Showing posts with label LIMBAUGH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LIMBAUGH. Show all posts
Friday, November 15, 2013
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Freedom Party or GOP Overhaul… You Be the Judge
Marion Algier – AskMarion
Sarah Palin is definitely back full force and has opened the conversation as to whether the path forward for conservatives, concerned patriots and Reagan Democrats who feel they are not being represented by the GOP, either party, should be looking toward a new party or if there should be a GOP overhaul. The former governor of Alaska floated the idea of bolting from the Republican Party if it continues to, as she sees it, to back away from the principals of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. The Whig party was replaced by the Republican Party, with Abraham Lincoln as it’s first president and Ronald Reagan its modern standard bearer by which all others are measured. Sarah Palin said she was open to creating new 'Freedom Party' if GOP continues to 'neglect conservatives'… common sense patriots of all stripes. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin entertained building a "Freedom Party" while answering Twitter questions on Fox News Saturday.
In response to one Twitter user who asked, “Would you & Mark Levin be willing to build a 'Freedom Party' if GOP continues to ignore conservatives?” Sarah said:
"I love the name of that party — the 'Freedom Party,'" Palin replied. "And if the GOP continues to back away from the planks in our platform, from the principles that built this party of Lincoln and Reagan, then yeah."
Whenever the idea of forming a third party is mentioned a huge debate ensues, as it should, but too often just the negative arguments surface. In August 2012, the Examiner ran an article on how to counter the negative arguments. The biggest argument is always: “Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote… They can’t win!
“Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote because the candidate cannot/will not win.”
Here are two distinct arguments for the Examiner, as the case for a third party candidate being unable to win is much different than a prediction that said candidate will not win. Let us examine both cases:
RINOs and DINOs
1. Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote because the candidate cannot win.
Anyone who claims this is claiming that the election process in America is rigged. Let us set aside the matter of whether this is actually the case and focus narrowly on the claim being made. A person who believes this should be trying to convince people not to vote at all in protest of a corrupt system, not trying to convince people to vote for Republicans or Democrats.
2. Voting for a third party candidate is a wasted vote because the candidate will not win.
Anyone who claims this is claiming to be able to predict the future. We know that all psychics are charlatans and frauds, so such a claim destroys the credibility of the arguer. This argument is also an example of a logical fallacy known as circular reasoning. Don't vote third party because they won't win? How are they supposed to win if no one votes for them? Furthermore, this argument assumes that winning is everything, which is false. Third parties have to contend with obstructionist ballot access laws passed by Republicans and Democrats, which typically require a national-level or state-level candidate of a third party to win a certain percentage (usually 5%) of the vote in order to keep the third party on the ballot. Failing that, the third party must make a petition drive to collect signatures, typically numbering in the tens of thousands, and then (in many cases) fight off a challenge by lawyers and operatives of the two major parties.
N.B.: It is helpful to apply the arguer's logic to major-party candidates. For example, consider the U.S. presidential election of 2008. Statistical analysis shows that Republican nominee John McCain had no chance of defeating Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Therefore, by establishment logic, a vote for John McCain was a wasted vote. This logic can also be extended to the presidential elections in each state. Without loss of generality, a vote for a Republican candidate in a state that is safe Democrat is a wasted vote. After this counterargument, the arguer must either admit that using ability to win as a gauge of whether a vote is wasted is illogical, or accept that votes for anyone except the winner of an election are wasted, a premise which leads to a one-party dictatorship in which voting is meaningless.
You have to choose the lesser of two evils. A vote for (insert third party candidate's name here) is a vote for (insert name of major party candidate the arguer dislikes here).
This is clearly false, because if it were true, no other options would be on the ballot. Typically implicit in this argument is a logical fallacy known as appeal to fear. The arguer usually attempts to persuade voters to vote for their major party candidate by saying that a third party vote is a vote for the opposition candidate, who would be the worst possible choice. But this argument assumes that one would consider voting for a major party candidate if one's third party candidate were not in the election. If this is not the case, then the argument is invalid. In fact, the argument is always invalid because votes do not “belong” to Republicans, Democrats, or anyone else other than the voters who cast them.
Because of Duverger's Law and the nature of the American system, there will be a two-party system.
If this were true, we would expect to see a two-party system arise between Democrats and Greens in a place like Massachusetts, or between Republicans and Libertarians in a place like Utah, places where one of the two major parties has essentially vanquished the other. The absence of such a development seems to suggest that Duverger's Law is not ironclad.
Historically, third parties have not won the Presidency.
This is a statement of fact, unless we consider Abraham Lincoln's victory in 1860 to be the election of a third party candidate. But this is simply a statement of fact, not a proper logical argument. There is however, an implied argument that the past predicts the future. Such a prediction only holds weight if we allow it to. As the saying goes, if you keep on doing what you have always done, you will keep on getting what you have always gotten. To say that the past failure of third parties to win the Presidency creates an unalterable future in which no third party candidate can win the Presidency is to claim that the people have no real choice under the current system. If this is so, then it would make little sense to vote at all, since the established duopoly cannot be removed by democratic means.
Your third party vote will accomplish nothing.
False. See the above argument about ballot access laws. Also consider the historical impact of third parties. While the Prohibition Party and the Socialist Party of America never won any presidential elections, both succeeded in getting their platforms adopted by the major parties after spoiling enough elections and gaining a large enough portion of the popular vote. There is no reason why this could not happen again, and one possible way for a third party candidate to eventually win is to have ideas that are popular for an extended period of time that the two major parties simply refuse to implement.
