I know they are a first world country, but since the 1950′s Japan has been a country that has been four-square behind American foreign policy efforts.  It is a democratic country, and perhaps our staunchest in the region, aside from Australia.  Yet, I hear of nothing that we are doing.  We are standing by.  When the tsunami hit Indonesia, we had former presidents leading a relief effort.  Why not for Japan?  I think our character as a nation is not just when we help the poorest nations with disasters but also those who have been close allies.

Why doesn’t President Obama spend a little more time on helping a strategic ally instead of filling out his NCAA bracket?  Just a thought.

In my little town in Nebraska there is a high turnout. We don’t have many races, but the Republicans should sweep into office again. I just would like some ideas from the hustings on Election Day morning.

This law is a monstrosity. After watching the bill come to fruition on the senate floor, I find myself wishing it would go away. The Republicans must hold firm on this piece of legislation. At times in the past I have called for compromise, or explored it (in regard to the START treaty, of which I now have many doubts.) but this is a bridge too far.

Over a period of a couple of weeks the bill has gotten worse and worse. They are seemingly asking the taxpayer to set up a bailout fund, in case of future “failures of the system”, let me be clear on this: Two things kept this country’s bankers in check after the horrific situation of the 1930′s. They were that the government did not step in to save the bankers, see the men jumping out of the windows, and the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated Investment Bankers from Commercial Bankers. Some on this site, I am sure, will attack the ideas of Glass-Steagall, but I think it should be pointed out that at least the original incarnation of Glass-Steagall was a short, easy to understand regulation. The new regulations the Democrats are trying to force on the entire banking sector is going to make getting a loan in this country nearly impossible.

The are not dealing with Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s abuses. They are not ending bailouts. Wall Street reform should center on one principle: If you engage in improper practices that endanger your share-holders, you should go bankrupt.

Further, the Democratic Senators voted en bloc to accept potential future federal government bailouts of insolvent states like California. I live in a state that has made tough decisions, but will not need the feds to step in. I surely do not think the rest of the taxpayers in this country, including people in the ever-shrinking private sector of California itself, want to be on the hook for the mismanagement of that state.

Republicans need to stand up to the Democrats on this. If the RNC was worth a damn, they would run ads in the country demonstrating the poor parts of this act. Then we’d get some popular support behind us. Instead, they lose their courage at the very thought of the Democrats saying they aren’t tough on Wall Street. The important point to make: In 2008 more Wall Street money went to Democrats than Republicans. Steele needs to demonstrate some guts and back the Senate GOP members who will ferret out the monstrosity this bill is to the american people.

Ask ourselves this, why is Harry Reid unwilling to let us finish the amendment process, why do we need to do this NOW? Isn’t next week the same as this week? Why is it now a crime to let the Senate work its will and destroy this rotten piece of legislation?

The Democratic leadership in the house just lost a motion to recommit in the House of Representatives. That is big. The House leadership, in order to do anything over the next eight to ten weeks will need control over their majority. They got the motion to restrict porn on government computers, and cut spending in the Science Authorization bill, down to FY 2010 levels. This is big. In reality, this is like a vote of no confidence by Democrats against their own leadership. We now have the momentum and will be able to harry them on things all the rest of this session. HCR was the final straw, and all progressive pieces of legislation are nearly DOA.

They have lost control over their members. We control the debate. This will further destroy the will of the liberals to keep working for the scared Democrats. The Kool-Aid is not tasty any more. We can re-take the House. Now we Red-Staters need to go even more on the offensive. I live in Western Nebraska. I will be going to Eastern Colorado and South Dakota to help re-make them Red States.

In 1994 we won on a motion to recommit on the Crime Bill. We are nearing goal-line here folks. We need to press ourselves over the goal. I’m going to work, we all need to!

Just another question I thought I should ask, to flesh out and refine my viewpoint on the Financial Regulatory bill.  In much the same vain as my START conversation, I just want clarification on why Glass-Steagall, under which we had no financial crises, would not work now?

I also support the idea of unregulated markets as much as anyone.  But if the people who are in the unregulated market get to come and get bailed out continuously, then we need a different mechanism.  To wit:  The savings and loan bailout, The Chrysler and GM bailout, and the TARP bailouts obtain here.  If the government under either party has nary the backbone to tell these firms they are not too big to fail, then we probably need something like the old Glass-Steagall act to separate comercial banking and investment banking. 

