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Big Labor Infighting

According to California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton, the leadership of Big Labor behemoth SEIU has "threatened" him.  Why? Well, there's a splinter group called the National Union of Healthcare Workers, and...
He hailed the breakaway union's leader, Sal Rosselli, as a lifelong friend and "one of the strongest labor leaders in this state."
So is Burton merely doing a favor for a friend, or is Rosselli offering better representation to union members than SEIU? If it is the latter, then shouldn’t the SEIU step it up, instead of trying to quash someone else? Or is it all really about SEIU management power, and not the union member?

Shane Goldmacher reported this in a blog entry at LATimes.com.

There were some interesting comments.

"thomas Nelson" wrote November 24, 2009 at 11:50 AM:
One Socialist threatening another Socialist for supporting another Socialist...sounds like the Soviet Union all over again.
"gerrrg" wrote November 24, 2009 at 12:08 PM:
I'd put a $50 wager that the SEIU has it backwards...it is the SEIU that requires Democratic Party support in order for it to survive.
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Who is Really Extreme?

We're hearing a lot these days about how the GOP has extremists running things and it is ruining the GOP - mostly from the Democrats and those who believe them.  But I think it is the Democrats who hold some extremist positions.  Many prominent Democrats hold, overtly and actively, tacitly through passive allowance, or somewhere between, these positions:

1. Everyone has a right to food, a home, education, transportation, and medical care even if they never work to pay for any of it, meaning they will get those things by the government forcing others to provide them.

2. Carbon dioxide, which is produced naturally by human beings and other animals, is a pollutant that should be regulated and restricted by government.

3. Individuals should be treated differently based on their skin color or identification with an ethnic group, with some exceptions such as 1) Muslims or people of Middle-Eastern descent should not receive extra scrutiny related to terrorism, or  2) Immigration officials raiding a factory in a border town, or 3) Police making traffic stops.

4. There is a right to taxpayer funded abortion-on-demand through all months of pregnancy, for any or no reason, including performed on minors without parental notification.

5. It should be the official position of government and, and therefore public education, that there is no difference between heterosexual behavior and homosexual behavior, between a bride+groom union and two men or two women; this includes giving no preference to a woman and man who want to adopt over two men or two women.

Will we see calls in the MSM for Democrats to denounce these extremists positions?  Will any prominent Democrats do so?

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Why Do People Vote Democrat?

If we know why, we might be able to more of them to vote Republican.  Of course, this presumes that the Republican they would be voting for would be somewhat conservative, libertarian, or federalist - have some form of limited government philosophy.  Yes, I know that there are some conservative Democrats out there, but even a liberal Republican can help in that the majority party in a legislature gets an advantage, such as in committee appointments, and if most of the Republicans are of the limited government sort, then the liberal Republican can’t do too much harm.

Let me get out of the way right now that I don’t deny there are people who largely vote Republican for some of the same reasons listed.  That’s fine - their votes can help even if they weren’t for the right reason.  Also, I'm not saying that these are the only reasons someone would vote Democrat.

