EckerNet.Com

Many know that Steve Sarvi, former Mayor of Watertown, is the endorsed DFL candidate challenging John Kline for the Second Congressional Disctrict Two seat. While many liberals have focused on his military past as a way to counter one of Kline’s strengths, what is even more noticeable are his constant shifting stories, including his military career.

It would be nice to get a straight answer from Sarvi.

First he was a Republican, now he’s a Democrat. He’s shifted his stance on the issues as well. Now evolving viewpoints is okay on some issues, but on others it certainly raises the eyebrows. For example, previously he was Pro-Life, now he’s Pro-Choice.

And most perplexing is the very issue he has made a centerpoint of his campaign….his military service. He’s in the Army for a number of years, attaining the rank of Captain. Then he leaves the service to rejoin later at a greatly reduced ranked….Sergeant.

I’ve talked with a number of military, active or otherwise, who have indicated that while this isn’t unheard of, it’s a little odd. What makes it even more odd, is that his reasons for this discrepancy have changed over time.

As of May 19th, 2007, on his website, the story was as follows :

“Because of the demands of my civilian career, I came back to the service as a Sergeant”

Then as of June 6th, 2008, at a press conference, the story changed to

“I came back as a Sergeant because I like working with young soldiers. I like training them. I like being around them. And sometimes you don’t get to do that as much as an officer.”

If either one of those is true, then why the change in stories. Especially since the most recent story is much less believable, or outright false. Plus, the National Guard doesn’t just let you pick whatever rank you want.

Typically, as has been explained to me, if you joined up with the National Guard later on, especially from the Army, you would typically just be assigned your former rank, or at least an officer rank. What is there to justify the reduction in rank, especially from officer to enlisted?

Sarvi is trying to use his supposed leadership in the military against Kline. However, unlike Sarvi, Kline continued to be promoted and continued to lead. Sarvi on the other hand gave up his leadership position and instead picked a position where is led. A true leader doesn’t typically like to be led.

Sure there are legitimate reasons for the above situation, but given that the supposed reason for it keeps changing, it’s hard to trust Sarvi’s word. One would imagine that if he released his military service records, it would set aside many questions. I don’t think that is an unreasonable request since he’s chosen to make himself a very public figure, running for public office on his military service.

Or else we just have to take his rather questionable word that a Sergeant is a better leader than a full-bird Colonel.

Many conservatives, myself included, have stopped giving to party organizations. They simply support far too many RINOs. Now you can arguments, some valid, about why they have to do this. But the reality is many conservatives simply don’t want to support, even indirectly, RINOs and the misguided legislation they bring to the table. Years back, it even motivated some conservatives bloggers, most notably Caption Ed, to take a Not. One. Dime. pledge. Instead, many (most?) have taken to donated to specific candidates only, ones that share their values….as rare as those may be.

So it was with great interest one I noted that one of the few true conservatives in the US Senate, Sen Jim DeMint, started a PAC with the intent to only support candidates that were true conservatives. The Senate Conservative Fund (SCF)….perhaps a PAC I could support?

But then I noticed under their Candidates tab a list of the 20 most competitive Senate races and requesting commentary. Problem is those races include RINOs like Ted Stevens, Susan Collins, Norm Coleman and Gordon Smith. It also included conservatives that while otherwise okay, have a huge trail of earmarks behind them, like Jeff Sessions and Elizabeth Dole ($180 million each on the Defense bill alone). It’s not exactly encouraging that a PAC purporting to support only true conservatives has such candidates being considered for support.

I sent off an email indicating as much, expecting no response I figured this was just another misguided attempt to convince conservatives to support RINOs.

However, the next day I got a response from the SCF, stating :

Good point. The list was not meant to indicate those candidates SCF is considering; just the top Senate races. We changed the wording to be more clear.

Wow, instead of a knee-jerk defensive reaction, they actually addressed the source of the misunderstanding.

So while it’s still a bit early for me to advocate everyone donating the the SCF, it appears encouraging. The true test is which candidates they choose to support.

It was entertainment night at the Senior Center.

Claude the hypnotist exclaimed: “I’m here to put you into a trance; I intend to hypnotize each and every member of the audience. The excitement was almost electric as Claude withdrew a beautiful antique pocket watch from his coat. “I want you each to keep your eye on this antique watch. It is a very special watch. It’s been in my family for six generations”.

