Saturday, November 15, 2008
Democrats Have Know Family Values
The will of the people is being ignored. We have an election and one side loses but wait according to the Democrats that does not matter.
What happened to family values in the Democrat Party?
It is clear Democrats Really Aren't for Family Values at All!
Democrats cheat to get elected then when they lose they continue to complain.
43 Democratic legislators, including the leaders of the Senate and Assembly, filed a brief requesting that state Supreme Court judges void Proposition 8. None of the petitioners were Republicans.
Bob
By Kathleen Gilbert
SACRAMENTO, California, November 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - 43 Democratic
legislators in both of California's legislative houses, including the leaders
of the Senate and Assembly, filed a brief requesting that state Supreme Court
judges void Proposition 8.
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and incoming
President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg were among the signers of the friend of the
court brief, which included a little over a third of the state's 120
legislators. None of the petitioners were Republicans.
According to the LA Times, the lawmakers' brief described the 500,000-vote margin as a "bare majority" that was "compromising the enduring constitutional promise of equal protection under the law."
"Proposition 8 seeks to effect a monumental revision of this foundational principle and constitutional structure by allowing a bare majority of voters to eliminate a fundamental right of a constitutionally protected minority group."If Proposition 8 takes effect, this court will no longer be the final arbiter of the rights of minorities," states the brief.Supreme Court spokeswoman Lynn Holton said the court plans to act quickly on the anti-Proposition 8 legislation, and may reach a decision as early as this week.
The three lawsuits challenging Proposition 8 were launched immediately after the November 4 passage of Proposition 8, which inserted the true definition of marriage into California's constitution.
Legal experts say opponents' claims that Proposition 8 is an illegal revision of the constitution, rather than an amendment, are not likely to hold water.According to a Union-Tribune column, recall election expert Ted Costa voiced concerns that, despite the legality of Prop. 8, the four Supreme Court judges originally responsible for legalizing same-sex marriage earlier this year may
again side with homosexualist lobbyists and void the amendment. In that case, said Costa, Proposition 8 supporters are likely to call for a recall vote to remove the judges.
What happened to family values in the Democrat Party?
It is clear Democrats Really Aren't for Family Values at All!
Democrats cheat to get elected then when they lose they continue to complain.
43 Democratic legislators, including the leaders of the Senate and Assembly, filed a brief requesting that state Supreme Court judges void Proposition 8. None of the petitioners were Republicans.
Bob
By Kathleen Gilbert
SACRAMENTO, California, November 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - 43 Democratic
legislators in both of California's legislative houses, including the leaders
of the Senate and Assembly, filed a brief requesting that state Supreme Court
judges void Proposition 8.
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and incoming
President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg were among the signers of the friend of the
court brief, which included a little over a third of the state's 120
legislators. None of the petitioners were Republicans.
According to the LA Times, the lawmakers' brief described the 500,000-vote margin as a "bare majority" that was "compromising the enduring constitutional promise of equal protection under the law."
"Proposition 8 seeks to effect a monumental revision of this foundational principle and constitutional structure by allowing a bare majority of voters to eliminate a fundamental right of a constitutionally protected minority group."If Proposition 8 takes effect, this court will no longer be the final arbiter of the rights of minorities," states the brief.Supreme Court spokeswoman Lynn Holton said the court plans to act quickly on the anti-Proposition 8 legislation, and may reach a decision as early as this week.
The three lawsuits challenging Proposition 8 were launched immediately after the November 4 passage of Proposition 8, which inserted the true definition of marriage into California's constitution.
Legal experts say opponents' claims that Proposition 8 is an illegal revision of the constitution, rather than an amendment, are not likely to hold water.According to a Union-Tribune column, recall election expert Ted Costa voiced concerns that, despite the legality of Prop. 8, the four Supreme Court judges originally responsible for legalizing same-sex marriage earlier this year may
again side with homosexualist lobbyists and void the amendment. In that case, said Costa, Proposition 8 supporters are likely to call for a recall vote to remove the judges.
Democrats Trying To Cheat To Win
Again Democrats Cheat!
A Changed Election?
Comedian turned Democratic politician Al Franken had little to laugh about on Election night. By dawn the next morning -- after all of the votes were supposedly counted in his race against Republican Norm Coleman for one of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seats -- the returns showed that Franken had lost narrowly by just 725 votes.
Coleman’s slim margin of victory meant that there will be an automatic statewide recount. But that’s the part of this story yet to come. The recount hasn’t even begun -- and won’t until later next week -- nevertheless Franken has already closed the gap convincingly.
Indeed, Franken must be more than amused now because, in the week following the election, Senator Coleman’s initial lead has all but evaporated -- without any significant stashes of uncounted ballots being uncovered or rejected votes being tallied.
By the night after the election, Franken’s deficit had shrunk by more than a third, so that only 477 votes separated the comic from being able to dazzle C-SPAN audiences by delivering his standup routine from the floor of the U.S. Senate. A day later, Coleman’s lead took another hit, meaning that it now amounted to less than half the initial margin, down to 336 votes. Last Friday turned the tables nearly another hundred votes, so that Franken then trailed by just 239 votes. The weekend and a government holiday didn’t stop the change.
By late Sunday night, another 18 votes were shaved off, lowering Coleman’s margin of, by then, less-than-apparent victory to 221. Several days later, on Veteran’s Day, Franken had closed the gap even further so that only 206 votes separated him from inauguration day.
All of this has been especially puzzling to election observers because, as previously noted, Franken hasn’t yet been the beneficiary of a recount that finds large numbers of previously uncounted votes or that tallies significant figures from earlier machine-rejected ballots. Rather, as University of Maryland research scholar John Lott Jr. wrote in a column that appeared Monday, Franken’s fortunes have risen as “local election officials correct[ed] claimed typos in how the numbers were reported.”That has raised an awful lot of questions about what is adding up to be all but the margin of victory.
You see, “corrections were posted in other races, but they were only a fraction of those for the Senate,” Lott explained. “The Senate gains for Franken were 2.5 times the gain for Obama in the presidential race count, 2.9 times the total gain that Democrats got across all Minnesota congressional races, and 5 times the net loss that Democrats suffered for all state house races.”
Indeed, the 500-plus vote swing in favor of Franken “is greater than adding together all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, and state house races combined (a sum of 482),” Lott noted.
Raising even more questions, “virtually all of Franken’s new votes came in just three out of 4130 precincts, and almost half the gain (246 votes) occurred in just one precinct -- Two Harbors, a small town north of Duluth along Lake Superior,” Lott explained. “None of the other races had any changes in their vote totals in that precinct,” he added.
