Erick Erickson's Blog, page 203

Just Say No to Louie Gohmert's Write-In Bid

The Republican Study Committee is the group in the House of Representatives that makes up the real conservatives among the Republicans. The body frequently pushes back on squishy Republican ideas and, over the years, has come up with some pretty bold and unapologetically conservative policy ideas. (One side note — it needs to stop letting in every person with an "R" next to their name, giving the squishes cover)

The Republican Study Committee has been chaired by Mike Pence of Indiana, Jeb Hensarling of Texas, and is presently chaired by Dr. Tom Price of Georgia. Next up should be Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, but Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas has decided to launch a write-in bid.

I like Louie Gohmert, but between he and Jim Jordan, I trust Jim Jordan to be a fully competent conservative trench fighter who will never go off the reservation about terror babies in embarrassing fashion — let alone be asked about it.

Rep. Gohmert, in trying to discredit Jim Jordan's qualifications points out that Jordan, like Speaker to be John Boehner, is from Ohio and would therefore be "a wingman" for John Boehner.

First, I'd like to point out that Rush Limbaugh's opening song is "My City Was Gone" and is about Ohio, so let's not think Ohio has some sort of problem other than that kooky guy in the Senate from Ohio with the crazy hair . . . Sherrod whatshisname.

Second, I would like to point out that when Jim Jordan first ran for office, his opponent was endorsed by and helped by a guy named John Boehner. Yeah, that John Boehner.

Wingman? I think not.

I like Rep. Gohmert tremendously. But I think Rep. Jim Jordan has earned the position, will be a tremendous conservative fighter, and, I hate to say it, will keep the focus on policy and not moo goo dog pan (a great line, by the way) and terror babies.

The TSA Lies In Response to RedState

I'd like to be charitable, but more than a week after we highlighted an outrageous TSA action, the TSA finally decided to respond. It did so by flat out lying.

The TSA's response is to this post about my friend the soldier who experienced one of the most egregious bits of bureaucratic stupidity at the hands of the TSA to ever be documented.

How does the TSA respond?

At Indianapolis International Airport, military charters arrive at the remote transit terminal, exclusive for these types of flights. TSA staff does not have access to this facility and, we do not conduct any screening operations there. Also, nail clippers have never been prohibited by TSA.

I emailed my friend who sent me the original and this is his response:

Wow. Holy sh*t. That's just an outright lie.

What a bunch of do****bags. See, this is why I want to remain anonymous. More bulls**t than I have time to deal with.

The funny thing is, almost everything blogger bob said mirrors exactly what I said–that we were taken to a separate part of the airport, etc–up until he said TSA has no access to the facility. Now that is a lie. I can tell you for a fact that they were there, we were screened by them, and they took nail clippers and a multi-tool.

Notice, he doesn't even deny that nail clippers are confiscated. He just says "they're not on the list of prohibited items". Doesn't mean a rogue agent couldn't confiscate them anyway.

By the way, I have had nail clippers confiscated by a TSA agent before and I know many others who have had the same thing happen.

Likewise, since posting that story, which has received more than 500,000 unique page views, I've heard from other soldiers with similar experiences. I think I'll believe the soldiers over Blogger Bob of the TSA.

Thank God Ronald Reagan Was a Conservative Before Being a Republican

Thank God that Ronald Reagan put his principles ahead of politics. As regular readers know, I'm not fully enamored by Dick Morris, but one of the best quotes on polling I've ever heard comes from Dick Morris. To paraphrase, Morris said politicians should never lead based on polling, but should lead based on principle and use polling to shape the message to enact those principles into law.

That's what Ronald Reagan did. Consider that in the early 1980's his policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union was actually not popular in the polls. Likewise, his policy of keeping interest rates high to kill off inflation was decidedly not popular.

But he held the course and history proved him right. Reagan put his conservative principles ahead of polls and turned the polling toward him. Contrast that with news out late yesterday that Republicans have thrown in the towel on getting rid of portions of Obamacare.

