"Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face." - Thomas Sowell
Freedom and liberty are the foundation of America. This love of freedom requires that freedom for others be just as important as freedom for you. Today this commitment to freedom is being superceded by a constant government expansion that will leave all of us subservient to the power of bureaucrats.
It has long been the holy grail for those who believe that technology can save us from catastrophic climate change: a device that can "suck" carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, reducing the warming effect of the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas produced each year.
Now a group of US scientists say they have made a breakthrough towards creating such a machine. Led by Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University in New York, they plan to build and demonstrate a prototype within two years that could economically capture a tonne of CO2 a day from the air, about the same per passenger as a flight from London to New York.
I don't know whether to cry or laugh.
First please note that global warming has ended for the last decade and temps have stopped rising even though CO2 has continued to increase.
Second, Any plant will remove CO2 from the air. The more CO2 that is in the air, the better plants do. The increase in CO2 is helping farmers. Removing CO2 will harm plants and farmers. Plant conversion of CO2 is part of the natural balance that keeps the earth stable.
So why does this mania to stop global warming continue?
A perfect example of the beneficial effects of warming is the people in Greenland who are delighted that (just as during the last warm age here on Earth) they are able to grow crops again.
I repeatedly tell people to look at the renaissance period and explain to me why they are so sure that warming is bad. It was great for mankind then. Why are the chicken little idiots able to convince people that this time it will be a catastrophe?
We have the incredible situation that people who aren't sure that CO2 is warming the planet or not are working diligently to reduce it "just in case". What if they screw up the climate and send us into an ice age? How do we deal with that? If that happens can we kill the idiots who caused the ice age?
by Dean Barnett - May 30th, 2008 - The Wall Street Journal
Regarding Iraq, this week saw the disheartening spectacle of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claiming that "some of the success of the surge is that the goodwill of the Iranians--they decided in Basra when the fighting would end, they negotiated that cessation of hostilities-the Iranians." This is an obscenity on two levels. Most people will naturally focus on the fact that Pelosi's refusal to credit the Bush administration also means she must refuse to credit our Armed Forces who have sacrificed so much and fought with such skill and bravery to make the surge a success.
Still more disgusting is Pelosi's bizarre desire to credit our enemies in Iran for our progress. This claim is so at odds with the truth and so offensive, it's shocking that even the most partisan Democrat would make it.
Who is surprised Pelosi would make comments like this? I am not surprised, but I am disgusted. It annoys me that I can't say this though without being the bad guy and being called partisan. It is not partisan to be disgusted by such contemptible statements as those made by Pelosi. However if you dispute them, Pelosi and her minions will immediately start screaming "You are questioning my patriotism!"
Maybe it is time to stop waffling about this. I am questioning her patriotism. She is a socialist who is dedicated to weakening America so that socialism can take over. I see that as treason. America is winning and Pelosi can't stand it.
by Charles Krauthammer - May 31st, 2008 - Townhall.com
"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."
Government rationing is the ideal of socialism, however we all know that socialism is a failure right? Well, in that case, lets advocate rationing for another reason. We will ration to stop man from destroying the planet by CO2. If you doubt global warming is happening the enviro extremists say you are evil and dedicated to the destruction of our environment. We can't prove that (say the environmentalists)s, we just know that it is true.
by John Samples - May 30th, 2008 - The American Spectator
In 2005, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 68 percent of the general population agreed that "Most people who want to get ahead can make it if they're willing to work hard." They also found that about 80 percent of Americans agree that "everyone has it in their own power to succeed."
Some Americans, however, are not optimistic. In 2005, the Pew Research Center identified a group called Disadvantaged Democrats. . .
DISADVANTAGED DEMOCRATS differ from most Americans on personal responsibility. Only 14 percent think that people can get ahead by working hard. Seventy-nine percent say that hard work does not guarantee success, and 76 percent hold that view strongly.
The Pew researchers also note that only 44 percent of Disadvantaged Democrats say that everyone has the power to succeed, while 47 percent take the fatalistic view that success in life is determined by forces outside one's own control. Not surprisingly, this group strongly supports more government spending on the poor. For these voters, wealth comes from government largesse rather than individual effort.
Thus, the Disadvantaged Democrats accept the insidious view that greed, wanting something for nothing, is an honorable goal of voting. To the Disadvantaged Democrat, they have a right to take money from others, who they see as rich. Who are the rich? Anyone who is better off than they are.
by Donald Devine - May 28th, 2008 - The American Conservative Union Foundation
The first principle of the English jurisprudence from which American law evolved is that everyone is subject to the law, king, commons and courts. The philosopher who most influenced both, John Locke, defined real law as “established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong and the common measure to decide all controversies between them.” It is set by a representative legislature that "neither must or can transfer the power of making laws to anybody else." The whole point of a rule of law is that it is based on the settled, common beliefs of the people and their legislature, not to be invented by judges—or anyone else--as fashion dictates.
This view of law as based on common beliefs was uncontested in America until the early 20th Century, when it was challenged by the legal-positivist progressives under the leadership of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the most influential jurist of “law without values” utilitarianism, Malthusian economics, state-regulated eugenics and compulsory sterilization, and judicial supremacy. Substituting expert pragmatism for common consent, progressivism is forced to create positive law on every subject based on the specific facts of every case, unguided by tradition or common morality. As Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek, following Locke, demonstrated, this violates the rule of law because law must have general rules that all people in general circumstances can understand beforehand. Progressivism even at its best produces too many rules for people to follow. There is a law on everything so that no one can know the tax code, business regulations or even the criminal law so no one can understand and follow them. At its worst, progressivism produces so many conflicting rules on so many specifics that the laws produce nonsense.
It is truly sad that America today has abandoned the best court system that ever existed for a system defined by a man who believed in the right of the state to determine who could breed. If Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr. had his way, blacks would not be permitted to breed. Yet blacks overwhelmingly support the kind of law this man directed. Today blacks willingly support the theories of both Oliver Wendel Holmes and Margaret Sanger even though both believed blacks should be eliminated from our society. This is simply bizarre.
How can this be a sane reaction to an insane system?
Our courts are a joke. We have abandoned the rule of law and replaced it by the rule of Judges.
Six City Journal authors recall a spring that shook the world.
Christopher Hitchens
Cuba was an unusually good vantage point for the 1968 phenomenon since it advertised itself as a new beginning for socialism that would avoid the drabness and conformity of the Eastern bloc. I was able to test this proposition in practice and in two ways. At a “cultural seminar,” I heard the distinguished Cuban film director Santiago Álvarez say that any form of criticism was allowed in Cuba, except direct criticism of Fidel Castro. This seemed a rather large exception, but when I tried to be funny about it (so often a mistake in revolutionary circles), I had my first experience of being denounced, in unsmiling tones, for “counterrevolutionary” tendencies. It was a slight surprise to find that people really talked like that.
Kay S. Hymowitz
Women might have taken stock of how the sexual revolution had ignored female preferences—love, fidelity, male solicitude—in favor of self-centered, male-friendly amusement. Instead, they translated the inescapable difference between the sexes into political and pop-scientific grievance. The reason that women were unhappy with the new order was not that low-commitment sex was an easier game for men; it was that men were intent on denying women’s sexuality. The patriarchy had promoted “the myth of the vaginal orgasm,” these younger feminists explained. Men got what they wanted, but all women got were those lousy faked orgasms.
Stefan Kanfer
The time was right for rebellion: it was a benign spring, and there were “issues.” The students made the most of them, breaking windows, trampling any flowers within reach of their sneakers—jackboots would have been too warm for the weather—occupying offices, destroying papers, and, in general, making a major ruckus. So major, in fact, that Columbia authorities summoned the police. Hordes of outsiders began to arrive, among them leftist critic Dwight MacDonald, who announced that a friend had beseeched him, “You must come up right away. It’s a revolution. You may never get another chance to see one.” Like many another superannuated radical, MacDonald was unable to distinguish a revolt from a tantrum.