All of this led Lott to observe that, while the “Minneapolis Star Tribune attributed these types of reporting mistakes to ‘exhausted county officials,’ … the sizes of the errors in these three precincts are surprisingly large.”On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page escalated the questions that naturally arise from what everyone has seen over the last week in Minnesota.
“It isn’t unusual for officials to report that they transposed a number here or there,” the Journal acknowledged. But “[i]n a normal audit, these mistakes could be expected to cut both ways,” the editorial continued. “Instead, nearly every ‘fix’ has gone for Mr. Franken, in some cases under strange circumstances.”Which brings us, finally, to the recount that will begin next week.
The conclusion of the Journal editorial was an admonition that, “if Minnesota wants to retain its reputation as a state with clean elections, it needs to run an honest recount.” That really should be straightforward because, as Lott pointed out, recounting the Minnesota vote in 2008 won’t be like recounting the Florida vote in 2000.
Unlike the punchcards used by Florida eight years ago, Minnesotans cast their votes using optical scan ballots. This is significant because optical scan machines have some vote-proofing qualities that ensure against mistakenly cast undervotes or overvotes.
“Voters themselves insert[ed] their ballots into the machine that reads and records their votes, and if the machine finds that a vote isn’t recorded, voters can either mark the race that they forgot to mark or didn’t mark clearly,” Lott explained. “Or if voters ‘overvoted’ and accidentally marked too many candidates, voters can also get a fresh ballot. There should be no role to divine voters’ intentions. If a voter wanted a vote recorded for a particular race, the machine tells him whether his vote in all the races was counted.”
In other words, the Minnesota recount of 2008 needn’t look anything like the Florida recount of 2000. Judges shouldn’t be examining ballots to guess whether the voter had attempted to vote for Franken, and lawyers shouldn’t be arguing that rejected ballots should be counted based on such mixed signals. The optical scan machines already gave the voters that second chance, which the voter didn’t take if the ballot got cast anyway.This isn’t to say anyone thinks the recount won’t devolve into such machinations.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a headline Tuesday noting that both candidates were “getting all lawyered up for the Senate recount.” After all, since election officials have already corrected away more than two-thirds of Coleman’s initial margin of victory, it has become a lot more believable to Franken that he can finish changing the election results so long as he tries.
A Changed Election?
Comedian turned Democratic politician Al Franken had little to laugh about on Election night. By dawn the next morning -- after all of the votes were supposedly counted in his race against Republican Norm Coleman for one of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate seats -- the returns showed that Franken had lost narrowly by just 725 votes.
Coleman’s slim margin of victory meant that there will be an automatic statewide recount. But that’s the part of this story yet to come. The recount hasn’t even begun -- and won’t until later next week -- nevertheless Franken has already closed the gap convincingly.
Indeed, Franken must be more than amused now because, in the week following the election, Senator Coleman’s initial lead has all but evaporated -- without any significant stashes of uncounted ballots being uncovered or rejected votes being tallied.
By the night after the election, Franken’s deficit had shrunk by more than a third, so that only 477 votes separated the comic from being able to dazzle C-SPAN audiences by delivering his standup routine from the floor of the U.S. Senate. A day later, Coleman’s lead took another hit, meaning that it now amounted to less than half the initial margin, down to 336 votes. Last Friday turned the tables nearly another hundred votes, so that Franken then trailed by just 239 votes. The weekend and a government holiday didn’t stop the change.
By late Sunday night, another 18 votes were shaved off, lowering Coleman’s margin of, by then, less-than-apparent victory to 221. Several days later, on Veteran’s Day, Franken had closed the gap even further so that only 206 votes separated him from inauguration day.
All of this has been especially puzzling to election observers because, as previously noted, Franken hasn’t yet been the beneficiary of a recount that finds large numbers of previously uncounted votes or that tallies significant figures from earlier machine-rejected ballots. Rather, as University of Maryland research scholar John Lott Jr. wrote in a column that appeared Monday, Franken’s fortunes have risen as “local election officials correct[ed] claimed typos in how the numbers were reported.”That has raised an awful lot of questions about what is adding up to be all but the margin of victory.
You see, “corrections were posted in other races, but they were only a fraction of those for the Senate,” Lott explained. “The Senate gains for Franken were 2.5 times the gain for Obama in the presidential race count, 2.9 times the total gain that Democrats got across all Minnesota congressional races, and 5 times the net loss that Democrats suffered for all state house races.”
Indeed, the 500-plus vote swing in favor of Franken “is greater than adding together all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, and state house races combined (a sum of 482),” Lott noted.
Raising even more questions, “virtually all of Franken’s new votes came in just three out of 4130 precincts, and almost half the gain (246 votes) occurred in just one precinct -- Two Harbors, a small town north of Duluth along Lake Superior,” Lott explained. “None of the other races had any changes in their vote totals in that precinct,” he added.
All of this led Lott to observe that, while the “Minneapolis Star Tribune attributed these types of reporting mistakes to ‘exhausted county officials,’ … the sizes of the errors in these three precincts are surprisingly large.”On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page escalated the questions that naturally arise from what everyone has seen over the last week in Minnesota.
“It isn’t unusual for officials to report that they transposed a number here or there,” the Journal acknowledged. But “[i]n a normal audit, these mistakes could be expected to cut both ways,” the editorial continued. “Instead, nearly every ‘fix’ has gone for Mr. Franken, in some cases under strange circumstances.”Which brings us, finally, to the recount that will begin next week.
The conclusion of the Journal editorial was an admonition that, “if Minnesota wants to retain its reputation as a state with clean elections, it needs to run an honest recount.” That really should be straightforward because, as Lott pointed out, recounting the Minnesota vote in 2008 won’t be like recounting the Florida vote in 2000.
Unlike the punchcards used by Florida eight years ago, Minnesotans cast their votes using optical scan ballots. This is significant because optical scan machines have some vote-proofing qualities that ensure against mistakenly cast undervotes or overvotes.
“Voters themselves insert[ed] their ballots into the machine that reads and records their votes, and if the machine finds that a vote isn’t recorded, voters can either mark the race that they forgot to mark or didn’t mark clearly,” Lott explained. “Or if voters ‘overvoted’ and accidentally marked too many candidates, voters can also get a fresh ballot. There should be no role to divine voters’ intentions. If a voter wanted a vote recorded for a particular race, the machine tells him whether his vote in all the races was counted.”