Yes, yes, they'll vote once or twice on full repeal, but they want to keep a few provisions that are totally noxious to the free market and will ultimately undermine private health care insurance in America, but sure poll well.

Here's the quote:

Speaking to more than 100 students at American University, Cantor said, "What you will see us do is to push for repeal of the healthcare bill, and at the same time, contemporaneously, submit our replacement bill, that has in it the provisions [barring discrimination due to pre-existing conditions and offering young people affordable care options]." . . . .

"We too don't want to accept any insurance company's denial of someone and coverage for that person because he or she may have pre-existing condition," Cantor said, addressing a young woman in the audience who noted that she had a pre-existing health condition.

Now, Eric Cantor's office put out a statement at 3:08 p.m., a copy of which his office emailed to me. In it, Cantor's Office said he supports "full repeal of" Obamacare.

Yes, the Republicans support full repeal of Obamacare, but then they'll resubmit their own bill and add to it some of the very same things Obama put in. And we need to pay attention to something key here.

The Republicans want to force insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. That sounds nice, but the only way to pay for it is either an individual mandate, which the GOP says is unconstitutional, or federal subsidy.

As Rush Limbaugh noted on his radio program yesterday, the pre-existing conditions mandate is akin to the government telling an insurance company that they must insure someone's house as the house is in the process of burning down.

Then of course there is the slacker mandate — that provision that lets the youth of America not have to grow up and move out by letting them stay on their parents' insurance.

Both of these provisions simply drive up the cost of health care. There are plenty of free-market conservative solutions out there. These two just happen to not be among them.

Saying you want to repeal Obamacare and then resurrect a few of its provisions is noxious. The whole thing should die and new ideas should be put forward that actually use the free market to lower costs instead of escalate costs.

Ultimately though, we know the GOP is going to try to repeal Obamacare, the Senate will kill it, and the GOP will move on. Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) pretty much admitted that on Sean Hannity's show yesterday.

Rep. Buyer misses the point — Obamacare is and will remain unpopular. The GOP should bring up full repeal repeatedly and build momentum into 2012. Then we can have a fully energized base ready to defeat Obama and elect a President who will not use his veto pen to stop them.

Ronald Reagan always thought about his vision for America. It was a long term vision that required long term planning.

The problem with the GOP today is they are short term thinkers with flash in the pan polling. And that will be their undoing.

Morning Briefing for December 1, 2010

RedState Morning Briefing

For December 1, 2010

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Thank God Ronald Reagan Was a Conservative Before Being a Republican

2. Gays in the Military

3. Eric Holder: Man on a Mission

4. The FDA in bed with Big Business

5. Gov. Jindal Calls Obama's National Security Strategy 'Dumb' and 'Dangerous

———————————————————————-

1. Thank God Ronald Reagan Was a Conservative Before Being a Republican

Thank God that Ronald Reagan put his principles ahead of politics. As regular readers know, I'm not fully enamored by Dick Morris, but one of the best quotes on polling I've ever heard comes from Dick Morris. To paraphrase, Morris said politicians should never lead based on polling, but should lead based on principle and use polling to shape the message to enact those principles into law.

That's what Ronald Reagan did. Consider that in the early 1980's his policy of confrontation with the Soviet Union was actually not popular in the polls. Likewise, his policy of keeping interest rates high to kill off inflation was decidedly not popular.

But he held the course and history proved him right. Reagan put his conservative principles ahead of polls and turned the polling toward him. Contrast that with news out late yesterday that Republicans have thrown in the towel on getting rid of portions of Obamacare.

Yes, yes, they'll vote once or twice on full repeal, but they want to keep a few provisions that totally noxious to the free market and will ultimately undermine private health care insurance in America, but sure poll well.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Gays in the Military

I greatly dislike talking about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The topic drives me insane. I'm not serving on the front lines of the battlefield and I frankly think if you aren't serving on the front lines, you should have no say in the matter, whether you are in or out of the military. I politely declined to discuss it on TV the other night, but it sneaked up on me last night as a topic and I finally let loose on it. Given the number of emails I've had about my comments, I might as well share my thoughts now.

