I bet you thought this was going to be about Peter Teahen, didn’t you? No, it’s another Powerlineblog.com story about Obama that I thought was worth saving… I’ve read BO’s book, and if I recall he worked for two years to pay his college bills – or some of them – before he took the job in Chicago. Link to story here -pf

During his commencement address at Wesleyan College this weekend, Barack Obama told the assembled graduates:

But during my first two years of college, perhaps because the values my mother had taught me –hard work, honesty, empathy – had resurfaced after a long hibernation; or perhaps because of the example of wonderful teachers and lasting friends, I began to notice a world beyond myself. I became active in the movement to oppose the apartheid regime of South Africa. I began following the debates in this country about poverty and health care. So that by the time I graduated from college, I was possessed with a crazy idea – that I would work at a grassroots level to bring about change.I wrote letters to every organization in the country I could think of. And one day, a small group of churches on the South Side of Chicago offered me a job to come work as a community organizer in neighborhoods that had been devastated by steel plant closings. My mother and grandparents wanted me to go to law school. My friends were applying to jobs on Wall Street. Meanwhile, this organization offered me $12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car.

And I said yes.

But Obama did not go from college to the “grassroots,” as his statement at Wesleyan would lead one to believe. Upon graduating from Columbia in 1983, he worked first at Business International Corporation and then at New York Public Interest Research Group, both in New York City. Obama didn’t take the community organizing job and move to Chicago until 1985. After three years in that capacity, he enrolled in law school.

Obama seems to consider the fact that he didn’t apply to law school or work on Wall Street until several years after graduating from college a sign of particular distinction. In fact, as those of us acquainted with recent college graduates and/or who interview law students for employment know, it is quite common for law school-bound college grads to work for a while first, and not on Wall Street. This work often consists of “public interest” activity and, in any event, typically pays quite modestly.

Obama may justifiably be proud of what he did between college and law school, but it is hardly the stuff of legends.

JOHN adds: At The Corner, Jim Manzi points out that Obama earned over $4 million last year, so the public service route has worked out pretty well for him. Manzi writes:

I’m pretty far from being a John McCain booster, but does Obama not get that he’s running against a guy who spent the directly analogous years of his life in a fetid jungle prison being hung upside down and beaten with sticks until his bones broke?

And I said yes. Cry me a river, pal.

Link from Powerlineblog.com

Looming Disaster

Next week, the Senate will vote on the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade climate control bill. The proposed statute is a nightmare that would devastate our economy. The Wall Street Journal calls it “the most extensive government reorganization of the American economy since the 1930s.”

The EPA estimates that by 2030 it will reduce GDP by 0.9% to 3.8%, and that is based on assumptions that appear hopelessly optimistic. Even the EPA’s assumptions contemplate an additional increase of 44% in the cost of electricity over what would occur without Lieberman-Warner.

The Chamber of Commerce has charted the various regulations, mandates and timelines that Liberman-Warner would dictate:

The idea that American voters can change the Earth’s climate is folly.

The danger that voters could choose to cripple our economy is, however, very real.

Linky

Mariannette Miller-Meeks

Guest Opinion

During 20 years in the military and again as a doctor, I saw again and again that extraordinary times demand extraordinary action.

Having left home at 16 and working as a nurse to fund medical school, I’ve accomplished so much more than I ever dreamed possible. I’ve experienced the honors and joys of a successful professional life highlighted with military honors and medals, academic diplomas and publications, teaching awards and recognition of volunteer services locally and internationally.

I left academic medicine at the University of Iowa and entered private practice in Ottumwa to afford more time with my husband of 25 years and our two children — one now a high school senior and the other in college.

Seeking public office really wasn’t something I’d even considered until my last visit to Capitol Hill as the first female president of the Iowa Medical Society. It was my frustration with the failure of Congress to act in Iowans’ best interests — a frustration the voters feel on so many fronts — that motivated me to take the extraordinary step of seeking the Second Congressional District seat. It’s time we begin to have the representation we need and deserve.

For me, the final straws were:

• The lack of progress on Medicare reimbursement that penalizes health care providers despite the high-quality treatment and care delivered in Iowa;

• The lack of initiative to address social insecurity despite the ballooning number of retirees;

• A cumbersome tax system that encourages lobbyists and special interest groups to seek preferential tax treatment instead of offering taxpayers the option of a flat tax;

• An energy policy that is yet to be developed; and

• The fear of government controlled and mandated health care.

That’s what motivated me to run for office, and those are the priorities that will have my attention as a member of Congress.

As a candidate, I bring forward unique skills from my nursing, medical, military, teaching and small business owner background. As a physician, the attributes of listening, collaborating, persuading, relationship building, forthrightness and honesty are desperately needed in Congress.

Watching Congress spend weeks obtaining baseball players’ testimony about steroid use seemed to underscore its ineffectiveness and partisanship.

Each party appeared more interested in claiming victory than achieving progress to move our country forward. Each day I confront the policies put into place by those who lack the vision to foresee their impact on the rest of us and how it dampens our potential.

The voters of the Second District are hard-working, honest people trying their best to raise families and serve their communities, and they deserve so much more than party line votes, hidden earmarks and catering to the special interests.

Because I’m action-oriented and involved in my community, I have my finger on the pulse of the issues that we all want addressed. I have offered solutions for individual health plans to permit accessible, affordable and portable nationwide health insurance that encourages innovation and personal responsibility.

I’ve described methods for sustaining and strengthening Social Security. I’ve advocated for veterans’ rights, particularly medical care in their own communities. After all, they’ve paid that price with their service and their own blood.

I favor creating an industry of energy within our district that promotes our economy, protects our environment and ensures our national security. I have been steadfast and unwavering in my message, focusing on the problems we face and workable solutions. Given my tenacity, spirit and strong work ethic, I would be a tireless advocate for the voters of the Second District.

We need a bridge that heals division and distrust. I can be that bridge.

Our View – Miller-Meeks is the Republican most ready to claim Leach’s mantle

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hey! that’s my view too -pf

Back in 2006, then political science professor Dave Loebsack faced a seemingly impossible challenge in trying to unseat a 15-term incumbent. Neither national party invested much cash (or interest) in what the political punditry considered a safe seat for moderate Republican Jim Leach.

Democrats nationally and locally thought the best chance to unseat Leach actually came back in 2002, fresh after Congressional redistricting, when Leach faced a formidable challenger in Julie Ann Thomas, a respected physician from Cedar Rapids. Yet Loebsack surprised all but his core supporters when he challenged Leach on his strengths (a firm grasp of the nuances and intricacies of international comparative politics) and capitalized on a wave of anti-incumbent partisan fervor.

Second District Republicans now have two highly credible candidates for taking down Loebsack in the most vulnerable period in any representative’s career: The first re-election campaign. Cedar Rapids funeral home director Peter Teahen brings a wealth of non-profit and business experience dealing with governments in local, state, national and international spheres. And Ottumwa ophthalmologist Mariannette Miller-Meeks brings much authority from her personal story as well as credibility from her leadership in academic and medical circles.

In fact, the June 3 primary question boils down to whether Second District Republicans want to go with Teahen’s experience or with Miller-Meek’s intelligence and energy.

We think the Second District — and the legacy of Jim Leach — would be served best by Miller-Meeks.

Teahen’s experience

Teahen, because of his experience as a mental health professional and a spokesman for the Red Cross, always is ready with an anecdote to personalize many recent crises and catastrophes. Whether it’s his account of spending a few weeks at ground zero after 9/11, his account of being in Washington after anthrax was released or his breaking protocol to warn New Orleans days before Katrina that people would die if the city wasn’t evacuated, Teahen draws readily upon examples from his own career to explain the success and failures of how governments and non-governmental agencies respond.

We appreciate that perspective. And we also appreciate how, with a daughter in the diplomatic corps, he understands the need for diplomacy while recognizing that those diplomats need to be backed up with a strong military.

But as nice as it would be to back a Corridor businessman, we’re concerned about some of the reasons behind Teahen’s history of switching party affiliations. Teahen said he needed to register as a Democrat for about nine years in order to serve on the state’s governor-appointed Board of Mortuary Science. That bit of willingness to bend the rules to serve on a state board raises a red flag.

That’s also why we’re paying close attention to an ethics complaint recently filed against Teahen by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — claiming that television commercials for the funeral home owned by Teahen are disguised campaign spots paid for by corporate money. Teahen told the Associated Press that his staff believes they have complied with FEC regulations.

Any Republican seeking to extend the legacy of Jim Leach needs to be above reproach.

Miller-Meeks’ intelligence and insight

Miller-Meeks is in a much better position to claim Leach’s mantle. Her unique background as a soldier and a medical doctor places her in a good position to challenge Loebsack and to address issues of health care, national defense and economic development. Her time on faculty at the University of Iowa enhances her academic and medical credentials, and her decision to begin private practice in Ottumwa shows her commitment to the state and has given her first-hand experience of how the economy effects small business owners and her patients.

As a doctor, Miller-Meeks’ main issue is health care, and her key focus is on addressing how government programs that decrease payment to providers and hospitals ultimately ration care and limit innovation and technology. Although we balk at her use of loaded language like “Canadian-style socialized medicine,” her concerns are valid and her experience would be an essential part of any discussion of reforming the U.S. health care system.

Miller-Meeks also speaks passionately about alternative energy options and the “travesty” of the nation having had no coherent energy policy for more than three decades. Whether it’s describing the 54 miles a gallon her hybrid gets as she drives across the district or the solar panels that help power her family home, she showed the clearest understanding of the personal and national commitment necessary to addressing energy issues.

And, as her supporters like to point out, she has held one more elected office than Loebsack had when he first ran for office. Having been elected as the first female president of the Iowa Medical Society, she now is ready for the opportunity to run to become Iowa’s first female member of Congress.

Winning hearts and minds

The third candidate, Lee Harder of Hillsboro, seems to have focused his campaign on proving that neither Teahen nor Miller-Meeks is conservative enough. While the former state corrections department chaplain and Liberty University graduate has impeccable conservative credentials, we’re much less interested in any form of ideological purity than in ensuring that our representatives practically represent the needs of all their constituents. Harder’s dogmatism, in fact, matches that of the presidential administration that has helped to create a world in which the nation’s moral authority is falling as quickly as the U.S. dollar.

Teahen and Miller-Meeks both have shown a commitment to results and bi-partisan cooperation rather than to party loyalty. But Miller-Meeks has the intelligence and the integrity to continue the Leach legacy and, potentially, to win over the hearts and minds of a Congressional district in which registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 155,050 to 100,623.

LINK

Written by David Tredrea,
12 Harley Street, London, UK
email: davidtredrea@yahoo.com
mobile: 070 107 56789

So … Peter Teahen wishes to be honoured as an extraordinary Iowan. Well, as a Brit I truly agree he meets the criteria for being extraordinary. He wants us to see him as an Indiana Jones replacement, swashbuckler, universal hero and amazing international humanitarian. His claims and ambitions are very enticing and impressive – but what if his true reality is more like that of a Walter Mitty character? Let’s dig a little and take his 8 page résumé for example.

Does he really have an MA degree from Liberty University? Is he really a certified traumatologist? Was he really a deputy medical examiner at the Oklahoma City bombing? The hard evidences say no even though Peter says yes. Peter inherited the funeral business set up by his parents and he also sells life insurance when not helping others. All good stuff but it would be truly sad if some of the very strong mortuary chemicals could have seeped into his brain leading him to think he was licensed or competent for anything more.

Concerning the certificates he lists from the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation anyone from able actor to zulu warrior can join the ICISF. Peter’s studies with them on short courses with long names over 8 years probably don’t exceed 14 days in total. He also claims Presidency of some grand sounding Companies. However, only yesterday AmericaReady.com was a garage in Korea re-engineering Toyota cars for export. Today, one can buy “premium tv” from AmericaReady.us. Other than its fine web-site, it is difficult to find any filed accounts or indicators of life for his International Mass Fatalities Centre. Even though it may not be his fault (just unfortunate coincidences), Peter is well qualified in divorce though – but endearingly and, perhaps not surprisingly, he fails to promote that.