If your third party candidate was any good, he/she would have won the primary of one of the two major parties.
Perhaps there was a time when this was true, but it is certainly not true today. The increased statism and polarization of the two major parties have made it difficult, if not impossible, for a libertarian-leaning candidate to win the nomination of a major party. Centrist candidates also face problems when it comes to invigorating the more extreme bases of their parties. It is worth considering that moneyed interests, especially since the Citizens United v. FEC case, may be manipulating the nominating processes of the two major parties to nominate certain types of candidates while keeping certain other types of candidates from winning. Such a scenario leaves only the independent and third party routes for a true grassroots candidate.
There is not enough time for a third party to achieve sufficient power to influence events.
If this is true, then it makes little sense to vote at all. The duopoly has set us on the course that the arguer claims will lead to destruction, and we cannot solve our problems by using the same thinking we used when we created them. If this is false, then as time is indeed a precious resource, we should not squander it by supporting establishment candidates and thereby wasting an opportunity for change.
As you can see, the “wasted vote” theory has no logical leg upon which to stand. So whenever you hear someone use this argument, send them to this article for a proper refutation.
The comments I have read online… Twitter, facebook and comments on related articles have been very positive toward forming a 3rd party, replacing the deaf GOP and for Sarah Palin, Mark Levin, Jim DeMint and other fiscal conservatives and constitutionalists to form the Freedom Party if there isn’t immediate change in Washington.
But Oldironsides, Nelson Abdullah, of Conscience of a Conservative, whose work I generally like, had a pretty negatative outlook:
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been my hero since the day she was chosen to run for Vice-President on the Republican Party ticket in 2008 (after her electrifying convention speech at the Xcel Energy Center). Sarah Palin has always epitomized the strong, patriotic female conservative with her Mama Grizzly and Lipstick on a Pit Bull attitude. Now I suspect she is about to consider the biggest mistake of her life and I am afraid a great number of her loyal fans will follow her. Jeff Poor wrote yesterday on The Daily Caller, “Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president responded to a Fox News Channel viewer’s Twitter question Saturday about the possibility of her and conservative talker Mark Levin abandoning the Republican Party and creating something called the “Freedom Party.”
When true Republicans stand fast on the traditional principles of their party they win elections. Unfortunately, there are too many Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) who have managed to destroy the image we represent. It was no coincidence that Sarah Palin was chosen to run along side one of the party’s biggest RINOs, Arizona Senator John McCain. Without Sarah Palin on the ticket, I and a whole lot of other conservative Republicans would have probably stayed home on election day in 2008. This is not the first time that a strong liberal influence has taken hold of the Republican Party. I was there in New York when the state Republican Party was dominated by ultra liberals Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits. In fact, what the conservative Republicans did then in the early 1960s is just what Sarah Palin is thinking of doing now. Abandoning the Republican Party and creating a new political party. Sarah Palin is calling her party The Freedom Party, the disenfranchised Republicans in New York called their new party The Conservative Party.
If history has a way of repeating itself, Sarah Palin’s Freedom Party will become relegated to a distant 3rd or 4th place in the national political power base. The New York State Conservative Party was only successful in electing one candidate to a national office in the last 50 years and that was James Buckley who became a one term U.S. Senator. James Buckley was the brother of noted columnist William F. Buckley and shared his notoriety. From the inception of the Conservative Party their greatest influence was in cross-endorsing a handful of conservative Republicans in local elections.
Wikipedia has a rather complete story about the history of the New York State Conservative Party.
The Conservative Party of New York State is a political party in the United States active in the state of New York, holding “Line C” on ballots directly below the Democratic and Republican parties. It only operates in New York State, and is not part of any larger party.
In New York State’s elections, the Conservative Party is ranked fourth place in terms of membership, behind only the Democrats, Republicans, and the Independence Party, but ahead of the Greens and Constitution Parties.[1] As of November 1, 2011, a total of 147,993 voters, or 1.3% of New York State’s total enrollment, are registered with the party.[2]
History
Electoral History of the Conservative Party of New York State
The Conservative Party of New York State was founded in 1962 by a group including J. Daniel Mahoney, Kieran O’Doherty, Charles E. Rice, and Charles Edison, out of frustration with the perceived liberalism of the state’s Republican Party. A key consideration was New York’s fusion voting, unusual among US states, which allows individual candidates to receive votes from more than one party. The Liberal Party of New York, founded in 1944, had earlier benefited from this system.The Conservative Party founders wanted to balance the Liberal Party’s influence. One early supporter was National Review founder William F. Buckley, who was the party’s candidate for mayor of New York City in 1965. In 1970, his brother James Buckley was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Conservative Party candidate; in 1976, he ran for reelection as a candidate of the Republican and Conservative Parties, losing to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In the 2004 U.S. Senate election, the Conservative Party endorsed Marilyn O’Grady to oppose Republican candidate Howard Mills and incumbent Democratic Senator Charles Schumer.
My strongest advice to Sarah Palin is in the words of someone she may admire: “You don’t change horses in the middle of the stream.” And it comes from the mouth of the most famous Republican of all, Abraham Lincoln. From an 1864 speech by Abraham Lincoln, in reply to Delegation from the National Union League who were urging him to be their presidential candidate. ‘An old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.”
