I do not think boyreporter,decaturguy and PD woulkd put me in their camp.

I just call it like I see it.

I will never “give a pass” to the Dems on anything. I operate on the assumption that everything that party does now borders on having its own listing in DSM III.

I also used to operate on the assumption that the GOP was conservative overall, and that its leadership believed in principles of traditional conservative values that the GOP had held dear for so long.

That is no longer an assumption I operate on. Which is why I support any attempt to bring the GOP back to its roots.

I have no issue with people pointing out the problems in the GOP, I only have a problem when they overlook and give a pass to the problems on the Dem side while criticizing the GOP.

I will attack what looks like hypocricy mercilously. (For example, my disputes with boyreporter, decaturguy, konop, and pd, or on the other side, my disputes with jsm, BG Icarus and some others.)

I have long criticized the GOP for its problems for years. I hated GW Bush since the day he was selected to be the front-runner in 1999 for the 2000 election.

But you’re willing to call me an Obama camp prostitute for pointing out the truth about what the GOP has done to itself? Nice.

So are you admitting that you’re now willing to vote for McCain the RINO in the hope that he’ll drop dead on January 21, 2009, so that an avowed feminist can take over? I’ve had a hard time getting most of the kool-aid drinking “conservatives” (LOL) to own up to that.

I have long criticized the GOP for its problems for years. I hated GW Bush since the day he was selected to be the front-runner in 1999 for the 2000 election.

The sad fact is that as bad, incompetent, destructive, self-serving and corrupt as the Republicans have been, the Democrats are on a whole different level in every regard.

If the Democrats would stop playing games with the courts, I could sit an election out, or even vote for a third party. However, due to the long term destructive influence that partisan hack judges do to the country, there is no option but to fight the Dems tooth and nail every election.

This is one reason that I was so happy McCain picked Palin as VP. I am sick of anyone tied to Washington in any way from either party, and I am sick of the empty suits like Pawlenty or Perdue that occupy most governorships.

Game over!

The only time lately I’ve felt like I needed a deep scrub – and I mean, like Dawn Treader/Eustace/Dragon’s Island deep scrubbing – was in the middle of kool-aid drinking Republicans who have forgotten what their party once stood for: limited government, individual liberty, national sovereignty, free markets, sound money, and non-interventionist foreign policies.

Obama is a Marxist who should never have made it as far as he has politically, but that fact that he has is a testimony to the depths that the Socialist Democrat Party has sunk. As if they could sink any lower.

But our party has sunk pretty low, too. Remove your blinders, and you’ll admit that it must have, in order to nominate someone like John McCain. It’s time to bring our party back to its roots. I hope it’s not too late.

How long do you have to scrub yourself to feel clean again after prostituting yourself out to the Obama camp? You keep spouting their talking points and memes, straight from your inbox, but I am sure you die a little inside as you cry yourself to sleep each night.

Any mistake the GOP makes in the future will pale in comparison to the mistake it made with its 2000 nominee.

It’s time to play “Name That NeoCon!” For 100 points: the GOP nominates someone who claims to be a conservative, but conservatives don’t trust him, until he picks someone they all consider to be “very conservative” as his running mate. As it turns out, once again, the GOP base is suckered into voting for RINOs and NeoCons!

Are we talking about Bush I/Quayle, Bush II/Cheney, or Bush III McCain/Palin?

[cue Jeopardy theme music...]

Anchorage Daily News editorial: Hey, you know who’s been a pretty darned effective governor?

HOTAIR-One of the more effusive back-handed compliments I’ve ever read, from a paper that’s well aware of her political faults. They’re not calling her a lightweight exactly, but it’s clear they think her interest in the nuts and bolts of policy is, let us say, insufficiently nuanced.

Which makes their conclusion that she’d be a dynamite VP all the more surprising.
Gov. Palin is not the kind of leader who gets bogged down in minutia and works 100-hours a week. Instead, she uses her charisma and a simple, clear vision to mobilize mass support for her agenda, then leaves the details and heavy lifting to others…

As governor, she has focused almost exclusively on a handful of high-priority issues — ethics, oil tax reform and state incentives for building a natural gas pipeline. And she has had dramatic success. With Gov. Palin leading the way, the Legislature passed strong legislation on all three fronts. On two of those issues, she had to take on Alaska’s previously all-powerful oil industry. Twice she easily defeated them…

One big surprise about Palin’s term as governor: She has been thoroughly bipartisan. Her most reliable supporters on her big three accomplishments have been Democrats. The partisan side that Palin showed in her acceptance speech Thursday is something Alaskans haven’t seen in her time as governor.

Earlier this year, Palin told a cable news interviewer that somebody is going to have to tell her “what it is exactly that the VP does.” In some ways, the vice president’s job is a perfect fit for her. She wouldn’t have to run the country. She could focus on a handful of high-profile issues, inspire people with her passion and star power, and try to accomplish a few great things.

read more

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/07/anchorage-daily-news-editorial-hey-you-know-whos-been-a-pretty-darned-effective-governor/

It even goes with Cato’s findings.

Face it, she raised taxes, and increased the debt of Wasila. Republicans can find their conservative soul and denounce her for her actions, or prove to the world that there is no moral character left within the GOP, nor is there any room for a conservative.

I quit reading here. If you increase zero by 69%, you still have zero.

I think I liberal lefty reporter just wanted to prove to his buddies that he could get ‘69′ in print past his editor.

What are your thoughts on the following?

Are we allowed to ask questions about her tenure as mayor of Wasilla? Here’s a story from the Wall Street Journal, exposing just how fiscally and operationally reckless Palin’s mayorship of Wasilla was:

The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters.

