Make That Three Strait

For the third strait semester I've gotten over a 3.0 in my classes (4 total), and have now gotten my overall GPA up to a 3.03 with just 7 hours of classes remaining until I GRADUATE! Here's a rundown of the grades I got;

Energy Systems Lab (2 hrs) - B
Applied Machine Design (3 hrs) - B
Steam Power Plants (3 hrs) - B
Turbo-Machinery (3 hrs) - B
Noise Control (3 hrs) - A

And I had one easy class, Art Appreciation (3 hrs) which was an easy A.

All together it was 17 hours with 3 extra hours of labs, and at the end of the semester it got to be really hectic. In about 10 days I had 2 tests, 3 presentations and 3 reports due, then the next week was exams...Yuck.

But finally, this semester is over and after this summer I will graduate with my Bachelor's of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Also hopefully in a few weeks I will get my certificate stating that I passed the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam, which is step one in getting my Professional Engineer license.

Too Cool To Pass By

Now is this not some Bad-Ass LEGO work? I can almost hear "Danger Zone" starting somewhere...




H/T Wyatt

Actual Quote From Class Today

If anyone is unaware, this week is the national "Empty Holster Protest" from Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. This is a protest advocating concealed carry laws on campuses which currently outlaw them, leaving students defenseless in the case of an armed attacker. The campus hierarchy assume that the campus police will be sufficient to eliminate the threat, but on campus here at TTU there are 15 officers for over 9,000 students, and although the campus can call upon city and possibly county law enforcement, incidents at Virginia Tech, Columbine, and other "Gun Free Zones" have shown how "effective" that police presence is.

Aside from the empty holsters, students have been carrying signs which can get the point across. Here is an example of some.

"This is a GUN-FREE ZONE! If you are planning on shooting a bunch of innocent people and then yourself, we're sorry, but that is not allowed here."

"This is a VIOLENCE-FREE ZONE! You cannot be raped, molested, murdered, assaulted, beaten, mugged, shot, strangled, or stabbed on this campus, because IT IS AGAINST THE RULES"

There are others, but nothing comes close to the next quote that was said in a class today.

One of the professors here at Tech is strongly against concealed carry on campus, and one of the students was/is wearing an empty holster.

I'm not sure if it was in relation to the holster, but the teacher asked the person next to him "Do you feel safe sitting next to him?"

Without thinking the other student responded, "I'd feel safer if he was armed."

Amen.

See Ya Steve

Steve McNair announced that he is retiring from football after 13 seasons in the NFL, with 11 of them playing for the Titans.

The dedication of this man to the sport is amazing, and seemingly no injury was too great to keep him off the field. He played through broken fingers, and other times when he spent the entire week injured, but sucked it up for 60 minutes on the gridiron.

After 13 years though, he says his mind is ready to play, but his body just can't keep up anymore.

Enjoy retirement, Steve. You've earned it.

Sunday Night Funny

Cowboy Blob had this picture up and it was too hilarious to pass up.

Smack A Clinton Time

The AP does a great job of demonstrating the phrase "Smack a Clinton" with this piece. Bloggers had been all over it for a full 24 hours, but the AP finally admitted it yesterday. I love seeing the media turn on them.













Just to make things clear, here's the debunking from the AP story;

THE FACTS:

Bill Clinton has many of the facts wrong.

His wife didn't make the sniper fire claim "one time late at night when she was exhausted." She actually told the story several times, including during prepared remarks on foreign policy delivered the morning of March 17.

It's also not true that she "immediately apologized for it." Clinton has never apologized for the comments and only acknowledged that she "misspoke" a week after the March 17 speech when video of her peaceful tarmac reception emerged.

It's also not true that she was the "first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone" - a claim that Hillary Clinton has also made when talking about the trip. Pat Nixon traveled to Saigon during the Vietnam war and Barbara Bush went to Saudi Arabia two months before the launching of Desert Storm.

The trip also was not in 1995, but 1996.

Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer responded to the former president's remarks Friday by saying, "Senator Clinton appreciates her husband standing up for her, but this was her mistake and she takes responsibility for it."

She's also told her husband to quit talking about it.

"Hillary called me and said 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am,'" Bill Clinton, who was in Indiana campaigning for his wife Friday, told reporters.

