That’s Right Nate

Over this past weekend, we have seen the people of Iran get beaten, shot, and stabbed as they fought to make their voices heard against a totalitarian state.  Tomorrow, there will be another protest, where brave men and women put themselves in harm’s way to demand that their votes be counted.  Less reported, is an equally heroic march in the United States.  The protester’s goal is nothing less than the firing of David Letterman.

Sure, they don’t have the media spotlight that the Iranians do, but the heroic selflessness of the New York protesters is an inspiration to all who believe in democracy.   These brave men and women will be ready to confront riot police and interns  outside of the Ed Sullivan Theater at 4;30 Eastern Time, an hour before Letterman goes on live.  While Ahmadinejad supposedly committed voter fraud, Mister Letterman most assuredly made an off color joke about Sarah Palin’s daughter.   At least the voters defrauded in Iran were adults.   I guess Bristol Palin is too, but she’s only 18.

The Letterman rally is the work of Michael Patrick Leahy best known for threatening to sue bloggers and tweaters.  However, standing up to David Letterman and the forces of CBS is going to be even more dangerous.   Stay safe Michael.  Our prayers go with you in your fight for freedom.

Not that you could find this out on American television.

Iranians take to the street in protest

As a Republican, I have a natural affinity for conservatives in all elections.   I was thrilled by the results in Europe last week, but this week it was tough to root for Ahmadinejad despite his conservative props.   Many Americans know he’s talked about destroying Israel, but few know that he has an admirable record in crushing feminists, labor unions, and the gay agenda in Iran.

I’m not surprised to see Iran’s regime having trouble keeping control of their people.   After all, when Reagan called the Soviets an “evil empire” and told Gorbachev, “tear down this wall” look at the effect he had on the Soviet Union.   Of course, it didn’t actually collapse until his successor was in the White House.   I’m sure having George Bush call the Iranians part of “the axis of evil” and warn them “you’re either with us or against us” had a similar effect on Iran.  Still, I think all Republicans naturally pull for the riot police when they see them fighting with rabble in the streets.

I believe that much of this is Obama’s fault.   For years, Ahmadinejad had been able to keep a tight grip on Iran by claiming the United States was the great Satan.   During his recent speech in Cairo, Obama disarmed much of the Iranian populace with his diplomatic posture.    Ajmadinejad no longer had a way to deflect criticism of his regime and the economy by calling on the country to unite against America.   Yet another classic example of Obama’s foreign policy naievte.

In the pictures I’ve seen from Iran, I have to admit that it is really hard to tell who are the protesters and who are the Muslims, but it is clear that many in Iran are outraged at the election results.  I don’t think any of us in this country can know what its like to cast a vote and have your candidate declared winner only to have victory snatched in the middle of the night, by a less than fair process and a government with a vested interest in the outcome of the election.

It seems to me that with Iran in chaos and many of the young people in the country crying out for freedom, that this is the perfect time to bomb them and take out their nuclear capabilities once and for all.   With their attention focused totally inward, they will not be able to stop us and there is a very good chance that we will be seen as liberators.   of course Obama would never do that.  He’ll probably just keep being diplomatic.  Isn’t that what got us in this fix in the first place?

Being recognized as one of the more important voices of the GOP has its advantages.  One of them is that they include me whenever they want to do a survey of the party’s movers and shakers.  Yesterday, I got this survey and I not only filled it out immediately, I sent in $100 so I can see the results in real time.   I found myself disagreeing with Obama’s position a lot which let’s me know I’m in the right party for me.   See how you do:

A few months ago the Department of Homeland Security published a hateful and erroneous report claiming that there was rising danger from right wing extremists.   Now, because we have had a white supremacist shoot two girls in Massachusetts, a conservative in Pittsburgh killing cops, a doctor murdered, and now this attack on the Holocaust Museum some people are starting to believe this report.   However, this is an overly simplistic reading of the situation.

Was James Von Brunn (The Holocaust Museum shooter) even a conservative? Andrew Breitbart of The Drudge Report and the Big Hollywood website doesn’t think so.  He said, “This guy was after neo cons like me who are conservative…This guy’s a multiculturalist just like the black studies and lesbian studies majors on college campuses.”  This is an interesting theory.  I am not sure if Von Brunn was part of a growing tide of neo-nazi on college campuses to study blacks and lesbians, but it is certainly possible.   While a note was found in Von Brunn’s car saying “You want my weapons this is how you’ll get them” and “Obama is a puppet of the Jews”, Breitbart points out he was a 9/11 truther who believed that 9/11 was a government conspiracy just like some people on the extreme left so you can hardly call him a conservative.

