Donkephant

Ex-VP Candidate Sarah Palin is about to make herself into the Ex-Governor of Alaska. She announced today that she’ll be resigning and leaving the office by the end of the month and handing the reigns over to the Lt. Governor. Obviously, it goes without saying that she won’t be running for re-election next year.

There’s some speculation that she’s doing this in order to focus on a run for the Presidential nomination in 2012, but I’m not so sure that all jives. I think it’s more likely that she will take a little time to get out of the spotlight, regroup, and then push towards a much more public speaking life. She mentioned that she felt that she’s done so much traveling the country and speaking. And maybe that is for a push for 2012, but more likely, it’s because she was getting some pressure to be the Governor instead of a spokesperson for the GOP.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that she’ll be the savior that the Republicans are looking for anyways and if she were to get the nomination, it would be a poor choice. Although, current trends continuing, she could win. I really don’t know that the “down-home country politician” is what the majority of Americans are looking for. And, while she certainly has the conservative chops, she just doesn’t have the perceived popularity to get the vote.

I guess time will tell what her path will be. She’s not very hard on the eyes, so let’s hope she doesn’t disappear altogether…

I finally was able to attend a tea party.   The previous ones either landed on bad days, or on blizzards, so I was unable to attend.  I’m glad I made it to this one.  Not only was it a great rally, it was a huge success.  Estimates are that there were about 1000 people in attendance.  I’m no activist, that’s for sure, but I like being able to at least show a presence to support a movement that I agree with.

Rob Port, the coordinator of the whole shebang, put on a great event and the speakers managed to keep it very non-partisan with each side of the aisle getting their fair bit of razzing.  Now, keep in mind that it was a conservative rally, so most of the razzing was aimed at those who don’t follow a conservative agenda.  But, in today’s climate, that seems to include just about anyone within 100 miles of Washington D.C.!

Rob said that he was told by one of the attendees that there were 10 or so of the North Dakota legislators in attendance. I can’t vouch for that, but I did see Rep. Craig Headland there. He’s a local rep for my area, so it was good to see him there.

I took a few photos of the event and if you care to see them, here’s a link:  Bismarck Tea Party 7/2/09

To explain the title, I give you a quote by one of the Founding Fathers of this great country.

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.  The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure.  — Thomas Jefferson

Natural Manure.

Let’s start at the top.  “The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.”  How important are the facts that are distorted by the leftist main-stream media?  And how long will we allow that distortion before that discontent becomes more?

“If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.”  How long have we been quiet?  Rather, how long have we truly been lethargic about our governing bodies?  How close to death is the entirety of public liberty?  Closer than you think.

“… if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?  Let them take arms [...] The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  Why has there been no resistance?  When will there be?  Will it be too late?  Is it too late already?  Have we given too much power to our rulers already?

The truth is that we have let them get away with their back patting, pork barrelling, party-lining, negligence for far too long.  It’s time we took our country back.  I’m not saying we should take arms just yet.  Let’s give a few more reasonable means have a go first, but we need a concerted effort to take back our leadership positions from the eliteist bastards and vote some true statesmen into office.

I really could care less what party you’re affiliated with.  In fact, if you can be argued for a partyline man (or woman), you’ve lost my vote.  I want someone who will look their party leaders in the eye and tell them no.  That will risk the loss of support for the integrity of their morals and ethics.  It’s damn well time that we said no more to politics as usual and hello to politics for the good of the people.

I’m no orator, and I’ve already toed the line between a purposefull post and a horrible rant, but the idea must be passed along.  A few tea bags sent to the President will not do.  We must find statesmen who are willing to make change.  If you aren’t questioning anyone who is put before you to vote on, you are failing in your duty as a citizen of these states.  Don’t vote for someone because your party says you should, vote for someone because you have proven to yourself that they are statesmen who intend to do what is right for the good of the people, not the good of their fellow politicians.

I’ve said enough.  I’ll stop ranting now, but I have a favor to ask.  If this has even come close to touching a nerve with you, please pass it along.  E-mail it to a friend. Post it to a social bookmark site. Let’s start setting things right.  The time is now.