Hillary's (Lack Of) Understanding of Economics

Here's a transcript of Hillary's OWN words on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno (Emphasis mine);

I was in Indianapolis the other day and I was shaking hands after I spoke. And there was this young boy about eleven years old and he's trying to tell me something—you know the crowd was yelling—so I leaned over and he said, "You know, my mom makes minimum wage and even though it went up, her hours were cut. So we're not making any more money. Can you help her?" You know, when somebody says something like that to you, it really does kind of energize me. I think, yeah, I can, I'm going to really try to help you, because this is wrong. And everywhere I go I hear stories like that about veterans who don't get health care, about people, who are, you know, losing their jobs, and I think we can do so much better. So for me it's just get up every day and fight on because this country's worth fighting for.

Note the line in bold. Economics 101, if production costs increase (either by material cost increases or labor increases) then you cut expenses to maintain a profit. In this case, the woman's wages were the increase. If the story is true, then this situation is easily predicted. The most amusing thing about this story is that Hillary herself was a HUGE supporter of the very reason this woman had a reduction in hours. The site Votehillary.org has a transcript of a speech she gave to the President about raising minimum wage. If there's any doubt of her support of a rate increase, here's the opening statement of it;

Mr. President, I find it almost hard to believe that we are here on the floor of the United States Senate arguing over the necessity for an increase in the minimum wage. I am strongly supportive of Senator Kennedy’s amendment, proud to cosponsor it, and urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote in favor of it and to oppose the second-degree amendment. Now, this amendment does not go as far as I or Senator Kennedy and others would have preferred. It raises the minimum wage to $6.25 an hour, far short of the $7.25 an hour that Senator Kennedy and I and 48 other Senators proposed in March, but we could never get a vote on that. Now, this amendment, however, should have even greater support than the 50 cosponsors we had last March. It should pass unanimously out of this body. Fifty senators just last March supported an increase to $7.25 and now we have cut the increase with a hope that we can get, number one, the vote we are hoping to get on this appropriations bill; and, number two, an overwhelmingly bipartisan passage.

Not only did Hillary attempt to use this story to gain pity among voters, but she doesn't even seem to realize that she was the cause of it. This woman truly has no understanding of basic Economics.

H/T: RFTR's Gmail message.

One More Reason Against Gun Control

James William Spiers III is alive today because he is the proud holder of a hand-gun permit. While delivering a pizza to some apartments in Des Moines, Iowa, Spiers was confronted by an armed robber who held a gun to his head, demanding money.

After a struggle, Spiers either managed to wrestle the gun away from the robber, or used his own and fired off shots at the robber as he ran away, wounding him 3 times.

After the incident, Spiers was sent home by his manager, and the HR department's response was;
that they don't allow employees (more importantly delivery personnel) to carry guns "because we believe that that is the safest for everybody.”

Yes, it's safer to carry around a bag filled with cash at night unarmed.


H/T: Instapundit

The Chinese Love The Clintons?

In a report by the WSJ, the Chinese are heavily favoring Hillary Clinton to win.

Anyone wonder why?

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, May 23 [1998]) -- Republicans are keeping up the pressure on President Bill Clinton to explain questions about possible links between 1996 Democratic campaign contributions and decisions to share U.S. satellite technology with the Chinese government.

In the weekly GOP radio address Saturday, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., said "the administration needs to provide Americans with direct and full answers to important questions about all of this."

"How did it come about that highly sensitive technical information was given to the Chinese? Why did the president ignore the national security experts who counseled against this deal? What damage has been done to our national security?" Goss asked.

"We know that Chinese officials chose to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in the 1996 re-election of the Clinton administration. What we don't know is what they expected to gain from that investment," Goss said.

The Clinton's took illegal campaign contributions from the Chinese in 1996...and I'll be darned if Hillary didn't take illegal contributions from the Chinese this cycle.

Also, The Cassandra Page took a more in depth look in 2005 at the findings of the congressional reports.

"He'll Be An Engineer"

Hehehehe.

News You Won't Hear In The News March 25th, 2008

There was a recent story about the reduction in news stories about Iraq these days. At this time last year, 23% of news stories were about Iraq. During late 2006 and early 2007, the outlook wasn't good. Then the surge deployed, and over the last 5 or 6 months there have not been more than 40 US troop deaths.

With that reduction, the air time dedicated to Iraq has since dropped to 1% of total airtime since the beginning of the new year. Even HuffPo admits the surge is working stating;

From a journalist's standpoint, the story hasn't changed for several months. The American "surge" appears to have made progress, and while Iraq is hardly safe, pockets of the country are much safer than before.

