The Democrats are nothing if not persistent. After trying to hang this dismal economy on President Bush while the Obama administration repeats every mistake from the Great Depression to create their own version, Tim Bishop says let’s go all in!

After spending so much as to add more to the national debt than all previous presidents combined, all to no effect, why not move on to the next disaster of the Great Depression, a trade war. In the Great Depression it was the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Today we have Tim Bishop looking to attack call centers in India and the Philippines. With allies like us, who needs enemies?  The governments in India and the Philippines are cranking up the diplomatic channels to stop Bishop’s bill. It will be interesting to see how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will react. I doubt she will be saying, “Thanks, Tim!”

The man who has spent his entire career in academia and government had this to say on the news of the diplomatic activity:

“Frankly, the fact that both the Indian government and the Filipino government are reacting like this says that our bill is very badly needed,” he said. Most of the call center jobs lost in the U.S. are “sent primarily to India and the Philippines. So I hope [the bill] does have an impact.”

Did I read that right? Legislation is badly needed to provoke our allies? Don’t we need India as a counterbalance to Pakistan? Wasn’t it Obama who came to office saying he was going to make nice with everyone around the world and apologize for that cowboy Bush’s behavior? Didn’t Tim Bishop get the memo? Here is some more Bishop deep thinking.

In addition to making them ineligible for federal loans, the call center bill would place stiff mandates on companies that chose to outsource their call centers. Customer service reps working in those companies’ call centers overseas would be required to disclose their locations when asked by American callers, as well as provide callers with the option of being transferred to a call center in the U.S. — stipulations likely aimed at pleasing constituents who are tired of dealing with customer service reps based in other countries.

Although I am sure most of my regular readers can see right through that, let me reveal the devilishly clever thinking of Mr. Bishop. By requiring that call centers provide the option of being transferred to a call center in the U.S., companies would basically have to have two call centers, thereby eliminating any savings. Mr. Bishop seems to believe that companies will gladly force bad service on customers to save some money regardless of any complaints. How does that explain how Dell Computer moved some of its call centers back to the U.S. in 2004 when the quality couldn’t keep up with the company’s growth. But who should make that decision, the CEO or Dell or Tim Bishop?

Why is Tim Bishop, a Congressman from Eastern Long Island, the driving force behind this? Are there a lot of call centers in his district that are moving overseas? None that I could find. It’s all about politics. Tim Bishop is facing a tough reelection battle and he is afraid to run on his record. So he needs to drum up an issue. He squeaked by his last reelection by accusing his opponent of being an outsourcer. It worked last time, so let’s fire up that old chestnut and see if it’s got legs. Don’t let the free market decide, don’t worry if it damages relations with our allies. It makes the Communications Workers of America union happy and isn’t that what’s really important?

I have a better idea. Why don’t we approach Tata Motors, the Indian automobile company that now owns Jaguar and Land Rover and get them to build factories in the U.S.? We can outsource low paying call center jobs to them while they outsource high paying manufacturing jobs to us. It makes economic sense, but then again, that won’t help Tim Bishop get reelected, will it? Oh, well.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

This is a story you are not likely to hear about from the mainstream media. As previously reported on this site the Obama administration, led by Hillary Clinton, came down hard on the sovereign country of Honduras for upholding their constitution and fighting against a Chavez style, “leader for life” power grab by their president Manuel Zelaya.

To summarize, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was coming up against term limits. His buddies, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the Castro brothers in Cuba, wanted to help Zelaya transform Honduras into another socialist enclave.  The Honduran legislature and Supreme Court blocked his efforts as unconstitutional. When the head of the army tried to enforce the ruling of the Supreme Court, Zelaya fired him and then with his thugs stole referendum ballots from an air force base where they were being held after the Supreme Court ruling.

Zelaya was removed from office and exiled. The presidential elections proceeded on schedule, a new president was elected and democracy was preserved. As a result of the commotion an inquiry panel of the Organization of American States (OAS) was formed to investigate what happened. Here are some of the conclusions they reached.

“the political crisis was set off” in January 2009. That’s when officials from the president’s office met with congressional members of his own Liberal Party and “threatened them with the rupture of the constitutional order if they did not choose—as supreme court justices—lawyers who were not on the list of 45 supreme court candidates” officially nominated through a legal selection process. According to the full report, Mr. Micheletti testified that U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens was party to this pressure on Congress to break the law.

Why is American Ambassador Hugo Llorens pressuring legislators in Honduras  to break the law and to pack the Honduran Supreme Courts with Zelaya puppets?

