Sarah Palin is a Benedict Arnold

Some Republicans won't like what I say here but it needs to be said.

The full title of Daily News headline should have been, "I'm with stupid because I'm stupid."

It's official, Palin has endorsed Trump. She's thrown the entire Conservative movement and the Tea Party under the bus.

Palin as it turns out is a fraud, her ego is writing checks it can't cash and whatever she's done in the past to help Conservatives is completely undermined by this one incredibly unwise endorsement.

There is no real home for people that call themselves Conservatives today as it turns out, not in the Republican Party and now certainly not in the Tea Party.

I'm trying to remember the last time something made me this angry politically. Every day a Conservative could have a meltdown by picking up the newspaper or watching the main stream media but this?

Love me or hate me but this is a complete betrayal, Palin is a Benedict Arnold.

In the primary season Conservatives, if you truly call yourself a Conservative should vote that way. In the general it's a different story. If Trump wins the nominee I will hold my nose and vote for him because he'll be the lesser of 2 evils but I don't trust him anymore than Hillary or Sanders. Trump is not a Conservative anymore than McCain or Romney was.

It's incredibly frustrating that in this election cycle we had the best field of Republican candidates maybe ever and Trump is the choice? Really?

Granted many of them are flawed on certain issues and don't tow the line on government spending and immigration but almost all of them would be a better choice than Trump.

Cruz, Santorum, Carson, Jindal, Rubio, Fiorina, Kasich and Christie in that order all would be acceptable and good Republican Presidents even with their flaws.

Pataki, Huckabee and Paul would be on the bottom of my list with Graham being dead last.

I think the only way I would vote for Trump was if Graham were the only other GOP candidate running in the primary.

So Trump has blown the whole thing up and now Palin has steamrolled Conservatives by endorsing him.

I hope and I pray that voters ignore the Trump sideshow, the polls and vote their conscience in the primaries. You may not like Cruz for whatever reason but there's no denying he is the best Conservative running.

Patriot Act and BO gotta GO!!

Below is the link to this letter which was edited and published in The Daily Astorian on June 21, 2013.
 

Overreaching Powers

The Patriot Act reality.

I was a defender of the Patriot Act in general principle after 9/11 when it was proposed because my understanding was it was only going to be used to hunt down known or suspected terrorists. In the last several days after learning about the massive size and scope of the law I have to admit now it was a big mistake giving the government these kinds of overreaching powers. Knowing what we all know now the law has to be drastically altered or better yet abolished.

When Barack Obama says,” trust the government” I just can’t believe that gathering phone records of millions of innocent Americans is a very” trusting act” nor is it really keeping us any safer from terrorism.

As we’ve seen any number of times in his administration abuse of power is just his normal MO or "Chicago style politics.” Fast and Furious, the IRS targeting Conservatives, the IRS spending $4.1 million on what was basically a lavish vacation, the DOJ secretly subpoenaing the private phonerecords of AP reporters, the Benghazi cover up, the recent graft grab by EPA employees, the billions of taxpayers’ dollars blown on alternative energy companies gone bankrupt, the failed GM and Chrysler bailouts, the massive Obamacare boondoggle that is basically an enormous tax that 75% of the people polled said they didn’t want and still don’t want and now this incredible phone records story.

If anyone really believes that you can “trust” the government to use this information for security and terrorism prevention only look no farther than how the IRS was basically used as a political tool to deny groups on the right their freedom of political expression. By the way, this is the same IRS that is suppose to enforce and collect on the new Obamacare laws next year and we can “trust” them to enforce the law equally?

Do you honestly believe the phone records of people who are politically on the right wouldn’t be tempting information used by power hungry liberal bureaucrats that may find a way to use it against them?

This phone records story was a tipping point, yesterday I called all of the Oregon US Congressional Representatives and demanded that impeachment hearings begin for Obama, enough is enough. I urge others to do likewise because the Obama loving lapdog mainstream media isn’t going to go to bat for freedom or fairness.

Maybe now NSA’s Prism program will check my phone records and put me on a terrorist watch list. Maybe the IRS will audit me because I’m speaking out against the most corrupt President and his no less guilty group of minions in the executive branch, that have ever cursed our country. Bring it on, I'm right here!

