We just got a new channel (TV One) on our Cox Cable here in Claremore. I’m loving it because it has reruns of Amen! What a great show! Just thought you should know.

Here’s the latest from Ann Coulter, lamenting–as have I–the wobbliness of President Bush’s conservatism. Writing of Bush’s penchant for backing liberal Republican (RINO) incumbents over true conservative Republican primary challengers, she addresses Lincoln Chafee:

"…Bush is backing developmentally-disabled Lincoln Chafee over the only Republican in the race, Stephen Laffey, Harvard MBA and mayor of Cranston, RI. Chafee opposes Bush on taxes, Iraq, abortion and gay marriage. This man is literally too stupid to know he’s a Democrat. If Chafee hadn’t inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, he would be living in a shack tending weeds. In the last election, Chafee famously refused to vote for Bush, instead writing in Bush’s father" (emphasis added).

How great is that! A wordsmith she truly is. Plus, she has the added benefit of being right. Read the rest of her column here.

The weather is absolutely lovely again. We are loving it.

The construction workers developing the new houses in our area cut our electric today. So far, they have cut our cable/internet twice, our water once, and our electric once. When you work from home, it’s a real problem. The city of Claremore is good to respond though.

Pray for the OCRL as we meet tonight.

I am a little behind on my reading, but I finally bought and read The Fair Tax Book by Neal Boortz and John Linder. I have been a fan of the fair tax in concept for some time. It was nice, though, to read all the details. All I can do is repeat an old saying that nothing is as powerful as an idea that’s time has come. It is time, my friends and neighbors, to replace the income tax in the USA with a consumption (retail sales tax).

I am not going to re-write their book here. But I am going to provide you with a link to it at Amazon here. But this book and read it now. It is 130 pages or so. You can read it in 1-2 sittings. For the future of our country, you need to read this plan. More than that, if you can read this plan and honestly be opposed to it, I’ll give you a dollar. It is the most sense tax issues have ever made for me. Think you’re not not interested in taxes? Let me ask you this:

• Would you like to receive your full paycheck without all those deductions for income tax, Medicare, and Social Security? Say you make $500 every two weeks. Would you rather take home what you do now under our current system? Or, would you rather take home the full $500 (without negatively affecting Medicare and Social Security)?
• Wouldn’t it be nice if April 15 meant nothing more to you than any other Spring day? Under the fair tax, there is no income tax, and no April 15 deadline. That also means no forms, no receipts, no wasting hours upon hours preparing your forms, no hiring accountants to file your forms.
• Wouldn’t it be nice if an estate could pass from a dead parent to their children without having half of it confiscated by thedeath tax? With no income tax, there would be no death tax and no marriage penalty.
• Wouldn’t it be nice if all those people out there who are currently cheating the system by not paying income taxes had to pay their fair share? Under the fair tax, everyone will pay taxes on new retail items. Illegal immigarants, drug dealers, hookers, cheats, thiefs, and scoundrels, along with the normal average everyday folks. More people paying in means that everyone’s burden (their fair share) goes down. Nice, huh?
• Don’t want to pay any taxes? Under the fair tax, you don’t pay one dime in taxes until you spend your money. You could earn money tax free, buy only your necessities for life (on which every head of household receives a prebate check to offset the taxes), save the rest, and pay no tax. What about the huge taxes that would be on big ticket items like cars and houses? In the first place, we are already paying a huge amount of tax on these items because of the embedded taxes (read the book for a fuller explanation). Once the income tax is repealed, the embedded taxes would go away, so the price will be very much the same. Beyond that, you could avoid all taxes by buying used. It’s a retail sales tax on new items. Used cars and used houses (and other second-hand items) would not be taxed.

Interested yet? How could you not be? Buy this book. Click the cover below to get it at Amazon. I also saw they are stocking them at Wal-Mart for about $18. A small fee for tax reform indeed.

I am a huge Peggy Noonan fan, although I do not always agree with everything she says. But her last column is absolutely 100% dead-on accurate. She is smart, and it is a bit of a lengthy piece. I encourage you to read it all. It makes the case, one I have been making, that the big spending has to stop, especially from the Republican party. Here’s an excerpt:

George W. Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr. Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce?

Read it all here: Is Bush’s big spending a bridge to nowhere?

Some of you all know that I love to podcast. It has been a long time since I have done any, but they will start back up soon. Once they do, they will be posted on the WynnCast blog. And, if you want to hear any of the previous podcasts, they are available at the Old WynnCast Blog Archive.

Shalom!

WHAT WOULD REAGAN DO?

Ann Coulter has another winner here; read it!

