|
The Republican Party has an opportunity this Thursday to
stand up and clean up some of the corruption that currently permeates the
Georgia state government. This Thursday,
December 17th, the Republican House Caucus will vote on the next
Speaker of the House, Speaker Pro Tem, and Majority Whip. Many names have been floated around, but if
the Republican Party wants to truly make a change and bring integrity back to
the State House, they need to vote for representatives that have had nothing to
do with the former leadership. For
Speaker, there are a few names that have surfaced that have not been part of
the former leadership. My two top
choices would be Bill Hembree and Bartow County's own Barry Loudermilk. Of course, my personal favorite would be
Barry Loudermilk for obvious reasons, but the main thing is to make a true
change and to distance ourselves from the former leadership.
What we should expect from our leadership is a commitment to
performing the proper and limited duties of the government. In other words, they should actually follow
the Georgia and United States Constitutions.
This includes stopping any bill that contradicts our state and federal
constitutions. During these hard
economic times, we also need leaders who will commit to lower taxes and less
government. These two principles have
been key to the Republican platform and now is the time to stand strong behind
these principles. Although our federal
government is going the opposite direction, Georgia can lead the way by
lowering our taxes here in Georgia and cut spending by eliminating many of our
government programs, giving us smaller government.
If any Republican isn't willing to stand firm on these
principles, they have no business calling themselves a Republican and definitely
should not be in a leadership position in the Republican Party or the Georgia
State House. If you want true change in
Georgia politics, you need to contact your state representative today and tell
everyone you know to do the same, because Thursday afternoon might be too late.
|
|
No monthly meetings in November or December due to the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays
When:
Saturday, January 23, 2009 @ 9:00 AM
Where: Slope's BBQ, 1131 North Tennessee St., Cartersville, GA 30120
Speaker:
Insurance Commissioner & Gubernatorial
Candidate John Oxendine
Future
Meetings:
(Guest Speaker is Gubernatorial Candidate Ray McBerry) |
Our 2009 Sponsors
State Senator Bill and Susan Heath
Former Rep. Jeff and Kim Lewis
State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine
John and Terry Bangert
Rep. Paul and Marijon Battles
Wanda Cagle-Gray
Susan Crockett
Ted and Gail Henry
John & Kerry Howard
Douglas and Joan Jones
Rep. Barry & Desiree Loudermilk
Become A 2009 Sponsor TODAY! |
|
Become a Bartow GOP Member 
If you have not joined the Bartow County Republican Party, please take the time to do so now. Click the button below to join at the $35 Family level, or you may print a PDF membership form and send it in by clicking here. All membership dues will help in electing Republicans in 2010 and informing voters of how their elected officials are representing them. Join today and be a part of the Bartow County Republican Party.
You may join at the $35 Family level now by clicking on the PayPal button or visit BartowGOP.com to become a sponsor or join for two years.
|
|
State & Local 
The recent ethics problems plaguing the current Republican leadership in the state has been widely publicized by the (gleeful?) media. From the resignation of former House Speaker Glen Richardson (after revelations that he had an affair with a lobbyist seeking legislative favor for the utility company that she worked for) as well as other indiscretions and ethical lapses, the time has come to clean our house.
Republicans in the legislature may just be starting to get it. It is early, but there are signs that the Republican caucus realizes the damage that is being done by these and other scandals and may take steps to tighten ethics rules and get better control over the influence of lobbyists.
While this is potentially a good start, an even better solution is to reduce the size and scope of government to its Constitutionally enumerated powers, which by default would reduce the power and influence of the central government and therefore the breeding ground of corruptive influences that currently permeates our government at all levels.
As Mike mentioned in his Chairman's Notes, and as I mentioned to my new patriot friends at a Christmas Party last Saturday, this will only happen when we support good men and women at the local, county and state level so that when our Republican elected officials go astray and refuse to correct their errors, we will have a bench of strong conservatives. That way we can run good conservatives in the primaries so that we are not forced to vote for a Republican because they are less dreadful than the Democrat, but because they are excellent candidates and we are excited about them.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk is a dark horse for state speaker, but would be an excellent choice, as he is a principled legislator and a very decent man that has a track record of voting against bills that are outside the bounds of the Constitution...even when those bills are proposed by his own party. If we fail to energetically support men like Barry and like Tom Graves and Bill Heath and others that understand the foundational principles that made our country great, then quite frankly, we deserve the government that we get. |
 |
|
|
|
Greetings!
