Now, don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are plenty of 90-year-old, Brahmin conservatives who get flummoxed at “the Facebookings.” I am sure there still exist out-of-touch, elder statesmen of the movement that just haven’t caught up with those newfangled Internet tubes that our friend Al Gore created. I am sure that there are more than a handful of aged establishment types shaking their fist at the Fox News and those darn websheets positive that they’ll never catch on, just as they were sure rock-n-roll was a passing fad. But can you be an up and comer in the conservative movement and be wholly unaware of one of the newest icons of conservatives everywhere?

I am here at CPAC this week and just ran into Joe “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher who was telling me about his run for Congress in the 9th Congressional District. Joe made me aware of a hilarious little example of the abject cluelessness of his opponent. So let me introduce to you one Mr. Steve Kruas. Professional auctioneer actually licensed with the Ohio State Ag Department with well over 300 “successful” auctions under his belt. I guess you don’t need the Internets, talk radio and TV news shows to sell used farm equipment.

Anyhoo, the “strong fiscal conservative” is running in the 9th Congressional District GOP Primary against Wurzelbacher both of whom are vying to face Marcy Kaptur (D, OH) in the general election this year. Steve is a bit miffed that Joe isn’t giving him much notice at this point in the campaign.

Certainly, Kraus is happy to link himself with the Tea Party and even helped put on an event in Sandusky, Ohio where he set himself up as a spokesman for those venerable homegrown activists.

But it’s Kraus’ website where all the action is. There Kraus attacks Joe as a scurrilous sort of scoundrel. Why? Well, because Joe claims to be a limited government guy but he and all his friends work for BIG Government, darn it!

Joe the Plumber is a contributor for Biggovernment.com.

His campaign manager Phil Christofanelli was going to school in Missouri and is a contributor at Biggovernment.com.

Dustin Stockton of the Western Representation PAC (based in Nevada I think) solicits money for Joe the Plumber and again is a contributor for Biggovernment.com

Kinda funny all these connections to Biggovernment.com and supposedly they are fighting for limited government.

Maybe I ticked off Andrew Breitbart in a previous life (owner of Biggovernment.com)?

Horrible, right? How could this Wurzelbacher fellow, whoever that is, be claiming to be for small government when he works so darn hard for this BIG GOVERNMENT thingie?

But isn’t it obvious that Kraus doesn’t have any idea what he is talking about?

Yes, BigGovernment.com is a site owned by Andrew Breitbart (whoever that is, eh Stevie?). But BigGovernment.com is not a site that is working to promote big government ideas. It is a site that attacks big government ideas. The site’s subject is big government exposées.

So, one has to wonder how someone can claim to be a tea party conservative — a new movement, mind you, one informed daily by the Internet, talk radio, and TV cable news — and not know who Andrew Breitbart is and what his websites are and do? How can he not understand that Andrew Breitbart and all his minions are not advocates of bigger government? How can he be a new, young conservative and never have become aware of one of conservatism’s most active rock star-like personages?

Go ahead and claim that I am just coming to the defense of my boss and my coworkers here at BigGovernment.com, but come on. Think about it. Can you be a well-informed conservative these days and not be aware of the leaders in your own movement?

You tell me? But what do I know? Not only do I write for this Breitbart fellow’s BigGovernment.com but I also write for his BigJournalism.com site, too. So I must be enamored of fat journalists.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, a well known breast cancer-fighting charity, decided to withhold further donations to the abortion provider for several reasons, one of which is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Congress for violating various state abortion laws.

Last month, the Associated Press reported Komen’s new criteria and why it is excluding PP. “Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities,” the report said. “According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it’s the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.”

The foundation gave more than $569,000 to Planned Parenthood in 2010.

As to the charges against Planned Parenthood that are pending in the congressional investigation, you might recall the stellar work of Lila Rose, whose videos brought to our attention that Planned Parenthood was violating state laws by ignoring requirements to report child abuse and rape while pushing abortions on minors.

But Planned Parenthood apparently isn’t taking this lying down. They aren’t just lamenting Komen’s decision; they are getting mad.

