John McCain (D), (R?), (?)

As we look forward to the super-Tuesday primaries, those of us that consider ourselves conservatives of the Goldwater/Reagan model must pause before voting for any candidate in the name of expediency or pragmatism.

In my case, the last two elections were about defeating the greater evil. I never was overjoyed that another Bush family member would run the country. In 2000, I was a Forbes guy, then was forced to vote against Gore. Four years later, I was forced to vote against Kerry and the Breck Girl.

This election cycle, I find myself considering a sacrifice of even more of my core values to defeat either one of the outright Socialists running in Democrat's clothing. So I was left 'holding my nose' once again, throwing my support to John McCain. The John McCain who birthed McCain-Feingold, which squarely opposes the First Amendment to the Constitution. John McCain who cozied up with Ted Kennedy to allow twenty million illegal aliens to laugh at our laws, who gave us the 'gang of fourteen'-back room deal makers, who for decades has made bargains with liberals at the expense of principles he claims to have learned from Reagan, yet rarely applied in practice. In 2006, John McCain fought the Defense of Marriage Act and Rick Santorum every step of the way. And McCain know calls himself a Conservative when it's convenient?

And in light of our choices, remember this: John McCain in 2001 considered leaving the Republican party. In 2004, he is on record as having negotiated with JOHN KERRY to be his running mate. This is confirmed with audio recordings of both Kerry and McCain confirming this fact only four years ago. And that is why I have to throw my support to Mitt Romney. At least I know he will not ask to be Hillary's running mate to defeat the Obomination (spelling intentional).

Consider that before holding your nose and voting for the pragmatism of supposed 'electability'.

Why Rudy?

Being a Californian, I always heard that NYC was a dangerous, dirty city run by the mob, with the the scraps being fought over by street gangs. Remember the movie "Escape From New York?" ...silly movie, but the image was somewhat accurate. Anyway, as a young kid, I remember some guy named Giuliani was always up front, putting mob guys in jail. Then later, I started hearing how much better NYC had become. People were often discussing walking through Central Park at night. I still don't know if I would do that, but it is clear that there was a major clean-up operation completed in NYC under Rudy's watch.

Flash forward to 9/11.

An outright act of war was declared on us by a theology. The world's financial hub was destroyed in an hour, our defense center almost suffered the same fate, and our center of government narrowly escaped total destruction as well. Rudy was up front immediately. He didn't hide out with protection details. He was grubby, tired, but solid and in control of information. This was clearly the result of previous years of good planning and knowledge of the departments of the city he operated. In short, on that Tuesday morning I saw the model of a President, and said it then. I knew we'd see him in this position some day, and that day is here. The threat has only retreated to the shadows momentarily, regrouping, planning, biding time. Remember, 9/11 was was put in motion five years before its execution. There will be other attacks, and no Democrat is prepared to take the action required. And most Republicans have become weak-kneed in the glare of world opinion, shaped by anti-US and liberal ideologies.

I believe the sole issue in this race is national security. Without it, health care, global warming, the economy, abortion, etc., are mere side shows for peace-era politics. I think Rudy understands this, and that is why had my vote before he even decided to run for President. Rudy has been my candidate since 9/12/2001, and will be our President on 1/20/2009.

Women Voters...

"Feelings" are not a qualification....


"....Marianne Pernold-Young told CNN Wednesday she ultimately picked Barack Obama in Tuesday night's primary because of the Illinois senator's performance at a recent rally she attended.

"I was moved to tears. Not once, but twice," she said. "And he has this enormous electricity. And I was just taken aback. And I just had to go with my feelings."

Rudy's tax plan

This makes sense. And it doesn't hurt to have a solid financial guy like Forbes sign on.

2008 Starts off with even more leftist bias

Here's a little example of liberal media bias (yet again)....that's right, the same media that the MoveOn left claims is the lapdog of the right.

Today, January 6th, early afternoon, on MSNBC with Tim Russert and guests, analyzing the GOP:

Russert: ".......The Republicans are all over the place, divided, fractured and in disarray at this point. It seems like they need to go somewhere and get their act together if they expect to counter this Democrat momentum...(to female MSNBC commentator)....."