Ah December, my favorite time of year. The season in which we celebrate the birth of the savior of the world...what? No, not Brack Obama. The season...WHAT?!...no, not Al Gore! I was talking about Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, whose teachings were the foundation for our law and Constitution. (Sorry, I had a liberal reading over my shoulder while I was typing). Anyway, where was I? Well, speaking of Barack Obama and Al Gore, both of them were at the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen recently, proclaiming the immediate need to battle the menace of global warming. At the summit, Obama promised that the United States would reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 83% below 2005 levels by the year 2050. Since the population growth estimates for the United States predict a 2050 population of 420 million, with the corresponding growth in the need for energy of these people, I'd say Obama had better be the savior if he plans on pulling off that little miracle.
The claim of a need for this kind of miracle suffered a severe setback recently, when a hacker released 62MB of e-mail data from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) which casts serious doubt on the claims of the global warming alarmists. The CRU is the institution that has been responsible for providing the main source data and climate modeling for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is turn is the authority used by the U.N. and world governments to cripple western economies and extort massive transfers of wealth from the western economies to Third World kleptocracies.
Yet now it seems that the whole premise for this drastic action is on very shaky ground, to say the least. Among the e-mails released by the hacker was one from P.D. Jones, the CRU chief, to Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes (famous for the the "Hockey Stick Theory" of global temperature rise) in which he stated "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline". In other words, he blatantly admits that he is falsifying data to hide the fact that the global temperature is in decline despite all of their brilliant theories!
Responses from top Democrat leaders has been about what you would expect. Obama dismisses criticism and holds to his agenda, WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says that this changes nothing because their is still a consensus among scientists that global warming is man-made ("I'm sorry, Mister Columbus...while we find it mildly interesting that you sailed in one direction and did not fall off the edge of the earth, the consensus among His Majesty's advisors is that the world is indeed flat. Now, if you would like to revise your claims then you should know that you will be eligible for government grants to study giant sea monsters that eat ships."). Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) takes it a step further and demands that the hacker be prosecuted and jailed.
God works in mysterious ways, and wouldn't it be delicious indeed if the whole scam of anthroprogenic (man-made) global warming were brought to its knees because some guy hacked into their e-mails? Obama had previously taken a "wait-and-see" approach to the cap-and-trade bill, but now he is pushing hard to get it passed and America committed to the Copenhagen treaty before the revelations are widely known (what, you thought the MSM was going to cover this in headline news?).
We still have a fight on our hands as I will detail further below. However, despite the fact that the poitical and economic climate (no pun intended...well, maybe a little one) currently looks very bleak, our Founding Fathers constructed our system of government knowing that wicked men would seek power for their own benefit, and built it to withstand their machinations. The fight is just getting good, and I hope that you will join me in getting actively involved in restoring our government to what the Founding Fathers intended.
We must work to remove from office those Democrats who have supported this president's extra-constitutional agenda, and replace them with strong Republicans. More importantly though, we need to make sure that those Republicans that we elect understand that we expect them to exercise only those powers enumerated in the Constitution; no more, no less. We expect them, once in power, to work tirelessly to reduce the size and scope of government. Because the fact is that if we elect more John McCains, Mitch McConnells, Lindsey Grahams and the like, then we have not reversed the weakening of our rights, but only reduced the speed a little.
We are blessed to live in the greatest country in the history of mankind, and while the government envisioned by the Founding Fathers is under attack, the fight is not lost. We just need an educated and motivated minority. As Samuel Adams once noted, "It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." God bless this nation, forgive us our failures and help us to remember Him and His Son, Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas! |
|
Even before the hacked CRU e-mails put an embarrassing dent in the claims of the global warming alarmists and their prophet, the Al-Goracle, Obama and his legislative henchman Harry Reid were having trouble crafting a climate change/cap-and-tax bill that would garner the necessary 60 votes for passage in the Senate. Pelosi was having a little more luck strong-arming House Democrats, but it was clear that this was something that many Democrat legislators, especially the so-called Blue Dogs, were having a hard time stomaching.
