One more time.  This compilation of political positions and comments is that of guest milblogger The Crawfish.  He alone is responsible for it’s content.  The management and staff of vajoe, the advertisers, the voters in tonight’s Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island primaries, the people stuck in airports around the country because of weather delays, the fans of the English Premier League and the Champions League, and all of my former dart shooting teammates have nothing to do with the content, and would probably call me nuts anyway.  Then again, I can appreciate that term, since it is the most famous quote from a Brigadier General during all of WW2: To the German Commander, NUTS!, signed, the American Commander.  God Bless the memory of Anthony MacAuliffe and the Battling Bastards of Bastogne.

In case you’re new to this three-part series, the management of The Swamp has decided that the GOP, in general, and John McCain, in particular, have kicked the conservative base to the curb.  The Crawfish, since he’s still on active duty for another 24 months, cannot run for the Presidency, but he and the management have come up with their own party and platform, in theory at least.  It is called The Crawfish Party Platform, but some folks have complained about the party name.  Hey, when we can really make a run for it, we’ll give it a better name.

Topics in our Party Platform include (in no particular order):National Defense

10th Amendment Commission

Clean Bill Committment

Line Item Veto

The Fair Tax

Entitlement Programs

Foreign Aid

Glo-Bull Warming

What the First Amendment Really Says

Federal Courts and Their Jurisdictions

UnConstitutional Departments, Agencies, and Bureaucracies

Budget

End Social InSecurity Fairly

The English Language

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Embassy Security

Border Control and Immigration

National Primary Plan

Campaign Finance Reform

Diversity and Multiculturalism

Self-reliance and Responsibility

Political Correctness

Disaster Relief

Abortion

Prisoner’s Rights

The War On Terror

Israel and the Palestinians

Energy Policy

Minimum Wage

Legal Reform

Honesty in Governmental Votes

The Second AmendmentTaking Care of Those Who Are Disabled

A Constitutional Amendment to Fix the 14^th Amendment

In parts 1 & 2 of this series, we went over the first 24 planks.  We proudly present the remaining 10: 

Prisoner’s Rights: Prison inmates have the right to life, adequate food and water, and to not be tortured. Other than that, they have no rights. No right to cable TV and exercise. The only TV channels allowed will be C-SPAN networks, CNN, FOX News, a local weather channel, a local news channel, and a prison information channel. No right to libraries unless for education research. No right to air conditioning (if our troops overseas can stand the elements, so can inmates). If the prisoner has as much private space as a sailor on a destroyer, then there is no overcrowding. Prisoners will be expected to work for 10 hours per day for the government, and this can be anything from furniture manufacture to chain gangs along the highway. Prisoners not on death row or serving life sentences without parole will be expected to complete high school equivalence if they do not have a diploma, and work toward a trade school certificate or an Associate’s degree. While pursuing their education, their work shifts will be cut in half. No right to endless appeals over piddly stuff. If sentenced to death, they have the right to one appeal per court level. If they are convicted of a state offense, their appeals end with the state supreme courts, as does their life. If convicted of federal crimes, their appeals can go to the Supremes, but only once, and all appeals must be completed within 2 years of the original verdict. The War On Terror: This is not politically correct to state, but it is a religious war. One side admits it, but our side is afraid to admit it. Islam declared war on the rest of the world when the Prophet Mohammed commanded that all non-believers (infidels) be converted, enslaved (dhimmitude), or put to the sword. The war has been going on for over 1300 years. It will not end until the world is entirely subjected to Sharia Law or Islam is exterminated. That’s not a pretty thought, but it is the plain truth, so if you don’t like it, get over it. As for the illegal combatant prisoners at Guantanamo, they do not meet the requirements set forth in the Geneva Accords for prisoner of war status, therefore they can be tortured, held indefinitely, or even summarily executed. Sucks to be them.

Israel and the Palestinians: There were no such things as ‘Palestinians’ until the 60s. Mostly, they were arabs living in Jordan whose leadership angered the Jordanian government (Yassir Arafat escaped into exile disguised as a woman). Their ‘movement’ began when they got kicked out of Jordan. If they had been peaceful, they could have had a pretty good life in Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, or wherever they wanted to be, but no. They demanded that Israel become theirs. Our Party believes that if the Palestinians want a homeland of their own, they should negotiate for land that is currently part of some arab nation. Israel is small enough for its own self. It doesn’t need to get smaller. The arab nations have plenty of land. As for Israel’s borders, the 1968 attempt at exterminating Israel by the arab nations was a war of aggression. When you start one of those wars and lose, you don’t get back land that you got run out of. Syria lost control of the Golan Heights when Israeli forces fought back the invaders. Jordan lost the West Bank and their part of Jerusalem. Egypt lost Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. Israel has since given Egypt the Sinai in return for peace, and because they really didn’t want it anyway. Gaza, Golan, and the West Bank are properly Israeli until such a time as Israel freely gives them away. Until then, Israel is free to do whatever they want in those areas. If they wish to set up lots of settlements, that’s their prerogative. If they wish to expel all of the ‘Palestinians’, they are free to do so. If any more rockets or missiles are fired into Israel from Gaza, the IDF should be free to wipe out all of Gaza. If the arabs don’t like it, they can take the ‘Palestinians’ in themselves. If Hezbollah strikes from Lebanon, the IDF is within its rights to turn southern Lebanon into a sheet of glass.

