Conservative Wanderer

“A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and, above all, responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.” — Ronald Wilson Reagan

Monthly Archives: August 2009

The Left Is Astroturfing Again! -UPDATED-

UPDATE 9/1: The page indicated below has been taken off the mybarackobama.com website. However, the folks at Heritage managed to capture a screen shot of it, which you can see here. It is good that it was taken down, however, it is still shameful that it got posted in the first place. Like a ship’s captain is in some sense responsible for what all members of his crew do, so is Barack Obama responsible for this, even if he wasn’t the one personally posting it.

This time, it’s by phone, and on 9/11, of all days. Straight off mybarackobama.com, here’s the explicit and detailed instructions:

PHONE CALLS ON 9/11 – Illinois! (Health Care Organizing Event)
STAY HOME FOR THIS EVENT! DO NOT GO ANYWHERE!
Stay HOME:
—-* The Event consists of ALL OF US Making Two Phone Calls on one particular, single day.
—-* We call each of our State Senators (phone numbers are below) on that day.

What day? Our US Senators return to DC the Tues after Labor Day. That next FRIDAY, Sep 11, is Patriot Day, designated in memory of the nearly three thousand who died in the 9/11 attacks.

All 50 States are coordinating in this – as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders.

DO YOU WANT to ensure passage of the Public Plan? Since 75% of Americans support it, I guess it’s time for us Seventy-Five Percenters to be heard. Why Public Plan? = Because It’s American To Take Care Of Our Own!

And, according to a White House Advisor to the President with whom I spoke ten days ago at a DNC Panel, he said, “ON ONE DAY you ‘burn-up’ the Senate Switchboards – THE NEXT DAY you’ve got the Senator’s attention”. We will achieve that effect, on Friday, Patriot Day 9/11.

Auto-generated emails will remind you about our Armchair Public Plan Slam-Dunk Two-Phone-Call Call-A-Thon. Plus I will email you that day, too. And, if you’re proud you joined-in, then email me (the Host) back, when you’ve made your calls. I will be honored to report our massive numbers to OFA for them to brag on the web.

2 PHONE CALLS ON 9/11 – BE A TRUE PATRIOT –

DEFEAT ANTI-DEMOCRATIC FORCES OF HATE WHO CONSPIRE TO REMAIN HEALTHY + WEALTHY WHILE THE PUBLIC LANGUISHES UNDER THE BURDEN OF OUR PRESENT HEALTH CARE SYSTEM –

—-* TELL THEM: “I’m calling from the city of [xxx] – and I AM mad as Hell – and I AM NOT going to take it anymore, If You Don’t Mind!”…
—-* TELL THEM: “Please make the Public Plan the Law of the Land –
—-* TELL THEM: “Because IT’S AMERICAN TO TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN.”
—-* TELL THEM: “Tell that to my Senator – Thank you, Good-bye.”

That’s it – simple – all you need is a calendar, an armchair and a phone, for us to have a good strong voice.

Ask your friends if they want to join our Public Plan Call-A-Thon on 9/11: Patriot’s Day –

Continue reading →

Another Hero

I know we’ve all been busy eulogizing people named Kennedy and Jackson, but personally I think a little-known man named Freeman is more worthy of our praise:

Marine Capt. Matthew Freeman made his last trip across the U.S. Naval Academy in the company of friends the other day.

Yes, there were admirals and generals, colonels and majors, captains of the Navy and the Marines among the hundreds who joined him. But there are moments when the strictures of rank are loosened by the greater bond of brotherhood. This was one of them.

Four thousand and seventy-four days had passed since Matt arrived here as a kid, had his head shaved and was sworn in as a Navy midshipman. Two thousand six hundred and fifty-one days had gone by since he hurled his hat into the air at graduation and became a Marine. It had been 47 days since he married Theresa, his high school sweetheart, and 34 days since he headed to Afghanistan.

And it was just 19 days after he led his men onto a rooftop that provided the only high ground in a nasty firefight with the Taliban in a hamlet in a rugged, desolate northeastern province.

The morning he came back to the Naval Academy was a Wednesday, but it will stick in your memory as the day you heard that Ted Kennedy had died and the week when you learned that someone might have killed Michael Jackson. The politician and the entertainer of their generations, they were lionized by many and scorned by some. One pleaded guilty, the other was found innocent. But they each died with an indelible asterisk, a footnote to their legacies that time will not erase.