Much like the health care "reform" bill, cap and trade loses popularity the more people learn about it, and that unpopularity in on the increase with the revelation of the hacked e-mails which give more proof that the whole global warming reduction scheme is an outright fraud.
Democrat leadership is getting nervous as they see their chances slipping away to pass a bill. Don't get me wrong; they are still going to fight hard, but they are hindered by the fact that Americans who believe that man is causing global warming, or even that global warming is still occuring, have dropped by huge margins.They are starting to use every tool at their disposal to accomplish their agenda.
Obama has been leaning heavily on his legislative leaders to get a bill passed, and last week he basically threatened the Congress with enacting policy unilaterally through the Executive Branch if they fail to do so through the Legislative.
In an announcement from EPA Chief Lisa Jackson, which received press coverage in starkly inverse proportion to the impact it will have on each American, Jackson said that the agency will "cement 2009's place in history" as the point when the U.S. began "seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform" ("seizing"...an interesting choice of words). Basically, Obama through Jackson is using a recent Supreme Court ruling that carbon dioxide is a dangerous gas that can be regulated by the government, to basically tell Congress to pass the cap-and-tax bill or he will enact something far worse through the EPA.
As I noted in a previous newsletter, liberals and Democrats have an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is. Since carbon dioxide is a byproduct of human respiration (which trees thrive on by the way...I thought liberals loved trees), and since carbon dioxide (which makes up 0.0384% of the earth's atmosphere) is a dangerous gas, then liberals and Democrats should make a committment today to quit exhaling in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Just think...the discontinued exhalations of Obama, Biden, Kerry, Reid and Pelosi alone should be enough to drop the global temperature a degree or two. So come on liberals...will you prove your committment to the rest of us? |
|
Despite growing disatisfaction with the Congress and administration in their attempt to take over health care, Nancy Pelosi is still threatening her wavering members of the House if they don't vote for the bill, and Harry Reid is using every permutation he can think of to find a way to reach 60 votes on a final conference bill.
On November 21, the Senate passed a 2074 page, $2.5 trillion dollar health care bill. The 10-year bill includes $493.3 billion in tax increases, $464.6 billion in cuts to MediCare (and therefore services to seniors), and will impose $28 billion in new taxes on employers (read: small businesses) who do not offer insurance coverage for thir employees. It also includes dozens of unfunded mandates which will force billions of dollars of expenditures on the states.
The Senate rejected an amendment by Republicans (42-58) to restore the cuts to MediCare, which also included a Sense of the Senate resolution that would direct that any funds recovered by the savings that Democrats claim will be gereated by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, would be used to strengthen MediCare and not to fund a new federal health care entitlement. Of course that begs the question of, if there are hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in the system currently, then 1) why have we not eliminated it before, and 2) why should we believe that the same government that allowed all of this waste, fraud and abuse will suddenly become a model of efficiency and oversight? The thought is ludicrous!
As they say on the game shows..."But wait, there's more!" The Senate also rejected an amendment that would require health insurers to give the recommendations of doctors priority over the decisions of bureaucrats (please note the recent government recommendation that mammograms not be started until women are age 50, as opposed to the previous 40...oh, that will save the government money? Why, we never even thought of that!).
Not all amendments failed. The Democrats passed an amendment, 61-39 (who was the Republican vote?), that would allow a government task force, The Preventative Services Task Force, made up of bureaucrats, to basically dictate medical decisions. A Republican amendment to remove that provision failed, as did an amendment that would have prevented government from using comparative effectiveness research to deny certain types of medical care based on demographic statistics. The amendment also becomes a back-door method for allowing federally-funded abortions under the guise of "preventative care". Well, Obama did say that he would not want his daughters "burdened" with a child just because they made a bad decision. Yes, Mr. President, it is much better to teach your daughters that infanticide is a reasonable remedy for the result of a night of hard partying...because abortion is really just aspirin for the womb, right? Just ridding the body of an unwanted problem.
|
|
The Economy, Taxes and Deficits
President Obama has enacted policies that have led to double digit unemployment, record deficits, a devaluation of the dollar, and a weakening of America's economic power relative to other countries. He is the reincarnation of Jimmy Carter, and we are paying the price.
