Here we go again. Once again Pastor Terry Jones of Gainsville, Florida has started a worldwide...okay maybe just Afghanistanwide... conflagration because he decided to actually burn a copy of the Quran. The adherents of the religion of peace, AKA Islam, resorted to their usual tactics of murder and mayhem to--ahem--peacefully convey their sense of outrage over the desecration of the book the hold to be the very words spoken by Allah to the Prophet. But this isn't going to be about that so much as two other issues that bother me concerning this story: the belief by some on the right that we at home should follow the mandates of generals overseas in order to "protect the troops", and the seeming religious condescension shown towards Pastor Terry Jones based on the fact that his congregation is relatively small. I originally thought of doing two different posts, but I have decided to simply use one longer post to address both issues, so bear with me.

On the issue of allowing for members of the military command to tell civilians that they should muzzle themselves in order to "protect the troops", I have to dissent. I was listening to Sean Hannity in my car yesterday, and he was going on and on about how Pastor Jones should have heeded the call of General Petraeus and not burned the Quran, because we should defer to the military on matters like this. His reading of the situation is that since Gen. Petrateus is in-country, we should defer to his great wisdom on the matter, and if he says something we are doing here at home should be avoided in order to protect the troops then we should abide by that. But am I the only one who sees the problems inherent in such a stance, or the hypocrisy involved in it?

Conservatives seem to like playing "What if" a lot, so let's play a quick game, shall we? What if Gen. Petraeus suddenly announced tomorrow that since we are in a time of war, we should not be having these contentious political arguments about the budget problems we face, as it would show the enemy a picture of a nation divided and would thus put our troops at risk of stepped up attacks? Would we be in favor of kicking the fiscal can down the road because the good general told us to shut up about it? Or what if the good general decided that we should not publicly criticize the Commander in Chief during this time of war, because it might embolden the enemy to press more attacks and endanger the troops? Would Sean Hannity and the like meekly stop all criticisms of the President in an effort to "protect the troops"? I doubt it. And they shouldn't, because if we follow this particular road we make ourselves subservient to the wishes of military figures, which would render our freedoms null and void.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I have nothing but respect for the military, the jobs they do, and the dangers they face. I have had friends and family who served in the military, and have in-laws who serve now. I have an idea of the dedication they bring to the job and the challenges they face, and I appreciate the fact that they are willing to serve to protect us and our Republic from those who would do us harm. But I do not see where Gen. Petraeus or Secretary of Defense Gates have a right to tell anyone in this country what they should do or not do in the exercise of their constitutional rights. Maybe burning the Quran was a bad idea, but this one act by one pastor in one small church in Florida is not the biggest issue facing our forces in Afghanistan, and if this act had not occurred the Islamists in the area would have found some other reason to riot. And just so you know I am not taking some new position on the issue, you check out what I have already said about the issue right here.

As for the hypocrisy angle, it goes right to the top on this story...but lets start with the talking heads. Since I mentioned Sean Hannity, I figure I may as well continue to use him to illustrate my point. Sean Hannity loves to use his radio and television shows to rail against the left for bowing to politically correct attitudes and being willing to stifle constitutional freedoms in an effort to placate the Islamist hordes. Yet, isn't this exactly what Gen. Petraeus is doing and Hannity is championing? What the general is basically saying is that Pastor Jones should not have burned a Quran because doing so incites the enemy against American troops in the region. Back to what if for a second: Can anyone imagine the howling from the conservative press if any liberal had suggested the same thing and had a major member of the new media agreeing to it? We conservatives would have had a field day, and rightly so. So what's the difference when Hannity does it? Is our reaction based on principle or partisanship? And like I said , the hypocrisy on this story reaches to the top of this particular food chain. For all the angst coming from Sec. Gates and Gen. Petraeus about the burning of a Quran in Florida, they had absolutely no problem with a mass Bible burning overseen by the military in 2009. In fact, they used the same reasoning (inflaming the locals) to justify the burning of the Bibles as they used to condemn Pastor Jones for burning a Quran! Anyone smell that mendacity and hypocrisy yet?

The other issue that has gotten me a bit fired up here is the attitude that is being taken by the press towards Pastor Jones. Much of the negative publicity that he has gotten comes from his decision to burn the Quran, which of course marks him as some sort of fundamentalist zealot who is to be shunned by polite society. Personally, I have no problem with fundamentalist Christians, and have in fact written to defend it because I consider myself a fundamentalist. To paraphrase the old song, if believing in the fundamentals of my faith and believing that the Bible is God's revealed Word is wrong, then I don't wanna be right! But what has really been the burr under my saddle on this issue is the way people feel free to dismiss the man because his congregation has "only a couple of dozen" or "a few dozen" members, as if that makes his church insignificant.

The fact of the matter is that most of the churches in America fit that particular criteria, so does that make all of them irrelevant? According to statistics gathered by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, the median church size for American Protestant churches is 75 members, which translates to 59% of said churches. Again I ask, does that make that 59% of American churches insignificant?

See, the attitude that comes from treating small congregation numbers as if it disqualifies the pastors of those churches from being heard smacks of elitism. It's as if the only people who should speak on religion are the megachurch pastors who command the television airwaves and the imaginations of many in the public. But you see, it is the small congregations that are doing the work of the Lord; while Joel Osteen is trying to sell you another self help book, Bishop Lowe ( my pastor) is ministering to the sick and shut in. While TD Jakes is making sure that Mike Irvin and Emmitt Smith are front and center in his congregation, Pastor Forney (my mother's pastor) is reaching out to the youth in his community to try to keep them on the straight and narrow. While Benny Hinn is buying another jet, Pastor Moss (my sister-in-law's pastor) is standing in front of his congregation and visitors calling the lost to Christ. It is the pastors whose flocks consist of "a few dozen members" who witness to others; whose flocks hand out tracks and proselytize; whose members staff the soup kitchens; whose members minister to the homeless. And they do it all without fanfare, and without seeking it because they are only doing what Jesus required of them in His Great Commission: " And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen."

Yet these are the people that are to be looked down upon and sneered at?

I don't know what Pastor Jones preaches, and the media horde probably doesn't either. But I do know that he had every right to burn one Quran or a million, without being told by a US Army general to sit down and shut up. And he certainly did not deserve to be ridiculed simply for having a smallish congregation, as if the size of the congregation somehow confers legitimacy on the minister.

I know this one ran a little long and I understand if you skipped the part that didn't interest you. But thanks for reading and let me know what you're feeling about this issue.

