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One Year Ago Today: Please Keep Your Word Santorum
One year ago today, on Cavuto, Rick Santorum swore he would not run again in 2016.
So if Santorum doesn’t win this election he isn’t going to run again. HALLELUJAH! Now I REALLY feel motivated.
— MeredithAncret (@MeredithAncret) March 23, 2012
Given the godawful speech I witnessed Ricky giving at CPAC this year, I’m not sure we can count on him to keep his word and that, my friends, is bullshit the GOP does not need.
If we want to have any chance of winning we need NEW faces, fresh arguments, and someone who ACTUALLY supports small government. Rather than Santorum whose only issue with the current big government seems to be that it’s just not regulating what HE wants regulated.
So I’m just here to remind Santorum of his words a year ago. You said you would not run again, keep your word.
And now I’m going back to my vacation.
Bring Out Yer Dead! Or At Least 55% of Their Wealth.
Well it’s 2013. We survived a lot this past year. The Mayan’s really poor sense of humor, our President and Secretary of State blaming a youtube video for the death of 4 Americans, Hamas attacking Israel and nearly starting an all out war, the “ceasefire” between Palestine and Israel, Hurricanes, the election season, election night (I nearly didn’t survive that and several bottles of alcohol were murdered, but we made it), and I managed to not punch anyone in the face this year.
That was a close one to be honest and if I had physical access to some of the liberals on tumblr, that might not have happened.
However big things are happening this year and we need to discuss them. The obvious issue would be the fiscal cliff, but that’s a horse that’s been well and truly beat to death by better people than me and I’d like to avoid it.
Something that people have not been talking about as much is the fact that estate taxes (commonly referred to as “Death taxes”) are going up to 55% this year and $1 million is now the threshold. This would be a really bad year to die and leave an inheritance to your kids.
Two decades ago, Kester paid the IRS $2 million when he inherited a 22,000-acre cattle ranch from his grandfather. Come January, the tax burden on his children will be more than $13 million.
For supporters of a high estate tax, which is imposed on somebody’s estate after death, Kester is the kind of person they rarely mention. He doesn’t own a mansion. He’s not the CEO of a multi-national. But because of his line of work, he owns a lot of property that would be subject to a lot of tax.
“We’re not millionaires in the terms of making a million dollars a year,” said Kester who lives in a modest home and whose family — not outsiders or a corporation — runs his ranch. “I have a half-a-million dollars in soil.”
Kester can’t spend it, without selling land. But by selling the land, each year the ranch would become less viable.
- Fox News
In fact this will effect over half a million family farms in the United States.
See, an estate tax does not tax income or liquid assets. It taxes your assets and your estate. “A tax levied on the net value of the estate of a deceased person before distribution to the heirs.” And the estate and assets of a farm or ranch, while not liquid in many cases, add up to being worth a pretty penny very quickly. Land is not cheap and neither is the farming equipment or cattle or other livestock that one would find on a farm or ranch.
In 1997, a study looked at 22 herds of cows that averaged 99 heads of cattle and with the cost of cows being extremely high ($900 a head or more) the asset of a heard of cows could be worth over $100,000.
Then the land could be worth several million on its own.
Crops grown on a farm could be considered an asset and wheat, corn, and other crops are worth a lot!
Farm equipment is another expensive asset.
Family farms and family cattle ranches, which may not have much in the way of liquid assets (many do not) are quite often worth more than the million dollar asset limit asset limit.
So what happens when the person who owns one of this asset rich family farm or ranch dies and passes on the property to their children?
Well in the case of the Kester family, his children will have to pay a ‘death tax’ of $13 million dollars on his estate. The ranch does not have that sort of liquid worth, so the children will have to sell off part of their father’s land, their birthright, to pay the IRS.
Pay them for what exactly?
For the fact that their father died?
The land has neither gained nor lost value with the death of the father. The land is probably not even leaving the family line, no one is making a profit from the transfer of the land from the father to child.