So, here's my newsflash for you: there are gays in the military today. You'd never know that by the media coverage.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Eric Holder: Man on a Mission

With a federal jury finding a terrorist not guilty of all but one charge, with a Somali teenager arrested for trying to blow up Americans at a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony, with the wikileaks debacle, and with more and more to preoccupy the Attorney General of the United States, you'd think Eric Holder would be holed up in his office fighting the good fight.

You would be wrong.

Mr. Obama is sending his Attorney General to Switzerland to lobby for the World Cup. Yes, apparently the most important job for the American Attorney General is to make sure we get a soccer tournament in 2022.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. The FDA in bed with Big Business

You probably remember the fanatical fear that gripped the nation these last few years in response to a few factories with tainted peanut butter. You may also remember the national panic when spinach was a killer stalking grocery stores across the country. These types of events are notorious for being blown out of proportion by the national media & being chaotic by virtue of bureaucratic over-involvement.

While this may be remembered by many consumers as an annoyance, it is remembered far differently by the corporations that are subjected to massive regulation at the hands of bureaucrats from the FDA as well as dozens of state and local regulators across the country.

For the companies that had to deal with these problems, it was more than an annoyance, but rather an incredibly costly nightmare that they can never allow to happen again. When the peanut butter crisis hit, factories across the country were completely shut down in an attempt to trace the problem to it's source without contaminating any other consumers. On it's face this may sound reasonable however it is a massive over reaction that costs untold millions of dollars to the industry and in most cases producing limited results as the contamination is usually traced back to just one factory and by that time the damage has been done. For a business owner or CEO this is absolutely unacceptable.

Enter S.510.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Gov. Jindal Calls Obama's National Security Strategy 'Dumb' and 'Dangerous

Bobby Jindal wasted no time assessing this administration's approach to fighting terrorism, mocking Obama's strategy as a "treatise on social justice." In part two of his exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS, the Louisiana Governor argued that Obama's inability to talk honestly about radical Islam stems from the President's erroneous perception of why the threat even exists.

"We just need to give these poor people more money and there will be more opportunities, less violence, less terrorism," Jindal said of the White House's way of tackling global Jihad.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Gays in the Military

"We are talking about an American military that burns piles of Bibles lest any Muslim gets offended. What do Muslims hate more than Bibles? Gays. "

I greatly dislike talking about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The topic drives me insane. I'm not serving on the front lines of the battlefield and I frankly think if you aren't serving on the front lines, you should have no say in the matter, whether you are in or out of the military. I politely declined to discuss it on TV the other night, but it sneaked up on me tonight as a topic and I finally let loose on it. Given the number of emails I've had about my comments tonight, I might as well share my thoughts now.

Ugh.

So, here's my newsflash for you: there are gays in the military today. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" does not magically make them go away. It just means they cannot be open. And as the military is about killing the enemy and not who you prefer to hook up with, I have no problem with keeping the policy.

Here's another newsflash for you: no one wants to get into the nitty-gritty of all the details about fraternization, etc., which most people would rather laugh off or cringe thinking about. After all, what we're dealing with here is the desires of a minority to be identified by their sexual preference in the military — a preference that has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not they are competent to kill the enemy, which is arguably their chief job duty.

For the life of me I cannot figure out why this is an issue. There are gays in the military already. Don't Ask Don't Tell prevents the military from having to get into those sticky, potentially icky discussions of fraternization that are now made very easy based on whether or not a member of the military has a uterus and, if so, separate at night before turning off the light, etc.

But there is more to it than that. And this is the substantive part of it.

Yes, a majority of Americans do not care. But who cares what these people think. They are not getting shot at by the Taliban. And yes, supposedly a majority of the military doesn't care. But, and no disrespect intended, who cares what they think? I care about what the men and women on the front lines in the war zone think and I have not seen any polling breaking it out that way.

What I do see is the Marines, who are on the front lines, are opposed and that is enough for me.