Matt Freeman died clean.

[snip]

There were a dozen Marine captains in dress blue in the overflowing pews of the chapel. Marines may blink hard a few times, but they don’t cry. Their mothers and widows cry for them.

In the week when they laid a young Marine captain to rest, the news was dominated by the death of a politician and the echo from an entertainer’s death. The flag-draped coffin on the front page was not his, but if you look carefully in the paper this week you will see a small picture of Matt Freeman among the faces of those who have fallen recently in battle.

He did not live long enough to become an the icon of Kennedy or Jackson, but he died the greater hero.

Sounds to me like this Captain embodied the Marine motto of “Semper Fidelis.”

Newspaper vs. Reid

Ouch! That’s gotta hurt!

On Wednesday, before he addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Reid joined the chamber’s board members for a meet-’n'-greet and a photo. One of the last in line was the Review-Journal’s director of advertising, Bob Brown, a hard-working Nevadan who toils every day on behalf of advertisers. He has nothing to do with news coverage or the opinion pages of the Review-Journal.

Yet, as Bob shook hands with our senior U.S. senator in what should have been nothing but a gracious business setting, Reid said: “I hope you go out of business.”

[snip]

You could call Reid’s remark ugly and be right. It certainly was boorish. Asinine? That goes without saying.

But to fully capture the magnitude of Reid’s remark (and to stop him from doing the same thing to others) it must be called what it was — a full-on threat perpetrated by a bully who has forgotten that he was elected to office to protect Nevadans, not sound like he’s shaking them down.

No citizen should expect this kind of behavior from a U.S. senator. It is certainly not becoming of a man who is the majority leader in the U.S. Senate. And it absolutely is not what anyone would expect from a man who now asks Nevadans to send him back to the Senate for a fifth term.

If he thinks he can push the state’s largest newspaper around by exacting some kind of economic punishment in retaliation for not seeing eye to eye with him on matters of politics, I can only imagine how he pressures businesses and individuals who don’t have the wherewithal of the Review-Journal.

For the sake of all who live and work in Nevada, we can’t let this bully behavior pass without calling out Sen. Reid. If he’ll try it with the Review-Journal, you can bet that he’s tried it with others. So today, we serve notice on Sen. Reid that this creepy tactic will not be tolerated.

It would appear that Harry has decided he represents the Democratic Party more than the state that sent him to the Senate… and it also appears that, if the Las Vegas Review-Journal has anything to say about it, Reid will soon be looking for another job.

This is part and parcel of one of the causes of the town-hall revolts that we’ve been seeing across the country. Far too many elected officials have become disconnected from the folks back in their home district or state. The voters, having seen that far too often, have decided to remind the elected official who the real bosses are… meaning, the people who can choose not to send the official back for another term in office.

Another Senate Democrat Opposing The “Public Option”

This time it’s Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu:

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu told a relatively friendly overflow Monroe Chamber of Commerce crowd that she would likely oppose any government insurance option in health care reform and lobby against a proposed energy tax known as Cap and Trade.

Landrieu, D-La., who spoke during a chamber luncheon today, also met with local doctors earlier and briefly addressed about 15 demonstrators opposing a public insurance option and Cap and Trade.

When asked after her speech if the senator would support a public option under any circumstances, she said, “Very few, if any. I’d prefer a private market-based approach to any health care reform that would extend coverage.”

“I’d like to cover everyone — that would be the moral thing to do — but it would be immoral to bankrupt the country while doing so,” Landrieu said.

Okay, so it’s not an absolute no… she probably doesn’t wanna break with the party platform quite that blatantly. But clearly, she’s not gonna be a rubber-stamp for single-payer either.

If single-payer keeps losing support among Democratic Senators, it really won’t matter what Speaker Pelosi does over in the other chamber, it’ll die in the Senate.

As for the sometimes-mentioned “reconciliation” maneuver to pass it… I admit that His Obamaness and the Obamacrats has been really politically tone-deaf from time to time (calling town-hall participants “un-American,” for example), I think it’s likely that they realize that if they push the bill through using a back-door trick like that will really cause a political firestorm (note, I said a political, not a literal, firestorm–so misconstrue it at your own peril) that could permanently damage the “Democrat brand.” And I doubt they’d want to do that.

