Global warming to refugees

Keeping up with the news is like trying to put toothpaste back in the bottle... not impossible, but highly improbable. I discovered this the past few days and have decided to do a summary of some recent news...

• Global warming: it's official. The planet has actually been maintaining steady temps for the past TEN years. In fact, some scientists are now predicting a mini ice age due to recent activity in our solar system. Hopefully this news will reach Obama administration officials who recommend we paint our roofs and roads white to prevent additional heat in the atmosphere... maybe they'll even let us keep them black to fight the ice age!
• It's time we put those plaques with "Thou shalt not kill" back in our courtrooms. Two gangs in Chicago beat an honor student to death who intervened in a fight trying to help a friend. While he lie on the ground, they repeated kicked him and killed him by hitting him on the head with a railroad tie. Our President is travelling to Copenhagen to petition for the Olympics to be hosted in this great town... Chicago.
• General McChrystal has requested additional troops in Afghanistan, "Or America may fail." The General also stated that he has had all of one meeting with our President since he took office. Today, one day after making that statement, the White House scheduled an appointment for the General to finally meet again with our Commander in Chief.
• Iran is test blasting nuclear missiles capable of destroying Israel. In a recent interview with NBC (which they did not air), Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claimed to have direct access to and dialogue with the Muslim Messiah. Anihilating the US and Israel seems to be on the top of their agenda... and why did we not see this interview?
• Twenty House Democrats are now openly stating that they want healthcare for illegal immigrants. Supposedly this will save us money by keeping them out of our emergency rooms... my question, how can we be capable of providing them with healthcare but not capable of deporting them? Apparently we can find them if we are going to give them healthcare, we just can't find them if we want to help them get home.
• President Obama is calling for longer school days and shorter summers. This will supposedly help us to keep up with foreign nations who continually outscore us on testing... even though Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong actually have FEWER instructional hours than children in the US. Maybe we should look at revising the content of our curriculum rather than petitioning for more time in our public schools?
• And lastly... the terrorists housed at Guantanamo were referred to today by a White House official as "refugees."

Is President Obama better for our nation than John McCain would have been?

Glenn Beck is at it again. Last week, he stirred up the liberal media and elitist activist groups by throwing a frog into a pot of boiling water. Literally.

Even though it was made clear that the frog was plastic, animal rights groups used the incident to label Glenn Beck with "cruelty to animals."

Now while I agree that kindness to animals is an indication of righteousness, this is extreme. It was a plastic frog. People pull legs off these creatures to eat... not to mention that if these groups ever see chickens come out of killing cone, it's likely we'll never be allowed to eat chicken in the US and chicken farmers will be fined and jailed.

But frogs didn't stay in the limelight for long. During a network TV interview, Beck said he thought Obama is actually better for our country than McCain would have been. I nearly fell out of my chair. While we all agree that McCain was hardly a viable Conservative candidate, this came from a man who agrees with absolutely nothing our current President does, yet who unashamedly states that John McCain would have us whoopin' the terrorists and have kept our national security strong.

Later, he was interviewed by Sean Hannity and asked about this incredible remark... and I realized he had an amazing point.

If Senator John McCain had been elected, the politics of 2009 would be about Republicans vs. Democrats, what we want, what they want, if McCain was reaching across the aisle and working with the Dems... same old, same old.

But with Barack Obama as our President, the argument isn't about Republicans and Democrats in Congress. There's no easy way out, no doing the Republican thing because I'm a Republican or the Democrat thing because I'm a Democrat. Politicians are now being forced to choose if they will stand by conservative principles or cave to liberal pressure.

Because of President Barack Obama, DC politics are now about if you're a Conservative or a Liberal... you have to choose, there can be no middle road, no moderates, and when the next election comes around, we will know where our leaders truly stand... and it's an incredible thing to have happened to our great country.

Welcome to Conservative First, Republican Second

Over the past few months, I have noticed several increasing trends:

• Average Americans are becoming more interested in politics.
• The longer I am away from the political world, the more I miss it.
• Friends have asked me to keep them up to date on relevant news and politics.
• Other friends have questioned why I am a Republican.
• Still other friends have questioned why I am conservative.

So, I started thinking, and have decided to blog... a blog on current news, politics, and policies from a Christian, conservative, Republican perspective and in that order.

But why Conservative first, Republican second? Because I am a Republican and proud to be such, but I am a conservative first.

I do not support Republicans who are not conservative. I am a conservative because I believe in the Constitution, I believe in our Republic, and I believe in the inerrant Word of God as absolute truth.

I am a Republican because I, like our great President Ronald Reagan, do not believe the best way to promote conservative values is to abandon the Republican party or even the two party system. Rather, I, like he, believe in the revitalization of the Republican Party through Conservatism. Therefore, I remain a Republican fighting within the party for a return to our conservative values.

In 1977, President Reagan gave a speech on conservatism and the Republican party. I have quoted a small portion below, and encourage you to visit http://www.lanlamphere.com/public/2009/09/24/ronald-reagan-cpac-1977/ to read his entire, amazing speech.

"Despite what some in the press may say, we who are proud to call ourselves “conservative” are not a minority of a minority party; we are part of the great majority of Americans of both major parties and of most of the independents as well...