In a fundraising letter emailed to supporters, the abortion provider proved themselves to be less a “healthcare” organization, and more the ideologically driven advocacy group that detractors say they are. The email is blunt and asks supporters to sign onto the extremist rhetoric and send it on to others. Most interesting, the letter doesn’t just attack opponents in general but specifically attacks women that oppose Planned Parenthood.

Here is the text of that shockingly harsh letter:

This is for all the anti-choice, anti-women people out there.

Listen up.

You can spend every minute of every day trying to force the rest of us to live by your ideology. You can go after federal funds for health care and pressure private organizations like the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to stop funding breast cancer screenings for poor women. You can try to make it impossible to get birth control.

But you know what you can’t do? You can’t win. You can’t break us. Planned Parenthood isn’t just a family of organizations. It’s a movement. It’s women and men of all ages who believe that health care — including reproductive health care — is a basic human right. We are millions strong. We are everywhere. We act, we give, and we do whatever it takes to make sure that Planned Parenthood is there for the women, men, and teens who rely on them.

Know this: When you go after Planned Parenthood and the people they serve, you go after ME. I stand with Planned Parenthood. I stand with them against anyone who wants to stop women from receiving the health care they need. I stand with them today, tomorrow, and for as long as I need to.

I don’t now about you, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fundraising letter like this supposedly emanating from a “health care” organization. Imagine if a hospital or other medical organization sent such a letter as this to its customers.

Also amazing is the bald attack on women who don’t agree with PP. This also proves that they aren’t an organization interested in women but one only interested in women that agree with their ideologically extreme position on abortion.

In any case, what we seem to be seeing here is the last bit of a veneer of legitimacy ripped from Planned Parenthood. It is now fully embracing its ideological drive toward infanticide and has cast away any pretext that it is at all interested in mere healthcare. With this letter Planned Parenthood is admitting that it is a “movement,” not a healthcare provider.

That is exactly what is happening. The new “big success” automaker is spending millions hiring lobbyists to squeeze more millions out of state legislatures. As Justin Owen notes, GM has “turned to another, smaller government teat” by putting its hand out to the states. GM, Owen says, “has received another $1.7 billion in taxpayer-funded grants and tax abatements.”

This is no accident of timing, either. GM admitted to the Tennessee Watchdog that begging to the states for tax dollars is a concerted effort.

“We are increasing our activity with the states obviously, in the communities in which we operate. In doing this, we’ve invested more than $6 billion (throughout the states) during the last five years and brought 15,000 people back to work. So, the activity at the state level is important to us. Our lobbying is comparable to what our competitors are doing throughout the states,” said GM spokesman Greg Martin.

For the Watchdog, Christopher Butler found that GM has received more than $1.5 billion from Michigan, $7.5 million in tax incentives from Kentucky, over $10 million from Texas, and over $2 million from Indiana. Ohio and Maryland have given to the GM bailout fund, too, with tax incentives and other giveaways.

Naturally, as these lobbying efforts grow, GM has paid lobbying firms millions for their work, millions that are coming right out of the pockets of American taxpayers both federal and state.

Apparently, making cars is not a top priority for GM anymore. Owen says that, “turning taxpayers on their heads and shaking every penny from their pockets is a profitable corporate strategy for a quasi-public car company. As of last summer, GM sat on roughly $40 billion in reserves. Yet the ribbon-cutting ceremonies with state officials across the country continue like clockwork, with taxpayers footing a lofty bill.”

The main question here is, once all the facilities are open and humming, once all the tax dollars are safely in GM’s pocket, will there be demand for the products that all these new plants are turning out? Is it a good idea in this bad economy to massively expand using the false benefit of government handouts? What will happen if, after all this government aide runs out, GM finds that its sales still don’t justify all these new plants?

Are we taxpayers going to be expected to hand GM billions more because they are “too big to fail”?

A Brooklyn man living in an apartment with his two daughters was alerted to the fact that his in-foreclosure-home had been broken into and occupied by Occupiers, as in Occupy Wall Street activists. When he rushed to his home he found a group of strangers that had broken into his home claiming to have “reclaimed” the house and given it to another family.

