The famously abysmal leader of the House shows us her wisdom that is beyond her years again…

“Once again, the oilman in the White House is echoing the demands of Big Oil.

“The Bush plan is a hoax. It will neither reduce gas prices nor increase energy independence. It just gives millions more acres to the same companies that are sitting on nearly 68 million acres of public lands and coastal areas.

“If the President wants to bring down prices in the next two weeks, not the next two decades, he should free our oil by releasing a small portion of the more than 700 million barrels of oil we have put in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

“It’s time to tell the oil industry: ‘You already have millions of acres to drill. Use it or lose it.’”

With congress’s approval ratings at all-time lows, it should be readily appearant that they need to offer new direction - but that will not be the case.

As the market demands, new solutions abound - in spite of Nancy Pelosi.

And McCain getting in a nice jab to his opponent while stating his support of the move by President Bush:

“I know that Senator Obama is opposed to lifting the ban on offshore drilling. I believe the states should continue to decide,” McCain said, according to a pool report. “I hope that, as he has on several other issues, that Senator Obama will change his position and now support offshore oil drilling,” adding that an increase in the nation’s oil supply would reduce costs as the country made the transition to alternative energy sources.

“If we can show that we have significant oil reserves off our coasts, that will clearly affect the futures market and affect the price of oil. I urge Sen. Obama to change his position on this issue,” he said.

You know, we just might win this thing afterall.

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
_______________________________________________________________________________________

[See updates at the bottom that include Gramm's clarification. h/t to my Race42008.com colleague, Aron Goldman]

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

I refer to McCain economics advisor and former Sen. Phil Gramm’s “whiny Americans about a mental recession” flap.

The leftist MSM lives for taking conservatives’ words out of context and fitting it into their template of Republicans’ as racist, bigot, heartless warmongers.

What is so sad is that the Hannitys and Gingrich’s on TV and even Hugh Hewitt on the radio don’t see what is being done, and end up accepting the liberal template and gotcha games.

This is serious business folks, and its all well and good for us to chastise Gramm for not ever and at all times being aware of the different rules of the MSM game and so cannot live and breathe as a normal human being like liberal guests on TV and interviewees by newspapers.

We don’t play the gotcha games to mischaracterize liberals. We have integrity that way, but what we don’t do and ought to, is to point out their dishonorable actions in this way, not to mention their immoral policies that do hurt lower income people and create real recessions.

Phil Gramm is a conservative icon of the Reagan Revolution. He was a boll weevil democrat that resigned his seat and re-won it as Republican. No Jeffords he. He was an architect of supply-side economics that produced the recovery in the 1980’s that we still technically live in. He is an economics professor by trade and so knows that the technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, which has not occurred since 2001.

Gramm is also a very avuncular, upbeat fellow that likes to turn a phrase to translate arcane econ and was being interviewed by friends at The Washington Times, when he said:

In an interview with the Washington Times, Phil Gramm, a former Texas senator who is now vice chairman of UBS, the giant Swiss bank, said he expects Mr. McCain to inherit a sluggish economy if he wins the presidency, weighed down above all by the conviction of many Americans that economic conditions are the worst in two or three decades and that America is in decline.
“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

“We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today,” he said. “We have benefited greatly” from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.

Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy’s problems is one reason people have lost confidence.

Gramm made two errors (maybe three). His most egregious mistake was to conflate We the People with the American press, when he referred to a “nation of whiners.” Lots of people do this, and it is one of my pet peeves (and Rush Limbaugh’s). That the press decides to run a story doesn’t make it so and that they run a poll, doesn’t make it so.

Reality is. The press produces a product they call news. We too often confuse the two, and Phil’s mistake was easily used by the MSM to make it seem like he is callous towards low and middle income families and small and large businesses that are crying out for relief from high gasoline and food prices.

Gramm was speaking of the whiny press that wants people to think that America is in a decline that only an Obamessiah can save us from.

Secondly, he forgot the logic behind Reagan’s great lines: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours” and, “Are you better off than you were four years ago”?

I give him a pass on the latter, with his “mental recession” given that he was having an economics discussion and it was a good line – as applied to the press.

So, I give McCain a pass for going ballistic. He can’t risk alienating the inattentive to politics and economics sufferers at the pumps and the produce aisles.

What is so sad is that Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity failed to understand that Gramm was NOT referring to Americans complaining about gas and food prices and the lib Dems that have caused same by limiting oil drilling, oil refining and nuclear plant construction as whining. He was not chastising Americans that are suffering from same as imagining a mental recession.

No, Gramm was chastising the press for their false recession stories of the past SIX years!! He was speaking of the whining media and liberals that claim America is and has been in decline for the past 6 years, despite the economic numbers to the contrary that are the envy of the world, lest the GOP and Dubya get any credit.

There is no excuse for this. Sean seemed to get it and tried to challenge Newt, but Hannity lacked the intellect to frame the issue. Newt alternates between kissing lib butt and not. But for Hugh Hewitt not to get it, is unacceptable.

I didn’t know rooster’s could hear and see so much better than TV and Radio stars. Maybe my 18 years as a Lib-Dem co-conspirator frontman for the kooks helps. Now I’m in the stupid party.

[UPDATES: One is my response to Flagstaff re elites and two, re info provided by Aron Goldman at R408 that affirms my interpretation re elitist "leaders" that take their cues from fellow elites in the MSM]

First, gamecock:

I have noticed that elites and regular folks make this mistake in differing ways, i.e. they speak of “the American People” when they are really referring to what they hear on TV from media elites:

Elites like Gramm do it subconsciously as they exaggerate the power of the media elites (key word elites). Reagan never made this mistake and always made the distinction. But yes, regular folks don’t whine about competitiveness.

We “whine’ about high gas and food prices and what policies cause them. Gramm was not speaking of that.

Regular folks too often assume the MSM is reflecting popular opinion. Rush fights this everyday.

Second, Gramm’s clarification:

“When I said we’ve become a nation of whiners, I’m talking about our leaders. I’m not talking about our people. We’ve got every kind of excuse in the world about oil prices — we’ve got speculators, the oil companies to blame — but too many people don’t have a program to get on with a job of producing.”

“If you listen to our leaders, we can’t compete against Mexico, for God’s sake. If they don’t think we can compete against Mexico who can we compete against?”

I think the above updates fit my original interpretation given that the media are elites, as are leaders as per Gramm, all of whom echo the defeatist whining of the MSM/Dem Party lib template.