What set him off? Conservative babe Debbie Schlussel has a theory.   She points out that “Mr. Von Brunn has been on this planet for 89 years, and he didn’t feel comfortable shooting up a Holocaust museum until now–this new era of “tolerance,” in which we must tolerate the most extremist Muslim behaviors and sentiments.”  True, he felt comfortable arming himself to the teeth and storming the Federal Reserve in the 1981 in an attempt to kidnap the members.  However, the point remains.   Nazis didn’t start targeting Jews until after Muslims did.

What bothers me is that Rush Limbaugh saw this happening.     He warned us only a few short days ago to forget about the Holocaust because it happened a long time ago.  If they hadn’t built a museum to study it, this crime never would have happened.  If only we had heeded his wise warning.

Kathleen Shaidle points out that Von Brunn was hardly a mainstream Republican, “For example, von Brunn frequented Ron Paul discussion forums, where reasoned discourse is thin on the ground. It’s true that Mr. Paul was allowed a podium at the most recent GOP Presidential debate; however, let’s recall that Al Sharpton was granted a similar platform at the Democratic counterpart, within living memory.” If we accept that Von Brunn is a Republican, than we must also assume that all Al Sharpton followers who go on criminal rampages are mainstream Democrats.

Of course as Michelle Malkin points out, maybe Von Brunn wasn’t really a conservative or a liberal.   Maybe he was an equal opportunity hater.   Maybe the problem in all these cases isn’t political belief, but that whack jobs have access to guns very readily in this society.   Maybe an 89 year old who couldn’t even open a museum door without help would have been far less dangerous with a knife.  Perhaps, we can agree as a civilized society that speech, even occassional hate speech, is just talk and that readily available guns are the root cause?   Sorry, but I just don’t buy it.   The second amendment says we have the right to bear arms.

Call me a feminist, but life isn’t easy for young women nowadays, especially courageous conservative and outspoken women like Carrie Prejean and Bristol Palin.   Both of them were just callously attacked, by rich and powerful men.   That’s why I’m dedicating today’s blog is being dedicated to their courageous struggles.

Being an unwed teenage mother is very difficult.  Add to it the responsibilities of being an advocate for sexual abstinence and you can see that Bristol  Palin has her work cut out for her.   That’s why David Letterman’s joke about her being knocked up by Alex Rodriguez is not the least bit funny.    I’m not talking about the fact that Alex Rodriguez is Hispanic.  I have always believed that when a Mexican or other Latino makes over a certain amount of money, they’re really no different than European Spaniards.   Instead, it is because of the age difference.   Alex Rodriguez is nearly 30 years old.   Even Todd Palin wasn’t out of his teens when he married Sarah Palin.  It is offensive to believe Bristol would have anything to do with somebody nearly 30.  Furthermore, all the Palin kids practice abstinence and Bristol has probably gotten awfully good at it by now.

This also has to be a horrible time to be Miss California nowadays.  With the state’s economy in trouble, there are few grand openings calling for ribbon cutting.   Being singled out by the powerful homosexual agenda complicates things even further.   Let’s face it, when Carrie came out for opposite marriage, she was painting a big rainbow bulls eye on her back.  Now she is being fired as Miss California by Donald Trump after she didn’t fulfill the terms of her contract or tell the pageant people where she was or what she was doing.   There is of yet no word on whether or not she’ll have to return the implants, but you can be sure they’re going to want the tiara back.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from being subjected to chick flicts, its that women who are abused by men and left powerless, will do desperate things to try and reclaim their freedom.  This may mean seducing the pool boy or it may mean a cross country shooting spree.   We must not let these women feel that they are out of options.   I hope that Bristol will continue to be an effective campaigner for abstinence long after Alex Rodriguez has hung up his spikes.  Carrie Prejean is a natural as a Fox News anchor.   Let’s open up doors to these women because when they get angry enough they’ll be knocking them down.  In some ways, their issues crossover.  If gay people would just refrain from having sex, would gay marriage really be necessary?

One of the greatest things about this great country is our health care system.   When an American is sick, it only takes a quick phone call to bring the family physician over for a quick house call.  We don’t even have to pay for medical help because our employers pay the bill.  Medical decisions are made by ourselves and our kindly old family doctor without bureaucrats getting in the way.  My friends, the Obama administration threatens to destroy all of this all in favor of socialized medicine.

