Nation’s Capitol.  We must restore and advance the Constitutional-restraint of government championed by Ronald Reagan who ended a debilitating recession and created 20 million jobs.
 
#11 Re-think and Refine our Foreign Policy:
because America has lost power and prestige around the world in recent times; because Defense and Foreign Aid are such drags upon our nation’s economy; because their appears to be no integrity to recent American actions around the globe . . . we must identify our enemies; identify our friends and allies; strengthen the economic and other bonds with friends; eliminate all foreign aid that is NOT in our national interest and create a new and coherent 21st Century military and foreign policy.
 
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut


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Ape-Man Discovery in South Africa
Might Make Perry
Into Foolish Fuddy-Duddy
 
 
 
            You might ask what the link and headline above have to do with the price of tea in China or politics in the United States?   Perhaps more than immediately meets the eye . . . .
            A noted anthropologist's child recently stumbled onto something "earth-shaking" which has now been named Australopithecus sediba or the "Southern Ape" as a nickname.  If ever there was an actual missing link:  this appears to be it. 
These Australopithecus sediba fossils (young male and older female) are dated to just short of 2 million years old and mark the first and only time that such a fossil has been labeled as both a hominid (highly advanced ape) and a hominin (of direct human lineage) by responsible anthropologists. 
The discovery was made in South Africa far, far from where Louis Leakey’s “Lucy” (Australopithecus afarensis dated to 3.2 million years ago and apparently a hominid ancestor of this recent discovery) was first discovered. Hominids like gorillas; chimpanzees; our closest living relative, the bonobo (sometimes called a "pygmy chimp"), and their extinct ancestors have been dated to roughly 6 million years ago.  No scientist is yet calling these Australopithecus sediba fossils the long-sought "missing link."  They tend to shy away from such “bold” labeling for a good twenty years after key discoveries are made, but it certainly could make Charles Darwin smile . . . what about the price of tea; or the fate of TEA Parties?
            On the contemporary front, while Texas governor Rick Perry (G.O.P. Presidential contender) performed decently in his first presidential debate and at this point looks very much like the eventual G.O.P. standard-bearer in 2012 . . . Ol' Rajjpuut suspects Mr. Perry is going to keep having the echoes of his "personal debate" with a ten-year old New Hampshire child coming back to haunt him. 
 
 
            You may remember that the kid instigated by his Mom, asked Perry about the age of the earth and about "Evolution" and was lectured by the governor who said that "It was a theory that had a lot of gaps in it."  Mr. Perry, unfortunately for Constitutional-conservatives/fiscal conservatives is clearly what's known as a social-conservative.  Mr. Perry was more than disingenuous with the child.  Yes, Governor, there are gaps in a lot of scientific knowledge, but anyone who takes the Bible 100% literally (they say it all happened precisely as written including 7-day creation in 7 24-hour days exactly where intelligent people might say that to God a day might be 1.5 billion years long or whatever) and insist upon Creationism being taught in high school biology classes in public schooling is probably not worth our votes.  Well, Mr. Perry, this discovery might well rule out 99% of the serious gaps.  We're not talking about bull-shi_ like so-called "global warming" here, Charles Darwin was a serious and thoughtful scientist and he had worlds of evidence for his beliefs about the Origin of the Species.
 
            The seemingly-unending problem with the Republican Party is that they persistently ignore the stuff that 70% of Americans can agree upon (smaller, less-intrusive federal government; lowest taxes possible; following the Constitution; necessary defense and border control; and fiscal responsibility that includes NOT bankrupting the future for our children and grand children) and persist in sounding like people who want to shove their religions down our throats (Christmas carols in PUBLIC schools where Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics and believers in Herman the Carrot God attend alongside Christians), and like they totally lack compassion; and that they want to interfere in everybody's bedroom activities.  One fact dooms them to not being able to turn this country around: 
Most sensible voters distrust social-conservatives . . . .
 
            For example, social-conservatives are typically 100% anti-abortion.  First of all abortion is the law of the land for almost 40 years now.  More importantly IF you say that no abortion is ever allowed even for
 
                        rape victims
                        incest victims
                        very young girls
                        mothers whose lives are endangered
 
then you mark yourself as a fanatic who believes that our God-given brains are not to be used to make life better; a madman who doesn't believe in human free agency/free will.  For at least 30 years this matter has been widely-polled among American voters and without fail the results are the same:  59% believe that 100% anti-abortionism is just plain WRONG!   And that rape and incest victims and very young girls who are pregnant and mothers whose lives are endangered should have a choice. 
These same polls have also consistently shown that 70% of Americans believe there are "too many abortions in America." So 70% of Americans are quite concerned about abortions and 59% of Americans believe it must come down to the woman’s choice and should be allowed in drastic circumstances like rape, etc. One more thing, since the consequences fall virtually 100% on women, we men ought to stay out of it, it is a woman's choice between her and her God.  When you have 59% of the voting public against your primary social-conservative stance, you will not get elected and you do not deserve to be elected . . . and if social-conservativism interferes, then the necessary good needing doing by fiscal- and Constitutional-conservatives cannot get done and the American future gets flushed down the toilet as the progressive mischief-makers (mostly from the Democratic Party but they’re found in both parties) keep getting elected and keep destroying our nation.
            Mr. Perry did have one problem in the debate and that problem (Social Security) and the South African Ape-Man discovery might doom us all to four more years of Barack Obama’s incompetence unless Mr. Perry grows up. Mr. Perry correctly calls Social Security as it now stands a “Ponzi Scheme.” This is 100% accurate. Just as Ponzi swindlers take a lot of money from their victims and pay out relatively little, Social Security is fundamentally bankrupt right now. Mr. Perry needs to take his message to the people and explain it very well and explain why and how Social Security must be modified if it is to ever be a success for our children. He will not get a lot of help on this. Some of his fellow Republicans will intensely attack him for this honest, forthright stance.
            What his Republican rivals will do to Mr. Perry’s position will be walk in the zoo compared to what the liberal media and the Democrats will assault him with. Mr. Perry needs to confine all future comments on Social Security to this more-easily defendable position.
A.     Social Security as it now stands is a Ponzi scheme and unless modified deeply, Social Security funding will not be there for our children and grandchildren.
B.    Social Security for those aged 50 and above should be left 95% untouched. Means-basing for the very rich recipients on Social Security is vital.
C.    Social Security’s present Ponzi nature becomes evident when we talk about those aged 49 and below. The program must be adjusted and modified greatly to insure that it is fiscally-sound for all such workers.
D.   Social Security was created back when the average American’s life span was 55 years of age and when the average American worker’s lifespan was 52 years of age (far more men than women fell under Social Security and women averaged about 59 years old at death). Today’s realities are that the average death age is closer to 85 than to 55; and that a lot more women are part of the work force. Any changes to Social Security must reflect these realities.
As far as Mr. Perry’s stance on evolution . . . Rajjpuut is reminded of the insurance fraud allowed to stand by a foolish judge. The “victim,” in a wheelchair was told by the insurance agent investigating the matter that he’d hound him till his death and would never be allowed to leave that wheelchair. The “victim” told him, “Fine but I intend to visit Mexico City and the site where the Virgin of Guadalupe encountered Mary. Don’t be surprised if a miracle takes place, my good man!” Mr. Perry needs to read up on human anthropology and on the theories about evolution and on this discovery in particular. It would be smart on the face of it; and super-smart if Mr. Perry were to “see the light.” Seeing the light means Mr. Perry probably ought to say,
 
“The scientists say the earth is 4.5 billion years old; I know nothing that disproves that. The very recent discovery of Australopithecus sediba fossils in South Africa looks like it might be what they used to call a “missing link.” If that’s so, It looks like Mr. Darwin was right and it looks like a day to God is a damn long time to us and the week of creation found in Genesis is a damn, damn, damn long time compared to a human’s lifespan.”
 
            Mr. Perry further needs to educate Americans to the TEA Party’s “Contract for America.” This fiscal- and Constitutional Conservative (with absolutely ZERO social-conservativism in it) document may be the single greatest American political document since the Bill of Rights was added to the U.S. Constitution. The more Mr. Perry persists in attacking the dismal record of Barrack Obama and on pounding home the ten planks in this incredibly visionary Contract from America platform . . . the better off America will be.
 
