POW Radio: The Long Road Home

Click here to listen from 9-10PM tonight, or catch it on archives later.

I interview gun store owner Jim Snow about news of a disturbing memo from the government. Boozman enters the US Senate race. Tea Party speakers. This time I go off on President Obama for his continued support of the bailout. The threat of collective orthodoxy.

Picking Your Own Way to Heaven

Those who take offense at God for only honoring the one Way of salvation through faith (in Him, and not in any other) defend an absurd position, if one bothers to think it through. If God was somehow morally obligated to accept a second path, then why not a third, or a forth? The end of this absurdity is that God becomes obligated to accept any number of paths to salvation which man might dream up. This of course, reverses the role of God and Man. It takes us right back to original sin where we wanted to be "like God", indeed even be God's judge!

It can only end in two ways: God must either accept any person's standard of righteousness, in which case even Adolf Hitler would demand admittance to Heaven on the grounds that he was true to his beliefs. The other option, if one holds to a collective orthodoxy that is becoming so in vogue in these times of mental and moral confusion, is that God must admit to heaven anyone whose beliefs are approved by 51% of the vote of the mass of mankind.

In such an instance, modern politics has shown us that Hitler can still get into Heaven. He must simply form the right coalition as in "you ignore what you don't like about me and I will do the same for you" in order to cobble together those votes. Those who will be most likely to be left out of such a coalition will be Bible believing Christians and Jews, who would not be willing to compromise their faith. Christians who stand by the Gospel as the only way to Heaven, as Christ and the Apostles taught, would likely be among the only ones excluded from heaven under this perverse arrangement.

Unemployment Fund Insolvency

AW has warned you before, via Mark Martin's Off the Marble, about the indebtedness of our state unemployment fund. Is it good news or bad news that Arkansas is not the only state that has let things get this far out of hand?

Zero Hedge reports that "At this point there is no question that the vast majority of the hardest hit states now subsist exclusively due to the generosity of the Federal Government." They have borrowed many billions from the Federal government to pay out unemployment benefits.

I also like the colorful turn of phrase that the author uses to describe the situation when the Treasury can no longer find foreign buyers to finance this bailout of the states; "look for states to gradually reign in unemployment checks whether they like it or not, which would likely lead to some very interesting demonstrations of the broader population's lack of solidarity with Mr. Blankfein's $100 million, or whatever it may end up being, bonus number."

The intent of our state constitution is that our government should not be able to put us in debt without a vote of the people. So how did we wind up borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Federal government without a vote of the people to do so?

Our Archaic and Dishonest Highway District System

NOTE: Names of commissioners on the map don't necessarily mean they were serving during the period (97-07)in which the data for this report applies.
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State Representative Donna Hutchinson (R, Bella Vista) gave some infuriating information on the state's archaic and unfair state highway system. In my view, the system is holding the state back. It's unjust, and it's even counter productive. I'd like to share with you a few pointers from her presentation:

1. Above you see the lines of the 10 districts. Although it was not originally set up this way, each member of the highway commission represents two districts. The lines were laid out in 1935 when Arkansas had seven Congressmen (note the comment that disputes this point).

2. Since then, the population has changed, but the district lines have not. What this means is gross under-representation of some districts and the reverse in others. District six has almost five times the population of three.

3. The State Highway Commission gets 2/3rds of the state fuel tax for their use. They decide how to spend most of this money, which adds up to billions of dollars in the last decade.

4. There is a clear correlation between under-represented regions and underfunded regions. From 1997-2007 discretionary funds spend by the Highway Department ranged from $195 per household per year in district 3 to just $40.90 a year in district six and a pitiful $18.49 per household per year in district four. ****There is some dispute about who was over these districts during the time in question so I have withdrawn a sentence about it naming a name***** The weak numbers in 4 and 9 represent the Republican northwest part of the state being looted by the rest of the state which tends Democrat.

5. 80% of the most congested roads are in the districts with the least per household funding. Instead of giving more help to the areas with the worst roads, they actually siphon money out of those areas in order to spend it in districts that are already the best funded.

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In a personal note, I don't even think that the current Highway Commission system works well in the areas that are looting the northwest. When I lived in El Dorado almost everybody wanted a four lane to Little Rock. But the highway commissioner from our district was from Warren and what we got was a shiny new (and little used) road from El Dorado to Warren.

