Socialized Medicine: The battle begins....

Saturday night, all 58 Democrats and 2 Independents in the U.S. Senate voted to bring H.R. 3590, the government healthcare takeover bill, to the floor for a debate and possible amendments after Thanksgiving. It was the bare minimum to achieve the 3/5ths majority. The senators are now flying to their home districts for a weeklong vacation.

Whenever that final debate occurs, it will take another 60 votes to invoke "cloture" to end that debate. The good news is several senators who voted "aye" to allow debate say they will kill the bill unless the "public option," the very foundation of the legislation, is removed.

ACTION: Thank you to everyone who called, emailed and faxed senators to oppose government-controlled healthcare. Now, please call and protest at the district offices of your U.S. senator and other U.S. senators -- especially the swing votes (Democrats Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and Independent Joe Lieberman) -- to express your deep concern.

The key vote will be on shutting down a Republican filibuster of the ObamaCare bill, HR 3590. In the Senate, we are faced with a health care bill that:

* Costs $2.5 trillion during its first ten years of full implementation (2014-2023);

* Increases insurance premiums and imposes $376 billion in tax increases -- many on the middle class; and

* Cuts Medicare by $465 billion, while increasing health costs by over $100 billion.

The word "tax" appears 183 times in the latest health care bill. Is Obama serious? Is that what he and Reid want to do to us in the midst of a recession?

Of course, all this increased spending -- and taxes -- means that you will have less money to spend on providing for your family and/or pursuing your real passions.

The strategy in the Senate is to cram this bill down the American people's throats before we have a chance to fully read and evaluate it.

Do you want left-wing bureaucrats appointed by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid determining whether you should own a gun via the health care system?

Remember, H.R. 3590 would increase insurance premiums, increase taxes, costs $2.5 TRILLION over 10 years, imposes an individual mandate that everyone buy health insurance, launches a federal "abortion insurance" program, cuts and restricts MediCare, and would result in rationing.

The Democrats' plan would NOT increase affordability or portability of health insurance. NOR would it restrain frivolous medical lawsuits that have been driving up doctor's insurance and insurance premiums over the last several years. NOR would it reward, instead of financially punish, consumers who live healthy lifestyles.

Badly needed for 2010: Contract With America 2.0

What needs to be in Version 2.0?

1. Border Wall all the way from San Diego to Brownsville.

2. Illegal immigration halted and reversed. NO amnesty ever again. We will have to tell the soft bigots of low expectations like Lindsey Grahamnesty to shut up, and wheel off Juan McLame to the retirement home.

3. Legal Immigration curtailment. Make skills, not family reunification, paramount. End "diversity lotteries" that treat US citizenship like the prize behind Curtain #1 on "Let's Make A Deal".

4. ALL of the various market oriented health care reforms proposed by The Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, etc. Make that guy who runs Whole Foods our Joe The Plumber 2.0. (And why in the hell wasn't any of this done back when the GOP ran the House? Didn't Hillary's attempt to pussy-whip us into socialized medicine back in 1993 wake up anyone in the GOP?)

5. Drill here, Drill now. Debunk Climate Fraud for what it is.

Feel free to add to the list.

Off Year Elections: Pretty Damn Good!

The corrupt Commiecrat Corzine was sacked in New Jersey and a pretty good patriot was elected to Governor of Virginia, despite the atempts of President Obama to prop both of them up!!!

Doug Hoffman rose out of nothing as an Independent Conservative Party candidate to almost take New York district 23, despite RINO backstabbing. Think about that: Mr. Hoffman nearly won an election even though the RINO phony Republican candidate suspended her campaign and endorsed the Democrat.

Oh, and by the way, the RINOs say that we patriots quickly have to embrace "gay marriage" (sic) because opposing it is so obviously a losing issue. I mean, the anti-gay-marriage forces can only manage a bare majority in the Deep South states of California and Maine, right? (snicker)

Even here, in California, the special election in District 10 didn't go all that badly for the Republican. It was basically handed to John Garamendi on a platter, given the gerrymandering of the district:

David Harmer (Rep) 53,441 / 42.69%
Jeremy Cloward (Grn) 2,314 / 1.85%
Jerome "Jerry" Denham (AI) 1,435 /1.15%
John Garamendi (Dem) 66,311 / 52.98%
Mary C. McIlroy (P&F) 1,672 / 1.34%

Look at CA-10 on a map



This blob of a district takes parts out of FOUR counties, and stretches a pseudopod out towards Berkeley and the Richmond ghetto, in order to get enough Commiecrat voters and thus nullify the patriot voters of Travis Air Force Base and rural Solano and Delta farming regions.