 
If, ignoring all this sound advice, Mr. Perry persists in unscientific thinking he’ll be pushed out of thinking peoples’ minds as a foolish hick and we’ll get more and more of Barack Obama and it’ll be his fault. Grow up, Rick Perry, grow up!
 
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
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                “Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices” (excerpt from the TEA Party Contract from America which is shown in full in the footnotes).

 

Rasmussen Polls Show Virtually Unchanged

Political Viewpoints over Last 40 Months

 

 

            Social-conservatives in the next few months will have to decide if they want to solve the problems that matter in this country and govern the United States of America and make her great again or if they'd prefer to feel themselves "right" within their own tiny-twisted minds and leave the power, control and tax money all in the hands of President Obama and his neo-Marxists.  They can be "right" or they can find peace knowing they've saved the country . . . they absolutely canNOT do both!  That is the point of this blog . . . .

                America was moved to a point of absolute crisis this week. Today the Obama administration made an “endrun" around Congress (and changed the Constitution’s rules on Naturalization without amending the Constition) by making legal aliens of illegals and proposing the use of regulatory means within the Department of Homeland Security “on a case-by-case basis” to allow amnesty for illegal aliens deemed NOT to be a threat (no criminal record). Meanwhile President Obama is on vacation considering a “bold new jobs initiative” including a brand new round of federal stimulus.  More insidiously, for the last eight months the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been moving (also by fiat regulatory powers) to covertly enforce the Cap and Trade bill that failed to pass Congress in 2009 and 2010 and has begun by closing down coal mines and restricting oil drilling.  In a nutshell, these examples well illustrate what’s wrong with the nation today and why fiscal- and Constitutional conservativism as demanded by the TEA (“Taxed Enough Already” or “Taken Enough Abuse”) Party is the only route to saving our country.

                Few clear-thinkers among us would deny that America stands at a crucial point in her history: most all obvious signs point to decline and potential ruin, but opportunity to realign with our greater earlier history also beckons us toward the future. If ever there was a time for a true statesman or stateswoman to emerge, now is such a time. What do we mean by a “statesman?” How might we recognize him? We will explore the “pros and cons” of this question in the paragraphs that follow . . . .

            Political work in many ways is like being a combination mechanic and back-slapper. Yes, the final “work” gets done by others who must be encouraged to do vast legwork -- but first of all there is a need for the ‘mechanic’s eye for reality’ so that real problems get dealt with in realistic fashion. For example the reality is that 95% of our present problems have fiscal and bureaucratic over-reach as part of their central cause. That truth must be honored, but then again it’s also clearly a people-business. So let’s talk today about the reality of the problems and more importantly about the reality of the people-perspective necessary for a new true statesman to emerge and to lead us out of these stagnant and dangerous 2011 waters . . . .

            Although a good 30% of Democrats deny that the country is facing any fiscal problems (that is, no problems at all with respect to National Debt; Debt Ceiling; Bond Downgrade; Excess Government Spending; Ongoing Deficits; UNfunded Liabilities in Major Entitlement Programs) or troubles with the size and scope of government . . . the vast majority of Americans know better. Poll after poll shows that roughly 72% of the total populace agrees that these two areas are the source of the nation’s problems.   Voters showed their recognition of these truths in the 2010 elections when they voted overwhelmingly for candidates favoring fiscal- and Constitutional-conservativism. So what tools does the statesman have at his disposal in facing these problems? And what approaches should be avoided?

            The good people at Rasmussen Reports (which has been the most accurate among pollsters for the last dozen years) periodically runs a poll concerning the make-up of the voting populace. That poll consistently confirms what has been reputedly true over the last forty years . . . the nation is “center-right” politically. And yet, you correctly observe, tax-and-spend progressive politicians have dominated the country since Calvin Coolidge left office. The eight years of Ronald Reagan mark the only true conservativism within the Oval Office during that 82.5 year span. Why?

            The problem is that while fiscal- and Constitutional conservativism are ultra-popular stances . . . social-moderation combined with social-liberalism dominates the American scene. Live and let live socially (that phraseology is sure to upset the anti-abortion folk, no?) is the predominant political stance in America. Reagan with his affability, his great sense of humor and his capacity for succinctly nailing the opposition to the wall with their own outrageous behavior and beliefs (“Tear down this Wall, Mr. Gorbachev!” “Government is NOT the solution to our problems, government IS the problem.” “Concentrated power has always been liberty’s greatest enemy.”) was precisely what American needed in 1980 and has needed for the last 82.5 years and indeed throughout the total 234 years of the nation’s existence.  And Reagan stayed out of people’s churches and bedrooms.  He was a no-nonsense fiscal- and Constitutional-conservative with an appealing and practical ability to work with people of almost any political stripe. What was Reagan’s secret weapon allowing him to appeal to voters while so many conservatives thoroughly “turn-off” the vast majority of voters? Tolerance!

            Reagan began as a New Deal Democrat, a huge fan of the person and policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  He served as the President of the very liberal Screen Actors’ Guild for several years . . . he only slowly came to conservativism. He realized that (within limits) there was a need for both “loading the cart” by (after national defense was taken care of) encouraging free markets and business and “unloading the cart” by taking care of infra-structure and people. What’s the correct proportion of the balance between loading and unloading? Perhaps a 90-10 split with government spending 10% of the nation’s resources (GDP)?  Reagan’s own numbers showed an 81.5% to 18.5% balance.  In any case rather than being an ideologue, Reagan was open to discussion on the issues and postulated an 80-20 rule when it comes to calling another politician “friend.” “If a man votes with me 80% of the time, I consider him my friend, my ally.” So he was big on getting consensus rather than running roughshod over other people’s positions.

            Let us look at what Rasmussen polling tells us of what we can expect when we find a new Reagan. Only two political descriptions are rated as more positive than negative by the voters: “conservative” and “moderate.” 42% of voters regard it as positive if a candidate is labeled as “politically conservative.” For a comparison:  only 24% of the electorate regards “progressive” (the current euphemism for “liberal”) as positive. Both “liberal” and “progressive” are regarded as far more negative than positive terms. So again the conservative viewpoint is affirmed but the country doesn’t elect conservatives with any consistency . . . 60% of the nation calls itself either “moderate” or “liberal” on social issues . . . and that 60% finds an awful lot to hate in social-conservativism . . . an awful lot to vote against and be turned off by.

            So we return to our clear and obvious thesis: while fiscal-progressives (a.k.a. liberals) and Constitutional-progressives (a.k.a. neo-Marxists) are killing the country with their socialistic policies . . . our own social-conservativism is sharpening the knife and putting it into their hands.  How? By polarizing the voting populace into social-conservatives vs. everyone else and watering down all respect for fiscal- and Constitutional-conservativism. The reason the TEA Party was so effective in getting results in 2010, when they stayed out of politics and nominating and instead played kingmakers and idea salesmen, was that fiscal- and Constitutional-conservativism was served and issues like absolute anti-abortionism, prayer in public school, evolution in the biology classrooms of public schools, etc. are not discussed. 

When the TEA Party went too far and got into running for office, however, candidates perceived as “extreme” and “weirdo” (such as Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell and Ken Buck in Nevada, Delaware and Colorado respectively) emerged and totally turned off the voters and cost the Republicans a share of the Senate which would have made a huge difference in the last four key votes in Congress (debt-limit; Bush Tax Break Extension and budget for 2011 finally; finally passing a 2012 budget; and Cut-Cap and Balance legislation). All of these issues resulted in unsatisfactory legislation when a far more satisfactory result would have been possible if the G.O.P. controlled Congress. How important is this? 

Consider this, once Paul Ryan’s budget proposal was submitted and passed in the House, the Obama budget proposal was introduced into the Senate where Obama’s Democrats had controlling numbers. What was the result? Mr. Obama’s proposal was defeated in the Democrat-controlled Senate by a 0-97 vote. Even Obama’s Democrats understood the writing on the wall. Conservative thinking is ruling the day, but the public still strongly resents holier-than-thou social-conservativism and insistence by conservatives on their perceived-right to enter people’s religious or sexual sanctuaries will not be tolerated by the electorate. For a final proof of this: remember that 59% of the populace is 100% opposed to the ultra-social-conservative stance of ZERO abortions in cases of incest, rape, extremely young mothers, or a threat to the life or health of the mother while 76% of Americans believe there are far too many abortions in America.

