Back To Basics

Over at the Carolina Journal Online, Michael Moore (no, not THAT Michael Moore) writes about re-learning the basis of our liberties.

If this country is to survive in a form we can be proud to hand over to the next generation, we'll all have to follow this advice.

Fun With Statistics

Before you let the poll-driven reports of an already decided election get you down, read this from Iowahawk. And get a grip. At least for now, actual votes still matter in this country.

Brunswick County Early and Often Voting To End As Planned

The State Port Pilot Blog reports that local election officials chose to end early voting at 1 pm on Saturday, November 1st instead of adding an extra four hours as suggested by the state. You must be in line by 1 pm Saturday or, horror of horrors, you'll have to vote on Election Day.

Turnout statewide has been huge, and Brunswick County is no exception. As of 5 o'clock Thursday afternoon 31,093 ballots had been cast, giving the county a 41.3% voter turnout already.

Halloween Eve Funnies

Trick or treat

Sweet Emotion!!!

It's not as good as Jane Fonda's back ache, but still happy news. Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has publicly endorsed John McCain. Rock on.

Schadenfreude-o-rama

I was starting to look forward to this election just being over, but after I read this from feminist Erica Jong, I wish the campaign could go on forever.

"My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can't cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves."

"My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium."

Anything that causes Jane Fonda pain makes me smile. Is that wrong?

Early and Often Voting Update

Here's the latest Brunswick County early voting party affiliation breakdown:

43% Dem
36% Rep
22% Unaffiliated

I'm not sure why this adds up to 101%, but it's more likely my amazing math skills than anything untoward. Overall, 23.3% of registered voters have cast ballots so far in early voting locations.

Looks like the Democrats are out early this year. Statewide, black voters are early voting in record numbers, so that could explain some of it. The Democrat vote on election day may be less for Obama in Brunswick County than many would think. It may bode less well for local Republican candidates, though.

Don't give up the ship, and remember, in North Carolina you have until Saturday to Vote Early and Often!

Post Election Conservative Strategy

Some "high profile conservatives," social, economic and foreign policy-minded alike, plan to meet in Virginia two days after the election. No matter the outcome, they figure the conservative movement needs some work. They've got that much right, but forgive me if I'm not overflowing in confidence that they'll get much else right.

First of all, the idea that one can separate conservatives into the above mentioned "types" is troublesome. Maybe we need a better word than "conservative" to describe someone who can defend their ideology based on the stated principles of the founders of our nation. This conservative strategy session will include those who voted for the latest "bailout" bill, which would have horrified almost anyone at the 1789 Constitutional Convention.

I think that if the Republican Party is going to return to conservatism it's going to have to happen from the bottom up. That means that we common folk will have to educate ourselves on the basics of natural law and self-government.

How long has it been since you actually sat down and read the Constitution? It's not a long or complicated document. It was written so that an 18th century farmer could understand it easily. In it you'll find exactly what the federal government is allowed to do. They are called the "enumerated powers" and there are 16 of them. That's it.

Next, try the Federalist Papers, written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to explain the reasoning behind the Constitution to the voters of New York. It's not as easy a read as the Constitution itself, but it's broken down into small essays that address different aspects of the document.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense was the argument that pushed many in the colonies to accept the idea of a break from England. His series of articles called The Crisis rallied the country to support the Revolutionary cause during the darkest days of the war.

Anything written by Thomas Jefferson is helpful. Start with the Declaration of Independence and then the Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom and any or all of his letters and correspondence.

There are any number of works by and about all our founding fathers that deserve attention as well. Their philosophy is based in large part on Hobbes and Locke, which are harder to get through, but fascinating. The whole of Western philosophy plays a role in formulating the government we should be enjoying today. Our founders were fluent in the Bible and Plato and Socrates as well. It certainly wouldn't hurt us to look into all of these.

I'm far from an expert on any of these writings, but we don't need expertise to start educating our friends about how our country should and could work.

Our nation was founded by ordinary citizens, it's going to have to be saved by them as well.

