Hey conservatives, are you there?

No I don’t mean you Republicans…I mean those of you who are lovers of liberty! I mean those of you who defend the Constitution, not just when it protects them but when it protects someone they don’t like. I know you’re out there. You may be a Libertarian or an independent, you may not be affiliated with any party at all. Ok you might be a Republican too, but I know you’re there.

Well listen up!

I am not exactly sure at what moment the theft of the word “conservative” actually occurred, but I know it has happened. Through the rapid expansion of the size and role of government over the last 100 years the progressives not only infiltrated the Democrats but they infiltrated the Republicans too. They took over words like “liberal” and “conservative.” In fact, if you go back far enough “liberal” used to mean “conservative” until they stole that word. Then all the people who loved freedom found a new home as conservatives, and the progressives came to steal that too.

You see, that is what they do. Progressives are wolves in whatever clothes they need to wear to fool everyone about what their actual agenda is. The reason they do this is because their real agenda is so antithetical to the mission statement of America that most Americans would marginalize the people who espouse these ideas if they knew who they were. Unfortunately, America’s awareness has been dulled by years of addiction to the graft of big government.

If we are not only to survive but thrive as a nation we must separate the progressives who hate freedom from the conservatives that love it. Only then will we know who’s who.

How do we do that? Well conservatives love the Constitution, so let’s start there.

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“I could never home-school.  I would probably kill my kid by Wednesday, if I had to spend the entire day with him, every day!”

Typical fare for the teenager-parent relationship?  Unfortunately, yes.  But ironically, the individuals making these pronouncements are often the ideal candidates for home schooling.  Possibly the worst thing frustrated parents can do is send their aloof, argumentative children away (to school.) In any other setting, dropping them off somewhere, for someone else to deal with, would be deemed giving up on the relationship.  (This is the way children likely perceive the slight as well – they aren’t stupid, you know.)

If the parents cannot stand to spend time with their own child, how will he ever feel loved?  But parents are so blinded by school’s beacon; they shield their eyes and shove the child into the wolves’ den.  (It is no wonder he returns home behaving like a wild animal.)

What children learn in school

Parents wonder where their relationship with their teen went wrong.  Answer: Their influence was all but eclipsed the moment the child crossed the school threshold.  It’s that simple.

Each day a young child goes to school, he learns (way too early,) that his parents don’t know everything.  School reinforces this point by teaching the little ones to instruct their parents. “Tell Mommy not to pack plastic sandwich bags in your lunch – that kills the dolphins!”  Mommy kills dolphins!

He makes friends with other kids whose parents also slaughter innocent animals. He joins his peers, learns to challenge authority, then comes home and asserts himself.  The parent thinks, “Well, that’s probably a good thing, because he is learning to be self-confident and capable.”

But a good parent has a sneaking suspicion that it isn’t quite right.

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There’s something curiously missing from this story on Chicago’s Mantu Dance Company. It may be the only time the company has made big news without a mention of Barack and Michelle Obama in years.

One can only imagine the headlines were it so closely linked to a Republican President.

Illinois officials are taking a closer look at a nonprofit dance company that was awarded a $4.5 million state grant in 2003 for a planned performing arts center on the South Side that has yet to begin construction.

Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity spokeswoman Marcelyn Love, whose department hands out millions in grant money every year to arts and culture organizations, said the Muntu Dance Theater Co. of Chicago will be placed on “strict oversight” as they move forward with long-delayed plansto build an arts center at 47th Street and Greenwood Avenue in the city’s Kenwood neighborhood.

At issue is a 6 million dollar, if not more, vacant lot in Chicago.

A circular concrete barrier behind a tattered chain-link fence at the corner of 47th Street and Greenwood Avenue in the Kenwood neighborhood is all there is to show for once-ambitious plans to remake a struggling business corridor into a hub for African-American arts and culture.

Eight years ago, the nonprofit Muntu Dance Theatre secured more than $6 million in city and state grants, rights to the two-acre property for $1, and cash donations from the likes of ComEd and Boeing to build a $15 million performing arts center.

