The "Great Uniter"....that is what the media lovingly dubbed Barack Obama in 2008.  However, as many of us Chicago natives know, what the media showed us was not reality.  Is it any surprise that we had to turn to a European news source to get this story (HT Carol Platt Liebau).

"Change We Can Believe In", a key Obama campaign slogan, was meant as a slur against Mrs Clinton's personality, intended to highlight how she "couldn't be trusted or believed in when it comes to change", according to a memo seen by America's New Yorker magazine.

"She's driven by political calculation not conviction, regularly backing away and shifting positions ... She embodies trench warfare vs Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done. She prides herself on working the system, not changing it," the October 2007 memo added.

The memo was written by David Axelrod, a political adviser, as Obama's nomination campaign stalled against Hillary Clinton during the height of the 2008 Democratic nomination process.

Rather than fight out their differences in policy, Mr Axelrod told Obama that the only way to secure a defeat was to attack Mrs Clinton's character. The goal was to paint Obama as the "authentic 'remedy' to what ails Washington and stands in the way of progress" and to discredit his main rival in the process.

Emphasis mine.  We saw that when he was running against Mrs. Clinton and against John McCain.  Care to guess what we will see again this year?

Carol Platt Liebau has always been one of my favorite writers in the TownHall.com stable of writers.  Her post South Carolina analysis today though, almost (but not quite) hits the real lesson of South Carolina.

There's no doubt that South Carolina was a setback for Mitt Romney.  But setbacks can be opportunities, too, and if his campaign is smart, the clear South Carolina defeat will serve as a learning opportunity that will make Romney better able to move forward and engender support among all parts of the Republican Party.
This piece in the Washington Post is revealing.  It's clear that some members of the GOP are struggling with Romney's style -- they want someone "meaner" to take on Barack Obama.

There is no doubt, the 2012 campaign is going to be scorched earth.  The Obama Campaign has already promised it.  A "nice guy" is going to end up getting his a$$ handed to him really fast.

Jonah Goldberg at the Corner has an interesting comment up this afternoon....

Interesting e-mail from a reader:

Regarding Romney’s loss, one thing I have not seen mentioned is the robo calls.  All this week, the Romney campaign flooded republicans with robo calls.  From Monday through Friday we would get literally four to five calls a night.  They would come sometimes ten minutes apart.  If you did not answer them, they left long messages on your answering machine.  I turned off our phone on Weds, but when I turned it back on, on Friday, they were still calling so I turned it off again.  This REALLY pissed off a lot of people I talked to, me included–our son works at night a lot and we try to keep in touch via that line so I was especially unhappy.

This is something I have been complaining about (to the Utah and MN state political parties) for years.  Back in 2000 the national GOP got it into their heads that the optimal number of pre-election contacts for a candidate is 7.  I have no idea where that bit of "conventional wisdom" came from other than some paid consultant.  When it first came out that contact included word of mouth from supporters, emails, mailers, lit drops, lawn signs, news stories AND phone calls.  Over the last few years, sadly, many campaigns have dropped everything BUT the phone calls.  Don't get me wrong - I get why.  The phone calls are cheaper than traditional mailings, less labor intensive than lit drops or putting in lawn signs and more reliable than news stories.  The problem is (as one commenter at the Corner states) - at some point people start to consider the calls to be the telephone equivalent of email spam!

...He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her... John 8:7 (KJV)

So as we all know, Newt Gingrich won yesterdays primary in South Carolina.  The thing for me last night was watching my Facebook feed after the race was called immediately after the polls closed.  A majority of my Utah friends who are also members of the predominant religion in the area, took to Facebook in high dudgeon, wailing and caterwauling about how "dumb" South Carolina voters were in voting for a "serial adulterer".  These are the same people who have spent the last many months trying so very hard to convince Evangelicals that "Mormons are Christians TOOOOOOOOOO...we believe in Christ"

Well this message is for those people.....Christians are (by dictionary definition) people who follow the teachings of Jesus of Nazereth...not just people who "believe" in Him.  Christians are supposed to (by teaching) practice the teachings of Jesus.  One of those teachings is the forgiveness of sin.  Something that was not shown last night.

Fact is this - Newt Gingrich is a member of the Roman Catholic Church.  The RCC has some pretty "odd" (by modern standards) practices when it comes to divorce and their members.  In order to be a member of the RCC and have had a divorce (as my Catholic friends tell me) one has to have repented of ones past sins - including the divorce.  Now I can not profess to know what is in Gingrich's heart....no one but God does.  However, I know that as a Christian I am supposed to show to others, the GRACE that God has shown to me.  Something I did not see out of many of my LDS friends last night.

In thinking about all of that, I am reminded of the old Carolyn Arends hymn we used to sing in Sunday School many many years ago....

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord 
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord 
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored 
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love 
They will know we are Christians by our love

Lincoln Brown, posting at Townhall.com, has a very interesting column up.

I’m not going to opine much on this column, but rather throw something out there for debate. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Even for those who don’t follow Utah politics, which would pretty much be anyone living outside of Utah, there was a piece of notable news out of the Beehive State that had nothing to with Hunstman.