Seeing the damage his policies have done in less than a year, what recourse does Obama take? Well, that would be to double down. Like a drunken gambler, Barry O. just doesn't know when to stop. His recent jobs summit was a laughable failure (you know it was bad when even the MSM was dismissing it). Recently, Obama proclaimed that we have to "spend our way out of this recession" and insisted that a minimum of $150 billion in new government spending was necessary to stimulate job growth! Will he ever learn?
Of course, everybody knows that this is not Obama's fault; it is a mess he inherited from Bush. And two years from now when the economy is stagnant and more jobs have been lost, the Democrats will still find a way to blame it on Bush.
Obama wants to increase spending even more, and tries to assuage our fears by telling us he will also enact capital gains tax cuts for small business. Of course, most probably do not realize that the majority of small business owners, like myself, file their taxes on their personal income tax returns and few ever see capital gains, so this is a lot of bluster with no real positive effect.
Of course, with the millions of jobs that Obama has claimed to have already created (in government) or saved (in government), I'm sure the economy will pick up any minute now...except for the fact that the administration has had to repeatedly retract or reduce these claims after it was discovered that pay raises for government employees were counted as jobs saved, and many organizations were reporting more jobs created/saved than there were actual employees, or jobs created where the "job" was a one-time work assignment that lasted less than a week. See attached for a detailed listing of the discovery of bogus job reports across the country. |
|
Informational Miscellany
If you would like more details on the Climategate scandal, you can read this excellent article in the American Thinker that details the fraud, or you can read a more summarized (and entertaining) account by Ann Coulter.
More liberal hypocrisy...Sarah Palin opposes abortion and the left and feminists froth at the mouth with outrage...yet not a word of protest about Burqa Barbie. The burqa is the required traditional dress for Muslim women, and currently in many Middle Eastern countries Muslim men are throwing acid in the faces of women and school girls for the crime of appearing in public without a burqa. Good job liberals! Way to show your bravery! And I guess you consider female genital mutilation to be an elective cosmetic procedure. | |
|
...and Justice For All?
...not for three Navy SEALs who are being court martialed for allegedly punching the stomach and busting the lip of Ahmed Hashim Abed, one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq. Abed is believed to be responsible for the abduction, torture, and mutilation of four Blackwater security guards, after which the bodies were hung from a bridge in Fallujah.
The fact that these men are being prosecuted instead of being welcomed as heroes tells us all we need to know about the current administration. |
|
National Security and Defense
A little over a week ago, on December 7th, we remembered the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that sank many American ships and killed thousands of servicemen and women. In response to this atrocity, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took America to war against the Japanese and the rest of the Axis powers. Over the next four years he would send hundreds of thousands of our young men to fight and die on the beaches of Normandy, the fields of Berlin and the rest of Europe, Asia and islands of the sea. The war saw the beginning of the end when U.S. bombers dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the process killing not only Japanese soldiers, but hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. FDR saw this as the only way to break the will of the Japanese and finally end the war, and with it the death of our boys.
Contrast that 58 years later as the U.S. is engaged in another global war against an implacable enemy that seeks to destroy freedom and subjugate the people to their will. Today we face an enemy with the terrorist soldiers of radical Islam, who also seek to subjugate or destroy us. We also have a Democrat president prosecuting the war. The comparison ends there.
While FDR was willing to do what it took to end the war, preserve American security and save American lives, Obama seems to lack the fortitude to win the war. End the war? Yes. Win the war? Not so much.