We all knew that Obama was unprepared for the job, so we should not be suprised when he screw the pooch, but even I have been dumbfounded as I watch our President blunder through the recent unrest in the Middle East/Islamic world. It started during the Iranian revolt that the Obama administration decided to sit out, even as the Iranian mullahs used their secret police to openly murder dissidents in the streets. Somehow that wasn't a violation of human rights that required the US to help establish a NATO-led no-fly zone or engage in some "kinetic military action" (my God, where do they come up with these euphemisms?). See, the President made sure everyone listening both here, and especially Tehran, knew that the good ol' U-S-of A would not be "interfering" with domestic Iranian politics; we have to atone for Kermit Roosevelt's 1950s meddling that restored the young Shah to the throne. Couldn't have a repeat of that type of thing, don't you know!

Then we had the situation that jumped off in Egypt. When the object of popular uprising was Hosni Mubarak, a thuggish dictator for sure, but one who we could reasonably use an ally against terrorist elements in the region, theObama administration suddenly had no qualms about "interfering" in Egypt's internal affairs. Why, according to them Mubarak had to go, even though no one knew just who the real power was behind the demonstrations against the regime; it obviously didn't matter because everyone in the administration and the legacy media just knew that the demonstrators were all for "democracy". And just as importantly, they knew that the Muslim Brotherhood was not intimately involved and we knew that because...hell, who knows! That was what the media and the administration wanted to believe, so it was treated as truth, and anyone saying otherwise was obviously some right wing nut/extremist who hated the idea of democracy down in his very soul.

But now comes word from the internal house organ of the American Left, the New York Times that what was being warned of by numerous conservative thinkers and pundits, prominent among them Sean Hannity, is actually coming to pass. Despite the Obama administration informing us that the Muslim Brotherhood was a largely secular organization, it has been reported that the MB's are poised to inject religion into the mainstream of Egypt's new government, including their belief in sharia law. There is also evidence that the viewpoint that the MB would be able to take a large role in any new Egyptian government would be relatively easy for them is bearing out as well, since they were able to help convince the people that it was their religious duty as Muslims to approve a September date for new parliamentary elections...that favor them as they are the best organized political party in the country outside of the military that is currently running the government. Even the French media understands that the MB are poised to take control in Egypt, even though our super genius President and his brain trust spent weeks telling us it wouldn't , couldn't happen based on their fervent belief that the MB didn't want political power!

And now we have been plunged into a shooting war kinetic military action in Libya with not even a nod to Congress, and with no discernible national interest involved. Our wonderful Dear Leader took to the air waves to explain his rationale for intervening in Libya, and the best he could come up with boils down to Qadaffi is a bad guy, we have to prevent the loss of civilian lives, and we are bugging out ASAP. Now, no one can argue that Qadaffi is a truly evil cat, nor do we want to sit idly by and watch a madman slaughter his own people, BUT there is not one word there that comes close to showing any national interest there. We have been down this road before with a liberal as Commander in Chief and it did not work out for us, because these guys do not have the testicular fortitude to commit to military action and stick it out to a successful conclusion. The last time our military was being used as a Meals on Wheels outfit we got Mogadishu, a feckless air war in the Balkans, and the total ignoring of genocide in Rwanda and the the Sudan.

Further, there are credible reports that the rebels in Libya may not be all sweetness and light as the Obama administration and their media allies have tried to pretend that they are. As far back as February, Reuters was reporting on Al Qaeda's North Africa leader siding with the rebels against Qadaffi.  Now as NATO and the UN are coming close to having to arm the rebels reports are surfacing that the Libyan rebals have some really close ties to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah. So in the name of ousting Qadaffi (or maybe not), but definitely to save Libyan civilians, our illustrious administration is about to help supply the very group that has been at war with us since September 11, 2001. Amazing, huh?

You see, this is what happens when you elect a neophyte with no experience at governing, who then surrounds himself with political hacks (Biden, Panetta), political payoffs (Clinton), sycophants (Susan Rice), careerists (McMullen), and incompetents (Napolitano, Clapper)...just so the Big Boss Man can fell like he's the smartest guy in the room. With this group of clowns in charge, we are in serious trouble, because they have no idea how to handle anything tougher than a 2:00 tee time.

Let's just pray that these Adventures in Blunderland don't result in what BrianR once called a City of Glass scenario, because this fecklessness and weakness makes that a real possibility.

As anyone who has been a reader of this blog for a great length of time knows, I am going to teach one day...soon. I have had that yearning in my heart and soul since I was a child; teaching history has been the one enduring dream in my life since I was around 7-8 years old. I had great teachers who inspired me to want to do for other kids what they were doing for me, and to this day I can name every teacher I had from first grade through sixth grade...and a lot of my teachers after that. Teaching in my view is not simply a career choice, but in many ways is a calling for the people who do it well. Those are the ones that do not get into the profession looking to get rich, they get into it because it allows them to fulfill their calling and make a decent living at it. It is a position that allows them to touch countless children over the years, to have positive impacts on the lives of their students, and to shape the future in their own small way. Teaching, in many cases, is an almost noble profession. I have always thought that, and I still do.

However, the actions of the teachers in Wisconsin in the past week have put a black eye on the profession that I so respect and have worked hard to become a part of. By staging their borderline illegal quasi-strike, they have sullied the vocation that they so want to be seen as a profession by doing some of the most unprofessional things that one could think of: lying about sickness in order to shut down entire schools, smearing as Nazis any who dare to oppose their agenda, and giving impressionable children the idea that the way to deal with challenges is to either shout down opponents or run away from unpleasant responsibilities. That is not what teachers are supposed to do, especially in this era of "values education" that has been injected into the nation's classrooms.

The sad thing about it, though, is that it comes as no surprise to see Wisconsin's teachers acting this way. The problem with the teaching profession is that it has become in many cases just another union shop, more concerned with attempting to force concessions from their employers (the taxpayers) than in doing the jobs that they claim to be so dedicated to. What is even worse, is that the teachers in the unions don't seem to grasp the fact that they are simply pawns to be used in the machinations of the larger labor movement agenda. They aren't put out front of demonstrations like the ones in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana because they are the ones being most affected by changes, but because they are the ones with the best chance of manipulating public opinion to the side of the unions. They are the only ones who can come out, bleat "It's all for the Kids!" and have anyone take them seriously. The irony to the Wisconsin debacle is that this may be the last stand for that line of justification, because by doing so now people are getting a look at the money that the "poor, underpaid, overworked" educators are getting paid and the numbers are alerting everyone to the fact that it ain't about the kids. To quote Puff Daddy, "It's all about the Benjamins, baby!"