The report also says that ahead of the crisis, the international community did nothing to help defend the democracy. On the contrary, the OAS decided to send a mission for the referendum, “despite the fact that every state institution with competency in the matter had issued resolutions that it was illegal and that it should not take place.”

When the Honduran government acted against its rogue president, Hillary Clinton immediately labeled it a coup d’etat and pulled the visas of the fifteen members of the Honduran Supreme Court so they could not travel to the U.S. So why does the United States immediately come to the defense of Manuel Zelaya who is backed by Hugo Chavez and the Castro brothers instead of the rule of law? Everyone who has looked into this has come down on the side of the Honduran government and democracy.

There are many people who are bending over backwards to claim Barack Obama is not a socialist merely because he hasn’t taken over all of the means of production. When it starts to rain, I don’t need to wait until I am drenched to head for cover. This is just one more piece of the puzzle that this is someone we have to get out of office in November of 2012, before he does more damage than we can recover from in our lifetime.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

I still find myself in awe of our Founding Fathers who created our form of government.  The competing ideas that they sifted through to come up with our Constitution and the safeguards in it is wondrous.  The designs upon it by the progressives is by equal measure disturbing.

The progressives envision a national government that they can dominate and that, in turn, will dominate us.  There is no activity over which they do not feel they can or should control.  Private property is a panacea, to keep the masses from open revolt, but they really believe that all wealth that is generated belongs to the government except for the portion they permit us to keep.  If you think that statement is unimaginable consider this.  How often do you hear, concerning the current debate over the Bush tax cuts, that we cannot afford them for the rich?  Think about it.  They say our government cannot afford to allow certain citizens of this country to continue to pay the same level of taxes in 2011 that they pay today.  That the government somehow has to pay for a tax cut, that actually isn’t even a cut but rather a continuation of what has existed for the last ten years.  How is getting less than you want a cost? If you awake on Christmas morning and do not find the present you have been hoping for under the tree, do you say, “Man, that’s gonna cost me?” Of course you do not.

A Massive Federal Government

Think about the many federal departments and agencies that exist today for which you will find no authorization in the Constitution: Education; Agriculture; Housing and Urban Development; Energy; Health and Human Services; Transportation.  Did they not have education in the eighteenth century? Are we more agrarian today than we were in 1789?  If not, why do we need a Department of Agriculture today, but the Founders didn’t see a need for it then?

The progressives are fighting for the continual concentration of functions at the federal level where the voices of the people are faint, but the voices of the special interests are robust and clear.  The branch of the federal government that is closest to the people is the House of Representatives.  But ponder how small your voice is in that chamber.  You are one of some 700,000 in your congressional district; your congressman or woman is one of 435 in the House of Representatives.  How do you get your voice heard at the federal level?  And yet Congress will tell you what kind of light bulb to buy or what kind of toilet you must flush.  Is this what our founding fathers envisioned?

The Bloody Revolution

To establish our country they fought a brutal revolution; a revolution where 50% of the mortal wounds were caused by bayonets.  Now that’s up close and personal.  It is not something they entered into lightly and a reading of the Declaration of Independence will tell you that they pledged their lives when they signed that document and their death warrants as well.  If captured by the British they surely would have been tried and executed for treason.

In designing our form of government they were very suspicious of strong central power and authority, having just thrown off one.  They did not trust government.  As Jefferson said, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty.  When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”  Here is a simple test, do you fear the IRS or does the IRS fear you?

The Founders designed the Constitution to have strictly enumerated powers given to the federal government with all other powers retained by the states or the people.  They did not design a democracy, but a republic.  In that republic they built numerous checks and balances to prevent the accumulation of power. It has been the goal of the progressives to remove those checks and balances and put in place the tyranny that fears no people.

The Structure of the Federal Government

Among the balances they put in place was that the people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives.  That is the body of government closest to the people.  If you recall the wording of the Tenth Amendment it speaks of the federal government, the states and the people.  The Senate was to be appointed by the state legislatures to represent their interests.  The president was to be elected, not by the people, but by the Electoral College.  Lastly, judges were to be appointed for life by the president with the advice and consent of the senate.  Why did they do this?  One reason is that they believed that if a proposed law had the backing of the majority of the people (House of Representatives) and a majority of the states (Senate) then it was probably a good thing, otherwise slow it down.  The fewer the number of laws, the greater our liberty.