One thing is certain. Gramm was not referring to Americans that are suffering from high gas and food prices and complaining about the policies of the leaders in Washington that caused them. Those suffering from mental depression that have seen mental recessions are the press and the Kerry and the Democrats, including number one liberal Obama, all of whom declared the American economy in 2004 as the “worst since the Great Depression.” Those “leaders” are who Gramm was referring to.

[A portion of this post originally appeared in my Silly (MSM) Love Songs blog.]

_______________________________________________________________________________

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

MSM Ball Songs
(Sung to the tune of Paul McCartney’s ‘Silly Love Songs’)

You’d think that people would’ve had enough of Jesse’s love songs
But I look around him and I see MSM sycophants

Some people wanna fill the world with whiny Americans
And what’s wrong with Gramm?

And I’d like to know, there goes McCain again

I love gas, I love my testes
Jesse loves Jesse, Hillary wants testes

(2008 Rooster Crowing Records)

Gamecock lawyer has been to a few formal BALLS like the one Cosmo Kramer (naked back twirl and all – You shoulda’ seen my babe, Carol) attended with George Costanza on Seinfeld, but I so tire of the informal ones the MSM calls NEWS and foists upon the unsuspecting everyday.

I refer of course, to the gotcha silly word games Gramm and Jackson that have dominated the last 48 hours of Balls, that sound like Silly Love Songs in O’Reilly and Couric ears:

Rev. Jackson’s desired castration of Barack the Messiah, Lord Obama, due to said Messiah’s of late public eschewing of blame whitey rhetoric as per darker hued older children having babies.

Jesse would like to deliver Obama’s balls to Hillary’s Testicle Lock Box and thus reclaim his position as Number One Black Man in the Democratic Party and America. Unfortunately, Barack’s testes were long ago removed by the Obama who wears the pants in the South Side of Chicago family from just south of Barack’s belt to just north of Michelle’s reach, a safe place where Hillary can’t go since college. Too bad for Ms. Rodham that she never thought of Michelle’s plan.

But seriously, given Jackson’s love chile (see Jimi Hendrix for spelling), hymietown, and shakedowns, and given Rev. Sharpton’s riot incitings, tax non-payings and tawana brawlings, isn’t the real story the sorry state of journalism? Why do they even waste a mike on these clowns?

I can think of one reason this year, i.e. that they are advisers to the presumptive Democratic nominee for President. The man that wants the nukes who is counting on the MSM to continue to cover for the leftist and black pathologies that are every bit as ridiculous and dangerous as were those of the segregated white south and the KKK.

Now to the Phil Gramm “whiny Americans about a mental recession” flap.

The leftist MSM lives for taking conservatives’ words out of context and fitting it into their template of Republicans’ as racist, bigot, heartless warmongers.

Phil Gramm is a conservative icon of the Reagan Revolution. He was a boll weevil democrat that resigned his seat and re-won it as Republican. No Jeffords he. He was an architect of supply-side economics that produced the recovery in the 1980’s that we still technically live in. He is an economics professor by trade and so knows that the technical definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, which has not occurred since 2001.

Gramm is also a very avuncular, upbeat fellow that likes to turn a phrase to translate arcane econ and was being interviewed by friends at The Washington Times, when he said:

In an interview with the Washington Times, Phil Gramm, a former Texas senator who is now vice chairman of UBS, the giant Swiss bank, said he expects Mr. McCain to inherit a sluggish economy if he wins the presidency, weighed down above all by the conviction of many Americans that economic conditions are the worst in two or three decades and that America is in decline.
“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”
“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.
“We’ve never been more dominant; we’ve never had more natural advantages than we have today,” he said. “We have benefited greatly” from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.
Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy’s problems is one reason people have lost confidence.

Gramm made two errors (maybe three). His most egregious mistake was to conflate We the People with the American press, when he referred to a “nation of whiners.” Lots of people do this, and it is one of my pet peeves (and Rush Limbaugh’s). That the press decides to run a story doesn’t make it so and that they run a poll, doesn’t make it so.

Reality is. The press produces a product they call news. We too often confuse the two, and Phil’s mistake was easily used by the MSM to make it seem like he is callous towards low and middle income families and small and large businesses that are crying out for relief from high gasoline and food prices.

Gramm was speaking of the whiny press that wants people to think that America is in a decline that only an Obamessiah can save us from.

Secondly, he forgot the logic behind Reagan’s great lines: “A recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours” and, “Are you better off than you were four years ago”?

I give him a pass on the latter, with his “mental recession” given that he was having an economics discussion and it was a good line – as applied to the press.

So, I give McCain a pass for going ballistic. He can’t risk alienating the inattentive to politics and economics sufferers at the pumps and the produce aisles.

Who knows, maybe this helps McCain, and its even possible it helps Barack the new castrati, Lord Obama to get to the left of the good Reverend. In the end however, I suspect that the Din of the 20-year pew-parked butt and his Senator No to anything that would lower gas prices drowns all the Gramm and Obama as tough on black fathers rhetoric.

McCain in a landslide.

And to paraphrase the best Beatle, “What’s wrong with that?”

_______________________________________________________________________________

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

Given the liberal left domination of the MSM, leftist democrats Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry led by much larger margins over Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 in past June-Sept leap years than Obama currently leads McCain in most of the between election polls this year.

But, the un-Dukakis-like “lead” has provoked desperate Obama via surrogates Clark and Webb (and others months earlier), Clinton-like projection writ large attacks against McCain’s heroic military deeds via MSM attempted “swift-boat” covers.

The Clinton war room tactic of attacking one’s opponent’s greatest strength that mirror’s their greatest weakness is axiomatic. But the problems here are legion:

1-Obama had no Sistah Soulja moment in the primaries;

2-Kerry didn’t respond because the Swiftboat vets’ attacks were factually true;

3-McCain turned down freedom and stayed in the commie pow torture Hanoi Hilton for many years;

4-Let #3 sink in;

5-Unlike Kerry, McCain didn’t come back to America and toss medals over a fence or equate US armed forces with Khan’s Genghis; and

6-McCain’s recently read lips favor tax cuts.

Vietnam vet, junior Old Dominion Senator James Webb recently broke protocal as Obama’s limp-wristed security resume wafts:

WEBB: John McCain’s been a longtime friend. If that is one area that I would ask him to calm down on, it’s that. Don’t be standing up and uttering your political views and implying that all the people in the military support them, because they don’t, any more than when the Democrats had political issues during the Vietnam War. Let’s get politics out of the military, take care of the military people, and have our political arguments in other areas.