But the IRS, like vultures picking the flesh off the dead, want their piece of the pie.
The estate tax is a relic that not even Russia or China still employ. Are we really so greedy and grasping that we use the death of someone as a reason to snatch as much of his or her property and assets as we can?
I guess the answer to that is yes, but it shouldn’t be.
Estate taxes are an unethical money grab by the government and they need to go. Even if the limit was moved up to protect family farms and ranches, the estate tax would still need to go. It’s a sign of greed and grasping at anything that someone else has earned.
I want to pass on my wealth to my children. That’s why I work so hard to better myself, not just to give them a better life while I’m with them, but to leave them something when I pass on. I don’t do it to give the government 55% of it when I die.
There is a Reason Why No One in The Walking Dead Suggests a “Zombie Free Zone” to Protect the Group
I watched the first season of The Walking Dead and I have to tell you that there was a lot of gun use in that show, they all must have been a bunch of racists. For some reason not a single person came up with the revolutionary idea of taking their group inside a house and nailing a sign to the door that said “THIS IS A ZOMBIE FREE ZONE. NO ZOMBIES ALLOWED.” Surely that would have been a much simpler way to survive the zombie apocalypse.
“That’s crazy!” I hear you cry.
Why is it crazy?
“Because zombies don’t care about rules!” you shout.
Bingo.
Gun free zones just don’t work.
Why?
Criminals don’t care whether someplace is a “gun free zone”. In fact, that usually leads them to go TO those places to commit crime, because they are a “soft target”.
Ann Coulter makes that point brilliantly in one of her recent Townhall articles.
You will notice that most multiple-victim shootings occur in “gun-free zones” — even within states that have concealed-carry laws: public schools, churches, Sikh temples, post offices, the movie theater where James Holmes committed mass murder, and the Portland, Ore., mall where a nut starting gunning down shoppers a few weeks ago.
Guns were banned in all these places. Mass killers may be crazy, but they’re not stupid.
So gun free zones don’t work.
It’s time to try something new when it comes to protecting our children.
Or something old, apparently Rahm Emmanuel, David Gregory, and Barack Obama consider armed guards in schools are good enough to protect their kids. Even if they think the idea is “outrageous and unsettling” when the NRA suggests it for other other schools.
That’s right, the school Rahm’s kids go to has an armed guard, Obama and Gregory send their kids to school at Sidwell Friends, which has no fewer than 11 armed guards on campus.
So why shouldn’t other kids have the same protections? Either in the form of armed guards or armed teachers. Maybe Obama thinks his kids are somehow more important than the other children in the United States. Wouldn’t really surprise me.
Leaders in my state of Arizona are working toward better protection in schools at the moment, such as Tom Horne’s plan.
Arizona’s attorney general proposed arming one principal or employee at each school to defend against attacks such as the recent Connecticut school massacre.
“The ideal solution would be to have an armed police officer in each school,” Attorney General Tom Horne said in a news release Wednesday. But budget cuts have limited the number of Arizona schools with “school resource officers” on campus, he said.
The “next best solution,” Horne said, “is to have one person in the school trained to handle firearms, to handle emergency situations, and possessing a firearm in a secure location.”
Until some sort of option of this type can be worked out, there has been a plan put forward by Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who I have met!) who has decided to send some of his volunteer posse out to guard school’s in the area.
“I have the authority to mobilize private citizens and fight crime in this county,” Arpaio said. Arpaio first started using his posse to protect malls during the holiday shopping season in 1993 in response to violent incidents in prior years. Since then he said malls where his posse members are on patrol have had zero violent re-occurrences and patrols by his all-volunteer squad during the 2012 shopping season netted a record 31 arrests. Arpaio said since the program has worked so well in malls he believes it will work just as well protecting schools. “We’re not talking about placing the posse in the schools right now but in the outlying — the perimeters of the school — to detect any criminal activity.”