The Progressives Attack

The progressives began their designs on the Constitution with the introduction of the income tax through the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913.  By allowing the government to tax incomes the government could now afford to greatly expand. However, to be able to expand it had to have the consent of the states, which was not likely to be granted.  So two months after the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified.  The Seventeenth Amendment called for the direct election of Senators, rather than having them appointed by the state legislatures.  The individual citizens picked up two more votes in the federal government, in most cases an even weaker voice than their Representative, and the states were shut out.

Do you think things such as unfunded mandates could pass in Congress if the states still chose the members of the Senate?  Social Security? Medicare? The Department of Education? The Department of Housing and Urban Development? And on and on?  Think of some of the more radical members of the Senate.  Do you think Al Franken would have been appointed by the Minnesota state legislature?  For many years in New York, the State Assembly was under the control of the Democrats but the State Senate was under the control of the Republicans.  The governorship passed back and forth between representatives of the two parties.   However, New York’s two Senators are Democrats and win reelection easily because of the concentration of Democrats mainly in New York City.  Could Hillary Clinton have moved into New York and immediately become its newest Senator with a Republican governor and Republican controlled State Senate? She was elected Senator from New York before she even moved out of the White House.  So instead of representing their state legislatures, Senate candidates focused on the population centers of their states to appeal directly to the people and to get elected and reelected.  The states were reduced from sovereign entities to subsidiaries of the federal government.

The Supreme Court

When Franklin Roosevelt was president he tried to pass his massive socialist programs but found that the Supreme Court was striking down many of his programs as being unconstitutional.  Roosevelt wanted to pack the court by increasing its membership from nine justices to fifteen.  He argued that the justices were old and over worked.  So he wanted to appoint a new justice for every existing justice that was seventy years or older.  His plan failed.  But when he broke with George Washington’s precedent and that of every president who followed him of serving no more than two terms, he was eventually able to appoint every justice to the Supreme Court.  So he got his way, it just took longer.

The Supreme Court can be considered the collateral damage of the Seventeenth Amendment.  The Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.  However once the Senators became directly elected by the people things changed.  Would a distinguished jurist like Robert Bork be treated as shamefully as he was by the lie filled speech of Ted Kennedy if Kennedy and Joe Biden weren’t doing the work of the pro-abortion lobby?  Would Clarence Thomas be subjected to the electronic lynching he faced if not for some Senators pandering to their special interest groups?  What we now have are potential Supreme Court justices who have learned that if you don’t want to get “Borked” keep your mouth shut during your confirmation hearings.  So we don’t know who we are going to get until a lifetime appointee is on the bench and then it is too late.

The 2000 Presidential Election

Who can forget the 2000 presidential election?  The Democrats still say Al Gore won, not because of Florida (he lost the election there, he lost the re-count, he lost the re-re-count) but because he won the popular vote.  The debates raged, why do we have an Electoral College?  The president should be elected by popular vote only. 

The argument follows the one made previously about the direct election of senators.  The Electoral College forces presidential candidates to campaign everywhere because everywhere counts.  There are at least three electoral votes to be had in every state.  The Founders were very concerned about balance.  They did not want the president just to be elected by the people of New York, Boston and Philadelphia, the large cities of that time.  Today, if the Electoral College was abolished the election would focus on the media  and population centers of New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago and the large cities because that’s where it is easiest to get the message out and that is where the majority of the people are.  The progressives would put up pretty much the same candidates as they do today, perhaps more to the left.  This is their home turf and power base.  Instead of traveling around the country they could concentrate their time and money in a few large cities.  The Republicans would probably field candidates of a far more moderate stripe to not get hooted off the stage in New York.  Let me illustrate.

Electoral College vote Bush-Gore 2000

The Democrats claim Gore won in 2000 because he won the popular vote.  He lost in the Electoral College by five votes.  If you look at the breakdown of the states Gore won versus Bush, Gore took the Northeast, the Great Lakes area and the West Coast.  With the exception of New Mexico, Bush took everything else.

Let’s dial it down a level and look at who won at the county level.

Bush-Gore 2000 Winners by County

If you look at it at the county level, you could drive from the east coast to the west coast without entering a single county that Gore won.  You could do the same driving from Canada to Mexico.  But if popular vote was the metric, the man who won 80%-90% of the land mass of the United States would have lost.  Why should you not have a say, if you don’t live in a major population center?  It is not like Bush won in an Electoral College landslide and it is not like Gore absolutely trounced Bush in the popular vote.  The purpose of the Electoral College is to act as another brake on the tyranny of the majority.  

