In Indiana, Sen. Dick Lugar's Political Career Put On Ice At Age 80

 

Ice Sculpture created for Senator Dick Lugar's primary victory celebration. Image Credit: NBC's Kelly O'Donnell

In Indiana, Sen. Dick Lugar's Political Career Put On Ice At Age 80

Can anyone believe that the Tea Party is just an "astro-turf" political/cultural movement that has outlived its time in the functional protest limelight?

Tonight, Senator Dick Lugar doesn't think so. After 6, six-year terms, and running for a 7th, lost the ability to represent the Republican political party for one of the State of Indiana's two federal Senatorial seats. He was swept aside by a challenge from Richard Mourdock.

Richard Mourdock had a successful 30 year career in the private sector, managing businesses in the energy, environmental and construction industries. He also served two terms as County Commissioner of Vanderburgh County.

Mourdock became a viable challenger for the Senate seat after he proved as Indiana’s State Treasurer that he had been an integral part of the state’s fiscal health.  His leadership earned over $1 billion in investment income for taxpayers and successfully expanded the state’s college savings plan.  At the same time, his office has returned an average of 10% of his budget back to the Treasury each year.

Richard Mourdock out on the campaign trail. Image Credit: NBC's Kelly O'Donnell

Richard Mourdock also became known nation-wide for leading the legal fight to challenge the Obama Administration’s illegal bailout and takeover of Chrysler. Richard took this case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Indiana pensioners. Further, his conservative message of constitutionally limited government was heard by over one million people in attendance during the Glenn Beck promoted 9-12 March on Washington in 2009.

So what has current Senator Dick Lugar done to gain the positive attention of the Tea Party activists throughout Indiana? Well, he spent his last full day on the stump defending earmarks, touting that he won over a pair of voters who saw him as the “least worst of the two” and pinning his hopes on the unlikely scenario that Democrats and independents will turn out in higher-than-expected numbers to hand him a victory.

 Mourdock was endorsed by Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Lugar had the backing of the party establishment, including Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Six-term Senator Dick Lugar throwing darts out on the stump. Image Credit: NBC's Kelly O'Donnell

To be honest, we at MAXINE believe, no human should be allowed to hold any office, elected, or otherwise, past the age of 70 years old. Senator Dick Lugar is 80 years old and was hoping to be able to occupy the office for another six years!

Lugar, known as one of the more centrist members of the Senate, was befriended by Barack Obama during his time in the Senate. Obama touted the friendship during his 2008 campaign for president, angering some of Lugar’s constituents.

The Senate’s longest-serving Republican, Lugar also suffered a blow earlier this year when a panel in Indiana ruled that he was ineligible to vote in his former home district because he no longer lived there.

I guess we will just have to say,  Dick Lugar's political career, tonight, has been put on ice.

The real trick now that the Tea Party has brought down one of the centrist stalwarts of the Senate, long seen as a Republican not holding strongly to fiscal and constitutional matters, can they carry this momentum forward to the general election against Democrat political party Rep. Joe Donnelly, a three-term congressman from the South Bend area, this fall. The matchup is a preferred outcome for Democrats, who view Lugar’s ouster as an opportunity to pick up a longtime Republican seat. 

This contest will show if the Tea Party is dormant or if the protest movement has just moved from demonstrating in front of City Halls to electing Conservative answer based, solutions-oriented representatives to bring America back to its citizens and not the political class who have given us all a 16 Trillion dollar debt.

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** Article first published as In Indiana, Sen. Dick Lugar's Political Career Put On Ice At Age 80 on Technorati **

The Killing Of Innovation In Obamaworld

President Barack Obama (ahead), Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sergeant James Crowley walk from the Oval Office to the Rose Garden of the White House, July 30, 2009 to join in on the President;s invitation to the "Beer Summit". Notice that it is Officer Crowley who is interested in the needs of the hobbled Professor Gates ... and not the friend and President. Image Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

The Killing Of Innovation In Obamaworld

American exceptionalism and what the expression actually means are key to how the United States became the most powerful and successful country in the history of mankind.

Now that six full months of the one-party rule leadership regime of Carter's Second Term are in full effect, Barack Obama decided that the "Spirit of Innovation" is the key to the future and the country's economic prosperity.

To quote President Obama, "Innovation has been essential to our prosperity in the past, and it will be essential to our prosperity in the future."

Little does President Obama and the Democrat Political Party vote-locked led Congress understand that they have already snuffed the spark that ignites the flame of innovation which would be the payoff that risk offers the innovator.

Basically, by increasing the size and scope of Government in everyone's life, the mother's milk of innovation created through investment and the level of return on an investment that is judged by the risk involved ... has been turned upside down.

Increased taxes and fees, Federal takeover of major sectors of a once free enterprise business, laying waste to contract law precedents that helped to structure the confidence of the investor through business uncertainty, and the pursuit of policies that would actually kill off some of the energy producing sectors of our economy have done everything but produce an atmosphere in which innovation could grow yet survive.