The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and that we know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations—found through the often bitter testing of pain, or sacrifice and sorrow.

One thing that must be made clear in post-Watergate is this: The American new conservative majority we represent is not based on abstract theorizing of the kind that turns off the American people, but on common sense, intelligence, reason, hard work, faith in God, and the guts to say: “Yes, there are things we do strongly believe in, that we are willing to live for, and yes, if necessary, to die for.” That is not “ideological purity.” It is simply what built this country and kept it great.

Let us lay to rest, once and for all, the myth of a small group of ideological purists trying to capture a majority. Replace it with the reality of a majority trying to assert its rights against the tyranny of powerful academics, fashionable left-revolutionaries, some economic illiterates who happen to hold elective office and the social engineers who dominate the dialogue and set the format in political and social affairs. If there is any ideological fanaticism in American political life, it is to be found among the enemies of freedom on the left or right—those who would sacrifice principle to theory, those who worship only the god of political, social and economic abstractions, ignoring the realities of everyday life. They are not conservatives...

Once we have established this, the next question is: What will be the political vehicle by which the majority can assert its rights?

I have to say I cannot agree with some of my friends—perhaps including some of you here tonight—who have answered that question by saying this nation needs a new political party.

I respect that view and I know that those who have reached it have done so after long hours of study. But I believe that political success of the principles we believe in can best be achieved in the Republican Party. I believe the Republican Party can hold and should provide the political mechanism through which the goals of the majority of Americans can be achieved. For one thing, the biggest single grouping of conservatives is to be found in that party. It makes more sense to build on that grouping than to break it up and start over.Rather than a third party, we can have a new first party made up of people who share our principles. I have said before that if a formal change in name proves desirable, then so be it. But tonight, for purpose of discussion, I’m going to refer to it simply as the New Republican Party.

And let me say so there can be no mistakes as to what I mean: The New Republican Party I envision will not be, and cannot, be one limited to the country club-big business image that, for reasons both fair and unfair, it is burdened with today. The New Republican Party I am speaking about is going to have room for the man and the woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat and the millions of Americans who may never have thought of joining our party before, but whose interests coincide with those represented by principled Republicanism. If we are to attract more working men and women of this country, we will do so not by simply “making room” for them, but by making certain they have a say in what goes on in the party. The Democratic Party turned its back on the majority of social conservatives during the 1960s. The New Republican Party of the late ’70s and ’80s must welcome them, seek them out, enlist them, not only as rank-and-file members but as leaders and as candidates.

The New Republican Party I envision is one that will energetically seek out the best candidates for every elective office, candidates who not only agree with, but understand, and are willing to fight for a sound, honest economy, for the interests of American families and neighborhoods and communities and a strong national defense. And these candidates must be able to communicate those principles to the American people in language they understand. Inflation isn’t a textbook problem. Unemployment isn’t a textbook problem.They should be discussed in human terms.

Our candidates must be willing to communicate with every level of society, because the principles we espouse are universal and cut across traditional lines. In every Congressional district there should be a search made for young men and women who share these principles and they should be brought into positions of leadership in the local Republican Party groups. We can find attractive, articulate candidates if we look, and when we find them, we will begin to change the sorry state of affairs that has led to a Democratic-controlled Congress for more than 40 years. I need not remind you that you can have the soundest principles in the world, but if you don’t have candidates who can communicate those principles, candidates who are articulate as well as principled, you are going to lose election after election. I refuse to believe that the good Lord divided this world into Republicans who defend basic values and Democrats who win elections. We have to find tough, bright young men and women who are sick and tired of cliches and the pomposity and the mind-numbing economic idiocy of the liberals in Washington.

It is at this point, however, that we come across a question that is really the essential one: What will be the basis of this New Republican Party? To what set of values and principles can our candidates appeal? Where can Americans who want to know where we stand look for guidance?

...We, the members of the New Republican Party, believe that the preservation and enhancement of the values that strengthen and protect individual freedom, family life, communities and neighborhoods and the liberty of our beloved nation should be at the heart of any legislative or political program presented to the American people. Toward that end, we, therefore, commit ourselves to the following propositions and offer them to each American believing that the New Republican Party, based on such principles, will serve the interest of all the American people...

Families must continue to be the foundation of our nation.

Families—not government programs—are the best way to make sure our children are properly nurtured, our elderly are cared for, our cultural and spiritual heritages are perpetuated, our laws are observed and our values are preserved.

Thus it is imperative that our government’s programs, actions, officials and social welfare institutions never be allowed to jeopardize the family. We fear the government may be powerful enough to destroy our families; we know that it is not powerful enough to replace them. The New Republican Party must be committed to working always in the interest of the American family.

Every dollar spent by government is a dollar earned by individuals. Government must always ask: Are your dollars being wisely spent? Can we afford it? Is it not better for the country to leave your dollars in your pocket?

Elected officials, their appointees, and government workers are expected to perform their public acts with honesty, openness, diligence, and special integrity...

Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people. Any organization is in actuality only the lengthened shadow of its members. A political party is a mechanical structure created to further a cause. The cause, not the mechanism, brings and holds the members together. And our cause must be to rediscover, reassert and reapply America’s spiritual heritage to our national affairs.

Then with God’s help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us." ~President Ronald Reagan

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