The Next Meeting of Texas County Republicans will be TUESDAY March 27 at the Lions’ Club on US63 north of Houston. The meeting starts at 7Pm with a pot luck supper at 6PM. The speaker will be…..

 

The Next Meeting of Republican Women will be at NOON SATURDAY, March 10 at El Imperial restaurant on Main Street in Cabool. The guest speaker will be State Representative Don Wells. Hostesses will be Bert Carter and Dixie Grosenbacher.

 

QUESTION?  Have you paid your 2007 dues as a member of the Texas County Republicans? Your participation helps. Write a check ($10 per person) to Texas County Republicans and mail it to Ray Smith, Treasurer, P.O. Box 126, Mountain Grove, MO 65711. Do you have raffle tickets and money? Please turn them into Ray Smith. AND he is accepting contributions to the Texas County Republican Scholarship Fund.

 

NOTICE: Those who want to automatically receive “The Commentary” by e-mail please send your e-mail address to Lee and Joyce Hutcheson at ljhutch@fidnet.com. IT’S FREE and will be in the same format as it is when mailed. For those wanting a printed copy in the mail, the subscription is $10.

 

Governor Blunt Called and asked if he could come and speak at the Texas County Lincoln Day dinner. As he has another event scheduled that day, (April 21)  tentative plans are for him to arrive at 3PM and be available to talk one on one with those who come at that time. The registration and silent auction will start at 4PM with dinner at 4:30 to be followed by a formal address by the governor and other elected officials.

 

Governor Blunt Led a Trade Mission to Mexico last month to strengthen relationships with Missouri’s second largest trading partner. During his visit he emphasized the importance of a Mexican Customs Trading Port Facility in Kansas City to Mexico’s new leaders including President Felipe Calderon. The port facility will be the first of its kind in the U.S. and will allow U.S. exported goods to be cleared through Kansas City instead of the U.S./Mexican border. Missouri exported $1.15 billion in products to Mexico in 2005. (A News Release by the Governor.)  Some are concerned the port could allow more aliens to enter the country illegally.

 

Governor Blunt is Encouraging the Legislature to pass an affordable health insurance plan to help the over 700,000 Missourians who are uninsured. State Representative Doug Ervin has introduced  House Bill 818 to allow the uninsured and all Missourians to pay insurance premiums with tax free dollars like big companies can now.  The bill also eases the administrative burden to small businesses who want to help employees pay for health care, plus allow insurance to be transferred from job to job as well as increase competition between insurance plans. This plan combined with MOHealthNet for low income and disabled Missourians will provide health coverage to more people than ever in the state’s history. (Gov. News Release)

 

Governor Blunt Seeks Majority for higher education package. He is stressing the importance of a bipartisan majority for the state’s comprehensive higher education legislation. Currently a majority of Republicans support the Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative which would provide $335 million for new state of the art learning centers for Missouri students. Without bipartisan support, the list for colleges and universities will likely change and some facilities may not achieve the plan’s full benefits.(Gov. News Release)

 

The Governor’s Budget keeps his commitment to education with $2.9 million in funding for 100 new technology classrooms in 100 schools. The program provides teachers with lessons on how to incorporate technology into instruction and learning. Today, the program serves more than 20,000 Missouri students in more than 500 schools. The governor is also recommending the expansion of after school programs to focus on math and science with a partnership between all sectors sand are a strong investment for businesses, schools and government. Over the past two years, the governor has invested $332 million new dollars in our K-12 schools. (Governor’s News Release)

 

After a year-long investigation of fraud and waste in the child care program, savings of $19.5 million were found to provide services for an additional 3,400 children at no cost to the taxpayer. (Governor’s News Release)

 

 

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. (Unk)

 

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There’s No Painless Way to Fix Social Security so let’s just ignore the problem. That seems to be the Democrats’ position. Kristina Rasmussen, in a recent column wrote that “Social Security took center stage last month with the inclusion of ‘personal retirement accounts’ in President Bush’s budget proposal. Following the delivery of the budget blueprint, Congressional Democrats announced they were no longer willing to discuss options. A bipartisan working group being shaped by the Administration to explore solutions to the looming entitlements all but fell apart. Of course, Social Security woes aren’t occurring in a vacuum. Medicare is already entering the realm of red ink in its Hospital Insurance Component and the whole system is projected to go belly-up within 11 years.” (businessmedia.org)

 

