Spartanburg Tea Party

With a thanks to Wayne for shooting me this article, someone … someone … needs to put this on their “to research and remind” list for when we retake enough seats in Congress/retake the White House to solve these crazy programs.

This article in USA Today begins:

In Wilkinson County, Miss., a home has been flooded 34 times since 1978. Extraordinary as the damage may be, even more extraordinary is that an insurer has paid claims every time, required no flood proofing, never raised premiums after a claim and vowed to continue insuring the house. Forever.

The home’s value is $69,900. Yet the total insurance payments are nearly 10 times that: $663,000. It’s no surprise that the insurer faces huge financial problems. The insurer? The federal government.

The article goes on to detail specific instances and an overall incomprehensible system of taxpayers subsidizing tens of BILLIONS in insurance to homes which are flooded over and over. This is the epitome of the epidemic of lack of personal responsibility wherein homeowners in historically flood prone areas are allowed to continue their dependence on government programs to bail them at the expense of other American citizens. Sad and tragic situations the first time, perhaps the second. By the third, I’m beginning to feel a lack of compassion and more a feeling that I’m getting “got.”

Keep this on your list of issues to confront the new conservative majority. Tough decisions need to be made in restoring personal accountability, this is just one obvious example.

Just keeping the hopeful up on a Sunday morning, check out Marco Rubio’s Republican response video this week. And if you’ve got friends/family in Florida who will be voting in November, give them a holler.

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Thanks to dhorowitz3 at Redstate for this “pump it up” rundown of last night’s primaries.

It is heartening to see the tea party/liberty group influence on these OH SO important races. We have not gone away, we have not lost our focus or our passion. We have been working in our neighborhoods, working the media, working the wallets, working steadily and with determination to advance conservative candidates. The true work of the tea party is to win these seats. We won’t win them all, and we may have to back our second choice at times, but … November is coming

Allahpundit breaks down the Florida situation and gives us a bit of the “groovy optimism”

The money line?

Neither [Crist nor Meek] can win without heavy Democratic support, and since Meek’s the party nominee, most of it should go to him. (The perfect set-up for a 45/35/20 Rubio win!)

We’ve mentioned Mick a few times here at STP … he’s ahead in the race right now to unseat John Spratt right across the county line in the fifth congressional district. Spratt … a Pelosi lapdog to the infinity degree … Spratt who while charged by law to present a budget by April 15 has yet to produce one … Spratt, a 28 year incumbent. If you have friends/family in the 5th district, or if you can volunteer some time to flip a seat from Democrat to Republican which will have a HUGE impact, please consider contacting www.mulvaneyforcongress.com and donating time and/or money. Here’s a clip of Mick speaking to supporters last week in Lancaster.

USC-Lancaster BBQ from Mick Mulvaney on Vimeo.

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Politico writers Jim Vandehei, Andy Barr, and Kenneth P. Vogel do an assessment of Haley Barbour calling him “The most powerful Republican in politics.”

Read the article and find out why. This is one of the reasons he’s on my “watch” list …

At the moment, Barbour’s power is derived from his ability to tilt gubernatorial and statehouse races with his RGA funds. These races might not be as sexy as some of the star-studded races for Senate or as dramatic as the battle for control of the House. Yet they could prove even more important over the long haul because they will create the next generation of Republican leaders — and set the terms for the decennial redrawing of House seats.

Thanks to Aaron Gardner for posting this at Redstate… and I stole his title also!

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I remember the day that the sub-human, despicable creature called Bart Stupak caved (shock) and you and I began funding abortions with our tax dollars. It was a dark and gut-wrenching day.

So in an effort to “kick the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight” (TY Bruce Cockburn) I found Dan Benishek’s website that day and donated money. Not a lot. Just a way of keeping my sanity that day. Most of us can’t strike as hard or as often as we want to against the truly evil among us, so we must relish the “take THAT!” moments.

The blogsphere and the good people in Michigan rallied and this week Dr. Dan become the Republican candidate to run for Stupak’s seat. NOW PAY ATTENTION HERE … the night of the primary, Tuesday night at 1 am with all votes counted, Dr. Dan was ahead by … 1 vote. I’ll let you create your own GOTV speech from that to share with your friends/neighbors.