Energy Policy: The various left wing groups in America have completely screwed up our energy policy. They complain about pollution from electricity plants, but won’t allow power companies to build new, clean, efficient plants, especially nuclear plants. Our Party will give the green light to companies to build new power plants. They complain about not enough alternative energy sources, but won’t allow wind farms because they kill a couple of birds per year and they spoil Teddythedrunk(D-Chappaquiddick)’s view when he goes sailing. We will give the energy companies the go ahead to work on alternative energy forms and means of production. They complain about oil refineries, but won’t allow new, more efficient, cleaner ones to be built. They complain about the price of fuel, but won’t allow the refineries to be built or oil and natural gas drilling. We will open ANWR and the areas off the California and Florida coasts to drilling. We will wean ourselves off of the oil from the Middle East and Venezuela. They complain about the price of gasoline, but each state demands different gasoline formulas for summer, fall, winter, and spring. We will convene a meeting of the environmental regulatory agencies from the states to get them to agree on formulas to be used around the country, so production is simplified. They complain that government demands on the auto industry and gas mileage aren’t high enough. Our Party will say that the free market will decide what kind of cars the auto industry will produce. If consumers press for higher mileage and different fueling options, the companies will make it happen. Our Party will reject Kyoto and all follow-on enviro-nut treaties, especially if they call for the destruction of our economic base while doing nothing about other nations that pollute more, such as China and India. It’s not that we hate the environment. Our Party believes in responsible use of resources and attempting to do things ‘greener’, but we will not mandate that through the strong arm of the government.

Minimum Wage: Since there is no place in the Constitution where the federal government has the authority to have any say in the private business contracts between employer and employee, the federal minimum wage would be one of the first things axed by the 10^th Amendment Commission, but only if our Party doesn’t move to kill it through the courts beforehand.  This also goes for equal opportunity employment and every other government intrusion into businesses.  If Billy-Bob, Jim-Bob, and Bubba, the Redneck Cousins, want to run a sporting goods, bait, and beer store somewhere in the South, and they know their clientele will be a bit on the racist and sexist side, it is their right as the business owners to hire only white Southern males to work there.  The ACLU, of course, will send a black female to apply for a job and, when she’s rejected, they’ll file suit claiming discrimination.  The cousins shouldn’t have to fear that kind of lawsuit, nor should they have to hire someone that would be a detriment to their business just because of some equal opportunity law.

Legal Reform: Getting rid of our litigious society will require a lot of work, but step one is real tort reform in the form of Loser Pays. If you bring forth a lawsuit, and you cause a company or person to spend thousands of dollars to defend themselves (or be forced to settle out of court because the expense of fighting the case would bankrupt them), you should be taking the risk that if you are in the wrong, you must pay the other side for their legal fees and trouble. As far as the insanity defense goes, the Party recommends that “not guilty by reason of insanity” be changed to “guilty, but insane.” By this verdict, the person is determined to have committed the act, and punishment/confinement is based on the mental state. This will get rid of the ridiculousness of someone getting off with a few months in a counseling center and no criminal record if they commit a major crime in front of 23 witnesses and 2 video cameras on the corner of Main and Commerce at high noon on Wednesday because they claim to be “schizo-bananas.” The concept of “personal responsibility” shall be included in all legal transactions. Each person is responsible for their own actions, and cannot use society, PTSD, social deprivation, slave status of a great-great-great-great grandparent, etc., as a defense for non-social or anti-social actions, unless that person can show, without a doubt, that his situation is unique, and why others, who overcame similar situations, were aberrations. The designation of “hate crime” is to be removed from the books. Thought is not a chargeable offense. This designation only serves to foster a victim-oppressor relationship as hate crimes have been defined as committed only by (white) (male) (straight) against (non-white) (female) (homosexual) (specifically designated minority group). All crimes of violence should be thought of the same, and the amount of hate in the perpetrator is the same no matter the status of the victim. Lawyers, as officers of the court, are to be reminded that the release of a guilty person is, to society, as great a miscarriage of justice as the conviction of an innocent one, and they shall be held equally culpable for both. There shall be no “sealing” or “closing” of a police or criminal record when a juvenile offender reaches the age of maturity. A person’s criminal record is their criminal record no matter the age, since you can’t change the past.

