CNN Wins the Bagdad Bob Award

CNN reported a dramatic leap in public support for President Obama’s government takeover plan. For those who haven’t seen it, carefully read the final two paragraphs of this link. The sagging news network, formerly known as the “Clinton News Network”, yes, honest to God, included a sample of 45% Democrats, a higher concentration of Democrats than appear in the voting population as a whole or the public in general.

Be sure to reference this story the next time you confront a liberal defaming Fox News for its purported biases.

Seven healthcare questions Obama won't answer.

1. Assuming the figure of 47 million is correct, how can insurance coverage be provided to 15% more people with the same number of doctors, other providers and clinic hours and hospital beds without substantially increasing the cost?

2. If the answer to “1” above is “efficiency” then how will the efficiencies be created without overt rationing in either the underwriting or coverage process, or both?

3. If the answer to “1” above is “efficiency” then why will this federal entitlement be more economically efficient then existing Medicaid, Medicare and the Veteran’s Administration health programs, all of which objectively operate at billions of dollars of losses every year?

4. If the answer to “1” above is competition then how will fair competition work if one competitor-the government plan-makes the rules and has an unlimited ability to operated at a loss?

5. If the government underwriters use more generous underwriting criteria then private insurers currently use then how will extending existing coverages to include previously excluded pre-existing conditions be less expensive than existing coverages that exclude pre-existing conditions?

6. Why will the federal employees who manage the government program, who cannot be sued and are nearly impossible to fire, provide better customer service then private insurers who can be sued and who can fire their employees at will?

7. If the cost to employers to maintain existing health insurance is more than the cost of canceling existing coverages then why will employers not simply force their employees into the government program by canceling existing coverage, thereby negating the ability of the insured to “keep the insurance plan they’ve got”?

Red Flu-Do Not Send Your Children To School on 9.11

The video linked below is the most blatant evidence of the Labor/Socialist/Democrats' rejection of the most basic principles of American liberty.



It might look innocuous but it most certainly isn’t. This video concludes with an actual and personal pledge to support Barack Obama. This video has been provided to elementary and secondary schools throughout the United States for presentation to children on September 11.

Yes, this is exactly what it appears to be: an attempt to create a cult of personality packaged around a message of social involvement that equates an individual politician with the concept of social good. What more chilling example of Hitlerian totalitarianism has ever been attempted in the history of this country? Even worse, the target group is children, as in Josef Goebbels equation “today your children, tomorrow the world”.

Republicans, conservatives, and patriotic Americans who are committed to the concept of liberty should not send their children to school on September 11 to protest this video. Keep them at home. Read some real American history with your children, like how a million Americans died to end slavery in this country (although the Civil War is a historical fact that is lost on the idiot celebrities who are pledging to end slavery in the video); how we liberated a billion people in WW2 and five hundred million more in the Cold War; how we created the first country on Earth dedicated to individual liberty and not collective or elite rights; and how we created the most hospitable and welcoming country that ever existed that has welcomed more immigrants from more places on the planet to a level of prosperity and individual liberty that was inconceivable in their homelands, where ever those homelands might have been.

We need to fight this evil. The concept of pledging personal allegience to an individual political leader is indistinguishable from the North Korean indoctrination of children, to use a more 21st Century example. This country was born on the premise that citizens are loyal to the country, not its leaders.

Remember what 9.11 really means, and it surely isn't loyalty to "the one for whom we've all been waiting", to quote our Dear Leader describing himself.

The Gross Poll: Inisght into the decade of defeat.

Doug Gross’ recent poll demonstrates the distinction between a boxer and a puncher. The whole premise of the poll assumes that we Republicans are a one punch palooka whose only chance is the haymaker from Hell.

Given the economic collapse our nation faces, and Iowa’s role as arguably the worst business climate in the nation, there really cannot be any argument that the economy is our best punch. To require polling data to confirm the foregoing tautology bespeaks a level of either or both political or ideological insecurity that is almost in itself disqualifying from leadership. This insecurity has caused us defeat, followed by even greater defeat because it has afflicted so much of our Republican leadership.

So, like a smart boxer, let us lead with our best punch. The next question is to decide on precisely what is that punch.