To hear the teachers tell it, they don't make any money...certainly not much in relation to the private sector. But the thing is, there are no private sector equivalents to what teachers do in the public sector. There is, quite simply, no real standard that teachers have to strive for in collective bargaining since there is no comparable job with a salary structure for the teachers to try to attain. They are able in many ways to create their own market for their services, because the only salary structure they have to compete with are teacher salaries in other states. And teachers make pretty good money, and when the benefits are added in, they make great money. We have seen the numbers on Wisconsin, but take a look at the numbers in other states, say the geographical region that I live in, the Southeast. What will follow are the average salaries for teachers in my immediate region (NC, SC, VA, TN) and the average median income in those states, and you tell me if the teachers are really suffering financially. Also keep in mind that these are simply salary numbers, not including benefits:

North Carolina	South Carolina	Virginia	Tennessee
Teacher:  $42,556.67	$46,306.67	$57,873.33	$45,926.67
Median: $46,574	$44,695	$61,210	$43,610

In two states, Tennessee and South Carolina, teachers make more in salary alone than the median household average (2009), while North Carolina and Virginia are below the state median household income, but when you account for the fact that the job is a 9 month per year job, and the upward skewing of the Virginia median by the high salaries of people in and around the DC Metro area, those teachers are still making a pretty penny. I have yet to see the first teacher starving because they are so poorly paid in their chosen field. These protests have nothing to do with kids, but everything to do with trying to insure the ability to ask for ever higher salaries financed by the tax paying public.

It is shameful to me to hear these striking teachers continue to say that their fight is for the benefit of their students, when it is so patently obvious that they are simply looking out for their own futures. How much money a teacher makes, or the amount of money they have to contribute to their pension/retirement plans, or how much they have to pay towards their health insurance plans  has nothing to do with the education that our kids are supposed to be receiving. And if it does affect the performance of those teachers then they need to leave the profession, because obviously they are more committed to being union operatives than educators.

In this current mess, the teachers unions of Wisconsin, et al have finally ripped the mask away and let the public see just who they are. The union does not care about the students, and those teachers who are lying in order to skip out on work to protest obviously don't care, either. I just hope that the reputations of all those truly dedicated teachers out there are not too sullied by this, and that someday the profession can regain the esteem in the eyes of others that I have always held it in.

I know that it is almost a part pf the conservative credo to suspect, and at times castigate Big Labor. After all, Big Labor generally supports out political rivals, and the actions of the labor unions are generally a detriment to the society. Just look at how the hand of Big Labor  makes cars too expensive, while  simultaneously making such outrageous salary and benefit demands that it basically drives the car companies over a cliff financially. And I am going to scream the next time I hear the head of the NCAE here in North Carolina publicly suggest that municipalities need to place taxes on everything from beer to soda in order to keep teachers working...but for the benefit of "the kids", of course. Because we all know that the teacher's unions are not really concerned about getting the best deal for their member teachers, but exist to make sure my kids are well educated.

However, there is one union that I am supporting totally in their current battle with management: The National Football Player's Association. In this one instance, I say "Go Big Labor!"

The NFL owners are in the process of locking the players out because they (the owners) have ripped up their current collective bargaining  agreement, even though this agreement has made the NFL one of the best revenue generating businesses in the country. And with the help of complicit media/corporate partners like ESPN/ABC, they have tried to convince the increasingly gullible public that somehow owner lockout=player strike. And way too many people, including a lot of conservatives it seems to me, have swallowed that story hook, line, and sinker to use an angling metaphor.

The owners are crying poor right now as a reason to rip up the current CBA, which still had at least a year left on it, in an effort to force the players to give in to ownership demands of revenue give backs and to accept a much worse deal that the league currently operates under. They claim to be awash in a sea of red ink, but they refuse to open the books for union perusal and have set about trying to paint the union as responsible for the looming lockout. But in this instance, the union has not made any demands and started the process by simply asking that the current CBA be kept in place while a new deal was worked on by the two sides. But the owners refused to do so, and now they act as if the current CBA is obsolete and the players must cave, or the NFL is in serious financial peril.

The NFL and its defenders like to use the 60-40 revenue split in favor of the players as a basis of saying that the players are being greedy. Their argument is one that resonates with a lot of sports fans and many conservatives, who see the owners as bulwarks of the capitalist system. But a deeper look at the real story may change some minds.

For example, the whole 60-40 split is very misleading. The NFL and the press make it seem that the players get 60% of the gross revenues that the NFL takes in, when that is not really the case. The NFL owners take $1 billion dollars of the top of the yearly revenues, then gives the players 60% of what's left. Now in a multi-billion dollar business, that is still a handsome sum for the players, but contrary to the prevailing conventional wisdom, that money does not go straight into the wallets of the players. Their share of the revenue has to go out in player salaries and in pension benefits for retored players, and part is used to pay for the NFL's health care insurance plan for the players. Even then, things aren't as fair as they would seem, because the players are only fully vested in the insurance plan after 4 years of service/ This is in a sport where the average career only lasts about 3 years, and even then the plan is only valid for 5 years after the player's career is over. A "Cadillac Plan" this is not.

Further, the idea that the league is drowning in debt is laughable. In 2009 the NFL actually increased their revenue by 7%, up to $7.6 billion. Each team got $94 million from the various network television deals, plus another $22 million from DirecTv's Sunday Ticket Package. Also, they had a a 6% increase in tickets and concession that netted each team around $59 million! Couple that with the fact that the salary cap was only $123 million, with a minimum of &108 million, and it is hard for me to see just where the NFL is allegedly losing all this money. I mean, if the teams and the league are so broke, then where did Jerry Jones find the $1 billion he just spent to build Cowboys Stadium? The freakin' plastic surgery fairy!?

Another thing that the league is claiming is that rookie salaries and player salaries in the league are just "Too Damn High!" and something needs to be done about it right away. Now you won't get any argument, even from the NFLPA that it is insane to guarantee tens of millions of dollars to some kid that was just drafted. The players have been complaining about this for years, especially after the Matthew Stafford deal a couple of years ago when he was given $41 million in guaranteed money...which was more than even a Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, or Tom Brady...Super Bowl winners all...were making. The players association has been talking openly for years about trying to get a rookie salary structure similar to the NBA deal, so that the money teams have to spend are not allocated to unproven rookies s much as it can be used to take care of proven veterans. Yet, this was not the fault of the players association, it was the result of poor management to begin with, and the acceptance of an agent driven practice where players drafted in a certain position were expected to earn more than the guy drafted in the same slot a year earlier. Ownership could have stopped that practice by simply refusing to play along, but they were more than happy to play the game by the rules the agents put down.