So … here is Dr. Dan, thanking US for making this happen. As you will see from this video, he’s a regular guy, one of us, who has just had enough.

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As we are being told to be tolerant as plans move forward for a mosque to be built a stones-through away from where Muslims perpetrated one of their foulest acts against humanity, Muslims seem to have no problem gunning down Christians in one of their countries. Just where is their tolerance?

First, I’ve always had a difficult time referring to 9/11 as a “terrorist” attack. In my opinion that trivializes what it really was and what it really stands for.  It was not a “terrorist” attack; it was an act of war.  They declared war against us long ago and they have not withdrawn.  The entire world is their battlefield against western civilization.  Don’t mistake it as anything else just because they don’t have the means to perpetrate ongoing attacks (yet) or to wage war as most of us imagine it in the traditional sense. If they are allowed to defeat us, their history books will refer to this as a “great war” with a great victory, not as “terrorist” attacks.

Earlier today in Afghanistan, a group of Muslim Taliban Terrorists gunned down a group of Christians who had just finished providing health care for two weeks in northern villages so remote, they were no roads to access these villages and the Christian team had to hike for hours over mountainous terrain.

It is reported the Muslim gunmen robbed them and killed them one by one. The Muslims stated they killed them for preaching Christianity.  Ten were killed, including six Americans (five men / one woman), one German (woman), one Brit (woman), and two Afghans who were apparently interpreters who where mistaken for part of the team.  A third Afghan interpreter survived, it is reported he was quoting the Quran and shouting, “I am Muslim, don’t kill me.”

NOTE: Written for Political Vise

As I toured hundreds of miles of I-35 through Missouri and Iowa, the construction could not possibly have gone unnoticed.  The fact that they were completely ripping up a concrete road to replace it with another concrete road quickly got my attention.  Isn’t concrete supposed to last 50+ years? Most of I-35 was built in the mid to late 1960’s, so at 40+ years old could it have really needed this?

As I observe, they first drive a very large piece of equipment over the road with a jack-hammer effect and leave the road in ruin.  Next, they drag through the rubble to pull out all the rebar, and then they crush the concrete even further until they eventually get it down to stone size. Finally, they dump the stone-size pieces of concrete into a machine which grinds it down to sand. The 10” to 12” thick concrete road is then replaced with another 10” to 12” thick concrete road.

Supposedly, one of the advantages to concrete is that it will last a very long time and is easy to repair.  According to the ACPA (American Concrete Pavement Association):

“Restoration techniques can extend the life of concrete pavements up to nine times their original design life.”

So again, did this 40+ year old road really need this extreme replacement?

A couple of other interesting facts about concrete from the ACPA:

“Concrete can best withstand the heaviest traffic loads. There’s no need to worry about ruts, shoving or washboard effects possible with asphalt pavements.”

“Make it unnecessary to impose weight restrictions during the spring thaw. The U.S. trucking industry would be more profitable, more efficient and more competitive. Seasonal restrictions now cost approximately $50 million annually.”

Maybe it should say, “The Mexican trucking industry would be more profitable.”  Just sayin’.

Now supposedly, the NAFTA Super Highway is going to be four football fields wide and parallel to I-35.  Well, it’s not.  This is how they work, blending enough fact with fiction to confuse the masses.  While people are looking for such a wide highway to be built, the actual construction is ongoing.  Just think about it!! Imagine a highway that wide (eight lanes), then imagine the amount of traffic it would take to fill it up for more than 1500 miles. I would bet, you could put every 18-wheeler in this country on a road like that at the same time and traffic would still flow.  A normal four-lane highway will sufficiently handle the traffic to and from Mexico and Canada through most of this country.  It would naturally have to be wider near cities to handle local traffic, but the “Super” Highway does NOT have to be all that “super” to accomplish the mission.

They seem to be moving rapidly on this construction project as much of what we were driving on had been completed and they are working seven days a week.  The above photo of construction was taken on a Sunday.

My tour for hundreds of miles up and down this highway had pretty much the same scenery; cornfields.  Traffic was nothing compared to our South Carolina highways and the I-35 unrepaired sections were not as bad as much of ours up and down I-26 and I-95.  Why does federal funding exist for these highways in the middle of nowhere, but not our highly traveled east coast roads? I believe we all know the answer to that at this point…

NOTE: Written for Political Vise