In Washington DC Nothing Changes

I'm so disgusted with the Republican Party today over the debt ceiling deal. I feel this was maybe the last chance I could stand with them on what should been a paradigm shift in how government does business. Instead they blew it and sadly what I see happening now is that the party will likely split in two because these entrenched RINO's are no different than the Democrats. They didn't listen to the voters in 2010 when they swept the House.

John Boehner and Mitch McConnell had control over the narrative and sold out, rolled over and negated the momentum that should have been theirs with the majority in the House. If they get reelected to their leadership positions in 2012 I'm done with the party. I've always considered myself first and foremost a Conservative and not a Republican. But if the split occurs and it's officially called the Tea Party that will be the group I'll form an alliance with. There must be no other way to gain any ground than split the party and join people who align with most of the principles I believe in. The party of Lincoln, Goldwater and Reagan is nearly dead in the water and is nothing but a hollowed out Keynesian Neo-Con shell of its former self.

Now Barack Obama will get to claim a victory (even though it wasn't) and use this wasted moment by the leaders of the GOP to get reelected. They had him on the ropes and could have knocked him out but he's come back by winning the fight with a half-assed tie. The beltway bureaucrats call that a "compromise" by the way. It's not a tie for us Conservatives; instead in this case it's a catastrophic loss for the people who voted in 2010 and the future of the country. Nothing was gained; the same problems will loom larger but just a year down the road. Incomprehensible debt, a bad economy, unemployment, bad energy policy, bad foreign policy, bad fed policy, bad taxation policy (and still higher taxes to come), Obamacare looming, Social Security and Medicare billions in the hole, EPA gone wild, over regulation and the list goes on. Nothing changed it's just more of the same.

The main stream liberal media won't see it that way of course, they'll consider this a mandate of great resolve for Obama and continue to pitch him as the glorious leader who saved us all from default, misery and complete collapse of the nation. The reality is even without their help some won't need to be convinced anyway because they blindly believe in his cult of personality. If only they could see how his vision of a "Social Utopia" has been a miserable failure but they cannot. They still believe big government has the answer to everything and can "fix" things.

In truth the government should be a nation of laws not of men, not of men who temporally hold office and make us suffer as a consequence because of their lack of vision or courage to do what they know is the just and right thing. The massive size and scope of the federal government is taking more and more of our money (private property), and freedoms away and giving to these power hungry politicians who think they know better than we do how to take care of ourselves.

This is an ideological civil war that is being fought today and the far left is still holding the field. I just wonder how long it will remain civil. I wonder what will happen if the people we elect continue to ignore ours wishes?

They and the media ignored the 500,000 9/12 Tea Party Protest on the DC mall a few years ago who peaceful protested against spending, high taxes and Obamacare and still didn't listen. It makes you wonder when the civility will be tossed out the window and instead a group of 500,000 or a million converge on Washington only this time armed with guns. This may sound extreme but if the voices of the majority of the people continue to be ignored it's not an impossible scenario.

Thankfully I have a Higher Power in my life and I'll continue to believe in prayer and that God will intervene at the right moment as he always does. Ultimately he always has the final say and control over such things not this gutless group of bureaucrats.

I'm hoping that I can take a mental break from this madness and rejoin it when the Presidential Primary season begins. I'm going on vacation starting Aug. 5 and won't go back to work until Aug 16. It's time for some fun and relaxing days with family and friends. I'm so due, so due.

Arson Anyone?

Arson Anyone?

Animal Liberation Front and extreme Tea Partiers have similar delusions “The Animal Liberation Front and kookier elements of the Tea Party movement have much in common. In the first place, neither allows the facts to get in the way of their bizarre alternative realities.
 
At least the Tea Party has not stooped to firebombing barns and forklifts. Its incendiary devices are of a rhetorical nature, often consisting of thinly veiled, racially motivated attacks on immigrants and President Obama.”
 
Apparently graduating from the same fact-checking school attended by Tea Partiers who continue claiming Obama isn't a U.S. citizen, Animal Liberation last week torched a barn and equipment in Svensen months after mink-raising operations ceased there. Activists previously twice released mink at the farm. Mink-rearing operations ended in December after the Ylipelto family concluded that it wasn't worth the hassle and worry to continue producing the animals.
 
