The Stafford Voice

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Daniel

Did Freedom Win?

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by John Stossel

What a surprise! Everyone predicted a Republican resurgence. Instead, voters shocked pundits by strengthening the Democratic majority in Congress. President Obama called the result a resounding confirmation of my legislative achievements.Democrats quickly introduced legislation to add a public option to Obamacare; a second, larger “stimulus” bill; a Paycheck Fairness Act; and new card-check and cap-and-trade bills.

OK, I assume that didn’t happen. But it’s tough to come up with a Wednesday morning column. I write this on Election Day. Polls haven’t closed. It might have happened.

Please tell me it didn’t.

This was to be the year of the tea party triumph. As a libertarian, I so want to believe that the tea party marks the beginning a comeback for small government.

But I’m probably deluding myself. I know that big government usually wins. Remember the last time the Republicans took power? They promised fiscal responsibility, and for six of George W. Bush’s eight years, his party controlled Congress. What did we have to show for it?

Continue reading . . .

Daily Dose

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“We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.” – Thomas Paine

Mark 5:19 – Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends

On this day in history:

In 1868, Republican Ulysses S. Grant defeated Democrat opponent Horatio Seymour to become the 18th President of the United States.

Republicans Projected to Take Control of House

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Fox News is projecting that the Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats with a likely pick-up of around 60 seats, give or take a few.

As it is likely that the power in the Senate will be retained by Democrats, the overwhelming sweep by the Republicans an their takeover of the House is major news. As is the transfer of power from Pelosi to Boehner.

Topics that helped get voters out include the economy and health care. And, it is these hot issues, among others, that helped get people out early and in advance.

It is only the hope of many people across America that the outcome and enthusiasm from these elections is carried through to 2012.

Broder’s Brainstorm

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By Patrick J. Buchanan

Though Obama “may lose control of Congress,” says columnist David Broder, he “can still storm back to win a second term in 2012.”

How does Broder suggest Obama go about it?

“Look back at FDR and the Great Depression. What finally resolved that economic crisis? World War II.”

Conceding the prospect of a new war is “frightening,” Broder goes on to list the rich rewards of Obama’s emulating FDR.

“With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power, (Obama) can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve…

“(T)he nation will rally around Obama because Iran is the greatest threat to the world in the young century. If he can confront this threat and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he will have made the world safer and may be regarded as one of the most successful presidents in history.”

Cynicism aside, what is wrong with Broder’s analysis?

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Guess Who?

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by Thomas Sowell

Guess who said the following: “We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.” Was it Sarah Palin? Rush Limbaugh? Karl Rove?

Not even close. It was Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of FDR’s closest advisers. He added, “after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. . . And an enormous debt to boot!”

This is just one of the remarkable and eye-opening facts in a must-read book titled “New Deal or Raw Deal?” by Professor Burton W. Folsom, Jr., of Hillsdale College.

Ordinarily, what happened in the 1930s might be something to be left for historians to be concerned about. But the very same kinds of policies that were tried– and failed– during the 1930s are being carried out in Washington today, with the advocates of such policies often invoking FDR’s New Deal as a model.

Franklin D. Roosevelt blamed the country’s woes on the problems he inherited from his predecessor, much as Barack Obama does today. But unemployment was 20 percent in the spring of 1939, six long years after Herbert Hoover had left the White House.

Whole generations have been “educated” to believe that the Roosevelt administration is what got this country out of the Great Depression. History text books by famous scholars like Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., of Harvard and Henry Steele Commager of Columbia have enshrined FDR as a historic savior of this country, and lesser lights in the media and elsewhere have perpetuated the legend.

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Daily Dose

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“The people can never willfully betray their own interests: But they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act.” – James Madison

Matthew 5:16 – Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

On this day in history:

In 1889, both North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states.

Obama’s Economists Missed What Voters Plainly Saw

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by Michael Barone

Heading into what appears to be a disastrous midterm election, the Obama Democrats profess to be puzzled. The president’s record, they insist, is moderate, accommodating — if anything, overcautious. So why do most American voters seem to be angrily rejecting it?

That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is to say that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have increased government’s share of gross domestic product from 21 percent, where it’s hovered for the last several decades, to about 25 percent and have put the national debt on a trajectory to increase from 40 to 90 percent of GDP.

Voters have noticed — and don’t like it.

But, say the Obama Democrats, shouldn’t ordinary people — in particular, shouldn’t the blue-collar working class — be grateful to a government that tries to “spread the wealth” (Obama’s words to Joe the Plumber) in difficult economic times?

They used to be, the argument would go. In post-World War II America, voters regularly moved toward the Democrats in recession years.

There’s a difference, however, that has escaped Obama Democrats but perhaps not ordinary voters.

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Left’s Tolerance Limited to Liberals

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by Ken Connor

The Good Book tells us that pride goes before a fall, and with the midterm elections looming perhaps nothing encapsulates the truth of this maxim more than the leadership of the Democrat Party and its constituency of liberal media elites.  The Left’s inability to engage opposing views with seriousness and respect and their unwillingness to tolerate divergent opinions within their own ranks reveal an ugly intolerance lurking beneath their veneer of open-mindedness, an intolerance that has fueled the continued, rapid growth of the Tea Party and all but sealed the electoral fate of many Democrats come November 2nd.

A new series of advertisements for MSNBC on the airwaves this week captures perfectly the kind of paternalistic condescension that’s crippling the Left in the eyes of so many American people.  The ads are intended to communicate the spirit of progress that guides the network, and to set MSNBC above and apart from it’s chief competition and ideological nemesis, Fox News.  In airing these ads, MSNBC is essentially extending an invitation to the American people.  “Join us” they say, in our quest to “move forward” towards a better America for all.  There’s only one small problem.  According the ideological litmus test imposed by the network, vast segments of the American population don’t qualify to participate in MSNBC’s vision.

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Daily Dose

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“Our political way of life is by the laws of nature and of nature’s God, and of course presupposes the existence of God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and government.” – John Quincy Adams

Matthew 25:40 – And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

On this day in history,

In 1800, John Adams moved into the White House, becoming the first president to occupy it.