As far as national politics goes, third party movements only manage to split the conservative vote. Put a Democrat on the ballot against a Republican and a Third Party candidate and if the third party candidate is a conservative, the Democrat usually wins. The only recognizable third party we have today is the Libertarian Party but in spite of their conservative leanings, they seem to have been created for the sole purpose of legalizing marijuana. The Libertarian Party has virtually no international platform and wants a whole slew of state and federal laws repealed to prohibit one activity or another. In several noted examples, when a Libertarian Party candidate ran in a local election the Democrat always won and usually the votes gathered between the Republican and the Libertarian was greater than what the Democrat had received. A few noteworthy Libertarians such as U.S. Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Thomas Massie won their elections in Kentucky by running on the Republican Party ticket. And that is the only way to win.
No matter which way Palin and her potential co-founders of the proposed Freedom Party go… new party or the re-vamp of the GOP, it will be interesting!! As the CPAC Star said in her March Speech, “We are not here to rebrand a party… We are here to rebuild a country!”
You be the judge…
Related:
Rush Limbaugh: GOP 'Authoring Its Demise' With Immigration Reform Bill
Friday, February 15, 2013
It Finally Hit Me: Barack Obama Will Never Be Held Responsible for Anything
The EIB - – h/t to TLA: February 13, 2013
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: So yesterday I was openly complaining, some might even say whining, that I was gonna have to watch the State of the Union show. It was gonna be sickening to listen to what was being said and then to watch members of Congress stand up and essentially applaud the destruction of the country. And I talked to a bunch of people who said, "I'm not watching. I'm not gonna watch it. Not gonna spend any time on it." And I said, "Well, I have to." It reminds me of the days when I was in school and everybody told me they weren't doing their homework, so I didn't, either. Turns out they were lying. They all did their homework and I got D's and F's. Well, everybody that told me they weren't gonna watch the State of the Union ended up watching it.
I'll tell you what I thought of it, folks. I disagreed with everything the president said pretty much, in terms of his policies. I disagreed with everything he said, but it was a great speech. I liked the speech and you know what I really liked? I liked that part where he said that we all have to get along and work together to help people. I really liked that. That really scored with me. And I was watching the Frank Luntz focus group after the State of the Union speech and after Marco Rubio's response, it was on Hannity on the Fox News Channel. He had this focus group, and, if you didn't see it, it's too bad. If you did, you were looking at the very definition of low-information voters. It's amazing. They had the same reaction I had.
They disagreed with pretty much everything Obama said, policy-wise, but they supported him, and they thought it was a great speech, and they liked the part about everybody working together to get along. They liked the fact that he's gonna tackle the deficit. They liked the fact that he's gonna create jobs. They didn't agree with how he was gonna do it, but they liked that he's going to. They liked that he's gonna reduce the deficit. They liked the fact that he's gonna bring the debt down. They liked the fact that health care costs are gonna come down. Did you know that? Health care costs are already coming down and I found myself agreeing. I thought it was cool. I disagreed with, you know, how the president said he's gonna do it.
Look, I had a bit of a problem with the president on global warming where he basically said that if Congress doesn't act, he will. But I do think we need to deal with global warming. Everybody knows that. I didn't agree with much, but I liked the speech. I was very, very supportive. And Obamacare, the costs are coming down. That's good. I'm very happy about that. The debt, deficit is coming down. We're already over halfway to the targeted debt reduction of $4 trillion. So at least somebody's working on this stuff and somebody's trying to make it happen. I wasn't crazy about some of the things I heard the president say on taxes, but I had to acknowledge that the rich have been getting away with murder all these years. It's about time somebody tried to make everything fair, and who could oppose fairness.
You know, yesterday we had the Gallup poll, and on every issue except one -- and I forget what the one issue was -- every issue, every policy, by vast majority numbers, the American people disagree with Obama. A vast majority disagree with Obama on every policy. I mean, it's not close. In some cases, the numbers of people that disagree are in the 60 percentages, and the people agree with Obama are in the forties. But they liked the speech last night. They thought it was exactly what was called for.
Now, the New York Times has a story today. "Polls Show Dissatisfaction With Country's Direction, but Support for Obama's Agenda -- Just ahead of President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, new polls find continued public dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, yet support for several of the policies the president has said he will push in his second term." And that's what I saw in the focus group last night on Frank Luntz. They don't like the way the country's going but, man, they love what Obama's doing about it. Well, I know folks, don't ask me. I'm just telling you what I saw, what I heard, and what's in the news. It's a little conflicting. The Gallup poll people do disagree with Obama issue by issue by issue.
The New York Times says there is support for Obama's agenda but dissatisfaction with the way the country's going. See, those are two separate things. This is what we are going to have to learn to understand. Obama's agenda doesn't have anything to do with the country's direction. As far as the low-information voter is concerned, they're two separate things: support for Obama's agenda but dissatisfaction with the country's direction.
Now, you and I might say, "Well, wait a second now. The country's direction is precisely related to Obama's agenda." But no! We would be terribly wrong. Obama's agenda has nothing to do with the country's direction. Obama's agenda is about fixing it, and people support it. Now, this is also a mendacious media at work because this is exactly the opposite of what Gallup reported the day before that we discussed.
According to Gallup, the American public disapproves of every Obama policy except for his handling of defense. But the New York Times has this story that's just the exact opposite. Polls show dissatisfaction with country's direction but support for Obama's agenda. Two separate things. The Frank Luntz focus group was pretty much the same thing. They pretty much disagreed with what they heard last night in policy, but they liked the speech and they like what Obama said.
They like that somebody's working on it and they want everybody to work together. The Obama claim that the Affordable Care Act is already slowing health care costs? Now, you and I would hear something like that that the president said that last night... "Already the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs." I know your reaction was probably the same as mine when you heard that. It's just another bald-, bold-faced lie. The truth of the matter is that Obamacare has not even been fully implemented!
