Rick Santorum brings a bootstrap work ethic to the GOP campaign

Senator Rick Santorum

The GOP primary campaign blasted  through the states of Michigan and Arizona, blazing its way to the the epic 10 state battle of Super Tuesday, coming up in less than 6 days.

Mitt Romney won Arizona and all of its delegates with a solid win, but barely eked out a victory over Rick Santorum in Romney's native state of Michigan. As a result the Michigan delegates will be shared evenly between Romney and Santorum.

At the beginning of this whole GOP contest, Rick Santorum was not given much of a chance.  He was always at the back of the pack when it came to poll numbers and his campaign war chest was barely big enough to keep gas in his pick up truck as he drove  around Iowa, meeting personally with thousands of Iowans.

But what Rick Santorum lacked in campaign funds, he made up in hard work and perseverance....He ended up winning the Iowa Caucuses to most of the professional pundits surprise.

Many of these same professional pundits have been surprised throughout this GOP contest. After votes are counted, once underdogs and those called out of the race, end up winners.

The only pundit who seems to be consistently accurate in his predictions so far is Dick Morris, who jokingly said he covers the whole field when he makes a prediction of who will win, so he is always right
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Since Iowa,  Santorum again slipped to near back of the pack and even Newt Gingrich suggested he quit his campaign, since he was so far behind.  Undeterred,  Santorum continued using his dogged determination to slog it out in States where he had little built in infrastructure, describing himself as the real conservative of the race.

 But then Santorum surprised the field with victories in 3 states, Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri. He was able to gain momentum to become the front runner in the polls leading up to yesterdays elections.

Having poll position in the GOP race has proved dangerous for everyone who has occupied first place so far this campaign and Santorum had to absorb the scrutiny and the brunt of millions in negative attack ads.  As a result his popularity started to slip on the eve of yesterdays elections.

Santorum helped some his downward drift in popularity by making statements that some of the electorate found to be harsh.  His judgement on birth control, women in combat positions and his comment on John Kennedy's speech regarding the separation of church and state, alienated some voters.

As a result,  Rick lost some of his popularity, especially from women due to his birth control statements. His loss to Romney by a thin margin was probably due to his own gaffes. 

But last night it sounded  like Santorum learned his lesson. In  Michigan he softened his speech and reached out to women, signalling a different tack.

The tension is building up to Super Tuesday and no one is making any solid predictions as to what the outcome will be.  But there is one certainty; all of the candidates will be working hard to claim victory and among them will be Rick Santorum.  Rick Santorum who just a month ago was being urged by some in the GOP to get out of the race, fought his way to the top of the heap.  With hard work and determination can he do it again?

Ed was on air this afternoon with Radio Clare FM, talking to Gavin Grace and his audience about the important developments in American presidential politics.


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US won a world war in 4 years, yet after 10 years we are still getting killed in Afghanistan

US Marines walking through opium fields

 US guards at a prison holding dangerous combatants in Afghanistan, discovered defaced  Korans had been used to pass information amongst the prisoners.  Evidently our soldiers hadn't gotten the latest Fatwah regarding proper disposal of defaced Korans and had ended up burning them in a small bonfire.

The innocent burnings of these books has sparked religious outrage and caused the murder and injury of US troops throughout this country.  For days all hell has broken loose in this land, as if a floodgate had been thrown open,

But is this just symptomatic of something far greater than the burnings of a few books?  How many Korans have been destroyed and burned by Taliban terror strikes on the people of Afghanistan?...and yet we saw no mass demonstrations by the native population against these acts.

Of course in a different time, the United States waged war to win war,  we (and our allies) won a world war in less than four years in the 1940's.  In World War II as American forces entered Germany,  if they were fired upon, artillery opened up on the village the gunfire came from and flattened it.  That put a quick end to resistance as folks learned  there would be consequences, especially with American Generals like Patton in command. The German people soon sought out and exposed or killed those amongst them who wanted to continue the war. Resistance to American forces soon ceased and we began to help the German people. America stayed in Germany to help rebuild the country into the economic powerhouse it is today and also to guard against Soviet expansion.

But Afghanistan has proven to be a totally different sort of war.  After 10 years of "winning hearts and minds" it appears it is still a dangerous, violent country, ready to explode at any sort of spark, like one from a burning Koran.

Should we have used more Patton and less patent leather to conduct our "war"?

The biggest cash crop in Afghanistan is still the opium poppy, which is the basis for the heroin imported into Europe and the United States. Afghanistan produces 90% of the worlds opium and production has been on the rise since U.S. occupation started in 2001. Opium is also one of the main sources of money for the Taliban who are killing our troops. Why are these opium farms still allowed to flourish while Afghanistan is supposedly under our military control?

Furthermore, after all of this blood and sacrifice by US forces, it was learned Afghanistan signed an oil extraction agreement with China in 2011 that lets China exploit Afghan resources. Who is in charge of our foreign policy?