Where Do We Go From Here  

We are presently at a crossroads.  We have an electorate that is more knowledgeable, more aware, and more engaged than at any time in my memory.  We can continue to go down the socialist path toward a massive central government that takes all of our liberties for a measure of sustenance, or we can turn the tide and demand our liberties back.  

Let us begin by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.

With a week left in the election, Kirsten Gillibrand holds a substantial lead in the polls to be elected to the seat to which she was appointed after Hillary Clinton moved on to the State Department.  Liberty’s Lifeline finds this a remarkable situation considering that for most of the past year polls have shown the Gillibrand trailed a generic “someone else”.  It would seem that in this year of an anti-incumbent uprising, she would be among the easiest senators to unseat, and yet her race is considered “solidly Democratic”, in other words, in the bag.

If you watched the video of her debates with Joe DioGuardi she seemed overly scripted, delivering pattern Democratic talking points to questions even to the point of ignoring the question to parrot the memorized response.  In a “lightening round” that required a yes or no answer, she seemed to struggle to give an answer to some questions that required thought before answering.  It almost looked like a game show where she seemed delighted to get an answer right rather than giving answers she actually believed in.

Her Lies

In one debate the opening question was addressed to her and concerned her flip-flopping from the positions she advocated as a Congresswoman.  For instance, she received an “A” grade from the NRA for her pro-gun positions and she also strongly opposed amnesty for illegal immigration.   Since becoming senator the NRA changed her grade to an “F” and she now supports amnesty.  In answering the question she gives the baffling response that she always fights for her constituents.  Have her constituents changed their views 180 degrees since she was appointed senator and she is just following their lead, or has she instead fallen in line with Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid to get elected to the position?  One could argue that previously she represented an upstate Congressional district and now she represents the whole state, but even her current positions, although 100% in line with Harry Reid, are out of touch with New Yorkers, particularly regarding terrorism and events surrounding 9/11.  More on that later.

The other area she appears to be lying regards work she did as a private attorney for Philip Morris.  Her work involved helping Philip Morris hide from investigators that they knew that nicotine was addictive through their own research. When asked this in the debates she completely dodges the question by talking about her voting record on tobacco issues.  On rebuttal, she describes the allegations this way. “Your arguments are fantasy, absolute fantasy.”  In the second debate she says the charges are, “absurd and ludicrous.”  She doesn’t deny working for Philip Morris as a client, but says she was a very junior attorney and wasn’t able to pick her cases.  However, the New York Times tells a very different story.

“So when the Justice Department tried to get its hands on that research in 1996 to prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking, the company moved to fend off the effort with the help of a highly regarded young lawyer named Kirsten Rutnik [now Gillibrand].”

The Times article mentions Gillibrand’s current position that she was a junior associate with little control over the cases she was handed.  But they counter that argument:

“But a review of thousands of documents and interviews with dozens of lawyers and industry experts indicate that Ms. Gillibrand was involved in some of the most sensitive matters related to the defense of the tobacco giant as it confronted pivotal legal battles beginning in the mid-1990s.”

Attorneys should not be judged on the basis of the clients they represent and that applies here as well.  But Senator Gillibrand should answer the question along those lines, but she is clearly lying that the issues raised in the debate are ludicrous fantasies.  The Times article documents her involvement in detail and it was not trivial.  The real issue is her lying about it.

Her Connections

So how is it that Senator Gillibrand is ahead in the polls instead of trailing badly when “prefer someone else” drew 43% against “elect Gillibrand” at 34%?  The answer lies in her connections.

One of the most powerful Republicans in New York State politics is former Senator Alphonse D’Amato.  Senator D’Amato is a friend of Kirsten Gillibrand.  Many observers were surprised when Democrat governor David Patterson held the announcement ceremony with a stage full of New York Democrat luminaries, but front and center on the stage was Republican Al D’Amato.

During college, then Kirsten Rutnick, was an intern for D’Amato for two years.  Her father, Douglas P. Rutnick is well connected in Albany and is close to D’Amato.

Republicans tried to get Pataki to enter the race against Gillibrand.  Polls showed him in a virtual tie from day one, but Pataki told New York operatives he was happy in the private sector.  However, and article in the Politico had this to say:

“Pataki’s longtime ally, Al D’Amato, the former senator who still wields major power in the state’s fractured GOP, has been actively working behind the scenes to make sure that no one, not even Pataki, challenges Gillibrand, whom he’s known since she was a baby.”

