The Next Meeting of Texas County Republicans will be TUESDAY, October 24 at The Lion’s Den on US 63 north of Houston starting at 7 PM. The program had not been finalized at press time but those attending can be sure candidates be on the November 7 ballot will speak. A potluck supper will precede the meeting.

Texas County Federated Republican Women WILL MEET be the 8th District Fall Meeting at NOON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30 in the Mountain Grove VFW Hall located at the Airport. Tickets $12. From the traffic light in town, take CITY ROUTE 60 west. Go beyond the city limits. Look for airport sign.

Governor Matt Blunt and House Speaker Rod Jetton toured the Mexican-American border last month to thank the 185 National Guardsmen from Missouri for the job they are doing as part of Operation Jumpstart. The National Guard and border patrol troops are divided into 4-member Entry Identification Teams (EITs). The EITs keep watch at one mile intervals along the border in their designated areas.

Since the program began, illegal border crossings have fallen by 75 percent. They now catch 8 out of every 10 that try to cross the border. Before the National Guard troops arrived they were catching 2 out of 10. Last year we stopped 1.2 million illegal aliens from getting into the country. Of those, roughly 10 percent (120,000) were criminals who had already committed felonies. And last year they caught citizens from over 100 countries trying to cross into the U.S. including those from North Korea, China, Venezuela and several eastern European nations.

That’s not all they caught. Last year they confiscated 24.5 tons of marijuana. With the help of the National Guard so far this year, they have confiscated 300 tons of marijuana as well as a large amount of cocaine and methamphetamine. (From the Capitol Report by Rod Jetton)

Governor Matt Blunt says that in order for Missouri to be competitive in tomorrow’s global economy, we must make an investment in improving math, engineering, technology and science (METS) comprehension in our classrooms. We stand to lose quality jobs and enhanced opportunities for our state’s future if we fail to make METS a priority. Earlier this year the governor created the METS Alliance, a working group to develop an action plan, to improve METS learning, achievement and public awareness throughout Missouri. The alliance has established a METS Coalition, a non-profit organization to help move forward and lead the state’s efforts to improve METS education with a timeline starting October first. In August Gov. Blunt agreed to serve on the National Governor’s Association Innovation America Task Force charged with increasing the U.S. competitiveness in math and science. (Governor’s News Release)

Planning Ahead Speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives Rod Jetton held an Agricultural Summit at the Capitol on September 14 to develop agricultural policy and propose new laws to benefit Missouri agriculture. After an introduction, those attending split into seven small groups to discuss legislative proposals. The group subjects were: Row Crops ~ Alternative Fuels ~ Family Farms ~ Immigration ~ Livestock production ~ New Agricultural Markets ~ and Plant Research. One fact that concerned Speaker Jetton is that the average age of a Missouri farmer is 59. Jetton added that the best thing government can do for business and agriculture is, for the most part, to stay out of the way.

A Story the Media Ignores Two years ago Missouri was the #1 job loss state in America. Now 44,000 more Missourians are working and we are the 2nd fastest job producing state in the country. – Two years ago our budget was over $2 Billion in the red and we faced having to cut millions in spending. This year we have a modest $150 million surplus and have a projected surplus of $500 million next year. – Two years ago we were the #1 Methamphetamine-producing-state in America. Today Meth incidents are down 46% - We have gone from 10 abortion clinics to just 4 today and abortions are decreasing. – Today we are adding millions for schools using a new formula based on student need and district performance – Personal income is up 5.4% and Missouri has created 16,000 new businesses since 2005. – Two years ago we were told the only way to fix our budget mess was to raise taxes. – But tax rates have not been increased. The only bad news is that the news media doesn’t consider this as news. Governor Blunt has to pay for radio and TV ads to get the truth about our changes to the voters. (From a report by the House Republican Campaign Committee)


Payday Loan Operations will no longer be allowed to operate on-site that lend money to nursing home employees. Until the end of August about 60 nursing homes in the state operated payday loans in their facilities. Payday loans typically charge exorbitant interest for those who borrow from them. Blunt said we are stopping this potential financial abuse of hard working long-term care workers. (Governor’s News Release)

A New Directive by Governor Blunt requires all new employees hired by the State of Missouri to have the information they provide to the state reviewed by a program administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service under the Department of Homeland Security to verify that they are legally eligible to work in the United States. This is an on-line federal at no cost to the state. (Governor Blunt News Release)

Democrats only need 15 more House seats to gain a majority. “The Cook Political Report,” a non-partisan election analysis newsletter lists 55 Republican and 20 Democrat seats “in play” and 17 “toss up” seats all held by Republicans. What happens if Democrats win? The following comments are from Newsmax.com:

Nancy Pelosi becomes Speaker of the House. (95% Liberal) Under House rules the majority party selects the chairman of each committee and each subcommittee. Here are the committee Chairmen she will likely pick:

Steny Hoyer becomes Majority Leader (95% liberal) He is admitted to being tax-tax-spend-spend.

