The Kennedy Center Awards and the Crisis of the Times

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The Obamas’ theatrical giving of the Leftover-from-the-Sixties awards at the Kennedy Center – Led Zeppelin, which today provides the nerve-wracking background noise in grocery stores and Dustin Hoffman who hasn’t had a real job since 1967 – fully manifests the crisis in Washington, D.C. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint asked recently about something else with some honest frustration, “We need new people.” You’d think President Obama would do better as he is second generation himself and doesn’t belong to this crowd and in his campaign autobiography clearly crowned the Leftover-from-the-Sixties Democrats as his target to displace so as to awaken again a new and vital liberalism. So how’s that working out?

Markos Moulitas, with hopes of ushering in a generation of Iraq war veterans into the political process, well represented new and better thinking and suggested Virginia’s then governor Mark Warner, Virginia Senator Jim Webb, General Wesley Clark and Vermont Governor Howard Dean at a time when Obama began to rise and Hillary hovered around zero percent at Daily Kos (really).

“Will these Clinton-era Democrats ever go away?” asked Kos in a Washington Post essay in the day. The answer is not so easily will they go into the good night, and herewith lays the crisis. Young conservatives should ask today as well as once – oh, so long ago – governor of Florida Jeb Bush, who landed his helicopter near the White House last week in symbolism more course and conspicuous than any we have seen the likes of since the Soviets claimed to have invented corn flakes, “Will these Bush era Republicans ever go away?”

The answer to both questions is YES but DeMint is right to ask. Conservatives are better off with a presence and suggestion of new people: Senator Rand Paul of Tennessee, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, Joe Miller sure to rise in Alaska and the most talented and energetic Ted Cruz, the new senator from Texas, and possibly the one to establish the new paradigm in conservatism. Because today’s Republicans are not conservative: They are anti-liberal. And today’s Democrats are not liberal, they are anti-conservative. Like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty they go over the waterfall together.

There is no conservative party in America today but Ron Paul is Gray Champion to the new thinking which arose in the Tea Party and will awaken in what Grover Norquist calls Tea Party II: In six words, states’ rights, sound money, constitutional government. It forms a new matrix for new people and a new generation.

We enter this month an end game as per the Mayan Prophecy. The fall is at hand, but things don’t break because storms challenge New York or comets obliterate the earth. They break because cultures, liberal or conservative, refuse to let go. They cannot adapt to new thinking and cling instead to the old, the worn through, the irrelevant. And this year they marched David Letterman into the Kennedy Center. David Letterman? Previous awards have gone to Leontyne Price, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Fonda, Martha Graham, Tennessee Williams, Count Basie, Alvin Ailey, George Burns, Merce Cunningham, Isaac Stern, Cary Grant and Jimmy Cagney. These celestials today welcome Letterman into their sanga. Can there be any greater harbinger of the end times?

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Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for “Pundits Blog” in “The Hill” a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.

NASA Responds To “Dec 21st End Of World” Scare

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Dec. 21, 2012, won’t be the end of the world as some have claimed. However, NASA says that “it will be another winter solstice”. The organization made the post on its website as a response to a popular Mayan conspiracy theory which states that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21st 2012.

In the “Beyond 2012: Why the World Won’t End’ section, the space agency answers frequently asked questions and removes all doubt from the minds of readers using science and logic.

Questions like ‘Does the Mayan calendar end on December 2012?’, Could planets align in a way that impacts Earth?’ and Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?’, have been answered on the website.

NASA simply states that the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012 and that December 22nd is the start of another long-count period.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pro-Life Message is Winning: 13 of 16 Candidates Endorsed by Alaska Right to Life Victorious

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photo credit: steve rhodes

Contrary to much of the propaganda being pushed by some politicos, the pro-life message is a winner. Thirteen of the sixteen candidates endorsed by Alaska Right to Life PAC prevailed in the November elections.