Sheriff Joe gets a lot of hell from liberals for any number of his positions here in Maricopa country, from his tent city jail (making criminals uncomfortable, how kooky) to his views on illegal immigration (where he actually views illegal immigrants as criminals, shocking right?) but he keeps getting re-elected.
Someday Sheriff Joe will need to stop running for re-election and back someone new for the position of Maricopa county Sheriff, but for now I cheer him on and hope that more locales take a harder stance on protecting our children.
Neither criminals or zombies are likely to follow the rules and laws you set out. Sometimes the best protection of innocent life, is an armed guard to blow their brains out…in the zombies case. I suppose you could just shoot to wound if at all possible in the case of the criminal.
and CALL OFF CHRISTMAS!!!
Robin Hood is a heroic story of conservative principles, I’ve said that before on this blog.
Now the only real bright point of that Kevin Costner film that clip above is from is Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham. Especially his death scene.* It’s a crappy movie, but if you don’t judge my brain candy, I won’t judge you for that time you watched Jersey Shore.
The quality of the movie, or lack there of, isn’t the point of this post though.
You see, the Obama administration has effectively placed themselves as the Sheriff of Nottingham in America’s little version of Robin Hood.
They even threatened Christmas! What kind of monster does that?!
In a Monday report, the White House warned that failure to resolve the impasse over a tax and deficit deal could undermine consumer confidence this holiday season.
A new report from the National Economic Council and the Council of Economic Advisers timed to the online shopping holiday “cyber Monday” estimated that consumers could spend close to $200 billion less, while GDP growth could slow by 1.4 percentage points in 2013.
The report also warns that the psychological impact of a looming middle class tax hike could put a huge dent in retail sales over the holidays — traditionally the most important retail period of the year.
“Consumer confidence over the next several weeks is particularly important,” the report warns. “If Congress does not act on the president’s plan to extend tax cuts for the middle-class, it will be risking one of the key contributors to growth and jobs in our economy at the most important time of the year for retail stores.”
- Politico
As Doug Powers said in his article on MichelleMalkin.com: Raise taxes on the rich or Christmas gets it!
The funny thing about this is that the article was published on Politico on the 26th, but on the 25th Politico reported that there was a “Record start for holiday season”.
It’s estimated that U.S. shoppers hit stores and websites at record numbers over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, according to a survey released by the National Retail Federation on Sunday.
…All told, a record 247 million shoppers visited stores and websites over the four-day weekend starting Thanksgiving, up 9.2 percent of last year, according to a survey of 4,000 shoppers that was conducted by research firm BIGinsight for the trade group. Americans spent more too: The average holiday shopper spent $423 over the entire weekend, up from $398. Total spending over the four-day weekend totaled $59.1 billion, up 12.8 percent from 2011.
- Politico
Hmm…so which is it Obama? Is the looming fiscal cliff really going to effect consumers that much? Because it seems like it isn’t doing much at all.
I argue that is because the majority of American’s are morons, I’m certianly not out spending tons of money this Holiday season, but then again my argument is confirmed by Obama winning the election.
People are idiots and sales will continue to pull them in. They are spending MORE now than they were in years previous, which means your little threats that Christmas will be ruined if we don’t let you raise taxes, we’re not buying it Scrooge.
Stop threatening to call of Christmas and do your damn job.
I’m on Robin Hood’s side here. If you are going to raise my taxes, I’m probably not going to be spending much at all. You can’t spend my money better than I can, especially not in the Holiday season. A welfare check doesn’t mean quite as much as buying my sister that new Taylor Swift songbook** and it doesn’t look as nice when wrapped up under the tree.
______________________________________________________________________
*Because if there is one thing Alan Rickman is fantastic at, it’s overblown death scenes.
**Here’s hoping she doesn’t read this blog.
My first political book is officially in the works.
As readers of my blog, you all need to help keep me accountable and working hard on this book.
Obviously I won’t be ‘live blogging’ the writing of a book, since that would defeat the purpose of writing a book, but you can follow me on twitter and watch for the occasionally frustrated, rending of clothing and tearing of hair, tweets about my progress…among other things.
