If we are going to win this thing, this battle to retake our culture and our country, you are going to have to learn to love to fight.

This battle can’t be left to a few champions who do battle on the airwaves or on cable or on the Internet, or who just do their part tweeting and Facebooking.  While we Constitutional conservatives, Tea Partiers, or whatever we call ourselves have been punching above our weight – the merely crappy debt ceiling deal would have been an unholy abomination of a deal if not for the intransigence of our Congressional allies supported by our voices from outside the Beltway – the fact is that we need more warriors.  That’s you.

And to be a warrior you need to want to fight.  You need to need to fight.  I’m not talking about punching and kicking – though if someone wants to go there, hey, let’s rock.  This is spoken or written combat, whether the battlefield is a cocktail party or a Facebook page.  And it’s vital.  These are serious issues that are worth fighting over.   Our Founders didn’t think they were making a country for a bunch of simpering, goody-goody wimps who go all wobbly at a harsh word or a raised voice.  Democracy requires guts.  Nut up.

People whine about fighting, cry over “bickering,” stammer out clichés about “bipartisanship,” “compromise” and being “reasonable.”  Well, I reject bipartisanship, compromise and reasonability, and so must you.  I want to fight and to win; death or glory.  Compromise is for losers – half a turd is still 100% turd.  But enough about the debt ceiling bill.

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On Wednesday, President Obama attended a gala celebration in Chicago to celebrate his fiftieth birthday one day early. Attendees paid $35,800 a ticket to bask in the light of their Messiah, and to mingle with musical stars Herbie Hancock and OK Go.

Meanwhile, outside the Obama bubble, the stock market heralded President Obama’s 50th birthday with a 512 point decline — more than 10 points for each year he’s been alive. It was the Dow’s worst day since the 2008 financial crisis.

Many Americans find the President amiable and charismatic. That said, results are all that count, and by this measure, the President has fallen well short of the mark.

For those still blaming President Bush for an economy that has been all but stagnant for nearly three years of Obama’s management, the numbers speak for themselves:

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Senator Mike Lee to discuss the debt ceiling deal, and his new book, The Freedom Agenda: Why a Balanced Budget Amendment is Necessary to Restore Constitutional Government. Then Francis Cianfrocca discusses the wild week for the markets and the latest jobs report.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Mike Lee blazes new kind of tea party influence

Buy The Freedom Agenda: Why a Balanced Budget Amendment is Necessary to Restore Constitutional Government on Amazon
Senator Mike Lee
Job Creation Inches Higher; Unemployment Slips to 9.1%
BLS: Employment Situation Summary for July

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Until recently, the bookstore at the University of Tennessee sold breath mints in little boxes that had a photograph of Obama on the outside, with the caption: “This is Change? DisappointMINTS”

Talk about honest marketing.

Apparently, the bookstore sold similar mints when George W. Bush was president (the caption on the package then read: “National EmbarssMINTS”).

Anyway, although it was okay for the bookstore to sell “EmbarassMINTS,” Tennessee Representative Joe Armstrong decided it was not okay to sell the “DisappointMINTS.” Thus, after receiving a complaint from one student who was offended by the mints, he personally went into the UT bookstore and told them to pull the mints.

(In case you haven’t figured it out, Armstrong is a Democrat.)

On what grounds did Armstrong do this? On the grounds that the First Amendment doesn’t protect mints, because they’re not “educational” (according to Armstrong). But what Armstrong doesn’t realize is that these mints have become quite educational, inasmuch they drew him out of his hole just long enough to show us how very much the left despises free speech and free expression.

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Many local governments in the “Sunshine State” embrace transparency, according to Sunshine Review, a nonprofit organization dedicated to government transparency. And, then there is Miami-Dade County.

• Salaries over $150K
• Benefits for people with salaries over $150K
• Overtime paid to retiring personnel 2008-2011
• Number of department-issued cell phones from January 1, 2008 to January 1, 2011
• Number of department-issued personal cars for take-home use

Senator Rubio continues to impress with his Reagan-like efforts to restrain government and promote growth. His latest initiative is legislation to curtail rogue IRS bureaucrats who are seeking to use regulatory edicts to overturn 90 years of law.