In other words, the Minnesota recount of 2008 needn’t look anything like the Florida recount of 2000. Judges shouldn’t be examining ballots to guess whether the voter had attempted to vote for Franken, and lawyers shouldn’t be arguing that rejected ballots should be counted based on such mixed signals. The optical scan machines already gave the voters that second chance, which the voter didn’t take if the ballot got cast anyway.This isn’t to say anyone thinks the recount won’t devolve into such machinations.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a headline Tuesday noting that both candidates were “getting all lawyered up for the Senate recount.” After all, since election officials have already corrected away more than two-thirds of Coleman’s initial margin of victory, it has become a lot more believable to Franken that he can finish changing the election results so long as he tries.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Congress Looking At Tax Breaks
Democrats believe they can do a better job of investing our retirement money. Just look at the bailout of AIG, do we really trust the Government with our retirement account. Read the Wall Street article.
Bob
Targeting Your 401(k)
Congress has an eye on the tax break for your retirement.
November 14, 2008
You may have heard about Argentina's plan to nationalize private retirement accounts. Some Democrats on Capitol Hill are inspired, and with their big election victory they may get the chance to test Peronist ideas in America.
Meet Congressmen George Miller and Jim McDermott, who are eager to change the way Americans save for their golden years. They'll also be powerbrokers in the next Congress. Mr. Miller, who came in with the Class of 1974 from California, chairs the House Education and Labor Committee. Mr. McDermott, who has represented Seattle the past two decades, runs a House Ways and Means subcommittee on income security and family support.
Before Election Day, the Congressmen began to target the $3 trillion in 401(k) accounts held by about 60% of Americans. Mr. Miller called the system "an inadequate vehicle" that "has not been terribly successful" in encouraging retirement savings. He wants a "wholesale re-examination" of pensions.
Just what alternative these Democrats support is unclear, and nothing has been formally proposed beyond Mr. Miller's plan to make the system "more transparent," reduce fees charged by the money managers, and suspend the tax penalty for seniors over 70 who don't take the "required minimum" withdrawal from their account, regardless of the market situation.
But the Chairman has also signalled greater ambitions. At a hearing last month, Mr. Miller put the 401(k) system into play. Under the current system, employers match employee contributions that aren't taxed until redeemed, an indirect subsidy worth some $80 billion today. "We have to start to think about in Congress . . . whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that's not generating what we now say it should," Mr. Miller said. "For a taxpayer investment of this size, we must ensure that the structure of 401(k)s adequately protects the nest eggs of participating workers."
His committee listened to possible reform proposals. Most eye-catching was an idea from Teresa Ghilarducci at New York's New School for Social Research. Her plan would end the tax breaks for 401(k)s; she proposes instead to give all workers an annual $600 inflation-adjusted tax credit for retirement and force them to invest 5% of their pay into a government-run retirement account managed by the Social Security Administration. She called the 401(k) "a failed experiment." A McDermott spokesman called her proposals "intriguing" and "part of the discussion." Mr. Miller hasn't so far endorsed the plan.
The main liberal objection to 401(k)s seems to be that they let average Americans control their own investment decisions for retirement. As Shlomo Benartzi, a professor at UCLA's Anderson business school, told Mr. Miller's committee, "Individuals have a tendency to buy at the peak, and then panic when the markets drop and sell at the bottom." Better to have the government do this instead.
It is certainly true that retirement plans have lost, on paper, some $4 trillion in the past 15 months -- half in 401(k) and IRAs and half in company defined-benefit plans. Average 401(k)s are down a quarter this year. But assuming sensible policies and a normal economic recovery, those asset values should rise again over time. In any case, investment returns on stocks and bonds over extended periods far exceed the paltry returns on Social Security that for some workers are a mere 1% to 2%.
Tax breaks alone hardly explain the popularity of 401(k)s. Over the past 30 years, the number of individuals covered by them nearly trebled, up to 65 million accounts, while the number under defined-benefit pension fell 30%. People are attached to their 401(k)s because it is their property, which they can carry with them to new jobs (unlike traditional pensions), manage as they see fit and bequeath to heirs.
Before entertaining dreams of state-managed retirement accounts, Congressional Democrats might ask why Europe and Latin America have tried so hard in recent years to move in the opposite direction. Their pension systems are debt-ridden, can't easily adjust for demographic shifts and show a historically lower return.
If Democrats want to improve the prospects for American retirees, their first priority should be removing barriers to economic growth. Anger over the drop in 401(k) balances is one reason that voters who belong to the "investor class" swung to Democrats in greater than usual numbers this year. Their mandate is for policies that improve those returns, not strip them of tax benefits
Bob
Targeting Your 401(k)
Congress has an eye on the tax break for your retirement.
November 14, 2008
You may have heard about Argentina's plan to nationalize private retirement accounts. Some Democrats on Capitol Hill are inspired, and with their big election victory they may get the chance to test Peronist ideas in America.
Meet Congressmen George Miller and Jim McDermott, who are eager to change the way Americans save for their golden years. They'll also be powerbrokers in the next Congress. Mr. Miller, who came in with the Class of 1974 from California, chairs the House Education and Labor Committee. Mr. McDermott, who has represented Seattle the past two decades, runs a House Ways and Means subcommittee on income security and family support.
Before Election Day, the Congressmen began to target the $3 trillion in 401(k) accounts held by about 60% of Americans. Mr. Miller called the system "an inadequate vehicle" that "has not been terribly successful" in encouraging retirement savings. He wants a "wholesale re-examination" of pensions.
Just what alternative these Democrats support is unclear, and nothing has been formally proposed beyond Mr. Miller's plan to make the system "more transparent," reduce fees charged by the money managers, and suspend the tax penalty for seniors over 70 who don't take the "required minimum" withdrawal from their account, regardless of the market situation.
But the Chairman has also signalled greater ambitions. At a hearing last month, Mr. Miller put the 401(k) system into play. Under the current system, employers match employee contributions that aren't taxed until redeemed, an indirect subsidy worth some $80 billion today. "We have to start to think about in Congress . . . whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that's not generating what we now say it should," Mr. Miller said. "For a taxpayer investment of this size, we must ensure that the structure of 401(k)s adequately protects the nest eggs of participating workers."
His committee listened to possible reform proposals. Most eye-catching was an idea from Teresa Ghilarducci at New York's New School for Social Research. Her plan would end the tax breaks for 401(k)s; she proposes instead to give all workers an annual $600 inflation-adjusted tax credit for retirement and force them to invest 5% of their pay into a government-run retirement account managed by the Social Security Administration. She called the 401(k) "a failed experiment." A McDermott spokesman called her proposals "intriguing" and "part of the discussion." Mr. Miller hasn't so far endorsed the plan.