RUSH: Get politics out of the military? John McCain needs to calm down? This from a rookie Senator Jim Webb. Needs to calm down, don’t be standing up and offering your political views and implying that all people in the military support them. This is again more smoke and mirrors. None of this McCain is done. But Webb gets up and says it, the Drive-Bys report what he says, and that becomes the official record of what McCain says, i.e., what Webb says that McCain is doing. Who infused politics into this? Who infused the military into politics? It was Clark who claims, by the way — grab audio sound bite number four. Here’s Wesley Clark last night on MSNBC, asked for his response to being criticized for his remarks.

CLARK: I wasn’t representing the Obama campaign in anything I said yesterday about John McCain. I want to assure you, I would never, never diss someone’s service. When people choose to serve in uniform, I honor it. I came home from Vietnam on a stretcher. I was shot, I took a burst of AK, I got four rounds, so I think I know a little bit about what it’s like to honor men and women who serve in uniform. And I do, and I would never dismiss somebody.

RUSH: Twilight Zone time. This is after he did diss somebody. This is after he did diss somebody specifically on the basis of their military service. Claire McCaskill on MSNBC Live today, the infobabe asked her, “General Clark is not backing down from those comments that were critical of Senator McCain. What’s the campaign’s response to hearing that he’s not stepping away from those comments?”

MCCASKILL: Senator Obama has been very clear. It is inappropriate in any campaign ever to devalue anyone’s service to our country. That’s what they did to John Kerry four years ago. He will not be a part of it. This campaign will not be a part of it. I think he respects the service of General Wesley Clark. I think Senator Obama understands that General Clark is speaking from his own perspective. But for this campaign, for the Obama campaign, it is never about devaluing someone’s service to our country. Patriotism is about serving your country and your community, and that’s what Senator Obama wants this discussion to be about.

RUSH: What does this remind you of? Here we have two Obama supporters, Claire McCaskill from Missouri, a senator, and Jim Webb, both recasting reality. Obama, (paraphrasing) “Our campaign never said anything, why, we would never do this. We’re not going to put up with this. We would never, ever do it.” Webb said, “McCain’s gotta calm down.” I wish McCain would act in a way just one day that somebody could legitimately say “calm down” and have it mean something. The Official Obama Criticizer nailed this in his critique in the first hour of this program. Barack Obama and his campaign, he is the first black Clinton. He will not be the first black president because that’s Clinton’s. But he is the first black Clinton. That is exactly what’s happening here. Living in an alternative reality, and knowing full well that the Drive-Bys are going to cover for you and make reality whatever it is you say in response to things. So Clark gets a total pass. Obama gets a total pass. Obama gets treated as though he has rebuked what Clark has said, when he hasn’t, and then Webb goes out and says that McCain’s the one that needs to calm down. Meanwhile, the only official response from some elected Republican has been Bob Dole’s.

An astute conservative democrat in Alabama advised gamecock that Obama spoke to Bill Clinton this week, just as flip-flop moves to the center multiplied and just before Webb came to Wes, Clinton-fired former NATO chief that was about to bomb Russians, Clark’s defense for off the high-dive denigrations of McCain’s heroic service in Vietnam.

And why did Obama feel the need to declare his patriotic love for America in a post-WrighthateAmericaSermon-like context?

Why?

Because Obama’s stance in the polls at this juncture is worse than any Dem since…

Worse than any Dem.

June 1988 Plus Seventeen Dukakis, won ten states, went on to teach at Harvard.

Jim Webb will be the underside of the Obama ticket. Why else would he be embarrassing himself in public this way?

McCain will carry Virginia.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
www.race42008.com
Legal Editor for The HinzSight/Minority Reports @ www.theminorityreportblog.com
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” - The Chief Justice and “One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

The table is being set folks… According to the AP:

“Democrat Barack Obama is opening the door to altering his Iraq policy. Campaigning in North Dakota , Obama says his upcoming trip to Iraq could alter his plan to bring U.S. troops home within 16 months. The Illinois senator says it all depends on what he hears in consultations with military commanders there.”

The $64,000 question: will the MSM let him get away with it? The MSM continues to proclaim that they have no liberal bias. Here is an opportunity for them to walk the talk when reporting on what is probably the biggest flip-flop in the history of U.S. Presidential campaigns.

According to a CNS investigative report, there are fewer women employed by Sen. Barack Obama than are by Sen. John McCain, and the women who are employed by the Illinois Senator make less money than their male counterparts:

While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has vowed to make pay equity for women a top priority if elected president, an analysis of his Senate staff shows that women are outnumbered and out-paid by men.

That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.

“Mr. McCain is an honorable man, we respect his service. But when you look at our records and our plans on issues that matter to working women, the choice could not be clearer,” Obama told the audience in New Mexico, a voter-swing state. “It starts with equal pay. Sixty-two percent of working women in America earn half or more than of their family’s income. But women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. You’d think that Washington would be united it its determination to fight for equal pay.”

On average, women working in Obama’s Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That’s according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama’s Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one — Obama’s administrative manager — was a woman.

The average pay for the 33 men on Obama’s staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama’s staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama’s staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729. The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)

McCain, an Arizona senator, employed a total of 69 people during the reporting period ending in the fall of 2007, but 23 of them were interns. Of his non-intern employees, 30 were women and 16 were men. After excluding interns, the average pay for the 30 women on McCain’s staff was $59,104.51. The 16 non-intern males in McCain’s office, by comparison, were paid an average of $56,628.83.

The Obama campaign did not respond to written questions submitted on the matter Thursday by Cybercast News Service.

As a side note- how many news outlets do you think will pick up on this story? And if the opposite were true, how many MSM outlets do you think would run this story about Sen. McCain?

Reuters reported this morning that Senator McCain was asked Tuesday about the possibility of bringing back a military draft during a telephone “town hall meeting.”

McCain responded, saying: “I don’t know what would make a draft happen unless we were in an all-out World War III.”

McCain further added that the draft during the Vietnam War weighed most heavily on lower-income Americans, and that this should not be repeated.

“I do not believe the draft is even practicable or desirable,” McCain said.

So, how disingenuously did The Huffington Post report this?