Guy Sorman
What did it mean to be 20 in May ’68? First and foremost, it meant rejecting all forms of authority—teachers, parents, bosses, those who governed, the older generation. Apart from a few personal targets—General Charles de Gaulle and the pope—we directed our recriminations against the abstract principle of authority and those who legitimized it. Political parties, the state (personified by the grandfatherly figure of de Gaulle), the army, the unions, the church, the university: all were put in the dock.
Harry Stein
In the sixties, for a lot of us, the business of disguising personal conviction as news was far from disreputable; it was the whole point. That’s why, one January morning in 1968, my colleagues and I at Student Life, the venerable paper at California’s little Pomona College, got such a kick out of finding ourselves the subject of a furious editorial in the Pomona Progress-Bulletin, the daily serving the adjacent city of some 80,000. According to the editorialist, we weren’t merely troublemakers—that we already knew, and reveled in the fact. We were Communists.
Sol Stern
Historians have designated 1968 as the year when a violent whirlwind swept through the nation—when things finally fell apart, to paraphrase Yeats. But the whirlwind was already blowing during our five-day get-together with the Vietnamese Communists in 1967. Hayden, the unelected leader of the American group, was already famous as one of the founding members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the principal author of the 1962 Port Huron Statement, which became the official manifesto of the New Left. By the time he got to Bratislava, however, Hayden seemed uninterested in his own document’s call for a new kind of “participatory democracy” or indeed in any kind of friendly persuasion in politics. Just two months earlier, he had been in the thick of the Newark race riots, which he encouraged with words and perhaps deeds. “A riot represents people making history,” Hayden wrote in a notorious article for the New York Review of Books, celebrating the weeklong outburst of violence and mayhem that led to the deaths of 24 blacks and destroyed a community. The issue’s cover illustration was also by Hayden: an accurate diagram of a Molotov cocktail, one of the rioters’ lethal weapons.
I was assured that the conference would issue no joint political statement, other than affirming the need for ending the war. But from day one, it was clear that Hayden and some of his acolytes were trying to move our group toward a more “advanced” position than the one still maintained by the mainstream U.S. peace movement. Hayden wasn’t interested in ending the war so much as making an alliance with the other side. At one of the final plenary sessions, he gave a long speech summarizing the conference’s accomplishments and emphasizing our need to work together for the common objective: a Vietnam liberated and unified—by the Communists.
1968 changed the world. It changed it in an evil way. It energized a movement that keeps coming back to threaten freedom. Beyond doubt the current candidate for President, Barack Obama, is the candidate of the unrepentant radical left of that time. In the last two generations, 40 years, the youth of that time have permeated many of our highest institutions. However the one thing they have failed to do is now within their grasp. Underlying all of the radical extremist rhetoric and passion was the underlying desire to end free enterprise. Power is the goal. Not freedom. Power. The radicals wanted their turn on top. However free enterprise has proved remarkably resistant to their goal of its destruction. In America we are closer to that destruction than at any time in our history.
That to me that is the saddest part of where the last forty years has brought us. Within all of the sanctimonious bleating of the radical left, power, not freedom, was - and remains - their goal. And for the first time they see the chance to get it with a candidate who is like them, never honest with the people.
I have heard a couple of times the interesting connection of the state of our world with the goals of the Obama campaign.
America is the richest country on earth. Obama wants to change that.
America is the free-est country on earth. Obama wants to change that.
America is the most powerful country on earth. Obama wants to change that.
America has the best health care of any country on earth. Obama wants to change that.
America has the most home owners of any country on earth. Obama wants to change that.
America is the most decent country on earth. Obama wants to change that.
The reality is that the change Obama wants is to change the nature of our nation. The consequences are predictable.
The six articles above are a very appropriate read at this time in history. We are about to experience 1968 all over again. 2008 is the next surge of the most evil movement on our planet. Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, but that has not stopped the movement. Greed and the lust for power are all that it takes to keep bringing us back to the precipice of socialism. Anyone who is not happy with his spot in life finds it easier to believe that taking from others by force is their right.
That is the constant threat that drives this failed movement. Greed. And greed is rampant in our modern world.
It is bad enough that gasoline is hovering around $4 a gallon, but the ethanol blend of gas pumped into many cars - containing up to 10 percent of ethanol - is also causing problems.
More unintended consequences of the man is causing global warming chicken little . . . idiots. No other word seems appropriate besides idiots. First we find that the biofuel disaster is starving millions of people in the poorest countries around the world. Then followup studies prove that the denuding of rain forests to plant the food crops that are being diverted into biofuel is actually adding so much CO2 to the atmosphere that it will take more than 100 years to overcome, meaning that biofuels are the worst possible solution to the problem. And now, finally, we discover that the poorly researched idiocy is damaging engines and raising prices atrociously for those who are using the biofuels.
The next time some lame brain idiot tries to tell you that global warming is a problem, laugh in their face. To date the one thing we know is that they are not only wrong about what the problem is, they are imbeciles in how to fix the problem. Nothing could be a worse disaster than the biofuel idiocy they have passed, except their new idiocy of carbon credit trading.
by Alex Spillius - May 28th, 2008 - London Telegraph
Senator Barack Obama's foreign policy credentials took a further blow on Tuesday after his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination won the backing of Fidel Castro.
Interesting isn't it that you don't hear this on any of the American MSM news channels, or read it in American MSM papers?
by Kyle-Anne Shiver - May 27th, 2008 - National Review Online
Evidenced by his list of supporters, from Ayers Dohrn, Hayden and Fonda, to the New Black Panthers, the New SDS, the New Winter Soldiers, et al., the radical Left has anointed Obama as the One. Every aging, anti-war, anti-capitalist group and their new offshoots are flocking around Obama like moths to a flame.
He is the One they’ve been waiting for. Biding their time during the dark, dreary days of Reagan, throughout the self-absorbed Boomer years, into the Yuppie sellout decade, and on through the compromising Clinton years, they’ve waited and planned and hoped.
To these rabid Marxist radicals, Obama is the One, because he’s probably their last chance to see socialism triumph on our own soil. They have grasped the reality of their own mortality.
And this could be very bad news for America. Who, in his right mind, really wants anything these radicals were peddling?
There is a reality that those who support you give a strong indication of what you truly are. Hagee stopped supporting John McCain when it became clear, McCain really does not represent a Christian man. John McCain is a good man, a patriot and is fiscally responsible. However John McCain is perfectly willing to let the other side win the culture war. He is also perfectly willing to let Hagee's long support for Israel to be distorted into a claim he is an anti-Semite just because those who oppose him are twisting what he said around. Maybe McCain is allowing this man to be slimed because he truly is too stupid to understand what is happening. With that act we learn a lot more about John McCain.
And then we have those who are Barack Obama supporters. The real question is which of his supporters really understand him. The wide eyed young enthusiasts who are desperately searching for some new Messiah to believe in, the hard core radical Marxists who latched on to him early on and supported him when no one else did, or the disillusioned blacks who are determined that "one of theirs" will make it to the top?
My money is on the Marxists as what Obama really represents. This is a great article that explains which of the old Marxist guard has supported Obama, when they came on board and why you should bet that this is what he is. I keep telling people Obama is a socialist and a Marxist. This article explains it better than I can. If you care about America, you really should read it.
The polar bears are doing just fine, thank you very much.
So says Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who announced last week that her state would sue to block Washington from listing the animals as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.
And it's a good thing, too - because the new bear-population protections mask what may be the most serious threat to American economic might in decades.
Yes, polar bears.
