The Respectfully Republican Conversation

AS - I am not sure about taxing them - they would just pass it down to us in higher prices.

I am not sure what the answer is - I already do without a lot of things. I live in a small house, my kitchen is about 10 x 10 if that. No dishwasher, no air conditioning in summer, heat does not go above 65 in winter, everything is unplugged when not in use, eat out only rarely maybe a couple of times a year, don't go to see movies, don't buy CD's will go to the library and borrow them, no cable TV, only have a cell phone because I have teenagers - once went to pick my daughter up from a concert at night and could not find her. I had told her I would pick her up where I had left her off only when I got there the police had blocked the road. I could not find a pay phone to call her - she had her brother's cell phone with her. I ended up having to borrow one from someone on the street. Our TV is about 15 years old - we only watch it on weekends. Aren't we supposed to get coupons or something for the converter box so that we can still use the thing come February? The only thing I will buy is books - we could probably start our own library. My daughter was just saying the other day that her favorite Christmas presents are books. That and education - I will pay so that my children get a good education. Everything else is fluff. I could even do without the internet but I need it for my work. My husband is from Bangladesh - that man will not waste anything. He recycles plastic sandwich bags. I have convinced him to throw away the bags that have had sandwiches in them but he recyces the ones that have had cookies in them. He will reuse a brown paper bag until it falls apart. He will recycle wrapping paper. If the temperature is above 50 degrees he will hang clothes outside to dry (I am not kidding he will hang clothes outside in the middle of January if the weather is warm enough). He grew up in a village that did not get electricity until 1982. He studied by kerosene lantern or candle light. His mother just got running water about two years ago. Before that they would have to get water from a tube well and bring it in the house in buckets. They did not have money for toys - they made their own. They did not have much materially but they were happier than we are. I have been to Bangladesh several times and the happiest people are those that have the least. They are so happy to share what little they have with you. 

Our economy is built on us being constant consumers - changing cell phones every few months, buying cars every couple of years, buying more and more and more - the landfills are full of our excess - it has to end sometime. We need to learn to make due with less. There is no reason why anyone needs to make millions or billions of dollars - they could give their employees more or charge less. Look at Bill Gates - do you really need to pay hundreds of dollars for that software? We could have very affordable healthcare if the CEO's of healthcare related companies did not make millions. On this one, I don't think government is the answer - they can't manage anything efficiently. Instead of building all those mini-mansions they could have built smaller, more energy efficent homes. I could go on and on but I won't - I need to get back to work. 

They say credit is tight. I just got a letter from Discover increasing my credit limit. My daughter got a call from Chase on Friday wondering why she had not turned in the paperwork for a student loan they were giving her (she didn't request one). She got the paperwork in the mail and shredded it a few weeks ago.

MoveOn: "We Bought" the Democratic Party

By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, December 10, 2004

A standard "action alert" has provided a rare glimpse inside the mind of the Shadow Party.

In a December 9th e-mail signed by "Eli Pariser, Justin Ruben, and the whole MoveOn PAC team," the Soros front group stated: "In the last year, grassroots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the Party doesn't need corporate cash to be competitive. Now it's our Party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."

To clarify, the hysterical Left believes not only that America's oldest political party is for sale, but that George Soros has already made the down payment.

Such a view would line up with Soros' own designs. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer (no conservative, she) quotes an unidentified friend describing the billionaire leftist's modus operandi: "Money is just a tool for him. It's how he manipulates a lot of things in his life." Soros spent $18 million in his attempt to buy this year's presidential election. Now he's setting his sights a little lower, but his desire to "manipulate" our democracy remains.

MoveOn's contemptuous assertion comes the weekend Democratic state party officials are to meet, interview, and potentially endorse candidates seeking to head the Democratic National Committee. MoveOn has set up a campaign urging its followers to warn party officials against electing a centrist. Such a scenario, the e-mail assures, is a political loser.

Under outgoing DNC chair Terry McAuliffe, the Party cozied up to many of the same corporate donors that fund the Republicans - drug companies, HMO's, media conglomerates, big banks, polluting industries. The result was watered down, play-it-safe politics that kept the money flowing but alienated traditional Democrats as well as reform-minded independents in search of vision and integrity. And so the Party lost ground.

Aside from Stalinist-like references to "the Party," the most striking feature of the e-mail is its historical amnesia: it was exactly this formula that allowed Democrats to twice win the presidency.