The main liberal objection to 401(k)s seems to be that they let average Americans control their own investment decisions for retirement. As Shlomo Benartzi, a professor at UCLA's Anderson business school, told Mr. Miller's committee, "Individuals have a tendency to buy at the peak, and then panic when the markets drop and sell at the bottom." Better to have the government do this instead.
It is certainly true that retirement plans have lost, on paper, some $4 trillion in the past 15 months -- half in 401(k) and IRAs and half in company defined-benefit plans. Average 401(k)s are down a quarter this year. But assuming sensible policies and a normal economic recovery, those asset values should rise again over time. In any case, investment returns on stocks and bonds over extended periods far exceed the paltry returns on Social Security that for some workers are a mere 1% to 2%.
Tax breaks alone hardly explain the popularity of 401(k)s. Over the past 30 years, the number of individuals covered by them nearly trebled, up to 65 million accounts, while the number under defined-benefit pension fell 30%. People are attached to their 401(k)s because it is their property, which they can carry with them to new jobs (unlike traditional pensions), manage as they see fit and bequeath to heirs.
Before entertaining dreams of state-managed retirement accounts, Congressional Democrats might ask why Europe and Latin America have tried so hard in recent years to move in the opposite direction. Their pension systems are debt-ridden, can't easily adjust for demographic shifts and show a historically lower return.
If Democrats want to improve the prospects for American retirees, their first priority should be removing barriers to economic growth. Anger over the drop in 401(k) balances is one reason that voters who belong to the "investor class" swung to Democrats in greater than usual numbers this year. Their mandate is for policies that improve those returns, not strip them of tax benefits
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Senator Reynolds Recount
Today, I spent 8 hours watching the recount of the ballots of Senator Jim Reynolds and his opponent, David Boren. To bring you up to speed on Sen. Reynolds' race, going back to filing day, a person, by the name of David Boren filed to run against Senator Reynolds, only minutes prior to the campaign deadline. During the months ahead David Boren did nothing to get elected, no ads, no door hangers, no door knocking, no nothing, zilch, natta. Then just a few days prior to the November General Election, the Democrats started running TV and radio ads claiming all kinds of issues against Senator Reynolds. None of the TV ads had any truth to them. Reynolds won the race by 159 votes. Then, last week Boren filed for recount.
Several of us were asked to be watchers on behalf of the Republican Party and Jim Reynolds. We went to the State Party Tuesday to go through the format of the recount. See below directions.
1. The recounts will be held at tables. Four Election Board employees will be stationed at each table. A Caller, a Stacker and Two Tallyers. Both candidates are allowed one Watcher per table.
2. Ballots will be viewed one at a time. The Watcher will call out the name of the candidate as indicated on the ballot. The Stacker will take possession of the ballot and set it in a finished stack.
3. When the caller states the name of the appropriate candidate, the Tallyers will mark on piece of paper, in groups of five votes.
4. Watchers are to have an unobstructed view of the ballots. If you see anything remiss, you are to raise your hand or express objection verbally. The ballot will be set aside for review by members of the Election Board.
Thursday morning, we met at the Election Board and then proceeded over to the Court House for a brief hearing in Judge Hetherington's Court room.
The amazing part about the recount fiasco today neither Boren, his attorney nor watchers appeared in court for the brief hearing. Since Reynolds Senate Seat includes part of Cleveland County and Oklahoma County they also had a hearing in Oklahoma City where Boren was an hour late for that hearing. At our hearing, the judge instructed the recount to go forward. We left the court room and proceeded back across the street to the election board. We thought the counting of the ballots would take place at the Court House where there was plenty of room to process the votes. Instead of utilizing one of the large rooms, at the Court House the Election Board Secretary, Paula Roberts had small tables set up in the Election Board office.
The Election Board Secretary instructed her staff the formality of the recount that morning. The recount was very disorganized and crowded, at first. Four tables were set up with four people to a table. Two Republicans and two Democrats assigned to each table along with one Democrat and one Republican watcher. It was difficult to hear the names with others reading names only a few feet away.
The Election Board employees were all very interested and dedicated individuals. They took their assignments very seriously and it was very obvious they wanted to get the count completed in a fair and honest manner. Everyone of the individuals should be commended for being such diligent workers.
After 8 hours of counting close to 11,000 ballots, Jim Reynolds had a net gain of 1 vote. Man what a waste of time, energy and money. Tomorrow they will finish the recount in Oklahoma County. I am willing to bet the outcome will be the same as Cleveland County.
Special thanks to the Cleveland County Election Board for a job well done.
Bob
Editor Of Gazette
This letter is from one of Oklahoma's top bloggers www.reddirtreport.com. Please read
Bob
The following letter was one I wrote in reaction to a column written by far-left Oklahoma City-based pastor Robin Meyers, which appeared in this week's issue of the Oklahoma Gazette. - Andrew
Dear Editor,
Driving east into the Oklahoma Panhandle from New Mexico a few days before Election Day, I paid attention to the political signs I saw driving back home to Oklahoma City. Save for some signs supporting some local Democrats on the local and state level, there was not a single sign along the roadside touting support for Democrat candidates Andrew Rice, Jim Roth or Barack Obama, at least until I got into Oklahoma County.
I thought this said a lot about rural Oklahoma and the conservative values they hold dear. The sanctimonious rantings of Robin Meyers would lead one to believe that there is an army of liberals here in the Sooner State that have somehow been disenfranchised by know-nothing conservatives. The simple fact is that the majority of Oklahoma voters paid attention to the campaign and saw that Obama, Roth and Rice held views counter to their own. With that in mind, Oklahomans voted accordingly.
Meyers, meanwhile, says that with all 77 Oklahoma counties voting for McCain-Palin we are now a "national embarrassment." Beyond our state's borders, the country and the world "wept for joy" at the election of America's first black president. While that is a remarkable achievement for our nation, one has to look deeper, beyond the packaging and words of the candidate and look to see what they really represent. In the case of President-Elect Obama, well, he appears to be a far-left globalist more interested in pleasing the world and his handlers than in doing what is right for the American people.
And then there are all the unanswered questions swirling around Obama. He's really a bit of a mystery man. I talk to folks of different political stripes and more than one has indictated they feel like the American people are getting conned by a guy who, like Harold Hill in "The Music Man," and his promises of a boy's band, won't deliver. In Obama-world, the South Side Savior promises well-meaning rubes, from Seattle to Schenectady, "hope" and "change." Hope? Change? Trouble in River City, indeed!