The polar bear, you see, marks the first species on the "threatened" list whose supposed predicament is linked directly to global warming.
The current Alaskan polar-bear population may be near an all-time high.
Enviro extremists are ready to use totalitarian unelected judges to jam socialism down the throats of the American people under the guise of saving the planet. Several thousand years ago the Polar Bear survived a period of warming much higher than predicted by enviro extremists over the next century. However pointing that out does not budge the enviro extremists who are determined that they must end man caused global warming by ending the use of cheap carbon fuels. Niether the evidence that there may not be global warming, and that climate change is not caused by man, makes any difference to the enviro extremists. They really don't care aobut the enviroment anyway. They are socialists who are seeking government power, and they will use any lie to get that power.
Socialism is tyranny. It is time the American people start to see what is happening before it is too late.
It’s an odd thing about the way in which the two genders deal with their sexual experiences. Early on, it’s most often males who do all the bragging, even if they have to lie about it. However, as the years go by, it tends to be the female of the species who does most of the boasting. I’m not sure whether that’s because as women age, they’re anxious to remind everyone that once upon a time they were hot stuff or whether it’s just that women have better memories and are far more likely to keep diaries.
What brings this to mind is that Barbara Walters, in order to hype her new book, is blabbing all over the place about an affair she and former Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke carried on during the 70s.
One place where Walters is blabbing about her affair with a married man is on the Oprah Winfrey show, scheduled to air today. You can see more about this here. On the show, Oprah is not too impressed with the admission and insults Walters with the argument that she was Brooke's "mistress", a term that Walters clearly doesn't appreciate. Walters accuses Oprah of being the "mistress" for a married man too and Oprah takes offense at that.
This exchange has clear connotations of anger on Oprah's side. I wonder if what makes Oprah mad is the idea that a white woman would have an affair with a black man?
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has returned its first images from the surface of Mars, showing that the probe's vital solar arrays have successfully deployed and giving scientists their first up-close glimpse of the Martian arctic surface.
Phoenix landed in a northern polar region of Mars called Vastitas Borealis late Sunday, with mission controllers here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) receiving their first signals from the spacecraft at about 7:53 p.m. EDT (2353 GMT).
This is a great occasion . . . except for the political implications. Leftists will now claim that the Martian global warming of the last 20 years was the fault of man, because of the fact that this space ship landed on Mars. Like repeated incidents where George W. Bush was blamed for things that happened before he was President, and in spite of actions he took against them, the hate-America, hate-Free-Enterprise, hate-Republican . . . Democrats, with Al Gore leading the way, will tell their followers that man is causing global warming on Mars too. Just wait. It will not take long for that to be the new mantra of the enviro-extremist crowd.
Click here for incredible video, including animation of the landing.
You know that we are living in scary times. Terrorist groups are metastasizing all over the globe. Al Qaeda has re-established its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hizbullah, Hamas and other radical Islamic groups are gaining strength. You hear this stuff all the time, on television and on the campaign trail. Amid the din, it's hard to figure out the facts. Well, finally we have a well-researched, independent analysis of the data relating to terrorism, released last week by Canada's Simon Fraser University. Its findings will surprise you.
[snip]
. . . U.S.-based IntelCenter published a study in mid-2007 that examined "significant" attacks launched by Al Qaeda over the past 10 years. It came to the conclusion that the number of Islamist attacks had declined 65 percent from a high point in 2004, and fatalities from such attacks had declined by 90 percent.
The Simon Fraser study notes that the decline in terrorism appears to be caused by many factors, among them successful counterterrorism operations in dozens of countries and infighting among terror groups. But the most significant, in the study's view, is the "extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years." These are largely self-inflicted wounds. The more people are exposed to the jihadists' tactics and world view, the less they support them. An ABC/BBC poll in Afghanistan in 2007 showed support for the jihadist militants in the country to be 1 percent. In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, where Al Qaeda has bases, support for Osama bin Laden plummeted from 70 percent in August 2007 to 4 percent in January 2008. That dramatic drop was probably a reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, but it points to a general trend in Pakistan over the past five years. With every new terrorist attack, public support for jihad falls. "This pattern is repeated in country after country in the Muslim world," writes Mack. "Its strategic implications are critically important because historical evidence suggests that terrorist campaigns that lose public support will sooner or later be abandoned or defeated."
Why should we be encouraged by this news? The reality is that our strategy is working. We are slowly reducing the threat of the Islamo-fascists in both the middle east and around the world. As in all wars, they will shortly change their strategy and we will have to adapt again. However, at least our current strategy is based on a rational reaction to what is really happening in the world. It is frightening how many on the left are willing to claim the Islamo-fascists have motivations that even the Islamo-fascists reject. This willingness to believe their own propaganda is the truly horrifying concern about Democrats. Leftists hate America so much that they are blinded by their own ignorance of what our real enemies think.
Jupiter's recent outbreak of red spots is likely related to large scale climate change as the gas giant planet is getting warmer near the equator.
Great picture! (Click to enlarge)
This is one more nail in the coffin of the idea that man is causing global warming (or causing "climate change" . . . the new copout phrase used by the enviro extremists since it is clear that global warming may not really be happening here on earth).
The reality is that some minor warming happened on Earth, Mars and Jupiter in the last century. However here on Earth the warming has levelled off and there is concern that global cooling may happen for the next decade. In any event, it is now unalterably true that whatever is happening . . . MAN IS NOT THE CAUSE. CO2 is not warming Jupiter. Man is not warming Jupiter. CO2 is not warming Mars. Man is not warming Mars. And Man is not warming Earth because CO2 is not warming Earth.
Therefore, all the greenhouse gas legislation, from biofuels to carbon credits, is a totally useless waste of time. We are destroying our economy for nothing. Even worse, we are destroying our economy for stupid lies.
Drill for Oil now. Build refineries now. We will run out of petroleum at some point, but as long as it is the most cost effective fuel, USE OIL! Let economics determine when to switch to alternative fuels. We will run out of oil some day, but that is centuries away. Providing tax credits to favor non-carbon fuels is a stupid waste of money based on lies by people who know they are lying. The enviro extremists are lying for political reasons. They are socialists.
by Loretta Schertz Keller - May 23rd, 2008 - Pasadena Star News
With global warming, the Iraq war, terrorist acts here, there, everywhere and 7.8 magnitude earthquakes to boot, the world isn't such a happy place right now. Or maybe it's making the next mortgage payment or sending the kids to college that's keeping precious sleep at bay.
But cheer up! If the largest machine in the world becomes operative this summer as planned, sleep itself may become a thing of the past because all life on planet Earth - animal, mineral and vegetable - might end for all eternity.
Some call this machine the Doomsday Machine, but scientists the world over - about 7,000 of them, mainly physicists - are excited as can be. No more, they hope, will they have to wonder about there being other dimensions in space, or about what the cosmos was like within a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, or whether the Standard Model of modern physics is right or wrong and who knows what else. Their excitement is entirely understandable. They hope to recreate the conditions under which the universe began. It would excite anyone.
I would love to understand more about this Large Hadron Collider and the science behind it. However this article explains nothing. It is as usual in the MSM, a chicken little article that merely says there are some people in a panic about it. Whether their fear is rational is not addressed. The article simply sums it up as, "It's time to prevent science from fiddling while the world could burn."
With this logic, nothing should ever be attempted. After all, there is always some lunatic who is convinced that everything "might" be a disaster.
by Michelle Malkin - May 21st, 2008 - Townhall.com
All it takes is one gaffe to taint a Republican for life. The political establishment never let Dan Quayle live down his fateful misspelling of "potatoe." The New York Times distorted and misreported the first President Bush's questions about new scanner technology at a grocers' convention to brand him permanently as out of touch.