We saw Rick Perry this week giving us a great example of why strict adherence to fiscal-conservativism and Constitutional-conservativism is the only reasonable approach.   Serving as an extremely bad example, Perry preceded his recent entering the presidential fray with a big-spectacle event a “prayer-fest.” This played well in Iowa; it will NOT win him votes in the vast majority of states. Perry then goes to New Hampshire and cannot answer a simple schoolchild’s question about the age of the earth (4.5 billion years roughly) and, after tut-tutting to the kid that “there are gaps in the Theory of Evolution” (yes, there are, but nothing like the obvious contradictions and shortfalls of the sacred books of ALL our religions) tells the schoolboy that in Texas they teach both Creationism and Evolution in school. 

Mr. Perry, in short, is a fool proposing foolish things. Literal 7-Day Creationism is a religious tenet that should be confined to private schools funded by private and/or religious resources and NOT taught in public schools funded by the taxes of Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, atheists,  Shintos and Rastafarians as well as Christians. Mr. Perry, is proving himself unable to keep his eye on the twin balls of fiscal- and Constitutional-conservativism . . . indeed by advocating literal 7-Day Creationism be taught in public schools he is violating the tenets of the 1st Amendment. I don’t know about you, but Rajjpuut’s “God is way too large to fit into Mr. Perry’s tiny church.”** And that is exactly why, expect for Ronald Reagan, Conservativism has been such a failure over the last eight decades. 

If conservatives learn nothing from the TEA Party’s successes and failures . . . they need to learn this: there are no areas of an individual’s life more private or more sensitive than religion and the bedroom and any effort to tell that person how to believe or what to do in either the church or the bedroom will only foster the grossest of enmities.

Rajjpuut believes that the TEA Party, when it sticks to its ten listed principles in the Contract from America@@, is the strongest force for political good in the nation. When it abandons them a la Angle, Buck and O’Donnell only bad things are possible. There is no document greater and none more ignored at this time in America’s history than the Contract from America. This is the truth as Almighty God has allowed me to see it, ignore this truth at risk of ruin to our great nation.

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

 

** These are the very words Rajjpuut’s father spoke as he “ex-communicated” himself from church a long time ago after a priest avowed that Gandhi “would burn in hell along with all those other heathens because he didn’t welcome Christ into his soul” and then refused to “recant” under my father’s withering interrogation. When it comes to religion, the best advice of all is “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Rajjpuut suspects that Christ would welcome Gandhi into his soul in any case.  As to their relevance today, we (you and I) didn't rule on the abortion issue in Roe vs. Wade in 1973, but we should also not be so stupid as to deny that it's the present law of the land and has been for almost 40 years now and is unlikely to change . . . mostly because of the stance of absolutists among the anti-abortion people.  Refusing abortions in case of rape, incest, for very, very young mothers and in cases where the mother's life or health are at risk deeply angers 60% of the American public.

@@ http://www.thecontract.org/the-contract-from-america/

In short:

1.        Protect the Constitution

2.       Reject Cap & Trade

3.       Demand a Balanced Budget

4.       Enact Fundamental Tax Reform

5.        Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government

6.       End Runaway Government Spending

7.        Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care

8.       Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy

9.       Stop the Pork

10.     Stop the Tax Hikes

In full:

The Contract from America

We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

Individual Liberty

Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

Limited Government

The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

Economic Freedom

The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

Note: The percentages shown mark what percentage of the public respondents who thought this particular item belonged in the final “contract’ from among the 28 originally named principles created by the TEA Party . . . Hence the title Contract from America.

1. Protect the Constitution

Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)

2. Reject Cap & Trade

Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)

3. Demand a Balanced Budget

Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)

4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform

Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)

5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington

Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)

6. End Runaway Government Spending

Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care

Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)

8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy

Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)

9. Stop the Pork

Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)

10. Stop the Tax Hikes

Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)

 

 

 

Read more…
 
What Obama Gains

from Multi-State Bankruptcy

  

            If ugly truth is worse to you than lovely myth, go read someone else’s blog, I won’t myth you.   Most Americans are woefully ignorant of their foundations and the great vision of the Founding Fathers.  Over the years the progressive minority has attacked those foundations and the Founding Fathers incessantly and used that ignorance against us as they seek to destroy our Republic and replace it with a communist state. Progressivism, after all, is a desire to “progress” beyond the “ill-conceived and outdated” American Constitution in order to achieve progress toward a progressive-socialist (Marxist?) utopia on earth.

            Barack Obama believes that American Exceptionalism doesn’t exist and never actually existed. Most Americans feel there’s something definitely wrong with the President’s approach to things, but find it difficult to point a finger at exactly what’s not right. Let me give you a clue. The word “democracy” that he and others bandy about so pointedly is meaningless

Yes, our American Republic employs democratic means to select Representatives and Senators and semi-Democratic means to choose our president (the Founding Fathers put the electoral college into the mix for a damn good reason). But Democracy is not all that it’s cracked up to be . . . 

         A.  Justice and Freedom count; democracy can be misused and often is and doesn't matter
        
         B. There is always the possibility of “tyranny of the masses” in any democracy   
         C. 
Democracy among ignorant folks has happened often in history and the resulting mob rule has never been pretty
         D.  Words are one thing, reality is generally another.  The Peoples' Democratic Republic of China is not for the people; not a Democracy; and certainly not a Republic.  They mow protestors down in the streets. 
         E.  Democracy among savages amounts to nothing more than Thugocracy and often Theo-Thugocracy.  

            Right now there is great talk of democracy in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain all Islamic countries.  The chances they will degenerate into theocracies like Iran are excellent.  And Iran is definitely a Theo-Thugocracy. In a recent survey in Egypt a week before Dictator Mubarak was ousted, 85% of those surveyed approved of Shariah (strict Islamic code) “Justice” and Shariah Law. That is, 85% of the Egyptians think stoning people to death for not being a good Muslim; for adultery; for teaching other religions; believe that raped women must have four male witnesses to back up their case; think thieves should lose their hands; and see public lashing as fit punishment for women failing to cover themselves properly from head to foot . . . how much is democracy worth among such savage people? 

Democracy is certainly over-rated. Here in America, we have a Republic and the most successful republic in history and American Exceptionalism is alive and well, but severely threatened by Mr. Obama and his cohorts. The most Republican documents in our nation are: Paine’s Common Sense; the Declaration of Independence; The Constitution of the United States; The Bill of Rights added to the U.S. Constitution; and recently two more have been added  . . . The TEA Party’s “Contract from America;” and the Republican Party’s Pledge to America.   Perhaps two or three American in every 1,000 have read all six of these documents: a great pity that so many are so willfully ignorant. Here are some brief excerpts to serve as background before we get to the meat of this discussion with links to the whole documents provided so that the ignorant folk you know might be educated:

 

http://pledge.gop.gov/

 

“America is more than a country

“America is an idea – an idea that free people can govern themselves, that government’s powers are derived from the consent of the governed, that each of us is endowed by their Creator with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. America is the belief that any man or woman can – given economic, political, and religious liberty – advance themselves, their families, and the common good.

           “America is an inspiration to those who yearn to be free and have the ability and the dignity to determine their own destiny.

           “Whenever the agenda of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to institute a new governing agenda and set a different course.

            “These first principles were proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, enshrined in the Constitution, and have endured through hard sacrifice and commitment by generations of Americans.

            “In a self-governing society, the only bulwark against the power of the state is the consent of the governed, and regarding the policies of the current government, the governed do not consent.”     From “A Pledge to America” a 2010 document of the Republican Party

 

http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/commonsense/text.html

 

            “SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

            "Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”    From Common Sense by Thomas Paine

 

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

 

 

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .” from the Declaration of Independence unanimously approved by the 13 colonies

 

http://archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

 

                We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”    The Preamble to the United States Constitution notice the huge size of the first three words . . . .

 

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

 

                                                “Amendment X

              "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”   as added to the U.S. Constitution four years after the Constitution was approved. Of the 27 Amendments to the Constitution, the first ten are the vital Republican documents cementing our freedoms and limiting government known as the Bill of Rights.

 

http://www.contractfromamerica.com/Idea.aspx

 

The Contract from America

      We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

Individual Liberty

      Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

Limited Government

      The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

Economic Freedom

      The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

1. Protect the Constitution

      Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)    From the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party Contract from America in which Americans voted on their top ten issues and resolutions from among 24 key proposals. In the case of this #1 “plank” 82.03% of respondents thought that it was vital and it became the #1 issue for the TEA Party.