Leave it to the Republicans to jump in and ruin a good thing.  Much like the parents that listen to rap music and go emo to be “cool” with their kids, the GOP has tried to adopt the recent tea party movement as their own and use it for their own means.

I’m all for the advancement of the movement, but the GOP needs to realize that the movement is just as much a movement against the GOP establishment as it is against the current administration.  Years upon years of lackadaiscal GOP leadership and quid pro quo legislature makes them just as bad.

Sure, they aren’t the ones in the drivers seat behind the multi-trillion dollar fiasco currently going on, but they certainly haven’t been trying too hard to put on the brakes.  The best they can claim is that they haven’t gone out of their way to forward the issue.

I’ve never really associated my self with any one party, and I don’t know that I’m going to start now (although I’m considering it), but the Republicans have earned a spot on the “not eligible” side of my ballot.

If there are any GOP folks out there reading this, I have this to say.  Pass it on to your GOP friends.

The Tea Party movement of late 2008 and early 2009 is a citizens movement.  It has no party affiliation (except being aligned somewhat out of the Democrat field) and no party sponsorship.  The fact that you’ve tried, in a vain attempt at redemption in the eyes of your constituents, to hijack the movement only proves that you haven’t learned a damn thing in the last few cycles and you never will.  The time is nigh for the current “good ol’ boys” establishment in Washington to fall.  And I can only hope that it doesn’t come to violence.

Johnathan at j5mc.com seems to think it does.

HB 1572 would literally make anything causing a human cell to die into a murder. So don’t even think about stem cell research.  Or cancer treatment.  Or surgery — wouldn’t want to carelessly slice away a few cells now.

I normally don’t see too much fault with what Johnathan writes.  For instance, his writing against the UND Pride Card has been pretty good.  That isn’t to say that I always agree with him either.  But he’s entitled to his first amendment rights just as much as I am, right?  But, in this I really think he’s a little too extreme.

First, let’s start with the actual wording of the bill:

References to individual, person, or human being - Legislative
intent. For purposes of interpretation of the constitution and laws of North Dakota, it is the
intent of the legislative assembly that an individual, a person, when the context indicates that a
reference to an individual is intended, or a human being includes any organism with the
genome of homo sapiens.

While I can see where Johnathan (or whomever he got is information from) could have gotten his idea, there needs to be a little scientific exploration.  The definition of an organism according to dictionary.com:

An individual form of life that is capable of growing, metabolizing nutrients, and usually reproducing. Organisms can be unicellular or multicellular. They are scientifically divided into five different groups (called kingdoms) that include prokaryotes, protists, fungi, plants, and animals, and that are further subdivided based on common ancestry and homology of anatomic and molecular structures.

I don’t think I need to point to the definition of a human, so let’s just go with a given of the genus of homo sapian being a multicellular organism.  Now, since the bill states that the “human being” as defined by the legislature is “any organism with the genome of homo sapiens”, and we know that homo sapiens are multicellular, we can also infer that killing a single human cell would not constitute murder since there would still be zillions of cells remaining.  Even mass cellular killing (e.g. binge drinking as refered to by Johnathan) couldn’t be classified as murder.  You could try and make the arguement for attempted murder, but you’d lose that as well.  Binge Drinking can kill in some extreme cases, but would be classified as a suicide in most cases, I think.

Without bringing in my religious beliefs (I’m pro-life) and looking at this strictly from a scientific, logical standpoint, I don’t see how anyone could come to the conclusion that this bill would make us all murderers.

I haven’t seen much about this in the news stream, but the South Dakota Senate voted to approve House Concurrent Resolution 1013 late last week.  All it’s waiting on now is a signature from the Governor.  In a nutshell, the bill is a declaration “Reasserting sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over certain powers and serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates. ” (click that link to read the full text)

I find it somewhat ironic that at the same time that all of these states are reasserting their sovereignty, their representatives in the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate are working very hard to further extend the reach of the governement.  I wonder who is truly representing the constituents of their state?  My guess would be the local governments.

The bells are tolling folks.  There’s a battle brewing, and peaceful tea parties are just the beginning.