State Senator Dan Liljenquist announced his intention to run against Orrin Hatch. It’s a gutsy move. Liljenquist is young both chronologically and politically. He was sworn in to the Utah Senate in 2009. By contrast, Hatch is well established, has seniority, knows how to work D.C, and has a sizeable war chest. Two Utah congressmen, Jason Chaffetz (R) and Jim Matheson (D) opted not to take him on.

He goes on to talk about Dan Liljenquist's record - which we have already discussed in the past.  He then goes on to ask...

The media and the left (pardon the redundancy) get their undies all in a major bunch when the LDS Church or Michele Bachmann's church get involved in anything that even remotely smells political. But when DEMOCRATS blatantly politic from the pulpit.....

In his push for re-election, President Obama has enlisted some of his billionaire buddies to help him engage in a little class warfare.  Warren Buffett has been front and center for well over a year now.  His latest is in response to Mitch McConnell's comment that if Buffett really wanted to pay more he was free to "send in a donation".  Buffett response was "put up or shut up".

So Buffett has pledged to match 1 for 1 all such voluntary contributions made by Republican members of Congress. “And I’ll even go 3 for 1 for McConnell,” he says. That could be quite a bill if McConnell takes the challenge; after all, the Senator is worth at least $10 million. As Buffett put it to me, “I’m not worried.

To which the taxpayers of America should respond - YOU FIRST WARREN!  Because when push comes to shove, whether it is Warren Buffett or Michael Moore or the rest of the 1%, they really are not about paying their fair share - they just want to be seen saying the right thing.

In his Examiner column about RiShawn Biddle's column on education reforms, my friend Gary Gross posited that ObamaCare could end up forcing some much needed education reforms.

It's ironic that Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid is forcing much-needed school reforms. It's also ironic that Obama's stimulus couldn't prevent the reforms:

The Obama administration also helped by providing $95 billion in federal stimulus spending and another $10 billion ladled to states and school districts as part of the Edujobs plan for staving off expected teacher layoffs that weren't ever coming to pass.

And while that is an interesting theory, I think education reform is going to have to happen whether ObamaCare is allowed to stay in place or not.  Reality, as State Sen. Dan Liljenquist often says, is not negotiable and the reality is that with or without Obamacare, many states are looking at budgets that are already stretched to the max.  Medicare is helping to bankrupt those states...and Utah has been sounding that alarm for a year now.

Looks like the PIPS/SOPA blackout is ON.

The freedom, innovation, and economic opportunity that the Internet enables is in jeopardy. Congress is considering legislation that will dramatically change your Internet experience and put an end to reddit and many other sites you use everyday. Internet experts, organizations, companies, entrepreneurs, legal experts, journalists, and individuals have repeatedly expressed how dangerous this bill is. If we do nothing, Congress will likely pass the Protect IP Act (in the Senate) or the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House), and then the President will probably sign it into law. There are powerful forces trying to censor the Internet, and a few months ago many people thought this legislation would surely pass. However, there’s a new hope that we can defeat this dangerous legislation.
We’ve seen some amazing activism organized by redditors at /r/sopa and across the reddit community at large. You have made a difference in this fight; and as we near the next stage, and after much thought, talking with experts, and hearing the overwhelming voices from the reddit community, we have decided that we will be blacking out reddit on January 18th from 8am–8pm EST (1300–0100 UTC).

Emphasis in the original.

Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action. We will showcase the live video stream of the House hearing where Internet entrepreneurs and technical experts (including reddit co-founder Alexis “kn0thing” Ohanian) will be testifying. We will also spotlight community initiatives like meetups to visit Congressional offices, campaigns to contact companies supporting PIPA/SOPA, and other tactics.

Thursday, I wrote about Sen. Orrin Hatch's arrogant attitude toward us peons who oppose SOPA/PIPA, we now have Utah AG Mark Shurtleff showing his arrogant support for this horrid legislation.

He argued in a Salt Lake Tribune opinion piece last weekendhttp://bit.ly/ynecnK that a tough enforcement bill is needed to protect consumers, entertainers and businesses.

"It will take a strong, sustained effort to stop Internet thieves and profiteers," Shurtleff wrote.

Actually, Shurtleff didn’t write that. And other lines in his op-ed didn’t come from him either. They were plagiarized from a news release and columns written by supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.

The Obama "Justice" Department took a huge hit in the Supreme Court this week...

In what may be its most significant religious liberty decision in two decades, the Supreme Court on Wednesday for the first time recognized a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws, saying that churches and other religious groups must be free to choose and dismiss their leaders without government interference.
“The interest of society in the enforcement of employment discrimination statutes is undoubtedly important,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a decision that was surprising in both its sweep and its unanimity. “But so, too, is the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith and carry out their mission.”

Whatever its precise scope, the ruling will have concrete consequences for countless people employed by religious groups to perform religious work. In addition to ministers, priests, rabbis and other religious leaders, the decision appears to encompass, for instance, at least those teachers in religious schools with formal religious training who are charged with instructing students about religious matters.

Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia who argued the case on behalf of the defendant, a Lutheran school, said the upshot of the ruling was likely to be that “substantial religious instruction is going to be enough.”

Asked about professors at Catholic universities like Notre Dame, Professor Laycock said: “If he teaches theology, he’s covered. If he teaches English or physics or some clearly secular subjects, he is clearly not covered.”

So a couple of weeks ago I wrote about Rep. Jason Chaffetz' tireless work at stopping SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act).  Well the Protect IP Act is the Senate version of the bill.  PIPA is sponsored but Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy but it also has Utah ties - our own senior Senator Orrin Hatch is a co-sponsor of the bill!   As I noted in my previous post, there are numerous groups out there opposing SOPA/PIPA because the bill was written so loosely and sloppily that it could do real and permanent damage to the internet as we know it today.  One site that has been a major driving force of opposition has been Reddit.  Reddit has multiple pages devoted to the fight against SOPA/PIPA including this page taking Senators to task for refusing to meet with their own constituents on the bill.  Included on that list of Senators that are refusing to meet with their constituents on the bill is also one of the co-sponsors....our own ORRIN HATCH.  Apparently our senior Senator does not want input from those of us he supposedly represents.  The why is really simple.....Senator Hatch has taken in a TON of money from pro-PIPA groups.

• • $489,907 from big media
  • $685,357 from pro-PIPA groups
  • $95,550 from anti-PIPA groups

The funny thing is, the chief author of SOPA, Rep. LaMar Smith (R-TX) is a violator of his own bill!

US Congressman and poor-toupee-color-chooser Lamar Smith is the guy who authored the Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA, as I'm sure you know, is the shady bill that will introduce way harsher penalties for companies and individuals caught violating copyright laws online (including making the unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime which you could actually go to jail for). If the bill passes, it will destroy the internet and, ultimately, turn the world into Mad Max (for more info, go here).

I have not said anything about the never-ending debates, in large part because there are much better political minds saying it all.  However, I could not help but chuckle at the incoherent questioning that came out of George Stephanopolous and Diane Sawyer in last Saturday's debate.  Sawyer, who giggled at inappropriate times and asked rambling incoherent questions, appeared to either be high or drunk during the debate.  When she turned to ask Governor Romeny a question and stopped with "Governor Romney....." (leading Romney to chuckle "is there a question or do you want me to follow up on what he said?") you knew she had no clue where she was or what she was doing.  Then there was the ludicrous question of states banning contraception...

All in all 73 minutes of the debate was spent talking about issues that no one (except Democrats apparently) seem to care about.   The Wall Street Journal thinks that there is a lesson to be learned in Saturday's debacle.

A funny thing happened on the way to the New Hampshire primary: ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos embarrassed himself on national television with questions plainly intended to embarrass the Republican candidates. Therein lies a lesson.

On Saturday night, Mr. Stephanopoulos stepped outside the role of honest interlocutor when he pursued Mitt Romney with the issue on nobody's lips or legislative agenda: whether states have the right to ban contraception. Likewise, fellow moderator Diane Sawyer, who asked Republicans what they would say, "sitting in their living rooms," to a gay couple.

As the audience appreciated—they booed after Mr. Stephanopolous's sixth follow-up—these questions were designed less to illuminate than to paint Republicans as people who hate gays and are so crazy they might just ban contraception if elected.

Modern western feminists love to tell you how they are doing what they are doing for all woman kind.  However, there are more than a few areas where modern western feminists are conspicuously silent.  The treatment of women in Islamic countries is the biggest one of them....

Three Western female reporters have been raped and beaten in Egypt, with minimal coverage in the Western media.

But many Muslim women and girls have been singled out for horrific abuse in Afghanistan, Iran, and Egypt.

Yet prominent Western feminists have been lethally silent, and the New York Times never seems to care.

Now the London Daily Mail has published the news photos of horrific public beatings by a squad of Egyptian soldiers of an isolated woman protester near Cairo's Tahrir Square.

"After being viciously beaten by a 10-strong mob of Egyptian male soldiers, this woman lies helplessly on the ground as her shirt is ripped from her body and a man kicks her with full force in her exposed chest.  Moments earlier she had been struck countless times in the head and body with metal batons, not content with the brutal beating delivered by his fellow soldier, one man stamped on her head repeatedly. She feebly tried to shield her head from the relentless blows with her hands."

"But she was knocked unconscious in the shameful attack and left lying motionless as the military men mindlessly continued to beat her limp and half-naked body. ..."

That is pretty much the gist of the legislation that State Senator Pat Jones is proposing...

Five years after she pushed to require minors to get parental consent before using tanning beds, Sen. Patricia Jones, D-Holladay, wants to ban underage tans altogether.

She said Friday she will draft legislation that would ban the use of commercial tanning beds by minors. If lawmakers agree, Utah would join California, which became the first state to outlaw tanning for minors, effective as of Jan. 1...

“They want to go to prom and have a tan not realizing the health ramifications,” Jones said.

Never mind that there is a plethora of information out there...information that you don't even have to look for to find....Nanny Senator wants to protect you from a legal activity.  Never mind that there is already a law in place....