The GOP has a lot of opportunity with the current spending coming from the left. People are going to realize part of our ultimate downfall was due to Obama's massive spending bills. Because the Republicans voted no, all but three, they have the ability to claim no responsibility when it all hits the fan. On the surface it looks that way, when you dig a little deeper you realize it's not that simple. While the GOP headmasters avoided the first porkulus bill they gladly jump on the second $410 billion pork train. Think the Republicans have suddenly found their fiscal conservatism? Wrong. Nearly %40 of the new bill were pet projects from Republicans. The first bill was disguised as a stimulus bill, this one serves no other purpose but to fund their favorite programs. The GOP is running around like a chicken with their heads cut off criticizing the Democrats with one hand and signing pork bills themselves with the other. If I were you I wouldn't allow yourself as a conservative to get caught up in this double talk. It may be time to find yourself another party. This one has sold its self up the river.

Read more at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyConservative/~3/u7qleQaySA0/

When I was a kid, my Dad used to take my brother and I to movies. Back then, adults would take children to films, unlike now when the market is driven to the teen intellect dollar. Now, nobody goes to movies, and back then, Hollywood was setting itself up to not be seen. One evening, my Dad decided to take my brother and I to see a movie, included in the double bill was a film called Soldier Blue. It was a restricted film, and we could not get into the theatre, so we came home. I only came across this movie while browsing the net. Indeed, Soldier Blue * is a classic piece of progressive propaganda, depicting history untethered to reality. It is a gripping piece of film, that depicts white people as war criminals, scoundrels, and rapists. It evokes emotion, so as an art work, it is successful. It is also propaganda, seeking to spread alarm and despondency in those that identify with the villains, these being Americans. Bad Americans, big bullies, picking on the peaceful vegetarian Plains Indians, who celebrated communal property rights, a welfare state, and social spending. As I rather like Americans (none of the ones I know are rapists, unlike the the movie depiction) it is not a movie I would pay money to see. Even in its free form as clips on the internet, is rather silly. But then again, I have studied history.

Read more at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyConservative/~3/0u37ekaSnL8/

By Ed Adamczyk

 

I am a peace-loving and coffee-drinking man and it pains me when a coffee war breaks out, unless I’m offered a cents-off coupon. The notice of a claim by a nearby McDonalds, on its advertising sign, of “Delaware’s Best Coffee” (I presume it refers to the Avenue, not the state) makes me again ponder this fondness of ours with getting over-caffeinated.

Walk or drive that one-mile route of Delaware through the Village of Kenmore, from the city line to Sheridan Drive, and you’ll pass 11 places to buy a cup of coffee, none of which is named Tim Hortons or Starbucks (and 4 places to obtain vodka: I checked. One is a liquor store with a coffee bar). Some are restaurants, while others, like the Noco gas-and-go at Delaware and Kenwood, have the ambiance of a filling station convenience store. That, on average, is a coffee outlet per 480 feet, and doesn’t count the recently-closed shop run by witches (I refer to the proprietors’ spiritual bent, not their personalities).

A coffee-pumping Sunoco mini-mart and a Starbucks are immediately south. A Tim Hortons can be found northwest, north, due east on Highland Avenue and a block east on Delaware Road (I once observed that Walgreens has Kenmore surrounded, but by only 4 locations. That does not compare to the alacrity with which Tim Hortons shops are being built. If you live in Ken-Ton and never want to see a certain person again, invite him or her to your home with the advice “Turn right at the Tim Hortons”).

All right, we swill way too much of this stuff. We know where to find the quality cup of coffee to savor and relish (with cake and brownies and doughnuts) and generally make us appreciative we are citizens of a 21st-century industrialized society. We also know where to get the rougher-tasting-but-still-coffee coffee that’ll get us through whatever errand we’re on, until we can locate the coffee of preference. And it is no secret the markup on a cup of coffee is sufficient, the barriers to entry are low, and the means of production is so simple, that anyone in any business can become a coffee merchant.

Know what we need, out here? Right, another coffee franchise. Enter Coffee Culture Café and Eatery, a Mississauga, Ontario-based chain with 70 franchises immediately over the border (sound familiar?). It will soon open its first American shops with locations in Williamsville and downtown Buffalo, and according to its website, has plans to take over the abandoned Long John Silver fish shack on Sheridan Drive near Parker Boulevard.

Theirs is a decidedly upscale enterprise. The Town of Tonawanda is about to get a coffee shop with wood paneling on the walls, overly-rich desserts in glass display cabinets and that overstuffed ambiance of charm and warmth and comfort that suggests you’re somewhere other than a half-mile away from Boulevard Mall. They’ll likely pipe in jazz and Wi-Fi as well, if I’m any judge of these places. It’ll be a place some people will designate their clubhouse, the way every man once had a favorite tavern.