 

                In fairness, Rajjpuut has included some input from “the other side”:    When Barack Obama wrote his first autobiography, Dreams from My Father, here are the dreams he was referring to from his father’s article in the “East Africa Journal” as taken from a liberal website:

 

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9610.html

http://www.politico.com/static/PPM41_eastafrica.html

 

                    “Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100 per cent of income . . . I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more . . .”    From Barak (no ‘c’) Hussein Obama’s article “Problems with our socialism in the East Africa Journal

 

                So, the question naturally becomes, “Besides Obama’s attacks upon American Exceptionalism and his utterly weak foreign policy, what exactly is it that Barack Obama, the progressives of both parties, the Democratic hierarchy and the union leadership are doing that threatens to destroy the American Republic? We could write whole volumes . . . .  

               Three main things come to mind:  1) Undermining the American Dollar and preparing its elimination as the world’s reserve currency right now thanks to Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Banks’ unrestrained money-printing, theoretically the 2011 dollar is worth about 3.2 pennies from the late 2008 dollar 2) Bankrupting the federal government with trillion dollar deficits and refusing to aim for a balanced budget and reduction of runaway federal spending and 3) Setting up multi-state bankruptcy so that the individual states (re-

read the 10th Amendment above) will be made so weak and so totally dependent upon the federal government that all power will reside in Washington, D.C. and the federal government will run the life of the country totally and completely with the states no more than weak agencies of the federal government. 

               One of the overlooked aspects of Obamacare is that it mandates state takeover of much of the present federal side of Medicaid and of a great share of Medicare to pay for Obamacare. These provisions would bankrupt all 50 of the states sometime between 2022 and 2026.  

              The main reason that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats did not pass a fiscal-2011 budget is that they had hidden $105 Billion in set-up fees (unconstitutionally hidden in Obamacare’s 2,900 pages. That is, they illegally took away all power from future congresses to control Obamacare and to save the states from financial ruin. If they’d passed a budget that $105 Billion would have stood out as stark evidence of their malfeasance. That final copy of the 2,900 page bill was given to the House to vote on just two hours before the vote. At that last minute, a cave-in by so-called anti-abortion Democrats led by Michigan’s Bart Stupak passed the bill (on receipt of a one-page promise from Barack Obama that no federally funded abortions would ever be part of Obamacare – so far over 200,000 have been paid for under Obamacare) with every Republican and 32 Democrats voting against it.

              Barack Obama wants to nullify the power of the states and the power of the individual citizens guaranteed by the 10th Amendment and his and the Union leadership's assault on Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan aims to hamstring all the states with government workers unions once and for all.

 

 

Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,

 

Rajjpuut

Read more…

Trick me once, shame on you; trick me twice, shame on me!”

Will TEA Party-Inspired Victory

Again Go to Waste for Conservatives?

The man of the hour is House Speaker Designate John Boehner. On the face of it, it appears that the hopes of conservative America could hardly have been put in stronger hands. Mr. Boehner reportedly has never asked for nor taken an earmark in his twenty-year career. Yes, a man of principle is needed. But more than anything else, America needs John Boehner to be a man with an elephant’s fabled memory and an owl’s much lauded wisdom. Will the recent TEA Party-inspired victory at the polls go to waste for conservatives? Something even bigger along those lines happened in 1994 . . . it must NOT happen in 2010.

In 1994 the conservative standard-bearers, the Republican Party swept into control of both the House and the Senate netting 55 new house seats on the way. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and the Republicans had set the victory up by creating a “Contract for America” similar in many ways to the ideas propelling the TEA Party Contract from America and the Republicans Pledge to America, both offered up in 2010. This year things are different in three important respects from 1994:

1) From a conservative’s view point, the 2010 election result was broader but less conclusive. Many more governorships were seized; more U.S. House seats were gained; many more individual state House and Senate seats were won; but the gain of six U.S. Senate seats did not give the Republicans a majority in that chamber.

2) The clear inspiration for the Republican victory was the creation of the TEA Party grass roots fiscal- and Constitutional-conservative movement begun about February, 2009, shortly after Barack Obama, the Democrats and many Republicans passed the $787 Billion Obama stimulus.

3) Republicans running on religious-conservative or socially-conservative lines were uniformly defeated as the old “litmus- test” gave way to a type of conservativism that Independents embraced eagerly.

TEA Party Has Much to Learn;

Republicans, Even More, from 1994

So, what exactly does the TEA Party-inspired conservative victory mean for America?

A. Nothing, if the beneficiary of this Conservative victory (the Republican Party) ends up less than a party of principle and also opts to return to its old “litmus test” of social and religious issues

B. Everything, if the beneficiary of this victory ends up returning to its roots as the party of small government; accountable government; fiscal-conservativism; and Constitutional Conservativism, leaves the old litmus test behind and learns from the debacle of 1994 . . . .

In 1994, the Republican Party had a historic opportunity dropped into its lap and then blew it badly by playing small politics instead of honoring the will of the voters and standing up for Constitutional- and fiscal-conservativism. Back then the voters angered by the Democrats’ failed attempt at Hillarycare and other less than conservative efforts by Bill Clinton also rejected the Democratic Party at the ballot box. The G.O.P. picked up 55 seats in the House of Representatives for a majority there and even won the senate. Like now the Republicans back then had a document working for them, the “Contract for America.” John Boehner has the opportunity to learn from Newt Gingrich’s less than sterling efforts and begin the nation’s return to sanity, principle and fiscal-integrity. You see, Gingrich compromised repeatedly with that wily devil Bill Clinton. Boehner would do well to learn the lesson that only 100% principled bills need to be presented for a vote in the House, not 99% principled bills with one ear mark or one outrider; not 99.9% principled bills . . . but only 100% principled bills. Why?

ITEM: You will remember that it was only AFTER the Republican victory in 1994 that Bill Clinton was able to go from 36% approval to 65% approval (in January, 1998, just prior to his escapades with Monica Lewinsky in the so-called “tailgate” or “little blue-dress scandal” becoming the headline story for the next few months).

ITEM: You will remember that it was only AFTER the Republican victory in 1994 that Bill Clinton was able to pass three expansions of the Community Reinvestment Act (two in 1995 and the “steroid version” in 1998) which ACORN was able to exploit to turn Jimmy Carter’s ill-conceived CRA of 1977 into a nation-wrecking sub-prime lending crisis**.

Item: You will remember that whereas in 1976 only one in 404 mortgages was offered at less than 3% down payment; that by 1986 the Arkansas Community Organization for Reform Now (later to expand to become the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) had doubled the rate in the nation to one questionable loan in every 198 mortgages; which had really jumped to one bad loan in every 14 by 1996; and 34 questionable loans in 100 by 2006 and ignited our present financial crisis.

Item: You will remember that ACORN lawyer Barack Obama in Chicago played a key role in that area brow-beating and shaking down lenders to force them to comply with the evil CRA legislation.

Item: You will remember that after 1998’s steroid expansion of the CRA ’77, ACORN, without Barack Obama, discovered that it was now just as easy to put an ultra poor renter into a $450,000 home as it earlier had been to get him into a $150,000 one.

Item: You will remember that after 1998’s steroid expansion of CRA ’77 by Clinton, ACORN was able to get many loans not at 3% but at ZERO% down payments.

Item: You will remember that people without I.D.; people without jobs; people without anywhere close to decent credit ratings; people without even a rental history; people whose only “income” listed was food stamps; other welfare recipients; and even illegal aliens were being put into $350,000-$500,000 homes courtesy of ACORN’s “street warfare” against mortgage lenders required by law to make knowingly bad home loans.

Item: You will remember liberal news coverage in big cities of protests against banks “Unfair to the poor” or “racist banks” being carried on TV as crowds chanted on the lawn outside bank presidents’ and vice presidents’ homes.

Item: You will remember G.W. Bush trying to change this complex of laws in January, 2005, but progressives from both parties (particularly the Democrats) voting him down.

Item: You will remember G.W. Bush personally or via spokesmen talking to congress some 26 times about the financial problem these CRA laws were causing.

Item: You will remember finally 30 months after his first attempt to rein in this nightmare runaway train, the Bush administration and bi-partisan patriots passed a watered-down version of his original anti-CRA bill in July, 2007. It was, of course, way too little, way too late and the debacle was on us by October, 2007.

