Bob Yates Posts

Today's Kansas City Star has a front page story that should embarrass any politician in Kansas and Missouri.

I get the regular e-mail newsletter from the Missouri Republican Party. It starts out with the stories it will cover.  Here is that list:

• Dave Spence rally with Chris Christie this weekend

  • Candidates for Governor, Senate debate in Columbia

  • Rick Perry coming to Columbia for Ed Martin

  • Peter Kinder speaks with Mizzou College Republicans

  • Ed Martin endorsed by FL Senator Marco Rubio

  • Shane Schoeller tours Missouri farms

  • Vicky Hartzler warns of military cuts

  • Ann Wagner discusses US foreign policy with Jamie Allman

  • RNC Web video: Redistribution

  • Roy Blunt op-ed: “Stop the Mediscare”

  • Chris Koster whitewashes Nixon's role in Mamtek fiasco

  • In other news

  • Upcoming events

Did you notice what statewide candidate's name is missing?  
I wonder why our good Republican friends can't say anything about rallys Todd Akin is having.  

A new Rasmussen poll is out on the Akin-McCaskill race.

Todd Akin has fallen behind Sen. Claire McCaskill by double digits in the Missouri Senate race, according to a Rasmussen automated phone poll released Thursday.

The survey taken Wednesday shows McCaskill leading Akin, 48 percent to 38 percent, among 500 likely Missouri voters. Nine percent preferred another candidate, and 5 percent were undecided.

And, someone has secretly recorded what it has been like in the Akin home.

I can't seem to embed the actually video. You need to click on the link above.

Marsha appears to be some producer at Fox News.

Unfortunately, the elevator ride that Akin took after his interview last weekend was not available to be shown.

Who says that Colbert is not a news program?

He reported tonight that Akin is for repealing the 17th Amendment.  

Here is the article that is the one Google goes to.

The relevant passage:

"I have a very serious concern about erosion of states rights, and reversing this [amendment] might pull that balance back," Akin said, adding that he is "leaning" in favor of repeal.

If I were a Democratic candidate for the state legislature I would ask my opponent whether he/she would vote to repeal the 17th Amendment to end the erosion of states rights.

I would tie my opponent to some of the more outrageous statements by Akin.  For example, are government supported loans to college students a "third state cancer"?  Do we need to have the federal government ending any assistance to children nutritional programs?  

I would try to get my opponent to distance him/herself from Akin or support Akin.

Over the past 24 hours, the left blogosphere is filled with analysis of Paul Ryan's record and his love of Ayn Rand.

Here is the minute 2009 video that everyone needs to remember when he read that Ryan is no longer a true Rand believer.

Ryan asserts it is Rand's kind of thinking that we need now that Obama is President.      

Let's listen to the critique of the Rand philosophy from the sainted William Buckley.
It is about 1:40 where Buckley talks about having Whittabker Chambers writing a review of Atlas Shrugged that is worth hearing.

Here is a copy of that review that Buckley amusingly references.  [That this is on freerepublic adds to the problem facing Ryan's love of Rand.]

Here is the paragraph that Buckley references. [The reference to the dollar sign refers to the last passage of the book when one of the heroes traces a dollar sign in the air and not (as Chambers noted) the Cross.]

The embarrassing similarities between Hitler's National Socialism and Stalin's brand of Communism are familiar. For the world, as seen in materialist view from the Left. The question becomes chiefly: who is to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run it more efficiently?

Something of this implication is fixed in the book's dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind, which finds this one natural to it, shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: " To the gas chambers - go!" The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture - that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the differences between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.

And, this is the kind of thinking Ryan asserts we need today: a rigid philosophy that leads to a final solution to those who resist.

Remember these are the words from saints of the Respectable Right and not from dirty, smelly hippies of the disreputable Left.  

I just got this email that is "Paid for by the Missouri Republican State Committee."

IMPORTANT DATE TO REMEMBER: The GOP primary is August 6

It sure is good to know the Republican primary is on a different day from the non-partisan and Democratic primary.

Wait......wait......I have just got a new email.

IMPORTANT DATE TO REMEMBER: The GOP primary is August 7
In the meantime, we all to like this passage in this email.

McCaskill votes for massive tax increase: Everyone knows that you shouldn't raise taxes during an economic downturn.  But while the US economy continues to sputter, Claire McCaskill sided with Barack Obama and against Missourians by voting to force a massive new tax increase on many American job creators and business owners.   Her vote allows the 2001 & 2003 tax cuts to expire on individuals making more than $200K ($250K for couples), and it also allows the death tax to increase on many Americans.

Actually, McCaskill and the Democrats voted to make sure that taxes do not increase on any income under $250,000, even for the income of Romney, Obama, Hartzler, McCaskill, or you and me.  So, McCaskill and the Democrats voted to cut taxes on EVERYONE, but because income over $250,000 is so sacred the Republican position is that no one has their taxes remain at the Bush tax cut level.

It sure would be good to know who those "job creators" are that will have to pay more on their income over $250,000/year.  

By the way, who are these Americans who will see their "death taxes" go up?

I have two land lines (don't ask).  

One is rather old and the other I have had for over twenty years.

Tonight, I have gotten Romney robocalls on both.  The message is the same: Santorum has flipped on supporting Planned Parenthood.

My spouse tells me we had a call for Paul and a call for Santorum on the old land line.

I wonder how much a robocall costs.  And, Romney appears to be carpet bombing at least my part of the state.

Are you getting any calls?

I just got a survey, paid for with taxpayer money, from by Republican State Representative, Denny Hoskins (R-121).

It touches all of the red meat issues of the Republicans: Right-to-work, teacher tenure, teacher pay based on merit, making sure unions don't spend dues on political issues, etc.

The only question about taxes is for roads.

However, the issue that is most interesting is the question about increasing funding for veteran homes.
As WE ALL KNOW, we must honor our veterans.  The survey notes that funding for veteran homes are such that, if we don't increase funding, one of the homes might close.

I'm asked whether we should institute a lottery dedicated to supporting veteran homes.

All I can say is "wow"!

It is sooooooooooo important to show how grateful we are for veterans that we are going to fund them by proceeds from gambling. I wonder why Hoskins didn't suggest a dedicated bake sale.

Oh, did I mention there was no question about increasing the cigarette tax, establishing a tax on internet saies, or any other general revenue tax (except for roads)?