"Here's to You Mr. Jefferson"

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Absolutely awesome video on our Founding Fathers!  Share with your friends! Sung to the tune of "Here's to You, Mrs. Robinson."

All the King's Horses and all the Kings Slaves Couldn't Put Butts in the Streets

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Imagine that: all of Caesar's subjects from across all spectrums of the leftist universe couldn't fill a ...... tooth. Oprah, Jon Stewart, ACORN, SEIU -- union attendance was mandatory. Sharpton and his gang pay folks ($65 a day) to show up at their hate fests.

Astroturf? Thousands Given Free Bus Rides by Unions & NAACP to One Nation Rally

Worse, these bloodsuckers and parasites trashed the World War II Memorial.



Leftist and Media Double-Standards on Socialist 'One Nation' Rally Reporting American Power

It's nothing new, of course, but the media's campaign to downplay the left's communist-dominated "One Nation" protest yesterday needs to be highlighted nevertheless.

The first thing to notice is this photograph on crowd size comparisons from "Restoring Honor" and "One Nation" (via Old Retired Petty Officer).
 

 
Crowd estimates have an "outsized" importance when the press and leftist blogs seek to minimize and ridicule the tea parties. But as soon as Democrat-Socialists march on D.C., wild claims of "double" the size of the Glenn Beck rally get wide play. Tom Maguire reports on the widely divergent crowd-size estimates, as well as systematic efforts to withhold on-the-ground reports (MSNBC edited out AP's first-hand report indicating that "Saturday's crowds were less dense and didn't reach as far to the edges as they did during Beck's rally"). And while some lefty blogs continue to pump up bogus "larger" crowd numbers, some have scaled back their claims as the facts have become available. The Political Carnival, which posted two entries yesterday boasting bigger numbers for "One Nation," has now issued a hilarious retraction, asking "Does Size Matter?" Well obviously it did yesterday, but now we have this: "While it is a visual indicator of enthusiasm and support, the size of a crowd isn’t as important as the content, message, and tone of the event."


Posted by Pamela Geller on Sunday, October 03, 2010 at 05:23 PM

Matt Mead and the Hansen conservative heritage

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Matt Mead, 2010 Republican candidate for governor of Wyoming, has promoted himself as a rancher, playing to the respect and admiration we feel for the cowboy, an icon of independence, self-reliance, and resourcefulness, a symbol of the man who is able to push through hardship and hard work to provide for himself and his family.

So how well does Mead size up to this icon of independence?

Matthew Hansen Mead can claim a family tradition of political conservativism. Mead’s mother, Mary Hansen Mead, was the daughter of Clifford P. (Cliff) Hansen, one of those rare men who was almost universally respected for his great successes in defending Wyoming’s rights. Cliff’s father, Peter Arthur Hansen, did surveying and ditch work on ranches and built up the Jackson Hole ranch he and his wife homesteaded with Cliff and the other children helping every step of the way. Cliff liked to tell the story that he never tasted beef until he was a college student, not because the family didn’t like beef, but because it was a luxury. The family produced cattle, and ate wild game like elk and deer. This was a story every frugal cattleman could relate to…you don’t eat your profits.

Cliff Hansen was a true son of Wyoming, growing up and getting his early education in Jackson before heading to the University of Wyoming where he earned a degree in animal science in 1934, then back home to Jackson. From 1943 on Hansen’s life included Wyoming political service, as Teton County Commissioner (1943-1951), UW Trustee (1946-1966), Governor (1963-1967) and U.S. Senator (1967-1978). At the same time he was President of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association (1953-1955) and a member of American National Cattlemen’s Association. This was a man who stayed in the middle of things, getting things done.

Hansen worked for all the people of Wyoming. Governor Cliff Hansen drove an expansion of highways and reservoirs in Wyoming, critical to our way of life. Senator Hansen, with Louisiana’s Sen. Huey Long Jr, won the battle to turn the flow of Wyoming’s public mineral oil royalties to Cheyenne rather than the U.S. Treasury. Hansen was involved in amending the Surface Mining Act, assuring that private land owners are compensated when minerals are extracted below the surface. He drove a change in national legislation to make the state’s share of public mineral royalties to 50%, up from 37.5%. He demonstrated selflessness for sake of Wyoming when he resigned his Senate seat three days early to allow his successor, Alan Kooi Simpson, to assume the seat, giving Simpson seniority in the U.S. Senate which stood to Wyoming’s advantage.