Item: You will remember that three months ago in August, 2010, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner praised Bush’s actions for stopping the recession from becoming truly deep and serious and from preventing a critical plummeting in home prices.

Item: You will surely remember that on at least 200 occasions, Barack Obama^^ has told us an analogy about a car in a ditch driven there by the previous administration.

Item: You will surely remember that Barack Obama claims his policies prevented another “Great Depression” caused by the prior Republican administrations and failures of the Free Market.

Item: You will surely remember Barney Frank saying, “Gee, the Free Market created another mess and now government has to come to the rescue . . . AGAIN!”

Item: You may not remember Rajjpuut telling you that the correct version of the “car in the ditch” story was that George W. Bush saw Obama, Clinton, ACORN and progressive politicians deliberately pushing the car (the economy) toward a 500-foot cliff (utter financial disaster) and jumped into the front seat, grabbed the wheel and slammed on the brakes, thus initiating a controlled skid that deposited the vehicle into the nearest friendly-looking ditch.

Item: You will surely remember Tuesday’s voting and that courtesy of the awareness created by the TEA Party, the Republicans now have a chance to make amends for their faulty oversight of the nation between 1994 and 2004.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

**How exactly did this disaster happen with Republicans owning a majority in both chambers?

How did Clinton like a Tae Kwan Do black belt use the power of the powerful House Republicans against them? It happened, just as the strike out of MIGHTY CASEY did, because “pride goeth before the fall.” Because when “politics is the art of the possible,” all is well; and when politics becomes "the art of the compromise for appearance-sake," all is surely wrong.

The Republicans, you see were committed by Gingrich to passing legislation in the House in accord with their Contract with America. Since they had the majority, they could and did and included among their achievements was incredible Welfare Reform, all well and good. However, Gingrich went beyond the possible into the dirty world of compromise with the Devil (Clinton) and got smacked around like a schoolboy. It happened more or less because Gingrich’s pride could NOT accept passing a bill or several versions of a bill only to see Clinton veto it repeatedly after the senate sent it to him. His pride demanded that he ENACT legislation . . . something NOT in his power. Enter the fuzzy world of COMPROMISE . . . .

Gingrich’s pride would NOT allow him to pass a bill and call it a success, he must see it enacted . . . and there Clinton had him because Clinton was NOT facing a veto-proof congress. So the Republicans would set out and eventually pass a great piece of legislation, Constitutional and smart and Clinton would veto it. They would adjust a few things tinker with it here and there and get a few more Democratic votes and pass it again and again Clinton would veto it. Presumably if Gingrich had been content to keep passing good bills and been content with the few crumbs of success Clinton allowed to become law, much good would have done; the Contract with America would have been achieved (passing all the bills; not unfortunately enacting all of them); and Clinton’s approval rating would have dropped into the teens . . . instead because of his pride and compromising with Clinton . . . the Dems got credit for passing “monumental reform” legislation; and the Dems repeatedly snuck in little pieces of poison (like three CRA ’77 expansions) and so Clinton was resurrected and re-elected. “But, but, but HOW?” You ask.

After several vetoes of several versions of a particular bill, finally, the minority Democrats in the House would create virtually a twin of the most popular version of the same bill Clinton had just vetoed (with some teensy-teeny nasty progressive surprises such as the CRA ’77 expansions earlier mentioned in them dropped into the small print) . . . rather than standing upon principle and defeating the bill in the house, Gingrich and the Republicans went along with Clinton’s charade, time after time after time after time and helped Clinton go from 36% approval to about 65% approval by 1998 before Monica Lewinsky did him in. Yes, the G.O.P. did fulfill their Contract with America, but because of the wily Clinton the nation was much the worse for it . . . . And that is the lesson John Boehner must take from history as goes about meeting the Pledge to America. NO compromise with the Devil, please, Mr. Speaker!

http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/pledgetoamerica.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_from_America

^^ This is an example of the two most well-known propaganda techniques: the Big Lie in conjunction with Unceasing Repetition.

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** Is Rajjpuut actually suggesting that intelligent Americans start calling female dogs “Behars?” Or someone you disagree with a "son of a Behar?" Well, it does sound quite a bit more pleasant for polite conversation (or even on the "View") and, of course, it would just be a term of endearment reserved for only his very closest friends . . . .

Angle, Buck, Miller, O’Donnell Show

TEA Party Express Ineptness

Was that a thrilling and educational Election Eve, or what? Most importantly and totally uncovered by the news media was that the fiscal- and Constitutional-conservative cause picked up a net of ten governorships for an overall control of 34 statehouses . . . absolutely huge. And, naturally picking up six senate seats is no small deal, nor is picking up sixty house seats.

So close and yet so very far . . . the greatest disappointment next to Obama’s obstinate refusal to “GET IT” (Mr. President, understand this: your policies were REJECTED and efforts to pretend that the nightmare we lived through under you for almost two years wasn’t actually your agenda but just an “emergency response” to tough times is BOGUS! Stop messing with America and its people, grow up!), of course, is that today Harry Reid is still the top dog in the United States Senate. Harry Reid survived in both roles (Senator and Majority Leader) for three closely-related reasons:

1) He came back to win his own election in Nevada with a true fighting spirit.

2) Sharon Angle, whom he defeated; Ken Buck in Colorado; and Delaware’s bewitched sweetie Christine O’Donnell all decided that the TEA Party’s Contract from America wasn’t worth the paper it and the U.S. Constitution are written on . . . and campaigned ridiculously.

3) The Reid-inspired (he pretty much hand-picked Sharon Angle to be his opposition and still nearly lost) TEA Party Express (TPE) purportedly based in California deliberately fouled up every campaign involvement they could, for example, the only corruption of any appreciable level involving the TEA Party movements across the country came from the TPE’s former shock-jock leader guilty of at least three shocking racist gaffs.

The main reason, of course, that Harry Reid prevailed was four very weak candidates running weak campaigns. Ignoring the TEA Party Contract from America, instead three of them decided that social issues had to be campaigned on repeatedly. Buck, to take a hideous example, actually without even being asked brazenly volunteered himself as a surrogate for almighty God saying that abortion in the case of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother was a sin; and attacked “the pill” and other contraceptive methods; and fertility treatments as well -- offering that he thought they all should be made illegal. Where, within the wonderful and superbly conceived Contract from America does one find that particular set of abominable political-career-killing precepts? In case no one has read Rajjpuut before, get this: Ultimately Independents choose the winners in politics.

Independents, by and large, are greatly impressed by fiscal- and Constitutional-conservativism as any thinking person should be . . . .That’s what it means when people say our nation is “center-right” or say 42% of people self-label as conservatives . . . certainly not that a 100% literal interpretation of Genesis will put you on common ground with anyone who calls himself a conservative; or that denying that dinosaurs lived 70 million years ago (as some fundamentalist sects try to) will make people think your branch of conservativism is intelligent.

Social and religious conservativism is a guaranteed loser in all but the most provincial elections. On a personal level, you believe whatever you want when you “go into the closet” (Matthew 6:6) and talk to your God; but discretion is the better part of valor anytime you shoot off your mouth in public or try to influence lawmaking.To emphasize that point, take Christine O’Donnell, why in hell would anyone tell strangers and a TV audience that they’d practiced witchcraft however briefly. Learn from your youthful indiscretions and then for heaven’s sakes don’t broadcast them unless you can turn a lucrative book offer. As for Joe Miller in Alaska, he seems to have completely unraveled under the campaign pressure (like we mentioned, a weak candidate) and he likewise ignored the Contract from America using it more as a paper towel than as a Liberation Manifesto for the American people. Republicans, in Rajjpuut’s view, are better off with Lisa M. Besides, there’s that TEA Party Express contribution behind all four of those candidates to consider . . . it’s as if the hand of Harry Reid was pulling the strings to get the weakest possible opposition for Democrats . . . ah, me . . . and as for that slippery ol' son of a Behar, Harry Reid, hate him as you might, gotta like his ground game!

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

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Rajjpuut’s Predictions 2010

G.O.P. Dem Ind.

Governors 34 15 1

Senate 52 46 2

House of Reps 268 167 0


But Flynn let drive a single to the wonderment of all

And the much-despised Blakely tore the cover off the ball

And now the dust has lifted and they saw what had occurred

There was Blake SAFE! at second; and Flynn a-hugging third!