How can you give credit to Obamacare for slowing health care costs when it's yet to be enacted? What is slowing health care costs, to the extent that they're slowing down, is the recession -- and that's even debatable. But, you know, in a couple of isolated areas, not very many, you can see where health care costs a little bit less than it has been costing. But that's due to the recession. It has nothing to do with Obama. But this is way too much information to the low-information voter. You can't persuade them with that.
So what I decided to do, ladies and gentlemen, is we got hold of Paul Shanklin and we decided to do a condensed version of last night's State of the Union. This is an honest, condensed version of last night's State of the Union...
JOHNNY DONOVAN: (Hail to the Chief) And now, the honest, condensed version of President Obama's State of the Union Address.
PAUL SHANKLIN AS OBAMA: My fellow Americans, fifty-one years ago, John F. Kennedy said something profound at his State of the Union. I... will not. Thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there isn't enough progress to my agenda. Corporate profits are evil, and we need a middle class to tax. It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country: The idea that if you work hard, you can get ahead no matter whatcha look like or how you sneaked in or who you love in a cheap motel -- or whether you have a thing for feathers, high heels, or wigs with bangs.
Now, the American people don't expect us to solve every problem. I haven't solved any, so don't worry. But they do expect us to put the nation's interests before our party. You first! In 2011, Congress passed my plan to have sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts called a "sequester" that would jeopardize our military readiness, and would most certainly slow our recovery and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. So let's set party interests aside, and work to pass a solution to end the sequester crisis I manufactured right here in America.
The biggest driver of our long-term debt is old people. The Unaffordable Care Act is slowing their access to medical care, but not fast enough. We must do more! Now, our government shouldn't make promises we can't keep, but we must keep the ones we already made -- unless it was to turn a budget in on time after four years. Every day I ask myself three questions about this nation: "How do we attract more jobs to our shores?" "How do we equip our people with skills they need to get those jobs?" and "How to do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?"
Well... Well, how do we?
We now produce more oil and gas right here in America, so we must do more to combat climate change -- and if Congress won't act, I will do what I want, whenever I want. Why does Congress even exist? We need more infrastructure like roads and bridges! (Sorry. Heh, heh. I couldn't help myself.) Today, too many families with solid credit are being turned down for home loans because of unnecessary regulation, and I just now noticed.
So, uh, free pre-school for everybody! Now... Now, we all know what needs to be done. Send me a comprehensive immigration bill, in Spanish, and I will sign it. There are still places in America where you can't get ahead, like Chicago. America will run away in Afghanistan and declare victory no matter what happens. Today, the organization that attacked us on 9/11 -- no, not Benghazi; the other 9/11 -- is a shadow of its former self.
Cyber attacks are bad. There are many places where people live on little more than a dollar a day. Ask my brother George. Now, women deserve combat duty. And honestly, people: Just give up your guns and we'll protect you about as well as we can protect a small child on a playground in Chicago where they have plenty of gun control already. In closing, my fellow Americans, we are citizens. Honest. I have the birth certificates for both of us! God bless you, and God help the United States of America, because I won't.
(Hail to the Chief)
Thank you.
RUSH: And there you have it, my friends, our State of the Union condensed version for those of you who missed it last night. (interruption) No, I'm being entirely serious. Snerdley is scratching his head, saying, "What are you up to?" I'm not up to anything. I'm telling you exactly how the speech was perceived last night. A majority of Americans, depending on where you look, either do or don't like Obama's policies.
But they really liked the speech and they liked that he's working on this stuff. They like that he's attacking the deficit. They like that he's fixing health care. They like that he's doing all this and they hope everybody works together on it. That's what they really want. They want everybody to join hands. I saw it in the Luntz focus group. They want everybody to work together -- everybody come together -- get along and fix these problems, because we have a debt problem.
Obama's working on it, and that's good. We've got a health care problem and Obama's working on it. We've got a unemployment problem. Obama's working on it. He's got a program for it. But the thing that you gotta take away, the thing that you must understand about last night that defines everything: There is massive dissatisfaction with the country's direction. The vast majority of the American people do not like the direction in which the country is going, while at the same time there is overwhelming support for Barack Obama's agenda.
Which means that, to the vast majority of American voters, there is no relationship whatsoever between Obama's agenda and the direction of the country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I realize in the opening segments of the broadcast that I had a little fun with this, but I do want to tell you something here that has been sort of an eye opener for me. Now, it may have been something that you understood long ago. It may have been something you put together long ago. I must confess that I only just realized this today. And it's about trying to understand how could so many people say they disagree with Obama's policies and yet reelect him. I know that you and I have expressed our puzzlement and our curiosity over the great disconnect there is in this country. The people that vote for Obama don't like where we're going, the direction of the country, the policies of Obama, yet he wins elections.
So we've all been taking our stabs at trying to explain why. Well, he won reelection because he did such a good job of demonizing Romney that he made everybody afraid to vote for Romney and they settled and just voted for Obama, vote for the guy who's already there, at least he's a known quantity. But the New York Times story today finally opens my eyes to what we're dealing with, at least for me. And, as I say, you may have understood this long ago. "Polls Show Dissatisfaction With Country's Direction, but Support for Obama's Agenda."
Now, you and I, in what I would call the high-information voter sector, understand what a giant disconnect that is. How in the world can people be dissatisfied with the country's direction while at the same time support the very agenda that's causing it? This just doesn't compute to you and me. We recognize that it is Obama's agenda which is leading to the problems this country has and thus the dissatisfaction that people have regarding the country's direction. But the majority of people who vote, there is no connection of those two things whatsoever. They support Obama's agenda, and they are terribly unhappy about the direction of the country, and, therefore, they do not associate Obama's agenda or his policies with the direction of the country.