Honesty in Governmental Votes: It has become a practice among some in Congress and the Senate to have their vote changed in the record if that vote was not vital to the passing or defeat of the bill. This is done so the member’s official voting record can be changed to reflect a different stance on a controversial vote in order to please certain constituents. If a member casts a vote, that is it!

The Second Amendment: The right to keep and bear arms is vital to this nation. Not only are all citizens under the age of 45 automatically part of the militia, according to US Federal Code, but our Party believes in the old saying, “An armed man is a citizen, and an unarmed man is a subject.” The Second Amendment makes it clear that this is an individual right not to be violated. Citizens have the right to firearms for self-defense, hunting, militia duties, and to make sure our government never turns tyrannical nor do the socialists throw out the Constitution. Any jurisdiction that has any kind of gun ban (hand gun bans in DC and Chicago are eminent examples) is in violation of the Constitution.

Taking Care of Those Who Are Disabled: The ending of entitlement programs would only be for those people who are functional and can work. People who are physically or mentally disabled to the point where they cannot do a job will be taken care of. THAT is the only type of handout that the American taxpayer never has a problem with. We will work with charitable organizations to make sure disabled Americans have food, shelter, and the care they need. People with disabilities that don’t quite meet that mark, but that are severely impairing, will get partial assistance, but not if that impairment is from their own actions, such as alcohol or drug use. This is as close as our Party will get to George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservative” label.

A Constitutional Amendment to Fix the 14^th Amendment: Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment begins, “Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” This is the clause that has given us the term “anchor baby” in reference to illegal aliens who cross the border and pop out a baby, in an American hospital paid for by American taxpayers, and the child automatically becomes a US citizen and cannot be kicked out of the country. The parents cannot be kicked out either, as they cannot leave the baby behind. This must end. The Party proposes a new Constitutional Amendment that will clearly state that automatic citizenship shall only be conferred upon a baby that is born in the USA to parents who are in this nation LEGALLY!

Once again, this post is by guest blogger The Crawfish.  It represents HIS views, and his alone.  The staff of vajoe, the management of vajoe, the advertisers of vajoe, the other bloggers of vajoe, and all of the readers and posters of vajoe, along with most of the civilized world have washed their hands of him and consider him to be, well…in need of some help!  The final portion of this manifesto will be published early next week.

Part Two of Three

A little refresher here.  The Swamp’s management has decided that there’s no political party this year that adequately adheres to conservative and Constitutional principles.  We have therefore produced a document sure to cause liberal heads to implode, the 2008 Crawfish Party Platform.   

Topics in our Party Platform include (in no particular order):

National Defense

10th Amendment Commission

Clean Bill Committment

Line Item Veto

The Fair Tax

Entitlement Programs

Foreign Aid

Glo-Bull Warming

What the First Amendment Really Says

Federal Courts and Their Jurisdictions

UnConstitutional Departments, Agencies, and Bureaucracies

Budget

End Social InSecurity Fairly

The English Language

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Embassy Security

Border Control and Immigration

National Primary Plan

Campaign Finance Reform

Diversity and Multiculturalism

Self-reliance and Responsibility

Political Correctness

Disaster Relief

Abortion

Prisoner’s Rights

The War On Terror

Israel and the Palestinians

Energy Policy

Minimum Wage

Legal Reform

Honesty in Governmental Votes

The Second AmendmentTaking Care of Those Who Are Disabled

A Constitutional Amendment to Fix the 14^th Amendment

In Part One of our essay, we explored the first 7 topics.  We will now go for a bit longer posting and print the next 16 topics, ending with the big political bugaboo called abortion:

