When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to reaffirm the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to this realization.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these United States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to reaffirm their former Systems of Government. The history of the present President Barack Obama and democrat congressional majority is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, such as in Arizona and has sued to render their laws void unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has rebuked Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has endeavoured to redefine the population of these States; for that purpose ignoring the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to discourage their illegal migrations hither.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for Arizona establishing an enforcement mechanism to enforce laws he will not treat equally.
He has selected Judges dependent on his Ideology alone for their nomination to their offices, and the resultant amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, under the guise of Healthcare and Financial “Reform” and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has wanted a “civilian national security force, that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded” kept among us, even in times of peace, seemingly wanting Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power, by ignoring the pleas of the Governor of Louisiana to help rather than hinder his efforts through the United States Coast Guard during the recent oil leak crisis affecting that State.
He has combined with others such as the Mexican government and the ACLU to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws which he is charged to enforce; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation by willingly suing Arizona :
For tacitly allowing the quartering of large bodies of Illegal aliens among us:
For protecting them, by bureaucratic apathy and malfeasance from punishment for various crimes which they should commit on the Inhabitants and laws of these States:
For undermining our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our knowledge by lying about the specifics of the Constitutional basis for government run health care.:
For arguing against our own state Legislatures, and declaring the federal government invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government among various states, by acting as though they are out of his Protection and waging War against them via neglect to their cries for assistance if that state didn’t vote for him in the last election.
He has allowed the pollution of our seas, the destruction of our coasts, economic destruction of our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time allowing large Armies of liberal lawyers to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has allowed enemy combatants taken on the battlefield to bear Arms against this Country, to become the executioners of our friends and Brethren.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of this country, the merciless liberal racial, socio, economic grievance mongers whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions held dear to the traditions and values of this country.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury and lies. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Democrat/Liberal brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here whether 300 years ago, or yesterday. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in political War, in Peace cautious Friends.
We, therefore, the Conservatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled ideologically, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these States, solemnly publish and declare, That these United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the current political majority and that all political connection between them and the current political majority, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy political War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fiat dollars, and our sacred Honor.

It’s time for the Vikings to get a new stadium. I’ve heard all the arguments against it and they are not enough to dissuade my opinion.

I’m going to make common sense arguments and allude to studies that show the negatives of a state funding a stadium. Frankly I’ve seen all the negative ones you could cite Teams have paid to have positive ones made in their favor which I could cite, but these arguments are my own. What gets lost in this whole bandwagon of republicans/libertarians against any public financing is this sick desire on the part of detractors to finally join the intellectually lazy argument against the rich.

1st: Stadiums and teams do not create economic growth. What kind of libertarian/republican really buys that argument? I’ve got several jerseys in my closet, somebody made them, somebody sold them to me. I’ve bought decorations for home and work, sold beer, food and glasses where their logo was a selling point. Somebody made the beer, the glass, the decorations, the advertisements, servers sold and were tipped in the wonderful frenzy of economic activity. Taxes were paid. People were employed because off all this activity. Now multiply silly little me (by at the very least) 100,000 across just our state. Some Viking bar in another state is doing the same thing. I know the argument of well what is the benefit to the state if some worker in China is making that jersey? The money isn’t coming back to the state, boo hoo. Neither are the sales for Vikings paraphernalia across the country..but they’re producing jobs for other people who may some day vacation in MN. I mean how far do you want to be a purest about local money spent/local money brought in; and ignoring the invisible hand?

2nd. The substitution effect. As if we are little lab rats some make this argument: Family X that chooses to go to a stadium event will sacrifice these “fixed” entertainment dollars on other things so the whole claim of spurring spending is a wash. Who lives their lives like this? Have the people who buy this argument ever been to a sale of any kind? If you know even the most rudimentary fundamentals of capitalism you may have heard about a little something called salesmanship. Family X is never thought to come to a place spend Y and leave. It’s not what you need it’s what they can make you want…yet people who claim to be free market capitalist tend to ignore that little fact of life.