Here are excerpts from a report in The Hill.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and other Senate Republicans on Tuesday introduced a bill aimed at blocking pending regulations that would require banks to report to the Internal Revenue Service all interest deposits paid to nonresident aliens (NRA). Rubio, along with Texas GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, introduced S. 1506 because they believe the pending regulations have the potential to drive billions of dollars of deposits away from U.S. banks. A summary of the bill provided by Rubio’s office argues that this could leave U.S. banks undercapitalized and less able to lend in the U.S. “Simply put, this rule will cause billions of dollars in important NRA deposits to be withdrawn from American banks and invested in countries with less onerous reporting requirements,” the lawmakers state in the bill summary. “A capital flight of any magnitude will hurt the lending capacity of community banks and damage local and state economies — not to mention endanger those who invest in U.S. banks due to corruption, inflation, and violence in their home countries, particularly in nations like Mexico and Venezuela.” The summary also notes that Congress has explicitly exempted NRA deposits from taxation… Rubio’s bill is a companion bill to H.R. 2568, which was introduced by Reps. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Francisco Canseco (R-Texas), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Ruben Hinojosa (D-Texas) and Gregory Meeks (D-NY).

This may sound like a technical issue, but there are big implications.

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This is one part of a running series entitled “Indoctrination Fridays,” a weekly review of leftist propaganda incorporated into public school curriculum, much of it geared towards elementary students.  For more of the series, please visit PublicSchoolSpending.com.

In the late 1990s, the Los Angeles Unified School District partnered with United Teachers Los Angeles – funded by a federal grant – to produce a multi-part curriculum entitled, “Workplace Issues and Collective Bargaining in the Classroom.”

Education Action Group obtained it from the California Department of Education.

The purpose of the lessons is to get students to appreciate the need for collective bargaining, and experience first-hand how it works. During the lessons, which can take up to a week of class time, students pose as either “labor” or “management” and bargain a teachers’ contract.  They grapple with such issues as health insurance co-pays, raises and hiring procedures. Finally, the union has someone to feel its pain!

The curriculum includes a video which touts the success of the program.  It’s insightful that the very first speaker on the video is the president of the teachers union, A.J. Duffy:

“UTLA plays a unique role in the labor movement in L.A. As the second largest teachers’ union in the country, with all of our other responsibilities, we are in the position to educate the next generation of civic leaders by reaching out to high school students and having them participate in a unique UTLA program. … The Collective Bargaining Education Project brings the lessons of labor to the classroom by involving students in the same process UTLA and other unions engage in to gain better wages and working conditions for teachers and students at L.A. Unified Schools.”

The union endorsements of the curriculum don’t stop there.

Linda Tubach, one of the curriculum’s creators, says “The students have a very direct experience with the issues that they’re going to face in their workplaces and their experience is a collective one in small groups, mentored by coaches who have direct experience in the collective bargaining process.”

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Today, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired 11,000+ air traffic controllers who had walked off their jobs on an illegal strike.

There has been a good deal of discussion of late about whether or not the IRS should launch an investigation into Media Matters’ tax-exempt status.  In today’s part two of a three part series from FOX Business’ Elizabeth MacDonald, details of the civilian complaint filed by C. Boyden Gray demonstrate why the former White House counsel to President George W. Bush believes that Media Matters should have its tax-exempt status yanked.

Citing a pattern of “unlawful conduct,” Gray writes in his petition, which FOX Business has obtained, that the nonprofit has “executed a partisan strategy” in violation of U.S. tax law as it exists “no longer to educate the public but, rather, to declare ‘war on FOX,’” Gray says, quoting from an interview its founder, David Brock, gave to the website Politico.