If someone has another or more important idea, I am open to it.  I don’t trust Tim Geithner any farther than I can throw him, and his ideas for a permanent bailout of Wall Street reeks to high heaven for me.

All ideas by the sage reasoned posters of RedState are welcome.

Recently, some Nebraska school districts have made it mandatory that teachers decline from counting off points for late work.

As a teacher, I find this a terrible idea.  The rationale given is that we cannot presuppose our morals into the classroom.  Therefore, since punctuality is a moral issue, we have no right to require kids to get work done on time. 

That is going work out well in the employment sector.  I am sure employers are really champing at the bit to hire a kid who has never been forced to turn something in on a deadline. 

More reason to heed the call of Erik and others.  We don’t just need conservatives in Washington, we need them in Republican states like Nebraska as well.  Two of the communities where this is happening I know are Grand Island and North Platte.  I think Lincoln is doing this as well.

I know teachers are part of the problem in education, but administrative policies like the one just mentioned are really problematic as well.  If we want basic morals and understanding the way the world works, we need activists to resist these policies from egg-head school administrators.  Let’s let the teachers teach, and turning assignments in on time is one value that needs to be in our schools.

I think we can support START for more than a few reasons. 

First, I think we have an obligation to the world to lead in the area of nuclear deterence.  But the United States also needs to lead in the area of Nuclear non-proliferation.  Russia and the United States are the two main nuclear powers.  If we can reach an agreement with them, then we can perhaps get nuclear weapons regimes under control.

Second, I do take to heart the efforts of Presidents Reagan and GHW Bush in trying to rein in nuclear stockpiles in the old Soviet Union.  I think START is a non-offensive way to do this.  Would I prefer a stronger minded president?  Of course, but this treaty is not going to change that either.  We won’t get a new president until 2013 at the earliest, so we should try to envision a set-up where the new president is able to lead from a modest framework of nuclear arms control.

Third, this is not unilateral disarmament as some would say.  Ronald Reagan used to say trust, but verify.  We have the ability in this treaty to try to verify Russian nuclear weapons reductions.  Does this assuage the conservative mind in me regarding the Obama administration?  The answer is no.  But I do feel that a stronger willed administration would be willing to appoint strong people to monitor the Russians and decide if they are cheating.  Again, with this administration, I understand the problems inherent trusting them to do what is right, but I also want a framework that a stronger administration can work from. 

Fourth, we need to reaffirm our commitment to bi-lateral agreements regarding nuclear weapons.  If anything, this treaty demonstrates the ability of the diplomatic system to work outside the United Nations.  We are working with nations on a one-to-one basis, which reinforces our ability to conduct diplomacy without a UN imprimatur.

Fifth, and most importantly, we conservatives need to de-link this treaty from the Obama Administration’s poorly decided nuclear response policy.  That policy is the height of naivte or worse.  However, it is not the same thing as a basic international framework for control of nuclear weapons, which is in the interest of the United States and Russia.  I also know that this administration has demonstrated weakness on the world stage multiple times, but administrations change.  Chances to re-assert a time tested regime of Nuclear weapons reductions and controls are not.  I think it is in the best interests of the country to support Senate ratification of this treaty.  I hope enough Republicans in the Senate see it that way too.  We can be critical of the President’s weakness and his apparent apologies for our country.  But we can replace him.  We should replace him.  We should not torpedo what has been a hallmark of bi-partisan bi-lateral diplomacy of this country for twenty-five years just to register our disapproval of this obviously misguided president.

This is the question I ask to my Democratic friends.  If the government is going to give you healthcare, and make sure that the unemployed don’t have to pay for it, then why would we work for a living?  I mean if I can get healthcare, and some welfare benefits, I’ll quit my job and live off the dole!  That is the reason why European nations have horrendously high unemployment rates.

The Democrats have so besotted our schools with entitlement thinking that this country’s youth have no ambition.  We have just signed our warrant to decline as a nation.  With no one willing to work, but all willing to live off the dole, we’ll be doomed to second rate power status in the next generation.  I mean if keeping healthcare means scrapping an aircraft carrier, what do you think we’ll do?

I hope Republicans hold firm on this, but I’m not holding my breath.  They’ll cave.  They always do.  And electing Mike Castle, Mark Kirk, et. al. won’t help either.  Then Obama will have bi-partisan help in the Senate.  So the only logical step is to use them for everything they are giving.  Why work when work only buttresses the slouches and ne’er do wells?