The Afghan people are exotic, you can see they bear resemblance to all of the past invaders of their country who tried and failed to rule this wild land. Alexander the Great with his Greek Army, Arab Muslims, Genghis Khan and his Mongols, the British and the Russians, all eventually were defeated and forced to leave.

Afghanistan has been chewing up and spitting out foreign invaders for over two thousand years. America has been in this country for 10 years and it seems there is no end in sight, unless a severe policy change comes into effect and that doesn't seem likely.

When we see our soldiers getting shot because a book was burned, when we see Afghanistan as the biggest producer of opium in the world and when we see China slipping in signing trade agreements with this government including oil rights, right under our noses....We wonder what the blood toil and tears are for?

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Irish American GOP contender Karen Harrington takes on top Democrat in Florida race

Karen Harrington campaign poster

Karen Harrington has no qualms when she speaks about her intentions of unseating the chairman of the Democratic National Committee from her 20th District Congressional seat in Florida.  Ms. Harrington took time out of her busy campaign schedule to sit down for a 1/2 hour chat with me/Irish Central to fill in some of  her history and what motivated her to get into politics in the first place.

A business woman with 3 family owned Rickeys Restaurants and over 100 employees, Ms.  Harrington, was very busy doing just that.  However she was so dissatisfied with the job Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was doing for her district in Florida and for the country, Karen looked to see who would best go up against the nationally powerful, incumbent Congresswoman, Debbie-Wasserman -Schultz.  Finding no one she could back, Harrington set about to go into politics herself, for the first time in 2010.

She had no political background when she ran against the incumbent Wasserman-Schultz in that 2010 election.  Yet in a surprise to all of the political pundits, she amassed almost 40% of the vote  in a heavily Democrat area. This 2012 election, sees a more seasoned and focused campaign with national recognition and national backing.
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Besides having more experience in campaigning, Karen's  team is enhanced with veteran  Anthony Bustamante as her campaign manager, a seasoned pro who was Senator Marco Rubio's statewide field director in his successful Senatorial campaign.  Karen has also found herself endorsed by nationally syndicated talk show host Mark Levin, who favored her strong conservative views.  Congresswoman Michelle Bachman has also lent her name to Karens campaign as well.  Due to recent redistricting in Florida, the 20th Congressional district demographics have changed and favor Karen Harrington a bit better than in the 2010 elections.

Yet Karen doesn't refer to her effort as a campaign, she refers to it as a movement as her efforts are picking up momentum around the country.  She has been getting donations from 38 different states so far, as people become aware of her and start to rally even this early in the political season. She is slowly building up a groundswell of support and has received positive Tea Party recognition in her state and nationally too.

Her conservative credentials are impeccable and basically the opposite of what her political adversary stands for, so there are no fuzzy differences between them. This election will offer a clear and stark choice between her and opponent Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Karen Harrington is for smaller government, more personal responsibility and using our own energy resources to become energy independent.  She says today's skyrocketing gasoline prices are a reflection of Obama's failed energy policies. She favors a hybridized solution on immigration, using some of the Newt Gingrich plan with a blend of Mitt Romney's. However her first priority is to seal off our borders first and then address the problem of illegal immigrants in this country, but self deportation is high on the list of her solutions.

One thing for sure, Floridians in the 20th District will have clear choices between their congressional candidates this upcoming election. This fight will have the national spotlight on it and a lot of political firepower will be zeroed in on this race.Of course the Presidential campaign will overshadow all other elections, but the congressional elections will be where the work in the political trenches will happen. Whichever party controls the House, will control the purse strings.

 Karens original name before marriage is Mitchell, with O'Malley and O'Sullivan in her family background, accounting for her red hair and fair skinned Irish looks.  But more importantly, that Irish bloodline gives her that strength and determination needed to take on such a formidable political opponent.

Anyone in the area of Florida should visit one of her Rickeys Restaurants around St. Patricks Day, in Silver Lakes, Pembroke or Hollywood.  They will be featuring corned beef with cabbage and of course you can wash it down with green beer.

Of course you can visit Karen Harrington's election headquarters and find more about her at: Karen Harrington for Congress

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For other points of view visit Carroll Standard: carrollstandard.com

Germany says solar energy is path to bankruptcy, yet Obama doubles US down on it

Solar energy - not the answer

One of the biggest national investors in green energy, Germany, is coming to the realization that green energy is the path to bankruptcy. This is nothing short of blasphemy in the green world to even make a partial admission that solar power is not the panacea it was promised to be.

Germany invested gargantuan amounts of money in green energy, doling out more than 130 billion in subsidies to install solar systems and spends an additional 10 billion per year subsidizing existing solar installations.