Glo-Bull Warming: There’s a reason why Algoracle won the Nobel Peace Prize. It is because his fantasies and lies are unworthy of the Nobel Prize in SCIENCE! Most REAL scientists, climatologists, and meteorologists agree that the Gorons and their scripture, The Holy Goran, are full of it. Glo-Bull warming is caused by cyclical action of THE SUN! Hey, our Party is all for conservation and using the earth’s resources wisely. We even want to reduce pollution. We’re just not going to wreck the US economy to do so on behalf of science fiction.What the First Amendment really says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” So what does that mean? Does that mean that a local city council is forbidden to put a Manger Scene at City Hall in December, or a borough cannot put up a Menorah in a park? Of course not. Any federal court rulings that have forbidden those actions fail to take into account the first five words of the Amendment. “CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW” has absolutely nothing to do with the actions of any state, county, parish, or municipality in the USA. Those government entities are not Congress, so the federal courts have absolutely no say in the matter. The federal courts have also not paid attention to “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” They have taken the “establishment clause” to the extreme of saying it applies to almost any governmental acknowledgement of religion in America. What that Amendment really means is that there will be no official national religion along the lines of those seen in Europe in the previous few centuries. It does not mean that we cannot make it very clear that we are a predominantly Judeo-Christian nation, and that we will not accept muslims trying to bring about Sharia Law or any of their plans of dominance. Actually, it does mean that Sharia Law is banned. The third clause is also vitally important, and has been nullified by an illegal law in the past few years. “or abridging the freedom of speech”, which was described by the authors of the Constitution in The Federalist Papers, means that political speech cannot be stifled at all. McCain-Feingold did just that. It must be overturned.

Federal Courts and Their Jurisdictions: The First Amendment stance brings us to another related subject. Why is it that the federal courts are involved in so many aspects of life in the USA that the Constitution doesn’t allow the federal government to have a say in? In 1981, Wesley Cook (who took the muslim name of Mumia Abu-Jamal to show his hatred for America and white people) murdered Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. The State of Pennsylvania charged him with the state count of capital murder and a state jury convicted him, sentencing him to death. The state appellate courts and state supreme court upheld the conviction and sentence. Federal courts stepped in and have tied things up ever since. Since this was a STATE case, the federal courts have no jurisdiction whatsoever. The day after the state supreme court upheld the sentence, the needle should have been inserted. This is just one of thousands of cases from every year that make their way into federal courts but should never have done so. This must end!

UnConstitutional Departments, Agencies, and Bureaucracies: There’s a lot of bloated bits of government that need to simply be ended immediately. Show us in the Constitution where a Department of Education is authorized. How about the Housing and Urban Development. If it is not a government function as outlined in the Constitution with federal spending authorized by the Constitution, then this Party will call for its immediate end.

Budget: Ending unConstitutional programs and government entities, along with rejection of earmarks and wasteful spending proposed by Congress, will allow our budget to be in surplus even if we beef up military spending. Tax revenue will soar under the Fair Tax Plan, especially if we get rid of illegal aliens and give their jobs to those currently leeching off the taxpayers in the forms of welfare, food stamps, free slum/ghetto housing, etc. The only thing that would cause that surplus to be drained would be the five year plan to end Social Security, but once that’s over, the surpluses would be here to stay.

End Social InSecurity Fairly: There is absolutely no reason for the government to be running a Ponzi scheme as a mandatory governmental retirement program. A 1% return on that kind of investment is horrid. The people of America should be in charge of their own money. They can do better for themselves. Our plan would end this fiasco, but in a way that is fair to all who have put in their money over the years. Anybody who is currently receiving benefits would have the choice of staying in the program or getting the remainder of what they paid in to the system returned to them. In Year One, American citizens who are aged 57 and above would receive refunds for every penny they have ever put in, with interest from the time it got put in. Year Two would see refunds for folks 49 and up. Year Three would have citizens 40 and above investing their own money. Year Four has the 30 and older citizens rejoicing. Year Five has all remaining citizens getting their money back. These ages could be adjusted after more studies to make the impact on our budget even across the years. Note that non-citizens don’t get anything. Oh well, that’s another bonus for being a real American.

The English Language: All government forms, with the exception of ones dealing with immigration, customs, tourist information, and international relations/business, shall be printed in English Only! Why are voting ballots printed in over 100 languages? To be authorized to vote, you must be a citizen. To become a citizen, you must be able to speak English. Our campaigns are conducted in English. Anyone who doesn’t speak English cannot get the proper information on the issues and the candidates. Don’t give us that tired equal opportunity line of reasoning. They have equal opportunity to learn English. People who desire to control and function within the official public sector of this nation need to do so in the language of the nation. Not being conversant in common or conventional English places an immense burden on the individual, their segment of society, and the community as a whole, and condemns otherwise talented and capable persons to secondary or lesser status. In short, English needs to become the official language of the United States of America.

Embryonic Stem Cell Research: If private companies wish to do that research, they can do so. The big issue is federal funding of this research. If this research showed any real promise, the pharmaceutical companies would be falling all over themselves to do it, and they could fund it themselves. There’s absolutely no need for government funding.

Embassy Security: In late February of 2008, the US Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, was invaded and torched. The Marines there did nothing to prevent this action. They were acting this way on orders of the State Department, which was doing its own impression of the administration of James Earl Carter, as per usual. The Crawfish Party would tell the Marines to act as Marines. Any invasion of sovereign US territory is to be repelled. The government of Serbia is also to blame, and they would have received some unfriendly attention, along with having the distasteful task of cleaning up all of those bodies that the Marines disposed of.