But what about Barack Obama? The guy's a perpetual gaffe machine. Let us count the ways, large and small, that his tongue has betrayed him throughout the campaign:
-- Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people: "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." The actual death toll: 12.
Even conservatives buy in to the lies the press uses to condemn conservatives. If Michelle would check, she will find that Dan Quayle did not misspell "potatoe". What actually happened is that the document he was given had potato spelled with this old spelling. In accurate coverage of the incident, Quayle actually did question the misspelling he was given, but his failure to insist it was wrong, was the basis for the popular lie. The reality is that the press invents so-called gaffes to condemn conservatives and ignores stupid gaffes of libreals.
You will never see the press admit that Barack Obama is a Marxist, even though you can see video of him below touting the litany of actions Marxists like Bill Ayers want America to take to weaken our nation.
In her article Michele has given us a great list of Obama's incredible gaffes to date. Expect Obama to make more. Expect the MSM to ignore them.
Update 5/26/2008 - We did not have to wait long. Only 4 days have passed and Obama, in an excess of enthusiasm for his latest lies about George Bush, is now blaming Bush for Hugo Chavez . . . who actually came to power before Bush was elected. (Click here for details of the latest gaffe.) I guess this is typical of the "greater truth" that Obama uses to explain the lies in his own autobiography. If you can't even get your own history right, how can you be expected to get the history of others correct?
This is Barack Obama explaining his plans to reduce our military strength and assure that in the future we are an inferior military force, enabling our enemies to defeat us.
by Patrick Buchanan - May 23rd, 2008 - Townhall.com
We are supposed to be a self-governing people. "Here, sir, the people rule." Elected representatives write our laws.
Yet, no Congress or state legislature ever voted to declare homosexual unions a marriage. The idea has everywhere been rejected. Wherever it has been on the ballot, same-sex marriage has been voted down.
It is curious how gullible some Americans have become.
Planned Parenthood continues its quiet dedication to genocide against black people, while blacks vote 90% for the same party which is committed to the planned parenthood organization and enables their goal to eliminate blacks through abortion.
Numerous Christians back the Democrat Party while that party is dedicated to the Marxist belief their religion must be ended. How can anyone who believes the bible be a member of the party which is dedicated to same sex marriage?
Neither blacks nor Christians in the Democrat Party can see the incredible conflict between their support for this party and its actual goals. Why is that?
The state of Texas had no right to remove hundreds of children from a polygamist sect because it has not proven they were in imminent danger, an appeals court ruled Thursday.
Officials raided the sprawling compound of the reclusive sect on April 3 and took 250 girls and 213 boys into state custody amid allegations of systemic sexual and physical abuse.
[snip]
"The Department did not present any evidence of danger to the physical health or safety of any male children or any female children who had not reached puberty," the nine page ruling said.
Investigators were also unable to prove that the teenaged girls who had become pregnant had been married to older men.
"The Department conceded at the hearing that teenage pregnancy, by itself, is not a reason to remove children from their home and parents."
It is now clear that the original report of a teenage girl being abused was a fraud and a lie.
The court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as a single household. and to seize all the children on the grounds that some parents in the home might be abusers.
Of the 31 girls the state initially said were underage mothers, 15 have already been determined to be adults. One of them is 27. The rest are not yet proved to be underage but investigation continues.
The bureacrats deny they did anything wrong and continue to defend removal of the over 400 children. They reject that this removal has done more harm than any harm that was possible by leaving all but the teenage girls with their parents. Being bureacrats, they never will. This entire episode is indicative of the egregious results of a socialist society. The abuse by these bureacrats is typical of people who have the power of government and the arrogance of self righteousness.
by Joe Lieberman - May 21st, 2008 - Wall Street Journal
A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies." This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.
The key to this article is the phrase "our enemies" in the title. The truth is that most Democrats see the definition of this phrase as Republicans or conservatives, not Islamo-fascists or global-socialists. Though we (as in Americans) are at war with the Islamo-fascists and global-socialists because the groups have declared war against us, the Democrat Party is not at war with either group. Joe Lieberman has backed John McCain on his foreign policy agenda, but still aligns himself with the global-socialist movement on domestic issues.
I find this inconsistent and bizarre. It leaves me very uncomfortable with treating him as a friend on the Islamo-fascist issues. However there is a famous phrase, politics makes strange bedfellows. There is no better proof than this article by a man who was rejected by the Democrat Party and who still caucuses with them. Bizarre is the only rational assessment.
It is hard to accept this as a credible position. Iran says they are going to destroy Israel and drive America from the middle east. That is what they say. Barack Obama says they are not a threat. Do you believe him or the Iranians?
by Lawrence Solomon - May 19th, 2008 - The National Post
Question: How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming?
The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming, over 9,000 of them PhDs.
At least one reason to doubt the extremists is the fact that compelling evidence exists man is not causing global warming, that CO2 is not the cause of increased temperatures . . . and anyway the earth may be heading to a period of cooling. Oops! Well, okay, we will just call it "climate change" instead.
It is drummed into us, ad nauseum, that the IPCC represents 2,500 scientists who together embrace a "consensus" that man-made global warming is a "scientific fact;" and as recently as last year, they didn't see this cooling coming. So the alarmists can't weasel out of this by claiming they knew all along such anomalies would occur.
Al Gore is the chicken little prophet of global warming, but he may soon be arguing that we need to protect ourselves from global cooling. Scientists who just last year said that global warming was the impending crisis are already switching their terminology to "climate change" in order to continue demanding that we turn over control of society to them anyway. They may have been wrong about global warming, but hey, their hearts were in the right place.
Now that they realize the problem may be global cooling, or maybe not, they aren't sure, the urgency to let them exercise their infallible judgement over our economy is just as imperative. Don't you see?
If anyone talks about "climate change" you can be sure of one thing. They are lying about the need for government intervention. The term itself means they don't have a clue what is happening.
by Kevin Mooney - October 20th, 2006 - CNSNews.com
The antipathy that congressional Democrats have today toward President George W. Bush is reminiscent of their distrust of President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War, a political science professor says.
"We see some of the same sentiments today, in that some Democrats see the Republican president as being a threat and the true obstacle to peace, instead of seeing our enemies as the true danger," said Paul Kengor, a political science professor at Grove City College and the author of new book, "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism."
In his book, which came out this week, Kengor focuses on a KGB letter written at the height of the Cold War that shows that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan's foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts.
While everyone else offers condolences to Ted Kennedy, I think this episode should remind people how arrogant he was. Helping our enemies frustrate the President (Ronald Reagan) who was overwhelmingly elected and legally charged with setting our foreign policy is not what our politics is supposed to be. Democrats see that as okay. In reality . . . it is, was and always will be treason. However treason is meaningless in modern America. Based on modern Democrat rules, Benedict Arnold was not a traitor. Like John Kerry he served in the military and thus to Democrats, cannot be a traitor no matter what he latter does.
Ted Kennedy never served in the military, yet you will never find a Democrat who does not think it perfectly okay for Kennedy to reach out to the soviets to try and defeat the elected President by subverting his foreign policy. If this is not treason, nothing is.
However Kennedy got away with manslaughter when he was younger and merely rich, so who is surprised he does not think laws like treason do not apply to him. He has used his wealth to remain important and powerful while violating some of our most important laws. I find it difficult to summon compassion for this arrogant self righteous drunk.
Update 1:39 PM - It was just announced on Fox News that the medical problem for Ted Kennedy is a malignant Glioma, a very serious cancer of the brain.
Of course everyone is going out of their way to say nice things about Kennedy, but I want to remind them of what he really was like. Ted Kennedy is never nice to those he hates. Yes hates is the correct word. That includes anyone who is not a liberal or socialist, but he has been particularly vicious and virulent against George Bush. Within days of working with Bush on No Child Left Behind and the new Medicare Drug Benefit, Kennedy used the following terms to excoriate Bush, "mislead, deceive, smear the character, cynical, despicable, a fraud, a radical, ridiculous, blunder after blunder, outrageous, shameful, put politics above our troops." He actually said at one point that Bush's behavior was "despicable but might not be treason".