As for the player salaries, despite popular belief player salaries on average are not that great of a burden to the owners. Check out the average salaries by position just a couple of years ago (listed by salary ranking):

1. Quarterback: $1.9 million
2. Defensive end: $1.5
3. Offensive line: $1.2
4. Defensive tackle: $1.2
5. Cornerback: 1.2
6. Linebacker: $1.1
7. Wide out: $1.05
8. Running back: $957, 000
9. Safety: $$947k
10. Kicker/punter: $868k
11. Tight end: $863k

Now, those numbers are nothing to sneeze at, but the salary averages are not much stacked up against the team revenue figures. And think about this as well, these averages are skewed upward by the big money contracts being paid to the superstar players at each position, and we know that there is a vast disparity in what Peyton Manning is going to be paid, versus a journeyman like Sage Rosenfels.

What the owners are demanding, and the players are rightly resisting, is that the owners be allowed to take $2 billion off the top while the players take less of the total revenue. The players offered a counter proposal that would allow the owners to keep their $1 billion dollar 'credit' and increase their revenue share to 50%, but with some changes to the rookie salaries, the salary cap, and player benefits including extending the health care plan to older retirees. And do you know how the owners responded?  By storming out of the meeting! Now you tell me who is being greedy here!

Hopefully the antitrust exempted cartel that is the NFL will sit down and actually try to strike a deal with the players. But it seems that many of the owners are operating under the delusion that what happened to the NHL after it lockout a few years ago and to MLB after its last strike cannot happen to the NFL. But if you choke the life out of the magic goose, who knows if it will ever lay another batch of golden eggs the way it has up to this point. What the owners have to realize is that the players are the product, because without them there are no games to be played, no tickets to be sold, and no apparel to be retailed. They are the reasons why the NFL is a profitable, multi-billion dollar enterprise and deserve to be compensated fairly.

So in this one case I emphatically say: "GO BIG LABOR!"

Recently, my brother and I were having a conversation about the clown in the White House and his ridiculous Obamacare plan. Specifically he was calling to celebrate the decision that struck down the law as unconstitutional and he said something about the whole plan that I had never even thought of" When Obama and his cronies say that Obamacare's fees are really a tax, they aren't lying. They just aren't being totally upfront, either. My brother, known at TH as Nolan273, hit upon the idea that this was all just a tax scam so that the government can take ever increasing amounts of money from us, but can sort of shift the blame away from themselves...and maybe even make it look like a noble act.

The way he and I figure it, part of the whole Obamacare scam revolves around the fact that even though there are supposed to be massive cuts to Medicare, there are still massive unfunded liabilities attached that have to be paid for by someone at some time. What the government is doing is forcing us to pay for this by trying to sneak up the amount of federal withholding for Medicare, and at the same time forcing the states to increase taxes on us to fund Medicaid as well.

Think about it, in the United States in 2008 we spent $599 billion dollars on Medicare, with our state of North Carolina spending $10 billion dollars on the program alone, not including Medicaid. And where does that money come from? The taxpayers, of course! And with a stagnant economy and a real unemployment rate hovering at about 15%, how long is it going to be before the feds start clamoring for another raise in payroll taxes to cover the mounting number of Baby Boomers starting to use the Medicare system for their health care needs?

I am indebted to my brother for this particular insight, because I never thought of it that way. Let us know what you all think about it, because it makes perfect sense to me!

Okay, back in December I sent an email to the senior senator from North Carolina telling him how disappointed I was in his throwing in with the Democrats to repeal DADT in the lame duck session. I let him know that in that particular vote, he was not serving the interests of the majority of North Carolinians but seemed to be buckling to the wants and whims of the people centered around the Research Triangle, (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) who tend to be overwhelmingly liberal.

So today I get a letter in response that the good senator sent to defend his position, which concludes by saying: "Ultimately, I was left with the core question of whether or not it was right for the U.S. government to continue to deny otherwise capable, willing, and eligible Americans the ability to serve in out nation's Armed Forces. Gay and lesbian members of the Armed Forces have served with distinction, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our nation. I reached the conclusion that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is outdated and no longer has a place in today's military. Simply put, repeal is the right thing to do."

Now, is it just me, or does his justification contradict itself or what? If gay and lesbian members of the Armed Forces have "served with distinction" and "made the ultimate sacrifice", how did DADT "deny...the ability to serve" to them? Wouldn't one have to be in said Armed Forces to serve with distinction?

Burr's letter to me, and I am sure lots of other constituents, simply proves what I asserted in my letter to him; his decision had nothing to do with military readiness or preparedness, but had everything to do with his trying to stake his claim to being a moderate. He saw Obama win in 2008 and coattail Kay Hagin into the Senate and decided that the thing for him to do was become a middle of the road Republican. Well, this professional politician...he's been in the government business since I was a kid...just lost my vote in the upcoming election, not just for his politically expedient vote on DADT, but for his idiotic letter to me. Now I understand just what type of moron he actually is.

I suppose the age of political civility died a week after it was birthed, sort of a partial birth civility abortion. Political civility was conceived and birthed in the wake of the Tucson shootings, but had its figurative spine severed when Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) took to a nearly empty House floor and let loose on the GOP for having the temerity to describe the Obamacare legislative monstrosity as a "government takeover" of the health care system,describing it as the "biggest lie of 2010." But Cohen was on a roll and just couldn't stop himself, so he went to the place that Democrat demagogues find themselves powerless to resist: Republicans are Nazis. Cohen expounded at length about the way Joseph Goebbels used "the big lie" theory to bring about the Holocaust by convincing the German people that the Jews were the taproot of all of Germany's problems. He went through the time tested routine of describing how the "big lie" works and rested seemingly on solid historical footing, because that is the history that is always taught. I mean, it is common knowledge that Goebbels pioneered the big lie theory for the sole purpose of inciting the German populace to countenance the mass murder of Jews as the vaunted Nazi "Final Solution". That much we know for sure, right?

As Lee Corso would say right about now, "Not so fast my friend!"

You see, like so much of the history that has become common knowledge through the years, the accepted definition of the Big Lie theory as believed by millions the world over is actually historically inaccurate. The fact of the matter is that Joseph Goebbels did not invent the Big Lie theory of political propaganda, was not the first to use the phrase, and never claimed it as a tool of the Nazis.

The first mention of the big lie is found in Adolph Hitler's unreadable book, Mein Kampf.  In it, Hitler accuses the Jews and other unpatriotic Germans (but mostly the Jews) of using that tactic to lay blame for the German loss of World War One at the feet of the German military machine, when the real culprits were the Jews at home undermining the war effort. according to Hitler, German Jews used the Big Lie to convince the German people and the rest of the world that German defeat was strictly military and had nothing to do with the Jewish plot to undermine the Fatherland.