Now socialized sounds kind of like social–like an ice cream social.  Hmm, ice cream as medicine, what could be wrong with that?  Unfortunately, that is not what socialized medicine means at all.  Socialized medicine is when people are insured not by their friendly insurance agent, but by the federal government.   As has been pointed out by people like Bill O’Reilly and Newt Gingrich, socialized medicine will cost more, provide less benefits, and require long waits for even basic services.  Nobody in their right mind would ever prefer a socialized option over their current insurance company

Obama, however, is shrewd.   He’s not calling for us to go right into single payer socialized medicine.  Instead, he wants to have a public insurance option to compete with private companies.  This move is full of danger.  As Timothy Finnell pointed out in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, “The reality is that the interlude between adoption of the current Obama plan and socialized medicine would be short. The demise of the private insurance industry would be brutal. No amount of wishing or promising would thwart the inexorable shift from the free market to government-run medicine. The evidence is so convincing that many believe the current proposal is merely a ruse to create a foothold for a single-payer system, probably along the lines of the Canadian system.”

As people like Bill O’Reilly and Newt Gingrich have pointed out, there really is no way for a private company to compete with the federal government option.   The government’s insurance plan would provide more benefits for less money.  The Lewin Group issued a report stating that they would expect private insurance companies to lose up to 120 million customers to the public option if they competed with each other.  We must not allow Obama to weaken medical care in this country by changing it.   The federal government is too powerful and too ineffectual to be a fair competitor to private insurance companies.

[One of the great things about my blog is that it has enabled me to meet some of the real movers and shakers in the world of politics.   One of these men is occasional guest on this blog Congressman Jack Kimble.  He's here today, to tell you about one of the greatest threats to our nation today - liberal bias.]

My friends, I am writing today to warn you of the growing danger of left wing bias in the media. The Republican Party has been under siege for most of the past 100 years and liberal bias is nothing knew.   Even in the 1930s, the media tried to blame the FDR created Great Depression on Herbert Hoover and not on FDR’s massive social programs.   Today, the media seems all too willing to give Barrack Obama a free pass despite the two wars he has mismanaged in the Middle East, a terrible economy, too much reliance on foreign oil, and corruption in the Justice Department.

In an effort to combat this rampant corruption, Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), myself, and a dozen other GOP congressman have formed the Media Fairness Caucus.  Our mission is to point out left leaning news reports and strike a blow for the kind of fair and balanced news reporting that is currently only found on Fox Television and The National Review.  Sure the further eroding of the economy and the possibility of a terrorist attack or all out nuclear war in the Middle East is troubling, but not nearly so much as our nation’s media favoring the liberals.

I have devised a handy plan to help in the event that you encounter reporting that you believe has a liberal bias:

1. If you spot liberal bias in print or on the air do not attempt to argue with the media yourself.   This will be completely ineffective and will increase your exposure to the biased reporting.  Instead immediately leave the room.   Do not waste time closing the newspaper or changing the channel.   Simply get up and leave the room.

2. Immediately dial the congressional office of the Media Fairness Caucus representative closest to your present location.   Remain calm and answer any questions that the staffer needs to ascertain the nature of the bias.

3. If it is determined that you are in fact exposed to biased media, we will dispatch a trained staffer to go over approved talking points with you and to remove the offending media from your home or business.

4. A Media Fairness Caucus member will write an op-ed piece in an appropriate newspaper.

5. Rehears these steps with your family.   Through repeating this drill, it will soon become second nature to you.

Thank you for your time and support as we fight to keep the country free of this despicable media bias.   If you contact my office, I can get you a list of approved broadcasters who are 100% liberal bias free.

I was listening to Rush Limabugh the other day and he made a great point about Obama’s trip to Buchenwald in Germany–”Who cares”.   Let’s face it folks it’s been 60 years and it’s time to move on and thank our lucky stars that the wholesale slaughter of a people can never happen again.  Limbaugh rightfully took Obama to task for, “ripping  Germany to shreds over something they did 60 years ago.”

Sure the Holocaust was sad and all that, but it is the product of an earlier age over 60 years ago and the result is a whole lot of museums, memorials, and presentations.   Let’s face it, The Holocaust has become big business.  Of course Limbaugh did little to hide his contempt from those who continue to profit from the Holocaust saying “Of course Elie Weisel gets up there and does his thing but it’s 65 years here or close to it.”

When somebody who loves this country as much as Rush Limbaugh and somebody who hates this country as much as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually agree on something, its either got to have some merit or they both have to be completely irrational.  Do we really need to refight this battle when it has now been established by Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich that traditional racism is dead and now is the vestige of liberal reverse racists?  Let’s face it most of the Jews who died in the Holocaust would be dead by now anyway.  It is sad, but true.  Fortunately, Rush Limbaugh isn’t afraid to point this out.  Instead, as Republicans we need to let bygones be bygones and move on to an even more dangerous threat—liberal bias.

Last week,  Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) launched the Media Fairness Caucus, made up of about a dozen House Republicans, aiming to fight liberal media bias before the liberals can get to Fox News.  As Smith said, Let me just say — this is going to sound radical, I don’t mean for it to be radical — but to me, the greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is liberal media bias.”

