My Interview on The Donlyn Turnbull Show (11/15/12)

Donlyn Turnbull (creator) and Tim King (contributor and co-host) at DS&P Magazine, where I also contribute and article or two on occasion, invited me on to their radio show on FTR radio last week to talk politics, Ronald Reagan, roast beef sandwiches, and Rosie O’Donnell (ewww).

 
If you would like to listen to the show (my interview is the second segment, about 20 minutes long) here is a link to the DS&P website where it is posted. You can stream it or download it.

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

I usually smile and laugh and tell people that politics don’t make me angry.

But that’s just not accurate today.

I’m mad as hell and, as Michelle Malkin said at Right Online this year, why the hell shouldn’t I be!

Fast and Furious, Executive privilege, unconstitutional executive orders about immigration, unconstitutional healthcare reforms, spitting and shredding the constitution, lying at every turn, campaigning instead of governing, cheap shots, dirty campaigns, refusing to listen to Congress, saying the Supreme Court’s decisions don’t matter, leaks of top secret documents, money given to the Muslim Brotherhood, support to the Sharia based government in Libya, promises made to a corrupt new President in Russia where soldiers are burning our flag, destroying our foreign policies and turning our country against our allies.

This is not something that we can not afford to allow to continue.

Every time I hear someone say they aren’t going to vote for Romney, for whatever reason they have, I want to punch something.

What are you thinking?

Do you want Obama to WIN?

Get your head screwed on straight and stop screwing over our country.

There is NO REASON good enough in this race to justify NOT voting for Romney this November. Even if you have issues with him, read that paragraph I wrote starting with ‘Fast and Furious’ again. Can anything you fear with Romney be worse than this?

I have very good reasons to vote FOR Romney. I’ve been supporting him for months.

So even if you can’t find a good reason to vote FOR Romney, right now all you have to do is look at Washington’s current leader and his cronies to find a reason

I don’t care what personal reasons you had for casting a ballot for someone else in the primaries, now that Romney is the nominee we can’t afford to vote for anyone else. If Giuliani and Bachmann announced a write in campaign (and I love Giuliani and Bachmann) I would still be voting for Romney, because he’s the one who can beat Obama.

And Obama cannot win.

I love this country more than I love my own life, but that’s why I can’t sit here and watch Obama tear this country down and destroy her foundations for another 4 years, so that he can rebuild her in his own image.

I swear by all that I consider holy that I will leave this country if Obama is re-elected. This is more than “going Galt” like I’ve seen some people threaten. This isn’t even a temporary idea, I will leave this country, I will get citizenship and I will throw my knowledge into fighting for that country.

Because, if Obama wins the election in November, then this country may no longer be worth fighting for. The things I love about this country will slowly, but surely, be chipped away and I can’t be here for that. It would break my heart and it might just kill me.

Don’t let Obama destroy this country. Don’t let petty, foolish, personal issues send your vote elsewhere. We can’t afford that.

I will be at the Right Online conference in Las Vegas on the 15th and 16th.

If any of my dear readers will also be at this conference then please let me know. It would be great to have someone to eat lunch with on Saturday.

I will be back on Monday with stories and photos of the weekend…well maybe not photos and maybe only carefully edited stories. After all, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

In any case, I hope to return with all sorts of new tips and tricks for gaining a bigger readership and utilizing social media in a far more efficient manner than I have been. All taught by some of my favorite conservative commentators, such as Michelle Malkin and S.E. Cupp.

WOOHOO!

Open primaries v. Closed primaries

Over the last few weeks I’ve been stopped several times, both on campus and off, to be asked to sign a petition to get open primaries in our state…which seems a bit like closing the barn door after all the cows have escaped, since my state’s primary was held on February 28th.

The last time this happened I had just had enough. I pointedly asked the women who was carrying the petition to tell me what party she was registered with.

Unsurprisingly, after a bit of prodding, she told me she was a Democrat. I asked her how she would feel about Open Primaries if I, as a Republican, were to gather up Republicans and go to a Democratic primary to vote for the worst Democratic candidate so that the Republican nominee would be able to wipe the floor with him. She told me “well I would be getting people to sign a petition if I didn’t support it.”

