Gotta love this man.

Sen. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, as Paul Rolly of the Salt Lake Tribune puts it, is a “low tax, small government, pro-business fiscal conservative.”  But he’s the kind of Republican that pisses off Gayle Ruzicka and the Utah Eagle Forum.  Which, in my opinion, makes him a good Republican.

How does he piss off the Ruzickastanians?  Let me count the ways:

1. He showed his opposition to a bill that would ban the teaching of evolution in Utah schools by wearing a monkey tail during the session the Senate voted on the bill.
2. He sponsored a bill that would make it easier for teachers to discuss contraception in sex education classes.
3. He helped prevent legislation against the IB program by people who think it’s a United Nations socialist plot against the American way of life.
4. When the Sutherland Institute got all bent out of shape over the Sundance Film festival, he compared them to the Westboro Baptist Church.
5. And just this legislative session, he sponsored, and helped push through the Senate Committee with a favorable recommendation, a bill that would have banned housing and employment discrimination against the LGBT community.  (It still failed in full session vote).

Hmmmmm, Gov. Herbert showing rational thought, Sen. Aaron Osmond listening to actual Educators when thinking about education legislation, and now Sen. Urquhart refusing to be a jellyfish and showing backbone by standing up to the Eagle Forum.

Is the Utah Republican Party learning that extremism is what cost them in the last election, or is this just a temporary shift?

Utah Legislators bought and paid for? Pshaw…

Why bother understanding one of your own bills you expect to become law when you can have a representative of the special interest group that is pushing it explain it for you.

At least that’s what a couple Utah Senators from Layton seem to think.  And not too many people up there seem too worried that the group that has sworn to punish the uppity citizens of Utah for a Citizen Initiative that defeated their beloved private-school vouchers knew more about proposed education laws than the people who supposedly wrote them.

But that’s what happened.  When a group asked Sen. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, to explain a bill that would change the way public schools in Utah were graded, all but guaranteeing every one would fail, he sent Judi Clark out to give the details.

Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, got the same Judi Clark to explain his bill, establishing a student achievement record for everyone to see, to the Senate Education Committee.

So, “Who is this Judi Clark?” you ask.  Is she the Layton Senator’s personal assistant?  Or maybe a Senate aide they both share?  A paralegal?  Could be she just typed it up for them, so they figured she knew it the best.

Um, no.  She’s the executive director of Parents for Choice in Education, a group hell-bent on decimating public schools so they can foster the use of public funds for private schools.

I know it’s silly, but it all makes me wonder why someone running a group that is working against public schools has so much influence regarding laws that have to do with public education.

Maybe it has to do with all the money they donate to political campaigns.

Nah.

Black Friday

If it’s the “Job Creators” that power our economy, and not the consumers, then why the hell is Black Friday such a big deal?

Republicans take note:

Front page of the Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 21, 2012:

“Obama’s aide: Hunstman was biggest threat”

Even before Jon Huntsman Jr. announced his candidacy for the presidency, the Democrats knew, or at least suspected, that extremism would be the downfall of the Republican bid for president.

All the numbers show that the middle (political philosophy) won the election for Obama.  He had the extreme liberals locked, just as Romney had the extreme conservatives.  Romney lost because Obama appealed to 56% of the moderates, compared to Romney’s 41%.

There is no doubt in my mind that Huntsman would have captured a lot of those moderate votes.  I know for a fact that he very likely would have taken 2 of the more liberal votes, mine and my friend Adele’s.  There’s no doubt in my mind that Obama is the better choice of the two we were given, by a longshot, but had he run against Huntsman I would have had some real thinking to do.

I voted for him in his bid for reelection as Governor of Utah, I was impressed with his ability to look at all sides of an issue and do what he thought was in the best interest of the state.  At times I disagreed with his decisions, other times I thought he was spot on, but either way it seemed he took into account all opinions, not allowing himself to get locked into a single view of the world. 