McCain Last Night: World War III Would Justify A Draft

McCain In 2006: We’re In The Early Stages Of World War III

In citing McCain’s comments, they oh-so-conveniently omitted McCain’s quote in which he said “I do not believe the draft is even practicable or desirable.”

And to place face-to-face profile shots of McCain, deliberately drawing attention to the scar he received after surgery 8 years ago when doctors decided as a precautionary measure, after removing a melanoma from his temple, to dissect surgically down his face and into his neck to examine his lymph nodes, where they fortunately found no evidence of cancer…well, that’s nothing short of classless. And even with all the money in the world, class is something Arianna will never be able to buy.

Much has been made of the media’s canonization of St. Obama via the manner in which he is framed in some photographs.

But is this phenomenon really unique to Barry? Here is an interesting comparison of some of the photos in dispute for both Sen. Obama and President Bush in the ‘04 cycle:





Hat tip: RedState Diarist Warner Todd Huston and City of Brass

Russert in conservative HinzSight from The Minority Report. By Mike “Gamecock” DeVine for TMR management.
____________________________________________________________________________________

The Minority and HinzSight Reports mourn the passing of Tim Russert, a man Rush Limbaugh called “the closest thing there was at any of the networks to an objective journalist.”

Conservatives understand that all people have subjective points of view and opinions about the issues of the day. We admit ours, and when the conservative movement flexed its muscles with the advent of Rush and his clones in the late 1980’s, Tim Russert was singularly respectful of Rush and the movement, very often quoting El Rushbo, and, significantly, doing an hour long interview with him every Thanksgiving holiday on MSNBC.

Before Tim Russert took over NBC’s Meet the Press, the only truly objective interviewers on broadcast television were David Brinkley and George Will on ABC. But Russert, a trained lawyer, took the airways by storm by re-inventing the Sunday Show genre. He broke thru talking points by confronting guests with their own words, thus turning the guest into his own cross-examiner. All of the political interview shows do this today.

Russert was also one of the few talk show hosts to emphasize substance over politics. He was driven by a love for America, not only solving its problems, but also celebrating its strengths.

Maybe most importantly to conservatives, the former aide to Democrat giant Daniel Patrick Moynihan was tough on liberals and Democrats as well as on Republicans and conservatives. Russert was one of the few MSM hosts to regularly confront liberals with conservative principles.

Conservatives loved and respected Tim Russert, despite many disagreements with him, and despite his human tendency to sometimes show favoritism to his ideological soul mates. Would that we all could hold or biases in check like Tim. As a former democrat myself, I especially appreciate Tim’s JFK style classic liberalism, much of which is today more recognizable as, modern day conservatism.

The King of talk radio rarely has guests. His show is driven by him, and suffices to say, he very rarely has liberal democrat guests. But he had Tim Russert on more than once, and his last interview with Tim upon the release of his latest book about fatherhood in general and his special relationship with his father was a classic. The interview took place on the day of Ronald Reagan’s funeral, and the discussion is quite stunning in its relevance to Tim’s shocking passing at age 58. (see update below)

Another reason Russert was so loved and respected by conservatives is that he was a man’s man. Born and raised by a traditional Roman Catholic family in blue-collar Buffalo, New York, Tim, as MSNBC’s Howard Fineman said this week, Did Not Pursue False Gods, He Pursued the Real One”

Tim was a family man and a sports fanatic. Tim was always smiling. He never let a show end without a reference to his beloved Bills. Because of Tim, I love the Bills too. That is my tribute to him.

Go Bills! And we miss you so much already Big Guy!

[update]

Rush interview link here by subscription only (although I suspect Rush will put this on the “free side” by Monday. Here is an excerpt about Reagan Democrats:

RUSH: We don’t have guests on this program, but we made an exception here for our friend Tim Russert of NBC News. Tim, how are you, first off? Nice to have you with us. It’s a real pleasure.

RUSSERT: It’s an honor to be here, Rush. Thank you very much.

RUSH: We put this together two weeks ago before the events of last Saturday and this week took place. We decided to go ahead and stick with it because I’m sure you have some Reagan stories, and before we get into the discussion of your book, let me ask you, Tim. As a journalist, what is your reaction to what you are seeing and hearing this week around the country and in Washington?

RUSSERT: Extraordinary. What we have seen is an outpouring of affection and respect for an American president. I have not observed or witnessed anything like it since the death of President Kennedy, and I was quite taken last night, Rush, as we showed some old footage of the Kennedy funeral which was the grainy black and white and people crying and sobbing, and in shock because of the assassination — and the contrast is so striking to the mood we saw in the streets of Washington last night. It was celebratory.

RUSH: Yeah.

RUSSERT: Because there was an understanding that President Reagan had lived an extraordinarily long and honorable life. And like in so many things, I had a long conversation with my dad about President Reagan, and dad’s instincts I think, are exactly right. He said, “You know, he told us exactly, early on about Alzheimer’s. He died in dignity, and he braced us for it. He prepared us for it. He was stand-up about it,” and I think that’s what we’re seeing reflected from the American people today, an appreciation of someone who talked to them in a way that was understandable, and meaningful, and respectful of them, as well as the issues.

RUSH: You know, it’s said that the country’s “never been more divided than it is,” and I think most people’s historical perspective begins when they’re born. You can I’m sure go back in American history and find easily as ribald a period of time if not more so than today, but still that is people’s reality. Do you think an event like this can have any lasting unity beyond Friday when the internment takes place?

RUSSERT: I hope it can, and I think it might. I heard that from Democrats and Republicans. Because there was a sense that when Ronald Reagan was president, he was a conservative Republican and he was proud of it, and he was unabashed in laying out his conservative principles and philosophy — and yet he was also willing as he would say, “If I can get three-fourths of a loaf I’m going to take it, stay with my principles, and move on.” I remember when (New York Democrat Senator) Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whom I knew very well, and (GOP Senator Kansas) Bob Dole went to President Reagan with a compromise on Social Security to keep it solvent to people would continue to have it for years to come and President Reagan said, “Can we get (Democratic Speaker of the House) Tip O’Neill?” and the four of those men — two Democrats, two Republicans — sat down and fashioned a compromise, which guaranteed the solvency of Social Security for a long time to come. That’s Ronald Reagan and that’s his legacy. I think that if more people here realize that there are ways to approach government where people can keep their principles and yet be willing to find common ground and consensus, the better off we’re all going to be.

RUSH: Well, where were you in the 80s in terms of your career? Were you working in Washington yet?