“They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York.

Apparently Ahadzi had bought the house in 2007 for the princely sum of $424,500 but during the housing bubble of 2009 the house ended up being worth only half that. Then, when he lost his job and got behind on the mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the property.

Enter — illegally, mind you — Occupy Wall Streeters who discovered the home in foreclosure and decided that they’d steal it away from “the bank” with the ostensible goal of helping the needy.

Ahadzi is rightfully indignant that they didn’t contact him so that they could help him retake possession of his own house. Ahadzi also asked why they didn’t try to help him and his two daughters to which the Occupiers claimed he “didn’t qualify” because he wasn’t in their group. “Why can’t you fight for me?,” he wondered.

So, who did they want to “give” the house to? An organizer for VOCAL-NY — a gay rights activist group. A fellow with a job and one that belongs to their own group, yet.

Worse, when Ahadzi got to his home he discovered that the Occupiers had taken all his personal belongings and shoved them in a pile in the basement and then began to tear out walls and “remodel” the place, spending, they claimed, over $9,000 in the effort.

This isn’t a lone incident, either. It is apparently an idea that the OWSers are going to try and push nation-wide. At a recent Chicago OWS rally, for instance, a purported Lutheran pastor preached an OWS sermon urging OWSers to do the same thing in the Windy City.

John Ruberry attended the speech and notes that Reverend Tom Gaulke told those assembled that they were going to repeat the New York efforts.

“We will be supporting a homeless family in reoccupying a vacant house,” the reverend claimed.

As Ruberry notes, this is called trespassing.

So, what have we learned form this? We’ve learned that OWS is not altruistic in anything they do even as they claim the mantle of Mother Theresa — well, Mother Theresa if she engaged in rapes, drug abuse, deaths, racism, anti-Semitism, property destruction and general lawlessness, anyway.

We’ve learned that, like any self-interested Wall Street Banker, the OWSers only want to enrich themselves and help their own members. They aren’t really interested in helping defend the poor and downtrodden. Just helping themselves.

Last week, layoffs were announced at the University of Mississippi Medical Center due in part to the 80 million dollars that it will cost to implement a new computer system named EPIC Systems, Obama’s newly mandated electronic medical records system.

Naturally, the system Obama is forcing on an entire nation of medical professionals and hospitals is the same system owned and operated by Judith Faulkner, one of his own big donors. Faulkner is also a big donor to the Democrat Party. Not surprisingly, besides affording her the lucrative, crony capitalist business deal, Obama also put Faulkner in a key role on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, the committee responsible for implementing the President’s e-records policy. She has become known as Obama’s medical records czar.

As hospitals and doctors are forced to launch their own EPIC Systems portals, the costs are forcing hard choices for administrators. All to implement what many call a flawed system.

Representative Tom Price (R, GA), a medical doctor, scoffs at Obama’s EPIC Systems e-record program. Price is not amused by the government-speak bestowed on this e-records systems, those “meaningful use” standards that he calls “anything but useful or meaningful.”

Rep. Price revealed to an audience at a recent Heritage Foundation event that Obama’s new electronic medical records system is filled with “nonsense.”

One of the things about the system Price told the audience was that the system requires a pathologist to fill in a field of information on what a patient is allergic to in every case the docs deal with. If they do not fill in this field the system will “ding” the doctor on his reimbursement funds. That may not seem so absurd, but Price also noted that the pathologist has to fill out these same fields even if he is just consulting on a case by looking at a slide in a microscope and won’t actually see the patient in person.

It gets worse. Price went on to recount that this system is so dysfunctional that it requires the same fields to be filled out for a corpse at an autopsy.

“This is no lie,” Price says. “The federal government wants the pathologist to determine whether or not a corpse has any allergies. …This is nonsense.”

Price told the Heritage audience that a bureaucrat simply cannot tell a doctor what to do. He felt that there wasn’t anything wrong with government mandating a main “highway” for electronic medical records to “ride” on but felt that bureaucrats in Washington simply haven’t the knowledge to make a single system that is all things to all doctors for all patients.