Border Control and Immigration: The Crawfish Party supports legal immigration. Illegal aliens are invaders of our nation and will not be treated nicely. They take American jobs from Americans, without paying proper taxes. They commit crime on a level similar to the leeches of our public housing ghettos. Gangs like MS-13 are very dangerous, and many of them are made up entirely of illegal aliens. They overload the public medical facilities and don’t pay the bills. Their hordes of children are a drain on our public education system. The Crawfish Party would seal the borders tight, get rid of the illegals that are here, hammer businesses that harbor and hire illegals, punish “sanctuary” cities, and push for a Constitutional Amendment to end the anchor baby problem. To seal the border, a 12 foot tall chain link fence would be erected the length of the border, approximately 7 inches within the border (with properly guarded openings along the Rio Grande for irrigation and livestock water use). Another 12 foot tall chain link fence would be 15 feet inside of the first. The purpose of these fences would not be to hold back the illegals, but to slow them down and make them good targets for the watchtowers 100 yards back every ¼ mile or so manned by Marines, National Guardsmen, and Marine-trained riflemen. This would have the added benefit of feeding the wildlife along the border. Underground listening devices would also be placed to detect tunneling. Deportation would start happening on a large scale, with plenty of raids on suspected illegal alien work sites. Of course, many of the illegals would start returning to their homelands of their own accord because the jobs would dry up and all benefits currently available to illegals, including education and hospital care would END. Businesses that are found to have illegals on their payroll will face serious penalties, as will the company owners and the people in charge of hiring. The penalties would definitely include prison time, and they would go up based on the severity of the violations and would skyrocket for repeat offenders. “Sanctuary” cities and municipalities would see an immediate end to all federal funds coming their way, to include the cancellation of any federal contract with any business in said municipality. The only federal funds coming in would be for military recruiting.

National Primary Plan: Our Party makes the following proposal for the primaries of all parties to use. It would make things simpler while making all states meaningful in the process, so the bickering between the states could end. For starters, no candidate could file for election or start up any campaign machinery or do any fundraising until 366 days before the election (election year is always a leap year). In January of election years, the traditional starters of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina would happen. In February, a primary Tuesday would be held that would include enough states to bring the total committed delegate count to about 15% of the total in each party. At this point, the bottom feeding candidates would be dropped. Another round of approximately 15% would happen in March, again eliminating candidates. The third round of 15% would happen in April, and the fourth round in May. At this time, about 60% of the delegates would be committed, with the likelihood of any candidate having clinched being remote, so the remaining states still have a big say in the results.   Now, there would be only two or three candidates remaining in each party. They would have 2 months to campaign over the rest of the nation before the final primary day in mid-July. The conventions would occur in late July and early August, with the parties currently not occupying the White House going first.

Campaign Finance Reform: Our Party has one major plan to change how campaigns are financed, besides the repeal of the unConstitutional McCain-Feingold. Individuals, organizations, and businesses can only contribute to candidates running in the district/state that the individual lives or works in, or the organization/business has a branch in. Foreign and anonymous contributions are not allowed. All contributions are to be posted on the campaign’s website within 24 hours.

Diversity and Multiculturalism: This is The Big Thing on college campuses, businesses, and government entities. It is also huge for the media. It is a bunch of dung. We have a National This Month and a National That Month all over the calendar, along with special days honoring everything that makes us different from each other. It is time to STOP celebrating diversity and multiculturalism, and all of the other anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-male, anti-heterosexual, anti-moralistic, anti-folks who actually earn enough to PAY taxes, anti-legal American, anti-American stuff. Diversity didn’t make us a great nation. What made us great are the things that give us UNITY, so let’s celebrate them!

Self-reliance and Responsibility: Our nation has become a nation of victims and leeches. Too many of our people constantly have their hand out. Everybody wants something for nothing. Most of them are Democrats. You cannot watch television during the daytime and not get bombarded with commercials for lawyers. People will sue over ANYTHING! This is because our society tells people that they are never responsible for their own actions and lack of success. Nobody is willing to actually WORK for a living anymore.  This nation became great because Americans grabbed hold of life, took risks, and worked their butts off until they could support themselves and their families.   

Political Correctness: Screw it! If your skin is thin, move to France.