Peter wants us to rejoice with him in his work as an extraordinary volunteer with the American Red Cross and as an innovative mental health professional. One might wonder how this comes about as he has no in-depth training nor qualification nor registration anywhere in mental health, psychology or related subjects. He has zero military experience nor ever treated anyone for mental health trauma and does not know how to – yet he lectures widely as if he is well read, competent and safe. He likes to talk about being “personally selected” for Mayor Giuliani’s HQ staff for 9/11and then contracting anthrax – and surviving, just! He says he has served in leadership roles following more than 40 large disasters including Hurricane Katrina, the South Asia Tsunami and the conflict in Darfur. Was he really in action for Operation Desert Storm as well?

Let’s explore a further selection of these claims: his leadership and teaching roles after the tsunami in Sri Lanka were, in reality, very minor – and largely set up by others. He followed me out as Team Leader 2. After I left, Peter went off track quickly and without anyone’s knowledge or consent to set up private initiatives. About Darfur last year, Peter Teahen was invited out by me as a junior, pro-bono assistant for a project to run a stress management programme for aid workers. He was very keen and persistent because he had never been to Africa (or even London) before and wanted to enhance his international status. Not known until much later, Peter has his sights focused on Condoleezza Rice’s job and needs credibility.

Peter Teahen has expensive tastes whilst on mission and enjoys talking about his unaudited US Red Cross credit card so he can stay in luxury hotels. Peter believes he has to look after himself properly – and he most certainly does. Despite perfectly adequate free and safe local housing, Peter was the only one who chose to stay in a luxurious hotel in Khartoum and sadly used Darfur aid money for that.

Out there, his mood swings were untamed and he was easily angered – especially if his chilled, diet Pepsi was not always readily available. His small teaching role was so problematic that he was asked to cease involvement. His delusions about events are legion.

“Last year in Darfur, I was 25 feet away from a truckload of Janjaweed rebels. That’s the group responsible for murdering 200,000 to 400,000 men women and children. You look into the eyes of those terrorists, and you look into the eyes of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka” (John Deeth Blog , May 16, 2008)

Rubbish. He talks of being held at gunpoint and staring into a 50 calibre machine gun. Poop! Peter never looked into anything much out there save the occasional mirror when he could check his tinted hair was not ruffled. As a figure of fun, the locals laughed at his constant need to preen. His time in Darfur was so laid back in terms of security it would make Disneyland seem severe. Certainly Peter met nobody senior or politically important, saw no genocide, no danger, no guns no death, no starvation, nor any front-line action – a camel eating grass perhaps – oh yes, and a small, smelly donkey.

Peter was proud that he had upgraded his gun licence before coming to Africa in case he needed to save us. How lucky we were that he did not need to. Here is another of Peter’s wild claims printed in the Fort Madison Daily Democrat on 14 May 2008 :

“He was hired by the British government to start a mental health program in Darfur to help people there cope with the psychological impact of the fighting in that region. He was scheduled to go back several weeks ago, but aide workers were being killed so he was instructed to stay away” .

Balderdash.

Top line in his exit report for the pilot Darfur mission 12 months ago, Peter complains about not being told before he left Cedar Rapids that he might need to bring his own towel then refused to buy one from the many local markets we visited so I gave him one for peace. There were also loud moans from him about how many large suitcases he could bring and he was further annoyed at not being given a list of local quality restaurants or tourist spots. It seems possible he would have taken his deck-chair out there given the mildest opportunity!

His often unmanageable conduct could easily have us arrested – such as liberal photography despite well known and extremely strict rules. Peter seemed to think that if he had his personal copy of the Qur’an he could have saved us from all the vicissitudes of local law because that ownership conferred upon him degrees of freedom not available to us un-enlightened others. He thought Muslims would be impressed if he carried their Holy Book and that they would then treat him kindly. Those darned chemicals again.

Peter says he is the author of several articles and an industry-standard disaster management manual used by local governments in many states but it really is difficult to track any of them down and nothing seems to be peer-reviewed. In addition, Peter is the proud and loud recipient of several distinguished awards. Judge for yourself – but what if Peter Teahen actually is like this Walter Mitty character who is an expert at talking the talk but in no way has ever really walked the proper walk – not even nearly? OK, pranced about on the low trip-wire maybe but always with safety blanket, harness, quality credit card and sharp-angled photographers.

Regrettably, even Peter’s political stance is not consistent. He has been a Republican for a few months only. It was truly embarrassing to hear Peter describe his own friends and neighbours with the Iowan sobriquet of “Idiot Out – Walking About”. Sadly, Peter may be the blueprint because he was as useful in Darfur as an ink-blot. A considerable liability and serious mistake. So, is Peter Teahen really a disaster waiting to happen? That answer will depend upon which of his fuzzy personalities smiles at the next focused camera.

Vote for Peter Teahen if this is the kind of chap you want to represent you in Congress. Your vote doesn’t matter to me as I am not American. However, Peter might be safer in Washington rather than in the real world of proper disaster management where integrity, competency and decency are vital. Those are the more vital realities. Hence this note. As Dr. Phil says, the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. Peter Teahen for Congress maybe but Peter Teahen for Confidence – definitely not.

The above was article is written by David Tredrea, a disaster aid worker from London, UK. BattlegroundIowa posted the article in its entirety. The views and claims of Mr. Tredrea are not necessarily the views of BattlegroundIowa.

Return to the Article

May 25, 2008

The Heroes That Dwelt Among Us

By Lance Fairchok

This Memorial Day our nation has been at war for over five years against a brutal and intractable enemy. Most Americans know only what they hear in news sound bites and see in flashing images on TV, as the attacks of 9-11 fade from our memory and no sacrifice is required of our citizens; the battles our soldiers fight become part of the background noise, the evils they shield us from distant and unreal.

The strength of our nation lies in our ability to defend our institutions and our culture, and in the willingness of our citizens to take a stand for the rights and against the wrongs that they hold incontrovertible. We are guarded by the knowledge that whatever our origin and whatever our beliefs, regardless of politics or ideology, the essence of America seeps deep into our hearts and that defending what she stands for is not only right, it is an honor and a hallowed duty. Out of the fiery crucible of history, our union has emerged stronger than any that came before her, in large part by the sacrifice of our soldiers.

Unlike previous generations, few Americans know a service member or have served themselves; the military is a distant and poorly understood institution, often maligned and frequently misrepresented. Despite this, and like those courageous generations that came before us and sacrificed to build the prosperity we enjoy, there are always those who step forward to answer the nation’s call. It is these brave few that we remember and honor on Memorial Day. Remarkable men and women, the best of us, to whom we owe so much, that perished in their duty. Their loss is a great sadness, but it is a greater sadness still that so few of us know their names.

Sergeant Timothy Padgett, from DeFuniak Springs in Walton County Florida, was 28 years old when he died in a firefight in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Sgt Padgett was a Special Forces medic. He almost certainly spent more time helping remote villages and their children than he did the wounded in combat. That is what the Green Berets do; that is what Americans do. He came home last spring in a flag draped casket, to a small town that remembers him as a volunteer firefighter, who had his Mom drive him to fires before he got his driving license in high school. He understood at a young age what citizenship means. He was the youngest of three, and his mother calls him her baby. Her heart is broken, yet she respects his decision to serve, and in that heartrending sadness, she is proud of his bravery, his dedication and his desire to help others.

I was on Hurlburt Field, the local Air Force Base the day they brought Sgt Padgett home to Florida. As I came through the terminal of the Base Operations building, I saw a thousand young Americans standing motionless. Dressed in Battle Dress Uniforms identical to each other, their faces as different as the many lands that sent immigrants to our shores; Korean, Italian, African, German, Polish, Chinese, Mexican, Russian. Each one profoundly American, and brave beyond any reasonable expectation, brave even beyond imagining. Many standing there were veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq; they had seen the enemy’s vision for our future. They had fought him, and they know the depravity of his ideology. They stood in silent ranks as an honor guard carried the casket in a solemn cadence past them; each individual salute a personal tribute, so precise, so intent, they utterly shamed me.

To most Americans this dignity is reserved for Presidents and Statesmen, yet these young volunteers give it to comrades fallen in battle, a warrior’s farewell, as proud and as powerful as anything I have ever seen. It was appropriate, yet somehow insufficient. There should have been busses here, with teachers and students, construction workers, doctors, lawyers, families with children, immigrants, everyday people, standing silently and respectfully, standing with the bravest of us, standing in tribute to who we are, thankful for all we have, thankful for this brave, honest, eager young man. There should have been thousands.

Twenty Three year old Sgt Eddie Jeffers died in Iraq on September 19^th, 2007. Eddie was from Daleville Alabama. He was on his second tour and newly married. His father has pictures of Eddie on his desk, pictures of a tall young man in uniform, smiling with his proud father, pictures of a warm and loving relationship, images that are doubly precious now. The February before his death, Eddie wrote an article entitled “Hope Rides Alone,” about the frustration he and his men felt about how the press and our political leaders were spinning the war. They battled a vile enemy and were there to win. Eddie was a patriot, not in the sense of blind nationalism, but with an intuitive understanding of what freedom brings to humanity. He believed in liberty, he believed that people had the right to freedom whether they lived in America or Iraq, he believed in the innate goodness of man even as he fought profound evil.

“We are the hope of the Iraqi people. They want what everyone else wants in life: safety, security, somewhere to call home. They want a country that is safe to raise their children. Not a place where their children will be abducted, raped and murdered if they do not comply with terrorists demands. They want to live on, rebuild and prosper. And America has given them the opportunity, but only if we stay true to the cause and see it to its end.”

Eddie’s war was about freedom from tyranny and terror. For Eddie, there was no second-guessing, no moral confusion, no other option but to fight for what he believed in, for the people he saw everyday on the streets of Ramadi and Anbar Province.

Some people influence their world far beyond the wisdom of their years, far beyond the wisdom of their elders, far beyond the understanding of a nation that barely knows its children have gone to war. In a time when the battle lines are clear for those who have the eyes to see, the bravery, the loyalty, and the strength of these men should knock us to our knees in thanksgiving and humility. In the eternal battle between good and evil, each drop of blood they shed should be sacred to us, and remind us that the blessings we have are hard won, and fleeting.

On Memorial Day Eddie’s father does not know what he’ll do or where he’ll go. The pain of losing his son is too fresh, too deep. He knows Eddie believed in what he was doing, and he knew his family loved and supported him. He takes some comfort in that. He wears a gold star on his lapel every day; one is his window, and one on his car. They are his daily tribute to his son.

Remember Eddie, Timothy, and their families.

Remember there are many more like them across the nation, whose children, husbands and wives still serve in the dangerous places of the world. Think of the wounded and maimed, the recovering and scarred who were so brave and so young and who suffer still. Remember them and say a prayer before you gather to enjoy this solemn holiday with family and friends. Think how terrible our world would be if they had not been willing to do what they have done, what so many like them still do.

Letter to the Editor

Republicans have a choice in the Republican Primary election this year and all of District 2. You have the opportunity to choose between 3 candidates that are running for the Republican ticket for the 2^nd Congressional District held formerly by Jim Leach.

Many people don’t vote in the primary because they do not understand the process. When you go to vote you check the Republican box and you will receive the Republican ballot. You do not have to do anything else to vote.

You can go right now to the Auditor’s office and vote early. They will be open Saturday May 24 & 31 for voting.

Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Ottumwa is one of the candidates. If elected she will be the first woman to represent Iowa in Washington. But most important is that Dr. Miller-Meeks is qualified to represent us. Mariannette doesn’t just talk about veterans and the GI bill, she served our country for 24 years and retired as a Lt Colonel, she knows about the concerns and needs of our veterans.