They do not associate Obama's policies with what has happened to the country. They don't associate all the spending and all the debt with the lack of jobs. They don't make that connection, they don't see any connection, they don't see it at all. Now, to me this is an eye-opener, and it's going to force me to assess exactly how to go forward here in dealing with these people. The idea is to persuade them. I mean, they are the low-information voters.
Now, if they're unhappy with the economy, if they're unhappy with jobs, if they're unhappy with the debt, if they're unhappy with the housing market and yet support Obama's agenda, then they obviously do not connect Obama's policies as being in any way related to or responsible for the country's direction that they don't like, which means a number of things. It means that they see Obama as working really hard to try to fix everything, rather than Obama as the reason for things worsening. They just do not see that. And to you and me it's a slam dunk. It's one plus one is two. These are people, outcome-based education, two plus two is five and we'll give 'em an A for trying. They don't see it.
So Obama is not at all connected to the tragic destruction of this country. He is seen as somebody who wants to fix it. It's the same thing as people seeing Colonel Sanders as a guy running a hospital to save chickens. Wouldn't compute. It wouldn't make any sense. But that's how he's viewed. Now, maybe one reason is that he's successfully blamed Bush all these years and the exit polling data last November, vast majority of people still do blame Bush for the economy, but it's more than that. It's that Obama never, ever, allows himself to be seen as governing. He is constantly campaigning.
Obama is constantly seen as in competition with what's happening in Washington. It is though there are straw men. There are men behind curtains. There are invisible, evil people doing all this to the country. He's trying to expose them and he's working very hard. Romney is one of them. Bush was one of them. There are a bunch of other people, we don't know who they are. But Obama is trying to find them. He's trying to expose them and trying to fix all this. Obama is not seen as the guy behind the curtains pulling the levers. Obama is not seen as the guy who does not like the way the country was founded and is trying to take this country in a different direction. He's not seen at all in the way he really is. It can't all be because of the media.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You may have figured this out long ago, but it just hit me -- and if you figured it out long ago and you've been trying to get through here and tell me, I wish you'd have gotten through. For those of you who figured it out and I didn't, I'm just now getting to it. I apologize for being a late arrival to the party, but now -- now -- it all makes sense. For five years Obama has never once allowed himself to be seen as governing.
He is constantly campaigning against mysterious forces who have ill intentions trying to harm you and this great country. There are these figures behind the screen, behind the curtain. Romney was one. Bush was one. There are others. Obama's trying to expose them. Throughout history dictators, for example, have never really been blamed for the bad things that happened in their countries. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Castro, none of them were blamed by the rank-and-file citizenry.
They were, instead, the leaders of the revolution!
They were the great figures trying to change all the evil that was happening to everybody. Here's Obama. Let me prove this to you. I have for you a little sound bite, 36 seconds, of people from the Frank Luntz focus group on Fox last night. Every one of these people voted for Mitt Romney. These are swing voters in Santa Monica. Now, Santa Monica's a liberal hotbed, but every one of these people that you hear voted for Mitt Romney, and they are talking about their perception of last night's State of the Union speech.
LUNTZ: From the Romney people, what did you like about Barack Obama's State of the Union Address? A couple of you...
WOMAN: I liked his immigration that he talked about putting people at the back of the line and so that they didn't get preferential treatment just because they were here.
MAN: I think education, the reform he was talking about -- affordability and making it efficient -- I think that's gonna... Education all starts from education, really.
LUNTZ: One more...
WOMAN: I like how he spoke of bipartisanship and working with Congress and moving the country forward by working together.
LUNTZ: Does he mean it?
WOMAN: I believe he means it.
LUNTZ: How many of you believe he means it, that he's gonna be more bipartisan this term than he was before?
WOMAN: He means it!
RUSH: Those people all voted for Romney, and they -- even the people that voted for Romney -- do not associate Obama with any of the problems in the country. This is what you and I are gonna have to learn and learn fast. No matter what is said, no matter what evidence happens, no matter what's reported, it will not be possible to connect Obama to the negativity that's happening in the country today because he's campaigning against it himself. That's the reason for the perpetual, never-ending campaign. It is why, in eight years, he will never allow himself for even one day to be seen as actually governing or presiding over any of this.
He's always going to be running against the very things he's doing.
END TRANSCRIPT
America – Land of the Mis, Under and Low Informed
Video: Mr.L: Sarah Palin Dismantles Obama SOTU on Twitter #SOTUGottaBeKidding
Sarah Palin exposes the fraud of Obama’s SOTU Address
If you missed President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, you didn’t miss much – especially if you watched any of his past four State of the Union addresses.
We heard the same recycled rhetoric, and we heard his Orwellian declaration that the cornucopia of new federal programs he proposed, as well as his intention to eradicate world poverty, wouldn’t “increase our deficit by a single dime.”
Of course, he glossed over the inconvenient facts. He boasted about job creation, but didn’t mention that real unemployment is higher today than when he took office. He touted all those still undiscovered “clean energy” jobs without mentioning the tens of thousands of real jobs the Keystone Pipeline will create if he would simply allow it to be built. He sang of new energy development, but didn’t mention that new offshore leases for oil and natural gas drilling have declined a decimating 61% under his administration.
