by Smitty

Four score and five interruptions ago our zany uncle brought forth on this continent a new indignation, conceived in contempt for liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created to serve the state.

Now we are engaged in a soft civil war, testing whether that indignation, or any indignation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great debate-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a blog post for he who here gave 90 minutes of his life that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should blog this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave man, living not dead, who struggled here, has consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what he did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which he who fought that gasbag has thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from this honored candidate we take increased devotion to that cause for which he gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that this candidate shall not have felt like he died, devoured by a vast, shark-like maw,  in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

via Breitbart

Update: good linkage from Stacy on the Right, The Daley Gator, and the American Catholic

by Smitty

The Franklin Center points to Florida Watchdog:

The many months of attempting to find the “anti-Romney,” the candidate without a large state government health care plan or a more liberal governing record in his past, seem to have been unsuccessful.
As foretold by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in November 2011, the political press at that time was ready to commit to nearly a year of avoiding Romney’s ‘inevitability,’ engaging in an “extended masquerade, designed to persuade credulous readers and excitable viewers that the Republican presidential nomination is actually up for grabs.”

Masquerade, my right big toe. Every single day had to be played out, and it’s pure hooey to pretend otherwise:

• Romney could well have imploded, a la Akin. Still could.
• The base had to be identified, and persuaded to get off the couch.
• The issues had to be identified, publicly mensurated, and sorted.

Anybody who says that, without the nomination process as a whole, Romney would not have arrived at Paul Ryan as VP pick is really doing a disservice. The primary votes were cast (I didn’t vote for Romney in the VA primary) and those results were important information for decision making upstream.

In summary, I reject all this: “your voice doesn’t matter, it’s all decided by the power brokers” noise. Pure disinformatzya. Keep an eye on anybody circulating it.

by Smitty

I’m not asking to have my taxes raised, or to watch the stake go through the heart of the economy. But Congress just kicked the fiscal can down the road again:

Yet, in a sign that Wednesday’s vote was more about message than substance, the House made no move to launch a formal House-Senate conference committee to resolve the differences between the bills, and there is little expectation that serious negotiations will take place before the election. The rates expire at the end of the year.

I don’t know how many senior GOP heads read this blog, but the message had better get through:

If the GOP holds Congress in January, the junk has got to stop.

If there is any GOP control, it shall have been a result of the Tea Parties. And if I have any feel at all for the pulse of the Tea Parties through blogging, &c, the Tea Parties are going to slice like a hammer on the GOP if the Ruling Class, beltway shenanigans continue. All the weight of the derision currently poured on #OccupyResoluteDesk and the rest in the blogs, on Twitter, at protests, and so forth is going to get trained on the GOP if there is not a total come-to-Beavis moment for the GOP. The GOP shall have played a populist fiddle to be returned to power. Said fiddle shall make a most ‘unexpected’ suppository if the people don’t see, as a going-in position:

• Significant federal government agency amputations, and corresponding budget cuts. Two words: enumerated powers.
• A budget.
• A tax code that doesn’t make the complexity of the theory behind the Higgs Boson look like a haiku by comparison.
• An admission that the entitlements really are only exceeded in sheer fantasy by the Global Warming crap, but not by much. Dust off the Bush reform plan for Social Security, and make it happen.
• An amnesty plan for the Federal Reserve staff, followed by a thorough air-clearing. Let the thieves retain their lives, in exchange for the truth about what a wretched failure the Federal Reserve is. Then some sane reform.
• In general, an honest, sober take on government.

It took a century to dig this hole, and there is no reasonable way out within a Congress; a Presidential term; a decade. But you guys are on notice that if we’re not at least on a different course, pronto, you’re toast.

Update: more at Reason via Insty.

Update II: linked at WyBlog.

by Smitty

Representative Mike Kelly on the topic of HR 4078:

To provide that no agency may take any significant regulatory action until the unemployment rate is equal to or less than 6.0 percent.

In fairness to #OccupyResoluteDesk, enacting this would severely limit the amount of kickbacks, graft, carve-outs, chiseling, thuggery, corruption, patronage, favors, handouts, grease, vigorish, and influencing that the administration could engage in.

Who is turbulent Congressman, and how dare he limit the administration to doing its job?

via The Blaze and NVAPatriot

Update: oh and here is Gerry Connolly, doing Virginia proud:

House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Darrell Issa asked Connolly if he would object to the typo being fixed, since the Republicans unanimously requested it. Connolly chortled triumphantly, “This member will reserve the right to object at the appropriate time.”
Genuinely pissed off, Issa retorted, “Nothing could be more insincere than to pick on professional staff on a typographical error. If we have to … go to the Rules Committee, I guess we will, but I’m really sorry to see that kind of an attitude on what the gentleman and all of us know was simply a typographical error.”
Connolly then played ball like a girl, whimpering to the chair, “Did this member hear … the distinguished chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee characterize a member as insincere?”

Chris Perkins for Congress

Sad embarrassments like Gerry Connolly must go!

Update: Hogewash is onboard.

Update II: Red Alexandria makes a good point, although whether or not Connolly actually read the bill by his very own self would be an interesting question to ask of the man.

Update III: Not sure I agree with Bill Quick, but that too is an interesting point. Ah, the joys of enforcing perfectionism against the opponent. . .

Update IV: Jackie Wellfonder brings it: #YouDidntDoThat Because You’re Betting on Government, Not We the People.