Daily Archives: January 18, 2010

Politics

When Teleprompters Get Heckled

It is with just a little satisfaction to see liberals getting some of their own medicine, if I may use that metaphor. One thing is obvious, teleprompters don’t react to hecklers very well.


And while we’re on the subject of Sunday’s plan to rescue Coakley’s senate campaign, it appears that Patrick Kennedy may have spent too much time at the bar. They are still running on blaming Bush. Doesn’t know Coakley’s first name, and are intent on pointing fingers. What?

Check these quotes:

“If you think there’s magic out there and things can be turned around overnight, then you would vote for someone who could promise you that, like Scott Brown,” Kennedy said. “If you don’t, if you know that it takes eight years for George Bush and his cronies to put our country into this hole … then you know we have a lot of digging to do, but some work needs to be done and this president’s in the process of doing it and we need to get Marcia Coakley to help him to do that.”

Right. Just keep on digging.

“One thing the Democrats have done wrong? We haven’t kept the focus on this disaster on the Republicans who brought it upon us. We’ve tried too hard to do that right thing, and that’s to fix it, as opposed to spend more of our time and energy pointing the finger at who got us [here] in the first place.”

(Curiously, Kennedy mentioned Coakley repeatedly during his remarks to reporters, each time referring to her as “Marcia,” not “Martha.”)

Priceless.

h/t Black & Right

Race Relations

Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On November 2, 1983, Republican President Ronald Reagan signed the bill in the White House Rose Garden making the Birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a national holiday. The bill first came up for a vote in 1979, but the Democrat-controlled US House of Representatives refused to pass the legislation. The first national celebration of the holiday in honor of Dr. King took place on January 20, 1986 and is celebrated on the 3rd Monday in January. In his remarks on signing the bill Reagan said: “Dr. King had awakened something strong and true, a sense that true

justice must be colorblind, and that among white and black Americans, as he put it, ‘Their destiny is tied up with our destiny, and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom; we cannot walk alone.'”

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal Holiday Commission with the mission of overseeing the observance of the MLK holiday was created in the bill signed by Reagan.

In May 1989, Coretta Scott King was made a member of the commission for life by Republican President George H. W. Bush.

Democrats today are trying to usurp Dr. King’s legacy, when in reality it was the Democrats who Dr. King was fighting. See the below article for details.

* * * * * * * *

Democrats Smeared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960’s

By Frances Rice

Character assassination. That’s the tactic used by Democrats in the 1960’s to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican who was fighting the Democrats and trying to stop them from denying civil rights to blacks.

The relentless disparagement of Dr. King by Democrats led to his being physically assaulted and ultimately to his tragic death. In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King’s leaving Memphis, Tennessee after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a “trouble-maker” who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Prior to his death, Democrats bombed Dr. King’s home several times. The scurrilous efforts by the Democrats to harm Dr. King included spreading rumors that he was a Communist and accusing him of being a womanizer and a plagiarist.

An egregious act against Dr. King occurred on October 10, 1963. With the approval of Democrat President John F. Kennedy, Democrat Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy – President Kennedy’s brother – authorized the wiretapping of Dr. King’s telephone by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Wiretaps were placed by the FBI on the telephones in Dr. King’s home and office. The FBI also bugged Dr. King’s hotel rooms when he traveled around the country.

The trigger for this unsavory wiretapping was apparently Dr. Kings’ criticism of the Kennedy Administration, according to the author David Garrow in his book, “Bearing the Cross”. The justification given by the Kennedy Administration publicly was that two of Dr. King’s associates, including David Levinson, had ended their association with the Communist Party in order to work undercover and influence Dr. King. However, after years of continuous and extensive wiretapping, the FBI found no direct links of Dr. King to the Communist Party.

The unrelenting efforts by Democrats to tarnish Dr. King’s reputation continued for years after his death. To his credit, Republican President Ronald Reagan ignored the Democrats’ smear campaign and made Dr. King’s Birthday a holiday.

Today, while professing to revere Dr. King, Democrats are still trying to tarnish his image by making remarks that diminish his civil rights achievements and continuing to claim that Dr. King embraced Communism – a system that is secularist and socialist.

In reality, Dr. King was a Christian who held deeply religious beliefs and was guided by his faith and his Republican Party principles in his struggle to gain equality for blacks. He did not embrace the type of socialist, secularist agenda that is promoted by the Democrat Party today, which includes fostering dependency on welfare that breaks up families, supporting same-sex marriage and banning God from the public square.

An understanding of who the real Dr. King was can be gained from a glimpse of Dr. King as a young man who participated in an oratorical contest when he was 14 years old. The title of his speech was “The Negro and the Constitution” which had the following sentences: “We cannot have an enlightened democracy with one great group living in ignorance…We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flout the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule….”

If Dr. King were still alive, he would be slandered by Democrats in the same way that they smeared him in the 1960’s and demean all black Republicans today.

Bio: Frances Rice is a lawyer, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Chairman of the National Black Republican Association. She can be contacted at: www.NBRA.info/

Economy, Florida, Media, Pensacola

Don’t Ignore Small Business

The article in the Pensacola News Journal showing the decline in business investment “Top 10 sales fall to $80M” painted a pretty good picture of slowing economic conditions and increasing uncertainty surrounding business investments.

Multi-million dollar projects are one thing. Businesses with those kinds of assets have people, if not departments, to tend to the details. But small business, really small business, the mom and pop venture, is one sector that can benefit with just a little assistance from local government. And the assistance I’m speaking of does not cost a dime.

There’s no better motivation to start a small family business than to find yourself unemployed. Current unemployment figures show there is plenty of opportunity for a new start-up for someone with a passion for a business or product for which there is market demand. Employed or not, you have way more potential to succeed than you know. Being unemployed may be all it takes to make up your mind to jump in with both feet to start your own business. Been there, done that. And there’s no greater satisfaction that I’ve experienced in the workplace than when the workplace is your own.

Depending on the business you have in mind, you may need more than one license, permits, and inspections along the way. You’ll have to comply with city, county, and state laws not only from the financial angle, but also from details like building codes, fire codes, and ADA compliant features that may be required. There are tax issues, federal, state, and local. There are insurance issues if you have employees. Having prior knowledge of these will save you time and money.

Let’s assume that after losing your job, you don’t have a boatload of cash to take your time in getting something going. You cannot afford to start paying rent for months on end while getting things ready. Inspections by various departments and jurisdictions may be required. Some of them must happen in a certain order. Learning this the hard way will cost you something that you can’t replace, time. And you can’t afford the financial setbacks you’ll incur for failing to comply with necessary details, beginning with the loss of business for not being able to open when you expected to.

So you have an idea of what you want to do. Maybe you took the extension courses offered by the University of West Florida on starting your own business? They are good, and inexpensive. For me it was like a college refresher course condensed into a few weeks. Maybe you’ve already run a business, but it wasn’t your own? Maybe you have a college degree in business or management? Those courses are helpful in a general sense, but do not cover the mechanics of what you will need to do in a legal sense, and in what order, before you can open your door for business.

You have a site selected that would be conducive to your business plan. But where do you start? Where do you go locally to get the ‘official guide to opening a business?’ That’s where the city and county can help. And there’s not been a greater need for this kind of help in decades.

Attracting big businesses/employers to the area is fine. Something the government should try to do. But let’s also try to develop the small business potential that is already here.

link: Top 10 sales fall to $80M

Update 1/24/2010: This post was reprinted in the Pensacola News Journal on the opinion page as a Viewpoint: Right time to promote small business growth