Experience as a doctor, nurse, and educator in the medical field, Mariannette knows the problems and harm government run health care will create. Our choices will be limited and we will pay for others to receive treatments that we don’t agree with. This is not a good plan for Americans.

Tax relief that is permanent and Supporting the 2^nd Amendment are part of Mariannette’s firm beliefs. Mariannette is also a member of the NRA.

Mariannette and her husband, Curt have been married 24 years and have two children. Curt is also a retired Lt. Colonel. They understand the importance of raising a family in a free America that offers the opportunity to our children to prosper and live the American Dream.

To learn more about Mariannette’s beliefs check out her website: http://www.millermeeksforcongress.com
A Prescription for Leadership in Congress.

I support Mariannette and ask you to Please vote for Dr. Marianette Miller-Meeks June 3.

5/22 – frankly the Dems screwed up on this one. if this hurts Teahen it hurts Loebsack. Teahen is a rich blank stare in this race. Miller-Meeks is by far the best candidate of the three republican candidates running. Loebsack would be very lucky if Teahen wins. -pf

update at 7pm news from Teahen: Teahen responded that the ad hasn’t been broadcast since April, well before the deadline for such ads.

”We believe we have complied,” with FEC regulations, Teahen said.

eh, vote for Miller-Meeks anyway… she’s STILL the better candidate by a country mile.

Another update on 5/23 -

Link now this link takes you to an interesting story. but THIS STORY is even better. I’ve heard a little about Peter’s need for the spotlight and it will be interesting to see how this story gets investigated. You have to go to these links (above) and read them and take the links inside the stories and read the comments.

There is something fishy that I would like to learn more about – stay tuned. There may be no story with the Dems complaint but the other story is interesting and only partially laid out for us. -pf

CBS 2 NEWS Iowa News

Democrats file complaint against 2nd District GOP candidate

May 22, 2008 14:19 EDT

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Democrats have filed an ethics complaint against a Republican candidate in eastern Iowa’s 2nd congressional district.

The complaint by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is against Peter Teahen , of Cedar Rapids.

It claims that television commercials for Teahen’s funeral home are thinly disguised campaign spots paid for by corporate money.

The complaint points to an ad featuring Teahen and talking about veterans, the flag, patriotism and “those who sacrificed their lives for the sake of freedom.”

The funeral home, which the complaint says paid for the spots, isn’t mentioned until the closing tag line.

A telephone message left at Teahen’s campaign office seeking comment wasn’t immediately returned.

Teahen is one of three GOP candidates in the June primary.

======================

AP wire story

Thu, 22 May 2008 16:40:02 GMT
Democrats file complaint against 2nd District GOP candidate

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Democrats have filed an ethics complaint against eastern Iowa Republican congressional candidate Peter Teahen.

The complaint filed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee claims that television commercials for the funeral home owned by Teahen are actually thinly disguised campaign spots paid for by corporate money.

”He is running TV ads that are clearly trying to reach voters paid for by corporate funds,” Carries James, a spokeswoman for the campaign commission, said Thursday.

The complaint points to a television commercial featuring Teahen speaking into the camera and talking about veterans, the flag, patriotism and ”those who sacrificed their lives for the sake of freedom.”

”I’m Peter Teahen and I’m proud to be an American,” he says in the spot.

The funeral home, which the complaint states paid for the spots, isn’t mentioned until the closing tag line.

The complaint claims the spots ”feature him and are clearly intended to influence his election.”

A telephone message left at Teahen’s campaign office seeking comment wasn’t immediately returned.

Teahen, of Cedar Rapids, is one of three Republicans seeking the party’s nomination in eastern Iowa’s 2nd District. He is running against Lee Harder and Mariannette Miller-Meeks for the nomination.

The seat is now held by first-term Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack, a college professor from Mount Vernon who ousted veteran Republican Rep. Jim Leach in the last election.

Republicans face a series of hurdles in their effort to replace Loebsack. In addition to a significant edge in campaign money, Loebsack represents one of Iowa’s most heavily Democratic congressional districts.

State election officials said that as of May 1, there were 155,050 registered Democrats in the district, compared to 100,623 registered Republicans. Another 138,049 voters were registered without declaring a party preference.

(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. In the interest of timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain occasional typographical errors. )

Clear choice

A few things I look for in a political candidate are character, principles and the desire to work for the people they represent. I believe the 2nd District was denied that when Jim Leach lost in the 2006 election. Whether you agreed with him or not, there was no doubt that Jim was a man of character who knew what he believed and why while working hard for the constituents. In 2008 we can return that kind of person to office by electing Mariannette Miller-Meeks to represent us in the U.S. Congress. No one can question her work ethic. Twenty years in the military and becoming a doctor aren’t accomplishments that come without a lot of hard work and discipline. As a physician practicing in Ottumwa she has among many things been cited as one of the country’s best 100 doctors, served as the first woman President of the Iowa Medical society, and organized a physician recruitment and retention effort to help bring physicians to southeast Iowa.

She believes in the same things we do. Individualism, hard work and perseverance in achieving goals, the sanctity of life from birth to death, the importance of family in our social fabric, free markets, the power of American ingenuity to solve problems are all part of who she is and what she stands for.

The short version of her political views is that the government needs to follow the Constitution. If the government has no business in it then it needs to stay out, if the government is screwing it up then it needs to get out, and bleeding our tax money to give to an ever growing bureaucracy to dole out is not the solution. From health care to taxes to energy independence, Mariannette believes the government needs to stop creating problems by unnecessarily obstructing the citizens and the free market.

Tuesday, June 3 is the Iowa primary. I urge Republicans to vote for the candidate that will represent who we are and work for us in Congress in the 2nd District, Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

MATT GREEN

Donnellson

Last week I was surfing for some good state blogs and ran into this one that I thought had “gone dark”. I sent a post to ask the blogger if he would add the muscatinecountygop.org site to his blogroll and I see that he did. I need to reciprocate on the county site. Then today I ran into this article. -pf

Friday, May 23, 2008

Teahen in Krisis Management Mode

While the media seem to still focus on the Boswell/Fallon Democrat Primary in the 3rd CD, it’s the Republican Primary in Iowa’s 2nd District that is creating news in the weeks leading up to the primary.

If you talked to any Republican insider in January, February, March or April and asked them about the 2nd District Primary the general consensus was that Peter Teahen was going to walk away with the nomination. They would point to his resume, him being from Linn Kounty, and the fact that his family has run a funeral home in the area for decades.

In under a month the tables have turned, and there is doubt that Teahen will be able to hold on to his perceived front runner status. His problem? He’s getting out worked by a tiny optomoligist from Ottumwa. To put this in perspective, it would be like a well known Des Moines businessperson having problems getting their campaign off the ground because of an unknown candidate from Grinnell is out working them.

Now when I say that Mariannette Miller-Meeks is out working Teahen, it’s not just on the grassroots side, fundraising, or voter contact, its all three phases of the campaign. Again, people assumed that Teahen being from Cedar Rapids was going to be an advantage; it has not been thus far, just look at their fundraising numbers.

Miller-Meeks has raised $94,530 thus far for her kampaign.

Teahen has raised $49,096.00 but has a kampaign dept of $31,663.76.

Simply put Miller-Meeks seems to want it more, I’m told she’s knows the issues, and has the ability to raise the funds needed to mount a serious challenge against Loebsack this fall. It looks like if you want a kandidate to put this race in play, your best bet is Miller-Meeks.

It has also been a terrible week for the Teahen kampaign. First he sees that Miller-Meeks continues to raise more money than he can, her kampaign releases their poll which shows she has erased any Lead Teahen might have had, and if it couldn’t get any worse he gets a FEC komplaint filed against him for the TV ads his funeral home had been running.

Sound familiar? In the 1st District Primary last cycle the Kennedy kampaign filed a komplaint against Mike Whalen for this TV ads for the Machine Shed that featured Whalen. Now just 2 years later we have Teahen running an ad that features him self saying stuff like, “I’m Peter Teahen, and I’m proud to be an American.” From what I’ve read it sure sounds like a bio ad for a guy running for Congress.

So it’s probably just a koincidence right? No. There is a link between Teahen and Whalen, its Victory Enterprises. It seems this is how you win the tough ones… A friend sent me the picture above of former Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Steve Grubbs, it looks like he plays for both teams, which is probably helpful to Teahen since he has had difficulty sticking with a party throughout his life.

Miller-Meeks deserves a lot of credit for out hustling her opponents, Teahen has run a terrible campaign.

Link

Oil Executives Try to Educate Senate Democrats, But Democrats Appear Hopeless

Earlier today, the Senate Judiciary Committee summoned top executives from the petroleum industry for what Chairman Pat Leahy thought would be a politically profitable inquisition. Leahy and his comrades showed up ready to blame American oil companies for the high price of gasoline, but the event wasn’t as satisfactory as the Democrats had hoped.

The industry lineup was formidable:

Robert Malone, Chairman and President of BP America, Inc.;
John Hofmeister, President, Shell Oil Company;
Peter Robertson, Vice Chairman of the Board, Chevron Corporation;
John Lowe, Executive Vice President, Conoco Philips Company;
Stephen Simon, Senior Vice President, Exxon Mobil Corporation.

Not surprisingly, the petroleum executives stole the show, as they were far smarter, infinitely better informed, and much more public-spirited than the Senate Democrats.

One theme that emerged from the hearing was the surprisingly small role played by American oil companies in the global petroleum market. John Lowe pointed out:

I cannot overemphasize the access issue. Access to resources is severely restricted in the United States and abroad, and the American oil industry must compete with national oil companies who are often much larger and have the support of their governments.

We can only compete directly for 7 percent of the world’s available reserves while about 75 percent is completely controlled by national oil companies and is not accessible.

Stephen Simon amplified:

Exxon Mobil is the largest U.S. oil and gas company, but we account for only 2 percent of global energy production, only 3 percent of global oil production, only 6 percent of global refining capacity, and only 1 percent of global petroleum reserves. With respect to petroleum reserves, we rank 14th. Government-owned national oil companies dominate the top spots. For an American company to succeed in this competitive landscape and go head to head with huge government-backed national oil companies, it needs financial strength and scale to execute massive complex energy projects requiring enormous long-term investments.To simply maintain our current operations and make needed capital investments, Exxon Mobil spends nearly $1 billion each day.

Because foreign companies and governments control the overwhelming majority of the world’s oil, most of the price you pay at the pump is the cost paid by the American oil company to acquire crude oil from someone else:

Last year, the average price in the United States of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was around $2.80. On average in 2007, approximately 58 percent of the price reflected the amount paid for crude oil. Consumers pay for that crude oil, and so do we. Of the 2 million barrels per day Exxon Mobil refined in 2007 here in the United States, 90 percent were purchased from others.

Another theme of the day’s testimony was that, if anyone is “gouging” consumers through the high price of gasoline, it is federal and state governments, not American oil companies. On the average, 15% percent of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4% represents oil company profits. These figures were repeated several times, but, strangely, not a single Democratic Senator proposed relieving consumers’ anxieties about gas prices by reducing taxes.

The last theme that was sounded repeatedly was Congress’s responsibility for the fact that American companies have access to so little petroleum. Shell’s John Hofmeister explained, eloquently:

While all oil-importing nations buy oil at global prices, some, notably India and China, subsidize the cost of oil products to their nation’s consumers, feeding the demand for more oil despite record prices. They do this to speed economic growth and to ensure a competitive advantage relative to other nations.Meanwhile, in the United States, access to our own oil and gas resources has been limited for the last 30 years, prohibiting companies such as Shell from exploring and developing resources for the benefit of the American people.

Senator Sessions, I agree, it is not a free market.

According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.

The Argonne National Laboratory did a report in 2004 that identified 40 specific federal policy areas that halt, limit, delay or restrict natural gas projects. I urge you to review it. It is a long list. If I may, I offer it today if you would like to include it in the record.

When many of these policies were implemented, oil was selling in the single digits, not the triple digits we see now. The cumulative effect of these policies has been to discourage U.S. investment and send U.S. companies outside the United States to produce new supplies.