Obama said he will discuss the foundation he wants when he makes a second visit to Elkhart, Ind., on Wednesday (8-5-2009). Layoffs in the recreational vehicle industry account for much of the job loss in northern Indiana, which is struggling with an unemployment rate near 17 percent.

If people do not have money to spend or invest in, bright, educated, and talented people to create and innovate, they will not have an environment that fosters creativity and return on the risk for their investment.

President Obama evokes the scepter of innovation after over 3 minutes of excuses and descriptions of how bad the economy is doing ... oh!, and did we mention that we inherited this recession? Video Credit: whitehouse.gov

This excerpted and edited from Yahoo News! -

Obama: 'Spirit of innovation' key to the future
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writer - 8-1-2009

President Barack Obama, citing fresh evidence the recession is winding down, says the country's future economic prosperity depends on building a new, stronger foundation and recapturing the "spirit of innovation."
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The president cited Friday's Commerce Department report showing that in the last few months the economy overall has done "measurably better than expected." He credited his $787 billion economic stimulus program for much of that progress.

"This and the other difficult but important steps that we have taken over the last six months have helped put the brakes on this recession," Obama said.
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"Even as we rescue this economy, we must work to rebuild it stronger than before," he said. "We've got to build a new foundation strong enough to withstand future economic storms and support lasting prosperity.

That means having the best-educated, highest-skilled workers in the world, a health care system that fosters innovation by holding the line on costs, building a clean energy economy and investing in research and development," Obama said.

"It is only by building a new foundation that we will once again harness that incredible generative capacity of the American people," the president said. "All it takes are the policies to tap that potential — to ignite that spark of creativity and ingenuity — which has always been at the heart of who we are and how we succeed.
Reference Here>>

President Obama believes that innovation and growth are fostered through Government programs and directed Government spending. Never, in the history of man has innovation been the product of an over-reaching managed effort put forth by any Government.

This approach will only lead to a killing of innovation in an Obama led world. This was not the approach that made the rise of the United States exceptional in the first place.

We, At MAXINE, believe that this template is the opposite of what it really takes to create an environment of innovation. Personal freedom is the key and smaller Government in all areas of a citizens life is the only way to recapture what made America great and exceptional in the first place.

Restore the growth of personal freedoms through self-reliance and innovation will naturally follow.

Reset America by resetting what made America the land of opportunity in the first place. It is time to re-read and apply the Constitution of the United States and grow to a program of Federal Government minimalism!

Barack O’Bummer – The Pied Piper Of Contempt

Barack Obama is still on the market for a running mate today after veep speculators talked up a surprise announcement in Indiana today. The rumors were rampant because Obama was introduced by Evan Bayh, who is Indiana’s second term U.S. Senator, the state’s former governor, and allegedly on Obama’s shortlist for veep. Image Credit: Bonney Kapp – Fox News

Barack O’Bummer – The Pied Piper Of Contempt

The level of dislike for America and its basic construct by Barack Obama has no boundaries. Factually, he insults us all … and most of all, the Democrat party who deserves a better standard-bearer.

Yesterday, at Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana, a seven-year-old girl asked Barack Obama in a townhall setting, why does he want to be President (?).

Instead of giving an answer that would actually come from hope and change ... he told her that America has gone downhill … that it isn’t the country it used to be.

Man, what a “Bummer”.

This excerpted from Hot Air –

Obama: “America is no longer what it once was”
posted at 11:25 am on August 7, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

[said the junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama]

“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was."

Reference Here>>

What America is HE talking about?

“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was."

Definitely not the country that sacrificed itself twice in world wars to save the free nations of the world from domination by powers that pursued genocide in the name of purity.

“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was."

Not the country that provides more in drugs and money than any other country to educate and curb the effects of AIDS.

“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was."

Not the country all other countries look to for economic leadership and innovation and that foreign born citizens break laws in order to experience the freedoms that exist here.

“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was."

Maybe he wants to go back to the America that openly pursued segregation or the one before that one, where slavery was a part of the agricultural economic structure.

What country would allow any minority to be able to be freely brought through a democratic process to the highest elected office of leadership?

Maybe he is expecting an America that should be one of entitlement to a group of elite folks and that HE is the top pick of that bunch of people ... as opposed to the broad range of Democrats that have put him into the position he finds himself at this moment before the convention in Denver.

To be honest, we, at MAXINE, liked the concept of the “Audacity Of Hope” ... it almost felt business-like, in that, it came from a place where it had the attitude that we had a good “BRAND” but we could make this “BRAND” better.

What we witnessed yesterday, at Concord High School in Elkhart, Indiana, in an answer given to a seven-year-old girl from Barack O’Bummer, in this latest of unguarded and un-telepromptered statements, is an “Audacity Of Contempt”.

Another telegraphed punch on the road to Carter's Second Term.