At the time, the project came with the blessings of local leaderswho hoped to not only turn around the fortunes of an area littered with liquor stores and boarded-up buildings, but help restore a piece of Bronzeville’s historic luster.

It’s interesting to note that Michelle Obama appears to now have enough time to plan school lunches for every child in America, yet, despite sitting on Mantu’s board for years didn’t seem to be able to find time to provide the least bit of oversight that may have prevented this problem. And that’s not all.

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I know it’s MSNBC and everything, but I still had difficulty believing I actually witnessed this clip on Breitbart TV of a silly little man saying the Constitution is irrelevant and confusing because it’s, like, more than 100 years old.

That does seem to be the sort of thing only the very young might say. So long as they are also rather foolish.

So I did a quick search for ‘Ezra Klein graduated with degree in’, hoping against delicious hope he was some sort of classics major. Or something indicating this young feller had possibly been required to read other really, you know, old stuff like maybe the Gettysburg Address or the Bible or…oh, dear, did he just say what I think he said about the Koran? Maybe Burke (I kid). Marbury v. Madison. Or Robinson Crusoe (‘Friday’? What the hell kind of name is that? Oh. 1719. Nooo wuuunder.)

But his degree was in political science. So class assignments probably didn’t range far beyond reading the writings of 26 year-olds at the Washington Post, which he wanted to grow up to become when he was 26. And did!

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This ought to go over well with the conservative base…

If you thought the fact that RNC Chair candidate, Maria Cino, was an Obamacare lobbyist was outrageous wait until you hear the latest…

The leading candidate in the race – Reince Priebus’s law firm supports Obamacare and says its constitutional!

Yes, you read that correctly.

Reince Priebus’s law firm supports Obamacare and says its constitutional.

Unbelievable.

The far left Think Progress website reported this today:

On January 14, 168 standing members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) will hold an election to select the next national chairman of the party. Current RNC Chairman Michael Steele is running for a second term against a number of challengers, including Saul Anuzis, Ann Wagner, Maria Cino, Gentry Collins, and Reince Priebus.

Priebus, the current state chairman of the Wisconsin GOP, is positioning himself as the true conservative alternative to Steele…

Despite his heated anti-Obama attacks, Priebus makes a living at a law firm far more comfortable with the policies of President Obama. Priebus works as a partner at the Milwaukee law firm Michael Best and Friedrich LLP. Over the summer, the firm created a series of presentations to explain health reform to its clients and to pitch the firm’s services for employers looking to comply with new health reform regulations. In one presentation, John Barlament, a colleague to Priebus at the firm, said that a health reform repeal is not only unlikely, but that the lawsuits brought by Republican Party allies to declare the law unconstitutional probably have no merit. Referring to the controversy over the individual mandate, Barlament explained that the commerce clause of the constitution “gives Congress authority to act on his legislation.”

It will be interesting to hear what GOP Leader John Boehner, GOP Whip Eric Cantor and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have to say about this.

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From CBS News:

President Obama earlier this month signed into law a measure to pay American Indians and black farmers a total of $4.6 billion to cover decades of government mistreatment. Now, a Republican congressman says the GOP-controlled House next year will hold hearings to investigate the settlement, which he says amounts to “reparations.”

Conservative Rep. Steve King of Iowa told local radio station KCIM that the Pigford settlement, which was part of the legislation, “is full of fraud” and “amounts to paying reparations to black farmers in America. We don’t do reparations in America.”

King said he expects Republicans to examine this issue and other issues Democrats may be hesitant to investigate, such as the re-organization of the defunct group ACORN. This isn’t the first time King has criticized the settlement, Talking Points Memo points out. (more…)

It’s no secret that health care is an industry beset by huge problems. The problem doesn’t as much stem from “evil insurance companies” as it does from a system created by federal and state governments to make a system as economically inefficient as possible.