It Takes a Lot More Integrity, character and courage to be a conservative than it does a Liberal. That’s because at the most basic level, liberalism is little more than child-like emotionalism applied to adult issues. Going to war is mean, so we shouldn’t do it. That person is poor and it would be nice to give him money, so the government should do it. The only exception to this rule is for people who are not liberals. They are the racists, bigots, homophobes, Nazis, fascists etc. etc. This is not to say that conservatives never make emotion based arguments, or that emotion based arguments are always wrong. But when you try to deal with complex, real world issues with simplistic emotionalism designed to make the advocates feel good, it can and often has had disastrous results. Liberals never seem to learn from this. (John Hawkins, Townhall.com)

 

Columnist Lorie Byrd Says: If I thought the most important task the next president would face would be dealing with abortion policy or protecting second amendment rights, Rudy Giuliani as a candidate would not arouse my interest. But, when President Bush leaves office there will still be enough to do in Iraq that his successor will devote the majority of his or her time and attention to matters of foreign policy and national security. Even if Iraq were miraculously transformed to a model democracy there would still be challenges in Iran and North Korea and from terrorist groups to keep national security the first priority. (Townhall.com)

 

The Democrats Promised a New Direction: The stock market is at an all time high and America’s 401Ks are back. What does a new direction mean?.....Unemployment is at 25 years lows. What does a new direction mean?  Oil prices are plummeting. What is the new direction?..............Taxes are at 20 year lows. What is the new direction?........Federal revenues are at an all time high. A new direction means what?................The federal deficit is down almost 50%. A new direction means what?.........Not a single terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11/01. A new direction means what?.............Several major terrorist attacks have been thwarted by U.S. and British intelligence…..Do we really want a new direction? .If all this is true, then a new direction means that………The economy will go south, taxes will go up, employment will go down, terrorism will come in and health care will cost more while Social Security will cost more but pay less.

 

Can You Believe it? Thirty four U.S. Senators voted against making English the official language of the United States. All were Democrats except for Pete Domenici from New Mexico. (Buying Hispanic votes?)  BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. Forty nine U.S. Senators voted to give illegal aliens Social Security benefits. Thirty seven were Democrats plus Jim Jeffords (An Independent who votes with the Democrats) along with eleven Republicans: McCain (AZ), (Also buying Hispanic votes?) Stevens (AK), Martinez (FL), Brownback (KS), Hagel (NE), Lugar (IN), Dewine (OH), Voinovich OH), Specter (PA), Chafee (RI), Graham (SC).

 

I saw the good government could do, ……..and the limits of its ability. While in the Florida Legislature I was offered two semi-truck loads of potatoes from a farm share program. Being in government at the time, my first call was to the social services agency, whose personnel promptly told me that they had no use for several tons of spuds. Even one of the largest charitable organizations could not handle that quantity of food. It was my secretary, the wife of a Baptist minister, who in two days rounded up church volunteers to unload and distribute the abundance of food to the people who needed it on short notice. It was a powerful lesson on the limits of even the most benevolent government.  (A quotation by Adam Putnam, R-FL from page 146 of Why I am a Reagan Republican compiled by Michael Deaver.)

   

 

The trouble with being a good sport is that you have to lose to prove it.

 

Lynching of the President

An article by Ben Stein, January 25, 2007

 

So there I was, lying in my bed in Malibu with my dogs, watching Mr. Bush’s State of the Union Address. I thought it was darned good. Realistic, gracious, modest, sensible. Then, wham, as soon as the speech was over, ABC was bashing him, telling us how pathetic he was, how irrelevant he was, how weak he was.

 

Right after that Jim Webb gave a very short speech biting Bush’s head off…but not making any concrete proposals about anything. Then, tonight, the next night, I walked into the kitchen where my wife had left the radio going on NPR to amuse the cats. NPR was having a call-in show talking about the State of the Union. The first speaker I heard was country music legend, Merle Haggard, who said he had never seen things so bad in this country. Then a legion of anonymous caller chimed in with similar thoughts.

 

And it suddenly hit me. The media is staging a coup against Mr. Bush. They cannot impeach him because he hasn’t done anything illegal. But they can endlessly tell us what a loser he is and how out of touch he is (and I mean ENDLESSLY) and how he is just  a vestigial organ on the body politic right now.

 

The media is doing what it can to basically oust Mr. Bush while still leaving him alive and well in the White House. It’s sort of a neutron bomb the of media that seeks to kill him while leaving the White House standing (for their favorite unknown, Barack Obama to occupy)…Obama was raised a Muslim.

 

How dare NPR ask a country singer who hates Bush to spew venom at Bush? Merle Haggard is a truly great singer and musician, but he’s just one old guy. There are plenty of country singers who love Bush and would campaign for him right now. And in what sense is Mr. Haggard an expert on State of the Union?

 

The truth is that we are in a huge economic boom. We are coming off a mammoth real estate explosion that put most Americans in history in their own homes. We have totally full employment. After decades of stagnation, real wages are rising. Gasoline prices are up and down. The nation is wealthier than it ever has been (although it is unevenly distributed). Opportunities for subsidized education are better than they ever have been.