How do you keep me accountable?
Well if you are interested in the book, send me a tweet or leave me a comment on the blog to nag me about when I will finish the book.
Of course when it’s done I’ll have to find an agent and a publishing company, so if you have any advice on that, feel free to include that along with the nagging.
What’s the book about, you ask?
What do you think? It’s a non-fiction political book which, among other things, tells a bit of my own personal story of transition from liberalism to conservatism, a discussion of what being a gay conservative means (mostly a lot of being insulted by gay liberals), clearing up some misconceptions about what it means to be conservative, and quite a large section devoted to motivating young conservatives (gay and straight) and encouraging them to get their views out there and argue their beliefs.*
Also there is will be some vague threatening posturing towards a few conservative pundits, who have their own shows *cough*GregGutfeld*cough* about what will happen if they don’t invite me to come on their show.
*any and all parts of this description could change. In fact, the whole book could become an argument about why koalas are superior house guards than dogs. I make no promises.
This is what defeated us?
Obama supporters vs. The Constitution
There was no triumph in his face, no elation, only the still intensity of contemplating the enormity of the smallness of the enemy who was destroying the world. He felt as if, after a journey of years through a landscape of devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant – and had found a rat eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.
- Rearden, Atlas Shrugged
I feel confident…and exhausted.
I am confident that Romney is going to win this and in January we will be watching the Inauguration of President Mitt Romney.
I will be at the polls tomorrow and I will cast my vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the men can bring our country back from the downward spiral that President Obama has put us in.
This is the most important, most exciting, most exhausting, election that has happened in my lifetime and, god willing, it will be the most important one of my lifetime.
I’m not really sure I can deal with such a stressful election season again.
Just remember to
Follow up to my post about Kyle Wood.
Okay, so now the police say Wood has ‘recanted’. I still think there is more to the story, but my point still stands. The original post was about the lack of reporting, not the incident itself.
The Advocate and other gay news organizations have jumped on dozens of ‘hate crimes’ against gays (the non-conservative ones) that later were proved to be false. Not only was their reporting on it after the falsehood was discovered very low key…to the point of almost not existing, but when you read the comments on the posts, the gay ‘community’ rallies around these liars and either says the cops are homophobic bigots who are lying about the situation or, if they do admit it was fake, they stand by them and say that ‘well this PARTICULAR case may not have been true, but this stuff happens all the time and they are just trying to get hate crimes noticed so people will do something to stop them’. (No joke, that’s almost word for word some of the comments I’ve seen on stories about gay people faking hate crimes.)
The biggest issue here is not that someone lied (still want to know what happened, it was clear he was beaten and it was not a beating he could have administered himself, something happened here and someone is responsible for his assault) but that many of the ‘leading’ gay news organizations did not bother to report on it until after it came out that it was recanted and then they made a HUGE deal out of it…unlike similar stories of gay liberals faking hate crimes.
Then of course there is the absolutely CHARMING commentary on the story about the situation. Gay liberals using every slur in the book, ones that they would normally call a person ‘bigoted’ and ‘homophobic’ for using, but when they do it to a gay person it’s apparently okay.
My point stands. This was not reported quickly for political reasons in the first place, because it did not fit the narrative that these websites want to promote.
It had nothing to do with the ‘lack of evidence’ to support it, no matter how much liberals would want you to believe it.
Why do I say that? Because if this SAME situation had happened to a gay liberal, Dan Savage would have been reporting on it in a heartbeat, not sitting around telling people that it didn’t pass the ‘smell test’.
ERMAGHERD! PAUL RYAN WANTS RAPISTS TO HAVE PARENTAL RIGHTS!
Well that’s apparently what liberals would like us to believe.
Anyone with a working brain is, I trust, automatically skeptical of such a claim…as you should be.
It’s not true.
I recently received a message on tumblr from a liberal who appeared to be very smug. They wrote “What if I told you” and linked to this article “Nightmare: 31 States Allow Paternal Rights for Rapists”.