Also unlawful, Gray says, is the nonprofit’s reported goal to “disrupt” the commercial interests of News Corp. (News Corp. is the parent of FOX News and FOX Business.)

Read the whole article, Former White House Counsel to IRS: Pull Media Matters’ Tax-Exempt Status.

Among the activity noted in the complaint:

• Conducting a campaign to get chain book retailers to stop selling the book, “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry”
• Advocating for legislation such as the Fairness Doctrine, which would be in violation of tax law if such activity exceeds an insubstantial amount
• Stating that it is “looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network,” and intending to “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to [sic] disrupt his commercial interests.”
• Using tax-free dollars to fund the “Progressive Talent Initiative,” an endeavor “geared toward members of the Netroots community” and aimed at producing “camera-ready liberals” who can speak to the media on progressive issues

So many other examples not even mentioned in the article are readily available.

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BILL DALEY:  The delegation is here, sir.

OBAMA:  All right.  Bring them in.  Let’s get this over with.

[enter Clintons, DNC Chair, Reid, Pelosi, Pollster John Zogby, Jesse Jackson, George Soros]

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ:  John, tell the President what you told us.

ZOGBY:  The debt-ceiling deal hasn’t helped you, sir.  We’ve just completed a telephone survey of 1000 people.  10% said they would hold their noses and vote to reelect you; 10% complained the aides were mean, the kids never visited, and the home smelled like disinfectant; and 80% vowed to vote for your opponent, whoever he is.

OBAMA:  Bad, yes, but there’s still time to  . . . .

NANCY PELOSI:  Tell him the rest, John.

ZOGBY:  The survey was limited to Democrats in Ms. Pelosi’s district, sir.  Of those who swear you won’t get their vote, 40% say they plan to register and cast ballots in neighboring districts as well.

PELOSI:  Obviously, they’re good Democrats, sir.  They’ve simply had it with you.

OBAMA:  So, you want me to stand down in 2012 for . . . Hillary?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ:  God no, sir.  It’d look like we pushed you out.  Poof goes the black vote.  We want you to run but . . . welcome her primary challenge.

VALERIE JARRETT:  Ah, I get it.  He’s supposed to lose gracefully, then stump for Hillary next fall in places like Harlem, Watts, and Liberty City, where his approval rating is holding steady at 97%.  I’d pass, sir.

HILLARY:  Way I look at it, Mr. President, Billy Jeff here broke trail for you in the 90s.  “First Black President,” and all.  You owe us.

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A little more than a year ago, Rawesome Foods, a health food co-op based in Venice, California was the target of an armed raid by several agencies, and the resulting video went viral.

On August 3, 2011, Rawesome experienced another multi-agency raid, but this one resulted in the arrest of the establishment’s owner James Stewart.

Stewart, and Sharon Palmer, the farmer who supplies him with raw goat milk, are being held on bails in excess of $100,000 and are each charged with four felonies and several more misdemeanors. Some examples of the charges are “processing unpasteurized milk,” “improper labeling of food,” and “improper egg temperatures.”

The government has kept pursuing Stewart and his club for years, despite a lack of any reports of illness or injury from consumption of his foods. Rawesome members argue that they are part of a private club, not subject to government regulation, and that they are being persecuted for their alternative lifestyles.

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Maine Governor Paul LePage is no stranger to hard times. He left home at 11 after a rough childhood, spending time on the streets, yet managed to finish both high school and college. He later went on to work as a Pepsi-Cola truck driver, at a meat-packing plant and as a short-order cook.

This is the story of Gov. Paul LePage, who, in a little more than six months, has ushered in sweeping reforms for Maine — a record of accomplishments it might take other governors years to achieve. What’s even more remarkable is that LePage is a tea party-backed conservative making significant strides in supposedly hostile New England.

LePage visited Heritage recently and shared the piece of advice that have inspired him throughout his life — just 10 two-letter words: “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

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In what appears to have been a sociopathically twisted interview, Martin Bashir of MSNBC interviewed Dr. Stanton Peele, who describes himself as an “addiction specialist,” to, lo and behold, diagnose members of the “Tea Party,” also known by their other name, the American People, as “addicted to having their own way,” a condition which will supposedly render them “psychopaths.”