For instance, most people do not pick their own insurance companies. Their employer does. The customer then isn’t the consumer, it is the business that contracts them to provide insurance for their employees. Patients don’t pay the doctors, the insurance companies do. In fact, the medical industry collects maybe 30% of the bills that aren’t sent to an insurance company. So their customer isn’t the patient, it’s the insurance company (or the government in the case of Medicare/Medicaid).

What you have is a system that puts all the control in people who aren’t the primary two parties in a health care relationship: the doctor and the patient. Is it any wonder why the system sucks? We’ve taken everything we know about economics and done the opposite.

However, for their part the doctors and the insurance companies have more access to legislators (due to campaign contributions and lobbyists) than patients do. The result is a regulatory system that is skewed away from patients, affordability and choice.

Illinois provides a great example of this.

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Well, it turns out that the slow snow removal process in New York City was the act of childish adults protesting budget cuts.

According to the New York Post:

“[Unionized city workers] sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.

On Wednesday, MYFOXNY.com reported that two people died, including a new born baby, because emergency crews couldn’t navigate the unplowed streets.

Plain and simple: the union leaders who called for the job action should be charged with negligent homicide.  Let them prove that their actions did not result in the unfortunate deaths of these New Yorkers.

For too long, Big Labor has been allowed to hold taxpayers hostage in order to get their way at the bargaining table.  And this time, their utter selfishness may have contributed to the deaths of two innocent people.

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The New York Post is reporting that unionized public employees were encouraged to slow the process of digging out of the recent snowstorm to demonstrate their labor leverage in hopes of grabbing more taxpayer largess.

Think that’s shocking? Just wait til taxpayers finally start paying attention to the power public employees have over local, state, and federal budgets. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown have already warned that 80 cents of every state dollar goes to public employee pay and benefits. Other states face similar figures. Shocking figures have shown public employee pensions twice as high in New York compared to their private-sector counterparts. Heck, even 60 Minutes is starting to take notice.

With all the political payoffs, scandals, and bailouts, the issue seems as mundane as the figures are mind-boggling, but the bill for lavish public employee pay is coming due in the form of a pension tsunami — or, if you prefer, a blizzard that will have union bosses calling for a bailout.

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Amidst the hustle and bustle of the “lame duck” Congress, another law was passed that didn’t quite get the same media coverage as the Bush tax extension “package,” the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the new START treaty. The Food Safety Modernization Act was not steeped in the same level of popular controversy as these other pieces of legislation. Nevertheless, its passage may affect our daily lives even more than these, and in a rather stealth manner.

Yes, the week before Christmas, the 111th Congress of the United States gave Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), quite extensive authority over food production in our country. That’s food- from the seeds that grow the plants and the animals that provide the meat and milk, to the Lean Cuisine you had for dinner.

Originally proposed last year by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin,  the new law will cost about 1.4 billion dollars over a four-year period. It arrived, as much legislation does, in response to several major crises. Recent salmonella outbreaks in eggs and peanuts, as well as E. coli, in spinach, caused sickness, and some deaths, within the country. These outbreaks led to food recalls and much criticism of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is under the authority of HHS, for its poor oversight of already known risky food producers.

The new law is intended to redirect the FDA from the position of crisis management of food-borne illness emergencies to that of preventing them. Under the new law, food manufacturers will be required to engage in detailed record-keeping of their processing systems and ways in which they can avoid bacterial contamination of their products. All of these records, and test results proving their systems to be effective means of eliminating contamination, must be shared with the FDA. The agency will now have the authority to order food recalls (currently, it only requests them). and will be required to perform inspections of food producers more often.

So, what’s wrong with this?

There are three issues that should concern us:

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California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer is absolutely right to scoff at accusation in the Wall Street Journal that California is the “the Lindsay Lohan of states”. Ms. Lohan is currently in Court Ordered rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic, whereas wily California is still “at large” and making lots of new Ponzi scheme promises to pay existing municipal bondholder with future borrowings.