Female commentator: ".....(smiling gleefully).....where are the Republicans going to go?...somewhere up in the Appalachians?....."

Oh, ok. I get it now. Republicans are toothless backwoods neanderthals, only taking time off from incest and moonshining long enough to did up Jim Crowe and run him for President.

The liberal bias in the supposed 'mainstream' media is at this point not even subject to question. You just now have to pick between what flavor of liberal you want to watch.

In point of fact.....

WATERBOARDING
IS THE ANSWER

Guns Save Lives------Again

Of course the Leftstream Media will spin this two ways:

1-It's the presence of guns that enabled Murray to kill the people he did, not his own lack of control and hatred for others.

2-Stopping a murderer with firepower just perpetuates the supposed 'problem' of gun ownership.

...But what might have happened if a professor at Virginia Tech had had a gun on that horrible day when 32 were murdered? How many would still be alive today if a gun had been used to save lives?

____________


- "It seemed like it was me, the gunman, and God," said Jeanne Assam, describing her feelings as she confronted a man who charged into her Colorado Springs church Sunday firing a weapon.

Assam, a church security guard with law enforcement experience, fired her own weapon at the invader and stopped his attack, police say.

Police on Monday identified the gunman as Matthew Murray and said he was also responsible for an attack earlier Sunday at a missionary center some 80 miles away.

The two incidents left four people dead, in addition to the gunman, and five wounded.

Police said a man with a beard, wearing a dark jacket, glasses, and skullcap, entered the facility, got into a dispute with a staff member about whether he could stay there for the night, and then opened fire.

Two staff members, Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24, died later Sunday from their injuries, Youth With a Mission co-founder Peter Warren said. Two other staff members were injured, and one was in critical condition.

Investigators tried to track the gunman through fresh snow with the help of dogs, but lost his trail in a heavily walked area, Deputy Chief Gary Creager of Arvada police said.

About 12 hours later, police say, Murray showed up at New Life Church as a service was letting out.

Police said Monday he had an assault rifle and two handguns, and may have had as many as 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

He fired on a family who were in or near their car. Two sisters, identified by police as Rachael Works, 16, and Stephanie Works, 18, were killed, and their father, David Works, 51, was also shot and is hospitalized in fair condition with two gunshot wounds.

Murray then entered the church, police say, where Assam was one of several volunteer security guards on duty.

"I saw him coming through the doors," she told reporters on Monday. "I took cover, and I waited for him to get closer, and I came out of cover and identified myself, and engaged him, and took him down. And that's pretty much it." Watch Assam tell how she stopped Murray »

Police said they were still investigating whether Assam's weapon killed Murray, or whether he might have died of a self-inflicted gunshot.

Assam extended her sympathy to the families of the victims "and of the gunman -- and I mean that very sincerely."

Phil Abeyta, who identified himself as Murray's uncle, appeared at another news conference and read a statement from the family asking for forgiveness.

"Our family cannot express the magnitude of our grief for the victims and families of this tragedy," he said. "On behalf of our family and our son, we ask for forgiveness. We cannot understand why this has happened."

Abeyta appeared with spokesmen from the Youth With A Mission center, who confirmed that Murray had been part of a training program five years ago.

Peter Warren, director of Youth With A Mission, said Murray did not go on the mission he was training for in 2002 because managers thought that "issues relating to his health made it unsafe for him to do so."

But a man who served at the center with Murray told CNN Monday that Murray was kicked out of the mission program for strange behavior. Watch more about Matthew Murray's background »

A source -- a long-time member of New Life Church -- said Murray had a falling out with Youth With A Mission after working with the organization a couple of years ago. The source said Murray sent antagonistic and threatening correspondence afterward.

Earlier Monday, Boyd said the gunman was unknown to parishioners there.

"He simply showed up on our property yesterday with a gun, with the intention of hurting people, and he did," Boyd said.

Boyd said the megachurch instituted security precautions after the shootings at the Denver area mission center.

Boyd said Assam was a hero in preventing further bloodshed, rushing to confront the gunman just inside the church. "She probably saved over a hundred lives," Boyd said. Watch pastor tell how guard saved lives »

"I give the credit to God. And I say that very humbly. God was with me and the whole time I was behind cover -- this has got to be God, because of the firepower that [the gunman] had vs. what I had," Assam said.