He began to swing the watch gently back and forth while quietly chanting, “Watch the watch, watch the watch, and watch the watch …” The crowd became mesmerized as the watch swayed back and forth, light gleaming off its polished surface. Hundreds of pairs of eyes followed the swaying watch, until, suddenly, it slipped from the hypnotist’s fingers and fell to the floor, shattering into a hundred pieces. “SHIT,” said the Hypnotist.

It took three days to clean up the Senior Center.

[Blame this one on 50¢]

This weekend there was a debate over who McCain’s VP pick would be. There were quite a few Jindal fans. And while Newt has been advocating for him to get the VP slot, I think the general concensus was he needed a few more years experience before he was ready for the big screen. While Republicans many not exactly have many stars in the wings, we should at least properly age the ones we have.

What asked my opinion, I confidentally predicted that Crist would be his VP choice. Although to be fair, my primary rationale was that not a damn thing McCain has done so far has made a lick of sense, so Crist is the most obvious choice.

In my defense, there are other reasons as well. Crist has already demonstrated great loyalty to McCain, to Guiliani’s expense even. He’s got the same moderate views. He delivered Florida to McCain and Florida is still definitely a battleground state. He also attended a recent meeting with McCain, along with Jindal and Romney, at McCain’s home in Arizona. Presumably this meeting was regarding the VP slot. Plus Crist has no independent power base that McCain might find threatening.

Now as even more evidence of my prediction, Crist is modifying his longtime position on offshore drilling right about the same time McCain is modifying his position on the same issue. Perhaps aligning their positions on the issues in preparations for a joint ticket?

Heh, I predicted back in December that this race would come down to McCain vs Obama. I’m pretty confident in this prediction as well. Unfortunately, I’m also pretty confident in my prediction that Obama will also be the ultimate winner.

Yeah, no need to pay attention here….this is more for the benefit of various bots that will hit this site.

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A man and his wife were driving home one very cold night when the wife asks her husband to stop the car.

There was a baby skunk lying at the side of the road, and she got out to see if it was still alive.

It was, and she said to her husband, “It’s nearly frozen to death.

Can we take it with us, get it warm, and let it go in the morning?”

He says, “O.K., Get in the car with it.”

“Where shall I put it to get it warm?”

He says, “Put it in between your legs. It’s nice and warm there.”

“But what about the smell?”, she asked.

“Just hold its nose.”, replied the husband.

The man is expected to recover, but the skunk she used to beat him with died at the scene.

Ok pretend you care about what I have to say above the links, and then pretend there is something impressive here. Or if you can’t do that, just continue below…

The Rev. Mother of the First Family of the MOB, gave me a truly awesome birthday present at the Father’s Day Extravaganza that was hosted by Chief of Freedom Dogs this weekend. While it wasn’t the howitzer I was expecting, it was almost as good.

Some good advice on buying your first shotgun (or any firearm) in fact. And I don’t say that only because the author plugs my main shotgun as one of the better home defense weapons out there.

Oh goodie, the Washington Post has officially joined forces with La Raza, the racist amnesty organization that openly advocates for an Aztlan nation, which would include the southwestern quadrant of the United State.

Honestly, who do they think they are kidding? The RNC’s website has removed “immigration” from it’s issues menu. Apparently recognizing that their candidate doesn’t exactly have a popular viewpoint on the issue, they’ve simply decided to remove it 1984-style.

Once again we’re not even going to considering opening up more areas to domestic drilling. Reason I mention it is the following quote :

Environment Florida spokeswoman Holly Binns told the Media General news group that offshore drilling has no immediate impact on prices.

“It would take anywhere from seven to 10 years to bring those resources to shore — to have any measurable impact on supply,” Binns said, advocating renewable energy sources.

Yeah….I expect the same reasoning was used 10 years ago….kinda sucks it worked doesn’t it?

Now there may not be jobs “Americans won’t do”, but apparently there are jobs Canadians won’t do. In this case being an exotic dancer, because Ontario is importing foreign exotic dancers and it’s still not meeting demand!

Five modern liberal myths debunked -

• Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq
• Al Gore would have won in 2000 if all the votes had been counted
• W’s 16 words in the 2003 SOTU address were a lie
• W either made 9/11 happen or let it happen
• There is a consensus on man-made global warming

If you’re an active military member, you can now get a free one-year membership to the NRA.