D’Amato later endorsed Bruce Blakeman as the Republican challenger to Gillibrand.  Blakeman was arguably the weakest candidate in the three-way Republican primary and ultimately finished third for the nomination.  So D’Amato would let his country go to hell so that his friend could be a Senator.  It’s not his support of Gillibrand that is most offensive, but the clandestine way he manufactured it.  If he believed she was the best candidate, come out and endorse her publicly.  Better yet, Al, switch parties to the Democrats so we don’t have two names on the same big government, anti-liberty party.

Here are some other key items about her connections from Redstate.com:

• Gillibrand’s father, Doug Rutnik, a contributor mostly to the Democratic Party, “is an Albany insider and lobbyist whose ties to former GOP powerhouses Joe Bruno, George Pataki and Al D’Amato are legendary” – Village Voice (1/22/2009)
• “Gillibrand won her seat (after being down 19 points) when a state police domestic violence report about the GOP incumbent, John Sweeney, was mysteriously leaked, ostensibly with the acquiescence of the Pataki administration – Village Voice (1/22/2009)
• Doug Rutnik is also one-time boyfriend of Pataki Chief of Staff Zenia Mucha; Pataki has chosen not to run against Gillibrand even though polls showed he had the best chance.
• Gillibrand worked for both D’Amato and Cuomo, who never conducted an investigation when he was attorney general of the Sweeney leak.
• D’Amato, who controls many county chairs that have fallen in line to support Gillilbrand, has also given his own personal support to weak Republican candidate Bruce Blakeman, which could easily be viewed as gift-wrapping the election for Gillibrand.

Can there be a clearer case for the Tea Party to help clean house in the Republican party?

Her Positions

Some of her positions that are out of touch with Americans and New Yorkers

• The Tea Party is bad for America.  You may not agree with the Tea Party or its positions but 46% say the Tea Party is good for America, 31% disagree
• She doesn’t believe Andrew Cuomo should debate Carl Paladino one-on-one.  So what we recently had was a circus of a debate with seven candidates participating and New Yorkers learning nothing other than that the rent is too damn high
• She believes Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other terrorists should be tried in civilian courts, while 51% of U.S. voters disagree.
• In the debate she couldn’t answer the simple question of whether disgraced former New York State Comptroller, who was convicted of crimes in office, should go to jail.
• She supports the Ground Zero mosque and said she would attend a ground breaking there if invited.  58% in New York oppose the mosque near Ground Zero

What’s Going On Here?

Here is a candidate who is ahead in the polls but supports almost everything that has prompted serious concerns around the country.  Rather than clear up her role working for Philip Morris, she lies about it.  Her connections appear to have a Republican, former U.S. Senator Al D’Amato, doing more to engineer this Democrat’s election than the Democrats themselves are doing.  He worked to keep viable Republicans out of the race and for appearances endorsed a Republican who had no chance of winning.  Her positions are very far to the left, but in lockstep with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.

More than anything else, Americans want free and fair elections.  The Tea Party has brought that message home to the Republican leadership by defeating candidates of the establishment and substituting conservatives.  New York’s state government is broken.  That’s bad enough but to have New York’s Republicans actively working behind the scenes to make sure a far left Democrat gets elected is disgraceful.  Voters should send a loud and clear message on November 2, 2010 

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DB-hJVLVh0&hd=1

Kirsten Gillibrand and Joe DioGuardi battle it out in a televised debate.  Here are some of the highlights. 

Kirsten Gillibrand was elected to Congress as a relatively conservative Democrat.  She received a grade of “A” from the National Rifle Association and she was counted among the Blue Dog Democrats.  After Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, Gillibrand was appointed to Clinton’s vacant senate seat.  Since joining the senate she has changed her positions 180 degrees.  The National Rifle Association now gives her a grade of “F”.  She now votes lockstep with Harry Reid. 

Joe DioGuardi is a Certified Public Accountant who has previously served in Congress.  His position is focused on the fiscal issues we currently face and his objective is to go to Washington and approach it like an accountant to get their fiscal house in order.

Here are their key positions:

• Gillibrand supports ObamaCare, DioGuardi thinks ObamaCare should be repealed and we should start over, beginning with tort reform
• Gillibrand supports a public option and appears to support taxpayer funding of abortions
• Gillibrand says she is strongly opposed to outsourcing but voted for the GM bailout after which GM increased offshore production
• Gillibrand denies that she or Andrew Cuomo had anything at all to do with the housing bubble.

Senator Gillibrand is running from her record as fast as her legs will carry her.  Although she does deserve credit  for admitting she supported ObamaCare although she would be hard pressed to deny it.  She thinks that ObamaCare is just swell, though, and the only thing to continue working on is those big, bad, insurance companies that have the temerity to raise premiums, something that conservatives said would happen from the beginning.