This doesn’t sound radical to me at all.  Some of Smith’s complaints include attempts by the media to try and tie the Bush administration to the current Obama recession, being too pro immigrant, not calling Obama “liberal” often enough, and not grilling the First Lady with hard hitting questions.   This evil that was brought down upon the Republican Party this past election party is something that we can never forget.   As Republicans we must cry out when we see such liberal bias–Never again!

One of the really great things about being a successful business owner is that it brings me opportunities. This past Friday evening I was lucky enough to be invited to Sawyer Community College to receive an honorary associate’s degree in business management. Ordinarily, the honorary degree recipients make a sizable donation to the school, but instead I decided to gift them with a graduation address. I thought I’d share with you my comments to the graduating class of 2009.

President Ebsen, Dean Weaver, Dean Blake, students, faculty, and parents. I stand before you a member of the class of 2009. In the dozen years since Sawyer Community College first began awarding degrees their list of distinguished alumni stands as a testament to the learning that exists in these hallowed halls. Even more important are the less famous alumni for whom a Sawyer Community College education has been their ticket out of their parent’s basement.

Graduation speakers remind me of PBS. When its time for PBS to do a pledge drive, all the liberal talking heads go away and the A-listers like Dr. Wayne Dyer, Yani, and Peter, Paul, and Mommy Too come out. When its time for the colleges to start asking their students for alumni contributions they call on people like me to speak instead of their liberal professors.

As I look at the class of 2009, I see a group of young people filled with hope and it is these young people I wish to address now. You undoubtedly feel that you know a thing or two about life, but you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have voted Democrat in the last election. If you did, your generation would have produced listenable pop music. As an older and hopefully wiser person, I’d like to give you the benefit of my experience. Eat red meat. If it was good enough for America’s greatest generation, its good enough for you. If I could give one piece of advice its enjoy red meat.

Enjoy having your parents pay for things. You’ve probably got 5 more years tops, But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back and remember how nice it was not to have to worry about the price of pizza or beer. Of course, if you’ve got some weight to lose skip the pizza. Nobody likes fat chicks.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that you’ll be making more money soon and you’ll be able to pay off all those credit cards.

The real troubles in your life are only going to be made worse by big government.

Do one thing every day that makes you feel important and don’t worry about your short temper or the little people who work for you.

Don’t sing. Very few of you can carry a tune

Don’t be that asshole that pulls into the exact change lane on the toll way and then digs around in your car’s seat cushions to see if you have exact change. Know before hand. Counting to 40 cents isn’t that hard.

Don’t give homeless people money. They just spend it on booze.

Don’t waste your time being jealous of the people ahead of you. Instead crush the people who are behind you. It’ll cheer you up.

Don’t pay attention to idle flattery, but if somebody tells you to lose weight, it couldn’t hurt to take off a few pounds. Nobody likes fat chicks.

If you have a shirt you like that has a stain on it, keep it. You can always pretend that you just stained it and didn’t have a chance to change.

Play golf.

Don’t worry if you don’t like your job. Nobody likes their job. The most important thing is a good paycheck. A new sports car will cheer you up.

Stay on good terms with your extended family. As medicine advances, they’ll still be your best source for organ transplants.

Girls, maybe you’ll meet the love of your life and marry. If you don’t try looking for a successful older man who owns his own business and can provide you with a comfortable life.

Enjoy your body. Flaunt it, but if you need to lose a little weight try to cover it up. Don’t forget loose fitting fabrics aren’t really fooling anybody, but they’re better than tight clothing if you don’t have the body for them.

Guys, don’t dance. It makes you look effeminate. Mapquest and GPS are for cowards. Do not read news magazines. Fox News should cover all you need to know.

Get to know your parents and befriend them. When your siblings move out of state or marry a Catholic, it’ll just mean more inheritance for you.

Understand that friends come and go, but employees will stick with you as long as you can pay them. Money trumps friendship.

Don’t bother traveling. Everything you need is in your own hometown. New ideas are overrated while old ideas are comfortable like your favorite pair of jeans. If you take too many risks, you are sure to get hurt.

Fight the Capital Gains Tax and Inheritance Tax.

Don’t expect the government to help you.

Don’t waste too much time on your hair. Guys it looks best cropped short. Girls keep your hair long and full until you’re about 50 and you start looking creepy.

Follow the advice of people like me who have your best interests at heart. Politicians will say anything to get elected. I call it like I see it.

Above all, trust me on the red meat.

*Much of the inspiration for this speech comes from Mary Schmich’s essay “Always Wear Sunscreen” from 1997