Hear Ye, Hear Ye....

In case you haven't noticed yet, we have moved. We are no longer Political Yen/ Yang.

We are now known as The Public Cause.

Check us out.

New Blog Is Up And Running

As I have been saying for a couple of weeks now, I have been in the process of starting up a new blog--not on Blogger. It's been a bit shaky because the format and processes are a bit different... and, it's still a work in progress.

It's not been easy with my schedule being what it has been. But I have been diligently seeking moments when I can work on it and get it together, as fast as I possibly can. Since I am a verified IT idiot, it hasn't gone together with the greatest of ease.

So, I have decided that before people lose interest and tire of waiting for it, I will unveil it now. I will continue to tweak it as I go along, much like I did this one.

So here it is, the GRAND OPENING of the new home of LA Sunset:

The Public Cause.

Mark it on your blogrolls and/or bookmarks, and tell your friends about it. I am looking forward to many good discussions there, now and in the future.

Sources of Irritation

Take a look at this jackwagon.

A Michigan man who won $2 million in a state lottery game continues to collect food stamps 11 months after striking it rich.

And there's nothing the state can do about it, at least for now.

Leroy Fick, 59, of Auburn won $2 million in the state lottery TV show "Make Me Rich!" last June. But the state's Department of Human Services determined he was still eligible for food stamps, Fick's attorney, John Wilson of Midland, said Tuesday.

Character must be at an all-time low in this country. The attitude that everyone owes a person is at an all-time high. "I am going to get what's mine, whether I earned it or not" is a value that has been proliferated by government.

Notice

I am still exploring all of my options. As of now, I am in a busy stretch in my real life so I haven't had a lot of time to devote to thinking about a new blog.

I don't want to be impetuous and do anything rash, just because Blogger is no longer meeting my needs. Which host to go with is a decision I will have to make, as well as whether or not to keep the name and format.

Whatever and whenever I decide, I will post it here for anyone who is interested in continuing to follow. It's time for a change, I just don't want put a half-assed effort into it.

Thank you all for your patience in this time of transition and stay posted. I may just sneak a quick post in here and there to tide over until I can get the new project up and running.

Another Blast From the Past

T. Rex had a very unique sound.

Three members, including front man Marc Bolan, met early deaths....two to motor vehicles accidents and one to some unreported illness. Bolan wrote the songs and the music. This song (off of the 1971 release Electric Warrior) is a pensive piece that seems to highlight the writer's sense and understanding of his own mortality.

I have to wonder if he (like many others) had some weird premonition of his early fate, when he was writing it:



Enjoy.

Decision Time

Needless to say, I am pissed off at Blogger for more than one reason.

For this reason, I am pondering a relocation of this blog.

Stay tuned for more details as they develop.

Front And Center: The Latest Skewed AP Poll

Every one in the media and the Democratic Party is going completely gaga over the latest AP poll, showing Obama's approval rating at 60%. Yahoo puts the story out front and center.

The same poll shows 53% think he deserves re-election. Again, Yahoo wants to make sure you know this right here.

The first story doesn't mention it, the second story buries deep in the last third of the text. But to those who are willing to use their brains for a split second, all it takes is a look at the entire poll to see how heavily this poll was skewed. On page #37, you will see the respondents were 46% Democrat, 29% Republican, and 4% Independent. 20% are too stupid to know what they are.

This is significant for several reasons. The most obvious is a 17% differential between the Dems and the GOP. But the real skewing comes in the shorting of the Independents.

In reality, the Dems and Republicans represent about 30% of the electorate each. The other 30% or so is made up of Independents and other smaller parties. We always expect the Dems and the GOP to vote accordingly, but it's the Indies that win elections. And right now they are not happy with the state of the nation, as it applies to their lives.

In the second linked story, the AP makes an attempt at an explanation:

Some conservatives criticized the AP-GfK poll as heavy with responses from Democrats. AP-GfK polls use a consistent technique that starts with a random sample of the population and lets respondents identify their own political leanings. In this poll, 46 percent of respondents identified themselves as Democrats or leaning that way, while 29 percent said they were Republicans or leaning to the GOP. How people identify their leanings fluctuates in polls along with their other political opinions. The change in party identification in the current AP-GfK current poll is not a statistically significant shift from the previous poll in March, and does not by itself explain the poll findings.

Not very scientific, is it? Why not just scrap the poll, when they learn how lopsided the sample is? Answer: they don't care because they figure there are enough stupid people to accept what it says, with no scrutiny at all.

So, here we are. Once again we are going to be forced to endure the cramming of this propaganda down our throats for the next month, while more accurate polls are disregarded and ignored. Such is life when socialist statists are in charge. The state media is hard at work selling the delusion that Obama is a leader, just because he did one thing right.

He's still behind a stopped clock by a 2:1 margin.

Daniels Restoring Indiana Freedom, One Bill At A Time

After enduring a walkout by Democrats, the Indiana General Assembly got the job done and Gov. Daniels signed "The School Scholarship Act" into law. It may not be perfect, but it's better than letting kids get lost in a system that is a grand failure.



Choice is what makes the world better. Libertarians, everywhere, should be happy when more choices are created.