3rd. Ignoring visit motivation. (I read an anti-stadium study that said the “visit motivation” should just be ignored) Really? “..if their motive for their trip was not the stadium”…So let me get this straight. According to this argument if Honeywell was going to have a meeting, and decided to splurge to entertain some out of town guests with a shiny new luxury box at an NFL stadium…versus, what…a cruise on lake Minnetonka? That shouldn’t be counted even though dollars got spent here. Maybe pro stadium people do oversell the primary draw of a sports team to a city but that doesn’t negate the dollars spent here. Why is it assumed if they weren’t spent there, they’d be spent somewhere else? What if they aren’t spent at all because other venues of entertainment are not deemed a good value for the dollar?….After we sat quietly for two hours at the Guthrie theatre we concluded the multi-million dollar deal to bring new production facilities to Minnesota…yeah right. I would think some of these meetings would happen out of state, if at all.

Every year there’s a new American story, It happens in 32 other place but one of them is here, in Minnesota. Look at John Randle. He’s one of my favorite underdog rag to riches story but even more so because he has made his home in Minnesota. Are we not better for having him here? For having your children hear his story? To knowing all the hard work was rewarded down the street, across the way over at the Metrodome.

http://bit.ly/bigMAKmn

Maggie’s campaign initial’s remind me of fast food.  The problem is that Minnesota government needs a diet not a supersizing.

Kare 11 Doesn’t Care About Your Children…

If they did, they would be more careful about the types of ads they place on their website.

Look at what a college classmate and friend of mine emailed to me the other day, it is a screen shot of an article he was reading on Kare11’s website.  It has advertisements for a chat site devoted to “Gay hookups.”

If only Kare11 cared enough to select their ad content more carefully…

“As a Democrat and as an American, I’m going to put trust and faith in my government to get things done…”

Recently, a Democratic Fascist Leftist Party member told students of Gustavus,

Hopefully we can count on all of you to do your part this year to
elect a DFL Governor, because we can't afford Tom Emmer.

So, let me get this right DFL --

• we can afford a candidate who has done nothing to reign in runaway spending besides proposing new spending bills,
• we can afford to hire students to organize their campuses, but
• we cannot afford to say “enough is enough” to reckless spending while also putting a check on uncontrolled power?

Thursday, July 08, 2010
Restaurants Set to Suffer Under ObamaCare
Posted by: Michele Bachmann at 4:17 PM

When the full effects of ObamaCare are felt, be ready to pay more for lunch at the burger joint down the street. Restaurants are anticipating laying-off workers and passing higher costs onto the consumer in order to deal with the requirements in the Democrats’ new health care law.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports on the impact expected by one burger chain in particular, White Castle:

“The Columbus-based family owned restaurant chain – known for serving small square hamburgers called “sliders” – says a single provision in the bill will eat up roughly 55 percent of its yearly net income after 2014.

“Starting that year, the bill levies a $3,000-per-employee penalty on companies whose workers pay more than 9.5 percent of household income in premiums for company-provided insurance.

“White Castle, which currently provides insurance to all of its full-time workers and picks up 70 to 89 percent of their premium costs, believes it will likely end up paying those penalties. The financial hit will make it hard for the company to maintain its 421 restaurants, let alone create new jobs, says company spokesman Jamie Richardson.”

Likewise, other restaurants will be hurting. The Plain Dealer went on to note George Ebinger, owner of several International House of Pancake restaurants, who expects penalties for not insuring his 140 workers to cost him $220,000. He could insure those workers, but it will cost approximately half as much to pay the penalties and not insure them.

ObamaCare’s business crippling policies will stunt job-growth at a time when job creation is needed most. After all, unemployment continues to hover right around 10%. This bill needs to be repealed in full, plain and simple.

My vote against ObamaCare and commitment to free enterprise recently earned me the Thomas Jefferson Award by the International Foodservice Distributors Association. Clearly, insurance mandates resulting in cost hikes and penalties to the foodservice and restaurant industry are not the road to economic growth.

Ok, I’ve been a bit detached from the local political happenings in MN right now. Tom Emmer is running for governor on the republican side and a random schmegma of democrat inheritance babies and lifers are stabbing each other in their fat backs for the nod.

