The Exercise of Vital Powers

Iran is opening up its laws to allow donors to economically benifit from donating a kidney. Contrast this to the more “enlightened” United States or Europe where only the doctors, hospitals, donor matching firms and insurance companies are allow to profit from the transaction, not the person supplying the kidney.

Read the Story in the Economist.

4000 people died in the US while on a waiting list for a new kidney. Thats more than all those who died in the 9/11 attacks. Ironic that Fundementalist Iran might liberalize its laws to save more lives that Islamic Fundementalists took.

Three hundred and eighty six years ago, 102 people fleeing religious persecution in England and finding no home in the Netherlands, landed in North America near Cape Cod.

They didn’t have immigration visas issued by the Algonquians. They mostly kept to themselves and didn’t try to assimilate into the local population. They kept their language, religion and structure of government.

Today, I’m quite thankful to these pilgrims and the generations that followed, legally and illegally. They created the greatest country in the world. I’m thankful that, of all the people born in 1975, I was one of the lucky 5% to be born in this great country.

And as one of the luckiest 5% of humans living today, I find it very hard to condemn those who come here looking to create a better life for themselves and their children.

May you and your loved ones have a great Thanksgiving.

Congress itself isn’t immune to the problem either. Six years ago, it approved a half-billion dollar “Congressional Visitors Center” on the Mall to celebrate the works of Congress. It’s now three years and tens of millions of dollars behind its scheduled completion.

They succeeded in their mission.

Read Radley Balko’s rant on the Crap-ification of the National Mall.

ROFTL

“Milton Friedman revived the economics of liberty when it had been all but forgotten. He was an intellectual freedom fighter. Never was there a less dismal practitioner of a dismal science.

“I shall greatly miss my old friend’s lucid wisdom and mordant humour.” — Lady Margret Thatcher

Prediction: George W Bush won’t veto the bad bills coming out of the Democrat congress congress.

Why do I say this? Because I looked back to 2000-2002 when the Senate was in the hands of the democrats. Bush wants to be liked by the left and the media. He tried to win their favor with such abominations as McCain-Feingold, No Child Left Behind, and the prescription drug benefit.

All the Democrats need to do is pass a few bills “for the children” and our spineless president will sign them. There will be no veto of the minimum wage, no veto of increased NCLB funding/regulation, no veto of increased campaign finance restrictions.

The Era of Big Government isn’t over, and all those who voted Democrat in hope that a split government will hold the line is a fool.

Oh, and if you’re looking for proof on how easy Bush will cave to Democrat demands (either right or wrong) look how long it took before he sacked Rummy.

According to the AP blogger and Georgia Congressman Jack Kingston. is going to run for HRC chair.

I think Kingston has the right idea on how to tap the alternate media, and I agree with what he said yesterday that the GOP will need alternate sources to get their message out when we no longer control the gavel.

However, I worry that Kingston’s past performance in voting with his fellow appropriators and against the Flake amendments might send the wrong message to the base: “we haven’t learned our lesson”.

I’ll support Jack’s run, but only if he acknowledges the role run-away earmarking played in our defeat Tuesday.

HT Peach Pundit

It looks like the House and the Senate have switched control. Allen is behind by about 7k votes and although there will be a recount, it doesn’t look like that will help. Lieberman might just become the most powerful person in the Senate, forcing the Dems to move more to the right. This is probably a bad thing for the GOP’s chances to recapture the Senate, however if we can keep the White House and recapture the house in 2008 we’ll be good.

The mainstream media (and I include Fox News in that category) is labeling this as a referendum on Iraq. I don’t buy it. First off, the president’s party always loses lots of seats in the second midterm election. Second we lost about 6 seats due to our own incompetence and corruption: Foley, Delay, Ney, etc. There were more seats where Republican incumbents retired in largely democratic districts. The deck was stacked against our win from the beginning.

I was just on a blogger call with Jack Kingston (R-GA). He basically reiterated what conservatives & libertarians have been saying all summer: We need to go back to the GOP that gave us the Contract with America. We need to avoid scandal. The class of ‘94 was elected in part because of the House banking scandal. What is interesting is that Kingston doesn’t feel that there is a consensus that we spent too much or too little federal dollars.

The rumors of an RSC slate of leadership candidates is growing. Now is the time for Pence, Flake, Shaddegg and the others to take on the appropriators, take on the win at all costs leaders and push for a more fiscally conservative GOP.

Now that the GOP doesn’t have the majority, we can’t control the flow of debate in the Capitol. We will need to rely on alternative media outlets. Blogs, YouTube and other sources will me much more important to getting our message out. This is good because the GOP has never been able to frame the debate in our favor in the media. By building a grassroots support structure to get our message out while in the minority, we’ll be in a much better position to explain and sell our agenda when we do re-take the Congress.

As for the Democrats……

Speaker-to-be Pelosi is already talking about increases in the minimum wage, and spending more money on Medicare Part-D. Neither of these do I expect “Compassionate Conservative” Bush to veto. It will be interesting to see what the Dems decide to do about Iraq.

The Democrats also have unity issues. There were quite a few conservative democrats who were elected with the support of radical leftist groups.

2006 was a good year for the Republican Party of Georgia. We re-elected our Governor, we elected the first Republican Lt. Governor and Secretary of State. We picked up five seats in the Georgia House. We re-elected all our incumbent state-wide offices.

True we had a few losses. Brent Brown’s loss in the Labor Commissioner’s race was probably the worst. Perry McGuire, Mike Wiggins and Gary Black all fell to the better organized resources of the incumbents. I suspect there will be some finger pointing over that during the next four years.

All the state referendums passed with a 2/3rds majority. The ducks and deer have already vowed to take amendment two to the Supreme Court. This was exactly the reason we needed to elect Perry McGuire and Mike Wiggins.

I still need to go through all the RLC endorsed candidates to see who won and who lost. I know Steve Schultz lost in north Dekalb and Mark Grant lost his bid for the senate seat. There may still be others, but the RLC did pretty good last night.

Chuck Eaton was pushed into a run-off but he is the only one, so he’ll get the full resources of (an exhausted) state party. Once that race is over, the RLC needs to focus on making sure our state Republican Majority doesn’t follow in the footsteps of our national majority and throw it all away in an orgy of pork an corruption.

Republican Study Committee Chair Mike Pence:

“As we examine the results of this election, it is imperative that we listen to the American people and learn the right lessons.

“Some will argue that we lost our majority because of scandals at home and challenges abroad. I say, we did not just lose our majority, we lost our way.

“While the scandals of the 109th Congress harmed our cause, the greatest scandal in Washington, D.C. is runaway federal spending.

“After 1994, we were a majority committed to balanced federal budgets, entitlement reform and advancing the principles of limited government. In recent years, our majority voted to expand the federal government’s role in education, entitlements and pursued spending policies that created record deficits and national debt.

“This was not in the Contract with America and Republican voters said, ‘enough is enough.’

“Our opponents will say that the American people rejected our Republican vision. I say the American people didn’t quit on the Contract with America, we did. And in so doing, we severed the bonds of trust between our party and millions of our most ardent supporters.

If you’re upset about “Speaker Pelosi” then the people to blame are Melman, Hastert, Frist, Delay, and the approprators.