As a result, U.S. production has declined so much that nearly 60 percent of daily consumption comes from foreign sources.

The problem of access can be solved in this country by the same government that has prohibited it. Congress could have chosen to lift some or all of the current restrictions on exportation and production of oil and gas. Congress could provide national policy to reverse the persistent decline of domestically secure natural resource development.

Later in the hearing, Senator Orrin Hatch walked Hofmeister through the Democrats’ latest efforts to block energy independence:

HATCH: I want to get into that. In other words, we’re talking about Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. It’s fair to say that they’re not considered part of America’s $22 billion of proven reserves.

HOFMEISTER: Not at all.

HATCH: No, but experts agree that there’s between 800 billion to almost 2 trillion barrels of oil that could be recoverable there, and that’s good oil, isn’t it?

HOFMEISTER: That’s correct.

HATCH: It could be recovered at somewhere between $30 and $40 a barrel?

HOFMEISTER: I think those costs are probably a bit dated now, based upon what we’ve seen in the inflation…

HATCH: Well, somewhere in that area.

HOFMEISTER: I don’t know what the exact cost would be, but, you know, if there is more supply, I think inflation in the oil industry would be cracked. And we are facing severe inflation because of the limited amount of supply against the demand.

HATCH: I guess what I’m saying, though, is that if we started to develop the oil shale in those three states we could do it within this framework of over $100 a barrel and make a profit.

HOFMEISTER: I believe we could.

HATCH: And we could help our country alleviate its oil pressures.

HOFMEISTER: Yes.

HATCH: But they’re stopping us from doing that right here, as we sit here. We just had a hearing last week where Democrats had stopped the ability to do that, in at least Colorado.

HOFMEISTER: Well, as I said in my opening statement, I think the public policy constraints on the supply side in this country are a disservice to the American consumer.

The committee’s Democrats attempted no response. They know that they are largely responsible for the current high price of gasoline, and they want the price to rise even further. Consequently, they have no intention of permitting the development of domestic oil and gas reserves that would both increase this country’s energy independence and give consumers a break from constantly increasing energy costs.

Every once in a while, Congressional hearings turn out to be informative.

MORE!!!   Link  welcome to our world Bill!

… Say what you want about Bill Clinton…the guy doesn’t hold back.

That was the case again during his recent interview with People magazine. Yeas & Nays has obtained an advanced copy of the June 2 issue (on stands this Friday) and here’s what the former prez has to say:

-”I think most of the press people are in Obama’s demographic. … There have been times when I thought I was literally lost in a fun house.”

Link

McAuliffe says media ‘in the tank’ for Obama

Terry McAuliffe, campaign chairman for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), said Tuesday that the former first lady is hamstrung by a biased media.

“Clearly it has been a biased media, no question about it,” McAuliffe said on Fox News. When asked how much of the mainstream media is “in the tank” for Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), who leads Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, McAuliffe estimated that about 90 percent of the media favor Obama.

“It is what it is. We’re not complaining,” he stated. “We have to deal with the hand we’re dealt with.”

McAuliffe added that “every independent study has said that this is the most biased coverage they’ve ever seen in a presidential campaign.”

He also praised Fox News, which is often viewed as a conservative media outlet, as “one of the most responsible in this presidential campaign.”

welcome to our world Terry – pf

Link

Miller-Meeks will work selflessly for the people

Link to Miller-Meeks for Congress website

Wed, May 21 2008

— Wouldn’t it be great if we had leaders in Washington who truly cared and worked for the good of the nation rather than personal and political perpetuation of power?

Political correctness and social agendas are important, but these issues are meaningless and unobtainable without a bedrock of security. This nation is vulnerable in so many ways. We need representation in Congress that is not afraid to take on and work in a bipartisan way for solutions to critical issues. We must have four secure borders and, with that, immigration reform. We must be protected against a recurrence of 9/11. We must have economic stabilization, fair and equitable taxation and, instead of sleight of hand, a solution to our social security system that will not leave our children and grandchildren bereft of benefits. We must have energy independence. We must provide the men and women of our Reserves and National Guard the same benefits on demobilization as we do the Regular Army.

Only a practicing physician knows the depth and extent of the mess health care delivery is in, and only the ignorant and the dreamers believe in a utopian government-run fix.

The primary election is June 3. Register Republican, even if only for this election, and vote for Mariannette Miller-Meeks to represent the Second Congressional District. Mariannette will work selflessly for each and every one of you on the key issues that can carry us into a bright future. Mariannette exemplifies the independence, wisdom, energy and courage we need in Washington. Don’t think of her within narrow-minded party lines — she is an Iowan, she is a physician, and she will vigorously work to heal that which is sick and broken in Washington!

Kenneth S. Wayne
Joyce A. Vista-Wayne
Ottumwa

Obama is warning seniors and I’ll warn the rest of you… the protection of our social structure, medical, senior, education… can not be managed on the back of higher taxes for the rich. It’s very easy to scare people into voting one way or another, but people WE NEED TO BE SMARTER THAN THESE POLITICIANS.

We are doing something wrong if we can’t GET IT RIGHT without stealing from the rich. That is a very short term solution because the long term effect will be a socialist society where there IS no rich – no businesses, no creation of wealth, no inventions because there is no incentive…. it’s simple really – when we end up soaking the rich and still need money — where do we go for it?

We need to be accountable for ourselves. We need to CUT the corporate income tax to spur business. We need to LIVE WITHIN OUR MEANS. WE NEED TO GO ON AN FINANCIAL DIET!!! Most of the industrial world has lower corporate income taxes than we do. I think we’re the second highest. If we lose our taxing infrastsructure what do we do then? Tax India?

[I can see them smiling] -pf

Obama warns seniors on Social Security

GRESHAM, Ore. (AP) – Hours before being greeted by the biggest crowd of his campaign, Democrat Barack Obama quietly told a small group of seniors Sunday that Republican John McCain would threaten the Social Security they depend on because he supports privatizing the program.

Fire officials estimated 65,000 packed into a riverside park for a spectacular afternoon rally at a sun-splashed scene on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland. They said an additional 15,000 were left outside and dozens of boaters could be seen floating in the river.

“Wow, wow, wow,” Obama said as he surveyed the audience. “We have had a lot of rallies. This is the most spectacular setting, the most spectacular crowd we have had this entire campaign.”

While more subdued, his appearance early in the day before about 130 people at an assisted living facility to talk Social Security was a significant attempt to tie the GOP’s presidential nominee-in-waiting to an unpopular President Bush on a pocket book issue that motivates seniors – and also concerns younger generations worried about their own future retirement.
“Let me be clear, privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George W. Bush proposed it, it’s a bad idea today,” Obama said. “That’s why I stood up against this plan in the Senate and that’s why I won’t stand for it as president.”

Bush proposed a Social Security plan in 2005 that focused on creating private accounts for younger workers, but it never came up for a vote in Congress. Democrats strongly opposed the idea and few Republicans embraced it.

Obama said McCain would push to raise the retirement age for collecting Social Security benefits or trim annual cost-of-living increases. Obama has rejected both ideas as solutions to the funding crisis projected for Social Security in favor of making higher-income workers pay more into the system.

“We have to protect Social Security for future generations without pushing the burden onto seniors who have earned the right to retire in dignity,” he said.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds accused Obama of making “misinformed partisan attacks.”

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks to seniors at Huntinton Terrace,…

“John McCain has been clear about his belief that we must fix Social Security for future generations and keep our promises to today’s retirees, but raising taxes should not be the answer to every problem,” Bound said.

It was a day of coastal campaigning for the two Democrats still competing for the party’s presidential nomination.

Obama was in Oregon, where he is favored to win the state’s presidential primary on Tuesday. Hillary Rodham Clinton spent a second straight day in Kentucky, where she is favored to win when its voters head to the polls the same day.

She attended worship services at a Methodist church in Bowling Green, and happily sang hymns and joined in Bible readings. But her smile faded when the pastor launched into a sermon about adultery, asking his congregants whether the devil had ever whispered over their shoulders in their marriages.

Her mood appeared to brighten by the time she arrived for a rally at Western Kentucky University.

“Now, my opponent said the other day he wasn’t coming back, so I’ve got the whole state to myself,” Clinton said, sounding happy not to be sharing the Kentucky spotlight. “What a treat.”

Later Sunday, the Clinton campaign collected about $150,000 at a backyard fundraiser in Fort Mitchell, a northern Kentucky suburb of Cincinnati. Nathan Smith, the event’s host, is vice chairman of the Kentucky Democratic Party and a superdelegate – but he still has not committed to supporting Clinton.

Obama, the front-runner for the nomination, has begun casting himself as the inevitable nominee and using his time to distinguish himself from McCain as he pivots toward the fall campaign. He has scheduled appearances later this week in Iowa and Florida, two key swing states.

He underscored that speaking with reporters in the Portland suburb of Milwaukee, saying he’ll use the Iowa visit as another way to focus on November.

“We thought it was a terrific way to kind of bring things full circle,” said Obama. “We still have some contests left but if Kentucky and Oregon go as we hope, then we think we will have a majority of pledged delegates at that point and that’s a pretty significant mark, that means that after contests in every state, or almost every state and the territories, that we have received a majority of the delegates that are assigned by voters.”

He declined to declare victory.

“It doesn’t mean we’ve declared victory because I won’t be the nominee until we have a combination of both pledged delegates and super delegates to hit the mark,” said Obama. “What it does mean is the voters have given us a majority of delegates. Obviously that’s what this primary and caucus process is all about.”

During the meeting with seniors, Obama was asked why McCain seems to have avoided the enormous press scrutiny the Democrats have gotten.

Obama said McCain has benefited from a Republican nomination process that ended early while the Democratic race continues. He said the attention both candidates receive will grow more intense as the race settles into an Obama-McCain contest.

“It’s very understandable that the press has focused on myself and Senator Clinton because it’s been a pretty exciting race,” Obama said. “The fact is that the press will submit him to the same scrutiny they are giving to me.”

“People will lift the hood and kick the tires with John McCain, just like they do with me,” he said, who traveled Sunday with his wife, Michelle.

—

Associated Press writers Julia Silverman in Portland, Ore., and Sara Kugler in Bowling Green, Ky., contributed to this report.

The First Welcome page (with navigation help) is buried in archives now – but you can go here to read it.

I’m posting a bit here occasionally about what I’m busy doing.

If you’re new to this site you might be interested in looking at my favorite post summary here. Otherwise rummage through the site all you want.

[May 10, 2008] Busy busy busy… and not enough time to prioritize. Was looking at some other blogs that are much more personal than this one – really impressed with a few – will put links on this site when I get around TUIT.

Here is a link from State 29 about why Iowa is losing citizens, especially younger Iowans.  First, I love the tagline “Keeping Track Of All Those Iowa Scandals While Remaining Insightfully Vulgar”.  But it’s a good read with other supporting links that are worth taking/reading… Will be very busy until the Primary June 3 – and more deadlines at work that are approaching. Happy Mother’s Day Mothers!

[April 27, 2008] Pretty boring here, more work and more politics. Hawkeye football doesn’t look inspired for the fall, it will be interesting to go into a year with low expectations. And so it goes.

[April 17, 2008] I haven’t been thinking a lot about politics lately and that’s not a bad thing. Buried at work, trying to dig out, spending 5 days in Texas with family learning a lot about what I can and cannot do physically :::sigh::: hoping all will be well as we returned home. Also lost a friend over the last few weeks, lived a long life but will be missed much – and had some car trouble that has irritated me so much I’m selling the Ford for maybe a Toyota. (still have 3,000 miles on the warrantee so I will take my time). In the last few hours I emailed the Teahan and Miller-Meeks campaign to tell them I am supporting Miller-Meeks for Congress to replace the Representative who’s not – Dave Lobesack – in the US House. Both Teahan and Miller-Meeks are good candidates – you’ll hear more of why I’m supporting Miller-Meeks in the next days.