Some people vote Democrat because...
  • They’re registered Democrats and always have been and are never going to change.  It probably isn’t worth the effort to get such people to switch.  They may be part of the Democrat power structure and simply aren’t going to give it up.
  • They want to push the government Leftward.  These people are probably not going to vote Republican, but it may be worth it to encourage them to vote for a third party candidate instead of the Democrat.
  • There was a Democrat President or other figure they liked.  These people can be switched.  There are people who have fond memories of JFK.  However, we can show them that Republicans today have more in common with his political stances than the Democrat leadership of today.  People give Bill Clinton too much credit for the economy of the 1990s, and it can be demonstrated that a Republican Congress helped, and that the private sector did the heavy lifting despite – not because of – Bill Clinton.  One of the dangers of Obama is that he’s young and presumably will be around for years to encourage those who voted for him based on his perceived personality to keep voting Democrat.  I’ve already blogged about how to turn some of his voters.
  • They think the Republicans are corrupt or nasty.  Some of us are.  But it isn't too hard to demonstrate that Democrats are at least as, if not more corrupt or nasty, and it is easy to demonstrate that Republicans force corrupt Republicans out of power much more readily.  It will help if the GOP continues to hold members publicly accountable, and help even more if Republicans stay out of trouble to begin with.
  • Some Republican - politician or personal acquaintance - turned them off.  Unfortunately, some Democrat voters think of people in groups, and it is guilt by association for them.  Just think of how many Democrat voters Nixon created with Watergate alone.  It can be hard to turn these people.  It is easier to be proactive – being good ambassadors as Republicans so that we don’t turn them off to begin with.
  • They are single-issue voters, such as with abortion.  These people can only be turned if we draw them away from a fixation on a single issue.  With abortion, though I think it is murder, I highly doubt that even with the right SCOTUS, we're going to see abortion effectively banned.  A few states may place some restrictions on it, but "health of the mother", technology and travel are going to make preventing abortions difficult.  Although I do not believe there is a right to an abortion, we're going to significantly reduce the number of abortions only be reaching the hearts of each generation and instilling a respect for life in them.  This does not mean we should give up standing up for life in elections.
  • They think they need some government program/assistance to survive and thrive.  Anyone receiving any form of "public assistance" is susceptible to falling into this trap – welfare, grants, loans, and so on.  Anyone who has used the government to wrest something from a current or former employer or landlord.  That’s a lot of people.  Members of labor unions are constantly told by their leaders that Democrats will bring them higher pay, better benefits, and better working conditions.  For these people, it is important to appeal to their sense of self-worth and their personal talents and desire for self-determination.  It may mean steering them towards private assistance, and it might take the people who administer such assistance insisting that their beneficiaries refuse public assistance.  Just imagine if we stepped up to wean people from public assistance and got them to vote for limited government as a result.
We need to know why people who vote voted Democrat so that we can get some of them to our side.  If they are already voting, they're halfway there.  I'll get to more of that in subsequent blog entries.

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What to Expect With a Democrat President, Supermajority

If we get an Obama Presidency and a Democrat supermajority in the legislature, we can expect to see...

Men’s Rights/Father’s Rights – Please!  Joe Biden has demonstrated hostility to his own sex and Obama’s going to go along with Biden and the feministas because his own father wasn’t around.  This will not bode well for marriage and fatherhood as men will increasingly see those as too risky, thanks to existing inequalities continuing and new ones being put into place.

Health Care – More socialization in health care will make things less efficient and there will be fewer choices and slower advancement of technology.  Increased government involvement will give the government the "right" to intrude more into our personal decisions so that we won’t make unhealthy ones, because they will cost "the government" more.  Don’t expect this to discourage harmful sexual behavior – it will mainly apply to mandating more treatments for children against the wishes of parents, more targeting of tobacco and gun makers and food and restaurant businesses.

In the Courts – Appointment of many activist, far-Left judges who place foreign ideas over our Constitution, as the Democrats stop the foot-dragging on confirmations they’ve been doing ever since Bush was elected.  These judges will discover new "rights" that infringe upon existing rights, likely including a "right" to state-issued marriage licenses for monosexual couples.

Illegal Alien Amnesty Without the Necessary Border Control – This will create even more government-dependent citizens, more Democrat voters, a strain on our system, and will encourage more illegal aliens to come here and stay here, feeding a vicious cycle.

New Taxes and Tax Increases
– Taking wealth away from those who produced it, and using that to expand government and provide services to people who haven’t created that wealth.

Economy – The taxes will be bad for the economy as the wealth-producers change their behavior, invest elsewhere, cut back, or cash out and coast the rest of their lives.  Any economic problems will be blamed on "the greedy rich", further fostering class envy, and the "failed policies of Bush" still reverberating.  This will, or course, necessitate more regulation and more taxes.  Changes in trade polices will only make things worse as Americans will have fewer imports to choose or will have to pay more for them, and we will have more trouble exporting.  In the name of preventing "climate change", crippling restrictions will be imposed on businesses.  This may be offset with government corporate welfare, making the businesses dependent on Democrats.

Big Labor Gets BiggerSince unions funnel money to the Democrats, the Democrats will do everything they can to boost union membership, making it easier for unions to organize workplaces and harder for any of the employees to opt out, even if they detest the union and what it does with dues money.