Ok, confession time here. As I was mixing up a little peanut butter and syrup for a peanut butter and syrup sandwich in the middle of the night the other day, it made me wonder what other weird things people will eat when it’s the middle of the night and there’s not much in the house or when no one else is looking. So, my dear readers, I am asking you to comment with your weirdest late-night (or anytime) snacks or delicacies and all-around food stories. Here are a few others I will admit to (not that I eat these all the time, just have before or still do occasionally):

*Peanut butter and Miracle Whip sandiches;
*Store-bought cake icing on graham crackers;
*Totino’s 99-cent pizzas (honestly, I prefer these badboys to all other pizza, even restaurants, and I mean that);
*I grew up using Karo white (clear) syrup on pancakes and waffles. I didn’t even know what Aunt Jemima was until a couple years ago;
*Mixing Pace picante sauce with sour cream as a dip for tortilla chips. (I learned this from a girlfriend in the 7th grade);
*Basically using Miracle Whip on everything. I still prefer it and onions on a hotdog; and,
*Once in a while, growing up, Mom would fix a dinner of just cut up lunch meats, cheese, crackers, condiments (including Miracle Whip), pickles, chips, and Ro-Tel Velveeta dip.

Seems funny now, but those were some of the best dinners as I look back on it. Maybe it was because she would spread it out on the coffee table so we could watch TV, or better yet, so we could watch not only a rented VHS movie but also watch it on a rented VCR. Remember those days? I also remember once, way back before frozen yogurt was readily available, we had a great night when Mom and Dad bought regular blueberry yogurt and froze it. We had it like ice cream, and it was really good.

Well, I don’t know what this whole trip down memory lane means, but it was fun. I expect comments with your stuff now. By the way, this new forum holds your comments for me to approve the first time you make one. After I approve your first one, you can comment all you want and it will appear right away.

I did not watch the President address the nation live the other night, but thanks to the good folks at C-SPAN, I just watched it online (by the way C-SPAN folks, it is time for you all to abandon Real media and switch to Windows Media for your streaming!).

The real impression I get is one that I have known for a long time. We all must accept that George W. Bush is not a conservative. Now, I voted for Bush, twice. I supported him. I contributed to him. He was more conservative than Gore and Kerry, but he is not A conservative (think Reagan or Goldwater). Bush is a neo-con, socially moderate to liberal. He campaigned as a “compassionate” conservative. Translate “compassionate” to mean “big government spending.” Bush, a Republican, has spent more and created more bureaucracy than our party should ever have allowed him. We Republicans came to power on a promise of lower taxes, less regulation, smaller government, less spending, etc. Now that Republicans control the Congress and the White House, you would think that our causes and ideals would be making progress. Our initiatives would be passing one after another. The liberal weasels like Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, etc., would be reduced to a bunch of impotent piles of rubbish in the corner. But no, in the Congress the liberal good ole boys are still running the show. In the White House, the President spends and spends, creates more red tape and bureaucracy, nominates “stealth” candidates to the Supreme Court, and generally acts weak, which gives the liberals even more energy and ammunition. I hate to say that it might be possible that we, conservatives, have been weighed and found wanting. But I need to revise that. We conservatives in the country remain the same. We’re the ones upset that we have been betrayed. Let me restate that previous line: The Republicans we conservatives have empowered have been weighed and found wanting. I mean, Tom Coburn is awesome. But he cannot overrule the rest of the Senate. Anyway, I am getting on a tangent, so I need to get back to the point at hand.

When a President’s ratings go down, the quick and dirty solution to raising them is to spend money on something the country will view as important. That is what I heard the President do in his Katrina speech. I believe that the President is a man of faith, and I admire him for that. What I have a problem with, even from a man of faith, is the use fo the federal government as the means of our Christian duty. We Christians have a responsibility to be charitable, to seek the alleviation of pain and need, to respond to severe tragedies at home, in other states, and abroad. The federal government has a function too. That function is layed out in our country’s foundational documents. One function the federal government does not have is to be the great Nanny in the sky that is to sweep in and save us all from all problems, be they self-inflicted, natural disasters, or otherwise.

I have a man in my church that I love to death, and he is always a stalwart against “knee-jerk” reactions, and that shows his wisdom. Very often, in response to crisis, people need to do something. They may not know what, but they need to do something. For example, a church may have a pastor that has some misdeeds. A church may respond to those misdeeds by adopting a policy or removing some authority from the pastor’s office. The problem with that is, every other pastor to serve that church will then be constrained by that other pastor’s misdeeds and not his own actions. There are ways to respond to crises other than knee-jerk reactions. You can examine the situation adn reach better conclusions, but knee-jerk reactions make us all feel better. It feels like we have done something.