It's possible to pinpoint the exact week that the switch turned off. The war averaged 30 minutes per week of coverage last year on the three network evening newscasts up until Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces, testified in September about the surge's progress, according to news consultant Andrew Tyndall. In the last 15 weeks of the year, the broadcasts collectively spent four minutes per week on the war.

But there are still stories to tell in Iraq. Michael Yon has been reporting in Iraq since at least 2005, and has an open policy about his reporting. Any news agency is free to use his dispatches AT NO COST, and yet not a single report has been published by any of the mass media. This latest one is one that needs to be looked at. Here is an inspiring piece from it (emphasis mine);

Al Qaeda is still trying to spin Iraq into civil war, but whereas in 2005-2006 al Qaeda was succeeding, today al Qaeda is being shredded.

An Iraqi officer near Sinjar told me that recently a group of perhaps twenty “jihadists,” many of them foreign, descended on a Nineveh village. The Iraqi officer said the terrorists killed some adults and two babies. One baby they murdered was 15 days old.

Until recently, such terror attacks inside Iraq could have coerced the village into sheltering Al Qaeda. Yet this time, the “jihadists” got an unexpected reception. Local men grabbed their rifles and poured fire on the demons, slaughtering them. Nineteen terrorists were destroyed. Times have changed for al Qaeda here. Too many Iraqis have decided they are not going to take it anymore. Al Qaeda in Iraq is still fighting, and they are tough and wily, but al Qaeda Central seems to realize there are easier targets elsewhere, perhaps in Europe, where many people demonstrate weakness in the face of terror.

This type of story NEEDS to be heard by more people.

H/T: Jawa Report

Another Hillary Defector?

This time it's the media that for 8 years was the trustworthy friend of the Clintons. Now they've turned their backs on them late in the game.



Wow, this is getting good!

Favorite quote:

Who knows if she mis-remembered, misspoke, exaggerated...whatever. It makes the case for Senator Obama that all this experience that she's been talking about is at least partly her imagination.

Hot Air's got the video as well, as well as the Clinton Spin Machine at work on the "mistake."

UPDATE: Since the original story went viral on You Tube, CBS followed up on the initial report and stuck it to Hillary even more!

Super Delegates?

With all the Democrat Primary news there's a lot of talk going around about "Super Delegates."

But what the heck are they?

Mr. Right at TRP has an...animated...look at the Democrat Super Delegates that's worth a look.

Hehe, Aquaman. ROFL!

Cardinal Rule: Don't F#$% With The People That Handle Your Food

Waiting is on Comedy Central right now, and I had forgotten how much that movie makes it so you're never brave enough to complain about your food at a restaurant...EVER!

It's so funny, but having worked in them for a few years in high school, all the jokes are that much funnier because they can be ever so true.


If you've ever seen the movie, then I'm sorry for bringing back the memories of the "Special Prep" given to some of the food. Let me make it up to you with this...Emmanuelle Chriqui (a.k.a. the lesbian bartender).



TASTY!!!!

Quote Of The Day

If he indeed is a former Marine (Which I think he is), I feel bad for Rob Riggle, a correspondent for The Daily Show. He went to Berkly, CA to cover Code Pink's protest of the Marines. Here's an actual dialogue between Rob and a Code Pink-o.

Protester: It is our responsibility as the public to shut this station down. To shut this recruiting station down.
[Another protester tells that Code Pink "is about free speech"]
It's very important to protect free speech, and so we clearly have the right to be here.

Rob: If only there was an organization that was...sworn to defend that free speech.

Protester: Wouldn't that be great.

Wow. Seriously. WOW.

H/T: Hot Air

A Democrat Gets Caught Up In A Sex Scandal

After lambasting the Republican Party for Larry Craig's and Mark Foley's involvement in sex scandals, Democrats are having to chew on their own words as New York's Democrat Governor Eliot Spitzer admitted in a conference that he had spent thousands on a high-end call girl.

He is expected to step down and Lt. Gov. David Paterson will step in, possibly as early as tonight.

As a thought, it's ironic how the thing that politicians stand up for the most is the thing that they fall to later.

VICTORY!

Congrats to Kyle Busch for not only winning the first ever COT race in Bristol last year, but now, this year he has given Toyota their first Sprint Cup Victory at the Kobalt Tools 500 in Atlanta.

WAY TO GO TOYOTA!

