The Price of Liberty

If you want to tell the Democratic Party that enough is enough, they pushed too far, it’s time to pay up. You have to give of your time, your money, or both. There is no sitting on the couch and simply bitching on the internet or at the dinner table anymore.

Following the Twitter conversations of yesterday, Great Satan Inc. pointed to this post that shows just how little political improvement can cost.

Conservatives/Libertarians/Independents are, by this point, acutely aware of the need to remove Democrats from office. This takes money. Lots and lots of money. As someone who is woefully underemployed, I don’t have large stashes of cash to send to candidates, so I was thinking that the best option would be to contribute $10 every week to a candidate of my choice until the election.

If someone who is woefully underemployed can do it, so can someone who is fortunately still fully employed. It’s the equivalent of two lunches a week. Can you brownbag it twice a week for the rest of year to undo the damage of Obamacare? If you or someone you know wants to help, but is unemployed, then give a day of labor instead.

Last night, I gave (more than $10) to Charlie Dent in PA-15. He’s in a D+2 district with a top tier challenger who was personally recruited by the White House to help pass the Obama agenda. Dent has traditionally been popular, even with an uphill battle for electoral success, but this is the biggest test he has faced since he initially won office. This is a battle where money and boots on the ground will make a direct impact on the outcome of the election.

On guns, he’s a reliable vote. On health care, there was never a doubt. So if you’ve got $10 or more burning a hole in your pocket this week and want to put it toward a race where it will be needed and will help defeat Obama’s agenda, Charlie Dent is your guy.

Opposition Continues

From the Washington Examiner:

The House vote isn’t the end of the national debate on this issue, however, as the Senate still must accept the House changes in the Senate Obamacare bill. Senate Republicans argue that the House reconciliation bill that makes significant changes in the Senate bill violates the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, maintaining that it should be ruled out of order by the Senate parliamentarian for consideration in the upper chamber. That in turn would mean the only bill the president could legally sign would be the original Senate bill, with its massive funding of abortion and the infamous deals used to buy senators’ votes, including the Cornhusker Kickback. At that point, a constitutional crisis of historic magnitude seems inevitable.

Here’s why: Never before in American history has a measure of such importance been imposed on the country by the majority party over the unanimous opposition of the minority.

Read the whole thing.

Yes We Can!

Apparently that’s what the Dems were chanting as they crossed the magical 216 number to pass the Health Care Monstrosity. Let me just update the Democrats on what this really means.

  • YES WE CAN! Send you back to your district in 2010.
  • YES WE CAN! Put the Republicans back in charge of Congress, ensuring you never see your bribe pay off promised by Pelosi and her far left leadership.
  • YES WE CAN! Make your benefactor Obama a one term President who will be such political poison by 2010 and 2012 that we won’t be able to do anything to help you.
  • YES WE CAN! Implement a comprehensive market-based overhaul the Dem health care plan, getting the government out of deciding for you, and putting the people back in charge.
  • YES WE CAN! Ensure the Democratic Party locks itself into an ever shrinking handful of urban centers, and finds itself unable to get back to a legislative majority.

I can play this game all night long. Enjoy your victory. It will be a very short one.

More Like Him Please

We need to do everything we can to elect more Congressmen like Rep. Paul Ryan:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwk1aHU-pms[/youtube]

I hope he has a bright future with the GOP. The GOP need to come up with an alternative to ObamaCare and push it like crazy. An alternative that puts individuals back in charge of their own health care. Not the government. Not even employers. Individuals.

Post Health Care: Getting Back to Liberty

It’s a difficult thing for me on this blog to decide how to handle an issue like Health Care, because many of the Congressmen and women the GOP will be targeting heavily in 2010 are NRA A-rated, and I do not wish to damage the NRA’s political reputation by suggesting folks ignore the gun issue. But we all, to some degree, have to balance interests. So for those readers who are looking for some paybacks for what Obama and Pelosi have foisted on us in the realm of Health Care, I have some advice.