Rahm Emanuel, Majority Whip(100 %) From Chicago. Ann Coulter calls him the Democrats’ “Pit Bull.”

Charles Rangel, Ways and Means  (100%) The most powerful committee with jurisdiction over taxes, trade,   
    Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. He voted against tax cuts and opposes estate tax repeal.

Barney Frank, Financial Services (100%) A staunch liberal, he supports more consumer protection and the  
    regulation of credit rating services.  He is openly gay and founder of the National Stonewall Democrats.

John Conyers, Judiciary (95%) Represents the Detroit area and is the prime sponsor of a resolution to 
    investigate whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses.

Henry Waxman, Government Reform (100%) West Hollywood and Malibu. According to his website, his  
    top priorities are universal health insurance, reproductive rights, AIDS and environmental standards.

John Dingell, Energy and Commerce (95%)  Represents Detroit area. Supports organized labor, national  
    health care, social welfare and is known for being tough on business.

Ike Skelton, Armed Services (75%) From rural Missouri has fought defense cuts and is hawkish on defense.

David Obey, Appropriations (100%) Would probably seek to cut major defense programs.

George Miller, Education and Workforce (100%) A close ally of Pelosi and proposes cutting interest rates for 
    student loans and increasing fees on banks and other lending institutions.

Bennie Thomson, Homeland Security  (95%) A soft-spoken African-American who is tough and has been   
    diligent in attending to Homeland Securities issues.

Tom Lantos, International Relations (95%) From south San Francisco, a holocaust survivor, a staunch
    supporter of Israel. He also supports gun control, gay marriage rights and marijuana for medical use.

Louise Slaughter, Rules  (95%) From western New York is the chair of the Bi-Partisan Pro-Choice Caucus.

Jim Oberstar, Transportation and Infrastructure (95%) He has a liberal voting record but opposes abortion   
    and gun control and is thought to be the most knowledgeable elected official in Washington.

John Spratt, Budget (90%) He serves as an assistant to Nancy Pelosi and is known as a moderate southerner
    who opposes deficit spending.

Jane Harman or Alcee Hastings, Intelligence  It is unclear who would gain this position. Some believe   
    Harmon, now ranking member of the committee, has been too accommodating to Bush and the position
    should go to Alcee Hastings. That would draw fire from the GOP as Hastings was impeached as a federal   
    judge and convicted 18 years ago on charges of extortion, perjury and falsifying documents.

The Kiplinger Washington Letter predicts: If the Democrats do gain control of the House they will VOTE NO to Permanent repeal of the Estate Tax, NO to Making Bush’s tax cuts permanent, NO to expanding oil and gas exploration in Alaska and offshore, NO to Free Trade Agreements with Peru, Colombia and others and NO to preempt tough state laws on the environment, consumer protection and banking.

Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cure Initiative This will be on the November Ballot and is being opposed by Missourians Against Human Cloning PO Box 967, Chesterfield, MO. It is felt that the wording of this ballot initiative is misleading. Those who want more information should see < http://nocloning.org.>

Al Gore Has a New Book coming out in May of 2007. According to The Washington Post it will be called “The Assault on Reason.” If the book is successful it will produce a new momentum for Gore to make another bid for the White House. (Newsmax.com)

In Case You Missed It On September 7 both Senator Jim Talent and Representative JoAnn Emerson introduced bills: “To amend the Animal Health Protection Act to prohibit the Secretary of Agriculture from implementing or carrying out a National Identification System or similar requirement and to prohibit federal funds to carry out such a requirement…” These bills are S.3862 and HR6042

The Democratic Leadership Council has lost its tax exempt status. The Internal Revenue Service has issued this ruling on the basis that it mainly benefited a private group, Democrats running for office, rather than the community at large. The DLC was founded by Bill Clinton while governor of Arkansas. (Newsmax.com)

Several Iraqi Terrorists groups call for an attack on the Vatican. They are angry because Pope Benedict XVI in a lecture on “Faith and Reason” quoted from a 14th century emperor of Byzantium who said:“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was so new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”  (From an article in the Wall Street Journal)  In response to Muslim outrage over these remarks by the Pope, “It is sad that many Muslims appear unable to defend their faith through anything but intimidation.” Comment by Doug Bandow of Citizen Outreach.