The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin’s legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla…

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities,” Ms. Palin said Wednesday in her acceptance speech at the Republican convention. Litigation resulting from the dispute over Ms. Palin’s sports-complex project is still in the courts, with the land’s former owner seeking hundreds of thousands of additional dollars from the city.

When Palin took over Wasilla, the town had no long-term debt. By the time she was done, debt service had increased by 69 percent, the town had close to $19 million in long-term debt, making the debt around $3000 per capita. And the Mccain campaign is asking us – seriously – to consider her a fiscal conservative.

She is a Bush-Cheney fiscal conservative: low taxes, unprecedented new spending, utter incompetence, endemic cronyism and massive debt.

—-

Palin supported and signed into law a $1.5 billion tax increase on oil companies in the form of higher severance taxes. One rule of thumb is that higher taxes cause less investment. Sure enough, State Tax Notes reported (January 7): “After ACES was passed, ConocoPhillips, Alaska’s most active oil exploration company and one of the top three producers, announced it was canceling plans to build a diesel fuel refinery at the Kuparuk oil field. ConocoPhillips blamed the cancellation on passage of ACES [the new tax]. The refinery would have allowed the company to produce low-sulfur diesel fuel onsite for its vehicles and other uses on the North Slope, rather than haul the fuel there from existing refineries.”

There are good reasons for an oil-rich state to tax oil production, but a fiscal conservative would usually use any tax increase to reduce taxes elsewhere. Perhaps I’m missing something, but I see no evidence that Palin offered any major tax cuts. She did propose sending $1.2 billion of state oil revenues to individuals and utility companies in the form of monthly payments to reduce energy bills, but that sounds like welfare to me, not tax cuts.

Palin has offered a few narrow or minor tax breaks, including:

* A tax credit for film production in the state, offering about $20 million per year in breaks.
* A cut in an annual business license fee from $100 to $25 (the legislature went half way to $50).
* A one-year suspension of the state fuel tax to save taxpayers about $40 million.
* A repeal of tire taxes to save taxpayers $2 million.
* A tax credit for commercial salmon harvesting to save taxpayers about $2 million.

That’s about it.

Any mistake the GOP makes in the future will pale in comparison to the mistake it made with its 2000 nominee.

Even without Sarah Palin on the ticket it was an easy decision for me how I’d vote in November.

Is this the same Chris Farris who heads up the Republican Liberty Caucus? Wow. Kool-aid, much? The RLC has come a long way, baby, since Ron Paul headed it up.

This post by Decaturguy is very salient. Watching Georgia’s delegation at the RNC waste no time in puckering up and french-kissing McCain’s hole made my stomach feel like a butter-churn. This party should be ashamed of itself, and will soon learn what a horrible, horrible mistake it’s made.

Clue number one should be the fact that most Republicans are supporting this ticket in the hopes that McCain will keel over on January 21, 2009, allowing a self-avowed feminist to take the helm.

God help us. Let’s pray the GOP can come to its senses in 4 years – or maybe even 2 in Georgia.

Debt Service Increased 69 Percent Under Palin.

In fiscal 2003 — the last fiscal year Palin approved the budget — the total government debt service was $658,662. In fiscal 1996 — the year before Palin took control of the budget—the debt service was $390,385. The increase was 69 percent. [Wasilla Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2003, Table 1]

Palin Left Behind Almost $19 Million In Long-Term Debt, Compared to None Before She Was Mayor.

In fiscal 2003—the last fiscal year Palin approved the budget—the bonded long-term debt was $18,635,000. In fiscal 1996—the year before Palin took control of the budget—there was no general obligation debt. [Wasilla Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2003, Table 10]

Long-Term Debt Was $3000 Per Capita When Palin Left, Compared to None Before She Was Mayor.

In fiscal 2003—the last fiscal year Palin approved the budget—the bonded long-term debt per capita was $2,938. In fiscal 1996—the year before Palin took control of the budget—there was no general obligation debt. [Wasilla Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2003, Table 10]

When Palin Left Office, 6.24% of Government Spending Was On Debt Service, Compared to None Before She Was Mayor.

In fiscal 2003—the last fiscal year Palin approved the budget—the ratio of debt service to general government expenditures was 6.24 percent. There was no long-term debt before she took office. [Wasilla Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2003, Table 11]

On July 20, 2008, the pastor of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s home church, Larry Kroon, delivered a sermon called “Sin Is Personal To God.” Kroon, the senior pastor of the non-denominational Wasilla Bible Church in Wasilla, Alaska, used the book of Zephanaiah as his reference point for discussing “that great day of the Lord when God will finally bring closure to human history… a day of wrath.” According to Kroon, “all things and all people” are going to bear the brunt of God’s “intense anger.” “There’s anger with God,” he proclaimed. “He takes sin personal.”

Kroon placed Zephaniah in a modern context, warning that the sinful habits of Americans would invite the wrath of God. “And if Zephaniah were here today,” Kroon bellowed, “he’d be saying, ‘Listen, [God] is gonna deal with all the inhabitants of the earth. He is gonna strike out His hand against, yes, Wasilla; and Alaska; and the United States of America. There’s no exceptions here — there’s none. It’s all.’”

(Kroon’s sermon can be heard here; a full transcript is here.)

The Illinois State Senate is not a full time job either. Arguing the value of different experince is valid, but there’s just not enough difference timewise between elected service (nor private sector service either) between the pairs of candidates for the lifetime argument in my opinon to hold much water.