This same blindness is displayed in an Arianna Huffington column the e-mail cites. Arianna, who ran the 2000 "Shadow Conventions" with Soros money, castigates moderate Democrats who hope the party will take its national drubbing as a signal to move rightward. She asks, "Have these people learned nothing from 2000, 2002 and 2004? How many more concession speeches do they have to give - from ‘the center' - before they realize it's not a very fruitful place?" Yet none of these races was run from the center: Al Gore ran his 2000 campaign on the theme of "The People vs. the Powerful"; in 2002, Congressional Democrats ran as the party that valued UN decrees over national defense and collective bargaining above airport security; and MoveOn.org, Americans Coming Together, and the full Shadow Party apparatus ran the show in 2004. Despite the formula's proven failure, Arianna claims, "The party needs a chairman able to drive a stake through the heart of its bankrupt GOP-lite strategy and champion the populist economic agenda that has already proven potent at the ballot box in many conservative parts of the country."

The Shadow Party again walks in lockstep on this issue. Bill Moyers' favorite pet publication, The American Prospect, is also pushing for a more leftist party. TAP recently published an article by David Sirota that hailed diving into the Left's fever swamps as "The Democrats Da Vinci Code." Sirota calls for tough "us-versus-them red meat, straight talk about how the system is working against ordinary Americans." This Bob Shrum psuedo-populism has been the touch of death to every presidential candidate who's ever towed his rhetorical line. Nonetheless, Sirota claims this recipe is working. His proof? Socialist Bernie Sanders winning in Vermont, and über-liberal Ted Strickland carrying a safe Democratic district in economically depressed southern Ohio (which, like depressed inner cities, has been run by his fellow Democrats for a generation). Strickland, incidentally, ran unopposed this year.

Sirota also claims his advice to lurch leftward is vindicated by the success of Mississippi Congressman Gene Taylor. Sirota is right that Taylor is no moderate: he's racked up a conservative voting record that would be the envy of many Republicans. One of five House Democrats who voted to impeach President Clinton, Taylor voted for the invasion of Iraq, earned an A-rating from the National Rifle Association, supported oil-drilling in ANWR, co-sponsored the Federal Marriage Amendment, and voted to cap medical malpractice suits. He is also a pro-life Democrat who has a zero percent voting record from NARAL. Sirota is right that Gene Taylor presents a winning paradigm for Democrats, but for precisely the opposite reasons he suggests.

The likely intended beneficiary of the MoveOn PAC's e-mail campaign is Howard Dean, who won the MoveOn.org "virtual primary" and is actively campaigning for the DNC chairmanship on a hard-Left platform. "There's only one thing Republican power brokers want more than for us to lurch to the left - and that's for us to lurch to the right," Dean told a George Washington University audience on Wednesday. 

However, the Shadow Party's stealth candidate is Hillary Clinton confidant Harold Ickes. Soros funded Ickes' Media Fund and Center for American Progress. George Soros consulted with both Ickes and Bill Moyers during the campaign.

When asked why he dedicated so much of his personal fortune into opposing President Bush, Soros said, "This is the most important election of my lifetime. These aren't normal times. The ends justify every legal means possible." Presumably, including buying a political party. Having already "bought" the party, Soros now wants the Democrats to pick someone who will allow him to act as its absentee owner. He wants to place the party formally under the control of the Shadow Party.

"I want my ideas to be heard," Soros has pined. If MoveOn PAC successfully influences the party faithful in choosing the DNC chair, Soros' ideas may find a new outlet. That may represent a great return on investment for George Soros, but it would be disastrous for Democrats...and America.

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Off topic and worth it:

True story. 

A Michigan woman and her family were vacationing in a small New England town where Paul Newman and his family often visited.

One Sunday morning, the woman got up early to take a long walk. After a brisk five-mile hike, she decided to treat herself to a double-dip chocolate ice cream cone.

She hopped in the car, drove to the center of the village and went straight to the combination bakery/ice cream parlor.

There was only one other patron in the store:

Paul Newman, sitting at the counter having a doughnut and coffee.

The woman's heart skipped a beat as her eyes made contact with those famous baby-blue eyes.

The actor nodded graciously and the star struck woman smiled demurely.

Pull yourself together!  She chides herself. You're a happily married woman with three children, you're forty-five years old, not a teenager!

The clerk filled her order and she took the double-dip chocolate ice cream cone in one hand and her change in the other. Then she went out the door, avoiding even a glance in Paul Newman's direction.

When she reached her car, she realized that she had a handful of change but her other hand was empty.

Where's my ice cream cone?  Did I leave it in the store? Back into the shop she went, expecting to see the cone still in the clerk's hand or in a holder on the counter or something! No ice cream cone was in sight..

With that, she happened to look over at Paul Newman.