Some of us have worried for years that the Bush administration wasn’t making a steady public case for the war in Iraq. And, that at the least, the troops fighting the war deserved it. Now in the past week alone have come major speeches on Iraq and the war on terror by Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and yesterday the president himself, telling the American Legion’s convention that we are engaged in the “decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.

With expectations strong of a Republican debacle two months from now in the midterm elections, it is being widely said that the purpose of all this speechifying is to mitigate the losses. If so, that’s good news. In the midterm elections of 1950, President Harry Truman, amid both a shooting war in Korea and the dawn of the Cold War against the Soviet Union, declined to campaign for either his party or his war. Democrats got whacked, losing a net five Senate seats and 28 in the House (though not control of either chamber). We may assume Carl Rove knows his history.

The short version runs like this: Truman embarked on a limited war in Korea, his popularity plummeted, the Democrats suffered big losses in 1950, Estes Kefauver defeated Truman in the 1952 New Hampshire primary and the Republicans gained the White House for eight years.

This is a history worth knowing; the parallels between Truman then and Bush now are eerily pertinent to what may happen when voters go to the polls this November with a war on their minds.

Truman’s failures and losses are largely lost to popular historical memory. Mr. Bush himself rifled the Truman library of its foreign-policy successes this past May at the West Point Commencement. He described a world beset by the new communist threat - Greece, Turkey, Czechoslovakia and China for starters - then noted that Truman “recognized the threat and took bold action to confront it.” Citing a lengthy list of Truman’s foreign-policy achievements in those unsettled years (the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949) he said, “President Truman made it clear that the Cold War was an ideological struggle between tyranny and freedom.”

The Bushian turn on the parallel bars struck me a legitimate, but after he gave that speech, some liberal pundits themselves went nuclear, accusing the president of misappropriating a Democratic party saint. But, the similarities are intriguing.

The Korean War sat inside the broader context of the cold war, which Truman presaged in a stirring speech to Congress in 1947. Mr. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq followed on his strong post-September 11 speech to Congress, announcing a new global war on terror. Each president in turn promised that the Cold War and war on terror would be long hard slogs.

The most interesting Truman ghosts, however, are interred in the purely political atmosphere of Washington back then. The tale is told in an article by Steven Casey in the Presidential Studies Quarterly titled, “White House publicity Operations During the Korean War, June 1950-June 1951.”

As now, bipartisanship was in shambles. But it was the GOP that dripped venom on a war commitment. Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska, in the role of John Murtha, said of Truman, “The blood of our boys in Korea is on his shoulders and no one else.” The Republican National Committee built its midterm campaign around “blundering” in Korea. (Continued on page four)


Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. (George Santayana)



Will History Repeat (Continued from page three)

Here’s where it gets interesting: Amid the opposition’s carping and the Democratic Party facing the likelihood of big losses in the midterm elections, calls went up from within Truman’s party and indeed inside the White House to launch a public defense of the war. It didn’t happen. An anti-Truman slogan at the time asked, “Why Korea?” It got no answer.

Among the reasons Steven Casey adduces for Truman’s seeming passivity was a belief that it “was unseemly for the head of state to be grubbing for votes while American boys were still fighting and dying in Korea.”

In any event, the absence of a P.R. counteroffensive cost Truman dearly beyond the Democratic congressional losses in 1950. A year later, some 66 percent of Americans wanted to withdraw from Korea, and the following year Truman’s approval ratings fell to some of the lowest levels ever recorded by Gallup, staying below 30 percent and cratering to 22 percent in February 1952. General Eisenhower swept into office in November.

A month ago, this war president and the Republicans were heading for a similar fall. The electronic age is hell for limited wars. But George Bush is one of those fellows who seem to catch lucky breaks. His latest came August 10 in London foiling an unequivocally real plot to explode numerous U.S.- bound air liners over the Atlantic Ocean.

What occurred on 9/11 was off the charts of human experience. But not the London plot. That was a pivotal event in the politics of the war on terror. It was something most people could process and internalize. Logical conclusion: Yup, they are out there and they are trying to kill all of us. (Is there any other conclusion?)