Disaster Relief: Many on the left side of the aisle have railed about the lack of response from the federal government after hurricane Katrina. This is in spite of the fact that the federal government has spent over $200,000 per resident for relief and recovery down there. We say the government has spent too much! If you live in a hurricane strike zone, you’d better have good insurance, because it isn’t the government’s job to make your life better after the storm. As for the immediate response and the problems in New Orleans, their local and state governments let them down. State law called for a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans and points south 72 hours ahead of a Category 3 or higher hurricane strike. Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin ignored that law, then blamed Bush. Mississippi got hit harder than Louisiana, but folks there, led by Governor Haley Barbour, evacuated as necessary, then rolled up their sleeves and got to work with the attitude of “we’ll make it better than it was!” They didn’t whine in the national press about Bush not supporting them. They are Real Americans.

Abortion: Since this is a party platform, this issue is mandatory. Roe v Wade is the single worst case of Constitutional Law ever. The Supreme Court magically came up with some Constitutional ‘right of privacy’ that isn’t in the Constitution, and then they made it a reason to create federal law about baby killing. Jeffrey Dahmer killed and ate young men in the privacy of his apartment, but he was still a murderer. What does privacy have to do with killing babies? No Constitutional federal laws were in play, so the case should never have gone to the Supremes. It was a state law that was in question, so it should have stayed in the state courts. There is absolutely no reason for an American taxpayer to pay for an elective abortion. This will not cause women to “be forced to return to back alley abortionists” as the normal unhinged argument goes. Rather it simply means that they will be required to bear the burden of their own choice instead of having the taxpayers pay.

As per usual, this post is the creation of The Crawfish’s addled brain.  It has no relation to anything resembling the ideas and ideals of the folks that run VAJoe.com, their advertisers, the other bloggers, the Dim-ocrat Party, the Party Formerly Known as the Republican Party, The Green Party, The Reform Party, Ross Perot, or anybody currently employed in the District of Corruption.

Just in case the blog readers haven’t figured me out through my other posts and my 290+ posts in Joe’s Forum, I have put together the 2008 Crawfish Party Platform.  This posting will be in three parts and will be done over the next week or so. 

Topics in our Party Platform include (in no particular order):

National Defense

10th Amendment Commission

Clean Bill Committment

Line Item Veto

The Fair Tax

Entitlement Programs

Foreign Aid

Glo-Bull Warming

What the First Amendment Really Says

Federal Courts and Their Jurisdictions

UnConstitutional Departments, Agencies, and Bureaucracies

Budget

End Social InSecurity Fairly

The English Language

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Embassy Security

Border Control and Immigration

National Primary Plan

Campaign Finance Reform

Diversity and Multiculturalism

Self-reliance and Responsibility

Political Correctness

Disaster Relief

Abortion

Prisoner’s Rights

The War On Terror

Israel and the Palestinians

Energy Policy

Minimum Wage

Legal Reform

Honesty in Governmental Votes

The Second AmendmentTaking Care of Those Who Are Disabled

A Constitutional Amendment to Fix the 14^th Amendment

Without further adieu, The Crawfish Party presents the first seven topics in our 2008 Party Platform.

National Defense: The Party is committed to a strong national defense. We will strive to build up our forces and give them every tool they need to fight any enemy, anytime. Whether it be a conventional battle or a fight against unconventional forces, we will have the advanced gear our folks need to win and to take as few casualties as possible. This includes many new and advanced ships for the Navy, an all-new model force of aircraft for all services within 10 years, the best body armor that can be had for our ground forces, and the vehicles they want. We will also greatly increase the quality of medical care our service members get. That will be costly, but worth it. We are committed to giving every member of our armed forces (and retirees) a 10% raise in each of the next 3 years, and 5% raises thereafter. If anybody wants to screw with us, they will quickly assume room temperature. Do something really nasty to us and you will see a lot of large, bright mushrooms…capiche? If war again becomes necessary anywhere, our troops must be ordered to participate with maximum effort necessary to ensure total, absolute, unconditional victory.

10^th Amendment Commission: An idea that The Crawfish has considered for years, and that has been made famous recently by Neal Boortz, would be a commission made up of a few politicians (national, state-level, and municipal) and Constitutional experts that would go through the current federal laws, statutes, regulations, bureaucracy, departments, budgets, etc. Everything that doesn’t meet the governmental restrictions found in the Constitution would be highlighted and reported to the President for his weekly television address (Tuesday nights on your local network affiliates). In these weekly addresses, the President will show the American people how their government is acting outside of the Supreme Law of the Land and he will demand that Congress to immediately cancel/slash/zero-out/get rid of/nuke these items. 

