Scott R. Sullivan

July 21st, 2008 by Scott

So is this the week? Bob Novak is reporting today that Sen. McCain will be revealing his choice for running mate sometime this week.

Two names that keep recurring are Gov. Romney and Gov. Jindal. As I reported back in May:

Gov. Jindal looks very promising. He’s the youngest Governor in the country and has been hailed as the next Ronald Reagan! His voting record backs up these claims. He has voted for gun rights, to lower taxes, and most importantly, understands the global war on terror. This is a man we need in the White House.

If he chooses Jindal or Romney, I’ll be VERY happy.

I’ll find out if my thinking is correct later this week if Novak’s right on the timing.

And this comes at a great time. Obama is still trying to figure out a way to say he is against the troop surge that, obviously, worked. He, like Clinton before him, seems to be asking advice from his 300 advisors on what to say, whether or not to wear a flag pin, and so much more.

In a time when we are being spoon-fed the Hollywood-style packaged marketing of Obama(TM), the Brand, having a running mate like Gov. Jindal or Gov. Romney added to the race is a breath of fresh air.

P.S.
And both are Governors, which I love to keep bringing up. For those not familiar with my focus on Governors and the race for the White House, read my post from last year about the 2008 election about why history favors Governors over Senators for President.

Update:
It was just reported (July 23) that Gov. Jindal has taken himself off the short-list for VP choice for McCain. He says he wants to help Louisiana, which is an honorable decision.

It also gives him several years to prepare for 2012 as a running mate or presidential candidate. He’s a great choice to be the next Reagan and I hope he decides to take this challenge in the next election cycle.

July 20th, 2008 by Scott

In one of Obama’s recent ads, he says:

He passed a law to move people from welfare to work, slashed the rolls by eighty percent. Passed tax cuts for workers; health care for kids.

The truth of the matter is, he was mandated to sign that law by a bill written by the 1994 Republican Congress and signed into law by President Clinton:

First, the law in question wasn’t dreamed up out of thin air by its sponsors. It was the follow-up to the welfare reform act, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, that President Clinton signed on Aug. 26, 1996. That law gave states the ability to design their own welfare programs as long as they met certain federal requirements, including limits on how long recipients could get benefits.

Welfare reform was successful in moving people off public assistance. There was about a 78 percent drop in the number of families receiving public assistance in Illinois between 1998 and 2006. It was the federal law, hammered out by Clinton and the Republican Congress, that set the wheels in motion and forced states to act. Nationwide, the number of families on welfare declined quite a bit as well, going from 3,146,870 in ‘98 to 1,805,900 in ‘06, a decrease of almost 43 percent.(Source)

So why are we interested in putting Obama in the White House, when it was the 1994 Republican Congress and their Contract With America that initiated this action?

It was the Republican Congress that helped get people off welfare and become responsible, productive citizens. Let’s remember that.

July 17th, 2008 by Scott

They based their entire election campaign on the ‘failure’ in Iraq. They claimed we couldn’t win when Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stood at the steps of the White House and said that “this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything” (source).

They’ve maintained that position. Obama has said the same thing. Just this week, though, he erased his own comments off his website criticizing the troop surge.

Why did he want to erase his comments? Might have something to do with this story:

The nation’s top military officer Wednesday declared the security situation in Iraq “remarkably better,” so good in fact that he expects to recommend more U.S. troop reductions this fall if conditions hold. (Source)

The Democrats have based the campaign on the United States losing in Iraq. Well, Bush and the generals stayed the course and didn’t falter even when public opinion did.

The result? The Troop Surge worked. And we’ve already reduced the number of troops in Iraq to pre-surge levels due to its effectiveness.

We’ve been winning and the troop withdrawal the Democrats promised would be their mission when sworn in in 2009 could now begin before they get in the White House.

Take that, and add the following:

• The IMF said the U.S. economy will expand 1.3 percent in 2008, rather than 0.5 percent it estimated in April.
• The US Federal Reserves said today the latest data “reduced odds” for “an appreciable contraction of economic activity” (Source)

It’s good news. True, its not all roses. We’ve got a way to go, but I’m optimistic.

July 17th, 2008 by Scott

It used to be that the minority normally was the most vocal. It used to be that the ‘global warming’ crowd ruled the roost.

Well, the skeptics are becoming more vocal. And not just any skeptics. Here’s the article:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”
(Source)

Told you so.

July 15th, 2008 by Scott

I love that title! Credit goes to an article in the New York Daily News talking about how Obama, over this past weekend, decided to rewrite history and purge his website of references to his opposition to the troop surge.

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence.

“The surge is not working,” Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.

GOP rival John McCain zinged Obama as a flip-flopper. “The major point here is that Sen. Obama refuses to acknowledge that he was wrong,” said McCain, adding that Obama “refuses to acknowledge that it [the surge] is succeeding.”(Source)

We’ll see how much the main stream media picks up on this story or if they ignore it.

This is becoming a bigger problem online, as it becomes easier for people to “erase” past comments and or rewrite stories and revise history.

You’ll notice on my blog, when I make an update to an article I wrote, I add an “Update” at the bottom, leaving my article intact (two example: unemployment change, miscalled primary result).

