It's no secret that I have little respect for the leadership of the GOP. The party leaders are all country club Republicans, inside-the-beltway types who simply don't care what the rank-and-file members think.
This is one way they are just like Democrats: they've been telling us for several years, "Don't think; you'll strain something. Just shut up and vote." Then they're baffled that they lose elections.
Problem is, the American people are a lot smarter than the Ivy League inside-the-beltway types think they are. We know how many beads make five; we can actually retain information for more than a few minutes at a time and several of us actually pay attention to the crap the politicians in D.C. try to pull, thinking we're not watching too closely and that we can be fooled with fancy talk.
I frequently say, of islamic terrorists, that they mistake forbearance for weakness. In the case of the GOP, they mistake forbearance for apathy: "No one screamed too loudly about those huge education funding increases that Bush signed, so we can go ahead and spend more money!" At the time that abomination happened, people were more worried about war in Iraq and Afghanistan than domestic policy; 9/11 had happened a scant handful of years earlier and there was still a palpable sense of danger that there could be another major terror attack on US soil. We had other things to worry about.
But the people who pay the most rapt attention to politics were the ones the GOP needed to pay the most attention to...and the GOP flatly ignored them and their concerns. And support declined, until the Democrats seized control of Congress in the 2006 elections.
The GOP's response was to nominate one of the squishiest, most moderate Republicans they could find: John McCain. McCain's sop to the conservative wing of the party was to select Sarah Palin as his running mate, someone whose politics orbit somewhere near Reagan's. It was exactly the opposite of the 1980 convention, where right-winger Reagan picked George H.W. Bush, whose politics were precisely in line with the country club Republicans, in order to get the squishies' votes.
McCain's campaign: one would have more success sinking a battleship with a butterknife. His campaign was pathetic, particularly the way he tried to run against Obama by not running against him. Only a US Senator could possibly think that it made any sense at all to ignore his opponent's weaknesses. Sure, it made McCain look a little noble; it also made sure he remained a Senator.
Meanwhile, the entire thing catapulted Sarah Palin into national prominence; she turned out to be someone who could galvanize the base pretty effectively. The Democrats and their water carriers collectively shit themselves in abject terror because they recognized what Sarah Palin--with the full backing of the GOP--could mean for them.
The GOP leadership, though, wanted nothing to do with Sarah Palin--not on a national level--because after all she didn't go to any of the right schools and she's not in the country club.
After 18 months of Obamanomics and the Democrat Regime's heavy-handed gonvernance, the people are fed up with the out-of-control spending and the hard-left politics and the rank stupidity of liberalism; they're angry at the crappy economy and they know how it happened despite the Regime's best attempts at spinning it. The people want hard-line conservatives, because they know that hard-line conservatives deal in reality and facts, not wishful thinking.
The American people know:
* You can't spend more money than you earn...and other things besides.
* High taxes reduce economic activity
* Federal regulations are far too onerous
* Congress always exempts itself (and government) from the laws the rest of us have to obey
* ObamaCare is socialized medicine, and it will not work
* Government is too big
Historically, the hard-right-wing of the GOP--where Reagan and Palin come from--has been the source for all the people who knew how to fix the problems facing the nation. (Really fix, I mean, not just emplace Yet Another Federal Bureaucracy dedicated to perpetuating the solution in order to employ an ever-increasing number of government bureaucrats.) Having seen what a hard-left Democrat President with supermajorities in both houses of Congress can do, people are starting to realize that "gridlock" is not the dirty word the press would have us believe it is.
So the GOP voters--given a choice between conservatives and the country club--are choosing the conservatives, because they know which wing of the party is interested in cutting taxes and spending and making some sense out of a government which has grown far beyond its britches.
And the GOP leadership can't stand it. Because, after all, those voters didn't go to the right schools and they're not part of the elite inside-the-beltway clique. How dare they?
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In that vein, then, here's some cowboy common sense for the political class. (That cowboy should learn how to use commas, though. I'm just sayin'.)
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You know that pesky little "First Amendment" thing? Seems that Andover Township, Ohio, doesn't understand what it means.
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Clinton lost control of Congress to the GOP in 1994 because Newt Gingrich came up with a plan to nationalize Congressional elections, by showing the American people what their local elections meant in the grand scheme of things.
Here's the headline: "Bill Clinton: New-look GOP makes Bush look liberal".
Guess what? Bush is a liberal! He's a Democrat Lite, squishy country club Republican! He always has been; and his father is even worse than he is.
He's not "liberal" in the sense that Barack Hussein "DA PRICK" Obama is liberal, but believe me, he's liberal.
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Ann Coulter demonstrates how thoroughly the Left has lost its shit over Sarah Palin.
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Muzzling scientists keeps them from doing science, dumbasses.
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Solar minimum continues?
Over at Spaceweather.com one can find this information in the sidebar:
Spotless DaysAlthough we've had 1/6th of the "spotless days" this year that we had last year, the sunspot counts could not be called "high". I think the height of the pile was when there were five sunspot groups visible; right now there's one.
Current Stretch: 0 days
2010 total: 41 days (16%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 809 days
Typical Solar Min: 486 days
The sun's magnetic field continues to be weak--the weakest we've ever seen it, since we could even measure the thing--and the other solar trends point to a general decline in solar output that might last a good long time. (Decades. If not longer.)
The comments at that link are full of AGW nonsense, of course, including effluent from one tower of intellect who thinks that another Maunder Minimum can't possibly offset "global warming" due to CO2. *sigh*
Of course, if you think 3% of 0.78% of the atmosphere is causing runaway global warming, you're pretty much immune to anything remotely connected to "science", anyway. Real science, I mean, the stuff where the laws of thermodynamics apply and 2+2=4, not 8 or 16 or 25,000,000.
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I ended up flopping last night around 9-ish, and I slept fitfully, but well enough. I had to get up around 1 AM for food, but otherwise I slept.
Now my arms hurt. That's to be expected; I ran them right to the limit yesterday. I think I spent as much time resting as I did working--I'd work until I couldn't lift my arms, and I'd take a break; then go right back in.
A 5-lb hand sledge gets impossibly heavy when you're working in that mode. Jesus. When it started feeling as if it were neutronium-plated I could no longer effectively control where it went, so I had to stop and rest.
On the plus side, the muscle tone in my arms is gonna rock in a week or so. On the minus side, it hurts a bit right now, to the point that I'm not planning to do anything more strenuous than anime or WoW today.
Tomorrow I may try putting the wiper motor into the Jeep. The trailer hitch will wait at least until next week, 'cause it's going to be days before I can do something that strenuous again.
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Bad news department: Tuesday (before going to the boneyard for the first time) I had a look at the cam position sensor on the Escort, and there's no sign of an oil leak anywhere near it, so I just left it alone. Another beautiful theory, shot to shit.
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Tuesday I also had a look at the Jeep's front axle, and discovered that it's not the type which is disengaged in 2WD mode by a vacuum motor. Therefore, the problem with the dash light must be with a switch at the transfer case.
That's also going to have to wait. I'm tired, dang it.