He talked about “helping” to build “a thriving middle class,” but didn’t address how the middle class is actually faring under his economic stewardship. This is important – his deception must be addressed: under his leadership, middle class families have seen the average price per gallon of gas increase 96%, the average cost of family health care premiums rise 24%, the annual cost per household from federal regulations rise to over $15,000, and real median household income decline $4,520. If this is what happens when he “helps” the middle class, then please, Mr. President, we implore you to stop “helping” us.
He talked about a “balanced approach to deficit reduction” without mentioning that $5.9 trillion has already been added to the debt since he took office. We’re $16.5 trillion in debt and he keeps digging the hole deeper! He didn’t mention his record trillion dollar deficits or the fact that his last proposed budget would add $9.2 trillion to the debt through 2022. His Democrat-controlled Senate hasn’t passed a budget in four years. That’s obviously not “responsible” or “balanced.” He said, “We can’t cut our way to prosperity.” Well, we definitely can’t get there by borrowing and spending money we don’t have on his “investments” that don’t work. If indiscriminately borrowing and spending money led to prosperity, then bankruptcy would be a sign of economic strength. But it isn’t.
A State of the Union address should give us a true picture of the direction in which we are headed. But we didn’t get the truth last night. And it WAS Orwellian.
What is the true state of our union? Though this may sound harsh, I’ll speak the truth here. We are a country going bankrupt to fund a bloated, distant, and often corrupt federal government led by venal politicians more concerned with paying off their campaign cronies and consolidating their own power than in preserving the constitutional republic that so many have fought and died for (including our brave men and women in uniform who were barely mentioned last night).
We are a country with an economy being stifled under the weight of a bankrupt and voracious federal machine demanding more taxes and burdensome regulations. Job creators are the ones stuck with the bill when Obama calls for “new revenue.” Their businesses bear the brunt of the nearly 87 million paperwork hours imposed by federal regulations in 2012 – annually costing them $1.75 trillion. And I haven’t even mentioned Obamacare yet, which looms like the dark cloud it is over our private sector. Is it any wonder why our economy is stagnant or why job growth is so anemic? President Obama’s “solution” to these problems is to make the federal government more intrusive, bankrupt, and controlling.
If we continue down the path Barack Obama has us on, the long-term forecast of the state of our union is not a pretty picture. Yet he merrily rolls along it, deceiving too many Americans into thinking that these are intelligent, economic, and ethical proposals.
Our President wasn’t candid with Americans about our forecast, but, interestingly, in a Q&A session last week, Paul Krugman, one of President Obama’s economic cheerleaders at the New York Times, was remarkably candid about where we’re headed.
When asked about our federal debt, he admitted that “eventually we do have a problem” especially because “the population is getting older” and “health care costs are rising.” So, what does he see as the solution to pay for all this? He admits that your taxes will rise. And worse:
“Surely in the end it will require some middle class taxes as well. We won’t be able to pay for the kind of government the society will want without some increase in taxes, not a huge one, but some increase in taxes on the middle class, maybe a value added tax. And we’re also going to have to make decisions about health care – not pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical benefits. So, the snarky version I use, which I shouldn’t even say because it gets me in trouble, is death panels and sales taxes is how we do this.” (But wait, I thought there’d be no such thing as “death panels,” liberal liars?)
Mr. Krugman tried to portray this brave new world in the gentlest possible light, but it’s going to take quite a lot of “sales taxes” to meet the payments on the ever-increasing multi-trillion dollar debt we’re burying our kids and grandkids under. And with health care costs rising under Obamacare, obviously a lot of care will be rationed and even flat out denied by panels of faceless bureaucrats making life and death decisions for you and your loved ones. This is the long-term forecast for the state of America under Obama’s failed policies: middle class taxes and death panels.
Does that sound good to you? It doesn’t to me. So, we better get motivated to do something about it. We’d better get out of our post-election funk and wake up to the radicals’ reality being created as America gets “fundamentally transformed.”
Here’s the good news: President Obama is in many ways a lame duck president. None of his ridiculous ideas will come to pass via the legislative process. Of course, he may try to force them down America’s throat by imposing them through other means. But they can be undone if the right people are in position to undo them. He is very bold right now – some would say cocky – because of his November win, but there is another election around the corner, and we can check his boldness at the ballot box by electing constitutional conservatives. We must continue to affirm the fact that growing our bankrupt federal government is NOT the solution. Most of what the federal government does could be handled better on the individual, local, and state levels.
Our country didn’t weather a Revolution, two World Wars, a Civil War, a Great Depression, and countless other political and economic storms, just to be sunk by the dangerous policies of this current administration. We’re stronger than this. As President Reagan said, “I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.”
So, do something. 2014 is just around the corner. Get motivated! Get organized. America, don’t retreat. In the words of yet another White House program, “Let’s move.”
- Sarah Palin
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Limbaugh: GOP Race Has Become Search for Perfect Candidate (Who Doesn't Exist and Isn't Necessary to Beat Obama)
November 30, 2011
GOP Race Has Become Search for Perfect Candidate (Who Doesn't Exist and Isn't Necessary to Beat Obama)
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I haven't shared with you my thoughts on this Herman Cain situation, the latest. (sigh) Well, this is a frustrating thing. In fact the entire circus that is now... Well, it's now becoming a circus. This whole Republican race, it doesn't matter where you go -- I don't care what website you go to, I don't care what network you tune in -- all we're hearing is all the shortcomings of all of these people. I don't care if it's Herman Cain or Bachmann or Romney or Newt, all we're hearing is their shortcomings. The headlines are, you know, "Newt's health problems! Romney's foot flops." For crying out loud, what are we looking for, perfection?