And from the gladdened MULTITUDE went up a joyous yell

It rumbled in the mountain tops, it rattled in the dell

It struck upon the hillside and rebounded on the flat

For Casey, MIGHTY CASEY, was advancing to the bat . . . .

Politics: The Art of the Possible

Rajjpuut memorized Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s marvelous poem Casey at the Bat, when he was eleven years old . . . there is something magical there (a proviso to the G.O.P. and presumably John Boehner as well) because, after all “MIGHTY CASEY” did strike out . . . If John Boehner “works with” President Obama he will succeed in repeating the debacle that Newt Gingrich encountered beginning in 1994. What happened there/then? The Republicans won 55 new house seats and also swept into controlling the senate . . . the G.O.P. owned both chambers of the Congress for the first time in several decades. The wily Bill Clinton facing-off against an optimistic Newt Gingrich who pledged to commanding the Republican horde into achieving their "Contract with America" . . . and Clinton . . . made Gingrich very, very sorry . . . and America much, much, much sorrier . . . .

History shows us that it was only after the 1994 midterm elections that Clinton was able to pass his two 1995 expansions of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA ’77 which forced home lenders to make knowingly stupid home loans); and then the steroid expansion of that bill in 1998 which led to the financial debacle that began in August, 2007. To put things in perspective, in 1975, before CRA ’77 was passed just one in 404 home loans was granted at a questionable 3% down payment or less. After almost a decade of ACORN’s shenanigans mostly in Arkansas (it began as the Arkansas Community Organization for Reform Now in 1977 with the assignment from Cloward, Piven, and Wiley to ACORN creator Wade Rathke to shake things up in voter registration and housing) the national “questionable home loan rate” had doubled from 0.24% to 0.51 of home loans offered at 3% down or less. Clinton, himself beginning in 1993 had started “creating” law via regulatory edict upon CRA ’77 and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And then twice in 1995 with the Republicans guarding the switch Clinton expanded CRA ’77. When the dust had lifted in 1995, 14.1% of home loans were being offered at a highly questionable 3% down payment or less, many required zero down payment. (By 2005 34% of home loans were questionable and now ACORN was pushing for $400,000 homes not $150,000) How did this disaster happen?

How did Clinton like a Tae Kwan Do black belt use the power of the powerful House Republicans against them? It happened, just as the strike out of MIGHTY CASEY did, because “pride goeth before the fall.” Because when “politics is the art of the possible,” all is well; and when politics becomes "the art of the compromise for appearance-sake," all is surely wrong.

The Republicans, you see were committed by Gingrich to passing legislation in the House in accord with their Contract with America. Since they had the majority, they could and did and included among their achievements was incredible Welfare Reform, all well and good. However, Gingrich went beyond the possible into the dirty world of compromise with the Devil (Clinton) and got smacked around like a schoolboy. It happened more or less because Gingrich’s pride could NOT accept passing a bill or several versions of a bill only to see Clinton veto it repeatedly after the senate sent it to him. His pride demanded that he ENACT legislation . . . something NOT in his power. Enter the fuzzy world of COMPROMISE . . . .

Gingrich’s pride would NOT allow him to pass a bill and call it a success, he must see it enacted . . . and there Clinton had him because Clinton was NOT facing a veto-proof congress. So the Republicans would set out and eventually pass a great piece of legislation, Constitutional and smart and Clinton would veto it. They would adjust a few things tinker with it here and there and get a few more Democratic votes and pass it again and again Clinton would veto it. Presumably if Gingrich had been content to keep passing good bills and been content with the few crumbs of success Clinton allowed to become law, much good would have done; the Contract with America would have been achieved (passing all the bills; not unfortunately enacting all of them); and Clinton’s approval rating would have dropped into the teens . . . instead because of his pride and compromising with Clinton . . . the Dems got credit for passing “monumental reform” legislation; and the Dems repeatedly snuck in little pieces of poison (like three CRA ’77 expansions) and so Clinton was resurrected and re-elected. “But, but, but HOW?” You ask.

After several vetoes of several versions of a particular bill, finally, the minority Democrats in the House would create virtually a twin of the most popular version of the same bill Clinton had just vetoed (with some teensy-teeny nasty progressive surprises such as the CRA ’77 expansions earlier mentioned in them dropped into the small print) . . . rather than standing upon principle and defeating the bill in the house, Gingrich and the Republicans went along with Clinton’s charade, time after time after time after time and helped Clinton go from 36% approval to about 65% approval by 1998 before Monica Lewinsky did him in. Yes, the G.O.P. did fulfill their Contract with America, but because of the wily Clinton the nation was much the worse for it . . . . And that is the lesson John Boehner must take from history as goes about meeting the Pledge to America. NO compromise with the Devil, please, Mr. Speaker!

To Mr. Boehner, instead of saying “I wish you bluebirds in the spring,” Rajjpuut says, “I wish you gridlock for two years . . . a spine of steel to dull your tears . . . and most of all, when critics call, I wish you luck!”

http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/pledgetoamerica.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_from_America

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

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“I’m sure Colorado women are thrilled that if Buck gets pregnant from rape or incest he will deliver regardless of any threats to his health. No man under any circumstances can gain by supporting abortion repeal . . . .”

3rd Party TEA Partyism

Works in Obama’s

and Progressives’ Favor

Since one of America’s two major parties, the Republicans, is ostensibly a conservative party fiscally and Constitutionally, it’s not at all surprising that since 1860, national 3rd parties throughout history have uniformly been unsuccessful and even counterproductively helpful** to liberals. Surprise, surprise some phases of today’s TEA Party movement seem to be stabbing conservativism in the back. The Obama administration is favorably impressed . . . .

As Rajjpuut first warned some eight months back, except in highly unusual circumstances, extensive TEA Party involvement prior to the primaries is a very, very bad idea. Let the political process play out and then play kingmaker, that is the winning strategy. Rajjpuut has repeatedly suggested that the TEA Party spend its efforts helping voters learn about the party’s Contract from America and then (only after candidates are selected) picking the most conservative candidate if he/she displays the requisite integrity. The biggest single failing beside becoming a conservative-killing third party? Stunning and deafening silence on the Contract from America. In other words, Rajjpuut suggests the TEA Party is not only losing its way, it’s often blocking America’s way as well. Ah, me . . . . Let’s talk specifics . . . .

Here in Colorado we face two extraordinarily fouled up elections, for governor and senator, made extraordinarily favorable for liberal candidates and extraordinarily frustrating for conservative voters. The TEA Party Express (whom Rajjpuut suspects was created by Harry Reid initially to ensure he faced the weakest possible opposition in Nevada: Sharon Angle) has backed an ignoramus named Ken Buck. Buck rather than concentrating on fiscal and

Constitutional conservativism; his opponent’s pathetic record; and the Contract from America . . . has preferred to talk about abortion regardless of incest, rape, or threats to the health of the mother . . . I’m sure Colorado women are thrilled that if Buck gets pregnant from rape or incest he will deliver regardless of any threats to his health. Since no man can get pregnant, no man under any circumstances can gain by hypocritically supporting abortion repeal . . . .” Rajjpuut reminds all conservative politicians that abortion is, unfortunately, the law of the land and unnecessarily bringing up a losing argument (and, in Buck’s specifics, bringing up a questionable moral argument) is just plain stupid and an easy way to lose women voters in droves.

Buck has also gone out of his way to unnecessarily give his opponent strong sound bites of “Buck threatening Social Security” and “Buck for changing the way Colorado Senators are selected” . . . regardless of the merits of those last two arguments, it never makes sense to step outside of a winning formula. This year the winning formula for conservatives is 1) Contract for America and fiscal and Constitutional conservativism 2) Obama 3) the record of the Democrats in Congress 4) specific weaknesses of their particular opponent . . . . Buck, unfortunately has a grand canyon for a mouth and just loves to hear himself talk. Mr. Buck could still win, but under any other circumstances than the anti-Obama revolt in place this year, Buck would be UNelectable. If somehow Buck is elected Colorado will boast a numbskull in the U.S. Senate. Needless to say, his big government, big taxes, big spending opponent Bennett is properly committed to Obama’s Marxist agenda . . . fine choice we have for senator in Colorado, eh?