First, I don’t know of any mainstream American who feels like he or she has “had his own way” much lately. Second, clearly, Bashir and his guest have the wrong patient on their couch.

Anyone who has struggled through a family member with an addiction- whether to alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, or any other out of control behavior- knows the ropes. If you don’t have an addict in your immediate family, but you’re an American who is aware of your surroundings, you now know them, too.

We have just experienced the first real intervention, organized by the unorganized “Tea Party,” on behalf of the real patient, our establishment Washington politicians, who are addicted to spending and the power that emanates from it. The intervention that has just been performed on Washington came with all the characteristics that are typical of most interventions.

First, there is the “identified” patient, i.e., the family member who is the addict. This person is steeped in “denial” of his addiction. The family who has brought him to the office has been through hell with him. He has done any number of things to them in order to maintain his addiction, which is “number one” in his life. He has lied to them, hidden things from them, stolen money from them, made pledges to them that he would stop his addictive behavior, and then broken those very pledges.

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Since the modern tea party movement began February 27th, 2009, leftist ideologues in both political parties have tried to halt the movement. Their tactics are as predictable as they are weak. Their weapon? Name-calling.

Why must the supposed elites in the progressive movement resort to such childish methods like name-calling to counter opposing political views? There are only two reasons. Either they are over-educated/under-smart or their political ideology is indefensible. After nearly three years of redistributing income, Stimulus bills, Cash for Clunkers, $1.6 billion annual deficits, and raising the debt ceiling a gargantuan $2 trillion, I submit the answer is obvious.

Tea party members have been called names like astroturf, right-wing extremists, evil mongers, teabaggers (by our own President), liars, baby killers, greedy and, of course, racist. None of these names has resulted in slowing down the movement. Quite the contrary, the silly names from our political opponents illustrate the weakness of their ideological position and embolden the tea party to lengthen our stride. But what is our great sin in the eyes of these elitist liberals by which we are labeled with such vitriol? Exercising our First Amendment rights to peacefully protest and electing political leaders to…horrors!… represent our views!

Every week, American citizens calling for fiscal responsibility are called new names by those who ridiculously support continued trillion dollar deficits and the borrowing/printing of $.44 on each federal dollar spent. Like all loyal foot soldiers, liberals immediately fall in line armed with the latest ad hominem and attack those in the tea party movement.

The current name du jour of the tea party is “terrorist.” No less than the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, referred to American citizens who identify with tea party principles as such. However, Biden’s use of “terrorist” is not to be confused with oft-misunderstood Muslim extremists who explode themselves and kill innocent victims. Those would be, according to leftist elites, freedom fighters. The real terrorists are Americans who disagree with raising our debt limit for the 11th time in recent history from the current $14 trillion to nearly $17 trillion and giving President Obama and his friends a $2 trillion plus spending spree before the election next November. How evil can we teabaggers…oops…terrorists be?

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European courts brought more bad news to Google’s recent reign of error as Switzerland’s top Court ruled that Google’s Street View mapping service violated the privacy of its citizens forcing Google to blur faces and license plate numbers before putting images on the Internet. The Swiss Court stated, “the interest of the public in having a visual record and the commercial interests of the defendants in no way outweighs the rights over one’s own image.” Switzerland joins the United Kingdom, Spain and France all of whom have found that Google violated various privacy laws.

Lately, the United States has gotten into the act.  Last year, the Federal Communications Commission opened an investigation after the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a complaint asking the Commission to investigate violations of federal wiretap law and the U.S. Communications Act. Now, the FTC has launched an anti-trust probe into Google and the Senate will be holding hearings on privacy and Google’s anti-competitiveness nature when Congress returns in September.  But authorities have only begun to scratch the surface of issues relating to whether Google has lived up to its mantra of “Do No Evil.”