For all the hand wringing by the Republican establishment over Christine O’Donnell’s fitness for office two points must be made.  One, who is calling the kettle black?  Two, has anyone bothered to look at who she is running against?

In the desperate attempt to throw anything and everything they can find at Christine O’Donnell to try to derail her roaring comeback, her critics have gone all the way back to probe who her friends were in high school.  High school. If that is a criteria for being unfit for government office, how about these gems:

• President Barack Obama admitted using marijuana and cocaine in high school, but he is fit to be the chief law enforcement officer of the United States
• Vice President Joe Biden committed plagiarism and had to drop out of the 1988 Presidential race, but he is fit to be the “experienced statesman” to balance the Obama-Biden team
• President Bill Clinton lied under oath to a federal judge to prevent a woman with a legitimate case of sexual harassment from having her day in court.
• Senator Ted Kennedy left a woman in a submerged car to die rather than doing everything possible to help save her life and his Democratic colleagues called him the “Lion of the Senate”
• Timothy Geithner oversees the IRS, but didn’t pay his own taxes
• Charlie Rangel is under investigation for numerous ethics violations including not paying his taxes despite being the former chairman of the Congressional committee that writes the tax laws.
• Hillary Clinton, not as a high school student but as First Lady, held a séance so she could talk to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Is that enough or should I continue?  And these people and their supporters say, Christine O’Donnell is not fit for office?  Maybe she should rob a bank so that her resume would be more in line with these icons of the Democrat firmament.

What about Chris Coons?  In the midst of out of control spending and a dismal recovery burdened with the uncertainty of all that the Obama administration wants to pile on, this is from Coons’ own website:

• On the economy – “Chris Coons wants to focus on the millions of Americans who have suffered from the crisis.”  Great. More government programs.  Let’s not try to get government out of the way and let the economy create jobs and come roaring back, let’s make government bigger.
• On education – “performance in the classroom depends on more than teachers and curriculum. Housing, health care, crime and poverty all have a direct impact on a child’s development and their ability to learn.”  So if you think education is expensive now, wait until Mr. Coons starts trying to ramp up all these ancillary programs.  How about competence and getting rid of teachers who can’t teach?
• On energy – “He also is calling for a nationwide cap and trade program that will help establish a price on carbon.” Jacking up the price of energy is sure to boost the economy.
• On financial reform – no mention whatsoever about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, just applause for the Dodd-Frank act.
• On health care – supports ObamaCare
• Offshore oil drilling – Coons is opposed.  He favors offshore wind farms and also has this gem on his web site, “Our state’s success in bringing Fisker Automotive to build innovative, sporty electric cars at the former GM Boxwood facility is a testament to the commitment of the federal, state, and county governments to alternative energy and building a green manufacturing economy in Delaware.” While it is commendable that Coons brought this company to Delaware, does he know that the starting price for these cars is north of $80,000.  Is he so clueless to believe that this is going to make us energy independent?  If he does, he better call Mr. Obama and tell him to lay off the “tax the rich” mantra, because it is only the rich who could possibly afford to buy these cars.

We’ll leave aside that as a college student he authored a paper titled: “Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist.”  His current views are consistent with bigger government, more spending, less liberty.

So on the one hand we have Christine O’Donnell, who believes in the free market; that jobs are actually created by private industry; that the crushing debt burden that Obama and Coons want not only to continue but to accelerate; that taxes should be lower; and that government should be accountable.  All the other crap that the progressives are throwing at her will have no bearing on these positions that will get our country out of the mess we are in.  On the other hand you have Chris Coons who wants to double down on everything that Obama has done and make the debt even worse.

There couldn’t be a clearer choice.  Ignore the attacks from the left.  Do you like having your government crammed down your throat or do you want your government accountable to you?  Harry Reid’s “pet”, Chris Coons, wants you to open wide and say, “ahhh”. Christine O’Donnell thinks you’ve had enough.  What do you think?

In New York we have the unusual situation of voting for two senators in the same year.  Chuck Schumer is the incumbent running for reelection and Kirsten Gillibrand was appointed to the Senate to fill Hillary Clinton’s vacant seat when the latter became Secretary of State in the Obama administration.  So in some respects, Ms. Gillibrand is running for the Senate for the first time rather than as an incumbent.