We are talking about an American military that burns piles of Bibles lest any Muslim gets offended. Newsflash: what do Muslims hate more than Bibles? Gays. And how is a cave dwelling Taliban dragging an American soldier off going to distinguish between a gay soldier and a straight soldier? They aren't. And neither will their bullet. But I wager their propensity to take no negotiating tools prisoners will go up.

That's what I think. Your mileage may vary. Hopefully I can go back to not talking about this issue now.

Eric Holder: Man on a Mission

With a federal jury finding a terrorist not guilty of all but one charge, with a Somali teenager arrested for trying to blow up Americans at a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony, with the wikileaks debacle, and with more and more to preoccupy the Attorney General of the United States, you'd think Eric Holder would be hold up in his office fighting the good fight.

You would be wrong.

Mr. Obama is sending his Attorney General to Switzerland to lobby for the World Cup. Yes, apparently the most important job for the American Attorney General is to make sure we get a soccer tournament in 2022.

Don't you feel safe and secure in that knowledge? At least Obama isn't going himself given his success at getting the 2016 Olympics for Chicago.

Morning Briefing for November 30, 2010

RedState Morning Briefing

For November 23, 2010

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. The Climate Conference Echo Chamber

2. Council on American Islamic Relations: A Co-Conspirator to Terror

3. The American Idol-ization of Abortion

4. Have Some Irish Coffee

5. Fred Upton's Shocking Votes on Energy-Related Bills

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1. The Climate Conference Echo Chamber

Phelim McAleer is a journalist. In his capacity as a journalist, he is a skeptic. The role of skeptic - the one who asks the questions, the one who demands answers - is generally a lauded role in modern society. At least .. as long as there's a Republican on the hot seat. But in climate circles, they have another word, a pejorative term, for skeptics: deniers. The church of global warming has no tolerance for heresy, and even less for probing questions or investigations. And so it is that the journalist Phelim McAleer was denied press credentials for the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in sunny Cancun, Mexico this week. (Certainly a better PR choice than frigid Copenhagen.)

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Council on American Islamic Relations: A Co-Conspirator to Terror

Power Line brings us the news that the Council on American Islamic Relations ("CAIR") has been found by both the executive and judicial branches of the United States Government to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case.

If you recall, the Justice Department prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation for providing support to a terrorist group. In the particular case it was Hamas.

As Power Line notes, the Justice Department named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case and both a federal district court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals concurred.

Maybe now the media will stop trying to pretend that CAIR is some innocuous civil rights group. Hahahaha. Who am I kidding?!

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. The American Idol-ization of Abortion

Last week the smut-peddlers at Gawker.com introduced us all to Pete and Alisha Arnold. Alisha Arnold is apparently 17 weeks pregnant, and the Arnolds have allegedly decided to let the Internet vote on whether Alisha will carry their son to full term or abort him. I say "allegedly" because I am fairly skeptical of whether the Arnolds intend to follow through with their plan. In fairness, the Arnolds have left themselves a pretty substantial loophole, declaring essentially that they have veto power over the Internet poll. This seems to be fairly transparent way of saying that the Arnolds will check the results of the poll and then do whatever their hearts desire.

To my mind, the question of whether this episode is a hoax or publicity stunt is quite beside the point. What ought to concern us more are the hordes of American citizens voting in the Arnolds' poll and publicly obsessing over their gratuitous display of moral vacillation.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Have Some Irish Coffee

Yesterday afternoon, Ireland finalized terms of a bailout valued at 85 billion euros, from the ECB, the IMF, a government pension fund, and several European states. So far, the bailout is NOT having a calming effect on Europe's capital markets.

Credit spreads on so-called "peripheral" European sovereigns are blowing out this morning, and government bonds of Portugal and Spain are falling sharply. Italy managed to tap the credit markets earlier today, but the interest rate was high and the subscription level was disappointing.