Had London not happened, leaving only Iraq and Lebanon in front of a fatigued American public, Mr. Bush’s speech yesterday to the American Legion would have been a day late and a dollar short. But London did happen, and the Bush team has taken fate’s gift and used it to refocus and reframe the terror debate. Politics? Golly yes, and thank heaven for that. Unlike 1950, this public won’t go to the polls without its war president giving them an explanation of the point and purpose of this grave commitment.

A final Truman point. Notwithstanding his political collapse with Korea, surveys concluded that the American people had grown in their support of the broader Cold War. We’ll know soon enough the direction of George Bush’s political fortunes. But, his assessment of the world-wide threat as articulated five years ago remains valid, as did Truman’s of the Cold War ahead. History’s treatment of Mr. Bush is likely to be about the same: He didn’t flinch.


Money Matters Senator John Kerry has nearly $14 million left from his 2004 presidential bid so he can help other Democrat candidates and not worry about his own Senate re-election. Senator Clinton has raised $44 million for her Senate re-election, plus has $22 million in the Senate campaign bank account. AND Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana has $10.4 million in his campaign account if he wants to try for the Democratic nomination since his re-election as Senator doesn’t come up until 2010.  (Tidbits from Newsmax.com)

Global Oil Output to Surge 25% by 2015 to 110 million barrels per day. That prediction is the result of investments in new and unconventional petroleum sources like oil-sand deposits and oil shale, according to a study by the Cambridge Energy Research Associates. While there are presently only about two million barrels worth of crude capacity, much less than ten years ago, Cambridge predicts there will be some 12 million by 2010. The report acknowledges the probability of continued oil production declines in the U.S. and Europe’s North Sea, but it anticipates considerable increases, especially among OPEC member nations.  (From a report by “Money News by  NewsMax.com)



Those of us old enough to remember World War II face many painful reminders of how things have changed in Americans’ behavior during the war. Back then, the president’s defeated opponent in the 1940 election (Wendell Wilkie) not only supported the war, he became the personal envoy for President Roosevelt to Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill. We were all in it together, and we knew it. People who had been highly critical of American foreign policy before we were attacked at Pearl Harbor now fell silent and devoted themselves to winning the war.

What if the people, institutions and attitudes of today were somehow taken back to the time of World War II? What would have been the result? Would we have ended up losing that war?

What about the great cry of the hour, a cease fire?  It so happens that World War II had the biggest cease fire in history. It was called the “phony war” because, though France was officially at war with Germany, the French did very little fighting for months, while the bulk of the German army was in Poland and France had overwhelming military superiority on the western front.

During this time Hitler offered to negotiate peace with France and England. Kofi Anan would have loved it.  On January 1, 1940, correspondent William L. Shirer wrote, “this phony kind of war cannot continue long.” It was exactly four months since war was declared. How is that for a cease fire?

Did this de facto cease fire lead to peace? No. Like other cease fires, it helped the aggressor. It gave Hitler time to move his divisions from the eastern front after they had conquered Poland, to the western front, facing France.  And, now that military superiority along the Rhine had shifted in favor of the German armies, the war suddenly went from being phony to being devastatingly real.

Hitler attacked and France collapsed in six weeks.  It took the allied armies over four years of hard fighting before Germany and Japan were retreating. What would have happened if we had had Kofi Anan and the mushy mindset called “world opinion” at work then?



The polls are currently showing that the nation’s economy is the most important issue on voters’ minds. And the Left likes to talk about the inequality of incomes between the rich and the poor. Let’s take a look.

The growth of the Gross Domestic Product has been nearly 4 percent for three years running and the jobless rate is just 4.7 percent. That sounds positive, but what about taxes?

New data from the Treasury Department show that the bottom 50 percent of Americans in income (that is households with income below the median of $44,389) paid just 3.3 percent of the total income taxes paid. In Bill Clinton’s last year in office they paid 3.9 percent of the total.

By contrast, Americans with an income in the top five percent paid 56.5 percent of the taxes in 2000 but in 2004 the top five percent paid 57.1 percent of the taxes If this isn’t the definition of a redistributionist tax code then we don’t know what is.

It is especially instructive to see what happened since the tax rate on capital gains and dividends was cut to 15 percent in 2003. These tax cuts correspond with a huge spike in tax payments by the affluent. With the lower rate the taxes received on capital gains have soared by an astounding 79 percent and the taxes received from dividends grew by 35 percent.