Treasurer Lockyer in his Op Ed crows that California has approximately $89.4 billion in revenue and only $36 billion mandated as priority to pay schools, leaving “$53.4 billion available to pay debt service on bonds — more than eight times the $6.6 billion of interest payments the state will need to make this year.” But he conveniently forgets to tell readers that those interest costs are headed to $9 billion, pension costs will double to $8 billion, the State budget has a $24 billion expected shortfall over the next 18 months; and the State must by law pay back $27 billion in short term borrowing from State agencies.

California does have many similarities to Ms. Lohan. Both were America’s premier child stars, but over the last fifteen years they have increasingly been overwhelmed by their addictions. For Ms. Lohan, the addiction is cocktails and drugs; for California, it is shopping and spending. Psychiatrists explain that addictive behavior is any behavior that has become the exclusive focus of a person’s life and physically, mentally, or socially and harms the individual and or others. The addictive behavior produces beta-endorphins in the brain, which makes the person feel “high.”

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JOE BIDEN: Man, the wingnuts smoked us in midterms.

OBAMA: Yeah, they kicked our butts all right. Hey, I’m craving a cigarette. Anybody got one?

BIDEN: A cryin’ shame, Boss. Like you said last week, Boehner’ll drive the budget bus while we’re sittin’ in back scratchin’ our . . . .

OBAMA: Didn’t say that, Joe. Said I was “itching for a fight.”

DAVID AXELROD: Besides the veto, only one real option’s left to you come January, sir: creative new abuses of your executive powers.

OBAMA: Agreed. Listen up, everyone. Assume gridlock and suggest end runs around Congress on savings and revenue. Janet, you start.

NAPOLITANO: Disband the INS and employ drug traffickers to police our southern border, sir; they know the territory and consider human smugglers scum.

DAVID PLOUFFE: That would save us a bundle and show you’re serious about stopping uncredentialed landscapers infiltrating from Juárez and Tegulcigalpa, Mr. President.

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I’m going to take the death panel end-of-life planning conundrum down one point at a time to make this very clear for Americans to understand what the Pelosi-led Democrats have done to your healthcare and their attempt to take cover under a Bush-era law–the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008.

The Hill reported that the Obama White House attempted to calm Americans’ fears of the dreaded death panels:

The Medicare policy will pay doctors for holding end-of-life-care discussions with patients, according to the Times. A similar provision was dropped from the new healthcare reform law after Republicans accused the administration of withholding care from the sick, elderly and disabled.

However, an administration spokesman said the regulation, which is less specific than the reform law’s draft language, is actually a continuation of a policy enacted under former President George W. Bush.

“The only thing new here is a regulation allowing the discussions … to happen in the context of the new annual wellness visit created by [healthcare reform],” Obama spokesman Reid Cherlin told The Wall Street Journal.

In 2003, Medicare added a consultation visit for seniors new to the program, according to the Journal. Another 2008 law, enacted under Bush, said the visit can include “end-of-life” planning discussions.

However, what The Hill’s Jason Millman forgot to mention in his article was that President Bush VETOED the 2008 bill and the Democrats, along with some “good-willed” Republicans OVERRODE Bush’s veto forcing him to sign the legislation into law.  The bill dealt with doctors’ reimbursements and more, but the Democrats slipped in the end-of-life planning by opening up the Social Security Act, which I have stated many times is dangerous. Once the act is changed, it is difficult to amend again and allows for tinkering with the Medicare fee schedule and covered services definitions and requirements

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From WRAL in Sanford, North Carolina:

Ashley Smithwick, 17, of Sanford, was suspended from Southern Lee High School in October after school personnel found a small paring knife in her lunchbox.

Smithwick said personnel found the knife while searching the belongings of several students, possibly looking for drugs.

“She got pulled into it. She doesn’t have to be a bad person to be searched,” Smithwick’s father, Joe Smithwick, said.