This can't keep up. If investors continue to dial up the interest rates they charge Europe's governments, there's little chance of a sustained recovery. And that makes European states even less credit-worthy.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Fred Upton's Shocking Votes on Energy-Related Bills

Fred Upton's liberal voting record is a textbook example of why Republicans were kicked to the curb. From taxes to energy to federal government land grabs, Upton is no conservative.

Upton's proudest energy achievement is co-authoring the ban on incandescent light bulbs with über-liberal Rep. Jane Harman (D.–Calif.).

A big believer in global-warming-consensus "science," Upton told a Subcommittee on Energy and Environment hearing in 2009—just last year—that the global warming debate is over: "I have said at nearly every climate change hearing that for me I don't dispute the science. Right or wrong, the debate over the modeling and science appears to be over."

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Council on American Islamic Relations: A Co-Conspirator to Terror

Power Line brings us the news that the Council on American Islamic Relations ("CAIR") has been found by both the executive and judicial branches of the United States Government to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case.

If you recall, the Justice Department prosecuted the Holy Land Foundation for providing support to a terrorist group. In the particular case it was Hamas.

As Power Line notes, the Justice Department named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case and both a federal district court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals concurred.

Maybe now the media will stop trying to pretend that CAIR is some innocuous civil rights group. Hahahaha. Who am I kidding?!

Impotence & Salad

Welcome back. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. There are a few stories that came out over the holiday weekend and I think they are best tied together by one word — impotence.

Barack Obama increasingly appears to be an impotent President and no amount of viagra funded through Obamacare seems capable of helping the man.

First there was North Korea. They have, in essence, engaged in several acts of war against South Korea and have received no substantive response. The United States will engage in military exercises with South Korea, but that's it.

In reality, though, let's not kid ourselves. North Korea has no plans to go to war. North Korea just wants something. It wants concessions of some kind. Further, until the U.S. Government recognizes that North Korea exists solely because of Chinese subsidy (pretty much like us these days), we can do little to curb North Korea unless we take a more aggressive posture against China — something few Republicans and even fewer Democrats want to do.

China, however, is the enemy.

In the meantime, Obama does nothing.

Then there is the matter of Wikileaks. Why its founder, Julian Assange, continues to walk free, is mind boggling given the extent of the leaking he is doing. The founder of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, directly says Wikileaks and, consequently, Mr. Assange, is an enemy of the United States.

In Yemen we send unmanned aerial vehicles to deal with American enemies. The best we've done so far with Mr. Assange is send him a letter and plead with his sensibilities — to no avail no less.

Mr. Obama has been unable to deal with Iran. He has been unable to deal with North Korea. And now he is unable to deal with Wikileaks. To be fair, his predecessors had a hard time dealing with the first two as well, but if we're really being fair we should also admit that neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush would have so ineptly handled the matter of wikileaks.

Our foreign policy has become ivory tower and academic. The wikileaks documents, if nothing else, shows us that none of our allies take this administration seriously.

In order to meet his timeline to shut down Guantanamo Bay, the Obama Administration withheld meetings with Obama until countries volunteered to take some of the detainees — no word on the repercussions for letting them go once the head of state had a meeting with Obama.

Then there is Richard Wolffe's new book about Barack Obama. Mr. Wolffe of MSNBC fame no doubt thinks he is helping the administration, but Kyle Smith seizes on one revealing anecdote.

One staffer was conspicuously overweight. The president, in an incident that Wolffe believes proves how caring the man is, took it upon himself to present the aide with a salad for lunch — "then listened to him protest that he could take care of his own health. 'I love you, man,' Obama said. 'I want you to look after yourself. Eat the salad.' "

This is followed by Barack Obama quoting Abraham Lincoln and attributing his knowledge of the quote to his frequent perusals of the White House library. But the quote is actually from Ronald Reagan, not Lincoln, and Obama found it not by perusing the White House Library, but by reading his own diary wherein he mistakenly attributed the quote.

Mr. Obama is impotent and James Carville is perhaps right that Mr. Obama lacks a pair.