Our best punch certainly is not going to be the mere juxtaposition of Republican use of government to empower and enrich large, powerful economic units, so as to allow them to better victimize the average Iowan, against Democrat use of government to enrich and empower government itself, unions and the even the more bizarre collection of micro-interest protoplasm that make up their party, so as to better victimize the average Iowan. What is good for Principal, Wells Fargo, BoA, ethanol barons, etc… is not necessarily always good for the average American or Iowan. Our leadership has myopically assumed that the average Iowa voter knows nothing. While the average Iowan might not fully understand actuarial tables or the economic theories that justify social and corporate welfare, they surely do know their own life’s circumstances and they know what helps and hurts them-AND WE WERE NOT HELPING THEM! Merely doing less damage than the Democrats is not ever going to provide us with the majority building mandate we need to reverse the last twenty to forty years of government growth.

Here’s another historical, and hence political reality, a reality so obvious that any political leader, not enmeshed in only their life and interests (the latter, of course, being a subset of the former) should require polling data to know -people are pissed at “big business” because big business, much like big government, takes even the coppers from the eyes of the dead as they cross the River Styx. Just blathering about “smaller government” and “tax cuts” isn’t going to work-at least if the Republican politician’s objective is to obtain office for the purpose of governing in a manner that is more, rather than less, like our platform, and the beliefs and interests of the average Republican, who statistically is a small business owner or employee of a small business, family farmer, etc...

Moreover, it probably won’t work electorally more than once because the problems faced by the average Iowan are very much real. People want solutions so badly that they were willing to buy into the historically disastrous anti (or perhaps “contra”) Americanism that the Democrats offered in the last two electoral cycles.

Replicating the Republican legislative agenda, both here and in D.C., of 2000-2006 is certainly not the answer; the public has already weighed, measured and found that agenda to be sadly insufficient to solve the problems of the everyday Iowan. Accepting this fact will go a long way toward rebuilding confidence in our party. “Blame storming” has not really advanced our agenda, although it has helped to keep reform out of our party and given us a somewhat deserved reputation for being unwelcoming. Bankruptcy court is filled with companies that blamed the customer for not buying its product.

So, let us come up with a real agenda of governmental and economic reform that addresses employment and immigration security; long term and sustained economic development that is dependent on government providing nothing than a generically good business climate; health care, health insurance (and insurance in general), social service and banking reform; and then explain it to the voters. Or, we could keep repeating shopworn tag lines that remind the voter of nothing more than what they don’t like about Republicans.

Then, how about having a second punch? A third? A fourth? The public is with us on virtually every social issue, why on earth would we run from popular positions? Of course, that too might require actually saying something other than “family values” or “Christian” because the party of Mark Sanford, Larry Craig and David Vitter has to come up with new and considerably better ways to explain the importance of social virtue. Homosexuality is viewed as morally failed in virtually every culture, including the one in which we live, through all of recorded history so why do we need to speak in code? Abortion, even more contrary to the law of nature itself than homosexuality, is as perennially prominent as class warfare and race baiting in liberal campaign rhetoric. The voters already agree with us so why on Earth should we not we make the voters feel good about that agreement. Most people feel oppressed by a politically correct liberal media and academia that limits the expression of the conservative majority to whispered tones in the privacy of one’s home. We should end that oppression.

While the occupant of Terrace Hill and the leadership offices under the Dome make a lot of difference to the people who trade in power and government largesse, if we don’t come up with real solutions to real problems before the Democrats perfect the one-party total state that is their objective those occupants will not make much difference to the average Iowan on the ground. The Republican that has the insight to grasp this historical moment and the courage to exploit it will crush their rivals in a primary and the Big Lug in November. Otherwise, while we might scare the hell out of the public and gain slimish legislative majorities for a while, and some among us will make a killing, it won’t impress the public with any long term affection for us and it certainly will not stop, much less reverse, the gradual decline into the moral, emotional and political bankruptcy of socialism.

Propaganda doesn’t sell: The New York Times goes on welfare.

Great news this Saturday morning! It appears that the failing New York Times is seeking funding from and through non-profit charity.