When Goebbels used the Big Lie language, it was not in reference to his propaganda machine, but in relation to the British. Goebbels was saying that the British were telling huge lies to defame the German state, and that it was working in some quarters because people could not believe that a government would tell such lies to it's people. Again, the Germans were not embracing the Big Lie as something that they were doing, but were accusing an enemy of doing it to them!

Furthermore, Cohen totally mangled the way that the Big Lie works, as do most people when they attempt to explain it. Most of the definition/explanation is presented as such: The Big Lie is when a group or individual tells an outrageous lie so often that people come to believe that it is true. But the way that Hitler and Goebbels saw it, and defined it was totally different. Goebbels explained that the Big Lie only worked because people had a conscience. He explained that most people tend to only lie about small things because their conscience  constrains them from telling the Big Lie; because of that personality trait, people are more willing to believe the Big Lie when they hear it because they cannot imagine that people would actually tell the Big Lie. They have a tendency to assume that everyone has the same pangs of conscience restraining them that they do, so they are not psychologically prepared to deal with someone telling the Big Lie...therefore the Big Lie must be true!

That's a whole hell of a lot different than the way everyone usually tries to explain it, huh?

And one more thing that Cohen, and others, generally get wrong about the Final Solution.; the Nazi high command never tried to "sell" the Final Solution to the people of Germany. There was no need for the Big Lie to be used in that instance, because the German High Command was determined to slaughter all the "non-Aryans" in Germany from the moment Hitler rose to power. Goebbels did not spend his time solely promoting the destruction of the Jews to the public in an effort to make them pliant; public opinion simply did not matter on an issue of such high importance the Nazi leaders.

Now, this is not an attempt to absolve the Nazis of their crimes, as that would be a fool's errand; those people were as guilty as sin is wrong. But if someone is going to go to the floor of the House of Representatives and go on a rant accusing his political opponents of being Nazis, he should at the very least have a grasp of the historical facts!

And that ends today's history lesson. Class dismissed.

When Cornelius Dupree walked free from a Texas prison after spending the majority of his adult life serving a sentence for a crime he did not commit, his release reignited a debate that comes after every exoneration of a wrongfully convicted man. Namely, the debate about the flaws in the United States criminal justice system kicks off again, with liberal activists predictably screaming that the entire system is so flawed that it should be totally blown up and reworked and more conservative people recognizing that there are flaws in the system, but refusing to sign onto liberal wishes to create a new system that would presumably be more European than American.

As a conservative, I believe in law and order and the old adage that our system is the worst possible system for getting at justice...except for all the others. There is no other system of justice in the entire world that goes so far in trying to provide accused criminals with fair trials as ours, with the burden of proof being on the state; the right to face accusers in open court; the right to legal counsel; and open pretrial discovery for the defendant being some of the better known legal protections in place for the accused. But even with those and other safeguards in place, we still find ourselves dealing with the phenomenon of legal exoneration dominating the national headlines on a periodic basis. Just looking at those lives that have been destroyed should be enough to prove that our system is fatally flawed and must be reformed, right?

Wrong.

While the stories of the exonerated rightly tug at our heartstrings and point out some of the flaws in our criminal justice system, they by no means are conclusive evidence that our system needs wholesale changes to "make sure this never happens to another innocent." For as much as the critics of the system wish that were the case, the sheer numbers prove that even with the periodic headline grabbing exonerations in play, the system actually works fairly well.

While exonerations are certainly splashy and make for compelling stories, the legal exoneration is actually a pretty rare bird. Since 1989, the year I graduated from high school, there have been 265 convicted criminals that have been exonerated. That averages out to approximately 12 exonerations per year over the last 22 years.

While that number seems high, it must be taken in context to be understood. While the devastation of those 265 lives are tragic and call for some type of compensation, the number is actually statistically insignificant when compared to the number of felony convictions that are gained in America's courts on a yearly basis. The federal government compiles the number of felony convictions in the courts every four years and those numbers are staggering: 1990 saw 829,340 felony convictions; 1994 had 872,220; 1998 with 927,720; 2002 with 1,051,000; and 2006, the last year available with 1,132,290 convictions. And did I mention that these are state felony convictions only, with no federal convictions included?

When taken in context, the 265 wrongful convictions do not seem so daunting, and the impact is further diluted when taken as a percentage of all convictions in the above listed years. Following are the percentages of convictions that the exonerated, all 265 of them, constitute in the years on record listed above. To be clear, I  am using all 265 exonerations in each year to come to these percentages (convictions/total exonerations*100) and giving the ratio of exonerated prisoners to convictions.

1. 1990: 0.03%  (1:3129)
2. 1994: 0.03%  (1:3291)
   
3. 1998: 0.029%  (1:3500)
   
4. 2002: 0.025%  (1:3966)
   
5. 2006: 0.023%  (1:4272)
   

And if we use the total number of state felony convictions in the listed years (4,812,570), the percentage drops to 0.005%, or 1:18,160. Once again, that is using the total number of exonerations so far (265), not the yearly average of 12.

Now, I am no mathematical genius, but even I can see that the number of exonerated prisoners is very small when taken in context of the number of lawful felony convictions in the various states from year to year. Such small numbers are not reason to completely overhaul a judicial system that has served us pretty well since the founding of the Republic, the personal pain and anguish of those 265 people notwithstanding.

Further, we need to also keep the actual convictions in a proper historical framework as well. In many of these cases, the people have been exonerated through the use of DNA evidence which was generally not available at the time of trial. Even as late as the late 1980s and early 1990s DNA was not in use for evidentiary purposes in our courts. Clarence Dupree was convicted in 1979 when the most advanced forensic technology was blood type matching, which doesn't really prove anything and the young men who were convicted of the Central Park "Wilding" rape did not have DNA evidence available to back up their assertions that they never came into contact with the victims. In many of these cases the available technology actually pointed in the direction of the accused, and that was the best technology that the state had available. I understand that stands as cold comfort to the Clarence Duprees of the world, but it is still a fact.

Now, do not take this as some blanket endorsement of the status quo in the justice system, because we all know that there are serious flaws that need to be addressed. We have too many instances of Brady violations; overzealous prosecutors; and cops with tunnel vision as it pertains to some suspects. However, when the issue is looked at less emotionally and more rationally, it is inescapable that while it is tragic to see any innocent person languishing behind bars, that happens far less than is often assumed. The system is for sure not perfect, but is not fatally flawed.

Forget nearly everything that I wrote commending President Obama on his recent speech in Tucson. While it remains one of his better speeches, and it still conveyed the correct tone and message, it turns out to have been the piece of political theater that many conservatives said it was from the jump.