[March 28, 2008] As you can tell, HF2645 is occupying a lot of my thought in the last weeks. Also tending to a lot of personal things with friends and family… My anger about the passage of HF2645 is only moderately related to the content of the bill. My anger is focused on the way the bill was passed. Watching some of the debate in the gallery also heightened my interest.

There are some elements in the bill that put Iowa “first in nation” relative to giving power to unions and away from elected boards and superintendents. It is wrong for this 14 page amendment that changes so much – NOT to have gone through the Labor Committee, and to be passed during a time when many schools were on Spring Break. The April legislative forum will be a “MUST SEE” event.

March 16, 2008] -Doing some good things with diet, but still eating too much and need to find some exercise program that fits me. With the convention behind us we are working toward opening the Republican HDQS in Muscatine – but that won’t take a huge amount of time… time to dive into some huge projects at work and make a difference. Hospice is good (I volunteer there) Family is good, Friends are good, God is good, life is good. Please spend a moment in prayer, thanking God for your many gifts in this time of renewal. Palm Sunday is over – the most holy week of the year has begun. God bless the world. Pray for Peace.

[March 6, 2008] – I told you last year and repeated last week this was going to happen. Obama and Clinton are NOT good candidates LINK…

[March 5, 2008] – The GREATEST PLAY – April 25, 1976 – Dodgers vs Cubs
Worth your time!!! Click here: monday_flag_350wmv.wvx

[March 4] – He wasn’t MY candidate, he may not have been YOUR candidate but he is OUR Republican candidate for the Presidency of the United States in 2008. Go Mac!

[March 1] - It’s just a rumor at this point but LINK Bill Roggio is pretty close to the action – maybe #2 in al Qaeda has been eliminated. Hope the rumor proves to be true.

I have no inclination to write a special post about the Legislative Forum this AM but will cover it here. If the most important thing the legislature has to spend its time on this session is making Iowa a non-smoking state – I have to tell them there should be other priorities. And I think this IS all about priorities. Where a non-smoking state would be great, I’m also not apposed to the market place taking care of supporting smoke free places at the deficit of places that allow smoking. After all the market place is us; I’m not sure the government is us anymore.

In that vein, I’ve decided to invest the (Iowa tax free) rebate from the US government that there is talk of – to design and distribute static cling decals that say “Don’t blame me, I voted for Rudy”. My little contribution to continuing civil discourse.

My number #2 I DON’T CARE waste of time in the state legislature is the discussion about killing doves. I don’t even want to go there… Don’t we have budgets and economic issues to discuss?

It’s supposed to be almost 50 degrees tomorrow, hope that takes care of most of the snow. There are pools all over the county on when the mounds of snow at the Malls and parking lots will disappear. We’re certainly tired of the stuff.

That said, we’re pretty well prepared for the Republican County Convention next Saturday, and we just opened the HDQs we acquired to check it out – threw up some bunting and COMING SOON sign on the windows… nice place – right across from SWEET TEMPTATIONS in the PCPlaza. I see ice cream and politics in my summer…

[February 17] Well it’s supposed to snow again tonight. We’ve had more snow this winter than we have in the last 10 combined. My garage door is giving me fits – the ice then snow today will be another challenge, but I poured a quarter inch deep patch of salt where the door hits the floor – we’ll see.

I’m busy getting ready for the County Convention on March 8, the last major activity for a while. McCain ended up philosophically being my second candidate (although Rudy was very much my favorite) so it’s not a stretch for me to support him. He’s certainly better than either Obama or Hillary.

From what I understand the USA has the first or second highest corporate tax rate in the world. The EU and many countries have spent the last two years making drastic reductions in their corporate tax rates and both Obama and Hillary think taxing businesses will solve our economic problems. It will only drive more work out of the USA.

[January 31] The political campaign is over for Rudy and I need to figure out what that means to me. Many of my friends across the USA have vowed to continue to vote for Rudy through their primaries or caucuses.

Rudy has endorsed McCain but I still see McCain as an angry old man who keeps grudges yet picks odd things on which he pushes compromise. I hope we see Rudy and McCain traveling together and McCain can absorb some advice from Rudy on humility and keeping his temper. Rudy has learned a lot in this campaign – all for the better. Some say this positions him well for a failed Democrat Presidency in 2008-2012, but Rudy would be 67…. I think this was his year and we (yes you too!) failed him.

I’ve noted in a previous post that McCain’s continual stab at Mitt on the timetable issue is completely lame – it also shows the level at which this electorate is really listening; they are not. If voters were truly listening to message and substance – Rudy would still be in this race.

The only thing I’m really taking away from this primary cycle is my personal recollection of my disdain for the process; and it’s scary how many people can be swayed by a good speaking voice or a headline. As a nation – we get the candidate we deserve. (yikes)

There are a few people I really respect that support Senator McCain (now including Rudy) so I will take a closer look at him – and he’s clearly the stronger candidate between Mitt and Huck. Not sure I will be campaigning for McCain – we are busy enough here getting some local people elected.

And in continued defense of Rudy – his failed strategy is the only strategy that he could have reasonably taken in this campaign. He campaigned in Iowa and New Hampshire almost as many days as McCain so the media spin that he “didn’t compete” isn’t accurate.

A real deficit that I saw as the campaign continued is the “higher” level of Rudy supporters (at least in Iowa) were really for themselves, promoting their own agenda rather than really pushing support for Rudy. Oh they supported him, but not in the trenches and didn’t reach out to the press to communicate that support. That would have helped – but I don’t see anything changing the outcome – and I’m more concerned for the future now than I was when this political season started.

McCain has been the darling of the Media since the 2000 election – it will be interesting (in a creepy kind of way) to see how he’s treated if he gets to the general cycle. The media continues to control the message – and between the liberal press and the conservative talk shows dominating – we moderates are sandwiched in the uncomfortable middle.

[January 4] I’ve decided to take off the gloves and write more about why I continue to support Rudy against all other republican candidates – my boss mercifully let me take today off too to decompress from the caucus. I will post something this weekend, but to view the results, go http://muscatinecountygop.org and you’ll note my lack of enthusiasm. I understand the democrats in town bought something like muscatinerepublicans.com – and directed it to the democrat site. Isn’t that so, like, 5th grade?

[December 26] Enjoying my vacation but need to get into a better rhythm to get more done. Still need some precinct caucus chair people, will spend time on the phone tomorrow. Welcome 2008, I think I need a special post for that. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[December 18] My vacation starts on Friday, so I should have more time to post, right now I’m in the final stages of organizing for the county caucus on Jan 3, and that requires a lot of my time. Keep an eye on this site, and thanks for checking back. Go Rudy!

[December 10] I am terrible at finding time to do the personal updates. The Bears are out of the post season as are the Hawkeyes who are Bowl-less for the first time in 7 years. But there is always politics, and that too is getting me down. I hate calling people on the phone yet that’s what I’m doing – organizing the County Caucus for Republicans. Will write more when I can but for now David Frum summarizes my thoughts very well in the post I just threw up on the blog from National Review. Rudy’s the man for our times.

The Hucklebee surge doesn’t surprise me; I’ve always felt Romney’s support was wide yet brittle – but with Hucklebee’s history laid bare – he’s a worse candidate than FDT and neither one can beat a Dem right now. To me it’s still Rudy or – watch out.

[November 17] This has been the worst season of Iowa Football I have witnessed in a long time – probably because it was so unexpected. Not only did they look bad, but they never showed consistent improvement. Very busy next 6 weeks preparing for the county caucus and to get Rudy voters delivered to it, meeting tomorrow night.

[November 4] The Hawkeyes are fighting their way into bowl contention with two games left they SHOULD win… and if they get selected to play in a Phoenix bowl, it would be tempting to travel. But then there’s Rudy. The Iowa caucus has been moved to Jan 3 so that will be a busy December both organizing the caucus and getting Rudy people there. I’ve talked about all the things that have been keeping me busy in separate posts, Rudy in SE Iowa twice in October one of them in Muscatine. Going to take next Saturday off and Cheer for the Hawkeyes in person… But Rudy’s candidacy is taking front and center for me right now; I still believe he is by far the best candidate to lead this nation. There is no one even close to his experience, leadership and results.

[October 8] Well the Cubs were swept in their first series, the Hawkeyes are 2-4 and so are the Bears. Not a great sports fall for me but things can get better. The Bears won a thriller on Sunday Night Football. Rudy is here on October 17 – I should start a thread on that as soon as I have the time.

[September 30] Been an unusual sports month – The Cubs are still playing ball (NL Central Champions – Go Cubs Go) the football season is almost over with the Hawks 2-3 and the Bears 1-3 so far. I’m not sure the Hawkeyes can win another game as badly as they played yesterday. The Bears – anyone want a quarterback – or two? Politics are heating up at the local and national level – more on that later, but I’ve also posted a lot of good stuff to read. read it and comment if you are so inclined…

[September 23] I went to the county republican dinner instead of watching the Iowa game, and since they lost I didn’t bother to watch the game I taped. Go Cubs Go – magic # = 4 games and counting – read my post here about Chriss Winston’s visit to Muscatine – we need to do a better job of raising “Americans”.

[September 16] Looks like another busy week but the news is busy too. FDT announced and is doing little to quell the discussion of his physical fitness for the rigors of the presidency and Rudy is going to England later this week for a speech and an award to be presented by Maggie Thatcher. Time to get to bed, another week ahead!

[September 7] I have a busy weekend so you won’t be hearing too much from me, although it looks like I can watch the Bears game in Chicago. (unfortunately they’re playing in San Diego) something useful I saw this week was this site https://www.donotcall.gov/register/Reg.aspx register here to put your phone numbers on the national do not call registry.

[September 2] Labor Day weekend starts with a Hawkeye victory at Soldier Field. I have a lot to catch up on this weekend, reading writing and cleaning. I’ve posted quiet a bit over the last weeks; once I get out of the weekend you won’t hear much from me for a bit – I’m going to a trade show in Chicago SUN-TUE next week so that will make everything else busier too. I’m going to Graph Expo, which is where I was on 9-11-01, and I’ll be there during the 6th anniversary.

I will start a game thread for Syracuse. It’s a night game at Kinnick – always exciting; maybe we can win one once.

[August 26] holy crap, summer is almost over and kids are back in school. a LOT going on, Rudy was in Bettendorf on Friday, I need to write story today. Even though it was not a Town Hall meeting, we had a great time at a “meet and greet” at a family restaurant – promise to write the story today. The Cubs are still hanging in the pennant race. Go Cubbies!

[August 19] and nearing the end of summer. My niece is at school, first day of class is tomorrow. Busy at work – keeping up this site and one more here and working for Rudy and volunteering for Hospice. My internet appears down at home and I had work to do anyway so I’m spending a few hours at work online.

[August 12] Not much original thought from me, I posted a “poem” Desiderata that I remember having on a wall in my dorm room… My niece leaves for ISU this week – God’s speed and much love.

A TON of other things going on besides work of course, finishing my formal Hospice Volunteer training so I can get into the field now, and still working for Rudy. Witnessing very subtle changes in the journalistic and political landscapes – what is being admitted to relative to liberal bias – we shall see how that evolves. Some of the posts I’ve tossed up on the site for you to read reflect those small changes.

[August 4] Well the cubs are back in 2nd place, one game in back of Milwaukee. Just posted some funny cartoons here, if you wanna go look.

Here is a funny You Tube video done by Penn and Teller where he describes someone going to an event supporting some environmental initiative and people are asked to sign a petition, outlawing the use of H2O. (Di-Hydrogen Monoxide) – pretty telling… and funny in a creepy kind of way. Debates tomorrow – get the popcorn (or cereal, it’s early!).

[August 1] CUBS WIN! first place for the first time in AUG since 2003. CUBS WIN a thriller bases loaded passed ball to score the winning run. On a sad note, prayers for the missing, dead and injured and their families in Minneapolis.