Recently Obama announced that he would be sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. This was 25% less than his commander had requested, and had stated emphatically was needed to keep from losing the war within one year. Obama took 100 days to respond to a critical request, failed to give what was requested, and on top of it all, in the same speech that he announced he would send the troops he also telegraphed to our enemies that he would bring them back home in a mere 18 months. So now the terrorists know that all they have to do is sit back, wait out the Americans, and then take over the country and again return it to a terrorist training camp and refuge as soon as we leave. President Obama's actions are unconscionable.
This is even worse that the weak-kneed, tepid reponse of Jimmy Carter to attacks on Americans. This is not an example of leadership, but of political calculation. Obama sees his poll numbers steadily plummeting, knows that the majority of Americans want us to defeat the terrorists, but also knows that his appeasement-minded, leftist radical base wants us to end the war now regardless of the consequences. There will be a hard price to pay for this, and the worst is yet to come. Obama is reminding us once again why over the last half century the American people have decided that Democrats can not be trusted to protect us from our enemies.
Please pray for our brave men and women who have to fight not only the terrorists, but have to do so crippled by the decisions of their incompetent Commander-in-Chief.
Breaking News! - Today the Obama administration announced that the federal government will be acquiring the Thompson Correctional Facility in rural Illinois and will be sending the remaining terrorist detainees there for housing. Obama touts the jobs that will be created, as well as having found a way to keep his promise to close Guantanamo Bay Naval Prison within one year (although he still will not meet that timetable). So now we are bringing terrorists onto U.S. soil, where we are giving them Constitutional rights and trying them in civil courts.
Here is my question...how long after the detainees get to Illinois will it be before terrorists take over a Chicago mall and threaten to kill hundreds of innocent American men, women and children unless the terrorists are released? How many people will care about a few dozen new jobs when their friends and loved ones are slaughtered by Islamic radicals? I guess we'll know soon enough. |
|
The Culture of Corruption...it's the Democrats Turn!
Recently, in response to opposition to the health care "reform" bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "If you think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, 'Slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough.' "
I found this hilarious. Apparently Mr. Reid has forgotten that it is the Republican Party that was founded for the express purpose of ending slavery. On the other hand, it is the Democrat Party that is home to opponents of civil rights for blacks such as Bull Connor and George Wallace, not to mention Ku Klux Klan Kleagle and Grand Cyclops Robert Byrd, who happens to be the longest serving Democrat Senator and a powerful leader of its membership. Byrd gained some notoriety for personally filibustering the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for an astonishing 14 straight hours! We know that liberals are long-winded but that is impressive. On a similar note, it was also Democrats that voted lock-step against giving women the right to vote.
So to Senator Reid I say, that though the Republican Party and its members are not without flaws, at least we use our white sheets to cover our beds, not as racist ritual regalia. Try cracking a history book before you open your mouth next time, Harry...and a glance at the Constitution wouldn't hurt either.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In other news (the kind that never seems to quite make it to CNN, NBD, ABC, CBS, NYT, MSNBC, et al), it seems there are some Democrats in a little trouble themselves.
|
|
A Little Good News and Comic Relief
There is enough going on right now to make you want to cry. Have a laugh instead...
Great news! Obama has now reached a record low in the polls, not only for him, but for any president EVER! Obama has a -18 in the Approval Index Rating, which measures the gap between the Strongly Approve (24%) and Strongly Disapprove (42%) margins. Hopefully this will cripple his ability to further destroy our Constitution.
|
|
Reading for Extra Credit
Keeping Up With the World of Politics, Government, and the Social Issues of the Day
Congratulations to the tiny nation of Honduras, who stayed true to their constitution despite severe pressure from the rest of the world, including thuggish behavior by the Obama administration, and refused to allow former President Zelaya to return to power after he attempted to alter the constitution to allow himself to rule for life. Honduras recently elected a new president despite these threats.
With the media giving a pass to Obama at every turn, Politico's Josh Gerstein asks an excellent question... what if Bush had done that?
| |
|
May God Bless You,
Louis DeBroux, Vice Chair of Communications
Bartow County Republican Party
Michael W. Huneke II, Chairman
Bartow County Republican Party |
|
|