Obama's Orwellian Streak

Bruce Walker at the American Thinker explains very well the ideological danger of Barack Obama. The whole essay is well worth a read, but here's the gist:

The 2001 audio tape of Barack Obama describing the Constitution as a document of "negative liberties" reveals an utterly Orwellian Obama. How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control. Only in our age of collective thinking and untidy language could such a thing as "positive liberty" be conceived. The state power to coerce is not liberty.

Notions like "positive liberty" are part of the web of thought control by language manipulation which Orwell described in 1984. If Obama cannot think of "positive liberty" as a contradiction in terms, then he simply cannot think. The conscious surrender of language to the needs of the party creates a self-made prison from which escape is, quite literally, inconceivable. These unguarded remarks by Obama display a mind trapped in a reality in which words are phantoms.

Ghost News

It seems the ghost of Robin Hood's girlfriend, Maid Marian, has turned up in the Nottingham dungeon. She must be as annoyed as I am with the liberals' hijacking of her boyfriends' story.

It's become conventional wisdom that Robin Hood "took from the rich and gave to the poor" a la Barack Obama's wonderful redistribution plan. Actually, if you read the story, you'll find he was taking from the GOVERNMENT of the time and giving the money back to those who earned it. Robin Hood was a tax cutter!

This Will Solve Everything

A column in the Philly Inquirer suggests taking the voting franchise from Whitey. Personally I think the author doth protest too much. Take a look at this sentence.

"They mean well, but they are easily spooked."

Using a racist slur where perhaps 'frightened" would work? For shame. Clearly a hood resides in Mr. Valania's closet.

"Long dark chicken dance of the national soul," indeed.

Just In Time For Halloween

In case Obama's views on the constitution aren't frightening enough for you, try some annotated Bram Stoker's Dracula on for size.

Has anyone tried tossing some garlic in Barack's direction? Just a thought.

Lessons From Tito

Want to know what makes America exceptional? Ask someone who worked to get here from someplace else.

GO TITO, GO!!!

Of course everyone knows Republicans are racist, anti-immigrant xenophobes. Clearly.

Early And Often Voting Update

So far 18% percent of Brunswick County's registered voters have cast an early voting ballot. I'm not sure if that includes absentee ballots, but I think not. The breakdown of those who have voted so far is:

43% Democrat
35% Republican
22% Unaffiliated

The unaffiliated have broken strongly republican in the past, so read into these numbers what you will.

This is not the election to sit it out. Please.

If This Isn't Marxism, What is?

Barack Obama gave an interview in 2001 to a Chicago NPR station and discussed the civil rights movement's failure to acheive "economic justice" through wealth distribution. He argues that the failure was the result of depending on the Warren Supreme Court (which he seems to criticize for it's adherrence to the Constitution) instead of "community organizing" to advocate for a redistribution of wealth.

You can watch a video, listen to the original audio file through a link or read a transcript here.

That comment to Joe the Plumber about "spreading the wealth" was not a slip of the tongue. Obama believes in social and economic justice. These are Marxist ideals that sound great to people who feel trampled upon by "The Man", but which have lead to misery and death wherever they've been put into practice.

The economy operates under it's own laws. One can no more assure economic justice than one can assure weather justice. It's not "fair" that Seattle is rainy and SanDiego is sunny and warm, but no man is going to change that. The best way a nation can work towards "fairness" in it's economic matters is for the government to limit it's role to ensuring as best it can honesty between traders in the marketplace.

Shameless Penn State Football Post

My alma mater, Penn State, ground out a win against the Buckeyes last night (sorry Carson) proving once again the immortal words of P.J. O'Rourke, "Age and guile beat youth, innocence and a bad haircut." The game of football has not passed Joepa by, as many would have had us believe a few years ago. A story I read in Friday's USA Today explains why.

After a dismal 2-7 start three years ago Joe canceled practice and held a team meeting. He read the players a famous quote. He didn't try to "connect" with the young players, over 60 years his junior in many cases, by pulling something from popular culture. No hip-hop lyrics here. Joe didn't reach into the history of his sport for inspiring words from Bear Bryant or Knute Rockne. Joe Paterno sat his team down and quoted Shakespeare's "To be or not to be..." soliloquy.