It is typical that everyone will be oh so nice to this evil man while he is in the hospital and having health problems. However I don't ever recall Kennedy being kind to Republicans he has hated. Why can't we treat Kennedy the same way he treated Nixon's death. Isn't that fair?
by Caroline Glick - May 20th, 2008 - Real Clear Politics
As the New York Times noted in an article Sunday about Obama's career as an autobiographer, "In the introduction [of Dreams from my Father], Mr. Obama acknowledged his use of pseudonyms, composite characters, approximated dialogue and events out of chronological order."
That is, the man who is supposedly uniquely qualified to appease, adopted an attitude of indignation at Bush's condemnation of those who seek to cut deals with evil men, is also rather cavalier about facts. Justifying Obama's fast and loose treatment of the truth about his past, his editor Deborah Baker explained that Obama's attitude was more important than the facts or, in her words, "The fact is, it all had a sort of larger truth going on that you couldn't make up."
Like his life story, Obama's policies are not based on facts, but on his attitude. And his attitude, like [H.L.]Mencken's in the 1930s, is based on a naïve and arrogant belief that the worst thing that can happen is to have someone who talks about evil in the White House.
Peter Osnos, Obama's former publisher told the Times that Obama's meteoric rise to the pinnacle of politics is due in large part to his gift as a storyteller. In his words, "It's almost all based on these two books, two books not based on a job of prodigious research or risking one's life as a reporter in Iraq. He has written about himself. Being able to take your own life story and turn it into this incredibly lucrative franchise, it's a stunning fact."
Indeed, it is stunning. And frightening. It says that in a world in which evil men are combining and preparing for war and genocide, good men are preparing for pleasant chitchat with their foes because they have come to prefer attitude to substance. It is a world in which indignation can be summoned as readily (and perhaps more easily) for partisan political attacks as for delusional dictators‚ open preparation for genocide. And it is a world in which it is more important to discuss "healing" emotional wounds than devising policies capable of coping with an ever-more-dangerous international coalition of murderers.
This is a brilliant analysis of Barack Obama's attitude about life.
If anyone needs an explanation of why the marxist-pacifist Barack Obama is a threat to our nation, this is it. You cannot forget his repeated comments which prove he does not have a clue what it means to be an American (and mostly verifying Obama grew up in Indonesia). What American would have said, "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That's not leadership. That's not going to happen." What? Or his earlier comments about how Americans are bitter and cling to their faith and guns because of this bitterness.
When 50% of the poor in our nation own their homes, 75% own their cars, and 95% own color TVs and microwaves, who is going to say to the American people, you have to give up your lifestyle and care about the poor of the world? Is Obama talking to our poor? Are they going to have to join the rest of the world's poor and really face tough times? Or does Obama really think America is so rich it can give all the worlds billions a middle class lifestyle?
Obama, and his whiny millionaire wife, do not have a clue what life is about. They hit the lottery with his two books and they think everyone should live like they do. These two have the audacity to make millions and then complain about the rich. They whine about how hard they have it?
Attitude does not substitute for reality. Barack Obama is delusional.
by Michael Luo and Mike McIntire - May 19th, 2008 - The New York Times
To confront the Obama juggernaut, Senator John McCain, whose fund-raising has badly trailed that of his Democratic counterparts, is leaning on the Republican National Committee. Mr. McCain’s efforts to raise money suffered a blow this weekend when a key fund-raiser, Tom Loeffler, resigned because of a new campaign policy on conflicts of interest.
I cannot deny that I personally love the position that McCain is in. It is both ironic and appropriate that the man who led the battle to destroy political speech in America is being hamstrung by the rules and bureaucracies he created.
Though I plan to vote for McCain as the lesser of two evils, I consider it quite possible that America will be better off in the long run if Obama wins. McCain is advocating the overtly socialist carbon credit cap and trade system with its obvious consequences of destroying our economy. Since Bush-Hastert-Rove have already severely damaged the Republican Party reputation, having a President like McCain smear Republicans even further by destroying our economy cannot be a good thing long term. As a libertarian, I have no other credible place to go to influence our nation than the Republican Party. It concerns me that McCain has so little appreciation for the value to governing of having a party that stands for something.
Maybe McCain is simply not intellectually up to the challenge. There has to be a reason he finished at the bottom of his class at Annapolis. He does not understand the concept of free speech. He does not understand the concept of free enterprise. He does not seem to have the ability to analyze the complex scientific issue of man caused global warming.
Who is surprised at the reality he can't get most Republicans to donate to his campaign. He is almost as much an enemy of our movement as the socialists of the Democrat Party.
by Mark Steyn - May 17th, 2008 - Orange County Register
"That's enough. That – that's a show of disrespect to me."
That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.
President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset. Its perspective was summed up by his closing anecdote – a departing British officer in May 1948 handing the iron bar to the Zion Gate to a trembling rabbi and telling him it was the first time in 18 centuries that a key to the gates of the Jerusalem was in the hands of a Jew. In other words, it was a big-picture speech, referencing the Holocaust, the pogroms, Masada – and the challenges that lie ahead. Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.
Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.
Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies.
The 1930s-era senator whom Bush quoted in his speech as saying, "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided," was Sen. William Borah -- a Republican. If Bush is ridiculing a Republican for being an appeaser, why are Democrats so defensive?
"Now, that's exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and that alienates us from the world," Obama said.
"And that's why we need change in Washington. That's part of the reason why I'm running for president of the United States of America." What reason is that Barack, so we can be proud of appeaasers?
"I'm a strong believer in civility and I'm a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy, but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we've seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days."
Divisive? I will tell you who is being divisive. The LIAR Barack Obama. George Bush never attacked him. Obama's claim that he did is the lie. Obama went on to say, "They aren't telling you the truth. They are trying to fool you and scare you because they can't win a foreign policy debate on the merits. But it's not going to work. Not this time, not this year."
I keep saying that Barack Obama is a socialist, and certainly with this attack he is practicing the standard socialist technique of telling the BIG LIE. It has already been accepted as "truth" by the MSM that Bush attacked Obama. It is obvious that Obama and his campaign are trying to get the discussion about why we are at war behind them early in the campaign. That way they can campaign on their strengths towards the end. They were successful in diverting the discussion from Obama's lies about what Bush said to the discussion of appeasement and Obama's insistence that he is not an appeaser. Obama made a lot of progress in confusing the issue and defusing it. If this campaign goes like this we will shortly have our second socialist President. I predict that the economic consequences of Obama will be as severe as the consequences of the first socialist President, Carter.
by Karl Rove - May 15th, 2008 - Wall Street Journal
Republicans received a hard shot in Mississippi. Greg Davis (for whom I campaigned and who was a well-qualified candidate) narrowly lost a special congressional election in a district President George W. Bush carried four years ago with 62% of the vote. Democrats pulled off the win by smartly nominating a conservative, Travis Childers, from a rural swing part of the district who disavowed Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and hit Mr. Davis from the right.
This blow to the GOP came after two other special congressional election losses in recent months. Republicans lost former House Speaker Denny Hastert's Illinois seat and Rep. Richard Baker's Louisiana seat.
George W. Bush, Karl Rove and Dennis Hastert have destroyed the Republican Party. It is the height of arrogance for this populist political consultant, the primary architect of Republican destruction, to talk about this problem as if he did not cause it.