As we all know, the New York Times has become nothing more than a pathetic shell of a once noble and important component of informing the electorate. Now the nobility has been replaced by indecorous mendacity and the information with agitprop.

Poynter Online reported yesterday that the NY Times is “considering” funding from non-profit foundations. Such funding is, of course, necessary because the Times is no longer capable of earning sufficient advertising income.

Maybe the Times could have avoided such fiscal pandering had it not driven Republicans, conservatives and fair minded independents from its circulation universe.

Update: Barbara Boxer and the case for Jim Crow.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you Exhibit A-a paradigmatic demonstration that the identity politics of Jim Crow is still thriving in the womb that bred it.

Continuing good numbers for the GOP: an opportunity not a guarantee.

As summer’s heat brings dehydration to so many riparian landscapes the catastrophic reality of the "change" for which they voted in 2006 and 2008. The Obama Labor/Socialist/Democrat agenda is therapeutically baking America’s delusion producing symptoms of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) out of the body politic. With its improved lucidity the body politic is, in turn, returning to the party of reality and reason, the GOP.

Rasmussen reported yesterday that Republicans are leading Democrats in eight of the ten regularly polled issues. A thorough review of Rasmussen’s various internal questions provides even better news for pachyderms everywhere.

Perhaps most telling are Rasmussen’s latest ideologically self-identification numbers. Late last month, Gallup disclosed more than forty percent of all American voters consider themselves to be ideologically “conservative”. Yesterday’s Rasmussen report corroborates Gallup’s findings. Rasmussen shows 54% of the voters think the average L/S/D congressman is more liberal than are they, the average voter, while only 36% think the average Republican is more conservative that are they, the average voter. Numbers like that are powerful indicia of a growing public realization that conservative and Republican solutions, based on the traditional engines of individual and social success, create the greatest opportunity for the greatest good for the greatest number of people, as imperfect as we may be.

Rasmussen and Gallup’s data echoes Democrat uber-pollster Doug Schoen’s statements that non-party voters are trending “functional” Republican. As the public experiences the cost and risk associated with its generational flirtation with liberal fantasy it realizes how utterly misled it has been by a liberal press devoted to destroying a Republican president and a Republican president unwilling to fight back. So now the public realizes that turning the country over to L/S/D madness doesn’t solve its problems, it only worsens them.

Americans are willing to give us another look. Americans want conservative solutions. Product interest, however, is insufficient to assure product purchase. If we are going to win we have to provide those solutions in a credible way to a frustrated and suspicious electorate.

Republicans are, indeed, engaged in a major identity crisis. We had better find the right product before we worry about the salesman.

Notoriety for Andrea

We occasionally report on matters other than politics. Occasionally we even report on things personal to the Real Sporer himself. Yesterday, Ted’s partner Andrea (i.e. the “Flanagan” in “Sporer & Flanagan P.C.”) received a little publicity herself.

The Des Moines Register’s “Juice” publication gave the above pictured Andrea a nice write up.

Congratulations, Junior.

Castro + Ortega + Chavez + Zelaya = Obama (via HJRes 5)

After initially giving tacit endorsement of the Iranian Islamofacist crackdown that crushed the hopes for democracy in Iran the Obama Administration quickly offered an even more insightful and illuminative display of Labor/Socialist/Democrats' embrace of dictatorships everywhere.

While music fans and child molesters the world over were mourning the death of Micheal Jackson, an ally of Hugo Chavez, Honduran President Mel Zelaya produced a hemispheric thriller of his own. Zelaya was looking to follow in the Chavez footsteps as “President for Life” in Honduras. Zelaya had planned a rigged referendum (we’re sure Jimmy Carter was invited as the perpetual useful idiot that dictators employ to validate their gaffed electoral facades-see Venezuela and Iran) by which to set aside the inconvenient constitutions that term limited their respective unpopular regimes.

Unlike the politicized Venezualan military, the Honduran military demonstrated it's committment to protect their nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic, grabbed Zelaya and promptly exiled him to Costa Rica.