Pardon Me If I'm More Than *Slightly* Confused

So in September of 2005 after Katrina hit, scientists all over the world claimed that "Global warming is going to cause more hurricanes and much stronger hurricanes!" Predictions of the "one of the strongest hurricane season ever" were prominent in every prediction, and 17 named storms were predicted, including 9 hurricanes, and 5 over a Category 3. "The United States will be pounded," they said.

In actuality, there were only 10 storms, 5 hurricanes, which included 2 over a category 3 hurricanes. But only 2 tropical storms hit the United States. Everything else ran into a weather system which pushed them back out to sea.

Then came the 2007 hurricane season. Again, predictions were doom and gloom. Initially at 14 named storms, with 7 hurricanes and 3 majors, it was increased to the same as 2005.

Then when all was said and done, there were 15 named storms, only 6 'canes, and 2 major ones. One of which was Dean that plowed into the Mayan Riviera, and Felix who hit Nicaragua, but again, the season was weaker than had been predicted.

Now in 2007 and 2008, scientists have begun to claim that "Climate change" (aka Global Warming) is actually causing fewer hurricanes.

On top of that, a new study has shown that increased sun spot activity may actually cause Global Cooling.

THE SUN? THAT'S THE SOURCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE???!!! TELL ME IT ISN'T SO!

Seriously though. With all the contradictions given about "Climate change" and "Global Warming" I just cannot bring myself to believe it one way or another. I do realize that the Earth's climate is dynamic. But how much change is attributed to human activity is where I'm still skeptical.

Reason #1 (And Only One) To Watch IRL

Sure they're fast, but with the IRL, after about 5 laps you have what NASCAR fans at Bristol call "the conveyor belt." Where all the cars are spaced pretty far apart, and nothing happens for about 50 laps.

IT SUCKS!

But Sports Illustrated has given guys a good reason to watch IRL, Danica Patrick!!

I will also note that it's the only thing going that NASCAR doesn't have. A hot driver. Sure they've got hot TV Personalities, but no hot female drivers.

College Bloggers: Who Wants Free Money?

College Scholarships.org is offering a $2000 scholarship to one lucky college blogger this year.

Here are the requirements;

• Blog must be kept up to date, and contain current posts about events, politics, opinions, etc.
• You must be a US Citizen.
• Must have a 3.0 GPA.
• You must be currently enrolled in post secondary education
• And finally from the official post - "If you win, you must be willing to allow us to list your name and blog on this page. We want to be able to say we knew you before you became a well educated, rich, and famous blogging legend."

Huckabee Demotavator (STICKY)

(Click here for a reminder of why it's oh so true)

The award goes to RFTR for creating this poster. It will remain up until after Super Tuesday!

Sneaky, Sneaky, Sir!

Mike Huckabee won West Virginia on the back of a strategy move from John McCain. John is very aware that delegates for Huckabee turn into non-votes for Mitt Romney.

Reports are coming in that delegates supporting McCain were ordered from their higher-ups to vote for Mike Huckabee in order to prevent Mitt Romney from winning the 18 delegates that come with the state.

There were 2 votes since no delegate got a true majority of the votes and after Ron Paul was eliminated for finishing last, McCain's supporters abandoned him in a move that epitomizes "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

They, as well as many Paul supporters rallied behind Huckabee and gave him the win by 47 delegates, out of a total of 1,100.

Huckabee now holds 18 of the 30 delegates that will be going to the RNC, 9 more are decided in the primary, and 3 undecided ones will go as well. But unfortunately for Mitt supporters (like myself), and good for McCain Supporters, Romney doesn't have them.

Strategery indeed!

The Sick And Twisted Jihadi Mind

In an attack today in Baghdad, Jihadi's strapped dynamite and ball bearings to two women in separate markets, killing upwards of 100 people.

The sick part? The women had Down Syndrome and had been tricked by the extremists into putting on the vests, and were unaware that they were suicide vests.

From Hotair:

I also bring all of this up in the hope that liberal readers might finally extract their craniums from their backsides and realize that whatever you think of Bush, he’s not the problem. He didn’t start the war and he’s not the cause of the jihad. Animals of the type who would blow up innocent mentally disabled women to kill scores of other innocent people cannot be reasoned with. There’s nothing to talk over with people like that. They live in a state of violent depravity that puts them beyond reason barring some massive change in their own minds. We infidels aren’t going to make that chance by playing nice. We have to defeat them.