 

Most important of all, who would have ever been rash enough on September 12, 2001 to say there wouldn’t be even one major or minor successful terrorist incident against the U.S. homeland in over five years? Who would have though we would escape without more massive terror? But, we have, and it is a foolhardy person who would say that is an accident. Bush may not have done it by himself, but he had something to do with it.

 

True, we are mired in a war without end, costing us far too many great young and old Americans and too many limbs and wrecked families and vastly too much money. We all know we are getting soon. It was a huge mistake, but I’d like to see a President who did not make immense mistakes. Compared with Truman, and FDR, and Kennedy, Iraq is a mistake, but not worse then theirs.

 

True we have virtually no federal oversight of corporate looting and executive suite misconduct, but we didn’t have under Clinton either. The rich get away with murder. That’s what happens in the real world. Bush is to blame too, but all politicians cater to the rich, and Hillary will and Barack Obama will, too. It’s nauseating and I fight it constantly, but that’s life.

 

My point:  let’s be aware that Bush has presided over a lot of success in addition to substantial failure. My second point: no one elected the news media to anything. If we let them lynch the man we elected President we are throwing out the Constitution with the war in Iraq. In the studios and newsrooms, there is a lynch mob at work. Let’s see it for what it is. We have a man who has made mistakes in the Oval Office. He is the only President we have, and I trust him a lot more than I trust these unelected persons in the newsroom.

(Thanks to Dawn Smith for contributing this article)

 

A story oft repeated is soon taken for truth.

 

 

More Important than Running for President

The condensation of an article in Human Events by Newt Gingrich

 

For now, I’m not focused on November 4, 2008. I‘m focused on September 27, 2007.  That day, which is the 13^th anniversary of the Contract with America, the new organization I have founded American Solutions will do something more urgently needed than presidential posturing.

 

On September 27, American Solutions will reach out across the country to all 511,000-plus elected office holders in America, their staff and the citizens who are seeking to serve in these offices. Our goal is to create a wave of change that meets America’s challenges, seizes opportunities and builds a better future for all Americans.

 

The purpose of American Solutions is very simple, but very ambitious. We think it is important to break out of the political cycle we’re in, which consists of 30-second negative commercials, hostile e-mails, candidate cattle calls and canned debates. Instead, American Solutions will:

 

• Create better jobs with greater income so American can compete with the rise of China and India and win.
• Provide solutions to health care so that every American of every background can live the longest

possible life with the best quality care at the lowest cost.

• Provide solutions to our energy needs that are better for our economy, better for our environment and better for our national security.

 

I am optimistic about this project because three great breakthroughs are coming:

 

The first is in science and technology. Every 16 months, we double the amount of computer power you can buy with a dollar. That means in every decade the computer power that a dollar buys increases by a factor of 100. For example, at the Center for Health Transformation we’ve brought together computer companies, insurers and pharmaceutical companies to help drive the implementation of electronic prescription capability for doctors and hospitals on line, (by computer) ending the need for written paper prescriptions.

 

Second is the dramatic explosion in productivity that America has had in manufacturing and private sector services. Two examples of this are how the prices of television sets and cell phones have dropped while their quality has increased. The opportunity to bring these advances to government and public policy is enormous. American Solutions will exploit this opportunity.

 

Third, American Solutions will take advantage of a breakthrough that is really a rediscovery, namely our work ethic and incentives. Americans love incentives and hate coercion. Take one of our most serious national crises, the crisis in our public schools. The schools that are failing in this country do not focus on work ethic and don’t use incentives. Oprah Winfrey opened a school for girls in South Africa because she has given up on getting kids on the south side of Chicago to want to learn. America’s kids are paying the price. When Detroit public schools only graduate 21 percent of entering freshmen on time, it is cheating four out of five young people. Something has got to change.

 

On September 27 we will use the power of the Internet to start to make these solutions available to every candidate from both parties in every elected office in the country. The goals we have set for American Solutions are a lot more difficult and less conventional than running for president. But I believe that they are more important.

 

If we can move the entire system…if we can have school board members committed to incentives, hospital board members exploiting new technology and state legislators who understand how to bring market principles to public problems….this country can and will fix itself. (Continued on Page Five)

 

All things come to him who hustles while he waits. (Thomas Edison)

 

 

<>This is a level of change that cannot be created from the Oval Office. This level of change has to be brought about by people who care at the local level and want to do common sense, practical things to make life better for their communities. I hope you will join our effort at American Solutions where you can make a difference.

Who’s Worse Off? Iraq or California?