Just like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Zelaya planned to end Honduran democracy with a whimper. After Zelaya called a referendum that would have amended the Honduran Constitution to allow him to serve unlimited terms, the Honduran Supreme Court held such a referendum cannot be called by the President, only the National Assembly and only after a two thirds vote (oddly, exactly what the Honduran Constitution says). Zelaya simply ignored both the Court and the Constitution and obtained ballots from……..you guessed it, Hugo Chavez. The Honduran Attorney General then said that he would prosecute anyone participating in holding the plainly unlawful election.

The commanding general of the Honduran Army told Zelaya that El Presidente would have to comply with the Supreme Court's order. Zelaya then fired the general. While the Supreme Court was reinstalling the commanding general thugs working for Zelaya apparently stormed the warehouse in which the ballots were stored and began distributing them. The Honduran Army then acted to enforce the orders of the Honduran Supreme Court and the Honduran Attorney General and removed Zelaya from power.

Where President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the whole cadre of Democrat leftists could find only moral equivalency between the Iranian mullahs and the hundreds of thousands of freedom seeking protestors it had no such handicap in supporting a local thug like Zelaya.

Obama quickly declared the coup illegal (although the Honduran army was acting to enforce orders of its Supreme Court and AG to prevent Zelaya from conducting an election to make himself President for life) and is even now aggressively promoting Zelaya’s cause to the United Nations. A mere casual or narrow observation of the Obama Administration's outrage over Honduras could create a humanitarian basis for all the hubbub about Zelaya. After all, the L/S/Ds have exiled global terror threats to tropical resorts like the Bahamas or Palua and the Hondurans sent Zelaya to Costa Rica. But a more careful examination reveals something much more sinister and dangerous is afoot.

Americans need to take a good hard look at the nations Obama perceives as allies and enemies of the United States. President Obama has been unable to find word one to criticize the demon regimes in North Korea and Iran, other than the academic discussions that such regimes’ conduct may be destabilizing. However, from the day on which President Obama took office he has repeatedly insulted the British, the Canadians and the Israelis while supporting Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, China, Russia, and now Honduras.

While the Obama foreign policy objectives seem oddly inconsistent with the last thirty years of American policy (don’t forget it was President Clinton who made regime change in Iraq official American policy) the pattern is even more frightening.

Even as these words are written, the Obama Administration allies have introduced Joint House Resolution No. 5 before Congress. HJ Res. 5 will repeal the 22nd Amendment to our own Constitution-term limits for the President. Apparently, President Obama now views himself as an acolyte of dictators Chavez, Ortega and Zelaya and not merely domestic racists, radicals and terrorists like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres.

Yeah, where are those jobs?

Republican House Leader John Boehner is surely beginning to grow on us here at TRS. Boehner started slow in his first two years. Not surprisingly, Boehner was unable to create a Republican identity separate from that of the Bush Administration. Now, in confronting the most reckless and irresponsible social and economic agenda in American history Boehner is beginning to find his footing.

Boehner, like millions of other Americans undoubtedly recall the Labor/Socialist/Democrat mindless eight year attack on George W. Bush’s economy. Notwithstanding the inherited Clinton recession, the inherited corporate scandals, the inherited growing energy crises (just ask “Grayout” Davis about that one in 2002) and, of course, the most devastating exogenous shock to ever strike the American economy, 9.11, the L/S/D claimed that 5.4% unemployment was a “jobless recovery” back in 2004.

Boehner, like millions of other Americans undoubtedly also recall that the L/S/D claimed that the Bush economy, roaring along at full employment throughout all of 2006 was in dire need of change or the American dream would be gone with the wind.

Finally, Boehner, like millions of other Americans undoubtedly recall President Obama’s demand for a dead of night passage of the fiscal fantasy described as his trillion dollar “stimulus” package, without congressional, much less national, debate or unemployment would reach eight percent.

When unemployment blew past that eight percent worst case scenario, the President floated his usual astucious red herring with the datum defying claim that the stimulus was "saving jobs", nothwithstanding the complete absence of any economic evidence to support such macro gibberish. Now, with unemployment over nine percent and headed toward double digits, Boehner asks a simple question, where are the jobs?

Well L/S/Ds, where are they?