HANNITY'S CONSERVATIVE BLUEPRINT FOR VICTORY!

As I was doing the radio show last week I decided I wanted to start focusing on the positive more. I'm not that concerned with whether conservatives go and vote for McCain this fall or not.

Yet, I am concerned about conservatives making sure they vote for their local conservative candidates. It will be a disaster if conservatives stay home because of not wanting to vote for McCain. We can't afford to let Democrats have a larger majority in either the House or the Senate.

I know it is a difficult year and its hard to get excited about anything but we can't lose heart. There are still too many crucial issues at stake and we can't just sit back and not participate.

I was thinking of coming up with my own list and then I heard Sean Hannity talking about his Top 10 and I knew I was going to have to post them. I usually don't post things in their entirety but I know he is wanting to get the word out so I wanted everyone to see these and to help spread the word.

Call your U.S. Representative and U.S. Senators and encourage them to adopt these 10 items. Call John McCain and encourage him to change some of his policies to fit this list and encourage him to pick a VP who falls in line with this list. I knew I would agree with the list before I even read it but it was even better than I anticipated.

If all the Republicans would adopt this list and herald it like the Republicans did the Contract with America in 94 we could take back the Senate and the House easily.

Sean Hannity's Top 10 Items for Victory

1) To be the Candidate of National security:

a) Victory in Iraq
b) Fully support NSA, Patriot act, tough interrogations, keeping Gitmo open
c) A Candidate that pledges to NOT demean our military while they are fighting for their Country. eg Harry Reid: "the surge has failed", "the war is lost"
d) Candidate that promises to ensure that our veterans can live out their lives in dignity.

2) The Candidate who pledges to oppose Appeasement:

a) The Candidate will oppose any and all efforts to negotiate with dictators of the world in places like Iran, Syria, N.Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela without "pre-conditions"

3) The Candidate Pledges to support Tax CUTS, and fiscal responsibility:

a) The American people are NOT under taxed, Government Spends too much
b) The Candidate who Pledges to ELIMINATE and VOTE AGAINST ALL Earmarks
c) The Candidate pledges to BALANCE the budget

4) The Candidate Pledges to be a supporter of "Energy Independence"

a) supports Immediate drilling in Anwar and the 48 states
b) Building new refineries
c) Begin building and using Nuclear Facilities
d) expand coal mining
e) realistic steward of the environment
While simultaneously working with private industry to develop the new energy technologies for the future, with the goal being that America becomes completely energy independent within the next 15 years.

5) The Candidate pledges to secure our borders completely within 12 months:

a) build all necessary fences
b) use all available technology to help and support agents at the border
c) train and hire agents as needed

6) Healthcare:

The Candidate will look for Free-Market solutions to the problems facing the Healthcare industry, and will vigorously oppose any efforts to "nationalize healthcare".
a) The Candidate will fight for Individual health savings accounts, that includes "catastrophic insurance" for every American, so people can control their own healthcare choices.

7) Education:

a) The Candidate pledges to "save" American children from the failing educational system
b) The Candidate will fight to break the unholy alliance of the Democratic party and teachers unions, which at best has institutionalized mediocrity, and has failed children across the country
c) fight for "CHOICE" in education and let parents decide
d) fight for vouchers for parents

8) Social Security and Medicare:

a) The Candidate will "save" social security and medicare from bankruptcy.
b) Options will include "private retirement" funds so people can "control" their own destiny.

9) Judges

a) The Candidate vows to support ONLY judges who recognize that their job is to interpret the Constitution, and NOT legislate from the bench.

10) American Dream:

The Candidate accepts as their duty and responsibility to educate, inform, and remind people that with the blessings of Freedom comes a Great responsibility. That Government's primary goal is to preserve, protect and defend our God given gift of freedom.

That Government's do not have the ability to solve all of our problems, and to take away all of our fears and concerns. We need their pledge that we will be the candidate that promotes Individual liberty, Capitalism, a strong national defense and will support policies that encourage such...

It is our fundamental belief that limited Government, and Greater individual responsibility will insure the continued prosperity and success for future generations.