“[Washington should] not dictate what the docs are doing on a day-to-day basis for a given patient because it doesn’t make any sense, it’s a waste of time.” Price insisted. “They can never, ever put in place the right standards …for a bureaucrat to determine whether or not the doctor is doing the right thing.”

(About 20 minutes into the following video)

The fact is, while this month’s jobs record might seem good, Obama is still destroying jobs in other areas due to his constant stream of regulations. And maybe these numbers aren’t so good at that. This rosy 8.5 percent unemployment figure that the White House is touting is “terribly misleading,” according to James Pethokoukis. The AEI columnist notes that if the White House was still using the size of the U.S. labor force from 2009, the unemployment rate would be at 10.9 percent today.

Lastly, we should note that the full implementation of Obamacare is still several years off. When that bell tolls, job loss with be monumental. But even though we have yet to get to full implementation of Obamacare, it is still costing jobs even today.

Chief Steven Krokoff (Image Credit: The Troy Record)

The big criticism arose when officers used pepper spray when the Occupiers became violent. Since then, several Councilmen, such as Anton Konev, have criticized the police, saying that their actions were unnecessary. Konev, for instance, has announced that he has no confidence in the Chief and is angling to have him fired. Naturally, Konev has been an open agitator for and supporter of Occupy Albany.

But on January 6, Chief Krokoff came before the city council with a strong defense of his and his officers’ actions, delivering a withering blast to some of the councilmen that have come to the defense of the lawless Occupiers.

In what the Albany Times Union called a “scorching offensive,” Chief Krokoff scolded members of the City Council for supporting the criminal element of the Occupiers instead of supporting their own police department.

Chief Krokoff also went to the unusual extreme of slamming several of the councilmen by name for supporting the Occupy Whatevers:

Shame on Councilman Konev and Councilman Freeman, who at every turn, seem so willing to distort the truth of any situation, no matter how tragic, and use it for their own personal gain. Shame on you both for mattering so little to yourselves and your community that you have to create hate and further half-truths just to feel some sense of relevancy. This entire city has seen the content of your character, and I pity you both.

The chief may be about to become a hero to the law and order set with this spirited defense of his actions.

Albany political blogger Rusty Weiss is one of those cheerleading for Chief Krokoff. Weiss wonders why the media are not pointing out that some of the city councilmen that have been criticizing the chief “were vociferously participating in the Occupy Albany assembly.”

Good question.

Since some of the chief’s critics on the council have been involved in the Occupy movement, wouldn’t that make their criticism heavily biased and lacking credibility?

Worse, these Occupiers are hardly innocent bystanders. After the pepper spraying incident, Occupiers began circulating posters identifying one of the policemen involved and advertising his home address where he and his family live. The officer has received numerous threats from Occupiers since.

It’s no wonder that the Chief has about had enough of the harassment. After all, when we compare what happened to protesters in Albany to that of other countries, we see how silly the Occupiers look claiming that they were victims of a brutal police raid. A few spurts of pepper spray on the Occupy Albany folks are hardly the totalitarian oppression of the real bullets sprayed on Egyptian protesters, after all.

Outside the LBJ Library nearly 200 citizens gathered to hear a multi-racial panel of six speakers denounce Holder’s partisan attempts to push the administration’s agenda to turn a blind eye to continuing voter fraud that consistently favors candidates from the Democrat Party.

The rally was sponsored by the Houston-based True The Vote, a grass roots voter integrity project staffed by volunteers. True The Vote is a nation-wide organization that has affiliates across the country, every day citizens interested in the integrity of the elections in their home district.

True The Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said she was thrilled by the turnout that was arranged on only a few day’s notice.

We gathered for the purpose of setting the record straight and people came from all over Texas to hear a host of speakers all representing different sides of the issue. All were clearly saying that the thought that photo voter ID laws would in some way suppress the vote or would in some way disenfranchise voters is on its face a farce. This is only being done to advance a politically motivated agenda that has at its core the themes of victimization and race baiting.