You see, Joe isn't a "new school" guy. He 's not all full of "hope" and "change" talk. He's a man schooled in the classics, who read Homer in the original Greek in high school. He knows that the classics matter, that they are classic for a reason. The is no reason on earth that a room full of college football players could not be expected to identify with a young man looking across a "sea of troubles" and wondering if it was worth carrying on.

If only our teachers and politicians had as much sense as an aged football coach. Maybe this election's debate could rise above empty platitudes and political minutia to a discussion of the core belief systems of two very different men who would be leader of the free world.

Fighting Voter Fraud

The Brunswick County GOP held training this morning for poll observers These are the folks who will sit quietly inside polling places and hopefully make sure nothing dirty goes on. There was a lot of great information presented about what can and can not take place at our polls, but I'll save that for closer to election day.

One issue that came up at the training session and that I know bothers lots of people is the fact that no ID is required to cast a vote in North Carolina. Some form of paperwork that links a voter's name to an address is required at the time of registration. This can take the form of anything from a drivers' license to an electric bill. As long as you claim the name on the paper and the address matches the one you are using to register, all is fine and dandy.

That's as close as we can get in North Carolina to making sure a voter is who he says he is. Democrats both locally and on a national level consider voter ID laws to "disenfranchise" too many of their poor and minority constituents. Never mind that an ID is required to drive, fly, rent a movie or apply for food stamps. Asking for one at the polls is tantamount to a poll tax. Ridiculous.

The people of North Carolina love to whine and complain about their government, then return the same democrats to the house, senate and governorship year after year. If you want your vote to mean something and not be canceled out by some ACORN hack voting in every precinct in the Charlotte area, it's time to make a change. Swallow whatever differences you may have with Pat McCrory or your local GOP candidate and vote for at least a chance that we can have sanity in our next elections.

Friday Night Funnies

Because if you can't make fun of America-hating, bomb-throwing, public teat-sucking, anarchist Friends of Obama, who can you make fun of?

Elizabeth Dole Visits Brunswick County

A crowd of more than 70 supporters greeted Senator Dole at the Brunswick GOP headquarters this afternoon as she dropped by on her way to a debate in Wilmington. She gave a short campaign speech detailing her work for the state over the last six years and the consequences of the democrats achieving a filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate.

Sen. Dole explained her vote against the recent "bailout" bill saying that there were better, more market-friendly options on the table, such as tax credits for home purchases. She pointed out that her opponent in this election, Democrat Kay Hagan, had basically no opinion on the bailout plan until after Dole had cast her vote.

No matter what you may think of Dole's service as senator over the last six years, this country would be in dire straights with a President Obama unrestrained by a possible senate filibuster. Eighteen million dollars have been spent in the attempt to unseat Senator Dole and she is in a tight race. She needs all of our help to pull this one out, for the good of her and the country.

Back To Basics Conservatism

The Pat McCrory campaign recently sent out this quote:

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the

weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by

discouraging  thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage

payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class

hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's

initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for

them, what they could and should do for themselves.

Abraham Lincoln




Why is that so hard to understand?

Weather Underground Were Not Happy Little Hippies

Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker site has a post this morning helping to explain just what Bill Ayers and his Weather Underground believed. These were not the hippies you see following the Dead around the country in a micro bus. These are seriously sick people. They are educated thinkers working toward a Utopian vision of racial harmony and equality for all. They were able to discuss plans for re-education camps and the extermination of the estimated 25 million who would not allow themselves to be re-educated because they believe the world would be much better afterwards and it was up to the enlightened few (them) to make it so.

Barack Obama will not open Gulags on January 21st. He has no plans to round up his political opponents and kill them. But he has no problem trying to silence them while still just a junior senator running for president. That should give one pause.

Consider this. A dirty bomb goes off in a major US city a few months into the Barack presidency. The finacial markets, which were weak already, go into complete bedlam. The country rallies around its president. The media is invested in the Obama administration after shilling for the campaign shamelessly. The House and Senate are in filibuster-proof Democrat hands. Obama sees himself as all those around him see him--as the World's Savior.

Obama will surely try to prevent such an attack from happening again. He'll ask himself what caused such a thing to happen. Our dependence on foreign oil? Our support for Israel? Our support for Iraq? Our lack of respect for the Islamic faith? Our gross consumption? Can you imagine the solutions to these "problems" an unchecked Obama administration could institute?