Meanwhile, the TEA Party has twice gotten involved in the Colorado governor’s race and both involvements have been a mistake. A totally unvetted candidate, Dan Maes, who’d never held political office excited the TEA Party before he’d proven electable without them. Maes became the Republican candidate. Right there an ethical problem arises, why should Republicans then fund the campaign of someone basically nominated by another political party? In any case, Maes had a lot of baggage and it soon spilled out onto the sidewalk one lie and one scandal after another. So the TEA Party Express comes to town supporting one Tom Tancredo as an Independent running for guv. Tancredo is the eternal Colorado gadfly, who, like Buck, believes in the old out-dated Moral Majority litmus test. Just today, the Republican Party in Colorado removed its support for Maes which has to be demoralizing for Colorado conservatives. If Maes drops out, which he has vowed NOT to do, perhaps Tancredo can win. Since Tancredo, like Buck appears to be a cretin, that would be a mixed blessing at best.

From Nevada where ditsy Sharron Angle who, with the TEA Party Express’ help, defeated two electable candidates and gives Harry Reid a good chance at re-election; to Connecticut where the TEA Party Express-supported candidacy of Christine O’Donnell appears to have dethroned a winning bet^^ for November. . . the ignorance of TEA Party pre-primary election involvement is well-documented and regrettable; and likely to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat for the progressive Dems.

Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

**only in one instance, Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive (Bull Moose) Party in 1912, has any third party gotten as close as a losing 2nd place in a national election. In 1912 and in virtually all other instances, the presence of a vote-splitting conservative option has guaranteed victory for liberal candidates, specifically the Democrats involved. In Rajjpuut’s memory only the 1968 candidacy of George Wallace with the American Independent Party was not harmful to the conservative cause . . . why? because Richard Nixon was regarded as a moderate or even semi-progressive Republican in a race against further left-leaning Hubert Humphrey. The havoc created in state and local elections by third parties is not quite as predictable, but third party conservatives are a most welcome sight for Democrats.

^^ Castle, a progressive Republican, appeared to be a shoo-in in Connecticut and very popular. The winning strategy would have been to talk directly to Mr. Castle about the Contract from America. If he pledged to change his spots and support the Contract, then you support him until he proves unworthy of trust.

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Nine Reasons to Hold the Republican Party

in Contempt, One Reason to Hope

1. 1. Despite the natural advantages of being a conservative group, they’ve been largely impotent since Ronald Reagan’s days.

All surveys for decades show the country is center-right in fiscal matters and Constitutional matters. Yet the direction the country has moved in since 1964, has largely been dictated by the ultra-progressive wing of the Democrats not by Republicans.

2. 2. The Republicans are inarticulate.

Except for Reagan, no one seems to have caught on to the simple Buckley-Will trick of speaking to 95% of the issues as opportunities to clarify exactly what Fiscal conservativism means and exactly what Constitutional conservativism means on a personal level to the voter-citizens. As a result, the lies and propanda of the left have dominated the political argument for decades.

3. 3. Republicans in the last 20 years have become Progressive Lite

Progressivism (we need to “progress” beyond the outdated and flawed U.S. Constitution) is an insidious cancer eating away at the American way of life; Americans’ freedoms and wealth; and the American Constitution and far too many Republicans such as our two Maine senators are continually voting progressive. Citizens can’t trust Republicans to be Republicans.

4. 4. Most Americans think being a “Pure Democracy” is a good thing and have never heard terms like “tyranny of the masses” because Republicans are seemingly afraid to defend Republicanism.

5. 5. Most Americans do not know that the most Republican Document in the world after the Declaration of Independence is the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution (the first 10 Amendments).

6. 6. Most Americans do not even know what the 10th Amendment is. Nor do Americans appreciate that above all other concepts, this is the one that makes America a place where you can vote “with your feet” and that keeps the size of government under control and the power of government as small as possible. Because of the 10th Amendment no place in America can get too oppressive (with taxes, for instance) because people can pack up and move to a place where more respect for the taxpayer is evident.

7. 7. Republicans are perceived as “holier-than-thou” and sexists and have proven they aren’t willing to be the major party in the country.

Unfortunate as it may be, abortion is the law of the land. Thanks to ridiculous Republican constraints against (very young girls; victims of rape; victims of incest; and women whose lives are endangered by childbirth) sentiment against the right-wing stance has hardened into virtual “abortion on demand” in this country. Commonsense says Republicans need to never say another word against any abortions but late-term ones for about 40 years and stick to areas where the country can agree with Republican stands (fiscal and Constitutional conservativism only). 56-60% of women vote against Republicans routinely because Republicans are seen as a male-dominated party and males, not getting pregnant, have NO RIGHT to decide the decisions that belong between a woman and her God.

8. 8. Unwilling to lose the most radical 8% of the ultra-right, Republicans willingly abandon the combined 27-30 % of conservative Independents and conservative Democrats. Ideas are important, but practical politics is all about winning too. The Republican Party has not since Reagan latched on to pure fiscal conservativism and Constitutional conservativism, common sense small government and integrity in politics as its guiding principles. And the present mess is just part of the price America has paid because the country's major conservative party has expressed very little common sense.

Some Republicans apparently are nearer to fundamentalist Islam than they are to patriotic Americans . . . that is, they believe their religion should be the dominant or perhaps only one allowed in the country. When Republicans willing ignore the doctrine of separation of church and state and insist upon teaching Christmas carols in public schools; and that Creationism must be taught in public school science classes they earn utter contempt. This is why school voucher programs are important . . . send your kids to private or parochial schools as you prefer, but don’t attempt to proselytize your version of religion upon the whole country. If Mormons tried to get “predestinationism” into public school science classes we’d all be outraged . . . what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

9. 9. Neither positively nor negatively have the Republicans shown any stomach for the fight over ideas. Every ridiculous progressive argument holds ten times more value in Americans’ minds than the most sound of Republican ideas. For example: 80% of the people believe these lies are true (they’re discussed** in the footnotes).

a. Nazis were Fascists

b. Nazis and Italy’s Fascists were both conservatives

c. Communists are liberals and the opposite of Nazis and Fascists

d. Communism is a benign philosophy at worst, and has worked well for many countries

e. Right-wingers are racists and are ruining the country

f. Feminism has been a great positive and belongs to the left

g. “Creeping Socialism” is a natural evolution and has been totally positive

h. The rich are the country’s enemies and need to be forced to do their share by super-high taxes

i. Government can create jobs

j. Socialism works real well and protects the poor

k. Just a little government tinkering can make good free-market systems much better

l. Lack of regulatory control played a major part in causing the present financial debacle

m. G.W. Bush and Conservatives put us in our present fiscal hole. That is, drove us into Obama’s metaphorical “ditch.”

n. Barack Obama is a great American patriot and statesman

o. ACORN has little to do with Obama or the Democrats

p. Bill Clinton was a great president

q. Bailouts and stimulus from government eventuall do work and put the economy back on track

r. Once we get past this present bump in the road, it’ll be smooth sailing for America

And meanwhile these truths go unspoken and unknown in America:

econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L2

fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/#0.1_L3

thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-depression-youve-never-heard-of-1920-1921/#

fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/

city-journal.org/html/13_2_acorns_nutty_regime.html

politico.com/static/PPM41_eastafrica.html

timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece

prisonplanet.com/medieval-warm-period-rediscovered.html

husaria.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/clinton-campaign-alleges-voter-suppression-and-intimidation-by-obama-campaign/

israpundit.com/2008/?p=3781

theproletariatsnews.com/2008/11/special-report-do-we-need-a-new-fdr-to-save-us-from-depression/

There is, however, one great reason for hope. A large group of natural conservatives, many of whom have great disdain for the Republican Party have taken upon themselves the role of activists pushing for fiscal conservativism, Constitutional conservativism, dramatically smaller common-sense government and integrity in politics. I give you the single-most Republican document in America since the Bill of Rights, the TEA Party’s “Contract from America” hopefully about 85% of Republicans (and perhaps 20% of Democrats?) will sign this pledge at:

http://www.contractfromamerica.com/Idea.aspx

The Contract from America

We, the undersigned, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items, work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the first year, and pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom.