In his comments AG Holder cited one Republican in Maryland that was convicted of trying to trick black voters into staying home on Election Day, but what this single case has to do with voter ID laws was unclear. Holder’s intent, it seems, was to dismiss vote fraud from Democrats while shifting the blame to this one Republican. Holder did not mention such Democrat fraud as that seen in the 2008 Indiana primary, the New York Democrat that recently pleaded guilty to vote fraud, or any of the other such cases that can be easily found in the news.

It should be noted that at least one major case of voter suppression occurred during Holder’s tenure at the Department of Justice but it went ignored by his office. In 2008 a pair of militant Black Panther Party members used bats and weapons to intimidate white voters from entering a Philadelphia voting place. Ultimately Holder’s office decided not to prosecute this clear case of voter suppression.

There were five other speakers that appeared after Engelbrecht. Those speakers were: Anita MonCrief, the founder of the Boots of Liberty Task Force (BOLT) and the Editor-in-Chief of Emerging Corruption. MonCrief is also known as the ACORN/ Project Vote Whistleblower. Adryana Boyne, the National Director of VOCES Action a non profit organization that educates and empowers Hispanics with conservative fiscal and moral values. Election lawyer J. Christian Adams who served in the Voting Rights Section at the U.S. Department of Justice and whose book Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department is a must read for anyone interested in the hard facts of the DOJ. C.L. Bryant, a native of Shreveport, LA and a former president of the NAACP’s Garland, Texas Chapter. And finally, George Rodriguez, President of San Antonio Tea Party. Rodriguez served as a presidential appointee under both Presidents Bush and Reagan and is also the nation’s first Hispanic Tea Party President.

The crux of the rally was to spur citizens to get involved. “‘Democrat or Republican voter fraud is unacceptable but it is up to us to stop it,” said Engelbrecht.

Here’s my message today – everyone listening needs to take stock of the situation facing our country, and then ask themselves what they are doing to make things better. What are you doing? There are all kinds of places and ways that citizens can directly engage and work for the good of this country and hold to what made us great. True the Vote is a great example — a great way to serve in a desperately needed and critically important area — protecting the sanctity of the vote. Our election process was always intended to be run by American citizens for the good of America and Americans. We need to take our process back and need to educate ourselves in the ways we can get engaged.

One last bit of irony — if not hypocrisy — was experienced as people lined up to enter the LBJ Library to hear AG Holder rail against voter ID laws. As each person entered the library they were required to present their photo IDs in order to be allowed in to hear the speech.

In another case of the break down of the integrity of our elections systems, officials in Wisconsin have confirmed that they will not be bothering to check the legality of the signatures on the petitions now circulating to recall Republican Governor Scott Walker. Vote fraud is so blatant that Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler have appeared on recall petitions, but authorities said these fraudulent names will be accepted.

According to WISN TV, ABC channel 12, the Government Accountability Board — the agency responsible to review petition results — has decided that it will accept spurious signatures as long as those signatures are “properly dated and include a Wisconsin address.”

“We will flag them, but we will not strike them without challenge,” Buerger said after being asked whether Mickey Mouse’s signature would be counted. He noted that in previous recall petitions, Adolf Hitler’s name was struck because the address given was in Germany, not because of the name itself.

The plans for review of the recall petitions was unanimously approved by the board.

This is why Engelbrecht’s True The Vote has teamed with Verify the Recall, to make sure the petitions handed in by Democrats looking to recall Governor Walker are legal and proper.

Verify the Recall is a grassroots effort to assure that recall petitions currently being circulated throughout Wisconsin to recall Governor Scott Walker are free, honest, and satisfy Wisconsin’s election laws. Verify the Recall will put on-line in a searchable database every name and address that appears on the recall petitions submitted t the Wis. Sec. Of State and volunteers will comb through the petitions looking for duplications and fraud.

Too many Americans are doubtful of our electoral process today and True The Vote is determined to help citizens feel assured about the integrity of their system in the Badger State.