The Party Of Taxes, And The Party Of Tax Relief

President Bush;
"Unless Congress acts, most of the tax relief we have given over the past 7 years will be taken away. Some one in Washington said that "Letting a tax relief expire is not a tax increase." Try explaining that to 116 million American Taxpayers who will see their taxes rise by an average of $1,800.
...With all the other pressures from their finances American families should not have to worry about the Federal Government taking a bigger bite out of their paychecks. There's only one way to eliminate this uncertainty; Make the tax relief permanent."

At these words, one party stood and cheered (as well as many in the crowd above) and one party sat quietly in a display of protest to the suggestion.



H/T: Hot Air

NASCAR: How I Got It Bad

Trouble in Turn 2 has a cool post about how he got hooked on NASCAR, so I figured I'd follow through with my own remarkably simple version.

I literally grew up loving racing. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad and I going to what is now Music City Motorplex, to watch the local racers duke it out in the Late Models, Powder Puffs, Legends, Mini-Modifieds, and other divisions.

Usually once a year my dad and I would either drive up to Bristol, or Atlanta (when it was a regular oval) to watch the Busch or ARCA Series on that Saturday. I got to watch Charlie Glotzbach race in the ARCA series as well as when Michael Waltrip took a very nasty hit into the crossover gate at Bristol that tore his car in half at the firewall.

Following my dad, the black 3 was my driver of choice. His reason was simply, "At the time he was the only guy that could beat Bill Elliot," and that was good enough for me.

I still go to the Fairgrounds, and at some point I want to go to the Daytona 500, The Food City 500 at Bristol, and maybe a race at Atlanta since I may be moving to that area after school.

I love NASCAR, and once mid November comes around, I'm already looking forward to Speed Weeks in February. And this year with Joe Gibbs driving Toyota's, I can't express how excited I am about that. In a house of all Toyota's, it was a great day when they announced they were joining the cup.

I Finally Got Around To It

So I joined the Blogger Lose-A-Thon, but procrastinated/didn't have an accurate scale to weigh myself on until now.

While in Atlanta for a week and a half there was no scale to be weighed on, and at my parents the only scale there bounces between 56 and 105....neither of which are my weight. So finally after playing racquetball with my room mate I weiged in.


147 Pounds


That's about what I figured. And being 5'6" that puts my BMI at about the 23.5% range which the 147 pounds doesn't sound like much until you see that at 25% you're considered overweight, which for my size is at 155 pounds. So my goal is to get off my tail and get down to about 140, preferably 135 for the end of the contest in June.

I know I'm not going to win, and I know Wyatt and everyone is going to be seething at me for being so small, but....

Oh well.

Words Of Wisdom From Wells Fargo

I subscribe to Wells Fargo's Daily Advantage, a daily recap of the market's movement. Usually it is garbage can fodder, but every so often there as moments of grandeur, like this one.

The stock market is in a bumpy patch, but I'm going to sleep well tonight as usual. Here's why: My wife Kathy and I are very broadly invested in stocks, bonds, and cash in a way that we think roughly represents the U.S. economy. That means that as the economy goes, so go our investments. With the economy slowing down and maybe even entering a recession, we fully expect that our nest egg might stop growing for a while and maybe even shrink. So what? We also believe the economy will sooner or later resume its growth as it has after every downturn for the past 200 years. Why should this time be different? When the economy starts growing again, so will our investments. (Indeed, our nest egg may never stop growing, but that remains to be seen.)

About the only way Kathy and I could lose our savings is if the economy goes away, and I don't see how that could happen. It's a $3.2 trillion economy. Where would it go? Americans love to work and work hard. We make stuff or we provide services and then we take our compensation and spend it. That's the economy in a nutshell. And it's not going to stop. In fact, with the population growing and our productivity increasing, the economy will get bigger in the future. So we've bet on the long-term growth of the American economy and nothing that has happened in recent months suggests our bet is misplaced.

That's not to say we never do anything with our investments. We rebalance when growth of one sector or another alters our intended allocation. And if we thought there was a massive readjustment ahead, we might change our allocation. We moved some money out of stocks and into bonds in January 2000 just before the tech bubble burst and that move preserved some value for us. But we don't see any distortions like the tech bubble in our portfolio today. And while the recent downturn has been marked by dramatic losses to some firms and a lot of psychological angst, otherwise it's a pretty ordinary correction so far. So, as I was saying, long-term investors sleep better. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

A huge amen to Wells Fargo's Peter Nulty!