Leatherneck turtles make environmentalist propaganda even more difficult by nesting in Texas for the first time since the 1930s. Reason I mention it, is to ask the question of “When exactly did the SmartCar become a standard unit of measurement???”

Iran is apparently smarter than we are…in response to threats of embargos, they are building 7 refineries to effectively be able to produce their gasoline themselves. Too bad we’re not smart enough to do the same thing by increasing domestic drilling.

One-third of US voters are “angry” about illegal immigration, and it’s worth noting 83% of those direct their anger at the federal government. 63% of voters agree it’s more important to enforce the borders, while only 28% believe it’s more important to resolve the status of illegals here. And surprisingly (at least to US politicians) those that are angry about illegal immigration and are pro-enforcement still support welcoming immigration policies.

So I suppose that explains why both presidential candidates have officially decided to ignore this issue during this election season. That apparently passes as bullshit “leadership”, “change”, “hope” in Washington.

Strongest argument I’ve heard yet for bombing North Korea/Iran/etc…

On Monday, the Supreme Court could potentially announce their decision on two pretty critical cases today (Monday, June 15th, 2008). The Supreme Court sessions ends next Monday (June 23rd) so in all likelihood even if they aren’t announced today, they’ll be announced very soon.

Here are two big cases to watch out for:

DC vs HELLER - The infamous second amendment case. As this will arguably be SCOTUS’s biggest decision this session, I’m rather expecting it to wait until the end of the session but the Gitmo case was already announced, for which I had assumed the same, so it shows what I know.

Here is a pretty good roundup of what to expect from this decision, especially since it makes the distinction between upholding the Second Amendment for a number of purposes, most notably civic and personal. The author (Mike O’Shea) is right that there is a general consensus amongst airchair justices that the Second Amendment will in all liklihood be upheld….so the debate comes down to finer distinctions.

I fully expect this decision to essentially tapdance around the Miller 1939 decision, and come down in favor of private rights, leaving the argument for/against civic uses essentially twisting in the wind. Is I wrote previously, SCOTUS made it clear from the start that their decision would be limited to the case at hand, which is an issue of private usage.

Civic usage is likely to remain undecided, allowing states pretty wide latitude to ban “scary guns”. While SCOTUS, due to it’s non-elected state, is theoretically free from having to respond to public whims that may change from day to day, I don’t think most of the Justices want to come forward with a decision of essentially granting everyone the right to a howitzer.

Day vs Bond - According to US law, states can give in-state tuition to illegal aliens, but ONLY if they also provide that same tuition rate to US citizens. At least ten states have basically just ignored that last part and provide in-state tuition to illegals but charged US citizens from other states higher rates.

Those states include : California, New York, Utah, Washington, Oklahoma, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and New Mexico. Many more states, including Minnesota, have debated similar bills.

Lower courts have ignored the issue, so this is an effort to get the federal government to force states to follow federal law.

[Crossposted at True North]

Before the state convention, I got involved in a conversation with a fellow delegate on the pros/cons of the UN and especially the US participation in it. Subsequent to that conversation, the delegation at the MN GOP state convention, passed a resolution stating

Ending United State participation in the United Nations

My viewpoint was as follows

Since the UN has no real power and is mostly funded by us and whose mandates are mostly enforced by us……why bother???

We leave, it folds, world loses an anti-US soapbox.

While I fully admit that my viewpoint is a relatively minority opinion, at least in the general population. When you continue to have incidents like Mugabe’s goons burning political opponents alive, I think it serves to prove the validity of such viewpoints.

For what purpose does the UN exist? According to their charter preamble :

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small

I certainly seems like Mugabe’s continued reign of violence would violate that on several levels. Instead he is regarded as a legitimate leader of a nation, despite his continued refusal to abide by the results of his countries recent elections. While his people starve, he dines on fine multi-course meals.

The UN stands impotent, proving to be their usual worthless self. Indeed, I’m not sure UN forces would be much good even if they did deploy to keep the peace. They seem more adept at corruption and rape than anything else.

It’s time to realize that this is a failed experiment gone horribly wrong. Why continue to spend resources on that failed experiment, especially when we’re repeatedly asked to relinquish sovereignty to that failed experiment.