On May 21st 2012, the Bayshore Teaparty issued a press release endorsing Ron Paul for President of the United States of America, and with great pleasure no less! They state in their endorsement that they are tired of the GOP ramming candidates down their throats. The Bayshore Teaparty, headed by its founder, Barbara Gonzalez, has made this decision based on principal missing the true importance of this 2012 election, which is to defeat Obama at all cost! What’s more, she talks about Mitt Romney’s left-leaning policies, never mentioning any of Ron Paul’s dangerous agenda!
According to Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, Paul is not a teaparty candidate. Limbaugh stated on his radio broadcast, “Paul blames America for 9/11. This is NOT what the teaparty thinks.” Paul is an Isolationist! How will he protect us from enemies foreign and domestic if he admits that America should stay out of foreign policy? Remember America is the Infidel, and we are on every terrorist group “hit list”. What will Paul do if Iran is allowed to complete its mission to develop a nuclear arsenal and threatens the destruction of the United States and Israel with it? How can America trust such a kook?
In an article written by journalist Ben Adler dated December 22, 2011, Adler states, “Paul is not a true libertarian: he takes socially conservative stances like opposing immigration and reproductive freedom. He is a non-interventionist.” How then can the BSTP with all good conscience endorse such a man? The answer is clear…it’s the principal of the thing! This is not about teaching lessons: this is the most important election of our time! BSTP talks the talk about restoring America to her former glory. Does this mean taking a step backwards and ignoring what happened on the day when we got hit by terrorists on American soil? Is this no longer an issue? How will this resonate with families who lost loved-ones on that dark day? Perhaps the Bayshore Teaparty is being influenced by the Obama administration that suggests terrorism is no longer a threat to us.
My husband and I were once proud members of the Bayshore Teaparty. We shared common principles and beliefs, but no longer. I wrote to Barbara Gonzalez expressing my concerns over the Ron Paul endorsement, Gonzalez accused me of being influence by the media. Well to sum it all up, the Bayshore Teaparty has gone rogue with this perilous endorsement! Perhaps the teaparty should stand by its original policy and stay away from endorsing candidates; in all probability…they would be better off for it.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker caused a stir on NBC’s Meet The Press yesterday morning by defending private equity firms, Mitt Romney’s role at Bain Capital and calling the negative ads coming from both Romney and Obama supporters “nauseating.”
Booker, who made headlines last month when he ran into a burning house to save the lives of his neighbors, was calling for a higher level of political discourse, urging both campaigns to lift the country by focusing on the big issues rather than getting bogged down in the small minded attacks.
During his Meet The Press appearance, Booker said he was on the phone with the White House often and that he was a surrogate for the President’s campaign.
There must of been some high level phone calls to the Mayor after the NBC appearance. Probably from Vice President Joe Biden’s gaffe handlers. A few hours after Bookers remarks threatened politics are we know it, the Mayor took to YouTube to restore normalcy.
The heat coming from Washington must of been hotter than the fire the Mayor ran into. It became a threat to the fire in his belly.
Thanks to the left stream media America is learning that while a student at an elite Michigan prep school, Mitt Romney was a prankster who sometimes went too far. At least two of his pranks were cruel bullying incidents. He lead a blind teacher to walk into a closed door and he traumatised an apparently gay classmate, who later came out, by forcefully cutting off his bleached blond hair, according to a poorly sourced exposé in the Washington Post.
Thanks to the right stream media, sourced in part by Barack Obama himself, we are learning, four years late, that while in high school the President was a heavy drinker, pot and cocaine user, who hung out with communist radicals. He bullied a “plump, dark” Black girl.
We’re likely to be in for a lot more of these types of stories over the next six months. We’ll also be in for disingenuous complaining from both the right and left about each others tactics. All of this is a positive development for America.
Especially at the presidential level, it is the duty of political opponents to do thorough opposition research and to pitch what they find to the media. If the free media doesn’t run with the findings, it is the duty of political opponents to buy media to expose their opponent’s foibles. Then the free media will investigate, report and opine on the veractity of the charges. It is the duty of responsible journalists to verify or debunk opposition research pitched to them and the public and report accordingly.
The traditional media, which is leftist for the most part, took a break from its presidential vetting duty in 2008. Likewise, Barack Obama’s political opposition, the Clintons and John McCain, took a pass on vetting Obama. The Obama camp and the traditional leftist media brilliantly employed the race card to thwart Obama’s vetting.
Both Obama and Romney should be vetted, by each other’s campaign and by the media, over the next six months. It is not unprecedented for the media to vette an incumbent President. CBS’s Dan Rather famously got in wrong and lost his job over Memogate during George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign.
As we enter the vetting season, one of the side benefits will be that the biases of the vetters will be revealed to a skeptical public. As the Internet continues to transform how we get our information and plays a more significant role in political campaigns, the truth that there is no such thing as an unbiased media source will become more and more apparent.
“I voted for Obama in 2008, but I’m not going to vote for him this time.”
By Adam Geller
We’ve all heard someone utter this phrase, or something close to it by now. Whether we are in the business of politics, analyzing polls and focus groups, or having a more casual conversation about the political scene, this is a statement that seems to come up more often as we draw closer to Election Day 2012.