Reportedly, Obama performed well during his at Harvard Law, yet strangely the Obama team refuses to release any specific information regarding his time there or while he was at Columbia University. Why is that? Perhaps Rev. Meyers knows? I mean in 1990, Obama was made editor of Harvard Law Review. Yet, while serving in that position he wrote little more than a heavily-edited note or two, one, bizarrely, calling for limitless abortions.
Yet, Meyers would say that Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin are imbeciles in comparison to the Messiah-Most-Merciful whose grades are unknown to the public even today.
Having been burned before by the snake-oil peddlers in the Democrat Party - look at the corrupt Stipe machine in Little Dixie for instance - Oklahoma voters could sniff out a con-man right away and when it came to picking a president, John McCain was more in line with their political beliefs, which include lower taxes, less government intervention and yes, fewer abortions.
Meyers wants you to believe that Oklahoma "fell flat on its face" on Election Day. But when I saw the ruby-red map of Oklahoma after the election, I knew a lot of us stood tall, our spines straight. We can be proud that we weren't conned into voting for a slick product. Rather, we made a choice we felt was right for our state and we stand by that choice.
Cordially,
Andrew Griffin
editor of RedDirtReport.com
Oklahoma City,OK
(405) 420-2940
Bob
The following letter was one I wrote in reaction to a column written by far-left Oklahoma City-based pastor Robin Meyers, which appeared in this week's issue of the Oklahoma Gazette. - Andrew
Dear Editor,
Driving east into the Oklahoma Panhandle from New Mexico a few days before Election Day, I paid attention to the political signs I saw driving back home to Oklahoma City. Save for some signs supporting some local Democrats on the local and state level, there was not a single sign along the roadside touting support for Democrat candidates Andrew Rice, Jim Roth or Barack Obama, at least until I got into Oklahoma County.
I thought this said a lot about rural Oklahoma and the conservative values they hold dear. The sanctimonious rantings of Robin Meyers would lead one to believe that there is an army of liberals here in the Sooner State that have somehow been disenfranchised by know-nothing conservatives. The simple fact is that the majority of Oklahoma voters paid attention to the campaign and saw that Obama, Roth and Rice held views counter to their own. With that in mind, Oklahomans voted accordingly.
Meyers, meanwhile, says that with all 77 Oklahoma counties voting for McCain-Palin we are now a "national embarrassment." Beyond our state's borders, the country and the world "wept for joy" at the election of America's first black president. While that is a remarkable achievement for our nation, one has to look deeper, beyond the packaging and words of the candidate and look to see what they really represent. In the case of President-Elect Obama, well, he appears to be a far-left globalist more interested in pleasing the world and his handlers than in doing what is right for the American people.
And then there are all the unanswered questions swirling around Obama. He's really a bit of a mystery man. I talk to folks of different political stripes and more than one has indictated they feel like the American people are getting conned by a guy who, like Harold Hill in "The Music Man," and his promises of a boy's band, won't deliver. In Obama-world, the South Side Savior promises well-meaning rubes, from Seattle to Schenectady, "hope" and "change." Hope? Change? Trouble in River City, indeed!
Reportedly, Obama performed well during his at Harvard Law, yet strangely the Obama team refuses to release any specific information regarding his time there or while he was at Columbia University. Why is that? Perhaps Rev. Meyers knows? I mean in 1990, Obama was made editor of Harvard Law Review. Yet, while serving in that position he wrote little more than a heavily-edited note or two, one, bizarrely, calling for limitless abortions.
Yet, Meyers would say that Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin are imbeciles in comparison to the Messiah-Most-Merciful whose grades are unknown to the public even today.
Having been burned before by the snake-oil peddlers in the Democrat Party - look at the corrupt Stipe machine in Little Dixie for instance - Oklahoma voters could sniff out a con-man right away and when it came to picking a president, John McCain was more in line with their political beliefs, which include lower taxes, less government intervention and yes, fewer abortions.
Meyers wants you to believe that Oklahoma "fell flat on its face" on Election Day. But when I saw the ruby-red map of Oklahoma after the election, I knew a lot of us stood tall, our spines straight. We can be proud that we weren't conned into voting for a slick product. Rather, we made a choice we felt was right for our state and we stand by that choice.
Cordially,
Andrew Griffin
editor of RedDirtReport.com
Oklahoma City,OK
(405) 420-2940
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Obama Dictatorship
This article is from Newsmax Media. www.reddirtreport.com had this article on his blog. It is something to think about.
Congressman Warns of Obama Dictatorship
Monday November 4th
WASHINGTON — A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.
"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."
Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.
"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."
Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our diplomacy."
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.
Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.
"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."
Obama's transition office did not respond immediately to Broun's remarks.
© 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Congressman Warns of Obama Dictatorship
Monday November 4th
WASHINGTON — A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.
"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."
Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.
"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."
Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our diplomacy."
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.
Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.
"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."
Obama's transition office did not respond immediately to Broun's remarks.
© 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Senator Jim Reynolds
Senator Jim Reynolds who won last Tuesday by 159 votes now is involved in a recount. It is believed that several voting irregularities took place in District 43. His opponent Dan Boren has also requested a recount. Vote totals were slow coming in last Tuesday night. In Cleveland County, a voting machine lost power and the precinct votes were recounted.
They put up a candidate with a famous name, kept him below the radar screen for the entirety of the campaign, then blasted Senator Reynolds with $100K of deceptive television ads and a week's worth of attack mail. They came within 159 votes.
The recount starts tomorrow and could take two or more days. Stayed tuned.
Bob
They put up a candidate with a famous name, kept him below the radar screen for the entirety of the campaign, then blasted Senator Reynolds with $100K of deceptive television ads and a week's worth of attack mail. They came within 159 votes.
The recount starts tomorrow and could take two or more days. Stayed tuned.
Bob
Ethics Commission
Why should our elected officials be allowed to accept one thin dime from a lobbyists? Our elected officials should not be allowed to have even a hamburger paid for by a lobbyists. They should never, under any circumstance, be allowed to accept a gift of any kind from a lobbyists. I have sold to Wal Mart the past 35 years and I have had numerous lunches and dinners with buyers, never in all that time did I buy a meal for one buyer. If my product was the right product, I received the business if not, I did not. If we are serious about cleaning up politics in Oklahoma then I hope the Ethics Commission shows some guts and takes a stand and stops all gifts and lunches.
The leaders of the House and Senate should take a stand and send out a letter to all lobbyist explaining that Christmas season is just around the corner and all elected officials are not allowed to accept gifts, including all assistants.