Which didn’t actually answer the question, mind you.

As this was a public space another person came up to interject their opinion. He asked me what my solution would be if a Democrat, such as himself, wanted to vote in the primaries for Ron Paul. (Not sure why a Democrat would want to, since 90% of what Ron Paul supports is completely opposite to Democratic views…the only thing I can think that this guy wanted was the legalization of drugs…) I told him to do the same thing that my independent friends had done, which was register as Republicans for the primary and then re-register as their actual party.

He didn’t seem to find that satisfactory…too lazy to go to the trouble I guess.

Here is the key problem with this particular guy’s argument. The Presidential election is the time for the entire country to decide, based on whatever their views are, which nominee will make the best POTUS. That is why you vote across party lines, you can watch the debates, view the records, and decide between the party nominees to decide who will best lead the country.

This is not what primaries are for.

Now, ideally, members of the party should be voting for the candidate who will make the best President. However, Democratic and Republican ideals of what makes a good President are not the same at all, so cross primary voting would be unhelpful at best and disastrous at worst.

What a primary does is allow the members of the party to decide on who, of the available candidates, best represents their ideals and will be the best President possible within those ideals.

So the problem with a Democrat voting in a Republican Primary is that they will not be voting for the candidate that best represents Republican ideals, they will be voting for either 1.) the candidate who best represents Democratic ideals or 2.) the candidate that will be most easily defeated by their Democratic nominee.

And considering that option 2 is exactly what happened this year in the Republican Primaries in several states which have open primaries.

Democratic activists and strategists have launched a campaign to push fellow Democrats and independents to vote for Santorum to try to derail the more moderate frontrunner Mitt Romney, a Michigan native and the candidate President Barack Obama’s campaign least wants to face in the November 6 election.

“I think Santorum is completely radioactive and will bring an electoral disaster to the Republicans – he could deliver Obama a landslide,” said Michigan Democratic strategist Joe DiSano, who has launched one of the efforts to help Santorum. “We need to focus on the one real challenger to Romney.”

- Reuters

Gotta love that sort political trickery. Of course this says a lot about how worried the Democrats are about my candidate of choice, Mitt Romney.

However, this is why closed primaries are necessary. I don’t want to vote in a Democratic primary, I’m not a Democrat and it’s not my job to choose a candidate who upholds their ideals. Neither is it a Democrats job to choose a political candidate who best upholds Republican ideals.

10th Amendment? What’s that?

In case you are as confused as President Obama seems to be on what the 10th Amendment is. Here is the text of it.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

December of last year, 3 days after Christmas in fact, I wrote a post about Voter Fraud and Voter ID laws for elections.

Texas recently passed a law that would require the use of a photo ID to vote in their state. One would tend to think that this would be a state issue, that the federal government would stay out of. There is nothing in the constitution (or any law or amendment passed since) that I have found that allows the federal government to interfere in voting laws such as this. (While the Civil Rights act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 do restrict racial restrictions on voting, this law does not prevent voting based on race or any other inherent quality, such as race, age, wealth or intelligence.*)

But to the current DoJ and the current President, things like the 10th amendment and the constitution are less rules and more guidelines. So they decided that Texas’ new law will put an undue burden on Hispanic people in Texas, because they are disproportionately more likely to not have (or be able to get) a photo ID.

The Justice Department said that data from Texas showed that almost 11 percent of Hispanic voters, or more than 300,000, did not have a driver’s license or state-issued identification card, and that plans to mitigate those concerns were incomplete.

“Hispanic registered voters are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic registered voters to lack such identification,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, head of the department’s civil rights division, said in a letter outlining the objection to the Texas director of elections.

- Reuters

And so they are blocking Texas from instituting the law, similar to the actions taken against South Carolina in December of last year.

So why is it that so many Hispanic voters don’t have or can’t get a photo ID that allows them to vote?

Hispanic registered voters in Texas are 47 percent to 120 percent more likely to lack the required identification than non-Hispanic voters, the Justice Department said in its letter. Texas has 12.9 million registered voters of whom 2.81 million are Hispanic.