Feingold: ObamaCare Vote Unlikely This Year

When Democrats (the article doesn’t specify, but Russ Feingold is indeed a Democrat) start talking like this about a Democratic holy grail like a government takeover of healthcare, you might as well stick a fork in it.

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold told a large crowd gathered for a listening session in Iron County last week there would likely be no health care bill before the end of the year – and perhaps not at all.

It was an assessment Feingold said he didn’t like, but the prospect of no health care legislation brought a burst of applause from a packed house of nearly 150 citizens at the Mercer Community Center.

“Nobody is going to bring a bill before Christmas, and maybe not even then, if this ever happens,” Feingold said. “The divisions are so deep. I never seen anything like that.”

Feingold reiterated his appraisal a bit later.

“We’re headed in the direction of doing absolutely nothing, and I think that’s unfortunate,” he said when asked about the plight of uninsured Americans.

Before anyone accuses my headline of being inaccurate, let me remind you that Congress traditionally takes a recess after Christmas, and doesn’t meet again till the next “session” which typically starts on 3 January… therefore, if it ain’t voted on before Christmas, it’ll be next year.

And if it comes up in an election year, you can bet your bottom dollar that vulnerable Democrats in conservative districts are going to be even less enthusiastic about voting for it.

In short, if Feingold is right, ObamaCare is pretty much defeated, unless the Democrats keep control of both houses of Congress after 2010, and as of the time of this writing, that looks highly unlikely.

Democrats and the Culture of Corruption, Part Eleven

That was so much fun, let’s do two! (Hey, as a baseball fan, I enjoy a double-header).

Looks like some Democrats still don’t wanna pay their fair share of taxes…

House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel , already beset by a series of ethics investigations, has disclosed more than $500,000 in previously unreported assets.

Among the new items on Rangel’s amended 2007 financial disclosure report were an account at the Congressional Federal Credit Union worth at least $250,000, an investment account with at least $250,000, land in southern New Jersey and stock in PepsiCo and fast food conglomerate Yum! Brands. None of those investments appeared on the original report, which was filled out by hand and filed in May 2008.

Of course, if you don’t report investments, you don’t pay taxes on them.

The best take on this, however, comes from the aptly-named Sunlight Foundation:

Obviously, the 28 occasions we tallied of Rangel omitting information from his financial disclosures is inaccurate–it’s too low.

Democrats and the Culture of Corruption, Part ten

And now, back to this series highlighting what the self-anointed elite think they can get away with…

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — Hassan Nemazee, chairman of Nemazee Capital Corp. and a fundraiser for President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, was arrested on charges he used phony documents to trick Citigroup Inc. into lending him as much as $74 million.

But wait, it’s not just the Clintons and Obamas that this guy worked for.

Nemazee is one of the leading fundraisers for the Democratic Party. He served as national finance chairman for the Senate committee that works to elect Democrats when it was run by New York Senator Charles Schumer.

And that’s still not all…

Nemazee also served as New York finance chairman for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry during his 2004 run for the presidency.

Ya know, I didn’t see any Republican names in there… did you?

Obama Losing “Progressives”?

When you lose Paul Krugman, you’ve probably gone a long way to losing the so-called “progressives,” especially when he writes something like this:

According to news reports, the Obama administration — which seemed, over the weekend, to be backing away from the “public option” for health insurance — is shocked and surprised at the furious reaction from progressives. Well, I’m shocked and surprised at their shock and surprise. A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months. The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.

[snip]

But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line . . . It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled . . . So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back.

The amazing thing is that many conservatives (including yours truly) felt the same way about George W. Bush, though the issues and policies differed. If you look at how those sort of feelings hurt the GOP in the last two elections, it’s not too hard to see very rough sailing for the Democrats in the not-too-distant future.

Who’s Astroturfing Town Halls? Part II

Hmmm… people being bussed nearly 150 miles to attend a town hall and support ObamaCare?

Organizing for America, which is the successor organization to Obama for America, held a pro-Obamacare rally last week in front of U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer’s district office in Jackson, Michigan.
The Obama Administration and their SEIU supporters bussed in protesters from as far away as Muskegon and Detroit.

Detroit to Jackson is 78 miles.
Muskegon to Jackson is 146 miles.

See the link above for a map.

Now, tell me again, who’s Astroturfing? The right or the left?