Now the websites tagline is “Progressive: Politics to Pop Culture” so we can already tell this is A.) completely biased and B.) lacks any semblance of actual journalism already.
(Before you respond that I am also biased, remember that I don’t recommend you believe me with no further questioning…which is why I link to legitimate research and news so that you can start your own research.)
Okay, so this article is a hatchet job that provides no facts. Half of the links to ‘proof’ in their article lead to either articles on their own website (which also have no real facts to back them up) and the rest of the links (3 others) have to do DIRECTLY with a case that they cite where the mother won her court case, even though the rapist DID petition for parental rights.
The article (and none of the links) even tries to give us a percentage of woman who are A.) petitioned for parental rights by their rapists or B.) A percentage of rapists who are actually granted these rights.
My thoughts on that are of course that this is because the B part of that equation would be about 0% since the idea that any reasonably sane judge would grant custody or visitation rights to a felon and a registered sex offender (of which a rapist would be both) is absolutely ludicrous.
The article is actually so very bad that I’m going to have to take most of it apart piece by piece, which is something I think my readers enjoy.
In the midst of all the outrage over Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” comments, Missouri resident Shauna Prewitt waded into the war zone. The victim of a brutal rape, Prewitt later gave birth to a daughter borne of that encounter. When her rapist later filed for custody of her child, Prewitt’s nightmare became frighteningly worse. This courageous woman shared her experience with the rest of America; she is not alone:
“Prewitt says that if she knew then what she knows now about the laws in 31 states thatgrant men who father children via rape visitation rights that are equal to those that other fathers also enjoy, she might not have chosen to keep her child.
“My attacker sought custody of my daughter, but thankfully I got lucky and his visitation rights were terminated,” Prewitt says. “But I’m not sure I would have made the decision I did had I known I might be tethered to my rapist for the rest of my life.””
Okay, so you are saying that a convicted rapist petitioned for parental rights and were denied…that’s not ‘luck’ that’s just common sense on the judge’s part.
This section is curiously lacking in any sort of statistic on how many women this happens to and how often the rapist succeeds…that just might be pertinent.
What does this have to do with Todd Akin’s comments? The idea that there can be “legitimate rape” because the woman was not impregnated during that vile act, and conversely, the notion of “false rape” when it results in pregnancy, is mind-blowingly frightening.
I must be missing something, but when did Akin claim that a pregnancy resulting from rape made it a ‘false rape’?
Regardless, most Conservatives saw Akin’s comments for the stupidity they were (he’s far better than his opponent regardless) so attempting to pin his comments on conservatives in general is just ridiculous.
For a victim to be forced to bear the child of the man who sexually assaulted her, and in many cases also drugged, abducted, terrorized, battered, disfigured, pummeled, shot, or stabbed her is unimaginable. While the sponsors of HR-3 will insist that such a victim was never raped, since alas, there is a pregnancy; these legislators also tell the perpetrator that he, by default, cannot be considered a rapist. In such a world, Ms. Prewitt would have had no grounds upon which to terminate the visitation of the rapist bastard who fathered her child.
Okay…so Akin was in on creating HR-3. However if you actually read the bill, like I actually did, you will find that it has no restrictions on women being raped having an abortion.
Nor does it change the definition of rape or say that women who get pregnant ‘weren’t really raped’ because they got pregnant. Now you just reaching the territory of stupid. Nor have the legislators in question tried to say that ‘if you get pregnant, then your rapists isn’t actually a rapist’.
So, yeah…she would still have grounds, except in the fantasy world you are constructing which has nothing to do with reality.
It’s nice how you never link to the text of the actual bill you are badmouthing, you just make up what you think is in the bill and feed it to your readers. Fact checking might help you.
What are we to take away from Prewitt’s experience? Consider that 31 states have not yet adopted special laws that restrict the ability of rapists to assert their custodian and visitation rights to a child born through rape. These 31 states effectively grant men who father children via rape visitation rights that are equal to those that other fathers also enjoy.