I wanted to give the President credit for not rushing to make a political issue of this tragedy, yet I am today confronted with reports that his White House was doing just that in the initial hours after the attack. It seems that people inside the White House were coordinating with their media allies to link the attack to the Tea Party, the health care debate, or to the political right in this country in some manner. The t-shirts that I said I had no real problem with have now become a problem for me, since they are said to have been produced by Organizing for America, the group that was once Obama's campaign organization which now has a new name. There are also reports that the Obama team is hoping like hell that Rep. Giffords' husband flies the next shuttle mission so that they can make some sort of political hay out of that. If you want to see where I got my information, it can be found at  The Prowler on the American Spectator site.

So I stand corrected in my commendation of President Obama. I was fooled by the spin from the media, including Fox News, that painted the speech in the best light possible, and I genuinely thought that Obama did a good job...and I didn't want to believe that he and his White House were such ghouls as to use mass murder as a tool for political advancement. I guess I was the sucker on this one and now I know exactly what to expect of our Ghoul-in-Chief; nothing, not even the deaths of innocents can be "wasted" in the pursuit of political gain.

I generally like Rep.Peter King from New York, but I think he's all wet with his idea of creating a "gun free zone" of 1000 feet around members of Congress, federal judges, and other federal officials. The problem was not the gun, but the disturbed, possibly schizophrenic, young man who attacked Rep. Giffords and the constituents she was there to meet. We don't need new laws to restrict the constitutional rights of the people to bear arms, or for that matter stepped up laws for civil commitments of the suspected mentally ill. Congressman King better than anyone should know that laws should not be made simply because of one serious breakdown in the system.

What was curious about the statement, and which seemed to slip by unnoticed by many, was Rep. King saying that the new laws were needed because the members of Congress constituted a "special class". Maybe that was just a slip of the tongue, but it was a pretty telling slip because that is exactly what the people  DO NOT want to hear their representatives saying about themselves. Members of Congress are not special, even though they tend to see themselves that way, which is why the membership of the Congress just went through such a drastic change.

Yes, our representatives may need and deserve an extra level of protection because of their status as public figures, but they are not a special class. Maybe Mr. King needs to take a look around and see how many of his "special" colleagues got their walking papers last November for actually believing in their "special"-ness!

I am no fan of our current President, and have not been shy in letting that be known here at this blog and in personal conversations with friends and family. One of my main complaints is that I do not believe that President Obama is up to the task, and that stems from his seeming to have received credit all of his political life for things that he has not actually done.

Think about it; he taught a course in constitutional law and that morphed into his being some distinguished professor of constitutional law and an expert on the subject. He was given a Nobel Peace Prize simply for not being G.W. Bush; he was called a racial conciliator for throwing his granny under the wheels of the Racial Greyhound; he is purported to be an excellent orator for being able to deftly read his teleprompter; and he is credited for saving the American economy by creating trillions of dollars of debt in a couple of short years and presiding over a steady 9%+ unemployment rate. So I am not one to spend my energies giving him a lot of credit when it is obviously not due to him.

However, I am going to give the man credit for the way he has handled himself and his White House during the time following the tragic shooting rampage in Tucson, including his performance last night at the televised memorial service. While the media and politicians have been falling over each other to blame Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, talk radio, and the "lack of civility" for the actions of one seemingly mentally unstable person, Obama and his White House have made a decision not to engage in such talk. In fact. Mr. Obama made clear in his remarks that no one knows what prompted this act of violence and that blame could not be assigned to anyone for what happened. That was just the right tone to take and showed Mr. Obama, especially in this particular instance, as capable of realizing that partisan politics does not always rule the day.

What is bothersome to me is that so many conservatives are still attacking Obama as if he did something wrong here. They act as though he could have stopped the media from trying to assign blame to conservatives for this, but that was happening before he even had all the facts in hand. Besides, nothing the President could say or do would stop the likes of Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman, or Ed Schultz from launching on the nearest conservative target; that would have been akin to trying to stop the sun from rising in the eastern skies.

Further, there are complaints about the way the crowd acted, treating it more like a "pep rally" than a somber occasion, the passing out of t-shirts that stated that Tucson and America would thrive together, and the fact that the event was held at the McCale Center on the U of A campus; according to critics, the event should only have been held in a church somewhere. But in all honesty, what does that have to do with the President? I understand why they held it in the basketball arena, since it was a public memorial and they wanted to get as much of the public in as possible; after all, this event was a blow to the entire community. The t-shirts don't bother me one bit, since there was nothing at all political about the message on them, and just because this was a public memorial service doesn't mean it had to be a weepy occasion. Maybe it's just me and my experience in the black church atmosphere that I grew up in, but even funerals have a way of becoming celebrations; we are sad that we have lost a loved one, but we celebrate their lives and the fact that we believe that in their leaving us, they have gone home to their just reward in glory. So the lack of total solemnity just wasn't that big of a deal to me, and again it cannot be laid at Obama's feet. If he had admonished the crown in some way, lots of folks would be screeching about that today as not being presidential.

The bottom line is that President Obama has done lots of things to earn the disfavor and disapproval of conservatives, but his actions during this time has not been among them. This is probably his most "presidential" moment since assuming office and we should be willing to give him credit for it.

Sometimes you have just have to give a person the credit that they have earned.

In my last posting here at the Spade, I took a look at the uproar over the use of full body scanners and pat downs by TSA agents in our airports. My basic position is that in many ways this is much ado about nothing; while I understand that the searches and scans may be disconcerting to many, and an outright affront to some, the TSA is simply doing the best it can with what it has to work with. I also wrote that I am sort of tired already of hearing people braying about the violation of the 4th Amendment protections that they believe the scans and pat downs represent. My longtime friend and frequent debating partner Brian R, purveyor of  The View From the Island challenged my points about the 4th Amendment issues here, and in so doing made me step back and sharpen the point I was trying to make. More importantly, he got me to thinking about the contradiction that exists, as I see it, in the views of those who are dead set against the scanner/pat down policy at play now on 4th Amendment grounds, yet who have no problem at all with allowing racial, religious, or ethnic profiling to be used at the airports instead of random screening or the aforementioned TSA policy protocol.

Before we go any further, let me be clear that I am not some dyed in the wool opponent of profiling. Like I said in one of my comments on my last post, if you have an area that is a drug dealing spot and most of your dealers are young black males loitering in a certain area, then if you are going to make a dent in the drug traffic look for young black males loitering in the area. Likewise, if most of the people who are hijacking planes or launching terrorist attacks are young Arab or Muslim males, you should probably start there when looking for terrorist suspects. Further, I think that the random screening of certain people is one of the biggest wastes of time in the world when it comes to airport security; I seriously doubt that Christie Creamcheese from Hoboken, with her two toddlers in tow is about to try to commandeer a Boeing 737 and crash it into the Capitol.