During the Clinton presidency, the share of total income earned by the richest one percent increased  to 20.8 percent (a post World War II high) from 13.8 percent in 1993.

In any event, it’s a mistake to put much stock in these class-envy statistics on income shares and wealth gaps that Washington and the media like to stress. There’s nothing that policy makers can do about them in the short run, and a preoccupation with inequality will do actual harm if it leads to policies that reduce economic growth.


According to the Republican National Committee, MoveOn.org has contributed nearly $1,200,000 to Democrats since the 2000 election cycle and not a penny to Republicans. A spokesman from MoveOn.org. is quoted as saying: “Now its our party; we bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.”

Among the many points made in the RNC release are:

A MoveOn.org ad campaign claims that four House members have been “caught red-handed” accepting money from energy companies and voted against bills that would have penalized those companies for price gouging….In fact, the Website Factcheck.org disclosed that none of the four House members has done anything illegal and MoveOn.org’s “Red-handed” ads were pulled from TV stations in New Hampshire, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and Connecticut.

MoveOn.org is working hard to oust mainstream Democrats who don’t toe the far-left line. It was pointed out that the group contributed $251,126 to Senate candidate Ned Lamont in Connecticut, helping him to a primary victory over Joe Lieberman, a Democratic supporter of Bush’s policy in Iraq.

MoveOn.org also endorsed Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, whi as a Congressman voted against an amendment that said: “The apprehension, detention and interrogation of terrorists are fundamental to the successful prosecution of the war on terror.”





The state of Michigan lost 51,466 jobs to Mexico and Canada between 1993 and 2002. And they could lose another 46,000 by 2012. However, the future job losses are likely headed to China.

The Detroit News tells a story of two women who do the same kind of work. Deb Coverdell works for a company called KenSa, LLC (limited liability corporation) in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Huang Wei works for the same company and does the same kind of work assembling wiring harnesses for new cars. But, Huang rides her new electric bicycle to a new modern factory in Wuhu, China. She is starting a new life far away from the rice fields of her ancestors.

Deb Coverdell earns 31 times more money than Huang. Yet, it is Coverdell who frets over her future while Huang Wei bubbles over with enthusiasm, unaware that her job once belonged to a Michigan worker.

A few months ago, Jay Groendyke, in Grand Rapids, Michigan had a tough decision to make. Keep his automotive tool and die business as usual and hope, even as competitors folded, to be one of the lucky ones to survive, or do something radical to change course. What he settled on was a hybrid of both that, while controversial, may help his company fend off extinction and perhaps offer a model for saving his declining industry. It’s a case of if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em. Groendyke’s Synergis Technologies Group formed an alliance with three Chinese-based tool and die makers, the very kind of low-wage companies blamed for driving U.S. manufacturers out of business.

The new consortium – called Synergis China Automotive Die Group, Ltd – can now bid on business that was previously out of reach for the Grand Rapids shop. With the manufacturing might of four companies and the lure of cheap Chinese labor, the group can chase bigger jobs and accept them at a lower price point. Late last month, for example, the group won a major order building dies for a General Motors Corp. mid-size car program on three continents. Synergis executives say this order would not have been possible without the partnership.

Synergis was doing $42 million in annual sales with five facilities in western Michigan. It now has a new sales office in the Detroit suburb of Troy and is aiming to triple the size of its order book in coming years. It expects the growth to come from new auto business and expansion into farm equipment.

Right now it is struggling to digest news of a new multi-million dollar contract for the GM midsize “Epsilon” program. The contract is actually with Martinrea International, Inc. a supplier to GM. It is 20 times larger than anything Synergis has done before and it exceeds what they had promised to the Chinese by tenfold.

Having an alliance with foreign sources helps U.S. manufacturers to be competitive and keep jobs in place for now, but there are fears that over time foreign suppliers will develop their own technical expertise at the expense of their domestic partners. In addition, there are a host of logistical, economic and technical risks to doing business in China that may outweigh the savings.

Five years ago Synergis, a privately held company, had 500 employees. Today it has half that number and profits have been flat. But at least the company is still in business. According to the National Tooling and Machinist Association about 4,000 or one third of the nation’s tool and die shops have closed since 2000, eliminating 100,000 jobs or more. In Michigan alone, more than 16,000 tool and die jobs have disappeared since 1997 according to the Michigan Department of Labor.