Okay, so maybe we should have a law that says ‘no felon or sex offender may petition for custodial rights of children’, but the states you are criticizing to NOT ‘effectively grant men who father children via rape visitation rights.’
What the state laws allow is for them to petition the court for those rights.
Remember earlier when I said that the idea that judge would grant such a person custodial rights was ludicrous?
Remember when you never gave us any statistics on how often this is attempted or how often it succeeds?
HR-3’s “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape” language would nullify the laws of the other 19 states for all of the reasons given above.
HR-3 uses no such language. Did you even read the bill?
After all, HR-3 says no such father could be a rapist – and fathers have rights.
HR-3 says no such thing. Did you even read the bill?
Data shows that roughly 27% of all American women faced with Shauna Prewitt’s circumstances make the decision to have and raise the baby; roughly 47% give birth but put the baby up for adoption.
Ooh! This looks like a buildup to some actual statistics on how many rapists petition and succeed in petitioning for custodial rights!
In the world of HR-3, the 26% who opt to have an abortion would be criminalized.
Whoops….no, just more fantasy world.
In point of fact, HR-3 actually say:
‘Sec. 306. Non-preemption of other Federal laws
‘Nothing in this chapter shall repeal, amend, or have any effect on any other Federal law to the extent such law imposes any limitation on the use of funds for abortion or for health benefits coverage that includes coverage of abortion, beyond the limitations set forth in this chapter.
which means, for those with less reading comprehension, that this bill does not change the law on abortion at all. All it does is say that federal money cannot be used for abortions, except in the case of:
‘Sec. 308. Treatment of abortions related to rape, incest, or preserving the life of the mother
‘The limitations established in sections 301, 302, and 303 shall not apply to an abortion–
‘(1) if the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest; or
‘(2) in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.
So actually…this law doesn’t change anything for women who have been raped or have lives that are being endangered by the pregnancy.
To escape an imminent jail term, women would be forced to have their rapist’s baby
No, just stop.
and face the likelihood of being tethered to him for life.
Really, stop. Your fantasy world is not amusing anymore. You really need to live in reality.
Likewise, any rapist-father, now legally classified as non-rapist under Akin/Ryan law, could withhold consent to adoption as the unwed biological father and insinuate himself into the lives of mother and child.
No, they are still considered rapists. HR-3 has nothing to do with the definition of rape or defining what constitutes a rapist, a felon, or a sex offender is.
As previously stated, the rapist could attempt any of these things, but a judge would throw out the requests nearly as fast as they were made, HR-3 has NOTHING to do with this.
Consider the psychological aspects of rape: it is about domination, humiliation, control, and brutal degradation. For such a man to have controlling interests in the life of a child spawned by his brutality is heinous and reprehensible.
Oh look, we agree on something. This may be the only truthful thing you’ve said in this entire piece of crap.
Still has nothing to do with HR-3.
Legislation that would open the doors of victimized women to their attackers and give them free reign to manipulate, control, and to exert psychological torture indefinitely is downright barbaric.
Yes, yes it is.
Good job, you managed two correct (if obvious) statements in this article.
Still had nothing to do with HR-3.
Consideration should also be given to children fathered through acts of incest, and pedophilia; these two are often interrelated. In such instances, the Akin/Ryan law could grant indisputable custody to men who already have a sexual predilection for children, and would place the children of the children they raped squarely under their control.
No, no it wouldn’t.
HR-3 says NOTHING about protecting rapists or pedophiles.
In fact, it protects federal funding for abortions in one two cases at all.
‘(A) an abortion–
‘(i) in the case of a pregnancy that is the result of an act of rape or incest, or
‘(ii) in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy.
- HR-3
Great job at trying to poison the well though. I’m sure most of your liberal readers won’t bother to research this bill and will run around claiming that they have and that it protects rapists and bans abortions, but we both know that’s not true.