We the people who believe in the words of Ronald Reagan, that we are "the best last hope for man on this earth," "a shining city on a hill," and that our best days are before us if our Government will simply trust the American people.

Democrats Not Following Orders

It seems a new Osama tape has surfaced and bin Laden is really pissed with the Democrats.

"People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there."

Well my Democrat friends, are you going to follow bin Laden's orders or not?

Don Surber says not.

After a month-long vacation, Democrats returned to the nation’s capital this week, an army in disarray. They left in August confident that Republicans would go home, get chewed out about the war, and raise the white flag. Instead, the Surge worked and the Democrats are losing it.

S.A. Miller at the Washington Times reported:

Rank-and-file Democrats in Congress are criticizing the party’s leaders for allowing the White House to sap momentum from the antiwar movement during the August recess.

“The White House is taking great advantage of the Democrats not pushing back,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, California Democrat and co-founder of the antiwar Out of Iraq Caucus.

“We need bolder steps from the Democrats,” she said. “The people of this country are waiting for some leadership — some bold leadership — from the people that they elected to be the majority of the House and the Senate.”

It appears that Osama is waiting for that same kind of leadership.

I think it is well past time that the Democrats made up their collective minds and decide whose side are they on.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

It Is Coming

I have a friend who reports on the defense industry. Nice Jewish boy.

He says via e-mail that it is no use wasting your time trying to convince idiots of the obvious (morally it is sound though).

He says a big war is coming. BIG war. Like Pearl Harbor it will unite us. He says it is a waste of time trying to talk to the idiots. He used to blog a lot on the subject. Now he doesn't bother. He says events are the best convincers. Why does it feel like October 1939 all over again? The period of the "Phony War".

Which reminded me of this piece by Herbert E. Meyer at the American Thinker.

For better or worse, it's part of the American character to wait until the last possible moment - even to wait a bit beyond the last possible moment - before kicking into high gear and getting the job done. It's in our genes; just think of how many times you've ground enamel off your teeth watching your own kid waste an entire weekend, only to start writing a book report at 10:30 Sunday night that, when you find it on the breakfast table Monday morning is by some miracle a minor masterpiece.

However horrific it may be, the knockout punch won't knock us out. Instead, it will shift us from playing defense back to offense - and this time we won't hold back. The president will ask Congress for a declaration of war and he, or she, will get it. We'll bring back the draft, send our troops into battle without one hand tied behind their backs by lawyers, and we won't waste time and energy pussyfooting with the United Nations. And if we've closed GITMO by this time - we'll reopen it and even double its size because we're going to pack it. All of this will take longer to organize, and cost more, than if we'd done it right in the aftermath of 9-11. That's unfortunate, but that's the way we Americans tend to do things. And when we do finally start fighting for real -- we'll win.

That would be my assessment as well. In my opinion once Bush took on Iraq and then won the 2004 election the die was cast. What ever political winds were blowing after that the die was cast.

H/T Reliapundit who got me to thinking about this subject with his reports of recent terror alerts.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

Winning

I just read a bit touting Bill Richardson as a strong Democratic contender for President. Here is a bit of what the stands for:

...he advocates complete and total withdrawal of troops from Iraq within six months...

You don’t make babies or win wars by total withdrawal.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

Bush Is So Evil...#1

This is going to be a series of posts.

===

So I'm discussing the war with a guy. We are exchanging e-mails. And he is whipping me hard with the "Mission Accomplished" sign. To which I reply.

The ship accomplished its mission.

Bush accomplished his. Making American Democrats want to give up Iraqi democrats to the death squads.

Bush is so evil he has made American Democrats abandon the Iraqi democrats. It doesn't get much more evil than that.

Wait until I explain to people Bush's latest evil, they won't believe it.

Me? I'm too smart to join in that evil. I Support Democracy In Iraq.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

The Balance Sheet

I have a rather long post up at Classical Values about why my support for the war and the Iraqi democrats is relentless. What I'm posting here amounts to the punch line.

==

In response to a commenter who says the war is not worth the effort I reply:

I understand your point.