Individual Liberty

Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

Limited Government

The purpose of our government is to exercise only those limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

Economic Freedom

The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

1. Protect the Constitution

Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does. (82.03%)^^

2. Reject Cap & Trade

Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)

3. Demand a Balanced Budget

Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)

4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform

Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. (64.90%)

5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington

Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)

6. End Runaway Government Spending

Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. (56.57%)

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care

Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)

8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy

Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)

9. Stop the Pork

Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. (55.47%)

10. Stop the Tax Hikes

Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)

More than ever Americans need a strong conservative choice offered to them in the voting booth and the Republican Party has abandoned that initiative and the country has suffered greatly. Now, if ever, is the time for a renaissance in the Republican vision.

Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

** The recent blog

rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/08/29/americans_in_severe_truth-denial_complicate_recovery_hopes.thtml

discusses all these LIES and the truths no one seems to know
^^ TEA Party members and Americans at large voted on which of their original 24 concerns should be included in the final ten planks of their Contract from America . . . the percentages shown indicate how much support from the voters backed each issue.
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"Cheer Up, Angle, You
Can Always Serve as a Bad Example."
You’d think a Nevada conservative would understand the wisdom of “playing one’s cards close to the vest,” but Sharon Angle has shown herself the worst of all political fish, the “Large-Mouthed Loser.” Thanks to the endorsement of the presumably liberal-leaning TEA **Party Express, Angle emerged from the back of the pack of Republicans without any serious vetting and was left standing to take on Harry Reid, a wily old political veteran, and one of the most corrupt and evil men in America.
So now it comes down to corrupt, evil and politically saavy vs. stupid and loud-mouthed . . . Harry’s a shoo-in. Count on it, Reid will get at least 55% of the vote. You heard the deplorable news here first . . . . Rajjpuut has for a year now, warned of the utter inanity of TEA Party generated candidates taking on other Conservatives and Democrats.
Rajjpuut was most proud of the TEA Party when they came into a contest where the Republican lady candidate had received over $1 Million in G.O.P. funds although she was far to the left of her Democratic opponent in a conservative upper New York state race. The lady in question dropped out the weekend before the election and asked that all her supporters back the Democratic candidate (she had only 5% backing at that moment). The last-minute conservative candidate the TEA Party had backed against her not only denied her the easy win, he came within four percent of winning the election. This was the same night when they also played a key role in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
First of all, politics is all about money. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party are experts at pulling in political favors and political dollars, the TEA Party has no expertise. Secondly, the TEA Party showed its clout back in November, 2009, when it just stayed in the background and played the part of Kingmaker rather than running their own TEA Party candidates. That was the model to be followed, educating, arousing interest and fiscal and constitutional awareness, choosing the most suitable of the candidates from the major parties. And if NO suitable candidate was available, then running a TEA party candidate.
Thirdly, and most importantly, Rajjpuut has repeatedly bemoaned the surprising fact that having created the best news along freedom lines since the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution . . . the TEA Party doesn’t know how to leverage their “Contract from America.” In fact the TEA Party has largely let the Contract from America lie fallow.
Let us use loud-mouthed, foolish and possibly criminally stupid Sharon Angle in Nevada as a bad example and see what we can learn from her . . .
Did Ms. Angle obey Rajjpuut’s dictates and concentrate on Barack Obama’s and Harry Reid’s attack upon our Constitution, our wallets, and our children’s future? NO, NO and more NO.
Did Ms. Angle educate and inform the Nevada citizenry about the Contract from America’s ten key points and mention that she'd signed it? Absolutely NOT.
Did Ms. Angle mention abortion? Yes, she did.
Did Ms. Angle shoot off her mouth about things that are easily distorted and destroyed in sound bites (her stance on Medicare, Social Security, etc.??? Yes, like a total idiot, she did while avoiding the mention of the Contract from America, planks which besides every other benefit, are all easily dealt with in sound-bite -sized bits.
Does Ms. Angle still have a chance? Probably not, she’s shown herself remarkably stupid and utterly ineffectual so far. However, IF she were to start over and do as Rajjpuut recommended all along and educate the populace about the Contract from America which she’s hopefully signed and to frame all questions as responses taken only from either the Contract from America or in reference to Harry Reid’s or Barack Obama’s record . . . it’s still possible for her to turn things around, but don’t count on it, Angle’s already snatched defeat from the jaws of easy victory (Nevada has the highest unemployment and highest drop in home prices in the country and Reid is easily the most hated politician other than Pelosi and Obama) and such stupidity as hers is almost always rewarded. So short of Harry dropping dead from glee a week before election day, Angle has screwed herself and Nevada and the country.
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** The only bad press . . . along actually verifiable racist and perhaps "hate" lines . . . for the TEA Party was tied to one of the TEA Party Expresses leadership people a "shock jock," we're told whose blogs eschewed dealing with Obama's performance and attacked other things . . . talking about Islam, for example, as having "a monkey god." Wow, with friends like those who needs enemies? Rajjpuut will assume that they're really left-leaners trying to muddy the TEA.
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TEA Party Drops Ball, Ignores Tremendous WEALTH
Sitting UNused in Its Goody Locker
Imagine you spent all of your days prospecting for a gold mine sacrificing and scrimping, working like a man possessed and living like a beast and then you, By Gol’ hit the MOTHER LODE! And so you buy a teeny-tiny bungalow and put the forty tons of gold you’ve unearthed in your dugout cellar and never, never ever once go down there again even though your lifestyle is positively spartan and impoverished . . . absolutely nuts, eh? That, my friends, is exactly what the TEA Party is doing right now!
When it comes to human liberty . . . there’s the much ballyhooed Magna Carta; our own Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution and most importantly the Bill of Rights of the Constitution and there’s hasn’t been anything else in 223 years and then PRESTO! The TEA Party creates the “Contract from America.” And almost no one knows about the Contract from America . . . gold in the basement which is not even thought about, much less used to make life better . . . it’s a shame.
To make the Contract from America a bit more useful and much more widely known and understood, Rajjpuut suggests that a series of public service announcements on each of the ten “planks” be released one a week for ten consecutive weeks emphasizing common sense; American tradition; liberty; fiscal conservativism, Constitutional conservativism and National Defense and control of our borders. A call for comparison of each candidate's oral and voting record to the item in question and for each candidate to pledge his coming term toward work on these ten objectives and sign the Contract must be made. Rajjpuut also would change the original wording ever so slightly (where wording has been changed, the heading appears in maroon type):
The Contract from America
We, patriotic and concerned citizens, call upon those seeking to represent us in public office to sign the Contract from America and by doing so commit to support each of its agenda items; to work to bring each agenda item to a vote during the upcoming term and beyond; to pledge to advocate on behalf of individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom; and where necessary to seek Constitutional Amendments and repeal of present law for the good of the country and all its citizens.
Liberty
Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not granted by our government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.
Limited Government
The purpose of our government is to exercise only those SEVENTEEN limited powers that have been relinquished to it by the people, chief among these being the protection of our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.
Economic Freedom
The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.
Ten Key Principles
(Percentages given in parentheses, enumerate what percentage of our respondents felt each given item deserved to be included in the top ten “planks” of the Contract from America from among our original 24 items.)
1. Protect the Constitution
Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does and spend what that bill might require. Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require this action become the law of the land. (82.03%)
2. Reject Cap & Trade
Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures. (72.20%)
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike. (69.69%)
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution. Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require this action become the law of the land. (64.90%)
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington
Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in a complete audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities, or ripe for wholesale reform or elimination due to our efforts to restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution’s meaning. (63.37%)
6.
6. End Runaway Government Spending
Impose a statutory cap limiting the maximum annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth. Since the "Invisible Depressions" of 1921 and 1946 were quickly eliminated and prosperity resurged after serious cuts in government spending and elimination of and cuts in some taxes . . . implement such measures for the next 20 years or until the deficit is eliminated and unfunded liabilities are funded. Consider making congress a part-time entity. (56.57%)
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care
Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries. (56.39%)
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy
Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs. (55.51%)
9. Stop the Pork
Place a moratorium on all earmarks until the budget is balanced and all unfunded liabilities are funded, and then require a 2/3 majority to pass any earmark. Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require this action become the law of the land. (55.47%)
10. Stop the Tax Hikes
Permanently repeal all tax hikes, including those to the income, capital gains, and death taxes, currently scheduled to begin in 2011. (53.38%)
Beans are nutritious, tasty and inexpensive. When you’ve got a gold mine, however, you don’t eat beans at every meal.
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
p.s. Three obvious categories should be added to the bloggers' choices for their posting:
1. Contract from America
2. Economics
3. Checking upon Political Integrity
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