[July 29] Beau is upgrading the blog to the newest version for me this afternoon, so if there is interruptions in service that is why. Most of the changes will be transparent to the viewer, but will help in some of the stability issues that I am fighting when I add content (there are also security upgrades).

I am also working on a series of posts that I hope to clearly define my opinion of Democrat and Republican principles. The 2008 election continues to point to the most important of MY lifetime.

the upgrade is done and I’ve posted Part 1 of my series of ( R ) vs ( D ) principles.

and then I published part 3 over part 2, so I need to recreate part 2. soon.

[July 21] well again, apologies for the less than weekly posting, but I’ve been traveling on vacation and working more for Rudy. went to a few days of the early rounds of this women’s (WTA) event http://cincytennis.com and had a good time – more on the Rudy visit in another post. Just got HP 7 and will be busy reading that too, so posts may appear slower than normal.

[July 1] Happy July! this has got to qualify as the Line of the Day:

Abbas, appearing on a podium alongside Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, said Hamas had committed “crimes, murder and aggression against everything Palestinians stand for” in its takeover earlier this month of the Gaza Strip.

[June 26] Been another busy week. Getting more active in the Rudy Campaign and out and about a bit. A major project at work is moving forward nicely allowing me to take some time off to do other things. working a lot on the other blog you can read more here.

[June 18] Did I tell you I hate voice mail? Well I got a good one today. #1 Muscatine Power and Water picked up the Big Ten Network! better yet, #2 it’s in my standard package! Go Hawks!

[June 17] Going to Des Moines on WED for a Rudy Event. Mitt Romney was in Muscatine today you can check out the details here @ another site I support.

[June 11] Looking forward to some vacation in July – going to watch a professional tennis tournament in Ohio with friends. Look I’m famous – http://www.joinrudy2008.com/news/pr/284 listed as a county chair! I had no idea Rudy considered me furniture! Now I need to find some people to work for Rudy with me… help?

[May 29] I survived the day at work after a long weekend, including some vacation days and feel pretty good. Got some clean up landscaping done today so the yard looks nice coming home that’s always cool. Getting more involved in the Rudy campaign, you’ll hear more about why later, I just think this election is THAT important. keep in touch.

[May 20] very early May 20, I need to get to bed. With Beau’s help we just brought up the new Muscatine County GOP website – go here to see it. I will probably start a new personal post tomorrow – and will be blogging more over the holiday weekend – I’m taking THURS and FRI in addition to the 3 day weekend, so keep checking back.

[May 12] I will try to finish my letter to the editor and post it here tomorrow. At this point I could spend my weekend reading, writing and blogging, so stay tuned!

[May 5] ok I need to get better at the weekly notes here, sorry about that but I have been posting a lot. I have laptop problems right now and want to help with the muscatine gop website so I may not post as much for a bit, but am taking a 4 day weekend over memorial day – promise to improve more especially then. I have tasked myself to author a letter to the editor of the Muscatine Journal this week to find other Rudybots in town. I like this forum but need to feel like I’m making a larger impact for Rudy. Stay tuned and don’t give up on me! Beau did an a Rudy “widget” from the Rudy website this week that updates itself daily – kinda cool.

[April 15] Another busy week, getting my taxes done with an old family friend, and tripping to Des Moines yesterday to see Rudy. Plenty of documentation so read… Also this next week is Holocaust remembrance week, I will post an article I just read next.
I also heard from the guy who’s writing the book on Iowa Fans – it will be out on schedule before football season starts. More on that later, but with the Spring Game yesterday, I also posted a summary of thoughts about the 2007 Football HAWKEYES.

[April 7] I’m not planning on posting anything tomorrow – busy with work (Easter with family was today) but I also brought down my links to the Romney campaign because I can no longer support him. He doesn’t seem “ready for prime time” and has recently suggested a “not for publication” timeline for defeat retreat in Iraq. No. you’ll see more links to Rudy soon.

[March 31] ok! my recent engagement with Muscatine County Republicans have helped me refocus on the issues at hand and a bit away from the algore craziness (although you KNOW he WILL win a Nobel Peace Prize in October don’t you? – what a joke).
anyway – Tommy Thompson is in town today and Rudy is in Des Moines next Tuesday – so I’m having fun!

I also changed to use firefox from IE. Not used to it yet but I’m getting spelling help on my blog, so that is a good thing.

[March 25] I’m disliking what algore is doing to the Global Warming issue so much, I seem to be focusing on it a lot. It’s wrongheaded and counter productive. AND it shows you how people can be “moved” by hype. Shame on algore. I can only hope he will be shown as the hypocrite he is very soon. Rudy is going to be in Iowa April 3 – a rally in the evening in Des Moines. more on that later.

[March 18] posted a lot again this week, and decided to support Rudy formally. got my first anonymous post. please read and comment, read and comment.

[March 11] I posted a lot this weekend so I will let that speak for me here – cheers!

[March 4] well it’s the quiet end to another weekend. I didn’t get as much done on the blog as I wanted to – there is a lot going on in both the national and state legislatures and people should be paying attention. So far I’m also behind promising you a review of Iowa Football 2007 and Media Bias 3 – but tomorrow is another day. Turn your clocks forward on March 11, and beware the Ides of March!

[FEBRUARY 25] Dreamhost was down all day today if you were wondering why you couldn’t visit today. I’ve been reading up on the Hawkeye 2007 Football team – I will post something soon. Two things – awesome young group of Wide Receivers, and I’m very disappointed we are playing neither Ohio State OR Michigan this season. Doesn’t make sense.

[FEBRUARY 17] just added my endorsement of Rudy Giuliani for President 2008 (see a link to his exploratory committee in the links section at the bottom right). I also like Mitt Romney so I’m technically undecided.

[FEBRUARY 11] – I will be adding new pages on Obama, Hillary and the fight for sanity in the Iowa State Legislature and will periodically update those pages with new information.

a link to another take on the endorsement

Jeff Kaufmann, assistant leader of the Iowa House Republicans, today announced his endorsement of Second Congressional District candidate Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

“Mariannette represents the best that the Republican Party has to offer for service to this state. Her unique background places her in a perfect position to take the lead on health care issues, national defense, and economic development,” Kaufmann said. “Her conservative credentials are without question and her background as a soldier and a medical doctor are exactly the diverse background and level of expertise that that we need in our representative in Congress.”

Miller-Meeks expressed appreciation for Kaufmann’s leadership and expertise on key issues of importance to Iowans. Kaufmann, who has been a leader on property rights, school funding, affordable health care, and veterans’ benefits during his two terms in the General Assembly, is a seventh-generation Cedar County livestock producer. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Iowa and is a teacher and department chair at Muscatine Community College.

“The day I met Jeff Kaufmann I drove through a blizzard from Ottumwa to Tipton, and it was like finding sunshine when he spoke about his commitment to property rights and his efforts to overcome the challenges he faced within the General Assembly,” Miller-Meeks said. “I couldn’t have agreed with him more, and I wished he were my representative. Jeff Kaufmann is courageous and tenacious. Receiving the endorsement of someone so competent and dedicated to doing what’s right for Iowans is both humbling and inspiring. I am greatly honored to have his support.”

Link 

James Madison to America: This Is What We Warned You About
By Jerry Bowyer
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

As a Pennsylvania voter, I’m particularly fascinated by the identity politics that I see playing out every day before my eyes. It’s kind of ironic, since this is the state in which the founders met in to write a constitution which they intended to protect their posterity from the destructive effects of political factions. They warned us about the destructive power of political fanaticism. Not only has the modern Democratic Party failed to heed those warnings, but it has spent the last 40 years writing factionalism into its internal party rules. Identity politics may have worked for Democrats, from time to time, in the past. But now that the two leading candidates hail from different officially recognized racial, age and gender groups, the party is over. To quote Mr. Obama’s pastor ‘the chickens have come home to roost’.

James Madison wrote a pro-constitution editorial (known to history as Federalist 10), that described in prescient terms precisely why political factions are dangerous. When there is liberty, he argued, some men will create more wealth than others. Property and class factions are the result. Members of these different economic classes are tempted to pass laws which help themselves at the expense of the overall public good. Over time this excessive self-regard distorts the gift of reason and causes people to think and speak in ways that seem strange to the country at large.

Ambitious men with rhetorical skill exploit these factions, rising through them to positions of power. In fact, these ambitious men need factions in order to gain what they want. Groups of politically alienated voters are ideally suited to a demagogue’s desire for power and prestige. The narcissists and the fanatics feed one another.

Over time factions tend to move farther and farther away from reality as the reason-destroying power of fanaticism intensifies. Washington, following Madison’s lead, warned us in his Farewell Address that the power of party (his word for faction) tends to create convulsion and ‘false alarms’; that is social unrest and bizarre warnings about phantom dangers.

According to Madison, eventually factions can gain so much power that they are able to promote laws which destroy the liberty of other citizens. For instance (and these examples are his, not mine) they may erasing debt obligations, or impose trade restrictions in order to protect certain interest groups from foreign competition, or perhaps impose special taxes on the numerically small propertied classes.  Both Madison and Washington also warned future generations about the role of foreign powers in this process. Faction leaders often identify less with America than they do with their country of origin. For all of these reason, factions should be discouraged, and their effects minimized, said the men who met in Philadelphia.

As I write this, I’m less and less clear whether I’m writing about Philadelphia in 1788 (when the constitution was implemented) or Philadelphia in 2008 (as I see it shredded). You probably are too. Last month, Barack Obama initiated his Pennsylvania campaign by giving a speech in Philadelphia on race in America. Ironically enough, that speech was delivered at the National Constitution Center, across the street from the place where Madison and Washington and the rest issued the Constitution of the United States, a documented explicitly designed to rectify the factionalism to which America has been so vulnerable.

My National Review colleague Byron York was there and spent time talking with members of the audience. Over and over again, he found, not people who were satisfied that Barack had sufficiently distanced himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but people who agreed with Wright in the first place. The comments of Obama supporter, Gregory Davis seem pretty typical, “I wasn’t offended by anything the pastor said. A lot of things he said were absolutely correct…. The way he said it may not have been the most appropriate way to say it, but as far as a typical black inner-city church, that’s how it’s said.” There in a nutshell is the problem of faction, one group speaking about the nation as a whole in levels of hostility which are simply incomprehensible to the general public.

It’s not just race and gender, it’s also age. My mother, who has come out of retirement to help the Northampton County Department of Elections deal with the overflow of new voter registrants told me that the cards she sees are overwhelmingly registering as Democrats and they are overwhelmingly coming from college students. Do you have any doubts about who those students intend to vote for?

The factionalism of interest group also spills out into what the founders called ‘sectionalism’, that is factions which correspond with geographical divisions. The sections now are less a matter of upper and lower then they are a matter of toward or away from. City,/suburb/exurb has replaced Southern state/border state/northern state as the sectionalism of the 21st century. Philadelphia belongs to Barrack; the southeast suburbs are battleground counties, and Pittsburgh’s industrial west belongs to Hillary.

In other words, Pa Democrats like their brethren around the country, are tearing their party apart along race, age, gender and geographical grounds.

Who can blame them? Democratic voters are just doing what they’ve been trained to do – they’re thinking of themselves as members of factions. Over and over the Democratic Party has rewritten its internal rules to assuage the anger of unsuccessful political factions. This pattern started after the rioting at the 1968 convention with the McGovern-Fraser commission. Delegate quotas were established based on age, race and gender. Party caucuses were structured in ways that favored organized activist groups.

The rhetoric followed the rules. Jesse Jackson articulated the new arrangement perfectly in the Democratic convention of 1988 when he likened his party to a quilt made from individual patches of cloth, stitched together by his grandmother. On their own, they could not expect to rule, ‘your patch is too small…’ he told them each in turn. But sewn together women, blacks, latinos, and unions could take the nation.

Al Gore articulated it inadvertently when he bungled the motto from the Great Seal: E Pluribus Unum, which he translated as “from one, many”. It is, in fact, the opposite “from many, one”. His Latin was pretty weak, but his ability to translate the mood of his party was spot on.