Yet after all of this capital expenditure, Germany has little to show in terms of reducing green house gasses and helping the country's power needs. Despite massive investment, solar power accounts for approximately three percent of Germany’s total energy...When the sun shines!  To add insult to injury, Germans also pay the second highest price for electricity in the developed world, due mainly to the fact that they are heavily subsidizing green energy by adding the cost to everyone's utility bills.

According to Der Spiegel, members of Chancellor Merkel’s staff are describing the policy as a massive money pit. Philipp Rösler, Germany’s minister of economics and technology, has called the spiraling solar subsidies a “threat to the economy.”

Germany will be cutting subsidies to solar sooner than planned, and to phase out support over the next five years.

In spite of  this ominous sign that solar may be a technology that will not reach its dreamed of potential, President Obama has America on a headlong rush down the same path of energy broken dreams that Germany has found itself on.
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The green energy price tag for America under the Obama administration is reaching into the billions. When you consider the energy policies that choke off America from its natural resources and the subsidies to green energy by adding the price tag onto consumers utility bills, we are talking more than billions, possibly trillions, in outright costs and damage to our economy.

Does Obama and his team of experts in the White House think that if we just throw enough taxpayer money at green energy, it will magically become economically feasible? That the rules of physics and economics will somehow be swept aside?

President Obama should examine very closely what lead to Germany's decision to basically pull the plug on solar. President Obama has had plenty of red warning flags along this path he has us on, some of these flags have names like Solyndra and Evergreen Solar.

Another red flag is the cost of gasoline to Americans; in some areas it is hitting over 5.00 per US gallon. Due to Obama energy policies and tensions in the middle east, gas is getting very expensive. Expensive fuel will increase the price of everything Americans consume and take money out of their pockets at the exact time you want to encourage consumer spending. This could tip the American economy back into the recession they tell us we are no longer in.

Fueling most of the Obama administrations energy policies, is the belief that we are in the midst of a climate change caused by mankind's contribution of green house gasses. But, in an amazing new expose just published, it seems the science behind the green house gas theory...May not be based on good science.

John O'Sullivan has just come out with Roy Spencer’s Fatal Error: Believing the Vacuum of Space has a Temperature. This finding should tip the green house gas theory on its head.

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Aspirin joke makes left go mad and gives Santorum a headache

There is a din in the main stream media today because a main backer of US Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, made a joke about birth control practices in America.

The left leaning press smelled blood when they heard the "not politically correct"remark made by a man named Foster Friess. Like hungry sharks drawn to a bleeding hemophiliac in the ocean, they pressed in for the attack on Mr. Friess.

The offending statement that brought the level of cacophony from the liberal press to ear bleed level? Friess said "The form of birth control used when he was younger, was called an aspirin and women kept them between their knees to avoid pregnancy".

Taken in context, Mr. Friess is from previous generation, where there were few options, but lets get serious folks, what is wrong with abstaining from sex as a form of birth control? Are those that choose to be celibate to be condemned because they chose not to have sex? Where is the liberal tolerance?

But of course this fits in well in the left leaning media's coordinated character assassination of Republican candidates. Recent revelations by the news organization Daily Caller, has exposed the cozy connection between Media Matters & Center for American Progress with the White House. What gets pushed in these publications seems to get parroted by many members of the main stream media.

Even famed far left champion of liberal causes Alan Dershowitz spoke out against this unholy alliance when he recently said in a radio interview on Jay Severins Boston talk radio 1200 :

“These two organizations have been found to be anti-Semitic by many of the objective monitoring groups,” he said. “And now they are closely associated with the Democratic Party and I have said very clearly there is no room in this tent for me on the one hand, and for Media Matters and for this other group on the other hand. We can’t be in the same tent. I will not be in a tent with fascists"

Those are powerful accusations from a man of such standing in the very liberal wing of the Democrat Party. His warnings should be heeded.

This drummed up din, is willfully and purposely being used to detract from the failures of the Obama administration and designed to drive a wedge between Americans, a form of divide and conquer.

Mr. Friess and his wife Lynn, through their Friess Family Foundation, are major benefactors to many charities around America and the world. They are also known for their great works in helping disaster victims in New Orleans, Haiti, Indonesia and Malawi. They are the epitome of true America heroes that give America a good name around the world.

Mr. Friess made an apology saying the "joke bombed," and "many didn't recognize it as a joke but thought it was my prescription for today's birth control practices."
"In fact, the only positive comments I got were from folks who remembered it from 50 years back. Birth control pills weren't yet available, so everyone laughed at the silliness on how an aspirin could become a birth control pill. To all those who took my joke as modern day approach I deeply apologize and seek your forgiveness."
Can we now get back to the business of choosing the next President?
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President Obama picks on Catholics - will this prove to be his undoing?

President Barack Obama

The Catholic Church is the Church built on the rock of Peter. It is the cradle of Christianity and the wellspring from which all sects of Christianity have sprung for almost 20 centuries.