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again:  You guys have to jettison that psycho Tea Party, adopt a more inclusive and moderate platform and run candidates that can at least appear to sympathize with moderate Americans.  Because, I’d bet, most of us fall in that category.

A little cheese with that whine, Orrin?

Early in the presidential campaign, the [dis]Honorable Orrin Hatch, Senator from Utah, accused the president of future slams against the LDS Church as an attack against Mitt Romney.

Even though the article in the Salt Lake Tribune (Nov 17, 2012, page 1 of the Utah section) says “Proof of anit-LDS campaigning appears scant,” Hatch said “There was a lot more than you think, If you didn’t see it, there’s something wrong.”

Yeah, Orrin, there is something wrong.  Your shirt and tie are so tight that you’re getting hallucinations from the lack of blood to your brain.  Even the people at BYU, the LDS Church’s own University, disagree with you.  The Tribune wrote “Quin Monson, head of Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Politics and Democracy, says Romney’s Mormon faith wasn’t a big issue in the general election.”

Hell, Senator Mike Lee, Tea Party darling of the Utah Republican Party, even said that his faith got “trashed” more by his own party in the primary elections.  “I did expect it to occur; I didn’t expect it to come from the Obama campaign or the Democrats.  I thought that one or more super PACs or surrogates, whatever, would attack the church.  It didn’t really happen”, Lee said.

So Orrin, just shut the hell up.  The election is over, you were wrong.  All this bellyaching you’re doing does nothing but prove to people how desperate you are to be relevant.

Is the Tea Party dead?

Dear Republican Party,

I honestly believe you could have won this year’s presidential election if you had not been so willing to pander to the ultra right wing Teabagger fringe.

Why?  Well, I get the feeling that the Tea Party is dead. The moderates and even conservative moderates seem to be sick and tired of the blathering of this tunnel vision group.

I live in Utah, the reddest state in the union.  72.8% of our voters cast their ballots for Mitt Romney, more than any other state.  Yet no more than a lone Tea Party candidate made it through the Utah Republican primaries, and in the end Mia Love couldn’t even beat Democrat Jim Matheson in a gerrymandered 4^th District custom made for a Republican win.  Half of Utah County (home of Gayle herself), part of Juab and Sanpete counties and the more conservative south west part of Salt Lake County preferred a Democrat over a Tea Partier.  To me that says a lot about the popularity of extreme ultra-conservatism.

Now, I’m not saying that conservatism in general isn’t still strong, and I’m not even saying they are always wrong.  But I am saying that the semi-literate, foaming-at-the mouth Gayle Ruzicka lovin’ fringe of the Republican Party is scaring a big part of the more rational majority into the arms of the Democrats.

I truly believe that if the Republicans jettison the Teabaggers and put forth a more rational, compromising and moderate front *(ala Jon Huntsman Jr.), they well could well retake the Whitehouse in 2016.

Hell, even I was considering voting for Huntsman had it been him against Obama this year.  I voted for him twice as Governor of Utah.

Got this in an email.

The email read: (red from the person sending it to me, the blue from before.)

We should send this to everyone in our address book and hope that the one's that voted for OBAMA will change there VOTE this year before he ruins our COUNTRY!!! He's doing a great job of it now!!

GOD BLESS AMERICA

LETS MAKE IT STRONG AGAIN

---

FOR THE REPUBLIC

OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY MADE THIS AND IT JUST CAME OUT 4   DAYS AGO AND HAS HAD 6 MILLION HITS.

So, unlike the person who sent this to me, I decided to do a little research on it.  I found it on YouTube, and this was in reference to the video:

FALSE: OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY MADE THIS.  Not according to the person who uploaded it to YouTube.

FALSE:  JUST CAME OUT 4 DAYS AGO AND HAS HAD 6 MILLION HITS. Says right there that it was uploaded on February 10, 2010,  Over a year and a half ago.  Yeah, it does have over 10 million hits now, but even if interest dropped off drastically after 4 days, that’s still not very impressive.

Regardless of whether or not one believes the message it sends, it still shows how little the person who sent it knows about me to even send it to me.