Maybe had the media demanded to see his college transcripts instead of believing the myth that the man is a genius, we'd have seen before putting him in office that he really isn't as smart as he or his acolytes think he is.

Morning Briefing for November 29, 2010

RedState Morning Briefing

For November 29, 2010

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Impotence & Salad

2. Karma: SEIU Kicks Members' Kids to the Curb

3. Stopping START

4. Airport Security as Parody

5. Sore Union Losers at Delta Air Lines

6. White House Expedites Wind Farms; Stalls Drilling

7. Rothman chief of staff arrested on child solicitation charges.

———————————————————————-

1. Impotence & Salad

Welcome back. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. There are a few stories that came out over the holiday weekend and I think they are best tied together by one word — impotence.

Barack Obama increasingly appears to be an impotent President and no among of viagra funded through Obamacare seems capable of helping the man.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Karma: SEIU Kicks Members' Kids to the Curb

You remember how ObamaCare was all about making health care more affordable and protecting the most vulnerable, right?

And, surely you remember how much money and resources (i.e., members' dues) the purple behemoth known as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) put into the fight for ObamaCare—even going so far as (allegedly) beating Kenneth Gladney at a St. Louis town hall meeting.

Heck, it was SEIU's then president Andy Stern who pushed for the tactic known as "demon pass" that gave us final passage of ObamaCare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act.

Well, somehow we missed this last week.

"One of the largest union-administered health-insurance funds in New York is dropping coverage for the children of more than 30,000 low-wage home attendants, union officials said. The union blamed financial problems it said were caused by the state's health department and new national health-insurance requirements."

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. Stopping START

The US Senate has before it a proposed treaty with Russia which according to the administration is nothing more than a benign extension of Ronald Reagan's "doveryai, no proveryai" or "trust, but verify." For reasons that are more than a little unclear, the Obama regime has chosen to make ratification of this treaty its highest priority insisting that the ratification take place during the upcoming lame duck session of Congress, an act unprecedented in our history. Far from being benign is exemplifies not only weakness and arguably some kind of a 1960s idealism it is nothing more than political desperation.

The US Senate should refuse to act upon this treaty during the lame duck session or at anytime in the future.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Airport Security as Parody

Pejman Yousefzadeh has a great post on airport security. You've probably seen similar things.

Throughout the country the full body x-ray machines were turned off for travel the day before Thanksgiving and have largely been unused for several days.

Now, the TSA says there is no official policy, but it seems hard to believe it is sheer coincidence that on the busiest travel days of the year at the largest airports across the country the full body scanners were just . . . randomly?. . . turned off.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. Sore Union Losers at Delta Air Lines

There's big money at stake for unions at Delta Air Lines, Inc—over $22 million in annual union dues. As the only (primarily) union-free major airline (Delta's pilots are unionized), unions have long targeted the Atlanta-based carrier. However, now, with the National Mediation Board members being controlled by unions*, as well as Delta's recent merger with unionized Northwest Airlines, the unions have declared it open hunting season on Delta. So far, however, the unions have lost eight out of the eight elections they've called for—and now are going to rely on the union-controlled NMB to overturn the results so they can hold rerun elections.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

6. White House Expedites Wind Farms; Stalls Drilling

Interior Secretary Salazar has decided that America has serious energy needs - needs which must be addressed through an emergency effort to activate new sources quickly. Is this a sudden move to expedite offshore drilling - and reduce America's dependence on foreign oil? Not quite.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

7. Rothman chief of staff arrested on child solicitation charges.

Bob Decheine, chief of staff for Rep. Steve Rothman (D, NJ), has been abruptly fired. This came as a bit of a surprise, as Decheine has been a notable figure in NJ Democratic politics: he was a senior adviser to the Obama campaign in 2008, and as Rothman's CoS had just shepherded his boss to another win in Congress, by fair means or foul. In other words, a bit of a surprise, no? Turns out Decheine got arrested last week for soliciting sex from a minor. It was a sting operation, which means that - thank God - no kids were hurt by this guy.

Please click here for the rest of the post.