- Business Week

I mean, you need a State ID or passport to buy alcohol, get a library card, buy cigarettes, or buy a gun…and this is Texas (my mom’s side of the family is from there) at least 3 of those things are common place in Texans (which 3 is up to you) and I haven’t heard liberals complaining about that…in fact they want more protections and controls on at least one of those (I hope you know that I mean gun control, because I’m quite sure they aren’t pushing for more control on library cards).

Well…it might have something to do with the fact that, according to the most recent numbers on StateMaster.com, there are an estimated 1,041,000 illegal immigrants in Texas. Now, I’m sure they aren’t all Hispanic, we do get illegal immigrants in America from all over the world, but given the geographical location of Texas and Mexico, I think we can be fairly certain that a good portion of the 300,000 Hispanic voters (11% of Hispanic voters) who do not have a state identification card (or any other form of legitimate photo ID) and can’t get one have one thing in common.

They aren’t here legally.

So they aren’t allowed to vote and they aren’t allowed to go get a state ID card, because they don’t have the documentation to receive one.

And guess what, they shouldn’t be voting at all then.

 

And now for something completely different, here’s a video (and article) proving that America has the coolest Navy ever.

 

*though sometimes I wish we could restrict voting based on intelligence…

Math and logic show media bias against Romney is unfounded (Via The Conservative New Ager)

I am getting tired of the media downplaying that Romney has been the winner of numerous primaries and is headed toward the Republican GOP nomination (and is without question in a strong position to take down Obama).

Let’s just ignore that no GOP candidate has ever gotten as high as Romney is currently at about 40%.

Then let’s deal with the fact that it’s pretty much a mathematical impossibility that Romney isn’t going to win the delegates.

via Math and logic show media bias against Romney is unfounded.

Facts, please base your opinions on them. Don’t be this guy.

Voter Fraud – A Clear and Present Danger.

Like the title?

 

It’s both a homage to Jack Ryan and Dirty Sex & Politics, who

 

mentioned this particular film/book in her post “Self-Manipulation” yesterday. Granted, my post has nothing to do with her topic in that post, but still…

It makes me think of Harrison Ford anyway…and that’s always of the good.

I had a conversation on facebook today with a friend who is substantially more liberal than I am. We usually don’t discuss politics, because it’s not a healthy conversation for us to have. We were discussing whether or not it is reasonable to insist the those who vote or register to vote, do so with a valid government issued ID.

Not surprisingly I was on the side that, yes this is reasonable and legal, she was not.

The articles that sparked this conversation? Two opinion pieces (and hatchet jobs) from the New York Times. I put opinion in bold, because the people in question the conversation seemed to think that these articles are sufficient proof that A.) Voter fraud does not exist and B.) that requiring voters to show a government ID is all part of a vast Republican conspiracy to “restrict the voting rights of demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor and the young, who are more likely to support President Obama, are disproportionately represented in the 21 million people without government IDs.”

First, I would like to know why I, as a registered Republican, have never been invited to the meetings where we decide on these vast Republican conspiracies.

Secondly, if I brought up something said by Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly as proof in a debate with a liberal I would be promptly chastised for using opinions rather than facts. Yet when the NYT write hatchet job opinion pieces, those are completely valid as proof on the  liberal side.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Let’s move on to the topic of government IDs to vote.

The arguments put forward about why requiring a government ID is unreasonable (from my friend) are as follows.

1.) If you have to take the bus (which is probable if you don’t have a driver’s license already) they are unreliable and take a long time to get there.

My response: Instant gratification usually doesn’t exist. Anything worth having is probably going to take a little effort. and OH BOO HOO YOU POOR BABIES! I don’t have a car, I go to school on the train every morning. It’s not convenient, but I do it. When I lived on my own I went to the grocery store on a bus on my day off and rode back with 5 or 6 bags of groceries.

2.) The wait at the DMV takes to long and takes away time from classes or working.

