Hennessy's View

I approached the Rennick Park Pavilion with a heavy heart for three reasons.  At least three.

First, it was yet another night that I would not be home. And tomorrow’s first day of school.  The last first day of school for my son, Patrick. I can’t think of that without thinking about his first day of kindergarten—which seems like yesterday—when he insisted on riding the bus.  With his little backpack overflowing with supplies listed on a green sheet of paper (Rockwood-Green Pines-K), he stepped onto that bus in August of 1998.

Second, being totally selfish and shallow, I was late.  The service started at 6:00, but I was rolling in during the invocation by Pastor Curtman.  Nothing makes you stand out like walking in the middle of prayers.

Third, the very need for this event is disturbing.  A man and his family are targets of political hit job. Brian Nieves’s only crime it appears was winning an election that men of power and money had reserved for someone else. 

I was surprised when Brian Nieves took the podium to speak. He was both humble and determined. The ridiculous accusations by a political opponent would not end his fight, he told us, but it had rattled him. He said he understands, now, why his candidate recruitment efforts were so difficult. 

“I won’t put my family through that,” they told Brian. 

He assured us knows why.

Republican party power brokers wanted another candidate to win the primary for Missouri Senate District 26, which covers parts of Franklin, St. Louis, and Warren Counties.  Nieves won a tough four-way race in which he was attacked and lied about by opposing candidates, their supporters and staffers, and Republican power brokers.

Brian wanted to tell the story, but he’s under lawyer orders not to discuss the incident. He did let us know that his accuser—for whom he asked us to pray—was comfortable enough at Nieves’s office to return for his sunglasses and enjoy a soda. Less than twenty-four hours later, that accuser would swear in a police report that he was so traumatized by a visit to Nieves’s campaign office that he was rendered a quivering mass of humanity, curled in a fetal position on the floor, begging for mercy.  Mercy and a nice refreshment, that is.  “Could I get a lemon wedge?”

Sorry. The accuser seems to have demons of his own.  He must be under incredible pressure.

The 200 or so people who came out on an evening designed by God, to stand and sit, cheer and prayer by the banks of the Missouri River left certain about two things:

1.  This episode will end someone careers, and

2.  Brian will come out standing.

I wish I could report how exciting it was. I can’t.  I was thrilled to see the response to Annette Read’s and Cindy McGee’s call for a prayer vigil for the Nieves family. But need for this—when we should be out fighting the disassembly of America—just pisses me off. The abuse of this man and his family pisses me off.  The abuse of the system, from the police to the courts to the political process, pisses me off.

While I should have left that ceremony full of love and hope, as I was told, in the end, I did not. I am not angry, not spitting nails, not enraged.  I’m just disgusted that human beings are using good people as pawns.

I understand that the Nieves family will face monstrous legal bills.  To defray those expenses, they have established an emergency legal defense fund.  To contribute, to help push back the ridiculous attack on Brian and his family, please contact his campaign office at 636-432-1776.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Technorati Tags: brian nieves

One of the most popular and most talked about movies of 1993 was Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas, Barbara Hershey, and Robert Duval. 

Douglas played William “D-FENS” Foster, an engineer at a defense contractor who has a really bad day.  Some described the movie as “an ordinary man at war with the everyday world.”

Foster became an iconic anti-hero for the people who (stealing Bill Clinton’s line)worked hard and played by the rules, yet found themselves at the bottom of the heap in the post-Cold War era of 1993.

Foster’s wife (Hershey) had left him, and he moved back in with his mother. Making matters worse, Hershey had a court order barring Foster from visiting their young daughter, whom he clearly loved more than life itself.

On the little girl’s birthday, everything falls apart.  Foster gets laid off from the defense contractor job.  The police (Duval) remind him he’s not to go near his wife or daughter.  And in one memorable scene, a fast food chain’s rules interfere when Foster just wants breakfast:

When I read the story of Jetblue flight attendant, Steven Slater, Falling Down  comes to mind. 

And I’m not the only one. 

According to a new Wall Street Journal/MSNBC Poll, two-thirds of Americans believe the worst is yet to come for the economy.  Democrat pollster Peter Hart sees Steven Slater as metaphor for voter sentiment.