Any more of these one-stops to feed a coffee jones, and Western New York will be in jeopardy of losing its reputation as a great place to have a beer. Not the fact, just the reputation.

Indeed, I’m convinced I’ve lived long enough to see coffee become the de facto social lubricant of our civilization. Read any of what’s considered great literature and note the characters are constantly swilling brandy, opening wine bottles, slamming mead shots, and waving tankards of beer in the air. Have you done a lot of that lately? Note the ratio of your recent experiences with alcohol (whatever your age, speed or hipness) compared to the times you stop your activity to grab a cup of coffee, and tell me if you’d rather be the owner of a saloon or a coffee shop.

I occasionally stopped into that forlorn little Long John Silver store, geographically near no other casual dining experience on Sheridan. I liked that I always seemed to be, even at my stage of the game, the youngest patron in the place (they served a non-burger menu of fried seafood, which the older clientele evidently found perfectly digestible). The parking lot was always filled with the sort of heavyweight sedans favored by the senior citizen demographic (never a Jetta in sight), and the place was deserted by 8 P.M.

Well, Tonawanda will apparently be getting a different experience soon. Minivan-driving moms and high-school kids with coffee habits and downwardly mobile young professionals will have a new and comfortable place to converge.

These kids are driving me crazy. Do you think she likes me? Help me with my resume. I’m guessing the coffee will be strong and the cross-table conversations will be fascinating.

 

By Bill Gallagher

Former President Bill Clinton couldn't resist. Self-control has never been his strong suit. Clinton told ABC News that President Barack Obama avoided happy talk and "shot straight with us" in describing the depth of the economic crisis. But then Clinton offered a bit of gratuitous advice to the president just one month in office, saying, "I would like him to end by saying that he is hopeful and completely convinced we're going to come through this."

By Bill Gallagher

"We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Canadians are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege."
-- Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau

This week, Barack Obama is taking his first foreign trip as President to Canada, and he should use the occasion to take note of a society that, in many important quality of life measurements, offers an example the United States should strive to achieve.

By Bill Gallagher

 

A fortnight after taking office, our new president got some unsolicited advice from the old, departed vice president: Do things just as I did or you will bring catastrophe upon the nation. It will be your fault and failure. Any departure, whatsoever, from the policies I hatched means a "high probability" that terrorists will successfully carry out a nuclear or biological attack. Be warned young man, the blood will be upon your hands.

Barack Obama, Dick Cheney admonishes, must embrace his dark deeds - abduct people, torture them, imprison them without charges, deny them legal representation, spit on basic human and civil rights, illegally spy on tens of millions of innocent Americans, trample on the Constitution, declare the president is a monarch accountable and answerable to no one, brand nations as irredeemable enemies, treat allies with contempt and behave as the world's bully. 

by Richard Sharp

 

It’s not easy being a crook these days. There are more cops on the beat, surveillance cameras everywhere, searches at borders, airports and public buildings and events and security systems in homes and cars. The police and security agencies are into a so-called “war on terror," aka a growing, global surveillance society. They’re into entrapment, big time, of potential terrorists, prostitutes and Johns, suspected sex offenders, protesters, whomever they choose.

They can set you up, keep secret their information and, if you are anywhere close to the “terror,” lock you up and refuse you your day in court. For these guys, say good bye to the right of habeas corpus. That would be an 800 year old right!

By Mary MacElveen

 

In my prior piece dealing with our crumbling infrastructure, I had referred you who read that piece of how the Amish people helped out in a time of crisis or rather an inconvenience.

 

The reason I had asked you to read that amazing article was not only a case of neighbor helping neighbor, but to learn something from it.  You are probably asking, what can we learn from such a simple society?  We can learn how to survive going forward.  Upon reading that article when researching my piece on infrastructure, this statement rang out to me where a non-Amish person who had been delivered hot coffee from his Amish neighbor stated that it was the "Best coffee I ever drank,"

By Mary MacElveen

 

Like Rachel Maddow, I too am a huge fan of infrastructure.  Even the word excites me.  I know strange for a woman. Right?  I love seeing things built which translate into jobs.  I think that is the reason why I have for as far as I can remember love the smell of tar used to fix pot holes, because those who are doing this work are improving our lives and performing a hard days work. Forget the perfume, let me smell some tar.

By Mary MacElveen

 

 

 

 

Lost to all as Senator Judd Gregg backed down smiting the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama to be his Commerce Secretary was this most important story I read in today’s Washington Post: Financial Crisis Called Top Security Threat to U.S.. Which I will get to in a few moments.