Iraq – Obama will either pull us out of Iraq too fast or will move too slowly for the fringe Left.  Anything bad that happens there will be blamed on Bush, anything good will be attributed to Obama.

Afghanistan – No amount of effort is going to find/kill bin Laden without killing a high number of American soldiers, or "innocent civilians".  It is just the nature of the terrain and the realities of the local politics.

Terrorism – Terrorists we have detained will be set free or will entered into our stateside judicial system, and if convicted, placed in our prison systems for while, where they will recruit more terrorists and then they will be released into our society.  Deferring too much to the U.N. will make us a sitting duck.

Education – Quality will decline, but the amount of time schools have children and the amount of control over the lives of those children will increase.  More money will be funneled to universities, colleges, and trade schools in a wasteful way that drives up tuition costs and encourages more students to become dependent on loans and government assistance, and possibly spend a longer time in school as dependent students, creating more Democrat voters.

Housing – More government housing will be provided to people who were irresponsible about housing before.  Bad loans will again be encouraged, with taxpayers backing them up.  Developers will essentially be forced to build "mixed”"housing so that a certain number of units will be subsidized by the other renters/buyers so that people who don’t earn as much as they do can live like they do, right next door.

Stifling Free Speech – They’ll try to return the "Fairness Doctrine" to kill conservative talk radio.  Hollywood film and television studios will be exempt as they only criticize Obama for not being far enough Left, otherwise supporting him.

Larger and New Government Programs – Which will mean higher taxes for a long time to come, more government-dependent-Democrat-voting people, and more interference in our personal and professional lives.

Attack on Second Amendment – More restrictions on gun purchases, ownership, and self-defense.  Any organized group on the Right that criticizes Obama will be treated like a terrorist threat, only worse that actual terrorists will be treated.  They will be barred from gun ownership.

The bottom line is that will have less freedom and liberty as we will have fewer choices and will retain less of our own earnings.  More of us will depend on the federal government to do more for us.

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What To Expect After the Election

If Obama wins, especially with a Democrat legislative supermajority, expect to see euphoria from the MSM.  Anything bad that happens will be the fault of Bush.  Anything good that happens will be because of the "hope brought by the impending new administration".  McCain will be considered too old to run again, so the MSM will talk about what a great guy he is (remember Bob Dole after ’96?) and how people lied about him during the campaign.  This may be blamed on "the Religious Right" and the MSM (and some in the GOP) will blame Palin for his loss. Those who were the most trouble for Obama during the campaign can prepare to find themselves harassed by politically motivated federal investigations.  All the while Obama will be portrayed as a great and benevolent unifier.  The race hustlers, however, will say that this doesn’t really change anything – America is still racist and that is why they will still be needed.  After all, Obama is only "half black" and not "slave blood".

If Obama loses, expect cries of voter fraud and vote suppression, lawsuits galore.  Expect the MSM to spin it as McCain winning "even though" he picked Palin, and how it is finally time for the GOP to dump the Religious Right.  The MSM will do as much as possible to portray McCain as too old to run for a second term, and Palin as too extreme or incompetent to be worthy of the nomination herself, and will be portraying Obama as the "sure thing" for 2012, when we will finally be over our racism enough to vote for him after seeing what a mistake McCain was.  With a Democrat Congress, the media will be calling on McCain to "reach across the aisle" and to always do everything the Democrat way.  If he doesn’t, the MSM will throw a fit.  The race hustlers will go absolutely bonkers.

Either way, all of the interesting stuff about Obama will come out
– all of the stuff the MSM has been ignoring, downplaying, or sitting on.  There won’t be as much about Biden, because he has been around so long, but the MSM will suddenly discover his gaffes.  Expect to find out some "surprises" about Democrat Senators and Representatives, as well.

Either way, there will be a struggle in the GOP, with some people mistakenly thinking that Republicans should be more like Democrats, forgetting that the voters who want Democrats will still choose Democrats.