The only guy I really have beef with here is Jerry Denham, American Independent candidate, John Birch member, and associate of the late John Katz. Not that his votes would have made any meaningful difference in this race, but what if he and his patriotic and well meaning John Birch Society types stopped squandering their energy in the American Independent Party, actually *joined* the Republican Party, and worked to get a Real Republican elected? From what I know of him, David Harmer was definitely such a man.

Rush Limbaugh smeared by Demunist Commiecrats

So the Obamunist sycophants in the media are now making outrageous attacks on Rush Limbaugh regarding rumors - that's right, rumors - that he has made racial remarks in the past.

And the NFL, like most big-money operations, got scared, quickly jumped on the bandwagon and let it be known that Limbaugh's desire to be included in a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams would be rejected.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, a classic corporate empty suit, simply referred to Limbaugh's "divisive comments" as the reason for his being viewed as an unwelcome applicant for a franchise.

Since rumor is all that the shrieking Commiecrat crowd has to go on, they have dragged out of the closet the infamous hubbub back in 2003 when Rush Limbaugh was hired to give his opinions on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown pregame show. What got him into hot water was when he opined that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated. In a refreshingly straightforward manner, he went on to say, "I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."

I happen to have seen that little segment, and I vividly recall two things about it. First, immediately after Limbaugh made his comments, Hall of Fame player Michael Irvin, an African-American and former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver, said, "Good point, Rush." I take Irvin at his word that he meant what he said.

Second, I recall thinking that Limbaugh's comments were positive in that they spotlighted the fact that most white Americans *do* want to see African-Americans succeed. And that's a good thing. I felt at the time that he should have been applauded for being sensitive rather than reviled for being insensitive. Nevertheless, the Race Police came flying out of the woodwork, and Limbaugh resigned under pressure the very next day.

So, here we are again, bringing up memories of all the "racial" comments made by famous persons who were fired and vilified for being "insensitive." Two of the more well-known examples that come to mind are Al Campanis, who was general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Jimmy the Greek Snyder, a one-time mainstay on CBS's NFL Today.

In an appearance on ABC's Nightline in 1987, Campanis said, "[Blacks] may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager." The left immediately went berserk, and the Dodgers quickly hustled Campanis off their payroll.

Campanis later explained what he had meant by his remark by saying, "When I said blacks lack the 'necessities' to be managers or general managers, what I meant was the lack of necessary experience, not things like inherent intelligence or ability. I was dead-tired after traveling when I went on the show. I got confused. It was like a telegram - you try to say it in a few words, and it's implied differently."

By all accounts, Campanis was not even close to being a racist. In fact, he was one of Jackie Robinson's biggest defenders when he played for the then Brooklyn Dodgers, and once challenged an opposing player to a fight when Robinson was being bullied.

Moreover, in 1987 Campanis was right, for the simple reason that at that time it wasn't that long ago that African Americans couldn't even *play* the major leagues, let alone manage a team there.

As to Jimmy the Greek, his famous faux pas was when he was purported to have said to a reporter, in a restaurant, "The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way - because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. This goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trading, the owner - the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid."

PC and historical accuracy are sworn and everlasting enemies. The interesting thing is that some years later I read a long, detailed article in the newspaper, based on scientific studies, that confirmed that blacks tend to be superior athletes because of their genetic propensity toward large and powerful thigh and buttocks muscles. It was a fascinating, well-researched article that provided scientific answers to a question that has long been of interest to both blacks and whites.


Whites are as much at fault as blacks for the absurd overreaction to both speech and facts regarding race because they are the enablers in a relationship that began as master and slave. As Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Shelby Steele, an African-American, points out in his book White Guilt, Americans are hopelessly trapped by the need to feel guilty over the sins of their fathers. Any people of color - including Arabs, Africans, and Latinos - must be coddled and treated with an excess of TLC.