What would happen to the dissenting voices? To be anti-Obama is to be be a racist and now an Anti-American. Those people would be a threat to the very lives Obama would be trying to save. A good president can't allow a threat like that to stand, can he?

"It can't happen here," you say.

The residents of Germany, Venezuela, Italy, Russia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba and countless others beg to differ.

John McCain Visits Shallotte

He seemed shorter in person. Hmmmm.

Senator Burr Visits Shallotte

U.S. Senator Richard Burr and NC GOP Chairwoman Linda Daves spoke to a gathering of local republicans this morning in Shallotte. The event was held on short notice and not widely publicized, but a dozen or so folks turned out to hear Burr and Daves rally the troops as we head into the closing days of the 2008 campaign.

Both Burr and Daves stressed the importance of not paying too close attention to the media and their polls. Burr pointed out that 12 days before his election, he was down 7 points in the polls and ended up with one of North Carolina's biggest victory margins for a US Senate race.

The Real Clear Politics average of five pols taken over the last three days has Obama with a 2 point lead in North Carolina. Exit polling from early voting sites shows Obama doing much better than that, but should probably be taken with quite a few grains of salt.

In any case, this election is far from over in North Carolina or any other state.

Star News To Dem's Rescue

Vernon Ward, the Democrat candidate for Bonner Stiller's NC House District 17 seat, hasn't had much of a campaign. He claims health problems that prevent him from "stressful" activities like running for office, but not from actually performing the duties of that office.

Never fear, Mr. Ward! The Star News is there to get your name and your campaign in the public eye by running stories about you not running very hard for office.

The sad part is that much of this story is regurgitated from older stories saying pretty much the same thing. Notice the date on the campaign spending they report. Yep, apparently June 30th is the most recent campaign expenditure report they could come up with.

And the Star News wonders why they're bleeding readership.

More Early and Often Voting News

Here's some statewide analysis of early voting so far. It kinda makes my head spin.

I still hate early voting.

The Senators Are Coming!!!

Tomorrow and Friday, Brunswick County will host both of her US Senators.

Sen. Richard Burr will headline an early voting rally in the parking lot of Jerome's Steakhouse on Main Street Shallotte at 9:30 am. After the rally folks can head over to the National Guard Armory just down the street and vote.

On Friday, Senator Elizabeth Dole will visit the Brunswick County Republican headquarters at about 3:00 pm. You are asked to arrive early to prepare yourselves.

I'll try to get some pictures posted from both events.

Defense of the Brunswick County GOP

Listening to local talk radio this morning on the Big Talker FM, I heard host Curtis Wright criticizing the efforts of local and state Republican organizations. He was angry because he'd scheduled the NC GOP chairwoman as a guest and she was apparently a no-show. Wright has every reason to be ticked off and I share his frustration with elements of the GOP. It does sometimes seem that the Republican party would rather not win elections. I can't and won't defend the party at the state level and I can't speak for the New Hanover County GOP either.

But Wright also singled out the Brunswick County GOP while talking to a Brunswick County caller, and I have to step up in their defense. When my wife and first moved to Oak Island in 1994 we changed our registration to Independent just so we could have something on our ballot on primary day. On the county level, there were no primary contests on the GOP side and quite a few positions had nobody opposing the Democrat in the general election. It was pathetic. A few years later I got involved with the Brunswick GOP executive committee. Meetings were sparsely attended and not terribly friendly to a newcomer, least of all a Yankee newcomer.

Over the next few years more and more newcomers began getting involved. There was ugly infighting, recriminations and hurt feelings. "Locals" who had been fighting the good fight in a county 100% controlled by Democrats were a bit defensive about people moving into town and trying to "do it just like we did back home." All of this was understandable and looking back on it, was probably a good thing. Democracy ain't pretty.

A couple years ago, the infighting mostly stopped. A new chairman was elected who honestly had nothing but the party's best interests at heart and people started coming together. Now we have meeting with more folks in the audience than we had around the table 5 years ago. Our office has been open every day for weeks and we're adding more volunteers all the time. This year the GOP will have observers in all of Brunswick County's polling places. Phone calls to voters are being made. Every new Republican registering in Brunswick County gets a letter from the party welcoming them and inviting them to help out.