Bob
Oklahoma ethics rule could ban gifts from lobbyists
MINNESOTA LAW MAY SERVE AS A GUIDE FOR ‘THINGS OF VALUE’
Comments 5
BY MICHAEL MCNUTT
Published: November 10, 2008
A proposed rule to ban lobbyists in Oklahoma from buying dinners, expensive gifts or tickets to sporting events is similar to a measure that has worked well the past 14 years in Minnesota, an official from that state said.
Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, said the rule banning most gifts from lobbyists to state officials and employees is not difficult to enforce.
It took several years to get the Legislature to pass the rule prohibiting most gifts to the 201 legislators and about 2,300 state officials, board members and agency heads, he said. Legislative employees also are covered in the ban. An exception to the rule allows gifts such as a plaque with a resale value of $5 or less or a trinket or memento that costs $5 or less
END OF CAMARADERIE?
A proposal has been submitted to the Oklahoma Ethics Commission to prohibit lobbyists from giving "things of value” to state officers and state employees. It would outlaw state officers and state employees from receiving lobbyists’ gifts.
Goldsmith said lobbyists bought meals for legislators and brought in food for lunches or dinners during late-night sessions.
"That all ended, virtually instantly,” Goldsmith said. "There was a fairly traumatic change at that point that some lobbyists still complain about it. They say the camaraderie between legislators and the contact that lobbyists have has been diminished.”
The Ethics Commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing at 10 a.m. Friday in Ponca City’s City Hall on that proposal and several others. Commissioners will vote early next year on which proposals to pass on to legislators.
Earlier this year, commissioners approved a rule, which passed legislative review, reducing lobbyists’ spending on elected officials from $300 to $100 per calendar year. The rule requires lobbyists to disclose gifts after spending more than $10 on a state official or aide during each six-month period
Lobbyists had spent more than $208,000 on legislators in 2007, a 28 percent increase over the previous year, according to Ethics Commission records.
Bobby Stem, a lobbyist with the firm Capitol Gains, said he doesn’t oppose a ban.
"Our firm policy has been to keep those gifts to a minimum just so we can always avoid any hint of impropriety. We believe that it not only protects us at the firm but it protects the image of the members that we work with.”
The leaders of the House and Senate should take a stand and send out a letter to all lobbyist explaining that Christmas season is just around the corner and all elected officials are not allowed to accept gifts, including all assistants.
Bob
Oklahoma ethics rule could ban gifts from lobbyists
MINNESOTA LAW MAY SERVE AS A GUIDE FOR ‘THINGS OF VALUE’
Comments 5
BY MICHAEL MCNUTT
Published: November 10, 2008
A proposed rule to ban lobbyists in Oklahoma from buying dinners, expensive gifts or tickets to sporting events is similar to a measure that has worked well the past 14 years in Minnesota, an official from that state said.
Gary Goldsmith, executive director of the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, said the rule banning most gifts from lobbyists to state officials and employees is not difficult to enforce.
It took several years to get the Legislature to pass the rule prohibiting most gifts to the 201 legislators and about 2,300 state officials, board members and agency heads, he said. Legislative employees also are covered in the ban. An exception to the rule allows gifts such as a plaque with a resale value of $5 or less or a trinket or memento that costs $5 or less
END OF CAMARADERIE?
A proposal has been submitted to the Oklahoma Ethics Commission to prohibit lobbyists from giving "things of value” to state officers and state employees. It would outlaw state officers and state employees from receiving lobbyists’ gifts.
Goldsmith said lobbyists bought meals for legislators and brought in food for lunches or dinners during late-night sessions.
"That all ended, virtually instantly,” Goldsmith said. "There was a fairly traumatic change at that point that some lobbyists still complain about it. They say the camaraderie between legislators and the contact that lobbyists have has been diminished.”
The Ethics Commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing at 10 a.m. Friday in Ponca City’s City Hall on that proposal and several others. Commissioners will vote early next year on which proposals to pass on to legislators.
Earlier this year, commissioners approved a rule, which passed legislative review, reducing lobbyists’ spending on elected officials from $300 to $100 per calendar year. The rule requires lobbyists to disclose gifts after spending more than $10 on a state official or aide during each six-month period
Lobbyists had spent more than $208,000 on legislators in 2007, a 28 percent increase over the previous year, according to Ethics Commission records.
Bobby Stem, a lobbyist with the firm Capitol Gains, said he doesn’t oppose a ban.
"Our firm policy has been to keep those gifts to a minimum just so we can always avoid any hint of impropriety. We believe that it not only protects us at the firm but it protects the image of the members that we work with.”
Walters Speaks Out
Now David Walters shares his thoughts on the election. We love it when liberals like Walters and Turpin speak out. As long as they keep talking the Republican Party will continue to grow in Oklahoma. David Walters' finished as Governor of Oklahoma when he departed Oklahoma's Governor's Mansion in 1995 after a single term and an indictment on eight felony counts. Remember the midnight hearing?
Bob
What’s The Matter With Oklahoma?
Posted on November 8th, 2008 by David Walters
What’s The Matter With Oklahoma?
I waited three days in the hopes that my fuming at Oklahoma’s counter performance to the collective heave ho that the rest of the nation gave to the Republicans would subside.
It has not.
Amending the title of Thomas Franks’ insightful book about how conservatives won the heart of Kansas … “What’s the Matter with Oklahoma?” Did we really just do this?
We’re the winner of the national championship for the highest McCain/Palin margin at 65.6 percent; the only state where Republicans gained ground in the state house, senate and statewide offices; and the only state in which McCain/Palin carried every county.
Not one of our 77 counties went democratic, not a single blue dot (see chart). Sen. Obama polled 10.8 percent in Beaver County. This was not out of 100 votes where percentages are easily distorted, but out of 2,462 votes cast.
Now you are thinking that we cannot expect much progressive thought out of a county best known for its cow-chip throwing contest (two tries if you lick your fingers after the first). But I have been to Beaver county and met good people and don’t understand how 89.2% decided Sarah Palin should be vice president of the United States.
It’s not just our friends in Beaver scouring the landscape for aerodynamic cow patties. Twenty-one counties fell below 25 percent for Obama and 39 counties, more than half of the 77, fell below 30 percent.
The top bastion of democratic performance? Cherokee county, where they used to spray for Republicans, held McCain/Palin to “only” 56.percent. The heart of our most democratic county only allowed Obama to get within 12.2 percent of a single county victory.
Howard Dean called me as I was looking at these numbers. He wanted to say, “thank you” … for what I have no earthly idea.