No stranger to enemies, it's earliest believers are enshrined as martyrs. Those faithful ones died for their beliefs, rather than bend to powerful government leaders by renouncing those tenets. Many forces have assaulted the Church over the centuries and many have failed.

Today the Church has a new, powerful enemy of its core beliefs banging at their gate, President Obama. In his rush to implement the highly unpopular Obamacare legislation before the Supreme Court rules on its constitutionality, President Obama has decided to frontally assault the Catholic Church.

He is trying to force the Catholic church to pay for abortion procedures and contraception devices for any of its female employees. Obama decreed that these are women's "health rights" and should be provided free of charge by the Catholic institutions.
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Never mind that these services are already widely available throughout the United States and most of this is already provided free of charge to those that cannot afford it. Obama wants to force his ideology upon the church and make them provide services they are spiritually and morally opposed to.

It was a direct punch in the face to the Catholic religion and a basic assault on most of Christianity who agree with the right to life philosophy.

Of course, the President appeared to back track on his attack a few days later, with his late Friday announcement that the Church itself wouldn't have to pay for these services, but their insurance companies would have to. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows this doesn't change anything. The insurance companies will just increase the premiums on the church to cover the expense of these new imposed "benefits". To top the egregious insult to truth off, many, if not most of these religious organizations, self insure. President Obama and his advisers know all of this.

The President's "accommodation" towards the Church is all smoke and mirrors and Church leaders know it. They are not happy that these government impositions will be forced upon their institutions.

Other religious organizations have now stepped up to stand next to the Church, which many see as a separation of church and state issue. President Obama has drawn a line in the sand, it is going to be his way or the highway and he is marshaling his forces in the media to get his way.

Yet, no matter how grandiose or powerful President Obama thinks he is, he should take a moment to examine where he stands in the whole history of this Church.

The Church has been around for almost 2,000 years, and in spite of some of its present day problems, it is a powerful spiritual and institutional force. The United States has been in existence for just about 235 years and under Obama's leadership is in decline.

President Obama has awoken the sleeping giant. If I was a Vegas odds maker, my money would be on the Church.

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Alec Baldwin brings knife to the gunfight with Sean Hannity

Alec Baldwin declared war on conservative media giant Sean Hannity yesterday, when he Tweeted out: "Is there a bigger idiot alive than Sean Hannity"? Sean answered that question by saying today: "Yes Alec, I can think of one right now...You!"

Sean had been on a self imposed gag order on commenting about Alec's inappropriate comments because he made a promise to Alec's brother Stephen, not to engage in negativity with his Brother. But today on his radio show, Sean took the gag out, took the gloves off and went after Baldwin.

Hannity is a natural Irish brawler anyway and never backs down from a fight. Alec Baldwin has already been on the losing end of a verbal run in with Sean a few years back when they sparred on a radio program. Baldwin got so flabbergasted that he ended up doing a tirade on live radio, trying to demean Sean by calling him a no talent, former construction worker. Come on Alec is that all you've got?

Sean Hannity says he is not going to take anymore abuse from Alec and called him a thug, bully and an angry bitter liberal during his radio show today.(Angry bitter liberal? Can you get any lower) He says that he is going to help Alec by addressing his famous anger management problems, a sort of Alec Baldwin intervention. Hannity dedicated today's show as the "special angry Alec Baldwin show", interspersing the entire time with snippets and excerpts of Alec Baldwin's public outbursts.

Sean says Alec Baldwins past behavior shows he is a self centered narcissist and doesn't care for anyone else but himself. Baldwin delayed a planeload of fellow passengers when he threw a tantrum when the flight attendant reminded him all electronic devices must be turned off. Baldwins tantrum caused the Captain to turn the aircraft around and taxi back to the gate, where Baldwin was thrown off the flight.

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Sean even went into how Alec had demeaned his 11 year old daughter Ireland over the phone. Unfortunately for Alec, his tirade was secretly taped then released to the public by his ex-wife, Kim Basinger. Baldwin had since apologized for the outburst towards his daughter and had started to rehabilitate his public image.

Of course I wrote a recent column on how Alec had done a very critical hit piece on President Reagan, which in my opinion is totally inappropriate since he isn't around to stick up for himself. For sure President Reagan would mop the floor with the likes of an Alec Baldwin...I could just hear him say with a smile, "Well Alec, there you go again"

Sean is hugely popular with a daily audience of over 14 million listeners and viewers worldwide, anything he does gets great attention. Contrary to Baldwins tweet that Sean is an idiot, Hannity has displayed his mental prowess for years in the media, sparring and destroying those that try to battle him with their dogma. He is fully armed with facts and definitely kissed the Blarney Stone. Anyone willing to step into the ring with him, better have done their homework.

My advice to Alec: Be careful who you pick a fight with.

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