Now, to be fair, there are plenty of folks who are saying, “I voted for Obama in ’08, and I will vote for him again in ’12.” As long as we are being fair, let us also acknowledge the fact that we have yet to hear anyone state that they voted for McCain last time, but this time they will vote for Obama.
So, the pressing question is the extent to which previous Obama voters will, in fact change their mind. How many mind-changers are needed to make a difference, and swing the election away from Obama?
The answer is: not that many.
Rather than add to the body of analysis that already exists on a state-by-state basis, I want to simply concentrate on the popular vote. In sticking with an analysis of the popular vote, I make every assumption that much of the movement that I describe herein would take place in the battleground states with which we are all familiar.
Let’s start with a reasonable, conservative (small c) theory: let’s assume that no more than one-out-of-ten 2008 Obama voters actually do, in fact, change their minds and this time vote for the Republican. Now, some may say that the actual number may be higher than that, but for now, let’s stick with a smaller safer assumption. Let’s also assume, for now, that turnout matches 2008 turnout.
First, let’s go back and look at the actual popular vote results. Recall that in 2008, the vote tally was:
Michael Riley, a Baptist minister and member of The Asbury Park Press editorial board says “Jesus was a card-carrying socialist” in his Only Human column in today’s print edition. The column is not yet on the app’s web site.
Someone better inform Barack Obama who insists that he is a Christian, that he is not a socialist, and that he was born in Hawaii.
But Riley is not writing for Obama. He’s writing to Republicans:
“I hate to break it to the far-right wing in this country (or as it is more commonly called these days, the Republican Party), but Jesus was a car-carrying socialist. Or, he would have been, if cards had been invented, and if pockets to carry the card had been around and if the word socialism had made it into the language in the first century.
I have no doubt about it.”
I have doubts about what Riley understands about Jesus, government and freedom. That there will be a slew of cancelled subscriptions to The Press as a result of Riley’s column, I have no doubt.
The first thing that struck me about Riley’s column is that he is talking about Jesus in the past tense. Even a Jesuit trained lapsed Catholic like me believes in a Living God. Why is this Baptist minister telling The Press’s remaining readers that Jesus is dead? Didn’t we just celebrate His resurrection two weeks ago?
Riley paraphrases the Gospel of Luke and Karl Marx to make his case.
“One thing you lack,” Riley quotes Luke quoting Jesus talking to the rich, “go and sell all you possess and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”
“But Jesus was a conservative compared to those who followed him,” Riley continues in the past tense again, “In the book of Acts, we read, ‘All the believers were together and had everything in common, They sold property and possession to give to anyone who had need.’
No one claimed that any of their possession were their own; they shared everything they had.
That is right out of the Marxist playbook: ‘from each according to his ability to each according to his need.’ And woe to anyone who tried to wiggle out of the deal.”
Without getting all theological and politically scientific on Michael, the Nudnik of Neptune, let me just point out two key words from his paraphrase of Luke paraphrasing Jesus that hopefully will set him straight:
Sell and Give. Both involve a concept that is fundamental to Christianity and foreign to Marxism: Choice.
Never mind that Christians believe that God created Man (and Woman) and that Marxists believe than Man created God. Let’s look at selling and giving.
In order for Jesus’s followers to sell all of their possessions, they first had to have them. Hmmm, how would that happen in a Marxist socialist society?
In order for the rich to give to the poor, someone would have to buy those possessions. More than likely someone else who was rich.
While Riley starts his column with no doubt that the dead Jesus was a socialist, he seems to have some doubt as he concludes:
Obviously, human sin makes this kind of socialistic/communist economic system unworkable over the long haul and in large groups. But capitalism is a sinner’s banquet as well, full of abuse and greed and loopholes that turn into nooses for the poor.
The point here is that socialism is not necessarily a dirty word. It seems to be sort of what God was hoping for as a model for his people. So let’s not get all high and mighty about using it as an epithet.
How about we do get high and mighty about Liberty, Choice, Charity and Responsibility.
How about the preachers and ministers do their jobs and spread The Word and convert the sinners so that capitalism, the only system that has ever worked and creates genuine sharing and empowerment as opposed to the compelled sharing and mediocrity of Marxism, can work better for the rich and the poor.
Riley’s heart might be in the right place, but his head is a dark place.
Karin McQuillan, a retired psychotherapist and author who served in the Peace Corps in Senegal, writes at American Thinker that Hillary Rosen’s recent rant that Ann Romey never worked a day he her life is part of the Obama political strategy rooted in the politics of envy. Worse, she says the strategy is deeply rooted in Obama’s psyche as a result of his upbringing.
Closer to home, our friends at InTheLobby have a hilarious account of how Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni turned the table on U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg during the senator’s hearing this week over the fairness of toll increases and patronage at PA.
Turns out that Lautenberg as a former commissioner of the PA he had a free EZ pass for decades and didn’t pay tolls from 1978 through 2006 when the PA stopped issuing free EZ passes to cronies.
Regarding patronage, a former Lautenberg campaign staffer joined PA in 2002, and U.S. Senator Bob Menendez’s son is an intern at PA now.
West Virginia U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller came to Lautenberg’s defense. New Jersey Democrats have been silent, just as they were during Lautenberg’s dust up with State Senate President Steve Sweeney and George Norcross over the Rutgers-Rowan merger earlier this month.