The Iraqis are not worth even one American death. When we do the balance sheet on this war we must count Iraqi lives as worth zero.

Then once the Iraqis count for nothing it is impossible to justify any American effort.

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Thomas Paine

So yeah, my fair weather friends. Give in to tyranny and despots.

Salve your conscience with "its only Iraqis". What are they worth to us?

Make yourself feel better by saying that once we are out the head choppers will not follow us home. After all we are strong and they are weak. Haven't we proved our strength by surrendering Iraq to them? Why would they ever think of following us home after we have given them what they want? And you know maybe they won't follow us home. Maybe they will just do death marches, and religious re-ed camps, and totolitarian governments. None of our buisness really. What should it mean to us? They are not our kind.

We have the example of the Austrian Corporal. Wasn't he satisfied with Czechoslovakia? Didn't the abandonment of Czechoslovakia bring Peace For Our Time?

Abandoning Iraq will bring us peace. This time giving in to brigands will get us what we desire. The fighting will stop. The killing will stop. For sure. At the very least from the time we leave our hands will be clean.

Well let me tell you that if any bit of your conscience lives after abandoning the Iraqi people your hands will drip with blood for the rest of your life. And like Macbeth nothing will out the spot.

Which is why I Support Democracy In Iraq.

Never Again

My mother is Jewish. As I am.

She grew up in the 20s and 30s. She knew about Roosevelt's abandoning the Jews. She is a staunch believer in "never again".

And yet when I say that we can't abandon the Iraqi people to the head choppers all I get back is "I hate George Bush" and "America has no interest in Iraq".

Prompted by FlickMaven's discussion of Nazi evil.

While I don't quibble with the term, I think that many people miss the point when trying to apply the historical significance of the German "Final Solution" to our contemporary lives.

The point here is not that "monsters" perpetrated these acts. The point is that regular, everyday Germans did so, while going about their regular everyday business.

And so it is with the fate of the Iraqi democrats. The people who would abandon them are just ordinary. It is not like they want to see Iraqi democrats dead. It is more like indifference. Which is almost always the face of evil.

Me? I Support Democracy In Iraq.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

A Political Deadline For Defeat.

Joe Lieberman has given an outstanding speech on the Iraq War funding bills now passing through the Senate. The video is about 3 3/4 minutes long and you can view it at Classical Values or at The Astute Bloggers. I highly reccommend it if you can spare the bandwidth. Joe asks why Oct. 1, 2007 was picked as the cut off date.

Well, naturally I have a few ideas about that. I'm sure Joe knows the significance of that date. It is a little more than a month from our 2008 election. The Democrats want badly to get elected and they think that what with their rabid anti-war base and a general population that gets the war on Islamic Fascism and the importance of Iraq as a theater of that war, they have to get the war off people's minds before the election. So they have to calculate how late they can force the withdrawal and yet not have a full scale civil war in Iraq on election day.

Now we know that the Islamics really like the Democrats. They say so. The withdrawal gets a lot of praise. So I would expect as a quid pro quo from the Islamics that they will hold off on attacks for the most part especially from the withdrawal date until after the election once a date certain for withdrawal has been set.

In other words I think the Democrats with all their recent toing and frowing in the Middle East have brokered a sell out of America and Iraq. They went direct to upper management. No fooling around with intermediaries or cut outs who might screw the deal or want too big a cut. Nope. Right to the top. When it comes to the Culture of Corruption I think the Republicans with their Jack Abramoff type scandals were pikers. They were only selling out one segment of the American people to another. These folks are selling out America to foreign powers. And not retail like Dubai Ports or similar examples. These folks are offering a package deal at wholesale rates. The scope is breathtaking. The chutzpah stupendous.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

A Deadline For Defeat

Joe Lieberman cuts the Democrats down to size in this 3 3/4 minute video. Very much worth a look if you haven't seen it already.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

H/T Kurt at Flopping Aces

The "I Support Democracy In Iraq" Contest

Coyote Organics is offering a prize for the design of the logo for the I Support Democracy In Iraq campaign.