RUSSERT: Yes, I had finished law school, and then I joined Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1976 and was there through 1982. In fact, I was with Jim Brady, the President Reagan’s press secretary, the night before he was assassinated [sic—wounded, paralyzed]. We were at a replay, if you will, of the gridiron dinner where President Reagan and Senator Moynihan had spoken with and we walked out to the parking lot together and bid farewell and the next thing I knew 12 hours later, Jim Brady was shot.

RUSH: Again, somewhat of a personal connection to the formative event. As you look back on it now, Tim, from the standpoint of your age now as an adult and what you’re doing for a living and in your life now, all encompassing things as you, look back now these 20 years do you have a different recollection of the 80s now than did you perhaps when you were living through them going through them?

RUSSERT: Yeah, I think it’s much more macro, much larger. Sometimes when you’re covering and engaged in life on a day-to-day basis, or hour-to-hour basis, you don’t fully appreciate the size or scope or magnitude of an individual. And, Rush, I remember as a little boy watching with my dad when Gorbachev [sic--Khrushchev] took off his shoe and started banging it at the United Nations –

RUSH: Khrushchev.

RUSSERT: — yelling, “Your children would grow up in communism,” and my dad sat there shaking his head, saying, “No, sir. No, siree. No, sir.” This is a Big Russ, the World War II veteran.

RUSH: Yeah.

RUSSERT: And I had forgotten that imagery until, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” and it’s exactly the kind of resolve and determination that I saw in my dad, who is now 80 as I saw in President Reagan. You know, it’s funny because people talk about Reagan Democrats. I know Reagan Democrats. I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. People who were born Democrats and baptized Catholic, and in the 60s and the 70s, they believed deeply that the Democratic Party left them, and that’s very much the way Ronald Reagan experienced it a little bit earlier, in the 50s, and the reason people, these Democrats, these ethnic Democrats embraced Ronald Reagan was not because they had a checklist of his issues or philosophy or on a one-to-ten scale on tax cuts and so forth, not — some did. Some did, but many others embraced him because he began to talk about the United States and what it is and what it stands for — and morning again, America standing tall. That’s what my dad grew up with. My dad’s favorite expression in the whole world is, “What a country,” and that’s the language that Ronald Reagan used to explain who we were and what his vision was, and that’s why Reagan Democrats embraced them so vigorously.

See original TMR-HinzSight memorial here.

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

I really hope that they go with an unattended stool/microphone on stage with Sen. McCain to illustrate just which candidate is too afraid to speak openly with American voters:

Please tune into The Fox News Channel tonight at 7PM EDT to watch the first 2008 Presidential Town Hall, broadcast from Federal Hall in New York City. This historic location is where President George Washington first took the oath of office. Tonight it will play host to John McCain while he answers questions from real voters about important issues including the economy, energy prices and the war.

Last week, John McCain invited Senator Obama to participate tonight, hoping to start what would be a series of ten town hall meetings where both candidates would travel the country to answer questions from real voters. Senator Obama has yet to agree to meet us in these town halls. These town halls would revolutionize our political process and start a real change in the tone of politics. John McCain believes in this effort and is putting it into action.

Please tune into the Fox News Channel, tonight at 7PM EDT to witness first-hand John McCain’s brand of straight talk with voters.

I will create an Open Thread for us to discuss the Townhall as it happens. The thread will go live at approx 6:45pm EST.

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
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Gamecock watches in agony as Republicans and even conservatives like Sean-bound by the TV sound bite attention deficit disorder and obsessed with the low level sin of hypocrisy while American values get slaughtered-Hannity, once again miss opportunities to advance a Reaganite WINNING agenda, defending American institutions.

Whether its:

(a) ignoring Obama’s huge and egregious sin attacking the mortgage industry that has helped Americans (overall, blacks and other minorities) achieve record levels of home ownership (see America Dream) only to focus on the puny sin of hypocrisy while aiding and abetting the unfounded smear of good man named Johnson;

(b) surrendering unilaterally to the Church of Goreman-made Global Warming’s attack on American industry and the energy that makes modern civilization and liberty possible, all in the name of saving polar bears, whose population now is at record numbers; or

(c) accepting the left’s narratives without a fight over Saddam’s ties to terrorists and wmd threat despite President Clinton’s eloquent statements in the 1990s thru President Bush’s “new tone” appeasement of Ted Kennedy forsaking black children in the ghetto; Bush and McCain’s tone appeasing La Raza’s demands for their race; and so-called Republican Fiscal Conservatives AWOL status since 1995 [(see Tom Coburn's "Breach of Trust" book and JC Watt's betrayal by Newt Gingrich (also co-staring with Nancy Pelosi in a Gore TV ad near you)].

But speaking of President Bush’s new tone, here is the latest surrender:

President Bush regrets his legacy as man who wanted war

President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.

In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”

Phrases such as “bring them on” or “dead or alive”, he said, “indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace”. He said that he found it very painful “to put youngsters in harm’s way”. He added: “I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain.”

Mr. President, can we talk?

NOTHING you could have SAID differently would have prevented the attacks on you from the left for daring to call evil by its name and act accordingly.

Well, maybe you could have apologized for “allowing” of even “causing” Muslims to hate and attack us on 911 and for Saddam to violate the (American hero deaths in Kuwait bought) ceasefire.

So, Bush apologizes for not rhetorically surrendering while still enforcing the ceasefire? and then what do the earnest leftist “reporters” do? Why, they continue the lying re-write of history that President Bush just refused to contest when they say:

The unilateralism that marked his first White House term has been replaced by an enthusiasm for tough multilateralism.

Unilateralism?

See Mr Bush, if you just sing the song they write and dance to their tune (or at least with a “new” tone) they will treat you fairly.

NOT!

Wake up GOP. Its up to US, not Bush or McCain.

How long will we take this?

STOP!

Not Long says this Rooster.

It starts by not missing opportunities. Don’t fall for the trap that we can accept the premises of the left and put a conservative twist on it. Don’t pass up opportunities to make powerful arguments for basic American values for the cheap and lazy MSM sound bite route of “hypocrisy” indignations that never won a single vote.

No. Let’s be like Rush, sitting around minding our own business. Then, the left attacks the institutions and values that made this country great.

Let’s defend the institutions and values rather than follow a media narrative whose main goal is that their narrative and liberalism never let be discredited.

The latest narratives they seek to protect is that America is the cause of evil in the world and that the foreclosed upon homes were due to evil mortgage bankers.