On the other side what are we dealing with? Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and all this stuff that never got vetted and is not gonna get vetted now? Yet even as I look at websites, networks, places I would consider to be on our team are nitpicking all this stuff? It's a little maddening because there's no such thing as perfect. The Founders were not perfect. The whole Constitution was created on the basis that human beings are fallible. The Constitution's premise is that human beings with too much power will abuse it and imprison and tyrannize people. The whole point of it was based on the imperfection of people, and yet here we are apparently looking for the perfect -- and I'm not running, so it's not gonna be findable.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Somebody just told me that Obama referred to the British embassy in Iran as the English embassy. NewsBusters chronicled this. He called the British embassy the English embassy. Meanwhile, we're told that Rick Perry is an idiot or that George W. Bush is an idiot or whatever. The English embassy? The guy, 57 states, Barack Obama.
Folks, I don't know about you. Are you tired of hearing things like, "If the Republicans nominate (fill in the blank) then Obama wins"? Are you tired of hearing about (fill in the blank) is not electable? They're all electable. Half of this country -- I got a story in my stack -- half of the country is afraid to buy Christmas presents because of the economy. Half of the country is feeling bad because the holiday season's coming up and they may not be able to go out and participate in it. And we're being told that our candidates are unelectable. It's all BS. If anybody, by all rights, by what's decent, should be unelectable, it's Barack Obama, the architect of all of this. Which is not accidental.
This can get extremely frustrating as this quest, this demand for perfection -- I don't know where this comes from. I don't know who starts this. I don't know where this catches on, that somebody must be perfect, when there's no such thing. The Founders were not perfect. There is no human being who is perfect. There's no perfect plan. Just like there's no utopia. Yet these standards somehow end up being applied to us, our candidates, conservatives, where does this come from, where does this start? You take a program like "No Child Left Behind," the liberals will say, "There was a child left behind, that program's gotta be scrapped." Really? How about the war on poverty? How about scrapping the whole liberal agenda on the grounds that it's imperfect? It's not only imperfect, it's been a disaster. "But, no, Mr. Limbaugh, we can't because the intentions were very good. The intentions, the good-heartedness, the desires to help people, the war on poverty."
Oh, save it, Mr. New Castrati. Your good intentions have destroyed a great country. You know, American Airlines, I have a sentimental attachment to American Airlines. I flew American Airlines home from Dallas in 1967. (interruption) What? What are you laughing at? This is not a commercial. American Airlines isn't a sponsor. They don't have any money. (interruption) I haven't flown commercial since 1990 but what's that got to do with anything? I have a sentimental attachment to American Airlines. I flew them any time I could. I flew home in 1967 after I had passed the test and got my First Class FCC broadcast license, which you had to have back then, it was a big deal. I was 16 years old, and the flight attendant offered me some champagne when I told her what I was flying home for. I was flying home to St. Louis.
I met one of the great CEOs in CEO history, used to run the airline, Bob Crandall. I didn't meet him, but I had a couple of e-mails back and forth with him. They're one of the more innovative airlines we've had. They invented Sabre, which is the computer reservation system. American Airlines came up with frequent flier miles. They invented the whole program, American did, and now they've filed for Chapter 11, and it's just systematic. It's almost axiomatic that this is all starting to happen. And here in this country, of course, you saw what happened in Wisconsin and then in Ohio, people who are living off the public, people who are feeding at the public trough refuse to do with any less. And, meanwhile, the people who pay them are losing their jobs and losing their homes, but the president of the United States comes up with stimulus plans and lies to the American people and tells 'em the money is gonna be spent on creating jobs, and all that's done is cement and sustain a financial lifeline from public employees to the Democrat Party via union dues. And that can only happen if they keep their jobs.
I hear that our candidate, candidate X, isn't electable, or that if we nominate this guy, Obama wins, and so forth. And who says? There hasn't even been a vote cast yet. Everybody's going off polling data. The Hawkeye Cauci are in January, the New Hampshire primary -- this is still up for grabs. Just last week, or the week before, Romney was up 30 in New Hampshire. Now that number is dwindling. Newt's picking up steam. There hasn't been a vote cast yet. This is nowhere near over because it hasn't even begun. And the people out there pronouncing it over are those who want it to be over in both parties, by the way. You have the Republican establishment who wants this whole early nominee to be done with and have it cast in stone so there's nothing else left to do. The Democrats and the media want to pick our candidate for us.
In the meantime, polling data at this point are about as accurate as the computer models for the climate ten years from now. They don't mean anything. None of these polls mean jack-you-know-what right now. Not in terms of the outcome. Now, they matter in terms of energy, enthusiasm, fundraising, and this kind of thing. Leadership is a curious thing. You try to spot it in advance. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes it's really not known how somebody's gonna behave until after they're elected and get into office. That's why it's important to have some kind of a track record of people involved so you can maybe make some kind of a judgment. That's all anybody's doing right now. All everybody is doing is trying to assess these people, honestly and forthrightly.
This is serious. There are people in our country who think that this election will determine, in the long run, whether we remain a free people or not. And by free people, we're not talking about dungeons and political prisoners in cells and this kind of stuff like you find in Cuba. That's not what people mean. That doesn't have to happen in order for you to lose your freedom. Your freedom can be taken away from you with an increased tax rate. Your freedom can be taken away from you with your private property rights being infringed upon. You own something but you can't do anything with it, you can't do what you want with it, you can't even own it. There's any number of ways that we can lose our liberty and freedom without being thrown in jail and without a police state per se.