I unloaded about our local results, but Howard didn’t take the bait. His politically correct language has been finely honed from thousands of scathing attacks on each of his utterances. He opined that the economy is much better in Oklahoma than most states and that many other states have a sizable portion of their population that would normally be concerned about leaders who are “different” than they are. But in those states the economy and the need for change overwhelmed their normal reticence to select someone “unlike” them.
Man that guy can talk.
While I am fuming, foaming, uttering and mumbling obscenities, he sounds like he just graduated from The Obama School of Cool.
So should we do anything?
Of course we should. Not just for competitive partisan reasons, but because it’s not good for Oklahoma to run so counter.
One national media service recently said based on the polls, the future of the Republican Party lies with “old white people and hayseed states.” I don’t believe that, but much of the nation does and we don’t need to be in that category.
Another pundit said that to understand the current Republican Party one has to “understand the unique culture and politics of Appalachia.”
Are you kidding me? Hayseed states and Appalachia! Call your local chamber and ask them if they think this is somehow good for us.
From a national image it’s a disaster. From a local basis can you imagine how this emboldens republicans in the state house, now firmly in control of the legislature. Do you think we are going to hear much about education, health care and jobs — or are we simply going to get a double dose of Guns, God, and Gays?
Gun sales in Oklahoma skyrocketed immediately prior to the election and particularly afterwards. The vast majority of these Oklahoma voters really believe that Obama — in addition to not being a Christian, being affiliated with terrorists and intent on doubling our taxes — is also going to take their guns!
What was that comment during the campaign about clinging?
So what do we do?
Before we start shouting and stepping all over each other like the national Republicans, we should first calmly talk about process. How do we determine what are the highest contributing factors to this unusual trend in Oklahoma. Let’s assume that we can identify with polling and focus groups the top 20 contributing factors, and then perhaps we can identify that half of these we cannot do anything about … but a plan to address the other half may have merit.
I have lots of ideas … but I really have to cool off first.
David Walters
Homosexuals Attack Woman Carrying Cross
This is in Palm Springs where a group of homosexuals attack an elderly woman carring a cross during Prop 8 protest.
President Bush
President Bush will soon be heading home and for many that day cannot come soon enough. Count me among those who will miss him and his bedrock decency.
He had a rough road from day one. His first inauguration struck me as a portent. I was there, shivering in the grandstands on Pennsylvania Avenue. At the exact moment the president heard "Hail to the Chief" for the first time and was announced to the audience, a sleet storm descended from the skies.
It has never let up.
Through it all Mr. Bush kept his head up and soldiered on. He took the criticism in stride. I remember riding with him in his presidential limousine to the Washington Hilton for a speech. A woman standing at an intersection directed an obscene gesture at him that I had hoped he missed. The president waved to her and with a bemused look said to me, "Did you see what she did?"
Many other Americans, particularly the "values voters" who helped elect him twice, will miss him because of what he achieved: Samuel Alito and John Roberts on the Supreme Court, children in schools that now are better because they are accountable, African women who now have medicines for their HIV-infected babies, and religious charities that are finally being treated by government as partners instead of rivals.
I remember coming to the West Wing one morning before the daily 7:30 senior staff meeting and seeing Mr. Bush at his desk in the Oval Office, reading a daily devotional. I remember the look of sorrow on his face as he signed letters to the families of the fallen. When he met with recovering addicts whose lives were transformed by a faith-based program, he spoke plainly of his own humiliating journey years ago with alcohol. When a Liberian refugee broke into tears after recounting her escape to freedom in America, the president went over and held and comforted her.
Little acts behind the curtain like these inspired intense loyalty by staff members. They spoke of someone never too busy or burdened to care -- like when he took time on Air Force One to call my wife when she was sick. The president's true character rendered his media image pure caricature.
Mother Teresa was asked at the end of her life whether she was discouraged because after decades of caring for the dying and destitute in Calcutta little seemed to have changed. She replied, "No. God doesn't call me to be successful. God calls me to be faithful."
History will decide whether George W. Bush was a successful President. But he was faithful. He had a charge to keep and he kept it.
Mr. Towey was director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2002-2006. He is president of Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa.
From The Wall Street Journal
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Obama Is Going To Try To Ban Guns!
"Yes We Can . . . Ban Guns"--Obama Announces Gun Ban Agenda Before The Final Vote Count Is In
Friday, November 07, 2008
Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign slogan, "the audacity of hope," should have instead been "the audacity of deceit." After months of telling the American people that he supports the Second Amendment, and only hours after being declared the president-elect, the Obama transition team website announced an agenda taken straight from the anti-gun lobby--four initiatives designed to ban guns and drive law-abiding firearm manufacturers and dealers out of business:
"Making the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent." Perhaps no other firearm issue has been more dishonestly portrayed by gun prohibitionists. Notwithstanding their predictions that the ban's expiration in 2004 would bring about the end of civilization, for the last four years the nation's murder rate has been lower than anytime since the mid-1960s. Studies for Congress, the Congressional Research Service, the National Institute of Justice, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found no evidence that gun prohibition or gun control reduces crime. Guns that were affected by the ban are used in only a tiny fraction of violent crime-about 35 times as many people are murdered without any sort of firearm (knives, bare hands, etc.), as with "assault weapons." Obama says that "assault weapons" are machine guns that "belong on foreign battlefields," but that is a lie; the guns are only semi-automatic, and they are not used by a military force anywhere on the planet.
"Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment." The amendment--endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police--prohibits the release of federal firearm tracing information to anyone other than a law enforcement agency conducting a bona fide criminal investigation. Anti-gun activists oppose the restriction, because it prevents them from obtaining tracing information and using it in frivolous lawsuits against law-abiding firearm manufacturers. Their lawsuits seek to obtain huge financial judgments against firearm manufacturers when a criminal uses a gun to inflict harm, even though the manufacturers have complied with all applicable laws.
"Closing the gun show loophole." There is no "loophole." Under federal law, a firearm dealer must conduct a background check on anyone to whom he sells a gun, regardless of where the sale takes place. A person who is not a dealer may sell a gun from his personal collection without conducting a check. Gun prohibitionists claim that many criminals obtain guns from gun shows, though the most recent federal survey of convicted felons put the figure at only 0.7 percent. They also claim that non-dealers should be required to conduct checks when selling guns at shows, but the legislation they support goes far beyond imposing that lone requirement. In fact, anti-gun members of Congress voted against that limited measure, holding out for a broader bill intended to drive shows out of business.