However, I do stand amazed that the people on the right who are crying bloody murder over the use of full body scanners and pat downs as this egregious violation of the 4th Amendment have no concern that the use of profiling also constitutes a violation as well. I mean, what is more unreasonable than being treated as a suspect and being exposed to increased scrutiny and interrogation because of your nationality? What is more unreasonable than being pulled out of line or having your bags searched more thoroughly because you look like an Arab, or have an Arabic sounding name? What is more unreasonable than being treated as a potential terrorist simply because you "fit the profile"?

I had a friend once, a kid I worked with at my old job in the textile industry. His family was from Lebanon and moved to Boston when he was about six years old; this kid is American as American can be, because pretty much all he knows is America. His family were at least nominal Christians, living in our small North Carolina community, and were generally well liked. But if we went to a system of profiling, he would be one of the first to be profiled because he is a young Arab looking male and would likely be traveling alone...he would "fit the profile." But would anyone be worried about his being treated unfairly? Would Sean Hannity or Mark Steyn be using radio and television airtime to complain that Hesham's 4th Amendment rights were being violated? I doubt it.

And this is where it comes time for me to call a spade a spade, and I am sure many of you won't like it. Now far be it from me to place the race card, but in this instance there is simply no way around it for me; race and/or ethnicity is one of the major issues in this debate, but no one wants to talk about it. But I will and some of you ain't gonna like it one damned bit.

The reason that people are so up in arms about the TSA's current screening procedures is because it inconveniences them and they are treated like criminal suspects, when they don't feel that such treatment is justified. Why, they are good loyal American citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom happen to be White, and they cannot understand why they should have to be screened. That just makes no sense to them, so they are angry and feel that their constitutional rights have been violated by their being forced to be scanned or patted down.

Conversely, they have no problem with having young Arab men treated as criminal suspects, without any other evidence than their name, ethnicity, looks, or religious background; this, apparently, is not a violation of their 4th Amendment rights. I mean, not all Arabs are terrorists, but all the terrorists that have hit us are Arabs...right? So hey, it's no problem for us to single out the Arab 'other' for special scrutiny, because they just might be guilty and if not, no harm done...right? I mean, that seems to be the attitude of many of the people I listen to talk about this subject. They become indignant when they, or the "80 year old grandmother" is forced to go through the "indignity"of a full body scan or pat down, but they can't seem to see that it is equally unconstitutional to deem people automatic suspects simply because of how they look, or where their families came from. And what do we do when we come across another "Jihad Jane", the blond-haired, blue-eyed American woman who was caught recruiting terrorists to attack America? Where does she fit in the profiling spectrum?


Maybe I have a problem with this while others don't because I am Black, and I know what it is to be "profiled". I know what it is like to walk into a store and have people follow you from the moment you walk in until you walk out, as if you are there for no other reason than to steal from them. I know what it's like to have cops pull you over or follow you because you look "out of place" in a certain neighborhood. When you have been suspected simply because you "fit the profile", your ideas about profiling become a little different than some others.

Now, like I said before, I believe there is a need to do some sort of profiling. I don't believe that we can afford to ignore who it is that has threatened and attacked us in the past when taking current protective measures. What I do want though is some honesty on this issue of profiling from all involved, and I especially want to see a wee bit less hypocrisy from the people who are outraged over the constitutional violations of full body scanners, but are mute on any violations involved with the use of racial, religious, or ethnic profiling. The Constitution was not just written to protect my rights, but to protect everyone from an overreaching government. You cannot claim fidelity to the Constitution and at the same time be willing to allow violations of it...so long as the violations are aimed at someone else.

So which is it folks? Do we honor the 4th Amendment protections for everyone, or is it okay to suspend them for a select few?

I thought we had learned a lesson after the embassy bombings, but maybe I was wrong. I thought we learned a lesson after the WTC bombings in 1993, but I must have been mistaken. I was sure we had learned a lesson after the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, but that seemed to have not made the impression that I thought it did. Surely the attacks on 9/11 opened all of our eyes, and for a little while it did. But as always, we sort of started living our lives again, and while we did not forget the events of that tragic day, we allowed the message that it should have sent to us to be diluted. So I figured that the attempted bombing of a flight in Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 would have been just the wake up call America needed, to snap us out of the lethargy we had fallen into about keeping ourselves safe from terrorist attacks.

Alas, it seems that I was wrong again. It seems that Americans would rather have something to whine and complain about, some reason to accuse the government of wrongdoing over than to get serious about protecting our homeland from attack by people whose sole motivation in life is to kill us.

For the life of me, I cannot understand the uproar being caused by the use of the full body scanners at some of our airports, and by the frisking that TSA workers do in lieu of the scanning when people opt out. The way that people are going on an on about this issue, you would think that the federal government was taking people out of the airports and sending them to GITMO for water boarding ,rather than asking them to consent to a frisking that some people may find a bit uncomfortable. To hear people on both the left and right tell it, the body scanners are some type of porn device that the people operating the equipment are getting their jollies from, and the frisking is either a) one step removed from a sexual assault, or b) an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment protections against illegal searches and seizures.

My question to the complainers is simply this: What are we supposed to do to keep ourselves safe if both the full body scanners and the frisk are unacceptable?

Now, I think that the idea that the government is violating the Fourth Amendment in conducting these searches is ridiculous on its face. The Fourth Amendment reads as such: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The Supreme Court in its rulings have basically established that the Fourth Amendment protects the citizens from illegal, unwarranted searches by the state using its police powers, especially where there is criminal activity, real or suspected, involved. In other words, this amendment protects us from abuses of power by law enforcement, not from being frisked in an airport. I mean, whenever we fly we automatically cede some of our constitutional protections as the cost of doing business with the airline; passengers cannot say whatever they want on a plane without consequence, they cannot bring certain items on planes, and they have long been subjected to having their luggage checked...so what's the big deal now?

As for the idea that the frisk is tantamount to a sexual assault, that is to trivialize the suffering of people who have gone through the trauma of a real sexual assault. Being patted down and having someone maybe touch your breasts or genitalia is not in any way, shape, or form comparable to having someone force you into any type of non-consensual sexual activity. And those who have used that analogy should be deeply ashamed of themselves for trivializing a very real trauma just so they can complain about a government practice that they don't agree with.