As a Congresswoman in 2007 she was a member of the “Blue Dog” coalition of conservative Democrats.  In the Senate Ms. Gillibrand has been quiet as a church mouse.  Perhaps that is because she doesn’t want people to notice her metamorphosis from a moderate Democrat from upstate New York with a 100% approval rating from the National Rifle Association to another far left Harry Reid “pet”, voting with the Democratic leadership 97% of the time.  Now that she is in the Senate she has been endorsed for election by a leading gun control group which the NRA strongly opposes which prompted this response from the NRA

“She was either being dishonest with her voters in the congressional district or she’s being dishonest to the voters in New York state,” said the NRA’s chief lobbyist, Chris W. Cox. “Either way, the key word is dishonest.”

Gillibrand’s spokesman had no comment.

Ms. Gillibrand voted in favor of giving stockholders a vote on executive compensation in corporations.  Does she favor giving Americans a vote on her and her colleagues’ compensation?  In July 2009, she voted yes on a Congressional pay raise.  So we need to keep those greedy corporate types in check, but she gets to vote herself a raise?  But that’s not all; when as an attorney she represented corporations she had a very different role.  As an attorney representing Philip Morris her job was to keep the Department of Justice from finding out that Philip Morris’ own research showed that tobacco was harmful.

“So when the Justice Department tried to get its hands on that research in 1996 to prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking, the company moved to fend off the effort with the help of a highly regarded young lawyer named Kirsten Rutnik [now Gillibrand].” – New York Times, March 26, 2009

Call it inconsistent, but whatever you call it, Ms. Gillibrand doesn’t like to talk about it.

In September of 2009, the Senate voted to block the Department of Housing and Urban Development from giving grants to ACORN, the controversial group that was under investigation for voter fraud and later the subject of some undercover videos showing their willingness to help set up a prostitute and her pimp.  The measure passed by a lopsided 83-7 vote to end the funding.  One of the seven voting to retain funding was Kirsten Gillibrand.

Since joining the Senate she voted for TARP, she voted for the stimulus, and she voted to bail out GM.  It’s time to turn up the lights and find out who Kirsten Gillbrand really is today.  Let the debate begin.

The old bull Republicans continue to get rocked.  Add Carl Paladino and Christine O’Donnell to the list that includes Rand Paul, Sharon Angle, Joe Miller and others. It drives home the point that was exposed in a Rasmussen poll that 72% of GOP voters say Republicans in Congress are out of touch with their base.  On the Democrat side it is just the opposite where 61% of Democrat voters say the Dems in Congress fairly represent them.  While the Democrats are standing pat, rank and file Republicans are asking for a new set of cards.

Liberty’s Life Line endorsed Mr. Lazio, because New York state government is such a dysfunctional mess it was felt more political experience and a detailed plan would make more headway than an outsider.  However, the fire in the belly that Mr. Paladino demonstrated, we wish Mr. Lazio had.  But Lazio ran another lackluster campaign as he did against Hillary Clinton for Senate, missing the key issue for voters by focusing on the Ground Zero mosque instead of the broken government.  Oddly, he had a 24 page plan on how he would change things, but you had to hunt to find it.  I have two suggestions for Mr. Lazio: drop out of the race on the Conservative line and free that up for Mr. Paladino, and give a copy of your plan to Mr. Paladino.

For the Republican party’s old pulls, it’s time to clean out your desks.  Enough of the lamenting that we need moderates to win in the general election.  When the going gets tough moderate Republicans vote with the Democrats.  When do moderate Democrats vote with Republicans?  Never, because there are no moderate Democrats. We don’t need any more Arlen Specters, Susan Collins, or Olympia Snowes. It is time to get polarized, energized, and laser focused on the issues that affect Americans.  If that means we have two extremes, left and right, so be it.  It also means Americans will have clear choices.

So let’s get behind the nominees and also put the old bulls out to pasture.

When 300,000-500,000 of your closest friends, depending on who is doing the estimating, show up for a rally on the Washington Mall you would think it was somewhat newsworthy, no?  Of course it is, that’s why the New York Times published the story on page fifteen.  If you were walking by a newsstand and glanced at the front page, you wouldn’t have know that a half million of your fellow citizens got together with Glenn Beck to restore honor in America.  The front page would entice you with:

• Graft-Fighting Prosecutor Fired in Afghanistan
• For Obama, Steep Learning Curve as Chief in Time of War
• Upstarts Chip Away at Power of Feudal Pakistani Landlords
• Years Later, No Magic Bullet Against Alzheimer’s Disease
• In Hard Times, One New Ban (Double-Wide)

I guess our friends at the times couldn’t find any fabricated stories of someone shouting the “N-word” at Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece Alveda King, who was one of the featured speakers, to elevate the story to the front page.  Perhaps it would have been too embarrassing to mention on the front page that Al Sharpton’s counter-demonstration where “several hundred people packed a football field at Paul Laurance Dunbar High School to stage a rally commemorating Dr. King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”  Yesterday, you would have thought both rallies were the same size with crowd estimates of several thousand for each.  Perhaps this shows the true value of racial politics today.  America is tired of the race baiting and the false charges.   President Obama was elected with hope and change to become the post-racial leader of the country.  It appears the country has moved on without his leadership.