Given this man stood at the head of Mead’s family, leading by example, you would expect Matt to be a natural conservative.

Check the articles "What Heritage is Matt Mead Carrying Forward?" and "A Progressive Heritage - Not Constitutionally Based" for the answer.

A Progressive Heritage - not Constitutionally Based

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This is the next in a series about Matt Mead’s political heritage. [found at www.wyomingwatchdogs.com]

We’re going to digress for just a bit from our focus on Mead to lay some groundwork for what will follow. Most of us think we know what a ‘liberal’ is and understand that Liberals and Progressives are somehow linked. For instance, there was Obama addressing a gathering of our elected officials as his “Republican and Progressive friends”.

Democrats were in the room, just not addressed as ‘Democrats’. And Hillary Clinton told us not long ago that she strongly identifies with the best of the century-old American Progressivism movement. But for the most part that link is fuzzy, as we’ve only recently begun to hear our politicians publicly identify themselves as Progressives. So let’s clear up a bit of confusion.

In a previous article we explored the basic nature of Conservatives. A simple explanation of the difference between a Progressive and a Conservative in the United States is:

A Conservative wants to conserve or maintain traditional institutions, including the U.S. Constitution, and believes that some laws transcend time and place.

A Progressive wants to progress, or move beyond…everything, anything, traditional Americans stand for. For them, change must be constant. And most importantly, they insist we must progress beyond the U.S. Constitution, which they say is outdated and no longer applicable to our laws or our lives.

There are many variations on the Progressive theme, and there have been three major Progressive Party advances in the course of our nation’s life, so it’s difficult to follow and understand the movement. But every day we’re getting better acquainted with their ideas through their policies, laws, and regulations. How influential are they? Members of the U.S. Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) have drafted, developed or sponsored most of bills advancing modern Progressive goals over the course of its 20-year life. The Caucus’s 80-plus members include many House Representatives and three Senators.

Mind you, there are other Congressional Member Organizations that our national elected officials have formed. These exclusive clubs are built around an ideology, philosophy or race identity, and behind their closed doors members hammer out positions, plans and projects. But CPC’s members are particularly powerful.

There’s Barney Frank and Maxine Waters who, along with enablers and enforcers, put in place the rules and laws that delivered the sub-prime lending fiasco directly leading to our latest economic crash. There’s Henry Waxman, who has a bill before Congress right now intended to put controls on our internet free speech and access. Waxman and his good friend Ed Markey are sponsors of the cap and trade bill. Then there’s Alcee Hastings, a current Florida Representative who was a federal judge until he was impeached for “corrupt conspiracy”. This is the guy who when asked in March “how can Congress use the reconciliation rule to pass the health care bill?” replied, basically, that rules were for dummies and furthermore “we make them up as we go along“.

Other notable members of the CPC include Alan Grayson, Jesse Jackson, Jr, John Conyers, Dennis Kucinich, and New Mexico Senator Tom Udall. Nancy Pelosi, current Speaker of the House, was a member until she became House leader. The late Senator Ted Kennedy, who was so effective at shoving Progressive health care goals forward issue by issue, regulation by regulation, bill by bill for years, was also a member.

The fire burning in the bellies of Conservatives is a direct result of these Progressives. Now here’s the second half of the story. Progressives aren’t found only in the Democrat’s ranks. These ideals cross party lines. And there you have the source of much of the political frustration and anger this country’s people feel toward their government. No wonder nothing in our political world makes sense anymore.

Making your head hurt more

Do start in on some reading of your own. To find out what Progressives are thinking straight from them, take a look at http://www.ppionline.org/, or http://www.dlc.org// or http://www.progressivefix.com/, or http://www.progressive.org/node/130774.

Then for another perspective from outside their movement, read Ronald Pestritto’s American Progressivism: A Reader, or Peter Berkowitz’s Varieties of Progressivism in America.

That’ll keep you busy, and awake at night, for quite a while.

1 http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfmknlgAreaID=87&subsecID=205&contentID=896. Accessed Sep 29, 2010

2 http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/30/9310. Accessed Sep 29, 2010

3 http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/ Accessed Sep 29, 2010

What Heritage is Matt Mead Carrying Forward in Governor's Race?