No one knows what the Republican Party stands for any more. Newt Gingrich, a populist like Rove, helped to defend the liberal Walter Jones here in North Carolina. Jones was helped to secure his re-election by evangelical support. Evangelicals embraced Jones constant bragging about his Christianity, even as he voted with the liberals to abandon the Iraq battlefield and bring our troops home in defeat.
Evangelicals are the same group who embraced the socialist Mike Huckabee and worked hard to defeat Mitt Romney, not based on his policies, but based on hatred for Mormons. Evangelicals consider Mormons a cult. There is more hate for Mormons than hate for Islamo-fascists among evangelicals.
Travis Childers of Mississippi will be like Heath Shuler of North Carolina. He campaigns as a conservative. However that is all talk. He will vote as a liberal in Washington and his constituents will still send him back.
The Republican Party is in the process of imploding. For those who recognize the anti-American underpinnings of Barack Obama, it is extremely discouraging to realize, no campaign against him will be successful as long as the Republican Party is so fractured.
As a blogger on Lucianne noted, "W is more worried about polar bears than the two border guards rotting in jail." On most of the conservative blogs what is written is anger at the party about one issue or another. What you realize though is that it is the conservative bloggers who have given up on our Representative Democracy. Conservative bloggers take the position that you must agree with them 100% or they will abandon you. And they have.
Various flavors of conservative, religious conservatives who demand adherence to their position on abortion, cultural conservatives who demand adherence to their position on closed borders, patriot conservatives who demand adherence to their position on defending America, fiscal conservatives who demand adherence to their position on capital gains taxation, social conservatives who demand adherence to their position on gay marriage, rational conservatives who demand adherence to their position rejecting global warming, traditional conservatives who demand adherence to their position opposing earmarks, and so on ad infinitum. Each fraction of the conservative movement has some part of the Republican constituency that they hate as much as they hate socialists, progressives, Marxists . . . and moderates who will tolerate anything. Each in their own way have defined some part of the Republican Party they demean as RINOS. That is the imprecise label affixed to their enemies.
They have stopped supporting the party with money and, in many cases, with their votes. Some have even reached a point where they do not understand the reason Parties are so important to our nation succeeding. People cannot and will not spend the time to understand where someone stands on all the issues. Parties allow for a governing majority to be formed.
Today, the only governing majority that is holding together is the greed and tyranny based socialists of the Democrat Party. All the various factions of the Republican Party have conceded the day to their worst enemies, people who oppose them on every important issue, not just one or two. The Republican Party will not be an effective agent in this nation until it reforms with people who accept some compromise for the greater good.
Interview with Bjørn Lomborg - May 14th, 2008 - National Review Online
We need to “cool our conversation, rein in the exaggerations, and start focusing where we can do the most good.” So Bjørn Lomborg writes in his recent book, Cool It!: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. This Danish statistician and “skeptical environmentalist” (the title of his earlier book) was recently named one of the “50 people who could save the planet” by the Guardian. Impatient with the overheated rhetoric and hyper-pessimism of conventional climate politics, Lomborg takes a cold, hard look at the empirical facts, and weighs the costs and benefits of global warming (which he does not deny) and the policy solutions advanced to restrain it. His recommendation: Calm down. In an interview with National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez today, Lomborg offers that same advice to Senator John McCain, while throwing some cold water on the Republican’s climate-change speech in Oregon this week. “Wishful thinking is not sound public policy,” Lomborg tells NRO.
It is clear that any rational assessment of what we should do about "global warming" needs to include how to best deal with the consequences if it is real. How to deal effectively with any needed consequences is what has been lost in the dialog. Many people who think man is causing global warming still recognize that the solutions being proposed are ridiculous and lack perspective.
It is clear the Republican Presidential candidate is not maintaining any perspective at all.
John McCain’s daughter recently told GQ magazine that her dad is “freaked out” by climate change.
I think freaking out is the worst thing that any of us can do. There’s a lot of hysteria about this problem, which means that we don’t look at the full picture.
For example, McCain mentions that global warming means that there’ll be more heat-waves which will claim lives. That is correct. But it’s also true that rising temperatures will reduce the number of cold spells. And cold is far deadlier than heat. According to the first complete peer-reviewed survey of climate change’s health effects, global warming [assuming it is even true] will actually save lives. It’s estimated that by 2050, global warming will cause almost 400,000 more heat-related deaths each year. But at the same time, 1.8 million fewer people will die from cold.
When we get “freaked out,” we don’t see the big picture.
It is frustrating to many of us who disagree with the whole idea that man is causing global warming, that the evidence of the Renaissance period is not given more recognition. We have not yet reached the temperatures of that period of global warming and the Renaissance was a great time for mankind. Food production was way up as a result of the warming across the world. Why can more people not see that if global warming was good back then, it is not likely to be the disaster the chicken little morons are predicting?
As an example, we can use malaria, one of the disaster predictions of the global warming hysterics. Forget for a moment that intelligent use of DDT would have saved millions and millions of lives with no ecological damage if instead of banning it we had simply improved its intelligent use in focusing on just malaria.
The same attitude is the problem with trying to save people from malaria by controlling CO2. As Bjørn Lomborg notes:
But when you look at the facts, you find that climate-change policies are a very poor way of dealing with these sorts of problems.
Compare the spending dollar-for-dollar. With malaria, for every time we could save one person from malaria through climate change CO2 cuts, we could — simply by spending the same amount of money on actual malaria policies like bednets and therapies — save 36,000 people. It’s an astonishing fact but also a very powerful one: the better option is obvious.
So you can save 36,000 times as many people by dealing with global warming intelligently, instead of the stupid way proposed by Al Gore.
Can you see now why those of us who are unpersuaded that global warming is even real are so angry about the current state of the dialog? The global warming fanatics are about to destroy our world for nothing. As noted, the Al Gore solution will only give us a 5 years delay over the next hundred years when there are better solutions. Why would such a hopeless delay justify the insane costs?
At least Bjørn Lomborg is one global warming believer who is not also a raving lunatic.
by Howard Husock - May 13th, 2008 - The New York Sun
A hundred years ago, there was a pro-assimilation movement led by the nation’s cultural elite. Across the country, more than 400 settlement houses — from New York’s Henry Street to Chicago’s Hull House — were established. Their mission, taken up by the privileged of that era, included Americanization of newcomers. Indeed, the Pledge of Allegiance, first published in 1892, was written as a primer of America’s values just when immigration was hitting its peak.
Today, the pledge is regarded as chauvinistic, particularly by those who should be leading the assimilation effort. We can’t bemoan low levels of immigrant assimilation if 21st century America’s most fortunate lack the cultural self-confidence to promote it.
It is true. America is in the process of losing on so many fronts because so many of our most successful feel guilt and self hatred, not pride, for their success and the success of our nation. Compare Teddy Roosevelt's attitude (shown below) to the attitude of the socialist, pacifist, group grievance dominated Democrat Party of Barack Obama.
Even more dramatic, compare the whining about our economy with its current reality. We have the lowest unemployment of any major society on earth. We are at all time highs in home ownership. Our poor are better off than the middle class in almost every other nation with 75% owning their cars. Yet all we can focus on is the "possibility" that it might not keep going up at a "good enough" rate.
We have had growth, even though weak, for the last two quarters. Nevertheless our nation is now whining about the fact that it is not good enough. Chicken little politicians are claiming that it is the fault of the party that opposed the major causes of economic weakness. The cause is high energy prices. For years Democrat dominated energy policy has been based on the hypothesis that there is global warming and man is causing it, or that environmental requirements demand we must not drill for oil. Therefore we have committed to not drilling for oil in our nation, even though any rational analysis proves that only if all nations stop drilling could it make any difference. NONE of the rest of the world who have oil have stopped. Therefore our not drilling is useless. I repeat, NOT DRILLING FOR OIL IS USELESS.