His face broke into his familiar, warm, friendly grin and he said to the woman,

'You put it in your purse.'

Just received a PDF with this note, "The Birth of Subprime;The Beginning of the End". It is a NYT article by Steven A. Holmes, "Fannie Mae Eases Credit to Aid Mortgage Lending".

September 30, 1999

   Checking the Fact-checkersBy Matthew Sheffield | October 7, 2008 - 19:07 Fact-checking politicians seems to be the journalistic "in" thing to do this campaign season. Aside from the self-aggrandizing nature of such pronouncements, there isn't anything necessarily wrong with the concept. The devil is in the details, however. Over at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto notes that these esoteric fact check stories too often end up as opinion pieces criticizing the policies or rhetoric of politicians. In more cases than not, it's Republicans who bear the brunt of such "corrections," simply because truth in politics is often a highly subjective thing. Taranto focuses on one particular fact check by USA Today criticizing a John McCain ad for quoting Barack Obama out of context:

The Twilight zone continues on MSNBC --

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Chris Matthews Post-Debate Drooling

This is not a parody:

"Barack Obama is gifted in birth by a wonderful smile...

John McCain, when he smiles, has a somewhat menacing quality. It may not be purposeful, but when he smiles, you wonder what he's really thinking.

Barack Obama, for whatever reason, comes off as debonaire, even under attack."

Update: Olbermann keeps it classy: "McCain, and I'm trying to say this as nicely as possible, didn't look like a well man wandering around on that stage tonight."

ACORN Vegas Office Raided in Voter Fraud Investigation

ACORN's Las Vegas headquarters has been raided by Nevada authorities looking for evidence of voter fraud. 

Nevada state authorities seized records and computers Tuesday from the Las Vegas office of an organization that tries to get low-income people registered to vote, after fielding complaints of voter fraud. Bob Walsh, spokesman for the Nevada secretary of state's office, told FOXNews.com the raid was prompted by ongoing complaints about "erroneous" registration information being submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN. The group was submitting the information through a voter sign-up drive known as Project Vote. "Some of them used nonexistent names, some of them used false addresses and some of them were duplicates of previously filed applications," Walsh said, describing the complaints, which largely came from the registrar in Clark County, Nev. Secretary of State Ross Miller said the fraudulent registrations included  forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team. "Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," Miller said. Walsh said agents from both the secretary of state's office and Nevada attorney general's office conducted the raid at 9:30 a.m. local time, and "took a bunch of stuff." Miller's office reported seizing eight computer hard drives and about 20 boxes of documents. Bertha Lewis, interim chief organizer for ACORN, released a statement saying the group has for months been turning over any suspicious registration information to elections officials. She said those officials routinely ignored their tips, and called the raid a "stunt." "When we have identified suspicious applications, we have separated them out and flagged them for election officials. We have zero tolerance for fraudulent registrations. We immediately dismiss employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations," she said. "Today's raid by the secretary of state's office is a stunt that serves no useful purpose other than discredit our work registering Nevadans and distracting us from the important work ahead of getting every eligible voter to the polls."Neither the group, which hires canvassers to register voters, nor any employees have been charged or arrested for fraud or other crimes, said Miller, a Democrat. But it's not the first time ACORN's been under investigation for registration irregularities. The raid is the latest of at least nine investigations into possible fraudulent voter registration forms submitted by ACORN -- the probes have involved ACORN workers in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Indiana and other states. In response to the Las Vegas raid, Republican Nevada Sen. John Ensign and seven other senators penned a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency calling for the suspension of taxpayer dollars to "controversial groups like ACORN." The letter referred to contributions that potentially could come from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. In 2006, ACORN also committed what Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed called the "worse case of election fraud" in the state's history. In the case, ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, and all but six of the 1,800 names were fake. More recently, 27,000 registrations handled by the group from January to July 2008 "went into limbo because they were incomplete, inaccurate, or fraudulent," said James Terry, chief public advocate at the Consumers Rights League.FOX News' Eric Shawn, Judson Berger and Cristina Corbin and The Associated Press contributed to this report

Ibcsprouse, I agree with you.  I saw Byden on GMA and he said Rudy Guliane was all about 911. WTH?  Tell that to the families who lost their loved ones and to the troops fighting oversees. 91 I changed this country.  How arrogant of him to al trivialize that. 

I also thought the last question was very telling. Not only does he think he knows it all but goes on, and on without answering the question.  He gives me the chills.  God help us and this country. 

saluki wrote:  

Update: Olbermann keeps it classy: "McCain, and I'm trying to say this as nicely as possible, didn't look like a well man wandering around on that stage tonight."