I work in the restaurant industry, I have for around fifteen years. One day one of my servers who is a hard core conservative republican as I am tells me of a crazy lady at a table. This women goes on, out of the blue and excoriates HER for ruining the economy. “It’s servers like you who don’t claim their tips who have ruined the value of a dollar.” I don’t even know where this customer is coming from. She tells the server that Tom Emmer is meeting with some servers at Zeke’s restaurant or something. The server walks away from the table so she doesn’t say something inappropriate. I’m left wondering what is going on here. A random customer is talking politics and I’m stuck in the third person perspective.

So I dig around and find some asinine comment by Tom Emmer about servers making $100,000 a year. First off I want to believe that is a throw away line that isn’t intended to be taken seriously. It’s like saying: Al Franken was a “comedian” he was funny. Half true, not accurate. What is so absurdly false about that statement is that relatively intelligent people like myself wouldn’t continue to be in management if I could more than double by salary doing the same with less responsibility. Running in circles, refilling drinks, cleaning cheerios off the floor from baby spills, etc. …I’d do that for THAT higher wage in an instant. To make it clear I have done that work before.

This is what makes this issue so perilous for Tom Emmer to bull-headedly run into. A lot of people have been servers or some other variant of a tipped employee in their lifetime. Whether currently; or growing up as an unprivileged youngster trying to make their way and pay their bills. It is hard, degrading work that is hardly up for scrutiny. You quickly learn the value of a dollar when you’ve been lectured about how great you are at your job and find a big fat zero for your efforts from a customer. If you claim all your tips as you are required to by law you will most likely be greeted with a paycheck written to you for ZERO $. The government uses those claimed dollars to figure out your tax liability per paycheck and will often tax all of it leaving the server with a zero $ check. I sometimes try to cheer them up when they actually have money in their paycheck and tell them they can get a tank of gas with it!

The way to address this issue is not to tell servers they’re obviously lying and living high on the hog hoarding fistful of dollars. It’s not to tell restaurant owners and managers their servers are screwing them. There’s a different argument that can win the day.

If you get paid the minimum wage why are you content to defend the little the government allows you to have? If your good at your job as a server shouldn’t you be allowed to ask for more? What do you think is the main impediment to that happening? It’s the minimum wage. A person who has been a server for 20 years will find their hourly wage will always be whatever the minimum wage happens to be. The newly hired high school drop-out who manages to get past the interview process…they get the same hourly wage as the experienced veteran. It’s not that the restaurant owner is greedy, they would love to reward you with a higher wage that you deserve. They are stuck however paying the worthless employee the same wage. If I could reward my stalwart at say $10/hour and could offset that cost by hiring the unknown at say $5/hour I’m sure many operators would. You’ve earned your worth, it’s time for the government to get out of the way of a restaurant operators’ freedom to interact with their employees as free market citizens.

So looking at my previous post I think maybe I need to clear some things up, sometimes in the fog of our own thoughts we tend to talk to people after we’ve hashed the issues thoroughly in our own cranium…impart our brilliance and wonder why “they” don’t get it.

In my infantile dealings with state/national and party politics I’ve learned that there is some structure and continuity to how it is all run. Keep in mind to an outsider who doesn’t pay attention much to the minutia as I did, there are only two realties: Party…..Candidate. The how, what, where, and in-between don’t matter at all. Don’t know, don’t care, don’t want to learn.

After the primaries nationwide (mostly), and for the Republicans in MN (since there are no credible primary challengers for any statewide office) I was trying to argue for unity in the face of defeat. The die as been cast for the candidates who won at the state convention in Minnesota. The time for bickering and arguing who is more “conservative” or “libertarian” has passed. If X wasn’t enough of Y then he/she should have been defeated at the state convention by the will of the convention goers. If you think the convention goers are part of some vast conspiracy then I truly feel sorry for you. If the candidates for the particular offices in your area are too liberal/conservative you must galvanize behind them regardless, because the alternative is too polar opposite from what you believe and should be unthinkable. Bide your time with someone who agrees with you 80% of the time and work within the party and system to change or replace them. You can’t change the clothes on the American mannequins when you’re on the street looking into the window.

There is a “group-think” that permeates the modern democrat party that makes even the most credible “blue-dog” simply the guy asking for the highest ransom for his vote. So if you want to talk “slippery-slope” a “moderate” democrat is the worst kind imaginable…she votes against your wishes while exacting more money from you for doing it!

