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Rob Port, who blogs out of North Dakota, makes the case for ending Indian reservations. He wraps it up this way:

The reservations were never created to help the Indians. They were created to move the Indians out of the way of the pioneers and westward expansion. Now we’re compounding that original raw deal by pretending as though treating the Indians as something other than your basic American citizen is helping them.

The American Indian has a proud history and rich culture that can and should be preserved. Even in modern times they’ve a legacy of contribution to the greatness of our country, from service in the military to their help in building our great cities. But the only people the reservation system is helping are the politicians and victim pimps who are the loudest voices for perpetuating it.

We’ve turned these tribes, these proud people, into perpetual victims and that’s wrong.

Dependence upon the government doesn’t help people.

I agree. Read the rest of it at the link.

I’m sure the reservations in North Dakota and the other plains states are much more significant than the ones we have here in California. Out here the only way you know you’re on a reservation is there’s a casino on it, and casinos are illegal anyplace else in California. We’ve made a lot of very small tribes quite rich by allowing them the gaming privilege, and they’ve used their wealth to promote ballot initiatives designed to increase the size and scope of their operations. Small card rooms became huge Vegas-style hotel/casino operations thanks to the ballot initiatives funded by Indian tribes.

How long are these special arrangements supposed to last?  How many decades…or centuries are required to make up for past injustices?

This is why I’m very much opposed to reparations for slavery.  Once you start it there will never be an ending and whatever they’re given will never be enough.  There will always be a push for more.

There’s probably a number of good reasons why this guy won’t be elected governor of Nevada:

One Nevada gubernatorial hopeful sees a speedy fix to Nevada’s budget crisis.

Nonpartisan candidate “Gino” DiSimone believes people would pay for the privilege to drive up to 90 mph on designated highways — and fill the state’s depleted coffers.

DiSimone calls his idea the “free limit plan.” He estimates the plan would bring in $1 billion a year.

First, vehicles would have to pass a safety inspection. Then vehicle information would be loaded into a database, and motorists would purchase a transponder.

After setting up an account, anyone in a hurry could dial in, and for $25 charged to a credit card, be free to speed for 24 hours.

The Nevada Highway Patrol isn’t keen on the idea, saying it would lead to increased injuries and traffic deaths.

People pay to speed now – they just do it in the form of traffic fines if they’re caught.

For those of you living a sedentary lifestyle, you need one of these.  Apparently among other things it will vibrate if you’ve been sitting too long. Maybe you can set it to vibrate every 30 minutes so you’ll remember to change the channel.

For the remaining days of Obama’s presidency he’ll be walking over the immortal words of many famous American historical figures, all woven into the new Oval Office rug.  However, the designer has woven a mistake into the new carpet:

A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.

President Obama’s new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.

Except it’s not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you’re fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.

A century later, during the civil rights movement, King, an admirer of Parker, quoted the Bostonian’s lofty prophecy during marches and speeches. Often he’d ask in a refrain, “How long? Not long.” He would finish in a flourish: “Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

I saw another piece that suggests that the Teddy Roosevelt quote on the rug was taken completely out of context. I guess that’s what happens when your life is nothing but a collection of catchphrases.

There’s quite a kerfuffle brewing in the conservative blogosphere over the Senate GOP primary in Delaware.  The two main candidates are Mike Castle, a sitting congressman who has voted time and again with Obama and the Democrats, and Christine O’Donnell, a conservative Tea Party-backed candidate.  The GOP establishment is backing Castle and insists O’Donnell can’t win the general election.  Conservatives are backing O’Donnell because a RINO in the office is almost as bad as a Democrat.

Dan Riehl provides some background:

In this, of all years, I don’t buy that a Castle can win in Delaware, but not an O’Donnell. Still, I’d rather see the GOP lose and have an identified Democrat, rather than one in Red skin.

Suddenly conservatives want to help a Republican beloved by the SEIU? Where is the principle in that? He frequently votes against his party, always to the Left. He votes against his party toward the Left more often than Kirk, Djou and most other Republicans from Blue states, including New Jersey and New York.

Mike Castle has been funded by labor organizations for a good reason. He champions their causes better than 50% of the time. One of the Labor Unions he has the closest ties to is the SEIU.

We run Obama down for not supporting the surge. Where was Castle? Right there with Obama of course.

He was there for S-CHIP. Have you forgotten that fight? His votes against the party are not insignificant. They include the Disclose Act, Wall Street Reform, he likes to spend money on everything and supports Cap and Tax.

He carries an “F” rating from the NRA. People are saying, well, this O’Donnell, she’s far from ideal. But Castle’s record is? Hell, I’d take a blank slate over this guy, frankly. We know he is going to undermine us on critical issues time and again and become a poster boy as the “reasonable Republican” we all loath when the Left throws it in our faces.

The argument from the GOP establishment is they’d rather have a RINO in office who will caucus with the GOP and possibly help gain the majority rather than risk electing a Democrat. I’m not convinced that in this GOP wave year someone like Christine O’Donnell can’t win. This year I think every Republican has a pretty good chance, and if we have the opportunity to elect someone who will actually vote with us, why shouldn’t we?