Susie, I knew I would hear that somewhere.  I haven't been over <----------------------------------- so don't know if that comments been made yet.  I watched Sen. McCain walk.  Yeah, he's had some bad war injuries that are probably quite painful to this day.  How can anyone say such a thing?  Sen. McCain is 72 years old and I saw him walking (almost skipping) down the stairs much faster than I do and he's 10 years older.  Some people are just IDIOTS and perhaps we should feel sorry for them...NOT!

Seems like there's a lot of fraud going on with voting.  ACORN is up to it's usual schemes.  When's the fed going to cut their funding that we the taxpayers pay.  Now ACORN is calling fowl play.  They think all of this is discrimination.  ACORN was recruiting newly released prisoners who live in a halfway house (I guess that's what you'd call it) looking for work.  ACORN was doing their civil duty and was hiring these criminals...LOL  Do I need to say more?

shirley, i'm not looking for a man who can speak pretty...i was just hoping that mc cain would knock it out of the box to improve his poll numbers and i don't think he did.  i'm terrified to have that smooth talking ultra liberal running our country especially since he'll most likely have both houses with him.  i agree with mc cain on almost all policies, although not all.  but he just doesn't seem to be able to convey them to the people and unfortunately too many people listen to the guy who speaks better. remember all the mocking that bush took because he wasn't the greatest public speaker.  i pray this country wakes up before election day and really stops and thinks about what they're getting us into.

Jerseymaria, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean YOU were looking for a man who spoke pretty.  I have heard so often how President Bush is an embarrassment..so many nasty things about him.  Obama knows he can get his point across.  He knows he speaks eloquently.  He said so in Oprah's 2004 interview that I sat and read in that onc's office for one freaking hours.  LOL  Oh, I was there an hour before I was put in captiviity in that little examing room.    I too am see where McCain isn't getting his point across.  I also think the same questions were asked last night that have been asked and we'ver heard them on their campaign trail.  Nothing new.  I can bet'cha that at least ONE of those 6.000,000 people who email in questions asked about Obama's "friends."  But of course that wouldn't be asked of him because that's just too personal.  HA!

You guys - did you see SNL on Saturday night - there was a very telling skit - NBC has pulled the video but you can see it here http://www.shopfloor.org/2008/10/05/satirizing-congress-the-president-george-soros-and-the-sandlers/ There is a lot of question as to who got NBC to pull it. Obviously it is true and hit a nerve with someone.

Really, really strange.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=77291

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DISPATCH FROM NAIROBI
Sendoff to Corsi: 'See you in hell'
Soldiers with automatic weapons detain author of 'Obama Nation'

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Posted: October 08, 2008
7:36 am Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

NAIROBI, Kenya -

WND senior staff reporter Jerome Corsi yesterday was refused permission to hold a scheduled news conference about his investigation into Barack Obama's Kenyan links by Kenyan immigration officials and soldiers armed with automatic weapons who then took him to his departure flight and made it clear he was not welcome to return.

"Don't ever come back. See you in hell," Corsi reported an unidentified official told him as the author of the No. 1 best-selling book "The Obama Nation" was delivered to a flight departing from Nairobi for London.

Corsi is now in London, where he will file a WND story on his discoveries in Kenya and recount yesterday's ordeal in radio and TV interviews, including the Fox News Channel's Hannity and Colmes.

Late yesterday, Corsi was able to communicate surreptitiously with WND in Kenya after being held incommunicado by immigration officials who at one point claimed his was being held because of a paperwork mixup.

He was just getting ready for a 10 a.m. (3 a.m. EDT) news conference to announce the results of his investigation into Obama's connections inside Kenya when immigration officials detained him along with Tim Bueler, his publicist.

Corsi made a quick contact with WND founder and editor Joseph Farah, but then Kenyan authorities, armed with automatic weapons, confiscated his passport and cell phone and held him as if he were suspected of a crime.

Corsi documented the ordeal and dispatched a report to WND from his telephone later in the brief period between the time authorities returned his belongings in preparation for his departure and when the British Airways jet took off.

"We were detained and lied to all day," Corsi wrote. "The immigration officer at the hotel 15 minutes before the press conference this morning said we only needed to come to the immigration headquarters downtown for a few minutes and that we would be back to the hotel for the press conference with only a few minutes delay."

That, however, was not to be the case, as Corsi and Bueler would find out soon after they left their hotel.