LIES!!!!

Bigger than any hypocrisy.

America is the arsenal of liberty and the reason there is any freedom on Earth.

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

Race 4 2008

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
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Rush as Buckley, MLK and Reagan

And God knows we need all four and We the People so we can soon write Majority Reports…

A few years after former radio broadcaster, Ronaldus Magnus, completed two terms of office as President of the United States in January 1989, he expressly and explicitly passed the banner of conservative leadership to Rush Limbaugh.

Soon after, El Rushbo moved to EIB Tower in the Bigg Apple to take his Sacramento, California radio talk show national, a move made possible by Reagan’s obliteration of the un-Fairness Doctrine that had kept am radio the bane of garden talk for decades, the progenitor of the conservative movement invited Rush to a fancy coming out party at his home.

That man, William F. Buckley who recently passed from the scene to meet his maker, was the man that announced the launching of his National Review magazine in the mid-1950s as “Standing Athwart history yelling STOP!”

Rush repeats that call today with a Martin Luther King, Jr. sermon twist.

Cut to Rush…

I want to ask all of you a question, and I would like to be able to ask this question to everybody who is not listening to the program right now. What’s it going to take? How long is it going to be before you all have had enough of the encroachment of your freedom and your liberty? How long is it going to be before you stand up and tell the leftists in this country, “Stop, shut up. Go back home. We are not going to let you ruin this country.” At what point, and this is not even about Obama. I’m not talking about Obama.

He is talking about liberals and liberalism and anti-America blame America first-ism.

How long?

How long will we sit in warm water like a lobster as the heat rises?

Will rising gas prices make it…Not Long?

The Time Has Come to Say, “Stop!”

I saw something in the newspaper Friday after I finished this program. Seattle, Washington, they are thinking of banning bonfires on beaches in Seattle, Washington, because of global warming. I cannot tell you how infuriated I have been and am and was made even more so by that story. Bonfires equaling global warming? At what point, and look, I know that people living in Seattle are primarily liberals, and bonfires on the beach don’t cause any problem whatsoever with global warming. This is absurd!

At some point, and I fear we’re not there yet, most of the times when freedom is taken away slowly, under false premises such as saving the planet or securing this or that or for whatever reason people gladly, without question, give away a little liberty a lot of the time. And when they finally realize that they have given a lot of it away, it’s too late to get it back without a serious upheaval of elected representation in Washington and state capitals. It is time for people to say they’re fed up.

How long? Not long? Reminds me of MLK, Jr. in Selma

I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” 1 come to say to you this afternoon however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again.

How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.

How long? Not long, because you still reap what you sow.

How long? Not long. Because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

How long? Not long, because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.

King’s struggle against segregation and racism was a righteous cause.

So is Rush’s and ours. In fact, MLK’s and America’s battle would not and could not have been won in an America that hated itself and the Judeo-Christian values of God given inalienable rights and liberties that made our progress possible.

I’m going to leave it out because I’ve talked about it enough. This is happening all over the country in so many ways, and we’ve had the stories for 20 years about the curtailment of private property rights because of some protected species — or worse: declaring your property a wetlands and you can’t touch it. And it’s hard to fight. The Democrats and the leftists have incorporated a lot of class envy in this, so even in this country there are people who want people who they consider to be unfairly affluent and wealthy to suffer. They want them to be punished for their affluence. The leftists have been planting the seeds in the minds of people in this country for years, for decades. What’s scary is that for the first time they now have been entire political party, the Democrat Party, advancing their agenda. It used to be they were considered wackos, environmentalist wackos, animal rights wackos, other kinds of “extremists.” Guess what? They are the Democrat Party today!

MLK was proud of America before and after the movement. He cited his pride in his speeches to encourage Americans to live up to its ideals. back to Rush and his commentary on American exceptionalism and The Audacity of Democrats to deny same in the American Thinker.

It’s by Rocco DiPippo and it is a history of this country from 2001 forward — 9/11 forward. There’s a little stuff before that, but it is excellent. It’s nothing that you don’t know. It’s nothing that you haven’t felt. But it’s on paper and it’s done in such a way that your memory is inspired. You remember all of these things. Let me tell you how it starts — and I’m paraphrasing this. In an America 30 years ago, 40 years ago, do you realize that a candidate such as Barak Obama would not last a week in the Democrat primary after it was learned that his preacher of 20 years hated America? Twenty, 30, 40 years ago, Barak Obama would have been drummed out of the primaries by his own party and by the American people. And if he had survived that, when we learned that his best buddies are terrorists and people who bombed the Pentagon and the United States, and, when we learned that he has the support and the tacit endorsement of our enemies around the world, he would be gone and people would be outraged. His political career would be over. Today, he’s their nominee.

How many of you last night watched this great Discovery program called When We Left Earth? It’s six hours; the first two were last night. They have gotten to the cold storage vaults of NASA. They have 500 hours of film. Some of it is not before seen. Most of it has been if you know where to look. Some of it’s new, only it hasn’t been seen. They remastered it in HD and they started the first two episodes last night. I was alive during all this. I remembered all of it. I remembered every one of those Gemini launches. I remembered the Mercury loses. I remember Gus Grissom losing his space capsule when he blew the hatch early on his Mercury flight. What I had forgotten, even though I instinctively knew it — and what reminded me because I’ve been speaking about it recently — was how damn proud everybody in this country was, including the media, of what we were doing with the manned space program.

Last week Rush answered the Republicans who call for us to “get over” Reagan:

I was perusing various websites, conservative websites. (I’m not going to mention the names; it doesn’t matter; they’re a dime a dozen now.) But I ran across some guy in a little post on his blog say, “You know, conservatives have got to change with the times. This is not Reagan anymore. They can’t keep talking about Reagan. We’ve gotta modernize. We’ve gotta adapt.” You know, the problem with this is… Let me make it as simple as possible. It has nothing to do with Reagan. It has nothing to do with cult-like devotion to Ronald Reagan. It has to do with the fact that personal freedom will never go out of style and personal freedom is at the root of conservatism; personal freedom and liberty and holding on to it and maintaining it. And that’s what conservative is, and that’s never going to go out of style, and I don’t know that we have to adapt that to anything other than what needs to be adapted and changed and stopped is the ongoing movement found in way too many parts of this country that would infringe upon individual liberty and freedom and yet we’re told, “Come on! You gotta adapt, you gotta modernize. You gotta understand where we’re headed here. We got a new set of problems and so forth.” That’s just it. There isn’t a problem in the world that doesn’t have as its best start in solving it freedom, pure and simple.