Mr. Hart said the 2010 contest is being pulled by the sentiment associated with the JetBlue flight attendant who fled his plane via the emergency chute after an altercation with a passenger. Calling it the "JetBlue election," Mr. Hart said: "Everyone’s hurling invective and they’re all taking the emergency exit."

Like William Foster, Steven Slater seems to symbolize—in exaggerated form—the mood of the American people.  We’re fed up with bureaucracy and petty rules, “minute and uniform,” as Tocqueville put it,  “. . . through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.”

Steven Slater broke through, alright.

In 1993, ordinary Americans—the Tea Party before it had that name—were ready to rumble.  After the Reagan years had restore some semblance of normalcy following the weird 1970s, Bush and Clinton conspired to impose a “new world order” that was inconsistent with our constitution, to use 18th century lingo. 

On November 6, 1994, the American voter signaled our disgust with Washington’s incompetence and encroachments. We switched controll of Congress from Democrat to Republican. In 2006, the voters reversed themselves, returning Congressional control the Democrats.  The voters wanted a change.

It worked.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 12,398 when the Nancy Pelosi’s surgically enhanced hand snatched the Speaker’s gavel from Denny Hastert.  Today, the DJIA opened at 10,300 and some change.  Some change, indeed.

In 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.6 percent. Today’s it’s 9.5 percent and rising, according to Timothy Geithner.  Today, new unemployment claims unexpectedly rose by 2,000 for the second week in a row. Consumer spending slowed. The national debt has increased 21 percent since the Democrats took over Congress—and sole authority to tax and spend.

Even with all that bad news and angst, there is great news ahead. Elections offer Americans the opportunity to take control of their lives and their future. In 2010, the shift in power from Washington to the people could be  of a historic scale.

Can you see November?

Popularity: 8% [?]

Technorati Tags: falling down, msnbc poll, steven slater, wsj poll

The primaries are over.

I honestly believe that in the St. Louis area, the rightward-most, viable candidate won each of the key votes. The people of Missouri are in a position to make historical shifts in our Washington representation. And those shifts are just the first step and restoring America’s First Principles.

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Roy Blunt is a conservative.  He will be a big step up for conservatism in the Senate.  No, we wasn’t the rightward-most candidate in the race.  But he was the rightward-most, viable candidate.  He still is.  He is the only candidate to the right of Robin Carnahan who has any chance of winning.  Any chance at all. If you don’t work hard to get Roy elected, then don’t complain when Robin Carnahan is the 51st vote to put the next Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court.  This race could decide the life or death of the USA.  And Roy Blunt is the good guy in this very close race.

Ed Martin Jr. has the best chance to win the 3rd Congressional District in my lifetime.  He’s running against a weak, flawed, and frivolous empty suit named Russ Carnahan. Ed Martin is a solid conservative, an original Tea Partyer, and dedicated American patriot. Ed can reconstitute the Reagan Coalition in South St. Louis city and county and in Jefferson and Ste. Genevieve Counties.  I believe he will.  Ed is the kind of patriot, along with John and Gina Loudon and Jim Lembke, who took an enormous gamble by showing up at that first tea party in February 2009. Politicians avoid situations they don’t control, and none of those people knew me from Adam.  But Ed believed that his country needed him at that moment, just as it needed the other 1,500 people who gave up a day of work to stand for liberty, responsible government, and community. Now, Ed believes his country needs him in Washington.  I can’t think of a better person to represent the district where I grew up and where my mom and dad and sisters, nieces, nephews, and grand-nieces and nephews still live.

Tom Schweich took a lot of heat during the primary, but no one challenged his credentials for Missouri Auditor.  I was personally skeptical of Tom before I met him.  His only public service involved foreign service, working for the State Department at the UN and in Afghanistan. When we met for lunch, my doubts about his fitness for Auditor quickly disappeared. In fact, I got the sense that it was all Tom could do to restrain himself from running over to the bar and balancing the cash drawer. He has a lifetime of experience overseeing various kinds of corporate audits and criminal financial investigations. Who do you want auditing the disbursement of billions of dollars in stimulus funds?  Democrat Susan Montee?  Democrat Jay Nixon?  Turncoat Chris Koster who won’t even defend Missourians against Obama’s un-Constitutional insurance mandates? John Ashcroft doesn’t endorse RINOs, and Ashcroft has endorsed Schweich.

