Medina-gate, part deux

I had the opportunity to listen to the Medina-Beck interview. It sounds worse for Medina than it reads on paper. I've listened to Beck long enough to know when he's being sincere and when he's being sarcastic, and he was being straight with Medina when he asked about her status as a Truther. Her first answer was definitely the response you would expect someone who just got blind-sided, but the second time he asked her response was she "hadn't formed an opinion," and then proceeded on to say that people should question their government. What? You don't have an opinion? Either she IS a truther, and did a really bad job of covering it, or (worse) she doesn't have a concept of the whole Truther movement, which is that the Bush administration had a direct hand in orchestrating 9/11. It's not about questioning the government; it's a particularly distasteful flavor of Bush Derangement Syndrome, especially given the vast bulk of evidence that says fire, not explosives, brought the towers down. The point is, does she live under a rock? Joe Pags, of WOAI in San Antonio, made an excellent point last Friday. We share the longest border in the country with Mexico, which is notoriously porous. Anyone running for governor should have some thoughts on security and terrorism. I agree.

The End for Debra Medina....???

Debra Medina, who up until this evening was my favored candidate for Texas Governor, inserted her foot up to her hip in her mouth on Glenn Beck, opening up some doubt on whether or not she is a Truther. I am exceedingly frustrated with her, but completely hacked off with Beck. The transcript of the interview can be found here. Ms. Medina was giving an excellent interview until Beck dropped the Truther bomb. She could have responded with something to the effect of "The federal government had no involvement in 9/11," and gone on her way to clobber Perry on eminent domain and HPV vaccines, but to her credit, she responded with a rather poorly thought out answer about how people should question their government. Totally consistent with her political philosophy, and on any other topic would have passed without a thought. But this was 9/11, and she opened the door to the belief that she was a Truther, and Beck hammered her on it. Beck shut the door on her, even as she attempted to explain her answer. Question: Medina is a candidate for Texas Governor. How is 9/11, or Truthers, relevant to that office? What point was Beck trying to make? He made no bones about that fact that he likes Perry in the transcipt. I have to ask...did he intentionally torpedo Medina? Why pull the rug out from under a Tea Party candidate? Her polling has skyrocketed, for good reason, in the last 4 weeks. She pulled even with KBH, possibly even pulled ahead of her. Was Perry, the 10-year incumbent, feeling a little heat? I supposed we'll never know the answers. Medina, in full damage-control mode, later released a statement abjectly denying she was a Truther, but it may be too late. Time will tell. I do have this to say; Beck, stay out of Texas business. I will not watch your show, buy your your print media, listen to your radio show, or patronize your advertisers (especially Goldline!), and I will encourage others to do the same.

Rape on the rise in Haiti

It's been over a month now since the horrific earthquake in Haiti. Now, from the UK Independent and the Canadian Press, rape and other violence against women is on the rise. Crimes against women have a shady past in Haiti. Rape was only criminalized in 2005, after President Aristide was exiled. Domestic abuse is still a "family matter". Put simply, women are and have long been second-class citizens in Haiti. And yet...where is the MSM? Where is the Obama administration? Recall for a moment the false rumors of rape and anarchy in New Orleans following Katrina and the reporting of it as fact by the MSM. If you believed the MSM reporting, the whole of New Orleans had reverted to some primitive, tribal state, with people plundering and murdering at will. Yet none of it actually happened, and the Bush administration was vilified for it. Fast forward to 2010. A search of the NY Times showed not a single article on the subject. Why? Is this not fit news to print? Why can the international media pick up on this, but not ours? And why not a single word from the Obama administration? Is this not worthy of even a minute of his time and attention?

Welcoming Scott Brown, the Gentleman from Massachusetts

From the Boston Globe, Martha Coakley has called Scott Brown to concede in the special election to replace Ted Kennedy. Dawn has begun to break over America once more.

On a side note, Obama is now batting 0 for 3 in stumping for local candidates. I can't imagine he'll be invited too many other places...

Obama is a spectacle

First, there was the much-hyped, overblown, and ultimately epic failure of the Obamas to secure the Olympics for their crony friends in Chicago. Then, the completely absurd, comical Nobel Peace Prize for doing...absolutely nothing. And now...BO does Dancing with the Morons:



Really? There are men DYING in Afghanistan to defeat the people whose stated goal is to harm this country, and Obama is out dancing with women NOT his wife. This is a spectacle, folks. Bread and circuses.

How much is $9,000,000,000,000?

So it seems that the Obama administration can't even make the most critical of projections correctly. Instead of the already outrageous $7 trillion (with a T) deficit over the next ten years, they got it wrong (again...just like the porkulus, just like health care 'reform', just like cap and tax). Instead, it's actually $9 trillion. So, how much is a trillion dollars? Let's start small. We can all easily picture $1,000, since that's a mortgage or rent payment. $1 million is even better. We know we're doing well if we have $1,000,000. $1 billion is harder to imagine, but not impossible. Bill Gates is an excellent example of a billionaire. But $1 trillion...the brain starts to shut down. To give us some perspective, the federal government collects just over $1 trillion per year in individual income taxes. That's about $3,300 per person. Now, imagine 9 TIMES that....almost $30,000 per person, per year. THAT'S $9 trillion. Crazy, huh?

The Elephant in the Room

Why is no one, not rank and file GOP members, or the RNC leadership, or the conservative blogosphere, or talk radio, challenging the Constitutionality of HR 3200? We should be screaming from the rooftops every day the fact that the Constitution does NOT give unlimited authority to Congress to spend tax money on social welfare programs, or even a limited authority. Time and again, throughout our history, charity funded by the public coffers has been struck down, either before its passage by wise Congressmen or after in the courts. As a reminder, I offer up the following:

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every State, county and parish and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision of the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress.... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America." - James Madison

“I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity.” To approve the measure "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.” - Franklin Pierce

“Mr. Speaker: I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.” - David Crockett

And, irony of ironies:

"As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

HR 3200 is not Constitutional. In truth, neither is Cap and Tax, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and the vast array of alphabet soup federal agencies. Follow the Constitution.