If you think that is anomalous, it comes on the heels of a primary election season in which eight out of eleven Alaska Right to Life endorsed candidates won contested primaries. Included in that number were two now senators-elect who bested incumbents: Mike Dunleavy of Wasilla, and Peter Micciche of Soldotna. Alaska Right to Life did independent expenditures for both.

In the general election, Alaska Right to Life PAC funded two independent expenditures: one for Bob Bell of Anchorage who lost by a mere 59 votes to one of the state’s top Democrat pro-abortion advocates; the other for Pete Kelly of Fairbanks who defeated Democrat incumbent Joe Paskvan.

Alaska Right to Life’s efforts appear to be paying off with the formation of a new pro-life Republican majority in the State Senate. The House has a large Republican majority as well, but the jury is still out on whether pro-lifers will be able to move key legislation after House Speaker Mike Chenault invited five Democrats into the Majority coalition.

With a combined 27 endorsed candidates in both elections, and 21 victories, we at Alaska Right to Life want to pause and give thanks to God that we are one step closer to ending the blight of abortion in Alaska. If we can retain our gains, and replicate these successes over the next couple election cycles, it is our belief that we can soon close the books on this sad chapter of our State’s history.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mr. Begich, It’s On! But Will Treadwell Be The Next Romney?

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photo credit: usdagov

By now, you have all probably heard that Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell announced on Friday that he is launching an exploratory committee to decide whether he should run for the United States Senate seat now held by former Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. As I read the well-wishes on the Lt. Governor’s facebook page today urging him on, I was left with a couple of nagging questions. Is Treadwell the right man for the job? And more importantly, is he up to it?

To all the Republicans out there who think this is going to be easy, I have a few words of caution.

First, Mark Begich is, without doubt, the most savvy politician in the state. Second, the whole government-media-complex will work tirelessly to make sure their golden boy wins re-election. Third, he will have David Axelrod and the whole ‘Chicago Machine’ at his disposal. And last, but not least, his secret weapon: unlike most politicians, people actually like this guy.

Am I suggesting that the 2014 race for US Senate is already a done deal? Not at all. But I am saying that we shouldn’t run hastily into a marriage that isn’t a good fit, and that will not likely end with an oath.

There are no less than five other potential candidates out there who have yet to make their intentions known, and I have privileged information that suggests there may be a wild-card in the works that could take the whole political establishment by surprise.

As for the Romney analogy, there are a lot of similarities between the psychology of Alaska Republicans, and that of the RNC who wanted nothing more than to beat Barack Obama. The Alaska Republican Party has proudly displayed an ad on its webpage urging the defeat of Mark Begich in 2014 ever since he assumed the seat in the United States Senate once occupied by the late-Senator Ted Stevens.

And so, like the National Republicans, the effort is already underway in Alaska to ‘immaculate the One’ who would defeat Mark Begich. Conventional wisdom is that if we can just unite behind a candidate early in the process, there will magically be unity in Republican ranks. And we will sweep to victory . . . and live happily ever after.

Didn’t we just try this with Romney? Was it just me, or was he running for the nomination for the last four years? And am I the only one who just saw how that worked out?

But the larger view that Party luminaries and political pundits miss is that some of us actually care about policy. We don’t just want to vote against someone. We want to vote for something. We don’t want consensus; we want leadership.

Wasn’t that the lesson of the 2010 US Senate race here? Some of us aren’t content to join the coronation for a candidate that in many respects is very similar to Mark Begich. Like Ronald Reagan before us, we want bold colors, not pale pastels. Aren’t there already too many do-nothing senators in Washington who are inebriated on the wine of their own self-importance, and are happy just to be a part of the club?

Now I’m not suggesting that Mead Treadwell would be a do-nothing senator, though he did support one in 2010. He is an affable guy, a deal-maker, and has big ideas. But it is precisely the fact that he has such big ideas that I find troubling, because they are the wrong ideas.