Every now and then I meander on the stylings of MSNBC’s prime-time lineup.  Indeed, it is that typical leftwing mish-mash that can sometimes serve to get the blood boiling.  However, recently it has been entertaining because of the Healthcare nightmare the Democrats are foisting upon us.

A few nights ago and again more recently Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.com made a comment saying the Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas would get a primary if she voted against the HC bill.  I didn’t know there was such a liberal swell in the Democratic Party in the Land of Opportunity.  It seems to me that polling in Arkansas shows clear two-thirds and larger majorities against the bill.  I wonder why Lincoln would worry one second what some spooky lefty blogger thinks?  Who is this liberal who will be voting this way?  I think an elected official who needs to get re-elected in a conservative state would listen to her constituents and to hell with the lefty bloggers. 

Instead of threatening a senator with a primary, maybe the Democrats should have thought of this prior to getting themselves into such an intractable position.  Maybe they could have brought Republicans into the room, started working on bringing Healthcare costs down, and they’d be seen as really capable of governing.  Instead they carp and whine about people they sold to certain constiuencies as conservatives.  But when they want to log-roll the Republicans, and conservatives, they want these people to go back on every campaign pledge.  I think as conservatives we need to send letters of support to senator Lincoln, telling her to stand her ground.

How will the Democrats smooth-talk this one away?  I don’t think they will be able to do it.  I think this crisis and the president’s lackluster response to it is the rebirth of the old-fashioned suburban Republican.  Chris Christie won the governorship in New Jersey because he spent time speaking to the actual problems in the state.  Property taxes were pricing people out of the state.  He pledged to contain government, and was embraced by voters.  I think this is the beginning of something important.  Republicans should revive themselves in the Suburbs like they did in the 1970′s and 1980′s.  As far as I know, Christie is a pro-life governor in New Jersey as well, which puts him a few steps ahead of even Whitman and Kean the last two GOP governors in that state.  Voters are beginning to see what happens when you let the liberals have unfettered control of your state.

At the national level, the Republicans can make an issue of the Bush tax cuts expiring.  The Democrats called them tax cuts for the rich.  However, a lot of small businesses got a lot of help from the Bush tax policy.  When those incentives are gone, coupled with a massive and punitive health care policy, they will be even less likely to suppport a recovery.  When people are losing jobs and living hand to mouth (via handouts from the government), I think the real Americans will stand up.  Republicans will be able to go into those suburbs in the north and ask the real question:  Are you tired of propping up the failed policies that raise your taxes, and redistribute wealth to people who do not work for it?  That will cause them to return to the GOP.  They want sanity and we can now give it to them. 

Remember America:  You may not have liked everything about George W. Bush’s administration, but you at least you had a job!

I just want some actual clarification.  I know that he was out in favor of the stimulus, which was a mistake, but he is solidly pro-life and has a good rating from the NRA.  I was thinking about sending money to the race, and I think that Crist is very popular amongst the people needed to win the general election.  I know that Rubio is a good man too, but I would like to back a winner. 

I understand the stimulus support and embrace of the president to be a faux pas, but I think he has been solid in other areas.  I know the editors of this site really support Rubio, and I don’t know much about him.  So as of now I will likely give to Crist, because he has an actual statewide electoral record. 

I don’t think Crist is as bad as Scozzafava.  Can someone shed a little more light on this subject for me?

With the Democrats flailing about wildly, the GOP needs to offer a coherent plan in the healthcare debate.  I know that many on this site will say that we have one, but I think we need to make it apparent with advertisements detailing what we want. 

With talk of splitting the healthcare bill in two pieces, the GOP needs to take the lead on the portions of the healthcare reform we support, to include things like interstate portability and tort reform.  We also need to make it clear to the middle class, that the Republicans want to make healthcare more affordable for the people who currently have it.  If we make it cheaper for those already insured, then those without will have a cheaper option for insurance.

I think this will work in that the Democrats have already fallen apart on this issue.  Rep. Wiener has stated that 100 Democrats will vote no on reform without a government option.  Republicans can take credit for saving reform if we split the bill and pass the things we can agree with Blue Dogs on.  Then the president will have to tick off his base, which will hurt congressional Democrats.  After all the enemy in 2010 isn’t BHO, it’s the congressional liberals from moderate to conservative districts. 