I was thrilled to see that Paul Curtman, running for Missouri’s 105th House seat received almost twice as many primary votes as his Democrat opponent.  But Paul has a lot of work to do before November, and he’ll need a lot of help.  If you want a viable strict Constitutionalist candidate for the US House or Senate down the road, you better be working for Paul Curtman this year.  He is the future.

Likewise, Gary Fuhr’s win in the Republican primary for MO 97 makes me happy, although a couple of other fantastic candidates were in that race.  Gary will make a great leader in Jefferson City if his friends and neighbors and primary opponents put him there.  He and Paul will make a great team.

There’s a lot more to cover, but I have work to do around the house.  And we’re all busy with preparations for the Biggest Tea Party St. Louis Ever Saw on 9-12 Under the Arch.  If you haven’t already done so, please RSVP on Facebook and invite your friends and family from anywhere to spend a patriotic weekend in St. Louis.  Our local economy can use the visitors.

I know that the passions of the primary are still with us, but we can’t sit around licking wounds or celebrating much longer.  We have thousands of doors to knock, dozens of rallies to attend, tens of thousands phone calls to make.  The Tea Party movement launched to change America’s future through a revolution at the ballot box.  I don’t give hoot in hell who gets the credit, just so there’s a lot of credit to give.

And just to end with a cliché, let’s get out there and win one for the Gipper.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: ed martin, election 2010, gary fuhr, Paul Curtman, roy blunt, tom schweich

Besides . . . lots?

In 1994, Dan Rostenkowski, then Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was convicted of felony fraud charges. 

In 2010, Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is found guilty of ethics violations. (And BO says it’s time for him to go.)

In 1994, Democrats were on the ropes after winning the House, the Senate, and the White House.

In 2010, Democrats are on the ropes after winning the House and Senate in 2006 and the White House in 2008.

In 1994, Republican conservatives ran a national campaign to win the House and Senate.

In 2010, Republican conservatives, bolstered by a massive grassroots movement, is running a national campaign to win the House and Senate.

How will it all end?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: Charlie Rangel, Dan Rostenkowski, House Ways and Means

Just before her beatification, Shirley Sherrod jumped the shark.

On Thursday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper let the embattled former USDA director talk for an hour. Bad idea. It was bad for CNN, bad for viewers, and really bad for Sherrod, who lost her mind on the air. This is what she said:

I think he’d [Andrew Breitbart would] like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery, That’s where I think he’d like to see all black people end up again.

The sad tale gets sadder.

If Anderson Cooper’s purpose was to expose Sherrod as a bitter, racial, crank, then he did yeoman’s work.  In that one hour special of All Shirley, All The Time, Cooper didn’t just knock Sherrod off of her pedestal—a pedestal I helped place her on—he hit her in the head with it. 

But the destruction of Shirley Sherrod was not Cooper’s intent, I’m sure.  He hoped to canonize the woman. It’s a comedy of errors all around. Sherrod’s media performance was so terrible she was banned form the Sunday talk shows. If we ever hear from her again, it will be after intense media coaching from the best the DNC has to offer.  But no coaching or make-up will cover her seething anger toward everything that doesn’t hand her cash.

In the end, Andrew Breitbart—the man who broke the story—got it just about right. He said all along that Sherrod hadn’t gotten past race. 

Jonah Goldberg said Shirley Sherrod owes Breitbart an apology. I agree. But don’t hold your breath.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Technorati Tags: Anderson Cooper, Andrew Breitbart, Shirley Sherrod

Have you noticed few people call Barack Obama “The One” anymore? “The Golfer” or “The Vacationer” is more like it. Something less than One, by any measure.

Still, with each passing day and each new, permanent crisis, it seems like BO just ain’t up to the job of President.  Nothing new.  When Jimmy Carter’s incompetence became obvious, the lefty press developed a theory that the job had simply grown too complex for one man. Don’t be surprised to hear it again shortly. They carried that meme right into the GOP convention of 1980 when Walter Cronkite decided that Ronald Reagan needed to appoint Gerald Ford his co-nominee rather than veep. 