What, if not factionalism, lies at the heart of Hillary’s ‘its tough for a woman out there’? What, if not factionalism, lies at the heart of Obama’s church with it’s the-government-intentionally-created-Aids-to-kill-black-people paranoia and its Afro-centricity?

Step by step, the warnings of Federalist 10 have been trodden underfoot, until finally age, race and gender have moved from the edges of the party to its very center. Delegate quotas, activists-dominated caucuses, the replacement of winner-take-all with proportional delegate systems…even proposed fixes such as super delegates and front-loaded primaries, are all fruit which comes from the same poisoned tree – the rejection of the founder’s vision of a nation protected from factionalism.

G.K. Chesterton once said that if you find a boundary stone in the middle of a field, and you don’t know why it’s there – don’t move it. For the past four decades the party of Jefferson has been moving the ancient boundary stones. This year’s Democratic primary chaos stands as a monument both to the arrogance of the generation of 1968 and the wisdom of the generation of 1788.

Link to original article

Random Events
By Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Sometimes unrelated events nevertheless tell a coherent story.

One newspaper story that caught my eye recently was about two high-powered schools in South Korea where Korean girls study 15 hours a day, preparing themselves for tests to get into elite colleges in the United States. Harvard, Yale and Princeton already have 34 students from those schools.

When a copy of the 50th anniversary report on members of the Harvard class of 1958 arrived in the mail recently, I thought back to one of my fellow students in that class who had worn a hole in the sole of his shoe but put a folded piece of newspaper in his shoe to cover the hole, rather than tell his parents.

He realized that they would buy him a new pair of shoes if they knew– and he also realized that they could not afford it.

He went on to become a professor at several well-known medical schools and to have various achievements and honors over the years.

From even further back in time, I received a letter recently from a man who grew up in my old neighborhood back in Harlem. When he and I were in the same junior high school, one day a teacher who saw him eating his brown bag lunch suddenly arranged for him to get a lunch from the school cafeteria without having to pay for it.

It happened so fast that my schoolmate had already taken a bite from the school lunch when he suddenly realized that he had been given charity– and he wouldn’t swallow the food. Instead he went to the toilet and spat it out.

By now his brown bag lunch had been thrown out, so he just went hungry that day. He went on to become a very successful psychiatrist.

Like everyone else, I have also been hearing a lot lately about Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of the church that Barack Obama has belonged to for 20 years.

Both men, in their different ways, have for decades been promoting the far left vision of victimization and grievances– Wright from his pulpit and Obama in roles ranging from community organizer to the United States Senate, where he has had the farthest left voting record.

Later, when the ultimate political prize– the White House– loomed on the horizon, Obama did a complete makeover, now portraying himself as a healer of divisions.

The difference between Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright is that they are addressing different audiences, using different styles adapted to those audiences.

It is a difference between upscale demagoguery and ghetto demagoguery, playing the audience for suckers in both cases.

People on the far left like to flatter themselves that they are for the poor and the downtrodden. But what is most likely to lift people out of poverty– telling them that the world has done them wrong or promoting the work ethic of the Korean girls, the dogged determination of my Harvard classmate with the newspaper in his shoe, or the self-reliance of my fellow junior high school student in Harlem who had too much pride to take charity?

When young people go out into the world, what will they have to offer that can gain them the rewards they seek from others and the achievements they need for themselves?

Will they have the skills of science, technology or medicine?

Or will they have only the resentments that have been whipped up by the likes of Jeremiah Wright or the sense of entitlement from the government that has been Barack Obama’s stock in trade?

In the real world, a sense of grievance or entitlement, as a result of the mistreatment of your ancestors, is not likely to get you very far with people who are too busy dealing with current economic realities to spend much time thinking about their own ancestors, much less other people’s ancestors.

Another seemingly unrelated experience was being in a crowd at a graveside in a Jewish cemetery last week. That crowd included people who were black, white, Asian, Catholic, Jewish and no doubt others. This country has come a long way, just in my lifetime.

We don’t need people like either Jeremiah Wright or Barack Obama to take us backward.

The time is long overdue to stop gullibly accepting the left’s vision of itself as idealistic, rather than self-aggrandizing.

.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy.

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Link to original article 

Steinbeck’s grapes lack wrath this time around

Gerard Baker: American View

Whatever happened to the Great Depression? Not the real one from 70 years ago, the lost decade of unimagined misery and Steinbeckian angst, the worst period in the history of modern capitalism. I mean the replay we were promised this year. The one we were told was the inevitable counterpart to the greatest financial crisis since a couple of medieval Italians first sat down on a Florentine bench and invented the word “bank”.

I don’t know about you but I feel a bit cheated. There we all were, led to believe by so many commentators that the sub-prime crisis was going to force the United States into a new era of dust bowls and breadlines, a slump that would call into question the very functioning of the capitalist system in the world’s largest economy. Carried away on the surging wave of their own economically dubious verbosity, the pundits even speculated that this unavoidable calamity might presage some 1930s-style global political cataclysm to match.

Well, it’s early days, to be fair, but so far the Great Depression 2008 is shaping up to be a Great Disappointment. Not so much The Grapes of Wrath as Raisins of Mild Inconvenience. Last week the Commerce Department reported that the US economy – battered by the credit crunch, pummelled by a housing market collapse and generally devastated by the wild stampede of animal spirits – actually grew in the first three months of the year.

The rate of expansion – 0.6 per cent – was weak for sure, and it followed a previous quarter of identically weak growth at the end of 2007, but as Depressions go it was singularly unGreat. In the 1930s, you’ll recall, GDP fell by more than 25 per cent. Even the periodic mild recessions we’ve had in the past 20 years at least resulted in some declines in economic activity.

Lest you object – perhaps fairly – that the GDP data are way too backward-looking to be of any use, last week we also got the news that the labour market, the canary in the coalmine of economic data, is actually improving. The US economy lost 20,000 jobs in April, while the unemployment rate ticked down a little to 5 per cent. You don’t have to compare this performance to the Great Depression to think it looks, as downturns go, really quite uplifting. It is, in fact, the gentlest start to a period of labour market weakness since the 1960s.

For comparison, in the first four months of the 2001 recession (which was, by the way, the mildest one in postwar history) employment fell at an average monthly rate of 105,000. In the first four months of this current downturn, the average monthly job losses have been 62,000.

You won’t need me to remind you that in the other Great Depression unemployment rose to an estimated 30 per cent. Worse still for today’s Steinbeck wannabes, as my colleague Anatole Kaletsky noted yesterday, it is starting to look as though world financial markets might be past the worst of the crisis that started all this.

Financial conditions are cautiously returning to something approaching normal. Barometers of distress have shown a distinct turn for the better. Take, for example, the so-called TED spread, a pretty good proxy for the state of financial anxiety. It represents the difference between three-month Libor interest rates and the yield on three-month US Treasury bills. In other words, it measures how risky banks think lending to each other for relatively short periods is compared with the riskless alternative of lending to the Government.

Last Friday the spread fell to its lowest level since the end of February, shortly before the collapse of Bear Stearns. Now, at about 125 basis points, it is still elevated relative to periods of clear normality: the historic norm is between 25 and 50 points. But it’s way down from where it was in March, December and August, when it exceeded 200 points.

So should we be putting out the bunting, declaring victory over the Depression, offering prayers of thanks that we have avoided another Munich or Dunkirk? Not quite. The depression scenario was always overdone, of course, but it is still not clear that the US will actually escape as lightly as this. The principal challenge remains the health of the American consumer.

House prices are still falling and there is plenty of evidence that many Americans, suddenly scared about the value of their house as a nest egg, are retrenching. Even with the Government’s tax rebate cheques dropping on to doormats, caution seems to be the watchword. That also raises the troubling possibility that a period now of shrinking demand could feed back into renewed weakness in the financial system, just as it is starting to heal.

Still, the picture is starting to look quite encouraging. Even if the US has a recession this year, the chances that it will turn into a full-blown slump are not high. Another disappointment for the hyperactive scribbling masses. But rather welcome news for everybody else.

gerard.baker@thetimes.co.uk

look. I really like Bobby Jindal – but not this year; this talk is crazy. He’s still 8 years away from an experience level I would accept. 4 if he REALLY FIXED things in Louisiana – which would be miraculous.
-pf

May 5, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

McCain-Jindal?

By WILLIAM KRISTOL

Barack Obama said Friday, “We’ve had a rough couple of weeks.” Actually, he’s had a rough couple of months. He’s lost three big primaries to Hillary Clinton. And, should he hold on to win the nomination, he can no longer be considered a clear favorite over John McCain in the general election.

In a New York Times/CBS News poll in late February, Obama was defeating John McCain 50 to 38. Two months later, the Times/CBS poll had McCain and Obama tied. The poll that came out yesterday showed Obama reopening a lead over McCain — but clearly over this period a vulnerability for Obama was exposed.

And when Obama’s 12-point lead over McCain was evaporating, Hillary Clinton was moving from a tie in February to a five-point advantage — and now that has widened further.

The main reason for Clinton’s strong performance was surely that she didn’t have as her pastor for 20 years the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama has now repudiated Wright because of his remarks at the National Press Club last Monday. But Wright said nothing new there. AIDS could well have been invented by the U.S. government. Sept. 11 was at least in part “chickens coming home to roost.” Louis Farrakhan deserves our respect. These views of Wright were known to Obama when he made his “I can no more disown him” speech in Philadelphia on March 18. Yet, last week, at a press conference in North Carolina, Obama claimed to be “shocked” and “surprised” by what Wright had said, and disowned him.

What really seems to have shocked and surprised Obama is what Wright said about him: “What I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing.” Later on in his press conference, Obama returned to this, saying that Wright’s cavalier dismissal of Obama as just another politician was “a show of disrespect to me.”

Some voters might think it would have been nice if Obama had been as angry in March at Wright’s disrespect to the United States of America as he was in April at Wright’s disrespect to Barack Obama.

Still, Obama is the likely Democratic nominee. Some conservatives are giddy at the thought — kidding themselves that the general election will therefore be easy, that Obama will be another Dukakis. I was struck, though, in several conversations this week with McCain campaign staffers and advisers that they’re pretty sober about the task ahead. About the Dukakis analogy, for example, one McCain aide said: If in 1988 Ronald Reagan had had a 30 percent job approval rating, and 80 percent of the voters had thought we were on the wrong track, Dukakis would have won.

And the McCain campaign knows the environment for Republicans remains toxic. They noticed that on Saturday night Republicans lost their second House seat in a special election in two months — this one in a district they had held since 1974 and that Bush had carried by almost 20 points in 2004.

Another McCain staffer called my attention to this finding in the latest Fox News poll: McCain led Obama in the straight match-up, 46 to 43. Voters were then asked to choose between two tickets, McCain-Romney vs. Obama-Clinton. Obama-Clinton won 47 to 41.

That reversal of a three-point McCain lead to a six-point deficit for the McCain ticket suggests what might happen (a) when the Democrats unite, and (b) if McCain were to choose a conventional running mate, who, as it were, reinforced the Republican brand for the ticket. As the McCain aide put it, this is what will happen if we run a traditional campaign; our numbers will gradually regress toward the (losing) generic Republican number.

Maybe that’s why, in separate conversations last week, no fewer than four McCain staffers and advisers mentioned as a possible vice-presidential pick the 36-year-old Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal. They’re tempted by the idea of picking someone so young, with real accomplishments and a strong reformist streak.

It might also be a way to confront the issue of McCain’s age (71), which private polls and focus groups suggest could be a real problem. A Jindal pick would implicitly acknowledge the questions and raise the ante. The message would be: “You want generational change? You can get it with McCain-Jindal — without risking a liberal and inexperienced Obama as commander in chief.” I would add that it was after McCain spent considerable time with Jindal in New Orleans recently, and reportedly found him, as he has before, personally engaging and intellectually impressive, that the campaign’s informal name-dropping of Jindal began.