A few times, this makes obvious the point that I made an error or was off in a prediction, but also shows I have nothing to hide, unlike Obama, who is attempting to change his own history.

In the long term, it also shows I am not afraid to state my beliefs and stick to them instead of feeling the direction of the wind and go with the popular “feeling” of the day.

July 9th, 2008 by Scott

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not the headlight on the train. It’s actually something I was not expecting to happen at all.

The Democrats are starting to see the light. First some back story. Oil prices have been driven up by several reasons.

First are the speculators. They buy and sell on what they THINK the price of oil will be 25 years from now. This has been pushing the price up.

Second is increased demand from the growing China and India. Increase demand, price goes up. Economics 101.

Third are the laws pushed on us by the environmentalists that restrict our own oil companies from drilling off our own coasts. We have more oil in America and off our coast than Saudi Arabia and many other oil producing companies.

Well, the Republicans have been pushing hard to have that restriction lifted to allow a boost in production. Increase supply, you lower the price. Economics 101.

Finally, the Democrats are starting to realize the error of their ways and are beginning to open their minds to the idea of lifting the restrictions they created to allow drilling.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A top U.S. Democratic senator said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday that he would consider supporting opening up new areas for offshore oil and gas drilling.

“I’m open to drilling and responsible production,” Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin told The Wall Street Journal, adding that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could also support the move. (Source)

I’m glad to see the Dems finally seeing what the Republicans have been saying for years.

July 8th, 2008 by Scott

First the news:

NASA scientist James Hansen’s famous claims about 1998 being the warmest year on record in the U.S. was the result of a serious math error, according to H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). NASA has now corrected the error, anointing 1934 as the warmest year and 1921 as the third warmest year, not 2006 as previously claimed.

NASA’s ground based temperature records for the past 120 years, which have been the basis for most of the claims that global warming is happening at an unprecedented rate, almost entirely due to human actions, have now been corrected to show that much of the warming occurred before CO2 emissions and concentrations began to rise significantly.

According to NASA’s newly published data:
— The hottest year on record is 1934, not 1998;
— The third hottest year on record was 1921, not 2006;
— Three of the five hottest years on record occurred before 1940; and
— Six of the top 10 hottest years occurred before 90 percent of the growth in greenhouse
gas emissions during the last century occurred.
(Source)

So can we now, officially, wrap up the “global warming” nonsense?

July 8th, 2008 by Scott

Democrats took control of the congress in January 2007. From Rasmussen Reports:

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.
Last month, 11% of voters gave the legislature good or excellent ratings. Congress has not received higher than a 15% approval rating since the beginning of 2008. (Source)

The Democrats loved to harp on President Bush’s low approval ratings last year. I find it ironic, that since the Democrats have taken control of the congress, its approval ratings have plummeted to an all time low!

Yet, we have not heard a peep in the mainstream media, who is still trying to blame the President for a recession that never showed.

By the way, the President’s approval rating is currently more than 300% higher than that of the Democratic congress.

June 30th, 2008 by Scott

I’ve agreed with this for the longest time, always laughing at those who had to drink “spring” water, which more often than not is just “filtered” water.

It is obviously a fad created by marketers, in much the same way that music is manufactured and marketed and global warming is marketed.

Just read this clip from the Washington Post today:

Desalinated seawater from Hawaii, meanwhile, is being sold as “concentrated water” — at $33.50 for a two-ounce bottle. Like any concentrated beverage, it is supposed to be diluted before drinking, except that in this case, that means adding water to . . . water.

And from Tennessee, a company named BlingH2O — whose marketing imagery features a mostly nude model improbably balancing a bottle of water between her heel and her hip — is retailing its water at $40 for 750 milliliters, with special-edition bottles going for $480 — more than a million times the price of the liquid that comes from your tap.

The push to turn water into the new wine is a marketing phenomenon: The bottled-water industry is engaged in an intense effort to convince Americans that the stuff in bottles is substantially different from the stuff out of the tap.

But empirical tests have repeatedly shown that they are generally the same. In blind taste tests, many people who swear they can differentiate between bottled-water brands and tap water fail to spot the differences, and studies have shown that both are fine to drink, and both occasionally can have quality problems.

Experts who study bottled water as a cultural phenomenon say differences between the two are largely marketing inventions.(Source)

In fact, if you look at most spring water bottles, you’ll see that it actually says “filtered” not spring. And we have all heard the anagram for the famous bottled water Evian. Naive.

I’ll close with this clip from Penn and Teller’s show, BS:

via videosift.com

June 29th, 2008 by Scott

Angie and I spent the weekend visiting friends and going to see Les Miserables since it was playing in Philly. Not only is Les Miserables a wonderful production, but it is also nice to see that a production that makes a big deal about doing what is right (instead of what is easy) and listening to God is still popular in this day.

The next day (after spending the night at Loews Hotel in Center City) we strolled down to a coffee shop for breakfast and hung out at Independence Hall.

I’m always in awe when I’m at Independence Hall. After all, we used to be the nation’s capitol for a short time and this city was where our great country was born. It seemed appropriate that on Friday, when the Supreme Court ruled against a gun ban and re-affirmed an individual’s right to bear arms, we were right down the street from the building that drafted the original document.

We can’t forget our Constitution, the Bill of Right and the history that has given us the freedom that so many today take for granted.