So a lot of people really do think that America, as a nation of free people, is at stake here and that this election is about that. But it's not just this election. One election is not going to be a magic elixir. It's just the first step of many that's going to have to take place. We have arrived where we are slowly and steadily over 50 years, if not more. The left did not wave a magic wand and get us to this point. Now, they've been building to it and building to it, but look how quickly they were able to get us to the tipping point with their right candidate being elected president of the United States. A total sham candidate who ran on a series of lies and hoaxes and frauds.
But people fell for it. It doesn't take much. All you gotta do is run around and say, "You know what? I'm gonna lower the sea levels and I'm gonna raise the sunshine, and I'm gonna give you health care. You're gonna get the best health care you ever had and it's not gonna cost you anything. I'm gonna get rid of all of insurance premiums. I'm gonna get rid of all screening. I'm gonna get rid of all preexisting conditions. You want health care, you're gonna get it, and the millionaire down the street is gonna pay for it. Who would say no to that? Especially when you have a population that has been educated to think that that's just.
We actually have a president of the United States... Folks, I made a big point of this Monday. I made a big point of it last night. We have a president of the United States who announced, essentially announced on the op-ed pages of the New York Times on Monday that his reelection effort will not include "white working families." They are jettisoned. They are not a factor. The Obama campaign says (paraphrased): "We're not gonna even try to get their votes. Who are we gonna go for? We're gonna go for the losers in life. We're gonna go to the people who don't think they should work. We're gonna go for the people that we have conditioned to hate this country because they've failed, the other people have succeeded and they've stolen from them, and it's time that the other people give it back.
"We're gonna go for those people, and then we're gonna get the elites in academia and the artistes and the songwriters and the actors and the actresses and all this, and that's gonna be our coalition. But with white working families? Sorry, we're not interested in their votes." What does that tell you? Forget color. It's not racial, folks. I'm only throwing "white working families" in there because that was in the op-ed in the New York Times by Thomas Edsall. This is not a racial thing. It sounds like it. The "white working families" are the old Reagan Democrats of the eighties. But the bottom line is they are working. Now, in common Democrat Party parlance, "working people," "working families" has always meant union. They don't mean that in this iteration.
They're not talking about union people. Union people fall into the elite category that they described. They're artists, they're people in academia. They know that they've got the union leadership wrapped up, wrapped around their little finger. Hell, the union leadership is probably more left than Obama is, if that's possible. Now, here's a guy, he's president of the whole country. We've always heard, "Presidents represent everybody. You are president of the United States of America," and one of the great seductions of 2008 -- remember, the world hated America because of George W. Bush; and so Barack Obama was gonna make the world love America again!
We were gonna be loved and respected -- and everybody wants to be loved, right? And we were going to be appreciated. And America was going to love itself once again, and America was gonna understand its place in the world, and all was gonna be right. And we were gonna be unified like we had never been unified before, because we've got a candidate unlike any we've ever seen in American history, right? All of that. He even said he was gonna lower the sea levels! And now not even three years later this same messiah has it proudly written about his campaign in the New York Times on Monday that his campaign can't win with "white working families;" and again, don't focus on the racial part of this. They don't mean that, either. Just focus on the working. They're the ones defining the terms here. When they say " white working families," they have a specific group of people in mind that they're not interested in.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You don't need prisons to lose your freedom. Look at political correctness. People stifle themselves. People will refuse to exercise their own First Amendment rights out of fear for what might be heard. Somebody might be offended, somebody might be upset. So people willingly, willfully give up freedom every day of the week. Political correctness has resulted in self-policing of your thoughts. I have a story here in the New York Times about how hard and patient and long liberals will be committed to something. Do you know when the school lunch program began? 1946. The school lunch program began in 1946, and now we are at a tipping point. In many states, more than 50% of kids now qualify for a free or subsidized school meal, and there's a New York Times story today.
And here's the headline: "Line Grows Long for Free Meals at US Schools -- Millions of American school children are receiving free or low-cost meals for the first time as their parents, many once solidly middle class, have lost jobs or homes during the economic crisis, qualifying their..." The New York Times is happy! Obama's happy! This kind of news makes 'em happy. Mission accomplished! Obama is still managing to make more and more people dependent on the government. But notice in this story how high family income can be to qualify for free or subsidized meals. Are you ready? Your family income can be 130% of the already high poverty level and qualify for free or subsidized meals.
Families making over $40,000 can qualify, and the New York Times admits here at the bottom of this story that it's "not just because of the economy, but because of the new way of certifying students as qualified put in effect in 2004" because the whole point here is to create as many people as possible dependent on government for -- not wants, not desires, but needs. We all need to eat. You cement the notion that your daily sustenance comes from your Democrat politician, your local congressman, your president or whatever; that is a bond that becomes very, very tough to break, very tough to vote against. "You want me to vote against the guy feeding my kids?" This is insidious. It is destroying the foundation of self-reliance and rugged individualism that has led to the greatest country in the history of humanity, and it's all being done on purpose by people.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Obama's job approval numbers are below those of Jimmy Carter's, eight points below Jimmy Carter's, and they tell us that our candidates are unelectable? Don't buy it, folks.
END TRANSCRIPT
Source: The Rush Limbaugh Show
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Limbaugh… On Palin Campaigning for McCain and More
Comment:
US Male
Palin's loyalty cannot be questioned. She would not be anybody if it were not for McCain. I believe that she thinks she owes him and that she is a loyal and honorable person. However, I also believe that after the election, McCain will dump her like an old shoe. McCain will do anything and say anything to keep his own political career.
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