In addition, it is Democrat dominated policy that has left our assimilation of immigrants in shambles and our borders open to illegal foreign invasion. No country in history has been as stupidly ruled as the Pelosi-Reid dominated America has been ruled.
How have these two been allowed to persuade the country that their control of our legislature still leaves them blameless for the problems they have caused?
In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace , or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, [like the hyphenated African-American? or Hispanic-American?] isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.
This used to be the liberal view back before liberals became anti-American and anti free enterprise.
In the aftermath of this year's primary battles, I have spent the last couple of days thinking about what is important for our nation in moving forward. Milestones are always an important time to regain perspective. Certainly I was not pleased with what happened in the primaries and I believe it is important to understand why things are not going well for my State and Nation.
I believe in democratic selection of our representatives. However it concerns me that here in North Carolina, the Democrat Party has used its power to overturn the reality that Republicans get the most votes. They have so gerrymandered legislative districts that Democrats control government despite losing the elections. How is that democracy? That, along with the abandonment of party principals by Republican leadership in Washington, has left Republicans dispirited. This year, Republican voters stayed home in droves. We are coming closer and closer to one party rule in America . . . and that party is socialist.
In response to the primary results, these are a few of my thoughts on what our nation needs to focus on for the future.
I still believe that education is the most important issue, long term, for our nation to deal wih. Our kids are getting inconsistent education results that are politically biased. A few wealthy and some middle class children are getting a good education. Most poor kids and some middle class are getting a terrible education. The result is a widening job success gap that robs our nation of its heritage of equality. However even the best educated in our nation are coming out of our schools ignorant of some of the key philosophies they need to deal with life successfully. Socialism has always been around in the world. Socialism is not new, other than by name, and it has always failed to deliver national wealth. Today, the vast majority of our teachers believe in socialism anyway. Our schools have been politicized beyond belief into secular institutions that advocate a failed economic system while expressing hostility to our Judeo-Christian roots. As a result our children have become blase about this tyranny to the point that the young, even in the Republican Party, see nothing wrong with socialism. This may well be the undoing of our nation.
Short term, there is no issue more important than energy. We have a quasi religion going around insisting that man is causing global warming, or global cooling, or climate change, or something . . . They can't make up their minds. (Some of their "Wild Predictions" here.) However enviro-extremists (Al Gore in their lead) are sure that the solution is to give them the political power to run our nation. The want to stop us from using cheap energy, specifically petroleum and nuclear. They use fear of DISASTER as the motivation to let them take control with their chicken little predictions.
However the only disaster is if they are given control. Man is not causing global warming. Man's contributions to greenhouse gases is trivial. Greenhouse gases have gone up significantly the last 10 years while the temperatures have remained stable. This is in complete contradiction to all the enviro-extremist temperature models that claim man is causing the Earth to get warmer. How many times do these people have to get it wrong before their lunacy is recognized and accepted? We need energy and it needs to be the least expensive energy possible. We must abandon the idiocy of biofuels that is driving world food prices up and resulting in starvation in poor countries. (Why is his support for biofuels not reason enough to denounce Al Gore?) Alternative energy has value only to the extent it is cost effective in keeping air pollution under control. Start drilling now. Start building nuclear power plants now.
Protecting our borders has to be the most compelling long term and short term fight we face. Our culture is under attack from the failed economies of Hispanic nations to the South. They have two motivations to invade us. One is economic. The other is cultural. In both cases the result is an unofficial invasion that is supported by governments to the South. Pretending these governments are not actively, if covertly, supporting the invasion is myopic. These Hispanic nations, with Mexico at the front, believe that their country's failures are our fault because 150 years ago the expansion of our nation resulted in areas, that were ruled by Spain at the time, to become part of our nation. This has been interpreted as "stealing" these areas from nations that did not come into existence until later. Radical Islam, which I call Islamo-fascism, is using us as the primary focus of their goal to become rulers of the world under a restored Caliphate. We are their bogeyman because we are currently the strongest nation on earth and they feel buying oil form the rulers of their nations make us responsible for their flaws. The two cultural invasions, along with the global socialist movement to subvert free enterprise, have left America in a position of vulnerability. We are under attack and we better start to resist all three global movements. Otherwise, like Rome, we will cease to exist.
Court corruption will destroy our nation if Judges continue using the pretense they have found hidden rights in the Constitution to rule as they wish to exempt certain issues from the legislative process. Roe v. Wade is critical to our nation, not because it has resulted in clear errors such as "partial birth abortion", but because it institutionalized "the rule of judges". This process, "the rule of judges", is subverting respect for the courts. "The rule of law" (and respect for it) is critical to survival of a representative democracy such as ours. When the people do not believe they can get justice from government, they work to subvert the way government works in order to get the justice they expect. Democrats are arguing that undoing their politicizing of the courts is politicizing the courts. This is a bizarre argument.
The basis of the power of America is individual freedom. However the problems we are currently facing are aggravated by the reality that individual freedom is being suppressed in favor of some supposedly greater good. When America is no longer free, she will no longer be a great nation. It is likely to result in the disintegration of our nation in the process too.
I have known Fred Smith for 3 years and have been a supporter since I met him. He is a good man. Lorie Byrd filmed his concession speech and has made it available for those of you who wanted to know how Fred handled the loss. I don't think you will be surprised, that he handled it with dignity.
by Steve and Cokie Roberts - May 6th, 2008 - Jewish World Review
Since Feb. 19, seven states have voted. Clinton has won four — Pennsylvania, Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island —building up a popular-vote margin of 483,000. Yet her total gain in delegates was exactly five. In Texas, she won by more than 100,000 votes, but because of that state's ridiculous rules, she actually came out five delegates behind.
Last night was a sad night for me. I was more pleased from a moral perspective with the results of the Democrat election than I was with Republican voting here in North Carolina. My main example? Rush Limbaugh is committing moral suicide with his "chaos" program to prolong the Democrat primary between Clinton and Obama. I thought Ronald Reagan taught us a lesson. Take the moral high ground and ultimately we win. How is it moral for Republicans to be sabotaging the primary of the Democrat Party? I am glad the attempt to spoil the Democrat selection process so clearly failed.
As far as messing up their process, it is noted by Steve and Cokie, the Democrats seem intent on doing themselves in without our help anyway. Because they are the party of government, they are really good at using anecdotal evidence to smear Republicans. We have handed them a doozy with "chaos". Even though it clearly had no impact, they will be using the unfairness of "chaos" to motivate and GOTV against us for years. Is this truly helpful?
As far as Republican voting, last night we allowed the selection of Republican candidates to be controlled by political consultants and advertising tricks. Pat McCrory, a late entry Gubernatorial candidate backed by party insiders, won the Governors contest by running massive ads against a man who had displayed a solid commitment to the principals of the party. Additional advertising by Bill Graham, a man who could not win the contest, swung last minute deciders to his camp in a hopeless cause also. How can we allow a man like Pat McCrory who has well over a decade of governing experience proving he does not share our values to defeat a man like Fred Smith who has shown he shares our values? Simple. Political consultants and their smear ads are influencing Republican primaries more than the principals of our movement. This does not bode well for the future of our party or the libertarian-conservative movement that Ronald Reagan espoused.
That was also proved when Republicans allowed John Tyson, a conservative Judge, to be defeated by TWO liberal Democrat Judges. In the fall, the seat will be contested by two DEMOCRATS.
Another example of the same insanity, the corrupt traitor who sabotaged Republican control of congress here in NC a few years back was elected by Republicans to be our candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction. Are Republican voters insane? Why and how can this man get elected to anything with Republican votes?