Sure we could do more, but we're a bunch of volunteers and amateurs at the political game. Some have lots of experience and some none, but we're all getting better at this all the time.

By the way, Brunswick County Republicans now control both the county commission and the school board. While I don't always agree with our representatives, it's a far cry from no conservatives daring to run.

Go Tito!!!!!

Our gal Sarah brings Tito the Builder nationwide.

Things may be looking up. We can expect fight from Sarah-cuda, but I even heard McCain this morning tearing Obama a new one over Joe Biden's comment that the world would "test" the Dear Leader during his first few months in office.

Early and Often Voting Has Begun

Success indeed.

Early voting is a travesty, and one-stop voter registration at the polls is an invitation to fraud. If going out to a polling place on election day is too much trouble for you, stay home. Sure there may be long lines on a busy election day, but if waiting in a line will deter you from helping to choose those who will make the laws we must live under, the republic is better off without your vote.

That being said, all of us who care about liberty and freedom from government must vote this year. There will be fraud, and most likely lots of it. We can help watch at the polls, but we can't be everywhere. The best antidote is a flood of legitimate votes to dilute the Mickey Mouses and Good Wills.

This'll Cheer Ya Up

Byron York at National Review stumbled upon some angry McCain supporters at a rally the other day. No, they weren't yelling about Obama. No, they weren't rednecks. They were immigrants to our shores raging at the media for attacking Joe the Plumber. Don't worry about the media digging into their immigration status, Tito brought his papers and was not shy about showing them off.

Read the whole story here. The second page is the best.

Yes Connie and Tito, "we're all Joe." Well done.

Welcome To The Harbor

After much prodding from the lovely wife, I'm adding my voice to the political cacaphony. I'm not a pundit, a politician or a journalist. I'm just a father who's trying to see that his son inherits a country the founders would recognize.

Politics has always interested me, and as I've gotten older I've taken it more seriously. By the end of Bill Clinton's term I had become truly frightened about the direction the country was headed. It seemed that every morning we'd turn on the news and hear something more disgusting than the day before. By the time government agents broke into a family's home to force a young Elian Gonzalez back to the slavery of Cuba I was dreading the next day's headlines. Where was the outrage in a country founded on freedom? Could that freedom long survive in a people that would let this happen to an innocent child?

Then came the elections of 2000 and the aftermath in Florida. All my frustration with my country had been tempered by the knowledge that I could help change things with my vote. But there on my TV were fellow Americans bent on "interpreting voters' intent" by measuring the depth of "dimples" and the width of "hanging chads." My country had gone nuts.

But this time I didn't feel so all alone. It wasn't the team of Bush lawyers that gave me hope. It was the crowds of normal, everyday folks who started gathering outside any place ballots were being "counted." When one county's election board got tired of the oversight by each sides' lawyers and moved the counting into private, the crowd outside got wind of it and went a bit nuts. They stormed into the hallway outside the room the election board had holed themselves into and screamed bloody murder.

It worked. People just like me forced liberty on their government. There was plenty of passion, but no violence. Suddenly, I felt less frustrated. If those twenty or thirty people could stand up for right, then I could too. Doing something would surely be better than worrying and complaining.

So I got involved with the local republican party and come the election of 2004, I was sitting in the poll as an official observer. There wasn't much to observe. The poll in my precinct is run by a wonderful old lady who'd no sooner cheat than she'd sprout wings and fly away. But it felt damned good to DO something.

I've tried in the last few years to educate myself about what this country should and could be. I started reading a lot of the history of the founding and the works of Jefferson, Paine, Hobbes and Locke. I've got a lot more to learn, but its becoming increasingly clear that we're squandering the inheritance of our forefathers.

I believe Americans remain a basically good people who have allowed themselves to be lulled to sleep by a huge and paternalistic government. Since most of us are educated by that government, we never realize how far our ship of state has drifted off course. This blog is my own attempt to get all hands on deck before it's too late. I want my son to have a good strong ship under his feet so that the ocean in front of him is a highway to all of life's possibilities and not an impassable barrier.