Clean Bill Commitment: Any bill that comes from Congress that is not clean has exactly zero chance of being signed into law. Any amendment or addition to a bill must be fully voted upon and must be germane to the rest of the bill, or the bill will face certain veto. Even if the President agrees with the non-germane amendment/earmark/addition, if it isn’t in-line with the salient point of the bill, it’s outta there!Line Item Veto: Kinda goes hand-in-hand with the 10^th Amendment Commission, and the Clean Bill Commitment. It is a MUST! The Fair Tax: This is the most well-thought out and researched tax plan in the history of the USA. If you don’t know the details, read the books. We get rid of the IRS, make taxes simple and fair, tax the underground economy, and stimulate the economy.

Entitlement Programs: These unConstitutional programs have been a cancer upon America since our first socialist President, FDR, and were exacerbated under his disciple, the Fake Texan, LBJ. There’s no place in the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to pay for housing for thems that are too lazy, drug addled, constantly prego with kids from who knows how many daddies, and are just plain criminals. There’s no place in the Constitution that authorizes the federal government to pay welfare or food stamps to those who are too lazy to work. Once we get rid of the illegal aliens, there will be plenty of jobs to go around. If people think those jobs are beneath them, well…those jobs give more of a paycheck than not having one. Real Americans do what they’ve gotta do to survive and thrive. It is time to END the cycle of dependency on the government that has caused so many to be entrapped in poverty.   The War on Poverty has spent trillions of dollars, and hasn’t reduced poverty at all. It has just created a permanent underclass of dependency.

Foreign Aid: Most would end. Period. If your nation doesn’t support our policies and freedom, you don’t get the money our taxpayers earned. AIDS in Afreaka? Try monogamy and condom use. Global poverty? Try getting rid of your own corrupt governments and tin-pot dictators. About the only people who could rely upon our support would be Israel and Iraq. The rest would need to EARN it!

In my time in the Navy, I have met people under 21 who have been entrusted by the US Government to distinguish friend from crazed insurgent in Iraq, to fire on said insurgent, to maintain a nuclear reactor from turning into a big gooey mess, and to push the button that launches the ICBM nukes. However, the minute these people step into a bar after that long deployment for a cold one, the federal government says the barkeep has to toss them out in the street with the rest of the trash. This logic in the mindset of our policy makers has always confused me. Fortunately, a lone statesman from SC is making a stand to allow military members under 21 drink responsibly (H/T to OYE):

A state lawmaker wants to give members of the armed forces younger than 21 the right to buy alcohol even though it’s in stark contrast to the military’s efforts to diminish underage drinking and related accidents. “I really don’t think it should create a problem for the military. It might even enhance their morale,” Rep. Fletcher Smith said Wednesday.
Kudos to you Mr. Smith! It’s about time the administration saw through the muddled rationale that was preventing our younger troops from the right to enjoy a beer now and then. Of course, Mr. Smith will most likely be met with opposition from a barrage of the values police, aka the Morale Suppression Squadron: The nice ladies over at MADD, the tolerant folks over at the Values Advocacy Council, and the modern women over at the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. They’ll most likely unleash a PR campaign that will equate the good folks at Budweiser to Satan himself. Well for whatever it’s worth, this blog supports your position Mr. Smith. A true friend to the military!

Hot Air has a pretty funny post which shows a video mocking outspoken protestors who think that it is a good idea to advance their agenda by yelling loudly on cameras.  This type of political discourse purported by Code Pink and some of Ron Paul’s more loathsome supporters will hopefully come to an end.  This sort of thing was common in the 1960s (at least from what I hear) with examples such as the Yippies shouting things at the 1968 DNC protest in Chicago like “’We will burn Chicago to the ground!’ ‘We will f*** on the beaches!’ ‘We demand the Politics of Ecstasy!’ ‘Acid for all!’”.  I’m thankful for the internet’s existence merely because such ridiculous groups can be brought to light, discussed, and ultimately discredited.  The internet and blogosphere provides a voice for these people,  but like a double-edged sword, they can be easily dismissed as buffoons.  If the internet wasn’t around, there would be no way I could hear about these groups while out in Iraq.  I think it’s important to keep myself apprised of the political situation back on the homefront, at least in my spare time.

Al-Arabiya is a Saudi-owned sattelite TV station operating out of Dubai. It’s in Arabic, but some of their reports they release in English for us displaced Westerners. It’s pretty moderate compared to Al-Jazeera and has a lot of stories about the Sahwa members in Iraq suceeding in defeating Al-Qaeda, so that’s always good. But this new promo they are running is downright bizarre. I couldn’t watch the thing since our bandwidth has been lousy, but the Fox News website had a quick blurb on their website talking about how a guy who gets chicken in a cafe relates to the polar ice caps melting relates to refugees on an island relates to terrorism. It’s like playing 6-degrees of Kevin Bacon combined with the proverbial “Butterfly flapping it’s wings in Taiwan” analogy, uh I guess. Independent Arabic TV is relatively new and still developing marketing techniques, so we’ll have to be patient and provide a little helpful feedback in the meantime.