When there was nothing America couldn’t do. When we were proud.

In the ’60s, even during the Vietnam War, there were days we were proud of this country, and the media led the way in many areas. True, there was a goal to get to the moon, and there was competition with the Russians. We ought to have a goal today. If we had elected leadership, we would have a goal today. You know what the goal would be? Drill here; drill now. The goal would be to stop depending on people who don’t have our best interest at heart for petroleum energy when we have our own. We can do it. We have elected leadership stopping us. The aforementioned extremists, leftists, who have now taken over the Democrat party who want to punish this country, if you doubt me when I say this, what party was it that wanted to lose in Iraq and still does? What country was it that waved the white flag to surrender and still does? What party was it that owns the defeat in Iraq if it happens? The Democratic Party.

What is the party that has lied to the American people repeatedly about circumstances involved? It’s not George W. Bush and weapons of mass destruction; it’s not George Bush and intelligence. It’s the Democratic Party which has been taken over by extreme leftists. We have been taught over the years in this country to hate the following: Big Oil. Big Pharmaceutical. Big Retail. Big Insurance. Big Health. Virtually anything in the private sector. We have been told to despise it because it’s out to screw us. It is out to cheat us. In the process, the American will, the American sense of pride in the greatness and the traditions and the institutions of their own country, has been broken down to the point that people are distrustful. They’re distrustful of the things that have made and kept this country great. The only thing we’re told to love, the only thing we’re told to trust, the place we are to go, the place we are sent to get even for things that don’t go right in our lives, the government, the benevolent government and the 535 dolts that run the place. The 535 elected dolts and the literally hundreds of thousands of unelected bureaucrats who over the past seven years with the tacit approval and support of both the Democratic Party and the Drive-By Media have sought to undermine the US national interest at every possible turn not only domestically, but across the oceans.

We’re told to hate the auto industry. The auto industry is destroying our planet, don’t you see? Big Oil is cheating us and destroying the planet at the same time. We’re being told we’re running out of time. We’re being told that we do not have the greatness to deal with these problems; that our greatness is over, that we’re in a constant state of decline, that we need to back up our expectations. Thirty years ago Barack Obama would be disqualified on the basis of one video of Jeremiah Wright. “Goddamn America? Screw you, buddy. Nobody says that about our country. You are finished!” Today we’re told to either overlook it or to try to understand his rage or that he didn’t really mean that. He’s just saying that for the crowd.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let me read you just a couple of paragraphs from the American Thinker piece by Rocco DiPippo that ran on June the 7th. I printed this baby out at 12:21 in the morning. “There was a pre-Lewinsky time, before moral relativism blurred America’s vision, when associating with people like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers would have automatically excluded someone from attaining the [presidency]. Back then, anyone with well-known connections to such America-averse personalities would have been rejected by a super-majority of the electorate during primary season and almost certainly blocked by the Democratic Party before they could have gotten to within a mile of the White House. But those days — when patriotic, true liberals like Joe Lieberman were considered typical Democratic Party politicians — are gone. Now politicians like Lieberman are banished to the Party’s periphery and leftists, not liberals, like Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Jim McDermott, John Kerry, (who served in Vietnam), Jim McGovern, Patrick Leahy, Richard Durbin, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have replaced them.

Only a Reagan can effect change in D.C.?

The Republican Party hasn’t stood up and said, “Stop!” Nowhere — nowhere, nowhere — from elected Republican leadership. Nowhere from elected conservative leadership has anybody stood up on a daily basis and challenged the lies that constitute the primary reporting of the Drive-By Media in the country for the last seven, eight years. Nobody has stood up and said, “No! I’m not going to put out my bonfire. Screw you.” No elected leadership has stood up and attempted to impugn or laugh at or criticize some of these things. No, because our party has got this weak-spined idea that the way to deal with this is to accept some of these premises and then try to tweak ‘em. Back to this TV show on the Discovery Channel last night.

Jay Barbree, NBC news, who covered much of the space program up until recently and still does some consulting work for them, talked about NASA being the most exciting place there is. We were launching Gemini rockets every six weeks. We did some of the most incredible things. We accomplished some of the most unimaginable objectives — and all the while, we had a media echo chamber that was telling us, “Yes, these are good things and we should be proud.” Today, we don’t have that. Today we have a Drive-By Media that echoes and perhaps is intimately involved in structuring, the anti-American, leftist agenda. The eyes of the world were on John Glenn, they reported. People were on their hands and knees on Cocoa Beach praying for John Glenn and the first orbital flight. These things don’t happen anymore, and I believe — I was telling somebody last night — I said, “Yeah, I think the media could easily turn the tide here; if the media were once again proud of the country, proud of the institutions and led people to loving their country.”

And the person I was talking to said, “This media?”

I said, “No, I was talking about that.”

He said, “Katie Couric? Brian Williams? These guys?”

I said, “No, I’m talking about the institution and it’s capabilities. I’m not talking about this current crop. Of course not this current crop.”

But I do think that the media can rally people to be positive because I am media and we’ve done it here. I know it can be done, because I know that people need leadership and they want it and crave it and they respond to it. That show last night — and there are two more episodes the next two Sunday nights at 9:00 Eastern — shows America at its best. People dropped to their knees and prayed. NASA was the greatest place in the world. These guys, these astronauts, they were all heroes. You know who our heroes are today? You know who the heroes are today? Che Guevera — to the American left. (interruption) Okay, Snerdley, give me one of their heroes. Give me a hero that the American left routinely cites. One of our heroes is Ronald Reagan. What does our own side tell us? “Get over him! Forget Reagan! The era of Reagan has passed!” Their heroes are older than Reagan. We never hear them say, “Get over FDR! Get over JFK! Get over Teddy Kennedy.” Our own side, our own party, tells us to get over Ronald Reagan! Ronald Reagan is one of our heroes. Not a cult figure hero, a substantive hero. Where are the heroes today? Well, how many hundreds of thousands of them are in Iraq, and what the hell is said about them by the leftists and by the Democratic Party, by John Murtha, by Dick Durbin, by John Kerry? You name it! They are murderers! They are rapists! They are thugs! You think this stuff doesn’t resonate all over the country? And look at the leftists on college campuses, high school campuses and wherever else you find idle time. They hate the US military! They have been taught and brainwashed to hate the US Military, which is protecting their silly right to say these stupid things. They have an official home: the Democrat Party. They have an official house organ: the New York Times, and the rest of the Drive-By Media. And these are the people who are trying to tell you to stop doing bonfires, to have your car only idle for three minutes at a time.