My Response:  Last time I went (to get a learner’s permit) I was there for about 2 hours. I’ve waited in lines at Disney Land that were longer than that. As for the second part, this is why you learn to budget your time. If you feel that getting an ID is important enough, you will take the time to get one. The time isn’t actually that much. Let’s assume 3 hours at the DMV (time in which you can use these things called ‘textbooks’ to study while you wait, so you aren’t hurting your education) and another 2 hours for bus rides (with the number of DMVs in my city, I doubt it would take much longer to travel both ways to the closest one). That means 5 hours, of which at least 4 hours can be used studying, spent getting an ID. College students, the ones I know as well as myself, spend more time than that each week watching TV. They can find the time to go to get an ID, even if it isn’t convenient.

3.) Asking friends for a ride is embarrassing or people aren’t a “fan” of doing it.

My response: Get over it. If you need a ride then ask for it. Sure it embarrasses me to ask for a ride from friends and I tend to avoid it if possible, but if I need a ride I ask for it. Embarrassment is not a good excuse in this case, just like being embarrassed wouldn’t be a good excuse for not telling your doctor about a health issue. If it has to be done, then you do it.

The supreme court supported the concept of Voter IDs, and Justice Stevens (one of the most liberal judges on the court) was the one who wrote the opinion supporting it.

Jimmy Carter is also in favor of Voter IDs.

Both of these sort of blow the idea that this is a Republican plot out of the water. You don’t see the New York Times reporting on that though, do you?

Just a thought.

——————————————–

Of course none of this takes into account that, if you are over 18 and a college student and you don’t have a state ID, you are simply too dumb to live.

I’m sorry if that’s offensive, but it’s true.

Even if you don’t drive, having a state-issued ID card is a fairly important thing.

Let me tell you a few things that I’ve done in the past couple of years that I couldn’t have done if I weren’t in possession of my Arizona state photo identification card.

1.) Flown to Atlanta for Dragon-Con

You need a valid government issued ID to get on a plane if you are not a minor.

2.) Bought things with my credit card

I will admit that quite a few places do not ask for ID when you make a credit/debit card purchase. This is not legal and could get the business into quite a bit of trouble. With debit it’s a bit more permissible, since you need to know the PIN#, but any credit transaction should ask for an ID.

3.) Get a job

When you are filling out paperwork for a job you need a photo identification card to prove that you are who you say you are and that you are an United States citizen. I used my passport for my last job, but let me tell you…getting a passport is a hell of a lot hard than getting a state ID card.

4.) Get an apartment (in a low income housing development, I might add)

To even go on a walk through of the complex they needed to photocopy my state photo ID. They had a copy in my file and they used the information on it and on my application to run a background check on me. That was the same at every apartment complex that I visited when I was looking for an apartment in 2010.

5.) Get a bank account/replace debit card

When I opened my bank account they scanned in my ID. When I lost my debit card several months ago, I had to show them my ID to get a new one and receive a temporary replacement ATM card…even though I knew all the passwords and information for my account.

6.) Go to a bar

They aren’t going to simply take your word that you are 21. Granted I have used my passport for this as well at one point, but see #3 about that.

 

Outside of the things I just mentioned, that have happened to me. There are of course numerous other things you can’t do without a state ID. You can’t buy cigarettes, pick up tickets from will-call, buy alcohol at the grocery store, apply for a credit card, write checks, or get a library card if you are 18+.

Probably several other things as well, that I can’t think of right now.

Is it wrong to force people to get an ID to do any of the above? I don’t believe so, neither do most of you as far as I can tell. If you do, why?

——————————————————–

Now for voter fraud.

When I brought up the fact that not requiring people to use a government approved ID when voting would make it far easier to commit voter fraud, my friend responded “You /seriously/ think it’ll go all slippery slope into extreme voter fraud?”

Umm…no. A Slippery Slope fallacy argument would be “There is no such thing as voter fraud now, but if you allow voting without a state ID then voter fraud will suddenly start to happen.”

My argument is that, regardless of what the New York Times claims, voter fraud does exist and there is not reason to make it easier to commit by not using state issued ID for voting. That is not a slippery slope.

For stories of actual voter fraud occurring, here are a few links.

