Tag Archives: Lynyrd Skynyrd

What’s That Smell Coming From the RNC?

Posted on by Standard 2

So you went to the Lincoln-Reagan dinner and you wrote a check to the Republican Party.  You thought your money would be spent to defeat liberal Democrats, right?

Well, maybe not . . .

It seems the establishment GOP feels more threatened by the Tea Party and other conservative Republicans than by the liberal Democrats.

I first experienced this in the 2012 Montana governor’s campaign when our local Republican committee threw a wing-ding to endorse and support one of the seven Republican primary candidates – a year before the primary election!  I was stunned.   I thought the party is supposed to remain neutral while its candidates compete for the right to represent their party in the general election.  My conservative candidate, a straight-shooting Tea Party favorite and long-time loyal Montana Republican, started the primary race with his own party working against him.

This practice (using funds from Republican donors to defeat conservative Republican candidates) has accelerated this year across the country.  But the recent episode in Mississippi goes way over the top.

Senator Thad Cochran, an aging (some say senile) and ineffective member of the DC permanent ruling class, was about to be knocked out of the Mississippi GOP primary race by a young, aggressive Tea Party candidate, state senator Chris McDaniel.  Cochran had made almost no effort to campaign, assuming that his seat was safe from any challenge, as it had always been in the past.  After all, he had been “bringing home the bacon” for 36 years, right?

The Republican insiders realized that their boy was in trouble, and there was no time to waste.  GOP operative Henry Barbour (nephew of Haley Barbour, former RNC chairman) was sent on a scorched-earth mission to take out McDaniel in the last few weeks before the primary.  He shuffled funds between some PACs under his control and hired DEMOCRATS to convince black voters to cross over in the primary and vote for Cochran.

Here is where it gets really sickening.  Barbour used money from Republican donors to print posters, broadcast radio ads, and make telephone robo-calls all claiming that Republican candidate McDaniel and the Tea Party are racists who are trying to prevent black citizens from voting!  Cochran_Race_BaitingBarbour’s propaganda campaign further claimed that McDaniel and the Tea Party would do away with food stamps and other benefit programs and cut funding for education, especially black colleges.

One radio ad said, “A victory by tea party candidate Chris McDaniel is a loss for the state of Mississippi. It is a loss for public education. … It is a loss for the citizens of this state in a time of natural disaster, for our public universities and particularly our historically black universities. A victory for Chris McDaniel is a loss for the reputation of this state for race, for race relationships between blacks and whites and other ethnic groups. Mississippi can’t afford Chris McDaniel.”

It is unthinkable that Republican donor funds would be used to smear loyal conservative Republicans (and the Tea Party) as racists – to convince gullible Democrats to cross over and vote against a Republican primary candidate.  But it worked, and Cochran won the runoff election by a few thousand votes.  The election results are under scrutiny, with numerous complaints of illegal votes.

The Tea Party Patriots demanded the Republican National Committee censure Henry Barbour.  Their “white paper” study detailed the many illegal and immoral activities of the establishment Republicans.

At its summer conference in Chicago this week the RNC not only refused to read a censure resolution brought by the Missouri state committee, RNC chairman Reince Preibus doubled down, threatening Missouri GOP chairman Ed Martin with his position for even raising the issue.

Apparently the insider Republicans have no fear of losing conservative voters – they assume we will continue to spend our money, our effort, and our votes to elect anybody who does not have a “D” after his or her name.

So next time you pull out your checkbook to contribute to the battle against the ongoing Democrat decay of our nation, think twice.  You may be supporting Republicans without principles who will do or say anything to hold on to their gravy train.  Even race-baiting.

It’s time to do some serious disinfecting in the leadership of the Republican party.  It’s really starting to smell in there.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

Ooh, that smell!
Can’t you smell that smell?
Ooh, that smell!
The smell of death surrounds you.

Lynyrd Skynyrd – That Smell

 

 

Guitar Heaven! – Skynrd’s “That Smell” live in Nashville 2003

 

 

 

 

I Didn’t Just Fall Off A Turnip Truck

Posted on by Standard Reply

“No matter what you’ve heard, if you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan.  Period.”



“Your premiums will go down.”