Dougherty on America's Impending Master Class Dictatorship

Kitco has a long but good read up. I only went there at first because I thought it was by the Mogambo Guru, who has a similar last name. Its not. That guy is funny when he talks about the impending collapse to due the greed and madness of our ruling class. This guy just lays it on the line.

A Little Graphic For The Faithful

How the GOP Base Feels

The socialist Daily Kos has a poll out on how self-identified Republicans feel. They were horrified at the results, even though real Americans would love it!

An example:

Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?

Yes 23
No 58
Not Sure 19

42 percent of Republicans aren't really patriotic. They pretend to love America only when they approve of the president. These traitors don't believe in democracy, in our nation's founding ideals, or in our flag. To them, those colors run. They are cowards.

Note, secession sentiment is MUCH stronger in the South than elsewhere -- 33 percent want out, compared to just 52 percent who want to stay. In the Northeast, "just" 10 percent want out, in the Midwest, its 18 percent, and in the West, it's 16 percent.

The Daily Kos did not have any results from people like me- independents because the GOP has gone too far left.

Polls: The Fix is In

It looks from here like Public Policy Polling is working for John Boozman in the U.S. Senate race. I say this on the basis of their recent poll results where they start by saying "John Boozman will enter the Arkansas Senate race this weekend as the frontrunner." They say this as if he had no primary opponents. Its true that he has a large lead over the unpopular Senator Blanche Lincoln (Sellout, AR), but one little problem. They did not poll Lincoln against any of her other Republican opponents! Or if they did, they dared not release the results.

************UPDATE*********UPDATE***********UPDATE
Looks like they DID poll Lincoln against "little-known State Senator Gilbert Baker, viewed as the GOP frontrunner before Boozman's entry, leads Lincoln by a 50-35 margin." That little snippet was in this more obscure PDF. The-name-they dare-not-mention (Holt Holt Holt Holt Holt) is who I considered the frontrunner, since the only poll which compared both Holt and Baker to Lincoln had Holt beating her by a wider margin.
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The failure of Public Policy Polling to compare Boozman-Lincoln with Holt-Lincoln makes the poll more valuable as a propaganda tool for John Boozman and the DC based GOP than it does anything else. All it tells us is what every other poll for the last four months has told us- about anyone can beat Blanche Lincoln. Even they give this away when they admit, "Boozman’s strong early standing probably has more to do with voters strongly disliking
Lincoln than necessarily liking him."

Then there is the issue of his high negatives-"Boozman is not all that well known- a 43% plurality of the state's voters have no opinion about him one way or the other..... Among those who do 32% view him favorably to 25% unfavorably."

That favorable to unfavorable ratio is significantly lower than that of any other Republican candidate in the race (I guess the people who DO know him know about his support of the Big Banker Bailouts). His favorable to unfavorable ratio is 1.28 while every other candidate on the Republican side has a favorable to unfavorable ratio higher than two. Jim Holt for example has a ratio of 2.71 while Gilbert Baker is at 2.2. Clearly, among people who know Boozman, there is a much higher percentage of people who view him unfavorably compared to his two main rivals. Boozman also ranked behind Holt in total name ID 54-62. Those figures are from two different polls, since PPP was pretending that there were no other Republicans in the race against Lincoln, still the gap is significant.

The Morning News had Mason-Dixon conduct a poll that actually included Jim Holt. This poll showed Holt had the widest margin of any of the other candidates against Lincoln. The poll had the race closer than the Rasmussen polls have had them, but Holt and Baker still came out ahead of Lincoln, Holt up by seven and Baker up by five. The lesser known candidates were a little behind Lincoln in this poll.

Even though the Morning News paid for the poll, they blew their coverage of it. The guy who made the graph reversed Holt's numbers so it looked like he was the worst candidate against Lincoln when in fact he was the strongest. Is the fix in? Is it a conspiracy or simple incompetence? Hey newspapers in this state, please do something to make us believe that you are playing it straight!

Then comes the new Rasmussen poll. For a long time the Holt camp complained that Rasmussen did not include Holt in their polls. Critics countered that Holt had not yet announced. So he announced. A new Rasmussen poll comes out. Holt is still not in the poll, but John Boozman, who has not yet announced, is in the poll. This one showed that Boozman's spread over Lincoln was no greater than Gilbert Baker's. That lends more credence to the idea that the PPP poll was skewed toward Boozman.