"Making guns in this country childproof." "Childproof" is a codeword for a variety of schemes designed to prevent the sale of firearms by imposing impossible or highly expensive design requirements, such as biometric shooter-identification systems. While no one opposes keeping children safe, the fact is that accidental firearm-related deaths among children have decreased 86 percent since 1975, even as the numbers of children and guns have risen dramatically. Today, the chances of a child being killed in a firearm accident are less than one in a million.
Friday, November 07, 2008
Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign slogan, "the audacity of hope," should have instead been "the audacity of deceit." After months of telling the American people that he supports the Second Amendment, and only hours after being declared the president-elect, the Obama transition team website announced an agenda taken straight from the anti-gun lobby--four initiatives designed to ban guns and drive law-abiding firearm manufacturers and dealers out of business:
"Making the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent." Perhaps no other firearm issue has been more dishonestly portrayed by gun prohibitionists. Notwithstanding their predictions that the ban's expiration in 2004 would bring about the end of civilization, for the last four years the nation's murder rate has been lower than anytime since the mid-1960s. Studies for Congress, the Congressional Research Service, the National Institute of Justice, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found no evidence that gun prohibition or gun control reduces crime. Guns that were affected by the ban are used in only a tiny fraction of violent crime-about 35 times as many people are murdered without any sort of firearm (knives, bare hands, etc.), as with "assault weapons." Obama says that "assault weapons" are machine guns that "belong on foreign battlefields," but that is a lie; the guns are only semi-automatic, and they are not used by a military force anywhere on the planet.
"Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment." The amendment--endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police--prohibits the release of federal firearm tracing information to anyone other than a law enforcement agency conducting a bona fide criminal investigation. Anti-gun activists oppose the restriction, because it prevents them from obtaining tracing information and using it in frivolous lawsuits against law-abiding firearm manufacturers. Their lawsuits seek to obtain huge financial judgments against firearm manufacturers when a criminal uses a gun to inflict harm, even though the manufacturers have complied with all applicable laws.
"Closing the gun show loophole." There is no "loophole." Under federal law, a firearm dealer must conduct a background check on anyone to whom he sells a gun, regardless of where the sale takes place. A person who is not a dealer may sell a gun from his personal collection without conducting a check. Gun prohibitionists claim that many criminals obtain guns from gun shows, though the most recent federal survey of convicted felons put the figure at only 0.7 percent. They also claim that non-dealers should be required to conduct checks when selling guns at shows, but the legislation they support goes far beyond imposing that lone requirement. In fact, anti-gun members of Congress voted against that limited measure, holding out for a broader bill intended to drive shows out of business.
"Making guns in this country childproof." "Childproof" is a codeword for a variety of schemes designed to prevent the sale of firearms by imposing impossible or highly expensive design requirements, such as biometric shooter-identification systems. While no one opposes keeping children safe, the fact is that accidental firearm-related deaths among children have decreased 86 percent since 1975, even as the numbers of children and guns have risen dramatically. Today, the chances of a child being killed in a firearm accident are less than one in a million.
Buying Firewood
Tips on burning firewood:
Buy seasoned wood. It needs a full year to season because it takes most woods six months to dry to 20 percent moisture content.
The cut edge of the wood should be dry and dark, indicating it has seasoned to some degree. Burn the hardwoods because they burn hotter and longer.
Osage orange is the best hardwood for burning beause it burns long and hot. Hickory is second best, followed by black locust. Mulberry also is good for burning, followed by white oaks, hawthorn and red oaks. Ash and hackberry also are good choices.
Soft woods such as cottonwood make poor firewood. Cottonwood puts out half
the heat of Osage orange.
A high-quality wood stove heats more efficiently than a fireplace.
Keep chimneys and stove pipes clean. Residue can build up and catch on fire, especially if the wood is too green or is pine or cedar.
Never use gasoline to start a fire in a fireplace or stove.
Use smoke detectors and have a fire extinguisher near the stove or fireplace.
Store firewood away from the house so it doesn’t create a fire haz¬ard to your home.
Keep firewood off the ground on pallets or a commercial wood rack. Left on the ground, wood will soak up moisture, deteriorate and attract insects.
Keep wood covered so it doesn’t get wet from rain, snow or sleet. The firewood will last longer and burn more efficiently.
A rick of wood is not an official measurement, said Charles Carter, the program administrator for weights and measures with the Agri¬culture Department. A cord is the standard and it is normally 4 feet wide by 4 feet high and 8 feet long. Ricks are roughly 16 to 19 inches long by 4 feet high and 8 feet long.
Make sure you get the full measurement a seller says you’re getting and get a receipt. That will document the transaction so the weights and measures division can investigate if the delivery falls short of expectations. Complaints can lead to a $500 penalty per count per day.
For the brochure “Oklahoma Firewood Facts, call the Agriculture Department at 522’6158 or write: The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Forestry Division, P.O. Box 528804, Oklahoma City, OK
73152-8804.
Buy seasoned wood. It needs a full year to season because it takes most woods six months to dry to 20 percent moisture content.
The cut edge of the wood should be dry and dark, indicating it has seasoned to some degree. Burn the hardwoods because they burn hotter and longer.
Osage orange is the best hardwood for burning beause it burns long and hot. Hickory is second best, followed by black locust. Mulberry also is good for burning, followed by white oaks, hawthorn and red oaks. Ash and hackberry also are good choices.
Soft woods such as cottonwood make poor firewood. Cottonwood puts out half
the heat of Osage orange.
A high-quality wood stove heats more efficiently than a fireplace.
Keep chimneys and stove pipes clean. Residue can build up and catch on fire, especially if the wood is too green or is pine or cedar.
Never use gasoline to start a fire in a fireplace or stove.
Use smoke detectors and have a fire extinguisher near the stove or fireplace.
Store firewood away from the house so it doesn’t create a fire haz¬ard to your home.
Keep firewood off the ground on pallets or a commercial wood rack. Left on the ground, wood will soak up moisture, deteriorate and attract insects.
Keep wood covered so it doesn’t get wet from rain, snow or sleet. The firewood will last longer and burn more efficiently.
A rick of wood is not an official measurement, said Charles Carter, the program administrator for weights and measures with the Agri¬culture Department. A cord is the standard and it is normally 4 feet wide by 4 feet high and 8 feet long. Ricks are roughly 16 to 19 inches long by 4 feet high and 8 feet long.
Make sure you get the full measurement a seller says you’re getting and get a receipt. That will document the transaction so the weights and measures division can investigate if the delivery falls short of expectations. Complaints can lead to a $500 penalty per count per day.
For the brochure “Oklahoma Firewood Facts, call the Agriculture Department at 522’6158 or write: The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Forestry Division, P.O. Box 528804, Oklahoma City, OK
73152-8804.
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