Even worse, Republicans will not open up their check book and back candidates of moral commitment to the overall principals of the party. Instead, contributions are based on single issue constituencies. That is for the paltry contributions we do provide. Democrats out raise Republicans around 4 to 1. Our process for deciding to contribute? Do you adhere exactly to the abortion agenda of the pro-life groups? Do you adhere exactly to the close the borders groups? This is the only basis for Republican contributions, and again as noted, they are paltry.
This has resulted in the Democrat candidates gaining a huge advantage. This money advantage wins a great number of races for Democrats, continuing the control of government that allows them to practice corrupt politics at will.
The article by the two Roberts quoted from above is another example in a long line of articles that really makes it clear, for Democrats, the party of government, it is all about controlling government. Republicans seem to make it pretty clear, they are not willing to do anything to end that control.
I am not sure I agree with Steve and Cokie's fears. The Dems will not lose if John McCain wins. He is closer to the Democrat Party principals than he is to Republican Party principals anyway. Republicans are losing.
by Paul Sheehan - May 5th, 2008 - The Sydney Herald
This column is about stupid black men, a sub-group now in the process of undermining the first ever realistic and galvanising tilt for the White House by an African-American.
Such a statement could not be made by someone here in America without there being an immediate poltically correct assault on the person denouncing them as racist. They would be driven from public life. The rest of this article would never be read. The race baiting hate mongers of the Democrat Party would make sure the point of the article would be subsumed in a tidal wave of denuciation.
What is the article about? It lists comments by conservative blacks talking about the reality of the Obama phenomenon. They are comments that blacks and whites in America need to be discussing intelligently. Instead, the comments are ignored, and the dialog is dominated by people such as Howard Dean who loudly proclaims that to even bring up the names of left wing fanatics such as Jermiah Wright, or Bill Ayers, or Rashid Khalidi, or corrupt enablers such as Tony Rezko, constitutes race baiting. Even if you accuse Obama of being a socialist, his defenders insist that charge is race baiting.
That is the reality of political dialog in America today. Barack Obama is immune from the same open dialog that everyone else running for President is subject to.
This article is a must read for anyone who truly wants to understand, not just the current political campaign, but the state of race relations in America today. You will read intelligent voices rarely permitted to be heard by our MSM.
"Global warming is indusputably caused by man" - William Connelley
Wikipedia is full of rules that editors are supposed to follow, as well as a code of civility. Those rules and codes don't apply to [William] Connolley, or to those he favours.
"Peiser's crap shouldn't be in here," Connolley wrote several weeks ago, in berating a Wikipedian colleague during an "edit war," as they're called. In such a war, rival sides change the content of a Wikipedia page from one competing version to another, often with bewildering speed. (Two people, landing on the same page seconds apart, might obtain entirely different information.)
In the Peiser case, a Wikipedian stopped a prolonged war by freezing a continually changing page, to prevent more alterations until the dispute was settled. As occurs on such occasions, readers are alerted that Wikipedians are warring over the page, and that Wikipedia was not endorsing the version of the page that had been frozen. To Connolley's chagrin, however, the version that was frozen cast doubt on claims of a consensus on climate change. Although this was done within Wikipedia rules, Connolley intervened to revert the page and ensure Wikipedia readers saw only what he wanted them to see.
Peiser is Benny Peiser, a distinguished U.K. scientist who had convincingly refuted a study by Naomi Oreskes that claimed to have found no scientific papers at odds with the conventional wisdom on climate change. The Oreskes study -- cited by Al Gore in his film, An Inconvenient Truth -- is an article of faith to many global warming doomsayers and guarded from criticism by Connolley et al.
Peiser and other critics of Oreskes's study, meanwhile, get demeaned.
Global warming fanatics like Connolley ignore that most responsible scientists DO NOT accept the global warming hysteria. Because the MSM are addicted to politically biased Wikipedia, Connolley has a great deal to do with the impression by most people that there is a consensus.
The truth is that global warming is highly suspect, and the case for man being the cause has no credibility at all.
Most telling, in my view, was his line of questioning - - and her answers - - regarding America's energy policy, and her plans to change it. O’Reilly launched into this subject noting that Hillary has recently proposed a suspension of the federal gas tax, and called her proposal the “same old politician stuff” because the Democratic Party has opposed ANWR drilling, and because Hillary herself has voted seven times in the Senate to oppose nuclear energy.
After some back and forth during which Clinton would only blame “we, the people” - - and of course, “corporate America” for the problem, we finally get to her answers on what to do about the energy crisis. In Hillary's view, refusal to drill for oil or build nuclear reactors is not the problem. People driving SUVs and charging what the market will bear for the limited supply of oil is the problem. Her solution.
“Well,” Mrs. Clinton responded. “Here's what I'm going to do, and I've said this very clearly. In the short term, I do want a gas tax holiday, but to pay for it by putting a windfall profits tax on the oil companies…”
O’Reilly challenged Mrs. Clinton on what she meant by taxing the “windfall profits” of oil companies. After dodging some more, she finally stated that she wants to “set a baseline” (presumably she means some level of profits that she believes is “okay”), and when oil companies achieve beyond that baseline, then she intends to “tax the profits.”
From here, Mrs. Clinton went on to disclose her intention to “take-on OPEC” (O’Reilly assured her that, being in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, the OPEC bosses “don’t care what you say”), and explained that she will “change the law” so American citizens can file anti-trust actions against OPEC, as well.
When O’Reilly noted that her plans to “take action” against OPEC would likely cause oil prices to rise even further, Mrs. Clinton insisted that “we're not going to be sitting idly by acting, you know, like we can just get away with this. We've got to change the way we behave, the way we drive….”
Please note; HIllary Clinton has no intention of allowing us to drill for oil or build nuclear power stations. She plans to make you drive smaller cars shorter distances. The problem is not that the Democrat Party has banned drilling for oil and building nuclear electic facitilities. The problem, to the Democrats, is that Americans will not be "responsibile".
You are just too free to choose the type of vehicle you want and drive whenever you feel like it. That is what has to change . . . as far as Clinton and the Democrats are concerned.
. . . as Gordon Brown bloodied in May Day election massacre.
by Philip Webster - May 3rd, 2008 - London Times
Boris Johnson sealed a nightmarish first electoral test for Gordon Brown, surging to a hugely symbolic victory for the Conservatives in London.
Mr Johnson claimed the largest prize of a triumphant day for David Cameron by ending Ken Livingstone’s eight-year reign as London Mayor. He said that he did not believe that his victory meant that London was a Conservative city, but pledged to work “flat out” to earn the trust of those who doubted his capability and commitment to the job.
Mr Livingstone, fighting back tears, said that the fault for his defeat was entirely his own.
Mr Brown suffered humilation across the country as the party lost an astonishing 331 seats. It was Labour’s worst election night for 40 years, leaving its local government and campaigning base severely weakened and ministers fearing for their survival at the next general election.
Think there is no prejudice shown by the staff of the London Times, calling an election victory by conservatives, a "massacre"?
The way politics works I don't think that the socialists in the Labor Party of England are really headed for the dustbin of history, but it is interesting how again and again socialist parties around the world are regularly thrown out of office when they grind their economy into failure.
Then again, what else does anyone expect socialists to do but destroy the economy?
Democrats here in America keep insisting that their anti-American socialist compatriots in other countries all hate America. Now however, we have had several years of anti-American governments being thrown out by their voters and replaced with people who appreciate America. Amazingly, Al Gore still talks daily about gaining the respect of nations . . . who have thrown out the leaders he seeks respect from and replaced them with people who support our efforts. Since the 2004 elections the people in Germany, Canada, France, Italy and now the United Kingdom have all switched their governments to pro-American.
The reality is that there is a global socialist movement and the leaders of the American Democrat Party are total adherents to this movement. They think that socialism is winning and are flabbergasted when losses to conservatives, here or abroad, prove that the world has not yet abandoned the concepts of free enterprise and individual freedom.