Daniels is often maligned by forces that claim to love freedom. To those people I say, he just gave back a little bit of freedom back to parents. RINOs usually do not restore freedom, they just don't take it as fast as Democrats do. But they do take it.

Just like signing the bill that strips government funding of Planned Parenthood. He signed it and gave Planned Parenthood the freedom to solicit more private donations. I am sure they don't see it that way, but the taxpayers of Indiana do.

The PYY Code Word Of The Week

Word on the street is as follows:

Immigration Reform = Amnesty For Votes Program.

But it's in code, so don't tell anyone.

Pamela Geller's Hit Job On Mitch Daniels Easily Dismissed

There was a time when Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs was a voice that could be trusted, but not anymore. 

This is not to say that she is never right, because there are some times when she nails it spot on. But there are also times she gets it dead wrong and there are many blind followers who take her word for everything she ways without verification.

She often publishes posts about events that the MSM would never dare to report, and that's a good thing. We need people like her to do this more often. But there are moments when she runs with stories that are inaccurate. There are times when she presents a remarkably slanted perspective, without doing enough research before she hits the send button.

This hurts her credibility greatly.

Here is one example: Mitch Daniels "Honored" by Notorious Jew-Hating, Supremacist Organization AAI

You really don't have to read much more of her post to see where she is going with this. But if you took Geller's word as gospel, you might be tempted to jump to the same weak conclusion she has.

It's hard to know where to begin to dismantle this absurd presentation, but let's start with Gov. Daniels.

Daniels is the grandson of Christian Syrian immigrants who were purged from their homeland by Muslims in the early 1900s. While he is of Arab descent, he is Christian and American. Many other Syrians were purged from their country at that time, many of them settled in Indiana, many have made great contributions to this nation.

Some became businessmen and entrepreneurs in the spirit of the American dream. Others worked in coal mines and other forms of hard physical labor. Most of them sent their children to school and admonished them to study hard, so they could make something out themselves they would have never had the chance to do in their old country.

Like other ethnic immigrants, the next generation became doctors, lawyers, teachers, and some made their parents' small family businesses even bigger. So to most intelligent rational people, it should come as no surprise that one of those families has now produced a governor.

Let's look at the award Geller froths about in her erroneous fit, the Najeeb Halaby Award for Public Service.

Najeeb Halaby Jr. was a second generation Syrian-American with multiple degrees and was a test pilot in the US Navy in WWII. His father cam here from Ottoman Syria in the late 1800s, they were Christians. His daughter became Queen Noor of Jordan, but Halaby was an American through and through.

For this reason, it should come as no surprise that there is an award that bears his name, one that was awarded to another American of Arab descent who has made great achievements in the state that elected him to straighten what was a horrible mess.

This brings us to the organization that gave the award to Daniels, the American Arab Institute. (Before we go further... please notice the order of that title, American comes first.)

It was formed by James Zogby, brother of the pollster and Christian American of Arab descent.

Yes, it is a liberal, left-leaning organization that probably disagrees with 90% of Daniels' conservative policies. Yes, it has been a staunch critic of many of the state of Israel's policies. It is political in nature, not theological. It does not promote jihad, it does not call for the eradication of Israel. It does call for a two-state solution, one that Israel is willing to accept but the Palestinians have not yet signed onto, due the growing influence of radical jihadist organizations like Hamas.

It is not CAIR, it is not ISNA.

I am sure that just as the AAI does not agree with the lion's share of the Daniels' policies, he doesn't agree with theirs either.

Geller's blog isn't the only one jumping out of their skin about Daniels right now.

Red State just had to follow suit and get on the pathetic bandwagon without knowing the facts, along with Geller. But at the least the major premise of this blogger's argument was made on policy. His assumption is dead wrong, but the mention of the award was an afterthought.

Daniels is a strong fiscal conservative. Not going to TEA party rallies does not mean he stands against the TEA Party principles of limited smaller government. He has spent the last 6+ years slashing spending, balancing the budget, creating a business friendly environment that has led to increases in jobs, and did it without punishing the rich. Does that sound like a RINO?

And as for the Jew-hating tendencies that Geller wants uninformed people to believe, here is a speech you may want to watch before you let her get you sidetracked into believing a lie.

This is Daniels receiving the Man of Achievement Award from the Anti-Defamation League:



Bottom line: Daniels is not anti-semitic, not a RINO.

He just doesn't cater to the reactionary crowd that Geller associates herself with. And if you want Barack Obama to be sitting in the WH for four more years, just let people like her hijack this dialogue and distract from the important issues of the day. She has done a fine job of reporting many things in the past and my hat goes off to her for that. But this is not about her, it is about what is best for this nation.

It is not fair to categorize this man as a Jew hater for accepting an award from an organization that represents his heritage. Doing so takes a play right out of the Democrats' playbook, which will play very well into their hands in 2012.Doing so, exposes a terrible hypocrisy and severely cripples the GOP's chances of presenting a united front against an out of control government.

But the most important thing to learn from this is tolerance and acting within the boundaries of rationality. Lumping every American of Arab descent into the mold of Islamic jihad is not fair, and not what I want this nation to become accustomed to doing. I know many and have worked with them over the years, they bleed red, white, and blue, just like any American. Even like Pam Geller.


(Hat Tip for the video, and the inspiration to write this long-winded post comes from Advance Indiana.)