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LA Times Wants More Felons to Vote

Couldn’t have anything to do with felons have more of an interest in Democrats winning, could it?  Here is their editorial.
Turnout for Tuesday's election is expected to be vast, but one group will be grievously underrepresented in many states. As many as 5 million felons are barred from exercising the most important duty of citizenship even though they have served their sentences or been released on parole.
Cry me a river.
A disproportionate number of them are African Americans.
Whose fault is that?  Oh, I know.  Those big, bad Republicans force people to commit felonies, and then only report felonies committed by African Americans, and the prosecutors only prosecute African Americans, and juries only convict African Americans.  It’s one, giant, racist conspiracy designed to prevent African Americans from voting.
But even without evidence of racial skewing, laws that prevent felons from voting after they have been released contradict the notion of rehabilitation and send a message to former inmates that they are literally second-class citizens.
Let’s toss any files on felons, too, and not retain any DNA or fingerprints.
As The Times recently reported, several states have eased or eliminated restrictions on voting by former prisoners convicted of felonies.
Do I see shades of blue?
But 12 states permanently prohibit some felons from voting, and 35, including California, bar voting by ex-inmates as long as they are on parole. An argument can be made that this patchwork of protections is an acceptable manifestation of federalism. But state restrictions on felons' voting rights also affect elections for Congress and for president.
Evidently you don’t know what federalism means.  It includes the idea that the federal govern is created from a collection of states, not that the states are mere districts of a central government.
It's intolerable that a citizen's ability to help choose the president, the one official who serves the entire nation, depends on whether a particular state decides that a felony conviction requires the revocation of voting rights.
Oh, yes, intolerable.  I stay awake at night worrying about it.
But history suggests that restoring federal voting rights for felons probably would have a ripple effect.
It sure would!  More Democrats!
Treating offenders who have served their time as criminals for life is cruel and counterproductive.
Will you be leaving any of your children alone with paroled child molesters?  How about a huge wad of your cash alone with a paroled thief?
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Unlike Dems, Republicans Don’t Allow Racism From Their Leaders

The president of Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated resigned for circulating a racist anti-Obama illustration.  The kicker is that the LA Times waits until the end of the article by staff writer David Kelly to let us know…
Ironically, the illustration was created by a liberal blogger as an attempt to make fun of Republicans.
So it is okay for "liberals" to make racist illustrations, as long as they are trying to make fun of Republicans?  Why no newspaper articles and television news reports hounding the blogger?

I think the resignation was a good idea.  Too bad we don’t see Dems getting their group leaders to resign when they make those kinds of mistakes.
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Palin and the Feminists

If nothing else, Palin being on the GOP ticket has prompted some feminist leaders to finally put the advancement of women in general ahead of socialism, Democrat power, abortion promotion, and lesbian power.  It is quite a sight to see feminist leaders who have always sided with Democrats or with more extreme Leftist parties to endorse and appear with Pailn.

Conversely, the MSM continues to attack Palin with any spin they can.  She’s damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t.

Hopefully, win or lose for McCain-Palin, we’ll see the start of a new era where feminism doesn’t have to equal killing your children, bashing men, and promoting larger government controlled by Democrats.

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Bigotry and Marriage Licensing

So, if I'm a bigot, as some have said, for thinking that state-issued marriage licenses should be for bride-groom combos, then doesn't that make Bill Clinton, Biden, and Obama bigots, too?
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Ahmadinejad Sounds Like a Democrat Politician

So much of what Iran's Ahmadinejad says in public sounds exactly like what the Democrat politicians are saying.  You could probably put their quotes on little pieces of paper and pull them out of a hat and have fun guessing the source - "Ahmadinejad or Democrat Politician?"

Why is that?

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Those Theocrat Dems

Will we be seeing the same kind of condemnation of the Dems by the extremist secularists and those who ridicule Bush for referring to his faith?  Somehow I doubt it.  Eric Gorski, Associated Press religion writer, reports.
One hallmark of Democratic faith efforts at the convention is diversity, which might soften objections from party activists wary of the Christian right or any mixing of religion and politics.
In other words, “It’s okay if we treat the different religions like the different color hats someone might choose to wear.”  It's okay to give lip service to religion, but not let it inform our stances in any way.
Behind the scenes, efforts to attract the religious vote will concentrate largely on Christian "values voters."
It’s kind of hard to do that when your party pushes for taxpayer funding for late-term abortions.
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Howard Stern Goes Off on Big Government Dems

Howard Stern said on the air today that he'd never vote for a Democrat again because he was upset by the Democrats in the FCC who have made it difficult for the satellite radio companies to merge.  Being the businessman he is, and making the "obscene profits" he has, I'm sure he's had plenty of roadblocks and speed bumps to deal with that have been placed in his way by big government types.  And he has in the past supported Republicans who have have supported legal abortion on demand.  On the other hand, his disdain for social conservatives is no secret (and is mutual).  He has supported some libertarian principles over the years.