Ray, I don’t want to choose between the lesser of two evils. The lesser of two evils is still THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS! Do you realize what you just said? Too argue otherwise is to ask your slave master for steel chains because you keep breaking the iron ones. I would be always planning my escape! Easier ties to break make my dream a closer reality. Selling out too a fate I don’t want too accept doesn’t make my helplessness any more noble.

Take that analogy and apply it to the speeding train argument. The train of America’s ruin is chugging along…democrats add fuel to the fire while republicans tap the brakes once in a while…so why not end it all and let the democrats get all the blame while we all go over the cliff It’s fitting some will use this argument while envisioning themselves outside of that speeding train. Me. I’m in it. I want to stop that train. If you can’t help me stop it you’re my enemy. If you won’t help me slow it down…you are my enemy.

It falls on us. The party activists to do the dirty work, to convince, to cajole, to inspire people to see our views and get others aboard to create a majority. Too work for our candidates and shelve the animosity and regret if we lost a battle; in order to win the war. Sadly too many “libertarians” and “moderate republicans” are content to snipe (at candidate for office they can vote for) from facebook etc. and it’s time for the disunity to end. Otherwise you’re fighting the crowd to the front seat of that speeding train.

Could you, right now: name the last five losers of the Super Bowl? of the World Series, of the Stanley Cup…of the United States presidential elections? Of your senate or congressional elections for the last five years? If you can you are special and rare.

You may know General George Washington won battles at Yorktown and Trenton. Can you name the battles which he lost? What do you remember? What did history record? Why is this nation here? Because he won! There were doubts about him then. For every fairytale story we recount over and over there are a ton of losers. When the scale is the future of our country I choose to side with the safer bet that will win. Honor in defeat is a concession granted by the winner to make your transition into irrelevance more palatable to you so you go away quietly. The loser accepts that honor to soothe their realization that their method was wrong. It may not have been the message. There is no honor in defeat in politics. It’s not sacrificing your principles to realize you sold it wrong, or too want to sell it right! A loss makes the loser a trivia question nobody will ask. I’d rather be mad at someone who can help me (in office) than ignored by someone who won’t (see the health care vote).

It’s an odd juxtaposition characters like Glen Beck and Jason Lewis have painted themselves into. Winning is everything. Everything is on the line, but if the winner isn’t as pure as the wind driven snow…well it’s not worth my time. Obama was a radical liberal who painted himself as a receptive lefty moderate…where is our hardcore conservative who can talk the talk of “moderation”? Oh that’s right…he/she was destroyed by his own side for the incompetent who hit all the talking points.

America’s birth was defined as a country that didn’t play by the rules, essentially perfecting guerilla tactics to defeat the British. The loudest claimants to that heritage call themselves conservative/libertarians and are suddenly too big to degenerate themselves to the silly idea of winning at any cost. Our country is on the line!

It’s funny to me as conservatives we rail and cry about some school district that imposes a “no scoring” rule for their soccer team or whatever. We find it abhorrent that winners and losers will not be defined and we see the value of teaching both circumstances for a child too learn. Losing builds character and winning can build future success. If everyone loses nobodies feelings are hurt (in theory). We know the value of defining a winner, yet a bunch of conservatives/libertarians will find NO shame in being the loser in the game of politics. Insulating their feelings so they are not hurt. They’ve defined the conditions of surrender ahead of time to keep their precious principles and ideology intact. When they meet the loss head on…well weren’t they the bigger person for falling on that sword of principle?

Some vainly argue that you are moving the electorate even when you lose. How do you measure that? We’ve run out of tomorrows to experiment with that quaint notion…just look at a debt clock! If you think that rationale is even close too lucid then I guess Goldwater’s loss stopped Johnson’s “Great Society” crap because everyone saw the honor in Goldwater’s defeat…

We must win, and then we must work as hard when/if we do. Putting your faith in politicians is all about possibility and percentage. Possibility is what they tell you and their past performance (measured against the circumstances and the consequence). Percentage is their likelihood of winning their particular election.

Blind faith (which is wasted on them) is hoping they’ll do the right thing,. Holding their ass to the fire and making them always aware of who helped them there, and the consequences of crossing their base…that is a Representative Republic. Republican/Libertarians who don’t know how to contact their Congressperson or Senator maybe a more despicable lot than the liberal who thinks there is 58 states.