A. Jacksonian of Dumb Looks Still Free thinks it should include a purple finger.

So far the owner of Coyote Organics and I will judge the contest (I may add one or two other judges as I corral them). The decision of the judges is final. If the judges can't come to a decision, my decision is final.

The contest will extend for thirty days from the first submission. I may extend that deadline (it will be announced at Power and Control) if there are no suitable submissions.

I will post the submissions as they come in.

Update: I have added some Submission Guidelines.

We Will Not Let It Fall To Violence

SFC SKI commented on my post The Objective - Iraq. The SFC makes some good points about the security situation in Iraq. To which I responded:

Thanks so much for the comment!!

You say:

You really can't split Iraq's security problems along internal and external, they are intertwined to a tremendous extent.

Agreed. However, what I was thinking of was more about a division of labor. Americans do primarily border security. Iraqis do mainly internal security.

With the whole job ultimately being handed over to the Iraqis - when they are ready.

As to the spineless in Congress. I think they are one termers. Think of the '72 elections when we elected Nixon (a truly vile man) over his anti-war Democrat rival.

The most important thing to be done in winning this war is that more soldiers like you speak out. You don't even have to blog. Comments on blogs are equally helpful.

BTW I'm sure it is too far above your pay grade, but our war leaders are really letting us down by not getting more news and views of the troops out.

War is 3/4s morale. The DOD and the President are letting the home front down.

The message is simple:

There is a democratically elected government in Iraq under attack by the disgruntled, by Nazi emulating Baathists, and by external forces. This Iraqi government may fall at the next election. We will not let it fall to violence.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

WE TOLD YOU SO: DEMS READY TO ABANDON ANOTHER ALLY TO TYRANNY

Well the DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED Senate did exactly what the DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED House did: voted for an arbitrary Iraq withdrawal deadline in an emergency spending bill LOADED WITH PORK!

We've been warning you all for three freakin' years - (especially during the Kerry campaign): the Dems will abandon the Iraqis the way they abandoned the South Vietnamese and the Contras. And you can throw in the Cubans, too!

And one day - if they take the WH, they will abandon the Afghanis... and then Israel, too. WHY?! They're COWARDLY, TRAITOROUS, LYING, CORRUPT APPEASERS WHO THINK FEEDING THE CROCODILE ONE ALLY AT A TIME WILL SAVE THEIR ASSES...

Pulling Out Under Fire

I was visiting the Democratic Underground where they are actually having an intelligent discussion of the logistics of a pull out. The thread is kind of short (probably not many military experts at DU) but one commenter cuts right to the chase:

Moving the initial invasion force took three months, and nobody was shooting at us, and Halliburton started with the bases I believe six months in advance of intial forces

Pulling out also involves force protecion, since it will be under fire.

Let me look at my military dictionary for "pulling out under fire" and see what I come up with. I come up with retreat and defeat.

Not a surprise.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Allies Cheerfully Betrayed - In Advance

It's Vietnam Time again. The House of Representatives has passed a Cut and Run Bill disguised as a Support the Troops Bill. How clever.

However, we have a lot of clever citizens in America. One of them has something very useful to say.

We must stop this "Hate George Bush" war at any cost.

It is a tremendous roadblock, stalemating the Iraqi war, and tying up the Congress as it tries to come up with more ways to thwart or embarrass the President through the war. Mistakes have been made. But Hating George Bush isn't going to correct them.

"Hate George Bush" involves waiting another two years during which we expend money and troops while awaiting a Democrat president who will inherit, in the least, the same conundrum, two years and perhaps two trillion dollars later. Meantime we will still owe this tremendous moral debt to the Iraqi people.

Here we have another case, like Vietnam, of not supporting our allies.

At least in the case of Vietnam we had the decency to wait until most of the American troops were out of the country.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

The Democrat Plan for Our New Army

President Bush:

Today's action in the House does only one thing: it delays the delivering of vital resources for our troops. A narrow majority has decided to take this course, just as General Petraeus and his troops are carrying out a new strategy to help the Iraqis secure their capital city.

H/T Hot Air via Instapundit.

So Brave - The American Eagles in DC

The video starts a little way in.

This is video from the march on DC yesterday. Made me cry and cheer.