I haven't caught his show at all since he made the switch to satellite.

But I'm not expecting Stern or just about anyone else who makes these kinds of declarations to stick to them.

Why?  Because the realistic choice in just about every election is a Republic or a Democrat, and quite often a voter must pick the lesser of two "evils" to make a difference.  Sitting out the vote or voting for a third party usually amounts to a de facto support for the frontrunner.

Of course, as a resident of New York, it is entirely possible that Stern could vote for RINOs and other Republicans he finds tolerable, since solid conservative pro-lifers usually don't get far in New York.

Something I do like about Howard Stern is that, although he seems (or at least used to seem) like he gets his opinions mainly from the New York Times, he has, from time to time, made a strong case for limited government.  And if enough of his listeners follow up on that idea, we just might be able to sway them to support limited government candidates and legislation.
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We Can't Tax Our Way Out of Failed Leftist Policies

How many times have you heard "we can't drill our way out of this"?  Well, I say "We can't tax our way out of this!  We can't talk our way out of this!  We can't surrender our way out of this!"  Whether in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., we can't tax our way out of the destructive results of socialism and Big Government - the failed policies of the Leftist Democrats.

I don't want a second term of Jimmy Carter.

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Point Me To This Past Unpartisan Utopia

I heard a clip of Benedict Arnold McClellan on the radio – I think it was from The Today Show - talking about his desire to change the partisanship in Washington, D.C.

Give me a break.  All of these people who claim that the nation has never been so polarized and partisan should do a little research and read up on some of the stuff that was said and written about some of our favorite Presidents in years past.  And hello... the war for secession, otherwise known as the Civil War?  Partisanship is nothing new, and we all know that calls for “bipartisan cooperation” mean “Hey all of you conservatives and libertarians: Shut up and roll over as we grow the socialist nanny state and tear down the family.”

Where partisanship really has gotten worse is with our involvement in Iraq.  Go back and see how Republicans handled dealing with a Democrat President during World War II.  You won’t find them behaving like the Democrat leadership is these days.  It’s really disgusting.  But the absurdity here is that McClellan is adding to that instead of reducing it.

Good job, buddy.  Better put some of this money aside to live on, unless you plan on being a paid tool of very partisan Democrats for the rest of your life.


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I Have an Idea For California’s Budget

In more news of the obvious, falling corporate profits means less tax revenue in California, the Los Angeles Times headline reports over an article by staff writer Evan Halper.
California's budget problems deepened today as the state reported that tax receipts plummeted nearly $1 billion last month due to plunging corporate profits.

The news comes as the state moves closer to the July 1 deadline for lawmakers to close California's budget gap, which had earlier been estimated at $16.5 billion. There is little agreement in the Capitol about how to go about doing that.

Democrats have been calling for multibillion-dollar tax increases. Republicans have signed pledges vowing never to vote for new revenue, demanding instead that the budget be balanced with steep spending cuts.
The Dems aren’t just calling for tax increases – they are calling for new taxes.  All sorts of new taxes.

So I’ve come up with my own.  Since falling corporate profits mean less tax revenue for California, thus forcing legislators to make budget decisions they’d rather not, and scaring children enough they go on picket lines to protest “cuts” (usually reductions in planned spending increases), we should encourage corporations not to engage in such behavior (falling profits).  Let’s implement a “Corporate Profit Decrease Tax” as a way of filling in the gap and, at the same time, discouraging corporations from paying less in taxes due to lower profits.

Hey, it makes about as much sense as most of the new taxes and increases the California Dems are proposing.

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