Of course, Reagan became President and proved, in short order, that  not only could one person handle the job, the right person could do it in 6 hour days with a nap to boot.  The trick, of course, is finding the right person. And America apparently failed at that challenge in 2008. 

I don’t have a bunch of stats and numbers for this, but I do have an awfully strong hunch.  Bill Clinton was dealt bad news from time to time, but he always seemed to land on his feet.  Barack Obama has good news every now than, and he somehow manages to screw that up, too.  Let’s look at headlines of the past week:

• Wikileaks releases ten of thousands of sensitive documents about Afganistan
• Maureen Dowd reveals that Obama’s “white guys” pushed Shirley Sherrod out of her job
• Hugo Chavez, Obama’s best friend in this hemisphere, threatened to cut off oil to the US over Columbia
• Obama backed release of Lockerbie Bomber, we learned

Did I say past week?  That was TODAY! 

Here’s the thing: today wasn’t a aberration. Every day of the Barack Obama presidency is like this.  Or worse. In fact, a few weeks ago, former Obama fawner, Peggy Noonan, declared Obama a “snake-bit President.”  And that ain’t good.

But Mr. Obama is starting to look unlucky, and–file this under Mysteries of Leadership–that is dangerous for him because Americans get nervous when they have a snakebit president. They want presidents on whom the sun shines.

Indeed. In 1981, the masters at Bishop DuBourg High School had us all watch Reagan’s Inauguration on TV.  We saw it happen live, on CBS, if I remember correctly.  Here’s the story from Defense.gov:

In stepped Reagan. After taking the oath of office, Reagan strode to the dais. As the new president began his inaugural address, the sun broke through the clouds. A woman in the crowd said that even Hollywood couldn’t have written a better script.

Reagan’s whole presidency was like that. Not scripted, but lucky.  When Dutch (Reagan’s nickname from back in Dixon, Illinois) screwed up, something happened. He’d come out smelling like a rose.

Noonan was right, of course. We want lucky leaders.  As goes a song from the musical Pippin, “It’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart.”

I would argue that intelligence, education, and experience, alone, are not enough to be president. Yet Obama appears to lack all of those, in addition to luck and instinct.  We know he went to Harvard. But so did George W. Bush. And Hank Paulson.  And the CEOs of most of the banks that collapsed in 2008.

So we have a lot of evidence that we hired the wrong dude to lead America.  The question becomes “what do we do now?”

There’s only so much we can do, and some of you have been doing it for a while.

1. We can keep pressure on Congress to STOP enacting this snake-bit, incompetent President’s agenda.
2. We can support candidates who will stop Obama’s agenda in the next Congress.
3. We can recruit and train candidates for 2012 who will reverse the damaging growth of government.
4. We can pray that our country survives this present crisis of government.

Until we have a Congress and President who understand the Constitution and voluntarily abide by its limitations on government powers, it’s up to us to remain vigilant against further government growth. And it’s also incumbent upon on us to understand what a colossal mistake we made by electing this snake-bit, failure of a man to our country’s highest office. 

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: Jimmy Carter, obama, peggy noonan, ronald_reagan, snake-bit

Between a touch of the flu and the flurry of activity over this very issue, I missed the best, most direct breakdown of Ben Jealous’s misguided and hypocritical attack on the Tea Party.  Read this column by Michael Graham on BostonHerald.com dated Thursday, July 15.

Money quote:

When you’re looking for bigots at a Tea Party rally, they’re on the fringe. When you’re looking for them at the NAACP, they’re on stage.

Ouch.

When we find bigots, even on the fringe, at a St. Louis event, we drive them out. And we don’t hide the fact that they were there.

At the April 15 Tea Party in Clayton, MO, Adam Sharp and several others drove from the park a guy wearing Nazi crap. They did it by standing next to him with a sign that read “Fake Tea Partier” while Sharp verbally challenged him.  Lee Fang, a “researcher” with American Progress with a history of shredding the truth, has doctored Sharp’s great video (without legal permission). Here’s what actually happened.

Perhaps if the NAACP treated the racists and anti-Semites in their midst the way the Tea Party does, Mr. Jealous wouldn’t be so busy back-peddling from his hypocritical lies today.