The same goes for Katrina. None of us will deny that it truly was a disaster. But does the knee-jerk response by the President fix the problems? His initiatives may make us feel better; but do they fix the problems? None of what the President has proposed woould have stopped the disaster or the badly carried out response. The only thing the President mentioned is that the feds will be looking at the disaster recovery plans for all major U.S. cities. Need I remind everyone that New Orleans and Louisiana had beautiful, written disaster plans. They have circulated widely through the blogosphere. It is entirely likely that the feds could have looked at those plans and said they passed muster. The problem is with the integrity and character of elected local and state officials. Local and State government has become so political that many of the figureheads elected to local and state positions have no skills or abilities. They are talkers only. What should happen, the non knee-jerk reaction here, is for the residents of New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana to use this as a wake-up call. Katrina should have alerted them to the stature of the persons they have empowered. The citizens who were affected should rise up and reject the leaders who have failed them so desperately, understanding that it is not the President of the United States’ job to deal with local or even state disasters (at least primarily). I mean, do people seriously want their first responders to have to fly in from Washington, DC?

As a country, we have seen a huge shift from self-reliance (under our God), community, and states rights (and responsibilities) to a culture in which we rely on the Great and Powerful Oz that is the federal government to be our savior. This is more so in some states and regions that others, but it is hugely widespread. But, if we were the have a knee-jerk reaction like this in response to what happened in Louisina, it would weaken and damage the local and state governments in the entire rest of the country. I guess what I am saying is, don’t judge us all based on how Louisiana messed it up. Hopefully, other state and local governments (including mine) will take the hint and know that if they are not effective in their positions of authority, those of us who put them there will remove them, and that the feds are itching to take over.

I am not uncharitable. I just believe the federal government is not the best-equipped entity to offer help. And the President agrees with me. He pledged in his speech that, becasue of the disaster, people wouldn’t have to navigate government bureaucracy, and they would be eligible for tax relief. Here’s a news flash, if the federal government can lessen bureaucracy in the aftermath of disaster, it should be lessened period. Root it out and eliminate it. No one should ever have to navigate bureaucracy. The same goes for tax relief. What the President is saying is that taxes stifle business and entrepreneurship. That is true all the time, not just in the wake of a hurricane. Lower the tax burden on all of America and see how the economy will grow. Or better yet, let’s all force the adoption of the Fair Tax. All in all, I guess I am saying I would like the President to be more conservative than compassionate, simply becasue he equates compassion with spending $60 Billion that is not his to spend. There’s an idea, all those who think the government should be more compassionate with my money, how about you give some of your own for a change? “Oh, but that’s why I pay taxes,” they will say. And I say, “No it’s not! Go look it up.”

And so, it is because so many people are dependent on the government these days that it has become their religion. Department heads and bureaucrats have become their apostles and disciples. In only such a terribly mis-guided system of dependence could Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and others of thier ilk be viewd as saints. People will naturally acknowledge from whence their help comes. That’s why many used to thank God. In our modern governmental climate, they just thank the government, and that is the extend of their religion. Now do you understand why government, and especially liberals, are so hostile to God? They don’t want the competition.

First, Jeane is getting better!

Second, it was so lovely today that I got the Cadillac started, put the top down, and drove! What a day for a convertible.

I visited a sick friend in the hospital. Her spirits are good, but she needs visitors. This could be a long-time-to-heal problem.

Mom and Dad met me at Cowskin Prairie for crab legs. I love impromptu, “hey-you-wanna-meet-me-since-I-am-in-town” dinners. We could have never planned to all get there, but it just came together.

At dinner I met a gentleman from KGVE (99.3 FM) in Grove. We talked about radio for a bit. I am continually amazed at how radio gets into someone’s blood. I started in the biz when I was 16 because Dave Boyd is a good guy–and for no other reason. They took me with no skills (I have the tape to prove it), and not only trained me, but gave me a job. I will always be a fan of the Boyds. And I love KITO, though I use the scan button on my radio mercilessly. I was kind of sad that KITO sold. It’s the end of an era almost. You don’t find many radio stations anymore like KITO was when I worked there. I’m talking still playing vinyl. 45s! It was a great first step, and it’s why I am where I am today.

Like I said, radio gets into your blood. I think if you’re a real radio guy or girl, it’s always there. I always had this little fantasy of buying KITO. That, of course, did not happen. But, it’s why I turned my office into a not-especially-great-for-broadcasting-but-is-better-than-most-for-podcasting studio. Radio (in my case, podcasting), is a love of entertaining people, and I guess like most actors and actresses say they like to entertain, I do too. It’s nice to know someone listens, even agrees with me, but even if they aren’t and don’t, I still do it because it’s fun.

So, anyhow, it was a really great day. Mr. KGVE, thanks for the visit! When I do quit scanning on my radio, it very often is on 99.3. Would love to see your setup sometime. In the meantime, my podcasts will be re-posted very soon. Mom and Dad, thanks for the dinner. Jeane and Alma, keep getting better.

Peace out…