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Matt Mead has big political shoes to fill. His grandfather Cliff Hansen took principled Conservative stands in his service as an elected official. So how does grandson Matt stack up against that? We’ve gone to Mead’s campaign website as a primary source for his positions on the issues we’re exploring.

To be fair, his website says he’s a fiscal Conservative, so it may that he’s not claiming to be an all-round Conservative. But let’s assume that in his quest for Conservative votes, he’s trying to convince us he is.

How do Conservative Republicans define themselves right now? The newly formed Republican National Conservative Caucus gives us some clues. Their No. 1 defining issue is a commitment to “work together to restore our Constitutional Republic”. Nowhere can I find that Mead is even interested in this, much less driven to accomplish the goal.

Conservative Republicans are also committed to:

• God, family, country, conservative principles, political party, in that order.


• Accountability (requiring individuals to answer for what they say and do).


• Free enterprise, limited government, low taxes, individual liberties, and a strong national defense.


• Dignifying human life and holding it sacred.


• Protecting families from interference in their lives.

We could add others, like state’s rights, a topic not found on Mead’s issues list. The most Mead has said about state’s rights is he ‘believes in them’. Mead generally says that any federal mandate forcing states to pick up the tab for regulating and enforcing a federal law should be decided by the courts.

So how do Mead’s positions fit into the rest of the Conservative ones?

Committed to God, family, country, conservative principles, political party, in that order.

The Wyoming Tribune-Eagle quoted Mead on his priorities.

“My major priorities include creating jobs and building the economy; developing our resources – ag, energy, water; making our education system the best possible for our children; protecting our gun, private property, and state’s rights; improving our transportation infrastructure and our quality of life; and improving connectivity and technology for the freedom to live and work wherever we choose to live in this great state”.

Clearly his priority order doesn’t match up. As for the priority issues themselves, some of the Conservative issues are missing in Mead’s and some of Mead’s aren’t found in the Conservative list. One noteworthy absence involves the top priority, commitment to God. I can’t find any quotes showing that Mead recognizes the existence of a Creator, or that he would agree that that our basic natural rights, like life, are granted by that Being. The LAST priority is supposed to be commitment to political party. Mead? I think it’s safe to say that he would put commitment to party way ahead of many of the others. And he definitely expects the R-people to be committed to him, which he tells us on his campaign website…” Wyoming GOP needs unity to win gov’s race”. In other words, he’ seems to be saying “R’s, I won the Primary, now you owe me your vote”.

Accountability. Mead, an experienced attorney, is a practiced sidestepper. See ‘Dignifying human life…’ below for more on that.

Free enterprise … limited government…individual freedoms and liberties, and a strong national defense

His priority of ‘creating jobs’ is not a Conservative concept. Government isn’t business and should have no influence except to keep regulations from hampering business. As for limited government, his website includes his statement that “Wyoming must honor its commitment to the state retirement system”. If his priority is to state employees, is it also to growing their influence, numbers, bureau size and reach? Much of his website describes how the state, meaning state bureaus, not the citizens, needs to guide, direct, dominate, and drive our government in all sorts of areas.

Dignifying human life and holding it sacred

He says “Regarding abortion, I believe in the sanctity of life and am against abortion. But, as a conservative, I believe in individual rights…” Possible translation, he’s against abortion unless the pregnant woman wants one.

Protecting families from interference in their lives

More families are finding themselves under the not so protective wings of social services, education programs, and so-called justice programs. Families we know worry about their family incomes, about their kids getting a poor scholastic education and a too liberal social education. They’re worried about bullying, by kids and school staff, about whether their kids will find work and a successful, happy life, and they worry about how to keep them ‘busy’ and out of trouble while Mom and Dad are at work.

Mead’s legal focus has apparently caused him to zoom in on one thing he sees as a priority for families – “protecting Wyoming children from exploitation” and making adoption easier. Seems narrow, given the concerns of our families, and in some respects, even vaguely threatening.

In the end

Mead’s positions seem to be at odds with Republican ideals, and the fact that he successfully recruited at least a couple thousand Democrat votes for the Primary puts a point on his chameleon political nature. Could a Conservative Republican really garner this kind of support? Not likely.

So if he’s not a Conservative Republican as we’ve defined it, where do his views fit?

Check the article  "A Progressive Heritage - Not Constitutionally Based" for some answers.