“We have four dead Americans . . . What difference does it make?”



“We’re the most transparent administration in history . . .  so long as I’m president, I won’t stop fighting to eliminate waste and abuse in Washington . . .  to eliminate what we don’t need to pay for what we do . . . to rein in exploding deficits . . . and I’m going to keep on fighting for real health insurance reform.”



Here are 65 more lies.



Call me and my conservative friends racists, obstructionists, uneducated “crazies”.  Accuse us of being the new Ku Klux Clan.

At least we know better than to believe much of anything this group has to say.

Tom Balek – Rockin’ on the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

Well now I don’t read that daily news
‘Cause it ain’t hard to figure
Where people get the blues
They can’t dig what they can’t use
If they stick to themselves
They’d be much less abused

I Know A Little – Lynyrd Skynyrd

My favorite Skynyrd song!  Too much guitar-power for one band – enjoy!

Do You Know What Common Core Is Yet?

Posted on by Standard 3

classroomI posed this question almost a year ago, and today I ask again –  do you know what Common Core is?

Common Core, the biggest change in education in US history, is underway, and yet it continues to fly mostly under the radar.  If your child or grandchild is in a public school, it is almost certain that he or she is already caught up in this total overhaul of our public education system.  Even if you don’t have children involved, you should be concerned because most citizens feel that education is the linch-pin to the success of our nation and way of life.

“Wait a minute,” you might ask.  “If Common Core is such a big deal, why haven’t I heard anything about it?”  And that is a very important question.  Did your school ask you whether you wanted to implement Common Core?  Were you involved in deciding what is important in your child’s education?  Whenever a major government program is kept secret – especially one that will have such a major impact on your children – you should wonder why.

Here are the basic tenets of Common Core:

  • national standards will be applied to make education homogeneous across the country
  • teaching methods and content will be focused on preparation for college and careers, rather than the attainment of general knowledge and skills
  • courses will encompass more “rigor” (higher level learning)
  • content will be technical rather than general; reading materials will be primarily non-fiction; history and philosophy will be limited and focused; and emphasis will be placed on how students learn rather than acquisition of facts
  • teachers will become facilitators of group projects and discussions rather than classroom leaders and producers of information – students will collaboratively determine what they should learn and what the correct answers are

These intentions sound good.  But like every process change, the devil is in the details.  There are so many unanswered questions:  if content is homogenized, how will students learn special and individual skills?  If the primary instruction model is group work, will introverted students be left behind, or will competitive students be held back?  Are we abandoning the building-block approach to knowledge that has traditionally established the foundation for higher learning?  Are elementary students capable of determining what they should learn?  Will schools cut back on the foo-foo to allow the necessary time to make this work?

And perhaps the biggest question of all:  will parents, teachers and local school boards have any control over content, or will our schools become federal government factories spitting out ideologically cloned kids?  Look back to pre-war Germany to see how dangerous top-down control of education can be.  Defenders of Common Core insist that there will be a great deal of local control.  Have you seen any yet?  All decisions to this point have been made by a small, elite cadre of educational theorists, government wonks, and profiteers lined up at the Bill Gates money trough.

North Carolina Lt. Governor Dan Forest has it right – he says let’s slow down and take a good, hard look at Common Core before we just jump in, with no questions asked:

As a school board trustee I barged in and studied Common Core up close and personal, alongside the teachers.  Although they had no choice in the matter (the train had left the station), many of them were not sold on the idea.  An article in Education Week illustrates just how tough the leap from “zero to ten” is going to be.  More teachers are now speaking out, and questions about Common Core are beginning to appear in the mainstream media.

Supporters of Common Core say conservative critics are uninformed and unnecessarily cautious – we are roadblocks to progress.  We need hope and immediate change!  Don’t ask questions, just trust us!

Sound familiar?

Tom Balek – Rockin’ On the Right Side

Rockin' On the Right Side

So, don’t ask me no questions
And I won’t tell you no lies
So, don’t ask me about my business
And I won’t tell you goodbye

Don’t Ask Me No Questions – Lynyrd Skynyrd

Here’s an EARLY Lynyrd Skynyrd clip (1974, before the plane crash).  Look behind them – that’s a SERIOUS back-line of amplifiers!