MSNBC is already huffing and puffing.  If Obama signs a reform bill without a government option, they will completely lose it.  The left will explode.  They will become as despondent as they were in 1994.  Then we’ll win even bigger in 2010.  I have advocated supporting a number of Blue Dog positions in the past, just to force the Democrats to choose.  Now, I think we need to be a wedge between the president and his leftist base.  It’s not only good policy for the country, but deliciously good policy for the country.

Last night on Rachel Maddow’s program, columnist Frank Rich made commentary about the parallels between the early sixties and the present day.  He said that he can remember the vitriol and hatred the right had for President Kennedy.  He likens that to what is happening now to our current president. 

Then he made a comment that the conservative attacks led to the assasination of President Kennedy.  That is a lie.  Lee Harvey Oswald was a leftist, former defector to the Soviet Union.  He was a communist, not a right winger.  That Rich is bringing the old saw about the right being responsible for the killing of President Kennedy is patently false.  And the way in which Rich skirted around that proves he knows its false as well. 

I confess, I tend to agree with Rich’s point-of-view in regard to the arts and entertainment.  He is a damn good theatre columnist and reviewer.  But last night he confirmed himself as having the same leftist mendacious streak as is practiced on MSNBC every night.  That is too bad.

It seems odd to me that the Obama administration, or any administration, would balk at using a non-lethal method of getting information from suspected terrorists.  Yet, for some odd reason, that is what is happening.

We know, based on reporting, that waterboarding worked to get information on a large scale terrorist attack on Los Angeles and the Brooklyn Bridge. Yet the left is willing to say that what we did was immoral. I guess that must be the Victim ethic of the left.

For years the left has been trying to get people to be victims. So, it should be no surprise that they think the moral high ground is in being the victim of a terrorist attack instead of working all-out to prevent it from happening. No one here supports torture in the abstract; but in the case of Waterboarding, we have evidence of its working to prevent attacks by Al-Qaeda.

For liberals, they would rather see Americans die in order to be “morally superior” than Al-Qaeda. No longer is western civilization of its own accord superior to Islamist savages. We wonder why there is a feeling of The Death of the West.

I feel a whole lot safer knowing my Secretary of State are reverting to the Clinton appeasement era plan of negotiating with Muslim terrorists/pirates.  Wow!  I am sure the mullahs in Afghanistan are taking heed of this strong-arm approach.

I love that we are treating piracy as a mere law enforcement matter, not an act of war on the United States.  I imagine Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party, is turning in his grave, 200 years after we last dealt with these savages.

I know this post will probably get me a bunch of hate mail on this site.  And I myself think it is used mostly as a stunt.  But I do think that insistance on hard pay-go rules this session of congress has the ability to fork apart the so-called “Blue Dogs” from the rest of the left of the Democratic party in the congress.

I favor supply-side tax cuts in any year that the Republican party is in control in Washington. I think that tax cuts followed by responsible spending priorities are what will save us economically. But as I have said before, we have a monster building in Washington. Part of the deal is we aren’t articulating a plan that the “Blue Dogs” could support. So, I suggest that we attack that problem by offering them something that they claim to want. If we could get a Pay-go point of order against all new spending measures, we at least would force the Democrats to support open ended tax increases, which is what they avoid by running up spending and then passing on un-godly amounts of debt.

Moderates, by definition, think that the Republicans are to blame for this current mess. I dont think this is true, but that is the way it is. And Democrats are capitalizing on this by stating that we aren’t offering anything new. So, we should call their bluff, and make them vote against something they have supported, Pay-go. I think hoisting the opposite side by their own petard should be part of what we want to do.

We will fork the “Blue-Dogs” and the Republicans will then be seen as the reformers. Even if it was a joke, at least then we’d have another point to raise against the Democrats’ corruption. Conservatives need to think outside the box. Our leaders in congress need to do the same thing. We need to be imaginitive with our positions to make the Democrats reel a bit. Right now, they just say same-old same-old, and we lose the country. Let’s think outside the box. They are not popular, but Republicans rate even lower because we are perceived as offering nothing. So let’s go out and offer the traditional policies with new ideas and attack the Democrats as the clones of the 60′s and 70′s which is what they are.

Have at me! I know paygo is not popular on this site, but it is a way to ridicule the Dems. I’d like to see more of that from our side!

As we read that the Russians are going to place bombers in Venezuela and Cuba.  As we read that the far left party in El Salvador is winning the elections this week, we must think back to American responses in the past.