  1. The first step is to identify key races in your state. If you’re lucky enough to not have any Obamacare traitors in your state, pick a neighboring state, or a state where you feel you have some connection or interest.
  2. Do everything you can to raise the profile of his or her opponent. Facebook and Twitter are two highly valuable tools for the engaged activist. Generally speaking, if find Twitter superior for activist work, but Facebook isn’t bad either.
  3. When it comes close to election time, that’s when it’s time to start volunteering. Politicians typically have a wide variety of volunteer work they can use, and that kind of thing gets noticed and appreciated very quickly. Volunteers are worth gold, especially if they are willing to make phone calls or knock on doors. This doesn’t take much time to do. At most you’ll give up a weekend or two.
  4. If you don’t have the time or dedication for volunteer work, being a pocket book isn’t a bad alternative. All things being equal, money is probably more important than volunteering to help bring votes to the table, because money helps get your name in front of voters. The great thing about donating is, even if you’re not a constituent of the politicians, by being a donor you will have some sway. It doesn’t honestly take that much of a donation before you’ll carry as much weight as a constituent. If you don’t have time to volunteer, and many people legitimately don’t, spread some money around to opponents of the Obama/Pelosi axis. It doesn’t take millions, or even hundreds, to have an impact.

If there’s one bit of advice I could most give for 2010, and probably 2012 too, it would be — don’t just bitch about how much things suck. If all you do is bitch all things will ever do is suck. This is the reason liberty loses in the political process. People who love liberty are very good at complaining that liberty doesn’t get a fair shake, but are very bad at inserting themselves into the process and doing the difficult things to make sure it has a place at the table. There are lots of reasons for this. The chief reason being that liberty minded types are not all that interested in getting halfway toward liberty. They want it all. I can sympathize with this, because that used to be me not too long ago, but things just don’t work that way. Maybe they should, but they don’t. If all we can get is half-way toward liberty in a Constitutional Republic, that’s certainly better than living in a Social Democracy while feeling good about yourself for being true to your principles. It’s time to jump into the pen and wrestle the pigs. You’re going to get dirty, and he’s going to like it, but if you want to feast on bacon, you don’t really have an alternative, do you?

Looks Like The Health Care Monstrosity’s Going to Pass

Watching the whip count over at The Hill, and it’s looking like this is a done deal. Get ready for November. We have to teach the Democrats a lesson they will never forget. Cancel your newspaper subscriptions! Turn in the cable box! Don’t just be a passive consumer of the establishment’s news. It’s time for freedom loving people to give involved and become the establishment. That’s the only way to reverse this terrible thing that has been put into motion.

First Day of Spring

What a Beautiful day it is, a perfect day to do some BBQing and restock on some Vitamin D. Got some pork back ribs on the smoker as we speak, and I’m outside in the back yard enjoying a snifter of bourbon. Lately I’ve really liked Blanton’s Bourbon. I like mine with just a splash of water in a snifter, in this case my Monticello snifter, which is a souvenir I picked up while visiting. But the really important part of the first day of spring is getting the smoker going. This is my first smoke in this one. It’s a Weber Smokey Mountain. This winter I was considering whether I wanted to get an offset smoker, but decided, after a bit of research, that a quality bullet smoker was closer to what I was looking for. I have three racks of back ribs in it now, which were rubbed down last night. My previous smoker had difficulty staying at the right temperature, and always wanted to get hotter. This one seems to struggle to stay at a higher temperature, but I will say it holds a much more consistent temperature. I can throw in extra coals without getting a wild temperature flucuation. In a few hours I’ll be able to judge whether the end product of this smoker is better than the previous El-Cheapo Brinkmann. In the mean time I’ll enjoy the sun, the bourbon, watch the woodpecker fly around to the various trees in the neighborhood, and try really really hard not to think about the cluster fuck going on in DC right now.

New Jersey Finally Wises Up

They are instituting a bear hunt in New Jersey for the first time in five years. This is badly needed. There are many groups, including HSUS, the Sierra Club, and the North Jersey based BEAR group. They are already filing a lawsuit to try to stop the hunt. This is going to be a doozy for the folks who decide to do the bear hunt. Animal rights activists are a lot battier than even the battiest anti-gun activists. Expect the PSH to be particularly flowing and smelly on this issue. So fierce we might have to suggest one of these to animal rights activists, along with this handy chart.

HSUS claims that people hunt bears for trophies and nothing more. This is false. Otherwise how do you explain bear recipes here, here, here, and here. This is just the tip of the iceberg. And the great part about bear is you get a nice rug when you’re done with all the bear recipes. How often do you get a free rug when you stock up on meat at the local Sam’s Club?