4 NY Democrats Plead Guilty to Voter Fraud

Article about ACORN and NYT articles being biased

We Will Not Be Silenced a film produced by a democrat activist talking about voter fraud in the Democratic party.

And even the case mentioned in the NYT article, of parents voting for their children while they are away at college, is voter fraud, even if the NYT tried to play it down. Voting for someone who is not yourself and forging their signature on an absentee ballot is illegal! Students who are registered in a different state, such as if a student at my college was from Iowa and registered to vote there, can still vote through absentee ballots than can be mailed out of state…or even to other countries if they are studying abroad. In 2008 my brother was teaching in Japan and he had the option, though I don’t think he used it, to get an absentee ballot sent to him and vote in Arizona while he was working in Japan.

——————————————————-

These new laws are perfectly reasonable, the Supreme court is in favor of them, and they do not prevent anyone who is really interested in voting from doing so…unless they are not in the country legally, in which case they should not be voting.

Somehow I think that the string pullers in the Democratic party a little more worried about losing the illegal immigrant vote, than they are the ‘broke college student’ vote.

For the record, I sincerely believe that if you are have gone to the trouble to be a well educated and well informed adult about the election, then you are going to go to the effort of getting a state ID so that you can vote. And you if aren’t willing to go to through the, extremely small, task of going to an ID…well you probably aren’t that invested in the democratic process and probably aren’t very informed in the first place. In which case, good riddance, we don’t need you voting.

Voting, not just for citizens anymore.

So I did a little checking around. Here are the requirements of the United States for voting.

• You must be a citizen of the U.S.
• You must be a resident of the U.S.
• You must be at least 18 years of age.
• You must be registered to vote (there is some wiggle room from state to state on this last one.)

However the big one that you should be looking at for this post, is numero uno. The first one of the list. You must be a citizen of the United States to vote. It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve lived here, how many jobs you’ve held, or whether you are here legally (with a green card or student/work visa) or illegally (whether you are from Ireland, Canada, Britain, Mexico, Egypt, or any other country). You CANNOT vote in federal or state elections if you are not a citizen, got it. Is this clear?

You would think so. It seems cut and dried, black and white, you get the picture.

But apparently, for some reason that god only knows the logic behind, John DeStefano Jr., the Mayor of New Haven, Connecticut, has decided that the constitution just isn’t good enough. (He’s a Democrat, why am I surprised?) He wants to extend voting rights to illegal aliens as well. Of course this a the man who said:

participating in the federal Secure Communities program would undermine the city’s renewed emphasis on community policing and destroy the good relationship that has been established between authorities and the city’s growing community of undocumented immigrants.

“The key to community policing is a relationship of trust and direct engagement with the community. Secure Communities will destroy the essential element of trust,” DeStefano said at a press conference outside the Columbus Family Academy in Fair Haven, where many of the immigrants live.

- New Haven Register

DeStefano’s exact words about why they should allow illegal immigrants to vote was that it was “to build a more engaged participatory community”.

Somehow I don’t think that we need to be engaging illegal aliens who have broken a federal law to come into this country (which, I might add, means they have committed a felony already and have lost the right to vote) more in our community. I think that actively shunning them is more the right action to be honest. Besides, one would tend to think that by committing said felony that the “essential element of trust” would have already been destroyed by those doing the illegal entering, don’t you think DeStefano?

I don’t care who you are, why you are here, where you are from. If you enter this country unlawfully, you have committed a crime. You have done wrong. There is no way around that. People from all around the world want to come to our country, or they did at one point in our history, but they all got in line to do it the right way. One of my best friends from high school just recently received his full citizenship, legally. Sure, it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but it was the right way to do it. Any legal immigrant who went through all the red tape to come to this country should be horrified and disgusted at those that cut in line and do things the “easy way”. They belittle the hard work of legal immigrants by demanding all of the benefits, but refusing to go through the same struggles.

Morons like DeStefano aren’t doing this country, or legal citizens of this country, any favors. He makes me ashamed to admit that I spent even a year of my life living in New Haven, even if it was between the ages of 2 weeks and 1 year.