You can waste a lot of time psychoanalyzing the individuals who gravitate to fringe groups. They are a stew of persecution complexes and obsessions, overstated with self-importance and addiction to the excitement and attention that come with extremism.
 
From the standpoint of preserving a basically healthy society, our best response is to maintain a steadfast grasp on reality. To label episodes like the Svensen arson "domestic terrorism" is to grant the perpetrators far more importance and credibility than they deserve.
 
Reality is that raising mink for their pelts is no more criminal than raising cows for cheeseburgers. If someone sincerely believes in mink rights, committing arson against someone who has already left the business is 100 percent counterproductive. This was stupid anarchy committed by narcissistic dolts.
 
It is also reality that many perfectly rational people have misgivings about raising furry little predators for no reason other than eventually skinning them for conspicuous consumption. At the same time, when you live in a place with severe winter ­- such as Russia or the northern latitudes or East Coast cities - you understand the functionality of fur in a coat or hat.
 
America provides many mechanisms for political and social change. “The Tea Party fears progress on goals like universal health care, while Animal Liberation demands immediate parity between animal and human rights.”
 
Meanwhile, all we in the middle should hold them accountable and make our own decisions.

Written by Steve Forrester PUBLISHER of The Daily Astorian

MY REACTION AND PHONE CALL TO FORRESTER ABOUT THE OP-ED 

In his op-ed Forrester compares the likes of the Animal Liberation Front who recently torched some personal property of a “former” Mink rearing operator to that of the “kooky “elements in the Tea Party.

In his partisan smear Forrester claims in essence that the Tea Parties are no better than these left wing nuts who torched a man’s personal property because in so many words they’re racists, disagree with the whole fantastic idea of Obamacare and lastly that Tea Partiers don’t believe that Obama is a U.S. Citizen.

This is the worst kind of extremist divisive journalism to publish and does nothing but demonize and marginalize a group of people whose main political objective is to have the state and federal governments abide by the US Constitution and the belief that smaller government is better for America than massive centralized government.

I was so angered by this ridiculous comparison I made a personal phone call to the Astorian and believe it or not Forrester took my call.

I immediately asked Forrester why he could make such an outrageous comparison. I asked him if he had ever heard of a single violent episode during a Tea Party demonstration anywhere in the nation or did he believe the TP’s in Astoria were capable of violence.

His answer: He didn’t answer why he made the comparison nor did he back away from it or apologize for it. He said he hadn’t heard of any violence by TP’s in Astoria but said it “could” happen back East.

I asked him if he had actually attended the Tea Party event that was held in Astoria to see who these people were and why they attended.

His answer: No, but he did know some of members like the Gannaway’s who own a jewelry store in Warrenton, OR.

I asked him why he would claim that all TP’s are Birther’s when only 1/10 of 1% of the group may actually believe that.

His answer: He didn’t answer.

I asked him why does he publish only op-eds from the New York Times when most of the people of Astoria are blue collar folks who could not identify with the Times opinions even if they were Democrats. I also said that over half of the people in Astoria strongly disagree and object to the writings of Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, Bob Herbert and especially the phony David Brooks who claims to be a Conservative but is far from it.

His answer: He said he pays the NYT a yearly fee for columns and that’s why he publishes them. He didn’t acknowledge nor answer that over half of the people in Astoria may disagree with the politics of the writers from the NYT.

I asked him why he didn’t publish op-eds from the other side since there are many articulate Conservative columnists all over the country who write insightful pieces.

His answer: I have to pay for columns and I like the NYT so that’s why I don’t publish other columns because they have to be paid for. He did say he “might” start publishing George Will’s column “someday.” He also claimed that he reads the Wall Street Journal which may be true but doesn’t agree enough with their views to buy any of their columns and publish them.

The conversation came to an end and it was my impression that although he was being friendly with me on the phone he had no intention of making a public apology for the Tea Party comments in his op-ed. I'm convince that as long as he has a voice in the media Forrester will continue to be a very polarizing and divisive left wing extremist making every political situation far worse with his words.