I am speaking of Mead’s penchant for ideology. Yes, I know ‘he’s a pragmatist not an ideologue.’ However, the doctrine of man-made global warming is nothing if not an ideology. The dogged belief in the inherent benevolence of the United Nations is nothing if not an ideology. And the pragmatism of compromise itself can become the handmaiden of ideology when it becomes an end in itself.

We already have a ‘Republican’ in the United States Senate who only wishes to be named among the ‘cool kids.’ She hasn’t passed a stand-alone bill in her 10 long years in the United States Senate. What we don’t have, and what I don’t wish to have, is one who is effective at getting the wrong things done. So before I’ll be jumping on the bandwagon, I need some answers from Mr. Treadwell.

If elected to the United States Senate, will he continue to push for International Treaties that would strip us of our sovereign Right to self-governance? Will he join the push for carbon taxes, or cap and trade? What would he do right now about the impending ‘fiscal cliff?’ What is his plan to rein in federal spending? Will he vote to allow leftist judges through Senate confirmation like his friend Murkowski? Does he support the President’s ‘tax hikes for the rich?’ What about social conservative issues? The second amendment? Will he vote for amnesty for illegal aliens? Does he favor reforming the tax code? What does he intend to do about the looming insolvency of Medicare and Social Security? Does he support full repeal of Obamacare? Will he support auditing the Fed? . . .

These are the things conservatives want to know. Until we have answers, support should not be offered.

Yeah, Treadwell’s a rich moderate that can appeal to independents. Romney won those voters overwhelmingly. How’d that work out for us?

Yeah, Treadwell is the anointed candidate of the Republican establishment. So was Romney. How’d that work out for us?

Yeah, Treadwell is an experienced businessman and government manager. So was Romney. How’d that work out for us?

Yeah, Treadwell is a decent man who believes in a fair fight. So was Romney. How’d that work out for us?

The bottom line is not that Mead Treadwell is a bad man that you should not support. It is rather that he is a man we still don’t have answers from, and who still hasn’t been vetted.

He may well be the candidate that emerges who will unite the party, and defeat Mark Begich. But we don’t know that yet.

I am a firm believer in the inherent wisdom and goodness of the people to make better choices than the politicos. It is up to us, not the Washington insiders, or the Juneau elites. So let the process work itself out. Get involved. Ask the questions. And for God’s sake, don’t settle for Mitt Romney.

Matt Johnson is a freelance writer, consultant, and political activist who resides in Chugiak, AK

Video: Sarah Palin Hammers Susan Rice, Jay Carney, Obama

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Sarah Palin appeared on the last “On the Record” to break down simply and aggressively the Obama administration’s missteps, especially its lack of transparency.

Palin also discusses the impending “fiscal cliff” and Newt Gingrich’s recent criticism of Obama’s approach to the impending deadline.

She also criticizes the use of the term “fiscal cliff,” stating that the United States has already gone over the cliff, long ago. The only question is “how hard are we going to thump” at the bottom of the cliff:

Family Research Council: ‘We are Losing a Moral Standard in the Military’

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Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said former CIA Director David Petraeus’ recent resignation due to an extramarital affair “has opened the Pandora’s Box” for the Obama administration when it comes to standards of morality in the military.

“I think we should be very concerned about what’s happening in the military. General Petraeus isn’t the only one. We’ve seen other general officers that are currently either under investigation or have been disciplined for similar behavior, and I think we should be concerned when we are losing a moral standard in the military,” Perkins told CNSNews.com.

Perkins said immoral behavior in the military can damage military effectiveness, which is why military personnel can be prosecuted for having affairs.

His comments came in a recent interview CNSNews.com, in response to the question: “Do you see this issue as something that [Defense Secretary] Leon Panetta is going to have to deal with in the next four years?”

Perkins responded: “Unfortunately, I think this administration has opened the Pandora’s Box as it pertains to standards of morality in the military. They have pushed open homosexuality, it’s going to be hard to differentiate between different types of sexual behavior, and so it’s almost ‘anything goes’ in the military.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Fascinating Video of Husky Imitating Human Baby

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As most of you probably know, Joe and I are dog lovers. We currently have four dogs, three mastiffs and a bulldog.