So am I crazy to say the fix is in or is it crazy to deny it? Time after time one thing after another keeps skewing coverage so that the citizens of this state are repeatedly denied access to this one critical piece of information: Jim Holt is currently the strongest candidate for U.S. Senate. You have to go to a blog like this one to actually be able to look at the links and put the facts together.

At least that Rasmussen poll compared Boozman to SOME other GOP contenders. And the results of the poll showed that, contrary to the PPP's contentions, that Gilbert Baker had just as big a spread against Lincoln as Boozeman did. Of course in the Mason-Dixon poll, the only one that dared mention the existence of Holt, Holt had a spread two points greater than Baker. So if Baker ties Boozman and Holt beats Baker then does that mean........

Why yes it does Virginia. But you have to go here to read it.

PS- Holt even out-raised "frontrunner" Boozman last quarter.

PSS- If you want to hear audio of your humble reporter "going off" on Boozman for his defense of his loathsome bailout vote then click here.

Patriots On Watch Net Radio- Tonight at 9 PM

Tonight I go off on Boozman for trying to defend his bailout vote. I also talk with Warren Phillips about NAIS.

Quarterly Fundraising Reports Coming In

Senate Candidates

G. Baker (295K)
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J. Holt (60K)
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Boozman (46K)
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Cox (31K)
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Coleman and Reynold's numbers are not available, but Coleman has warned supporters of a tough quarter and Reynolds has said goodbye to his staff. Hendren is rumored to be dropping out of the race and his consultants have moved on. The other candidates report less than $10,000 raised, and so don't appear on the graph above where each star represents ~$10,000 raised.

The 3rd district congressional race is just being re-made, but the 2nd district has numbers to report.

Griffin (261k)
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Wallace (37K)
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Meeks did not pass the 10K threshold.

In the newly developing first district race, Rick Crawford did decently with almost $60,000 raised. Expect new entrants to shake that one up.

AIG Bailout: How US Taxpayers Saved Europe's Banks

The full story here. Thanks Boozman, Lincoln and company.

Tough Recruiting Week

Your humble writer is in a bit of a blue funk this week. For one thing, this week is the decision point for college football recruiting. High school players across the country will sign letters of intent to play football at various universities. The Razorbacks are having just an awful time of it.

Their rivals are locking in one all-star recruit after another. Many SEC schools are signing classes of young football players that are ranked in the top ten nationally. The Razorbacks are running dead last in the SEC in recruiting this year. Even Vanderbilt is edging them out. That does not bode well for our grid iron fortunes over the next four or five years. We might get by with one weak class, but if we don’t do significantly better next year then we are in serious trouble down the road.

But that after all, is a game played with a ball. Politics has become a game played with the truth, and the consequences for not recruiting well are disastrous. It seems we have lots of candidates running for a couple of open seats, but quantity is not the same as quality. I question whether we the people are “recruiting well” in our efforts to get people of character and ability to seek out public office. And why should they? The system is such a mess, and the special interests are very well entrenched.

I can’t help but wonder if, for the Federal government at least, it is not too late for even good people to turn things around. And it’s not just me with the winter blues saying this. I heard House Minority Leader John Boehner just the other day say that “the federal government will not continue to exist” with spending at its current out-of-control rate.

Think about that. He literally said that the federal government of the Untied States will not exist anymore if it stays on its current path! And I see no indication that it will do anything but more of the same until the Chi-coms decide to quit loaning it the money that it uses to buy votes and pay off big donors. Maybe we better start thinking about how we could get on without them after they implode!

In related news, the courts have ruled that two provisions of the McCain-Feingold “campaign finance reform” law are unconstitutional. McCain-Feingold was definitely unconstitutional, so much so that apparently even a federal judge could see it.

The two main provisions the courts ruled unconstitutional were the ban against candidate criticism in the days leading up to an election, and a ban on corporate contributions.

It is the ban on criticizing politicians before elections that I objected to. In principle I support a ban on corporate contributions to political campaigns. Corporations are not real persons, and they don't have natural, that is God-given, rights the way actual persons have. In spite of this, the way things are done now such giant artificial persons have more access to our political system than real persons do. Many of these corporations are global, not simply American, entities. They have no special loyalty to this country, yet they have inordinate influence in the political process. Big corporations are driving much of the government spending that Boehner spoke of as such a dire threat.

Contributions to politicians and causes should come from real persons only, in my humble opinion. With a few historical exceptions like the British East India Company, giant corporations are a recent phenomenon. Can government by, of, and for, the people can survive this new era?