One thing is clear–Google’s position on privacy turns America’s long-standing view of the Constitution on its head.

In December 2009, Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, declared about privacy concerns: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

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It is a time-honored tactic of radicals to accuse their enemies of what they do in order to convert a negative into a positive, as the master of political agitation Saul Alinsky taught.

This explains the Left’s newfound interest in the lie that the Tea Party is comprised of “terrorists.”

Unless you think petitioning the government for lower spending is somehow akin to flying airplanes into buildings, you’ve got to agree with Sarah Palin, whose recent salvos on the topic are dead-on.

As President Obama and his merry band of Marxists continue driving America off a cliff, Palin (and columnist Charles Krauthammer) have been pushing back hard against the liberal talking point that Tea Party supporters are terrorists.

Her comments came after Vice President Joe Biden, Congressman Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), and their socialist buddies at MSNBC recently breathed new life into the “terrorist” smear. Because President Obama, who himself has ties to real, live terrorists, has not upbraided the vice president, we can safely assume he agrees with Biden.

Said Palin on Fox News Channel:

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Last year 876,020 people attended the Wisconsin State Fair to see children show the animals they care for,  try various foods on a stick, play carnival games, enjoy music and celebrate the last few days of summer. This year five dozen protesters chose to disrupt the normally placid Wisconsin State Fair grand opening with chants; at least one of them shouted an epithet commonly associated with political assassination.

The MacIver News Service’s cameras were there when a throng of about 60 protesters disrupted the opening ceremonies, shouting down Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker during his brief speech. Walker was one of several dignitaries at the opening ceremony of the the fair, but the only one there who is under fire from Big Labor for ending a fifty year entitlement of collective bargaining that was costing local and state government hundreds of millions every year.

Sic semper tyrannis is the Latin phrase meaning “thus always to tyrants.”  The phrase is commonly said to have originated with Brutus during the assassination of Julius Caesar. It was later shouted by John Wilkes Booth while assassinating President Abraham Lincoln.

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Sunday evening I was mulling over data from the 2010 Census when my wife suggested we take our extended family out to California Pizza Kitchen.

Walking into CPK, I was still mentally processing the implications of the census data that showed what appeared to be a strong link between college educated Americans moving out of high tax states to low tax states (go ahead and laugh, yes, I’m really like that).  When the menus came, my deepening melancholy for California’s self-inflicted tax wounds shifted to sadness due to the Golden State’s penchant for regulating all aspects of life.  Why?  I immediately saw that CPK’s shiny new menus were in violation of the California Health and Safety Code Section 114094, the law that requires restaurant chains to list “…the calorie content information for a standard menu item next to the item on the menu in a size and typeface that is clear and conspicuous.”   Nary a speck of calorie data was next to any item on the menu (not that I cared about it, I don’t go to restaurants to count my calories – the information was available on request, nice, but not legal in California).

A full-blown case of Over Regulation Realization Depression hit me.  California Pizza Kitchen, the quintessential California business, would be forced to reprint thousands of menus for their 67 California restaurants, or risk fines of up to $500 for each location: a $33,500 exposure for each local health inspector visit while out of compliance.

While waiting for my California Club Pizza (it was delicious enough to temporarily lift me out of my bad case of ORRD) my thoughts drifted back to the floor vote on SB 1420, the 2008 bill by Senator Alex Padilla (D-Van Nuys) that sought to impose the calorie counting mandate on business.  I recall arguing against the bill which passed on a largely party line vote, Democrats for it, and Republicans mostly against it (then Senator Abel Maldonado was the sole Republican “aye” vote while some of the more moderate Assembly Republicans, Bonnie Garcia and Todd Spitzer, abstained).

Democrats justified calorie listing mandate by saying that big restaurant chains could afford it (the bill exempted chains with less than 20 locations), that some restaurant meals contained enough calories to feed an entire family for a week (or something along those lines) and that the bill was made less odious than it was initially so as to remove the opposition of the California Restaurant Association.

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