"We got brought to immigration headquarters by what turned out to be about a dozen immigration officers plus military armed with automatic rifles," he reported. "Tim got placed in the back of the vehicle and was surrounded by the armed military. I was in the front between the driver and the top immigration officer who first identified himself at the hotel."

Kenyan authorities took their cell phones and passports, even while explaining the Americans were "not under arrest."

Hours later, two lawyers appeared before the author and his publicist, although they had not been requested.

"About 1:30, the chief immigration officer demanded we accompany him immediately to the airport - we were told immigration needed to verify our air tickets, which always were for this flight tonight," Corsi wrote. "The tickets were always e-tickets and could easily be validated by computer from anywhere."

But Kenyan immigration officials then explained the men's entry cards had been "lost" and that Corsi and Bueler had to be at the airport to help investigate what happened.

In addition to being held incommunicado, the two also were held without food.

"We were offered no food until Tim began feeling a problem with his blood sugar, then around 2:30 p.m. the head immigration people allowed one of the immigration officials to accompany us so we could have 'no more than 15 minutes' to buy something to eat,'" Corsi wrote.

Eventually, they were taken from the holding facility to the airport.

"We were led out of headquarters by [the] back stairs and elevators, to avoid the press that had followed us to headquarters and was still waiting for interviews," Corsi reported.

"We went to the airport via armed caravan," Corsi added, and on arrival the two Americans were told to go into a "holding cell" already containing other possible deportees.

"We refused, demanding to know if we were being charged with any offenses, where our lawyers had gone, and why we had to be locked up, when all day we had been lied to and told we would be released 'soon,'" Corsi reported.

The instructions to go into the holding cell were repeated several times, always without success, he said.

Late in the afternoon the two were told they would be allowed to board the British Airways flights to London and "that we had committed no offenses and were not being deported," said Corsi.

But authorities still kept the cell phones and passports.

"About 6 p.m. our lawyer arrived with our luggage, which we had not been allowed to go get or pack," Corsi wrote. "We had no place or opportunity to consult with the lawyer, who was asked to leave once we got our bags."

A brief meeting with Richard Nicholson, the vice consul in the U.S. embassy followed.

"He, too, confirmed we had done nothing wrong and were not being deported," Corsi wrote.

It was shortly after that, when authorities returned Corsi's cell phone, that he was able to provide this report as the British Airways flight prepared for departure for London.

Peter Mbae, a Kenyan publicist who arranged the news conference, told WND he contacted the Ministry of Immigration and was told the Americans were being held but would be let go eventually.

It was just one of the stories released during the day. One official with the Embassy of Kenya in Washington said he was unaware of Corsi's detention. When WND reached the embassy later, a receptionist confirmed the official word was that Corsi was not detained.

"He's enjoying his holiday in Kenya," she said.

The management of the hotel where Corsi was scheduled to hold the press conference backed away from its previous commitment, too.

In a press release, the hotel said: "We would like to assure our business partners and the public at large that Laico Regency Hotel is a law-abiding institution and does not condone any smear campaigns. The management cannot allow such activities to take place."

Corsi was in Kenya because Obama has a history of connections there, and the African nation is where his father worked as a well-known government economist. Corsi documented this history in his book but scheduled the trip to find answers to lingering questions - particularly about the links between the presidential candidate and Kenya Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Corsi had promised a news conference that would "expose details of deep secret ties between U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and a section of Kenya government leaders, their connection to certain sectoral groups in Kenya and subsequent plot to be executed in Kenya should Senator Obama win the American presidency."

Corsi was set to show Obama and Odinga have been in direct contact since the senator's visit to Kenya  in 2006. He was to claim Obama advised Odinga on campaign strategy and helped him raise money in the U.S. for the Kenya presidential campaign.

Corsi was to report Odinga's 2007 presidential campaign strategy called for exploiting anti-Kikuyu tribal sentiments, claiming victory and charging voter fraud even if the campaign knew the election had been legitimately lost. Odinga, Corsi said, also was willing to fan the flames of ethnic tribal tensions and use violence as a last resort by calling for mass action that led to the destruction of properties, injuries, loss of life and the displacement of over 500,000 Kenyans. The purpose was to compel the Electoral Commission of Kenya to declare him the winner or enable him to declare himself the winner by force.

Even though Odinga has not fulfilled his campaign promises to the Muslims who voted for him, he continues to cause concern among Kenyans because he has not declared his position on Shariah law, Corsi said.

Corsi said Obama remained in active phone contact with Odinga through the New Hampshire Democratic Party primary in January. The Illinois senator continued to support Odinga, he said, turning a blind eye to an agreement signed with Muslims and the post-election violence instigated as part of the campaign strategy.