If only the man hadn’t ordered chicken, car bombs would never happen!

Mr. Ahmadinejad is coming to my neck of the woods in Iraq (h/t McClatchy Watch).  I’m all about diplomacy as opposed to war, but it’s hard for the Iraqis to have dialogue with a guy who denies the holocaust and thinks there is no homosexuals in the country.  It sort of puts him in the nutjob category.  You can peruse the softer side of a theocracy on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s blog, but I remain skeptical.  Keep an eye on this one and standby to throw up the BS flag.

 

Pronounce it right, you Western infidels!

Admiral Smith had a pretty solid news conference the other day that highlighted all the brutality and twisted logic of Al-Qaeda in Iraq for 2007. Unless you are one of the 20 people that subscribes to the Pentagon Channel, you probably didn’t catch it, but the transcript and graphs are up on the MNF-I website for your perusal and analysis. The Admiral talked extensively about Al-Qaeda in Iraq, while the group is mostly Iraqis, it is led by foreigners and the suicide attacks are conducted by primarily foreigners (mostly Saudis BTW). While us Americans have been fortunate to not have a serious Al-Qaeda attack on American soil since 9/11, the Iraqis haven’t been:

These bombings were just two of the more than 4,500 attacks by al-Qaeda Iraq in 2007 that targeted civilians. Al-Qaeda murdered 3,870 Iraqis, injuring nearly 18,000 additional innocent civilians. The violence peaked in March and April and as the surge of operations pressed through the summer, the number of high profile explosions slowly began to decrease, however the numbers still remain alarmingly high.

I will say that Al-Qaeda in Iraq wasn’t really around before the 2003 invasion, and connections with Saddam are a little far-fetched. I’ve seen some stuff about Zarqawi here in 2002, but not much evidence. But now that they are here conducting this campaign of brutality (read the story about the teenaged suicide bomber in Fallujah), we pretty much owe it to the world to exterminate them. Long War Journal is a great resource in keeping up with terrorism from Algeria to Pakistan. Methods of accomplishing the long war can be debated extensively so stay informed.

The Sinjar truck bombings in August ‘07 killed 100s of minority Yazidis, but got little American media attention

One thing that I’ve learned from being in Iraq is that sometimes you have to adopt a pragmatic approach that compromises various conflicting ideas to reach some sort of practical solution.  I think the reason that I’m such a moderate on most political matters is because ideological groups are heinous. Here’s some examples:

Code Pink (link)

These yahoos storm into the Petraeus/Crocker September testimony with stupid signs and funny looking hats to insult a 4-star general in the name of “supporting the troops”. Geez, Code Pink, I think the guy might know a thing or two about “the troops” having been in the Army since you were smoking pot during the 1970s. These hippies are just looking for any cause to stir up trouble and, conveniently for them, there’s a war going on, so that they can leave their mark before they zip off into the cosmos or whatever aging hippies do once they croak. (SGT Freedom eloquently explains)

Lyndon Larouche Democrats (link)

These guys seriously freak me out. When I was in college, they used to always have a leaflet table set up with very poorly patched-together signs that made absolutely no sense about how we were headed for an economic depression and that the only thing that could save us was Roosevelt-style socialism and building choo-choo trains through Africa. My friend was brainwashed by them and invited me to their “compound” out in LA once to get some “education”. They verbally assaulted me for supporting Thomas Jefferson-style democracy and claimed I was some sort of British agent or maybe even a “speculator”. What these insults meant still haunt me to this day. Good thing they didn’t get my name. Some other groups many years ago weren’t so lucky, since the Larouchers attacked them with nunchucks during something known as Operation Mop-Up. Creepy.

9/11 Truthers (link)You ever wonder why the world is run by old white dudes in masonic hoods who control the world’s banks and engineer wars and famines to stuff their coffers with gold. Well, after being on this planet for 27 years, I have realized that no one is that smart to pull off a ruse on that magnitude. Good god, some of our leaders can barely tie their shoes let alone manufacture 9/11 to start a global conquest under the pretense of fighting terrorism. Think about it.

Westboro Baptist Church (link)

And you wonder why I’m a tad vigilant against religious fundamentalism creeping into politics. These crazies think it’s a good idea to spread the righteous word that “God Hates Fags” by protesting the funerals of our fallen brothers and sisters! Apparently, since the US accepts homosexuality, God is punishing our military by killing us with IEDs. The logic is completely absurd.

Maybe you can now see where I’m coming from. Please add your own nefarious groups as I only had time to publish these 4 and Long live the Moderate Revolution!