"I did not run away and I didn't think for a minute to run away, I just knew that I was given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse. I just prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide me."

She told reporters she had not slept since the shooting, "as I'm sure you can tell."

She said she was on the third day of a three-day regimen of fasting and prayer, wanting to know God's will for what to do with her life, when the shooting took place.

"I was weak, and where I was weak, God made me strong," she said. "He filled me and he guided me and protected me and many other people. And I'm honored that God chose me."

Assam was one of about a dozen volunteer security guards at the church, half of whom are armed, Boyd said. The guards are licensed, trained and screened, and are church members, not "mercenaries," he said. E-mail to a friend

The Left is honest once in a while

A War We Just Might Win

MICHAEL E. O’HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK

Published: July 30, 2007

Washington

Keith Negley

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks — all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups — who were now competing to secure his friendship.

In Baghdad’s Ghazaliya neighborhood, which has seen some of the worst sectarian combat, we walked a street slowly coming back to life with stores and shoppers. The Sunni residents were unhappy with the nearby police checkpoint, where Shiite officers reportedly abused them, but they seemed genuinely happy with the American soldiers and a mostly Kurdish Iraqi Army company patrolling the street. The local Sunni militia even had agreed to confine itself to its compound once the Americans and Iraqi units arrived.

We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate. Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark.

But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).

In addition, far more Iraqi units are well integrated in terms of ethnicity and religion. The Iraqi Army’s highly effective Third Infantry Division started out as overwhelmingly Kurdish in 2005. Today, it is 45 percent Shiite, 28 percent Kurdish, and 27 percent Sunni Arab.

In the past, few Iraqi units could do more than provide a few “jundis” (soldiers) to put a thin Iraqi face on largely American operations. Today, in only a few sectors did we find American commanders complaining that their Iraqi formations were useless — something that was the rule, not the exception, on a previous trip to Iraq in late 2005.

The additional American military formations brought in as part of the surge, General Petraeus’s determination to hold areas until they are truly secure before redeploying units, and the increasing competence of the Iraqis has had another critical effect: no more whack-a-mole, with insurgents popping back up after the Americans leave.

In war, sometimes it’s important to pick the right adversary, and in Iraq we seem to have done so. A major factor in the sudden change in American fortunes has been the outpouring of popular animus against Al Qaeda and other Salafist groups, as well as (to a lesser extent) against Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

These groups have tried to impose Shariah law, brutalized average Iraqis to keep them in line, killed important local leaders and seized young women to marry off to their loyalists. The result has been that in the last six months Iraqis have begun to turn on the extremists and turn to the Americans for security and help. The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.

Another surprise was how well the coalition’s new Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams are working. Wherever we found a fully staffed team, we also found local Iraqi leaders and businessmen cooperating with it to revive the local economy and build new political structures. Although much more needs to be done to create jobs, a new emphasis on microloans and small-scale projects was having some success where the previous aid programs often built white elephants.

In some places where we have failed to provide the civilian manpower to fill out the reconstruction teams, the surge has still allowed the military to fashion its own advisory groups from battalion, brigade and division staffs. We talked to dozens of military officers who before the war had known little about governance or business but were now ably immersing themselves in projects to provide the average Iraqi with a decent life.

Outside Baghdad, one of the biggest factors in the progress so far has been the efforts to decentralize power to the provinces and local governments. But more must be done. For example, the Iraqi National Police, which are controlled by the Interior Ministry, remain mostly a disaster. In response, many towns and neighborhoods are standing up local police forces, which generally prove more effective, less corrupt and less sectarian. The coalition has to force the warlords in Baghdad to allow the creation of neutral security forces beyond their control.

In the end, the situation in Iraq remains grave. In particular, we still face huge hurdles on the political front. Iraqi politicians of all stripes continue to dawdle and maneuver for position against one another when major steps towards reconciliation — or at least accommodation — are needed. This cannot continue indefinitely. Otherwise, once we begin to downsize, important communities may not feel committed to the status quo, and Iraqi security forces may splinter along ethnic and religious lines.

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.