In another piece in the Times two Progressive women pine for a “Palin of Our Own”, to win the hearts and minds of America.  The problem is America doesn’t want to listen to Janeane Garofalo or Joy Behar sneeringly spouting off about Sarah Palin.  As far as any women Progressive politicians, who is there other than Hillary Clinton and we’ve seen that act and passed on it.

In another piece titled “Party Down”, Marc Ambinder tells us about the anti-incumbent mood, “Unlike parties, which often recruit candidates who would appeal to the average voter in a general election, these activists care only about nominating the person who accurately represents their own views and frustrations.”  Appeal to the average voter?  The problem with the Republican Party in the past is that they have been listening to the main stream media reports about who the “average voter” is.  So they have elected so called “moderates” who get their clocks cleaned by real Progressives in the election.  The left snickered in their sleeves while growing the government into the bloated, ineffective, couch potato that it is.  It alarms those on the left that the Tea Party movement has changed all this and tone deaf incumbents are getting tossed left and right.  They have unmasked the average voter to be conservative and by measuring candidates against a conservative yardstick, they have struck a chord with the voters who have long felt ignored and disenfranchised.  Now those voters are energized and can’t wait to get to the polls.  Reason for panic on the left, indeed.

In today’s New York Times there is a story about Rick Lazio latching on to the Ground Zero mosque issue as his new campaign theme.  The first television ads I have seen regarding his run for governor are about this issue.  He is strongly opposed.  Okay, but he wants us to  elect him governor to do what, exactly?  New York has a lot of problems, from a state government that is completely dysfunctional to being broke and since everyone seems to agree that the mosque at Ground Zero is not about the right to build there but about the propriety of building there, what does it have to do with the office of governor?

When he pinch hit for Rudy Giuliani running for the senate against Hillary Clinton, after Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the race with prostate cancer, Mr. Lazio took a similar tack.  You probably remember their first debate when Mr. Lazio famously walked across the stage to a startled Mrs. Clinton and asked her to sign his pledge on campaign finance reform.  She refused and that was his theme.  The problem is that although many people feel our political process is corrupt, when it comes to campaign finance reform, most people don’t care about it.  Those who care about it are incumbents, who want to cripple those who run against them.  Some of the so called “reforms” have politicians spending so much time chasing $50 donations that they can’t do what they were elected to do.  Either that or we can only run multi-millionaire candidates who can spend their own money without limits.  (Simple solution: let anyone contribute any amount to any campaign at any time and just post the information on the Internet within 72 hours in a database that is fully searchable. Done.)  It only took a little time for the novelty of the debate video to fade and Mr. Lazio had no campaign.

Another challenger in this year’s governor’s race, Carl Paladino, one of the aforementioned millionaires, has been hitting the airwaves more frequently and more effectively than Mr. Lazio.  He is not a one trick pony.  His first ads hit Andrew Cuomo on being a career politician and that he, Paladino, was a business man who knows how to create jobs.  What do we desperately need now?  Jobs.  What are we sick of? Career politicians, like Mr. Cuomo, who played a role as HUD Secretary in the Clinton administration of feeding the real estate frenzy and the subsequent housing collapse that created the financial crisis.

On the mosque situation, agree or disagree with him but Mr. Paladino says exactly what he will do about it.  He will take the property away under Eminent Domain (thanks to the activist judges on the Supreme Court who gave us Kelo v. City of New London) and use the property to create a war memorial.  He doesn’t just say he will oppose it he tells us what he will do about it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I contributed to Rick Lazio’s senate run in 2000 and I have no connection with the Paladino campaign.  But if Mr. Lazio is serious about defeating Andrew Cuomo for governor, he has to find some issues that not only resonate with the people of New York but that are the responsibility of the governor to address.  If not, rather than split the conservative vote, he should step aside and help ride the anti-incumbent wave that Carl Paladino is surfing.