On Friday April fourth, I spent the evening in Grand Forks taking in
two speakers at the North Dakota Democratic Convention, both of whom
seemed to think they were running against George W. Bush.  North
Dakota’s democratic congressional delegation including Senators Conrad
and Dorgan, and also Congressman Pomeroy, began the evening by
relentlessly attacking President Bush on a number of fronts, to which
the crowd responded with uproarious applause.  Following their attacks
they introduced the special guests.

The first speaker was Senator Barack Obama.  He began with his typical
"let’s unite the country" rhetoric, then in an apparent effort to
extend the olive branch to republicans, proceeded to attack President
Bush.  He stated that the president promoted himself as a
conservative, but didn’t govern as one, and that, somehow, is bad.
Far be it from me to try to stop Obama from advancing conservative
principal, but it seems a little bit outside his realm.  He continued
on to state that we should stop trying to help the government of Iraq
because they refuse to help themselves.  I found it interesting that
democrats don’t apply the same standard to so many welfare recipients,
and even more so that Obama clearly hasn’t been keeping up on the
progress made in Iraq with regard to their government and continually
growing police force and military.

Obama went on to describe what he called Bush’s "can’t do, won’t do,
won’t even try style of politics".  As close as I could figure he
meant that Bush couldn’t or wouldn’t do what Democrats wanted him to
do.  It must go back to the unity Obama inspired by telling everyone
how terrible Bush was.

After more attacks on Bush by our congressional delegation, came
Senator Hillary Clinton.  She too proclaimed that she wanted to unite
Americans, and apparently planned to do so by attacking Bush and
Cheney and their "dangerous extremism" for about 25 minutes straight.
Apparently we are borrowing billions of dollars a day from Mexico to
buy oil from Saudi Arabia.  It occurred to me that there is more to
that story than what she was telling us, but nobody seemed interested
in challenging her.  She went on to attack Bush for his use of force
in the middle east, without mention of her having voted in favor of
doing just that.

Next we moved to attacking Bush for the high oil prices.  I remember
the democrats tauting a secret plan to bring oil prices down where our
only requirement was to elect them in 2006.  Well, we did, and the
prices continued to rise, but that’s in the past, she had a new
solution.  Windfall profit taxes.  She’s going to stick it to ‘big
oil’ by taxing them to death.  I’m certain that they will soon comply
and begin producing oil for far less.  Why should they make any money?

Senator Clinton went on to explain how Americans needed to share the
prosperity of our nation, ie. redistribute wealth.  Class warfare,
just another arrow in the quiver of the democrats.  Although I’m not
certain who was stopping them in the first place, Hillary patted
herself on the back for having made it possible for businesses in a
remote area of upstate New York to market their products on E-Bay, and
reminded us, as usual, of how rich she and Bill are.  We are so rich!
We don’t need or want tax cuts!  Very classy.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that her next tale was
completely and totally fabricated.  Senator Clinton regaled us with a
story of having visited with college students who told her of student
loans they had taken out with interest rates from 15 to 20 to 30%.
This was, no doubt, hyperbole designed to elicit a disgusted response
from the crowd as she blamed Bush for high interest rates on student
loans.  I’d be interested in actually meeting the student she did with
the 30% school loan.

Finally Hillary invoked for the second time the name of the UND
Fighting Sioux recalling last weekend’s close hockey game with the
Gophers.  They didn’t give up she said.  They kept on fighting.  The
only problem with that analogy was that the Sioux didn’t play the
Gophers last weekend, they played the Badgers.  Oops!

I am glad I was in attendance for the ND Democratic Convention’s
keynote speakers, and over the course of the night, two things became
crystal clear.  Barack Obama has no platform, no ideas, no solutions,
and is incapable of uniting anyone beyond their unity in hatred of
President Bush, and Hillary is a pandering liar who makes up stories
to create applause lines.  Having invested many hours in traveling to
Grand Forks, waiting in line, and listening to the speeches I left
inspired to work even harder for political progress in America.  It
seems that the best way to reinforce conservative values, and inspire
conservative activism is to listen to liberals speak.