It's true. If you look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average, for about the last 80 years, if you look at any date along the line, 10 years prior to that point the market will have been lower, and 10 years after that point the market will be up.

Another great quote from Dave Ramsey on CNN is summarized in this;
"A Recession is defined as 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, and over the past decades economists have predicted 20 of the last 3 recessions."

Possible Big News From The Huck Camp?

Flying Space Monkey speculates that due to Thompson taking votes away from Huck's base, Huckabee may withdraw from the Primaries.

That would be freakin sweet! Heh! Heh! Heh! Heh!

D.I.Y. Despair

I love despair.com. The site has the most amazingly funny demotivators. But the best part? A Do It Yourself Demotivator!

I was looking into politics (big surprise huh?) and thought, "I want to make one about my new favorite target to shoot flak at;"
The "I'm not the conservative you think I am" candidate from Arkansas, Mike Huckabee.

But alas, when I found the perfect picture, I drew a big blank!

So my task to you is this;
Give me a word, and a demotivator for the following picture. I will hold the contest until Wed. Jan 23rd, and should have the poster up by the next day.



I (and possibly my panel of judges) will select the winner, at which point, I will make the demotivator, and post it as a sticky post until Super Tuesday (Feb 5th), or beyond!

Here's my example:
RHINO - Not just a big gray animal.

ENTRIES SO FAR (not in the comments):

RFTR;
"PROPAGANDA - What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies right to our faces."

Mr. Right;
"CLEMENCY - Because murderous thugs deserve another chance to kill."
"I *Heart* HUCKABEE... Not!"
"HUCK - Sometimes rhyming words aren't just a coincidence, they're a warning!"

Jason Slagle (Mmmm Pizza!!)
QUIXOTIC - Just because your pursuit is hopelessly futile, doesn't mean your objective is noble.

Slumbering Behemoth (MAJOR thanks for the spinoff link from LGF!!!);
PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS - Because 1,033 violent & free criminals is just not enough

And although they're not related to the Huckster, these are really funny. H/T to RFTR for them.
































































This contest wouldn't be much of a success if it weren't for Harvey of Bad Example/IMAO and the links he gave from IMAO. So if you have time, be sure to visit his blog!

More GOP & College here

Because I See A Lot Of Huckabee Fans

You really should see this article that was posted about his so called "Tax cuts"

Yes there were over 90 of them, but they totaled all of 378 Million dollars. That's a pretty good chunk of change, until you look at his tax hikes.

There were a total of only 21 tax hikes, but they totaled $883.1 Million dollars in increased taxes, and gave a net tax increase of $933 per person in just 8 years in office, an increase of 47% from the starting point of $1,969 per person in state and local taxes.

The Club for Growth, a PAC that seeks economic freedom in candidates rates Mike Huckabee as very poor on not only taxes, but spending, entitlements, government regulations, mediocre at school choice, and only one plus was at tort reform.

Governor Huckabee's record on pro-growth, free-market policies is a mixed bag, with pro-growth positions on trade and tort reform, mixed positions on school choice, political speech, and entitlement reform, and profoundly anti-growth positions on taxes, spending, and government regulation.

While Governor Huckabee's record displays some flashes of economic conservatism, especially during his early years, the overwhelming evidence of his record and rhetoric over the past ten years leaves the Club for Growth and economic conservatives around the country to wonder if a President Huckabee would espouse the relatively pro-growth policies of Governor Huckabee circa 1997 or the anti-growth policies of Governor Huckabee circa 2004. While the Governor has made a concerted effort to defend his record, calling oneself an economic conservative does not make one so. His recent refusals to rule out raising taxes if elected President-the cornerstone of a pro-growth platform-perhaps indicate which path he would choose.

Over the past ten months, it has become abundantly clear which path Governor Huckabee has chosen, and it looks more like the path of John Edwards than it does a limited-government, economic conservative. Huckabee himself admits that he is a "different kind of Republican," a code word for more government involvement, less personal freedom, and greater dependence on government bureaucrats. Huckabee is proud of his tax hikes, his spending increases, and his regulatory expansions as governor, and he has not indicated that he would govern any differently as President. Nominating Mike Huckabee for president or vice-president, would constitute an abject rejection of the free-market, limited-government, economic conservatism that has been the unifying theme of the Republican Party for decades. - Club for Growth

Mike Huckabee reminds me of