Although our children have grown up around dogs and have seen plenty of entertaining scenes – including one last night when our four month-old mastiff got the better of his dad in a game of tug-of-war – we’ve never seen anything quite like the video below.

I had to watch this several times. In this extraordinary video, a beautiful husky dog imitates his owner’s baby’s sounds.

It’s obvious that the baby was enjoying the duet as much as the dog.

And if you haven’t already seen it, you should take the time to watch the video of a Great Dane, enjoying his master’s pool.

Brain-Lock Inside the Beltway: the GOP agonizes about the anti-tax pledge and Democrats do nothing.

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photo credit: gage skidmore

It’s at times like this I’m ashamed to admit I live inside the Beltway.

Well, that’s probably not specific enough, since I’m usually ashamed to admit I live inside the Beltway.

Still, the second you try to explain the stupidity of this “fiscal cliff” fiasco to a normal person, it makes William F. Buckley’s famous declaration that he’d rather be governed by the first few hundred people listed in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard seem all the more reasonable.

While there are some responsible politicians and policymakers in Washington, if you look at the whole place collectively, Uncle Sam starts to look like a junkie. The logic of addiction dictates that you make a deal that allows you to avoid all of your problems now and enjoy a quick high in exchange for a painful confrontation with reality down the road.

Almost exactly a year ago, during the famed debt-ceiling negotiations, Speaker of the House John Boehner boasted that he’d forced tough concessions from the Democrats, achieving the first real cut in government spending in ages. He claimed his “real, enforceable cut” amounted to $7 billion for fiscal year 2012. The Congressional Budget Office objected, saying the real savings were closer to $1 billion.

Read more from this article HERE.

AAA Says Certain Ethanol Fuel Can Damage Cars, Asks EPA to Remove From Pumps

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The recently approved use of E15 fuel made from blending gasoline and ethanol could damage vehicles and void warranties says the American Automobile Association (AAA), which is urging the federal government to ban it from the market.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the fuel earlier this summer, but AAA says only five percent of vehicles on the road are approved by the manufacturers to use the special blend they say causes significant problems such as accelerated engine wear and failure, fuel-system damage and false “check engine” warning lights.

The auto club conducted a recent survey it says identifies confusion among consumers as to which vehicles can use the fuel — 95 percent of those surveyed had never heard of E15, which contains 15 percent ethanol.

“It is clear that millions of Americans are unfamiliar with E15, which means there is a strong possibility that many motorists may improperly fill up using this gasoline and damage their vehicle,” said Robert Darbelnet, AAA president. “Bringing E15 to the market without adequate safeguards does not responsibly meet the needs of consumers.”

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), former chairman of the House Science Committee, said the findings confirm concerns on Capitol Hill that the fuel can damage cars.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Reid’s Website Scrubbed of 2005 Comments Opposing Filibuster Reform

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photo credit: brian finifter

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced earlier this month that he may take the unusual step of using a simple majority vote to limit filibusters. Yes, Sen. Reid may take steps to limit filibusters, the one recourse parties in the minority have to hold up legislation they oppose.

“Minority parties in the Senate use filibusters — parliamentary delays — to slow or kill legislation. They can only be ended by 60 votes — a margin neither party can achieve without some cooperation from the other side,” the Associated Press notes.

Democrats accuse Republicans of abusing filibusters while Republicans say they have no choice because Reid blocks them from presenting amendments. The Nevada senator, in turn, says Republicans use too much time pushing amendments that “make political statements or that are designed to derail bills,” the AP notes.

“Reid’s plan would forbid the use of filibusters when a bill is initially being brought to the Senate floor for debate and require filibustering senators to actually be on the Senate floor, a long-abandoned practice,” the report adds.

Huh. That’s funny. You know, as Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski reminds us, there was a time (2005, to be specific) when Sen. Reid totally loved the filibuster and defended it from attempts to reform it:

Read more from this story HERE.