 

Nearly a year ago, Victor Davis Hansen published an editorial titled “Eye of the Beholder,” which really puts the mainstream media’s reporting on the level of disaster in Iraq in perspective.

 

War-torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California perhaps now has 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the latter said to be a paradise on Earth. But, how you envision either place to some degree depends on the eye of the beholder and is predicated on what the daily media appear to make of each.

 

As a fifth-generation Californian, I deeply love this state, but still imagine what reaction would be if the world awoke each morning to be told that once again there were six more murders, 27 rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies and 360 instances of assault in California – yesterday, today, tomorrow and every day. I wonder if the headlines would scream about “Nearly 200 poor Californians butchered again this month.”

 

How about a monthly media dose of “600 women raped in February alone?” Or try, “Over 600 violent robberies and assaults in March, with no end in sight!” Those do not even make up all the state’s yearly 200,000 violent acts that law enforcement knows about.

 

Iraq’s judicial system seems a mess. On the event of the war, Saddam let out 100,000 inmates from his vast prison archipelago. He himself still sits in the dock months after his trial began. (This was written before his execution.) But, imagine an Iraq with a penal system like California’s with 170,000 criminals – an inmate population larger than those of Germany, France, the Netherlands and Singapore combined.

 

Just to house such a shadow population costs California $7 Billion a year, or about the same price as keeping 40,000 army personnel per year in Iraq. What would be the image of the Golden State if we were reminded each morning, “Another $20 million dollars spent today to house our criminals”?

 

Some of California’s most recent prison scandals would be easy to sensationalize. “Guards watch as inmates are raped!” Or “Corrections officer accused of having sex with under-aged detainee!” And apropos of Saddam’s sluggish trial, remember that our home state multiple murderer, Tookie Williams, was finally executed in December 2005….26 years after he was originally sentenced.

 

Much has been made of the inability to patrol Iraq’s borders with Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey. But California has only a single border with a foreign nation, not six. Yet, over 3 million foreigners who snuck in illegally now live in our state. Worse, there are about 15,000 convicted alien felons incarcerated in our penal system, costing about $500 million a year. Imagine the potential headlines: “Illegal aliens in the state comprise a population larger than San Francisco,” or “Drugs, criminals and smugglers are given a free pass into California.

 

Every year, over 4,000 Californians die in car crashes…nearly twice the number of Americans lost so far in three years of combat operation in Iraq. In some sense, then, our badly maintained roads, and often poorly trained and sometimes intoxicated drivers, are even more lethal than Improvised Explosive Devices. Perhaps tomorrow’s headlines might scream at us “300 Californians perish this month on state highways. Hundreds more will be maimed and crippled!” (Continued on Page Six)

 

Life is 10 percent of what happens to you, and 90 percent of how you respond to it (Charles Swindoll)

 

In 2001, California had 32 days of power outages, despite paying the highest rates for electricity in the United States. Before complaining about the smoke in Baghdad rising from private generators, think back to the run on generators in California when they were contemplated as a future part of every household’s line of defense.

 

We’re told that Iraq’s finances are in a mess. Yet, until recently, so were California’s. Two year’s ago, Governor Schwarzenegger inherited a $38 Billion annual budget shortfall. That could have made for a strong morning newscast teaser: “Another $100 million borrowed today…$3 Billion more in red ink to pile up by month’s end!”

 

So, is California comparable to Iraq? Hardly. Yet it could be easily sketched by a reported as a bankrupt, crime-ridden den with murderous highways, tens of thousands of inmates, with wide open borders.

 

 

 

This Latest Agreement with North Korea is Different

An excerpt from an article by George Will published in TownHall.com February 22, 2007

 

The new agreement might not bring Pyongyang to heel. It is, however, unlike that of 1994, in three particulars:

 

First China was infuriated by North Korea’s October nuclear test which fizzled but expressed defiance of China. So now China seems amenable to serious pressure on its neighbor, which is substantially dependent on China for food and energy.

 

Second, the new agreement, like the 1994 pact, is an attempt to modify behavior using bribery. But under the 1994 agreement, North Korea got the bribe…energy assistance…before being required to change its behavior. Under the new agreement North Korea will receive just 5 percent of promised oil…50,000 of one million tons of heavy fuel oil…before it must fulfill, in 60 days, the first of many commitments it has made.

 

Third, the administration believes it found in Banco Delta Asia, a lever that moved Pyongyang. The Macau bank was pressured into freezing 52 accounts holding $24 million…yes, million, not billion…of North Korean assets because Pyongyang has been using them for illicit purposes. If Pyongyang flinched from being deprived of $24 million…less than Americans spend on archery equipment… in a month… Pyongyang’s low threshold suggests how fragile, and perhaps, how containable it is.

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