You see, the government is in a tough spot here, and is attempting to handle it the best way they know how. Something drastic was going to have to be done in order to avoid another attack like the attempted Christmas Day bombing. Walking through a metal detector is simply not going to cut it when a guy has explosives packed in his underwear! I think that at this moment the TSA is doing the very best it can with the technology at its disposal, and instead of throwing rocks at them, maybe we need to grit our teeth and put up with a little bit of "indignity" by going through the full body scan or the pat down, and stop worrying that images of our naked bodies could possibly, maybe, end up on the net.

Because like Peter Johnson said on Sean Hannity's radio show yesterday, maybe we should stop worrying about being naked on the web, and more about being naked on an autopsy table.

When does the time come when the establishment GOP decides that they should stop their sniping at their right flank and fall in line with the will of the electorate? And when will some conservative writers start to realize that it is not the Tea Party that is waging an internecine GOP war, but the Establishment? I have read time and again conservative writers claiming that the TPM is somehow doing wrong to oppose Establishment Republicans, and I have grown tired of that new canard.

The Tea Party fought it's war against the Establishment exactly where it should have been fought...in the primaries. Battles were won at the primary level against entrenched Establishment types all across the country, and when those battles were over the TPM  assumed that all of the GOP would then turn their guns on the Democrats to defeat them in the general election. Boy, were we wrong!

Instead, the GOP decided that it was more important to protect the Establishment than to wrest control of the government back from the Democrats. They immediately launched attacks against "unapproved" candidates such as Christine O'Donnell, Sharon Angle, and Joe Miller, and don't forget that they also attacked both Rand Paul and Marco Rubio right up until it was obvious that those two were not going to be denied nominations in their respective states. The GOP was more than willing to savage their own candidates and weaken them in the general elections, and even worse they were, and are, willing to withhold campaign funding from candidates that they don't like. If you don't believe it, I'll use one example from my home state of North Carolina as an illustration.

Renee Ellmers won the GOP primary for District 2 and ran against Democrat incumbent Bob Etheridge, defeating him in the general election. A few days after the election tally came in, there suddenly appeared uncounted ballots from election night that some how went uncounted. And wonder of wonders, most of them were Democratic votes that suddenly reduced the Ellmers victory to a position where a recount was needed.

Now, Ms. Ellmers didn't have the money needed to effectively wage the recount fight and the NRCC initially refused to help defray here costs, because way back in the primaries they had decided that her candidacy was "not ready for prime time"...mainly because she beat their preferred candidate. The Establishment was ready to possibly lose control of this seat in the House primarily because it was not won by their preferred candidate! The only reason that they have kicked any money into the fight now is the same reason they eventually gave Christine O'Donnell a relative pittance in her race; the conservative new media picked up on it, broadcast it, and basically shamed the GOP into offering some support to their own candidates. But we are to believe that the TPM is at war with the GOP? Really?!?

Just the other day I wrote that failures in the next two years by the GOP will not mean the end of the Party, and I stand by that assessment. The GOP is too ingrained in the American political psyche to simply dry up and blow away, even on these particular winds of change. However, I do believe that the grassroots of the Party are more than willing to sweep out the "leadership" cabal of the GOP that are the personification of the Establishment mindset. The people do not want to hear Orrin Hatch looking to retreat from a fight over health care reform before one shot has been fired, or to see Mitch McConnell trying to derail Jim DeMint's non-binding resolution calling on the Senate Republicans to refrain from taking earmarks in the new Congress. We are tired of business as usual, which is why so many Democrats and entrenched "moderate" Republicans and their staffers are about to be officially out of work.

And if this is truly an internecine war for the soul of the GOP, then even if the Tea Party didn't start it, we conservatives better damned well have the will and fortitude to end it!

“This is the GOP’s last chance.” I have heard that phrase or some variation so much in the last two days that I am already sick of it. “If the GOP screws this up, they will go the way of the Whigs.” Really? After establishing itself since the Civil War era one more bad governing cycle will see the GOP assigned to the dustbin of American political history? Does anyone really believe that, or is it just the new thing to say to sound politically aware?

Because if people actually believe that, it may be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard intelligent people say. I no more believe that the GOP will cease to exist than I believe the moon is made of green cheese!

I understand the sentiment and the emotion of saying things of this nature, and I suppose that it is being said to serve as a warning to the GOP to legislate according to the will of the people. I get that. What I don’t get is this notion that if every member of the GOP doesn’t vote every way that we want on every issue, then we must overthrow the GOP. That sounds all well and good, but if that were ever tried, where would the conservatives go? The Libertarians? The Constitution Party? A wholly new Tea Party? And if such a move were tried, do we actually believe that it would be ultimately successful?

I say that we reject such a course of action and stay the course that has just plotted during this election season, because it is working. Not every Republican who has served in the Congress is a bad guy or girl; there are people like Jim DeMint and Michelle Bachman that the conservative grassroots can rally around. And the simple truth of the matter is that we need people with political experience and connections in order to be a political success. People like Richard Armey are invaluable to the conservative resurgence that we are seeing, because they have an insider’s knowledge of how to work the system that is needed, because the current system is not changing overnight.

Again, I say that we have plotted a course that can bear even more fruit if we continue to follow the path we have set down. We don’t need to overthrow the GOP; we need to continue to take it back from those who have happily watched as it drifted left over the years. We need to commit to continuing to nominate conservatives in the primaries; we need to continue to support them in the general elections; we need to step up efforts at wresting back control of the Party at the local and state levels and returning it to its conservative roots.

The current attitude being bandied about just seems counterproductive to me, because it would punish the entirety of the members for our prolonged failures as an electorate. We have always had the ability to do what we did this week, but we never stepped up en masse and attempted to do anything about the leftward drift in the GOP. Instead we stood by and watched the Party become something that we hardly recognized, often described as Democrat-Lite. We watched the GOP give us senators like Linc Chafee, Lindsey Graham, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins. We accepted presidential nominees like Bob Dole and John McCain, and we voted for them out of a sense of loyalty to the Party and because we felt they were the lesser of two evils (SCDSers excluded). Now we want to start threatening the GOP if they don’t correct all the wrongs that we watched accrue over more than two decades in less than two years? That would be like a parent allowing a child to run wild, with no attempts at discipline for 14 years to suddenly decide that after the child turned 15 it had one week to shape up, or the kid is getting sent to military school. It ain’t the kid’s fault that mommy and daddy never reined him in, so it’s not exactly fair to the kid for mommy and daddy to suddenly demand an immediate change in behavior with zero tolerance for slip-ups!

Let’s have a little patience with the new GOP Congress members, and put the entrenched members on notice that if they drop the ball they can go the way of Bob Bennett, Charlie Crist, and Mike Castle. We have started to take back the levers of power in the GOP and our voice is not only being heard, but heeded. Let’s not throw away the megaphone of an established Party apparatus without first making full use of it.