We have to exalt our heroes. Get on our knees and pray and get up and go to work. Yell STOP! Keep the bonfire burning. Millions of disaffected republican conservatives and democrats will heed the call. We the People rule.

We need a goal today like they had a goal in the ’60s. We need a goal. Energy and independence, our own oil. Drill it! Drill it here and drill it now! Who’s going to stand in the way? The very people who don’t want our independence. The very people who want us to be dependent on other sources of oil. They say it’s because they’re afraid of pollution. How many oil wells are in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Gulf Coast? How many were damaged or ruined during Hurricane Katrina? How many oil spills were there? Hundreds were damaged or ruined and there were no oil spills! It’s a phony argument to say that oil wells offshore will end up polluting and destroying the country and the environment and the planet. These are people who, while taking away your freedom and liberty — at the same time, by definition because you and I are the ones who make the country work, our ambition, our industriousness and productivity. Take away our freedom to do that and guess what happens? The country’s productivity shrinks. That, they want. It’s not fear we’re so big.

Finally, We ARE the CHANGE!

RUSH: I’m going to read you a little passage here, ladies and gentlemen, a little quote from one of our heroes, Ronald Reagan, whom our own side is telling us to get over. He said: “We should always remember that our strength still lies in our faith in the good sense of the American people. And that the climate in Washington is still opposed to those enduring values, those ‘permanent things’ that we’ve always believed in. … But Washington is a place of fads and one-week stories. It’s also a company town, and the company’s name is government, big government. … In the discussion of federal spending, the time has come to put to rest the sob sister attempts to portray our desire to get government spending under control as a hard-hearted attack on the poor people of America.”

To this day, we have a federal budget over $3 trillion. Any mention of cutting it is still said to be aimed at the poor, minorities and women, hardest-hit. We don’t change anything in Washington unless a Reagan comes along. Obama isn’t going to change anything. Obama is going to do what leftists and liberals have done for eons, and that’s to try to grow the government to as large as it can, raise taxes on as many people as possible, and eliminate as much personal freedom and liberty as he can. There’s nothing new about Obama. Reagan was change.

Read all of The America Thinker article and, if you have the required subscription, read all of Rush’s long classic monologue he gave us today.

Then, read Mary Grabar’s Obama’s Presidency: Victory in the Culture Wars
and Clay Jenkinson’s From Milton to Media: Information Flow in a Free Society as Redstate’s own pilgrim has given former Democrat gamecock a homework assignment to outline how We the People can be the Reagan change to save out country from the liberal dark age abyss.

A daunting chore hath the persistent pilgrim cuss bade! But given the daunting task of crowing at ever changing times of sunrises, GC is up to the roost!

As usual, more later…

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Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns

The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report

Race 4 2008

“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson

EDIT: I’m on the Drudge Report! I’m in the bottom left-hand corner in the picture at the very top!

This morning, I embarked on a fun little journey to see Hillary Clinton’s concession speech with another incoming American University freshman (who took some wonderful photos, which will be uploaded shortly). I’ll spare you the details and get to the interesting stuff:

* I spoke to the press about Hillary. A reporter for a station I wasn’t able to identify was interviewing two weepy women, claiming that Clinton had been “robbed” of the nomination and that the Clintons were — she wasn’t kidding — “decent” people. When they finished, I stopped the reporter and camera crew and asked for an interview, since I had something to remark upon about the delegate allocation process. I said that, as a Republican, I gained surprising newfound respect for Hillary Clinton during the campaign and that it probably bothers the Clinton supporters most that the person that she lost to wasn’t some elder statesman with an extensive resume, but a neophyte pol that has only managed to pass a single bill since he’s arrived in the Senate — oh, but he can give a good speech; Yes, He Can! I used the disparity between the Nebraska caucus and non-binding primary (the latter of which more than twice as many votes were cast and Obama won by a 32-percent-smaller margin) and asked why, exactly, the former was used to allocate delegates: how on Earth is that fair? Especially coming from the party that, in 2000, was hellbent on counting every last vote because the popular will was what really counted — oh, no, but now, Rules Is Rules! I was asked why I was interested in seeing Hillary if I was a Republican, and I remarked that I held a degree of respect for her and that the Democratic race fascinated me.

* Fox News captured me on camera while Hillary was shaking peoples’ hands. I got to shake hands with Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea Clinton. How did I get so close? Not because I was one of the first in line, but…because my friend and I entered through the VIP entrance!

Of course, we weren’t VIPs. When we entered the building, we saw a large, closed-in rectangular area where people were filing in from the opposite side. We wandered around with a couple of ladies trying to figure out how to get in, but to no avail. We asked a staffer how one could obtain access to the area, and she explained that staffers, delegates, and elected officials were to stand there. I persisted and asked if there was any way to get in there, and she told me — hush-hush, of course — how to get there. Security, she explained, didn’t check credentials.

Indeed they didn’t. We were granted access without a problem. We filed into the rectangular area, took a spot in the front (this is about 10:20, now), and waited. And then we realized — hey! Let’s try to get on TV by going to the backdrop. But then we ran into that staffer, who said that “since she got us the hook-up, we can’t be wandering around” — and yes, that means that we can’t walk all the way back to the backdrop — we weren’t supposed to be there. Fair game, I said. Since we were in the second or third row, I thought, that was fine.

So we waited. And waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. After about 90 minutes went by, Terry McAuliffe started making the rounds, eliciting cheers from the Clintonites surrounding us (all of whom were 20-30 years older than we were; nobody seemed suspicious, for some reason).

After over 2 1/2 hours of standing (and amusing texts with my mom), Hillary finally appeared, to seemingly endless applause from the audience, which surely numbered in the range of thousands. There were scattered pissed-off looks in the crowd as Hillary enthusiastically supported Obama, but overall, even the more ardent anti-Obama Hillbots that I’d talked to went along with Hillary and cheered at the prospect of voting for Obama. After the speech ended, the Clintons circled the area and shook hands with the people up front — which I was one of, of course. The press swarmed the area and definitely took some photographs in my direction, so I’ll be checking the Sunday papers tomorrow…

The moral of today’s story is: those who ask, receive! Press interviews and VIP access, baby. Overall