Were we not better off in the past when the CIA would pay for the assassination of South American leftists?  I mean, we took out Allende, and I don’t care what people say, we were right to do it.  I think Bush should have jumped right in and taken Chavez out as well.  Now, we have let that cat out of the bag. 

The question is:  Were we better off when we used to take a more direct interest in our Latin American neighbors? 

By the Way:  I have read next to nothing on Columbia…  What is happening on that front?  Is Obama goint to lose that for us?

Why Not have another Rush to Excellence Tour across America?  I remember being really young when Rush first went on his tour after his first book, and the crowds were electric.  I think most people right now are flummoxed with the current state of the country.  They see the attack on the producers and people with productive jobs as an insult.  I think a lot of those independents, if they were so gullible, could just as easily be won over to our side by pointing out the facts of our current situation.  No one does that better than Rush himself.

Maybe we could get a cooperative deal going here.  Rush, Hannity, Levin, etc.  could appear all over the country at rallies.  I think part of our problem in winning in so-called liberal areas of the country is that conservatives are so beaten down by the left that we don’t want to speak.  It’s not fun being ostracized and ridiculed.  But, if Rush et. al. help buck up our remaining conservatives, we might just convince a few of the squishy moderates.  The positive and negative of the moderate is that they don’t know what they believe.  We need to remember that in 1994 they decidedly went GOP.  We can get that again, if we use Rush and the rest of the radio bunch to our real advantage.

I don’t know if Rush reads what we write on our blog.  And I know that he has a life to live outside of his radio program and traveling to far flung regions of the country to buck up the forlorn conservative, but maybe this is the time to come out.  I know Hannity travels quite a bit.  Levin stays put a lot.  We need the conservatives in the new media, which includes us on RedState, to take the lead.  Our weak-kneed representatives will only get a spine when we get one!  That means saying what we think and mean in public, even at NEA leadership meetings (which I happily do!).  I think Rush can inspire whole new legions of conservatives to speak up and speak out.  He’s not a messiah, he’s not a miracle worker, he just knows, better than most, what makes this nation great.

If Rush would re-create the Rush to Excellence tour, he’d get tons of coverage in the local media where he was speaking.  Most of the moderates, who pay their mortgages on time, think the government is wasting way too much money, and think that there are better ways to reform health care than having a new massive bureaucratic  “solution”,  will  come back around.  It’s not just Rush, but all of us.  I mean he was right, most people live their lives as conservatives.  We need to forge that connection again, and then the administration will be flailing, just like Clinton in 1993-1994.

Anyway, that is my thought.  I’d go to a Rush to Excellence in Colorado Springs or Denver at any time.

As we sit here, we see that the Senate Democrats are preparing to pass a “stimulus” bill.  They are giving bare minimum concessions to the so-called fiscal conservatives in their own party, and passing a socialist revision of the American way of life.  The Republicans have been smart attacking the more egregious parts of the bill, but have been less forthright in offering a true alternative that the president will sign. 

The president has been AWOL only in public.  In private, his people working hard on this.  They have stated publicly that they would accept a smaller, leaner bill.  Why not offer that, and publicly?  Have Steele go on Sunday Shows, or better yet, our Senate Leaders and offer a real alternative.  That alternative would be an elimination of all social spending in the bill and a doubling of infrastructure spending.  The bill would then create jobs, and would help rebuild roads and bridges.  Part of the bill would also fast-track infrastructure projects where they are most needed, allowing the money to be put to good use.  We could put the tax measures on the bill and it would still be at around $500 billion, which is way less than the current boondoggle.  I think the GOP in the country would win major points.  I think that Obama would have to sign it, and I think the liberals would kill it, so we would have something to run on in 2010. 

Let’s keep in mind that our Goal in the minority is to make the Democrats and the Administration pay for each and every one of their gaffes.  We also need to split the Democrats as often as we can.  A common sense alternative like this would achieve both goals.  Republicans need to think strategically again.  This can be the first plank in a new Contract with America.

The House of Representatives is going to debate and vote on the “stimulus package”.  We need to make sure that our representatives on the Republican side oppose the measure.  Our conference needs to make sure that the Democrats retain all the responsibility for this debacle.  If the media isn’t going to spread the pork-barrel nature of this bill, we need to have ads up on television.

I think Rush was right when he said that the media has made Barrack Obama too big to fail.  If he fails, they fail.  That’s why there is no scrutiny of anything he says or does.  The only critics are Rush and Hannity and Levin.  If we don’t stand up now, we never will.  Republican members of congress need to know that we mean business.