Commenters at Captains Quarters say the Eagles outnumbered the defeatists by 5 to 1 or more. Lots of rough 60 year old hombres on our side. Read the comments. Thanks to SoldiersMom for the link to the video.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Making Headway

I have been pounding the drum for a while about the likely aftermath of leaving Iraq. There are many bad possibilities and some worse ones. So who comes to support my position? The ever reliably left Los angeles Times.

Congress should not hinder Bush's ability to seek the best possible endgame to this very bad war. The president needs the leeway to threaten, or negotiate with, Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds, Syrians and Iranians and Turks. Congress can find many ways to express its view that U.S. involvement, certainly at this level, must not go on indefinitely, but it must not limit the president's ability to maneuver at this critical juncture.

Not a complete capitulation by the LA Times by any means, but a move in the right direction.

Standing on the edge of a precipice tends to have a sobering effect. Maybe you don't sober up all at once, but you at least take a step or two back and have a look around.

As an activist, I intend to keep hammering at the Vietnam analogies, because I think that is the most recent and clear historical analogy to our current and possible future situatiion.

H/T Q&O

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

Turning Iraq Into Vietnam

London Calling. The Times Online has an article by the author of "Sideshow", William Shawcross, about how Iraq could turn out like Vietnam. (Bolding by your ed.)

At the end of 1975 I went to the Thai-Cambodian border to talk to refugees. Their horrific stories of people with glasses being killed as “intellectuals” and of “bourgeois” babies being beaten to death against trees were being dismissed as CIA propaganda by the anti-American Western Left, but it seemed obvious to me that they were true. I wanted to discover how the Khmer Rouge had grown and come to power; I wrote a book called Sideshow, which was very critical of the way in which the United States had brought war to Cambodia while trying to extricate itself from Vietnam.

But horror had engulfed all of Indo-China as a result of the US defeat in 1975. In Vietnam and Laos there was no vast mass murder but the communists created cruel gulags and, from Vietnam in particular, millions of people fled, mostly by boat and mostly to the US. Given the catastrophe of the communist victories, I have always thought that those like myself who were opposed to the American efforts in Indochina should be very humble. I also think it wrong to dismiss the US efforts there as sheer disaster. Lee Kuan Yew, the former longtime Prime Minister of Singapore, has a subtler view. He argues that, although America lost in IndoChina in 1975, the fact that it was there so long meant that other SouthEast Asian countries had time to build up their economies to relieve the poverty of their peasants and thus resist communist encroachment — which they probably could not have done had IndoChina gone communist in the 1960s.

That long view seems to me to be the one that has to be applied to Iraq. I still believe the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was the correct thing to do — and it was something only the United States could have done. For all the horrors that extremist Sunnis and Shias are inflicting on each other today, the US rid the world of the Pol Pot of the Middle East. So long as the vile Saddam family regime remained in power there was no hope of progress in the region. There is still hope — if we do not abandon the Iraqi people.

That is pretty much the key.

We must not abandon the Iraqi people the way we abandoned the people of South East Asia. I supported the abandonment at the time because I believed John Kerry, the Communists, and their American supporters. So I get the humble bit. In fact it is a stain on my soul. The best I can do now is never forget.

H/T Powerline via Instapundit

And for my e-mail buddy linearthinker who thinks this is very important. It is. It may be that the Revisionism of Vietnam is finally going to get revised. About time.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

The Victory Caucus

The Victory Caucus is a new blog devoted to Victory in the war against Islamic fascism.

What is their mission?

This will be a long and serious effort, but it starts now. We have established a team within the site that will focus on identifying strong candidates -- veterans, ideally --- as well as teams devoted to identifying White Flag Republicans and their antimatter opposites, the Blue Dog Democrats. These three groups will be at the forefront of our efforts to identify the districts where we can do the most good: whether that is to replace a defeatist Democrat with a new Republican victory candidate --- or to help a Blue Dog Democrat who is strong on the war take down a White Flag Republican. Here, party comes second: victory --- and country --- come first.

If you wish to do more Register at The Victory Caucus. (Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values.)