The lunchbox really belonged to Joe Smithwick, who packs a paring knife to slice his apple. He and his daughter have matching lunchboxes.

“It’s just an honest mistake. That was supposed to be my lunch because it was a whole apple,” he said.

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This chart compares K-12 education expenditures per pupil in each of the world’s major industrial powers. As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen.

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Avon Products recent announcement that the firm wants to avoid using ‘high-carbon, high-impact fuels’ derived from the oil sands is yet another hit and run on America’s safest and most secure oil supplier. It is a disingenuous publicity stunt that misleads the public with false promises under false premises.

Avon’s latest so-called “environmental” campaign boils down to asking its transportation contractors to eliminate higher-carbon fuels with a special focus on Canada’s oil sands. Given Avon’s sudden distaste for petroleum products one might set the same standard in return for Avon.  To speak tangentially, when the dictionary definition of hypocrisy immediately springs to mind there may be a credibility problem; ‘feigning to be what one is not; especially the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion’.  Yes, we have a credibility problem.

This is a company that nets huge corporate profits from the sales of millions of reps who idle, drive and willingly gas-guzzle their way from neighborhood to neighborhood hocking petroleum based products. Perhaps when Avon rethinks one of their core business models, we can stop laughing in Alberta.

This rash of anti-oilsands actions (we aren’t officially allowed to use the term boycott at present)  rely on a set of specious arguments.  To begin there are the technicalities that Avon and these nouveaux-environmentally sensitive companies like Gap Inc., Timberland, Levi-Strauss, Lush (operating with the aide of misinformants such as ForestEthics) hope the unwitting public will miss or at least misunderstand.

There is no real or practical way for transporters to avoid using fuel from a refinery from any one particular source of crude oil.

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On Monday, I wrote here of how President Barack Obama would pretend to work in bipartisan cooperation with the new Congress in deference to the shellacking he received in the November election – while behind the scenes dictatorially ramming through as many rules and regulations, directives and orders as he possibly can – and with which he can get away:

(Obama) will do his best to put on a public show, but his Big-Government-At-All-Costs agenda will continue unabated.  It will just be done behind the scenes via rampant, abusive expansion of the vast regulatory authority at his disposal.

Every Commission, every Agency, every Board in the federal pantheon will ratchet up their orders, rules and directives.  To impose via executive branch regulatory fiat what President Obama can no longer get done in Congress.  In other words, bypass the obviously expressed will of the American people for smaller, more accountable government – so as to continue jamming through his on-all-fronts Titanic Government plan.  And do so without the People’s representatives at all involved in the process.

… The federal Cap & Tax on – I mean Trade – energy bill didn’t pass?  No problem, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will enforce large swaths of it just as if it did.  The union vote secret-ballot-abolishing Card Check didn’t pass?  No sweat, the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will just pretend it did and move forward implementing it.

As if on cue, we have Monday night’s announcement by the Administration’s Dr. Donald M. Berwick – administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  In fact, the Christian Science Monitor article cited is entitled:

‘Death panels’ controversy: Is Obama avoiding Congress?

Berwick’s only in his post as a result of – President Obama avoiding Congress.  Berwick was never confirmed – President Obama chose to bypass the Senate and instead recess appoint him.

And there’s a reason President Obama did that – Berwick is a ghoulish dude who advocates health care rationing and is “romantic” about the death panel-enforcing British National Health Service.

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Today, in 1938, Jon Voight was born. Happy Birthday!

“We need a libertarian Che Guevara,” says libertarian activist Starchild, who makes a living as an erotic services provider.

Reason.tv’s Tim Cavanaugh sat down with Starchild, who recently ran forSan Francisco School Board as the Libertarian candidate, at the Libertopia 2010 conference in Hollywood. Their discussion covers topics such as the history of the libertarian movement, why San Francisco actually is a very libertarian city despite being named Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Year, why libertarians need to look to groups such as the Black Panthers as models for political activism, and how Starchild managed to convert Tim Cavanaugh to libertarianism.

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