Of course, we shouldn’t assume that the Democratic nominee will be Obama. Maybe Clinton will win both Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday. If she does, she’ll have a chance — an outside chance, but a chance — to win the nomination. And if that happens, the reason will have been that Obama allowed his own running mate in the primaries to become Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Link to original article

May 02, 2008, 4:40 p.m.

Bush’s ‘R’ Is for ‘Right’
So far it’s a non-recession recession. Score one for President Bush.

By Larry Kudlow

President George W. Bush may turn out to be the top economic forecaster in the country.

About a month ago he told reporters, “We’re not in a recession, we’re in a slowdown.” At a White House news conference a few weeks later, despite the fact that reporters pressed him to use the “R” word, Mr. Bush refused. And on Friday, after the most recent jobs report — which produced a much-smaller-than-expected decline in corporate payrolls, a huge 362,000 increase in the more entrepreneurial household survey (the best gain in five months), and a historically low 5 percent unemployment rate (4.95 percent, to be precise) — the president told reporters: “This economy is going to come on. I’m confident it will.”

We’re in the midst of the most widely predicted and heralded recession in history. Problem is, so far it’s a non-recession recession. Score one for President Bush. In an election year, it could be a big one.

First-quarter GDP growth came in at 0.6 percent. It wasn’t the widely predicted decline, and economists expect that number to be revised up. GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2007 was also up slightly, while the prior two quarters averaged over 4 percent growth.

My pal Jimmy Pethokoukis quotes Stanford professor Robert Hall, who heads the recession-dating committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research: “It seems unlikely that we would ever declare a peak-date when real GDP continued to rise.”

Interesting — isn’t it? — just how durable and resilient our low-tax, free-market, capitalist economy truly is. Hit by soaring food and energy prices, a bad housing downturn, and a Wall Street credit crunch, the economy continues to expand, albeit slowly.

The bad news bears always focus on areas of economic weakness. But parts of the economy are doing splendidly. This includes agriculture, energy, export firms operating in the global boom, and all manner of private-sector business, professional, health, and education services. Incidentally, these are the exact sectors producing the highest-paying jobs. What’s more, at 154 million employed, the civilian labor force just hit a new all-time high.

Another significant data point: Corporate profits are outperforming all expectations. With three quarters of the S&P 500 companies reporting, profits outside the banking system have increased 10 percent over a year ago.

Profits are a dirty word on the campaign trail. Hillary and Obama, who blame American corporations for most every problem under the sun, want to tax profits heavily. With ExxonMobil and other oil companies reporting strong earnings, Democrats are now calling for a windfall profits tax. Last time we tried that — under Jimmy Carter — foreign energy imports rose 8 to 16 percent and domestic energy production fell 3 to 6 percent. (This according top a study by the Congressional Research Service.)

A Senate Republican group led by Pete Domenici has a much better idea: Expand drilling and production both offshore and in Alaska. Domenici’s group estimates this would produce up to 24 billion barrels of oil, enough to cover five years of U.S. energy use without a single import.

It’s a vastly better plan than penalizing American businesses and their profits, which are the mother’s milk of stocks, jobs, and the economy. Senator John McCain gets this. His plan to slash the corporate tax rate is the single-best proposal on the campaign trail. McCain also understands that you don’t raise taxes during a slowdown. Nor do you raise taxes when the economy is bouncing back.

Right now, optimism seems to be returning to the stock market. None other than the New York Times ran a front-page story stating, “Wall Street Sees Signs of Sunshine.” That’s like the Daily Worker announcing the end of socialism. But let’s credit the old Gray Lady with reading the tea leaves right.

As a result of mighty efforts by the Federal Reserve, the credit crunch is easing and bond-market risk spreads are falling. The stock market just finished its best April since 2003, with the Dow running above 13,000. The Fed has come to the end of its rate-cutting cycle, and the U.S. greenback is starting to gain strength. With the dollar turning stronger, gold and other inflation signals are coming down.

Even tax rebates for working people will help a bit, although I’m no fan of temporary tax cuts. The much better idea is to make President Bush’s investment tax cuts permanent. McCain is for it. Hill-Bama is against it.

Whose call is it going to be?

Recessions and slowdowns come and go in the free-market economy. But even so, it looks like President Bush — against all odds — may have the last laugh. If he’s right on his no-recession prediction, Sen. McCain and Republicans down the electoral ladder are likely to benefit.

Click here to see the original article

Joe Benedict
Staff Writer

Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks was standing outside Senator Grassley’s office in Washington D.C. with several other doctors. She said she felt there would be no action on Medicare disparity after meeting with Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-Mount Vernon.) It was at that point that she said she might run for Congress. She decided to run as a Republican.

“Most people in their mid-life crisis buy a convertible – I’m running for Congress,” she said.

Miller-Meeks is not so much in a personal crisis as much as she sees a crisis in Washington. She said she doesn’t think people want career politicians representing them in Congress. Like Loebsack, she hasn’t had political experience prior to this run. She was elected as president of the Iowa Medical Society, which gives her one more elected office than Loebsack had held when he ran for Congress two years ago.

Being a doctor, Miller-Meeks has a big interest in health care. In fact, on Monday she performed surgery in the morning before hitting the campaign trail. She said changes need to be made in the single payer health care system that has continually decreased payment to providers and hospitals to control costs and ultimately ration care and limit innovation and technology.

Another large entitlement program that could use some help is Social Security, Miller-Meeks said. There are some simple solutions that can extend the life of the program. She said simply by tying the cost of living increases to a recipient’s birthday a lot of money will be saved. As the system works now, if someone starts Social Security in December they will get a cost of living increase the following month because everyone gets one Jan. 1. By tying it to a person’s birthday, those people wouldn’t get the increase until they were in the system for a year.

She also sees that it is difficult for congressmen to keep their hands off Social Security funds when money is needed elsewhere. For that reason, she supports some sort of private, but limited, account for some of the funds. She said the private account most likely could earn better than the 3 percent the government gains.

Miller-Meeks isn’t just concentrating on Medicare and Social Security, however. She also would like to see the U.S. generate an energy policy, something she said has been lacking in the last 30 years.

She said the Iowa Second District has a good start in alternative energy. The Siemens plant in Fort Madison and a wind plant in Cedar Rapids are taking advantage of wind power. Of course Keokuk has had the hydroelectric plant for many years and we have biodiesel and ethanol plants as well. She said the state could use nuclear power too.

The state also is becoming a leader in biotechnology, creating items like Asoya, oil from soybeans and working on oil from algae. Even the state’s garbage can help provide energy. Several waste authorities are looking at methane collecting from their landfills.

The government can push these technologies along by creating programs to help perpetuate them or by removing some restraint.

Something on everyone’s mind right now is gasoline prices. Miller-Meeks said the alternative energies won’t help gas prices right away. But at some point it will. What else needs to happen is to strengthen the dollar against other currencies.

“We need to admit that lower interest rates and our housing policy put people with shaky credit into homes they couldn’t afford,” she said. “We should help those who were misled.”

She said the lending companies may have to face the loss. She would like to see the Federal Reserve stop lowering interest rates and perhaps even increase them slightly.

People are becoming distrustful of loans, Miller-Meeks said, and that is not good for business.

Another economic issue is the corporate tax. The U.S. has the second highest rate in the world. Miller-Meeks said lowering that to 20 percent would help the economy. The lost money from lowering the tax would be made up through more production and more people working and paying taxes.

She would like to change the income tax system too. She would like people to have the opportunity to choose a flat tax. It would cut down on paperwork and headaches from the large, complex tax code Americans face.

The Iraq war is a concern too. She said the troop surge of last year has helped reduce the number of attacks. She sees keeping a small amount of troops in the country as a drawdown begins, similar to troops we have in many countries around the globe. She said she doesn’t know how many years a drawdown will take.

When asked about the $1 billion embassy being built in Iraq, she said that like anything else, she’ll ask how it benefits the citizens of the U.S. and try to find out answers.

On the personal side, Miller-Meeks lives in Ottumwa and she is married with two children: one in college and one in high school. She and her husband have both served in the military. She retired from the Reserves as a Lt. Colonel in 1998.

She is facing two opponents in the June 3 primary for the congressional seat. Lee Harder of Hillsboro and Peter Teahan of Cedar Rapids also are on the ballot.

Miller-Meeks will be back in the area on May 17 for several events in the Keokuk, Fort Madison and Burlington areas.

I don’t normal post these directly from Jeff (I do post pdfs of his notes here) but maybe I should start posting them here too. Below is a clear outline of what our representatives have to deal with when the democrats control everything. hold on to your wallets, they are after the hide when the money is gone… (bolding below is mine for emphasis) -pf

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Your Capitol Voice
Representative Jeff Kaufmann

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The Legislature adjourned on Saturday morning at 2:30 a.m. I arrived at my home at 5 a.m. dead tired and wondering about a process that would pass one of its most important bills in the middle of the night with all legislators significantly fatigued.

The session ended with some great news for my District and some major disappointments in a final flurry of votes. In this column I will focus on the last week of session. Next week will include a general session overview.

The last week began with a final battle over the statewide SILO. The Senate debated this bill that passed the House with strong bipartisan support.  An alternative idea was proposed that I believe was intended to kill the statewide SILO initiative.  A few legislators, including myself, reacted with equal energy to advocate for passage and point out the serious flaws in the alternate plan.

On Tuesday, the Senate debated and passed the Statewide SILO bill (34-15). It is now on its way to the Governor where he is expected to sign it.

Against great odds and a great deal of misinformation from interest groups and a few urban legislators, a crucial piece of legislation will now become law. This is not a perfect bill but it has a perfect goal: equity for rural/small town Iowa. This will mean millions to Cedar and Muscatine counties in school infrastructure needs and property tax relief. It has been a long battle, but upon reflection I wouldn’t hesitate to take the lead all over again.

It became obvious last week that the new spending would continue to explode. By the end of the week a two-year total for new state spending now surpassed 900 million dollars (17% increase). This means that next year, there will be a 500 million “hole” in the budget before we even begin the session. The 6.4 billion dollar budget passed on a straight party-line vote. We are headed for an imminent “fiscal train wreck,” hence my “no” votes on the budgets

As we moved into the last day of session, the Legislature debated the large Standings bill, which is a “catch-all” for almost any kind of policy. Also debated was a large infrastructure bill infamous for its pork projects. Some of us first fought an ill-advised cut in the funding of county fairs, but it passed on a near-party line vote. Here we are in the midst of record revenues and record spending and funding was cut to county fairs. The Legislature should be ashamed of itself.

We did have success when language was inserted that would weaken Iowa’s drunk driving laws (legislation pushed by the ACLU). Our initial attempt to remove the language failed again on a party-line vote. (The party tends to vote together in the last few days.) Immediately a small group of us contacted the Attorney General’s office and the Department of Transportation and received strong statements against the language. We then approached the media and shortly after a Des Moines Register internet article exposed the party-line vote to protect this weakening, it was reconsidered and removed. This was a small victory but a sign of future bad ideas that may succeed if everything remains the same in the Legislature.

And then there is the pork spending! Millions of dollars for pet projects in specific districts. Even though we heard phrases like “tight budget year” and “tough budget decisions” we still found $80,000 to restore an historic organ in one legislator’s district. There was also over 3 million to develop a park in southern Iowa, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a depot, refurbish a school in Des Moines, build trails, and the list goes on and on.

Although the projects may be worthy, each project can be traced to a specific legislator (usually either a leader or a legislator with a tough race ahead of them). The bottom line is that we cut the county fairs, couldn’t find money to avoid community college tuition increases, and nearly emptied the Senior Living Trust, but we funded an organ restoration for $80,000. I proudly voted no.

What did I learn last week? When the two parties worked in a bipartisan manner common sense often prevails. When policy is shoved through on party-line votes, poor fiscal decision usually occur. For District 79, cutting the county fairs at the same time we found millions of dollars of pork is a great symbol for the worst of the session…it was a long drive home.