By “racists” and “anti-Semites,” I mean Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton, to name only a few.  As Mr. Graham pointed out, “This is the leadership of the NAACP, not some lone kook in a vast crowd.”

Now that the President and Joe Biden have admitted that the Tea Party is not a racist movement, it seems Mr. Jealous and the NAACP are all alone, twisting in the wind.

Mr. Jealous seemed to want us to admit we’re intolerant?  We are.  We don’t tolerate racism. Period.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Technorati Tags: Adam Sharp, Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, NAACP, racism

The NAACP has decided that it’s worth time to call 20 million American patriots “racists” for advancing liberty and economic opportunity. 

At midnight, the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition sent a resolution condemning the NAACP’s bigotry and hatred to its Washington bureau.

The Tea Party’s principles are simple and clear:

• Smaller federal government
• Lower taxes
• Fiscal responsibility
• National defense
• Federalism

Those are precisely the tools to lift all Americans out of poverty. They’ve worked every time they’ve been tried.  In America, we just haven’t tried them in awhile, due in large part to the NAACP’s advancement of socialism.

Each of these First Principles protects the rights of every American—the rights inherent in our humanity, not phony “rights” invented by a bureaucrat.  We stand for rights given by God that no man, no government, can justifiably deny or diminish.  Our principles are the very same principles that the NAACP stood for in 1909 but has wandered away from since the 1970s.

When you look at the crime and poverty and family breakdown of the African-American community, where median household income is below that of illegal aliens, you see a half-century of failure by the NAACP. When you consider that the NAACP blocks every effort to educate the poor through school vouchers, you realize that the NAACP is all about power for a few, not opportunity for everyone. When you see that the NAACP refuses to condemn New Black Panther Party calls to murder police officers and babies, you understand how far that organization has fallen.

None of those persistent problems was caused by the tea party movement, yet the principles of the tea party are exactly what’s needed to wind down the multi-generational destruction in the African-American community.  As I have said repeatedly, we measure compassion by the number of people lifted out of poverty, not the number who remain trapped. We promote hope and achievement through liberty, safety, and pursuit of happiness.  That’s all we want.

The NAACP was once a vital weapon in the war against segregation and oppression. All that’s left is abigoted and malicious shell that does far more harm than good for people who need a break. 

The NAACP should give reason and decency a break by withdrawing its false and defamatory attack on the tea party movement.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Technorati Tags: NAACP, racism, resolution, tea party

Democrats are planning to punish the American people with draconian, destructive legislation during the lame duck session following November’s election, according the Wall Street Journal.

That’s why there have been signs in recent weeks that party leaders are planning an ambitious, lame-duck session to muscle through bills in December they don’t want to defend before November. Retiring or defeated members of Congress would then be able to vote for sweeping legislation without any fear of voter retaliation.

Cowardly bastards. 

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chair of the Senate committee overseeing labor issues, told the Bill Press radio show in June that "to those who think [card check] is dead, I say think again." He told Mr. Press "we’re still trying to maneuver" a way to pass some parts of the bill before the next Congress is sworn in.

In other words, these slimy frauds will retaliate against the people of this country by shoving more corruption down our throats.

If this doesn’t inspire every American to politically kick the teeth down the throat of the Democratic Party, nothing will. Let’s defeat the s.o.b.s so completely they couldn’t get elected dog-catcher in a town their family owns. 

Get on our mailing list now!

Let’s begin with an enormous turnout on August 3 to send a clear message about ObmaCare by voting Yes on Proposition C.

From Labor Day to Election Day, let’s flood Missouri and Southern Illinois with the largest grassroots campaign for patriotic candidates in American history.  While we don’t have funding from billionaires to hire college kids, we have thousands of dedicated American patriots who will tirelessly. 

Put in for vacation November 1, 2, and 3.  Your country will need you to get out the vote the first and second.  And you’ll need to sit back and smile on November 3.

Fight, fight, fight, fight like your children’s lives depend on it.

They’ve strangled Pursuit of Happiness.

They’ve targeted Liberty.

Can Life be far behind?

Popularity: 9% [?]

Technorati Tags: election, harry-reid, lame duck, nancy_pelosi, obama, socialism