And for those who are guaranteeing us that Mike Castle will caucus with Republicans and help them gain a majority, let me remind you of two names:

• Arlen Specter
• Jim Jeffords

Except they’re not Republicans at all, but big-spending Democrats who are now trying to pretend they didn’t support the Big Government Obama agenda:

The candidate was outraged – just outraged – at the country’s sorry fiscal state.

“We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet,” he fumed to a roomful of voters. “In my view, we have nothing to show for it.”

And that was a Democrat, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who voted “yes” on the stimulus, the health-care overhaul, increased education funding and other costly bills Congress approved under his party’s control.

Faced with a potential wipeout in November’s midterm elections, candidates such as Bennet are embracing budget cuts with the enthusiasm of Reagan Republicans.

There was a time when people like Bennet might have gotten away with this – back when the only news came from three liberal TV networks and your local liberal newspaper. Those sources wouldn’t have bothered to report his hypocrisy. Those days are gone and I expect Mr. Bennet’s poor choices in both voting history and campaign rhetoric will be fully exposed to the voters of Colorado.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy:

Add Jesse Jackson’s ride to prominent vehicles being stripped in Detroit.

Following the embarrassing news that Mayor Dave Bing’s GMC Yukon was hijacked by criminals this week, Detroit’s Channel 7 reports that the Reverend’s Caddy Escalade SUV was stolen and stripped of its wheels while he was in town last weekend with the UAW’s militant President Bob King leading the “Jobs, Justice, and Peace” march promoting government-funded green jobs.

Read that again: Jackson’s Caddy SUV was stripped while he was in town promoting green jobs.

Add Jesse to the Al Gore-Tom Friedman-Barack Obama School of Environmental Hypocrisy. While preaching to Americans that they need to cram their families into hybrid Priuses to go shopping for compact fluorescent light bulbs to save the planet, they themselves continue to live large.

Sounds like the car thieves in Detroit prefer Government Motors products.

Michael M. Rosen thinks the voters of California will finally wake up and send Barbara Boxer packing:

“Those who survived the [1989] San Francisco earthquake,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) reportedly declared at the time, “said, ‘Thank God, I’m still alive.’ But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again.”


Politically speaking, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that Boxer will survive the upcoming and equally devastating earthquake of 2010, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, a Republican, aims to oust her from office.


Boxer will lose, not because Fiorina is an impressive candidate (although she certainly is), but because voters — even in liberal California — have grown disaffected with ideological, partisan insiders with minimal accomplishments to their name. With the Golden State’s economy in full meltdown mode, angry Californians are looking for scapegoats, and the incumbent senator fits the description.

Read the rest of his analysis here. Boxer has devolved into a pompous, arrogant little twerp with a grating presence that none of us want to see for another six years. I think she’s toast.

Yet another in what’s becoming a flood of articles predicting a gloomy November for Dems:

In reality, barring some major and dramatic turnaround in the political landscape, the 50 seat GOP wave has now in many ways moved closer to the floor for Democratic losses. With the economy continuing to flounder and with fewer than 60 days until Election Day, the potential for a once-in-a-century type of wave that would lead to GOP gains in the 60-90 seat range is increasing.

The latest Gallup generic ballot tracking finds that, among registered voters, Republicans are leading by ten points, 51 percent to 41 percent. Three of the four highest leads for the GOP since Gallup began tracking the generic ballot in 1942 have been measured in the past month alone (and Republicans won the House seven times during those intervening years, with as many as 246 seats which would be a 68 seat pickup today).

Moreover, this is a poll of registered voters. This poll only partially accounts for a massive 25-point “enthusiasm gap” between the parties (highly enthusiastic partisans are more likely to answer a phone and sit through a survey). If Gallup had been using a likely voter screen, it would likely have shown upwards of a 14 point lead for the GOP. The last time a party won the national vote by fourteen points was in 1964, when the Democrats won 295 seats in Congress (in 1974 they won the national vote by 17 points and won 291 seats).

Still, we musn’t get cocky. Getting lackadaisical on election day could allow Dems to keep some close seats they should lose.

On election night in 1994 ABC anchor Peter Jennings famously referred to that day’s historic Republican takeover of both houses of Congress as a the voters throwing a “temper tantrum”.  With two months yet to go before this year’s election the “t” words are starting to come back.  From Eugene Robinson:

“Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they’re ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans — for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn’t an “electoral wave,” it’s a temper tantrum.

“… In the punditry business, it’s considered bad form to question the essential wisdom of the American people. But at this point, it’s impossible to ignore the obvious: The American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.”

Yeah, we got spoiled by lower taxes, having jobs, auto companies and banks that were owned by their shareholders, government spending that while excessive wasn’t completely off the charts stupid, and freedom from government intervention in our health care.  We also got spoiled by leaders who actually liked America and believed in American Exceptionalism.

Now that we don’t have those things we’re getting a little cranky.