I guess it's okay to a point, but it's also demeaning and irritating to people of color who just want to be treated like everyone else. As one African-American acquaintance of mine recently said, "The constant whining and cries of insult only succeed in attracting negative attention and get in the way of those of us who are trying to get ahead in life."

Fortunately, most people, both black and white, are becoming immune to the constant drumbeat of the racist-gotcha game. Plain and simple, we are suffering from race-compassion fatigue. To borrow from the title of Juan Williams' book: Enough!

P.S. Rush: For the sake of all Americans, please sue the butts off the NFL and every blogger and member of the media who attributed false quotes to you.

What can we do about this?

1. Call the NFL and give them hell. Their corporate office number is 1-212-450-2000. The switchboard hours are from 8:30AM to 7:00PM, Eastern Standard Time.

The NFL FAX number is 212/681-7573.

NFL staff members can be reached via-email by first.last@nfl.com. Example: roger.goodell@nfl.com

2. Call the corporations who pay big bucks to become the "official sponsors of the NFL" and tell them to please stop. It isn't the corporations fault what the NFL did, but they should know that decent Americans of all colors are fed up.

3. It's time to look into the backgrounds of every last creep in the NFL leadership. Every owner, every CEO, every GM, everyone. And Roger Goodell as well.

Oh look what I just found... I have it on good authority from some schmuck who posted it on the internet on April 1st, 1984 that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's ancestors owned slaves and when he learned of this, he was noted to have exclaimed: "COOL! And if I can just become NFL Commissioner someday, I can be a plantation owner too and control all those Black boys! Bwahahahahaha!"

4. Boycott the NFL and ESPN. Now I'm not saying stop watching the games (that's not a credible approach), but you can avoid buying any single product I see advertised in association with the NFL or ESPN. They won't notice me not watching the games, but they might just notice the fact that I'm not buying NFL shirts or other merchandise.

5. Forget the NFL and repeat after me.....N-A-S-C-A-R. Of course, the liberal Demunist Commiecrat news media tried to smear them too. You might remember when Arabic or East Indian looking "fans" were planted by MSNBC into NASCAR events to see if they would be harassed by NASCAR fans. Which prompted this great editorial cartoon:



There is a deeper issue here, namely, what the Leftist Agenda is.

1.) Rush may not be the representative of the opposition to their agenda, but he says exactly the things we are saying amongst ourselves. That is why they must attempt to propagandize about him as the Leader, so they can apply the Rules for Radicals, and isolate and destroy, thus isolating us and ultimately destroying us.

2.) Since the left have taken over all non-elected positions in the government, taken over the re-education of our children, control information transfer and media determination of news, and now represent the elite and Corporate America...They view sports as the re-education camp for the American Population that does not agree with their agenda.

3.) Modern American Sports has nothing to do with competition. It is only sold as competition, but in reality it is Entertainment focused on re-educating a population to fit a particular model.

4.) In sports you can control which people get to play and which can not. By using this method of re-education they can control the story line so that it falls in-line with the agenda. They do this by propping up organizations and individuals that fit the model, and demonizing the organizations and individuals that don't. This is very powerful because the machine can use the cover of apparent transparency to consistently, subliminally, and aggressively set the cultural rules, which in turn will all fit the agenda.

5.) Truth has become a scarce commodity in America. Among liberal leftists, lying is seen as perfectly acceptable behavior. Lying has little or no stigma attached to it, in their world. This is the end-game of moral relativism. Liberals are now enjoying the fruits of their years of subversive and divisive labor. These people are keenly aware of the fact that when truth is effectively undermined, all things are possible. Evil is, in part, the absence of truth. What we are witnessing is the dawning of a new era of evil. Time to fight back in earnest, people.

On the Obama Speech to Schools

I have mixed feelings about this speech tomorrow. My own child is not old enough to be in school yet, so fundamentally this does not affect me. But, the uproar from parents across the country is interesting and informative.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did something similar, although in the days before the internet, so the distribution was not nearly so universal. Why are we worried about this President giving a pep talk to students, which will almost certainly simply exhort them to stay in school and study hard. Nothing wrong with that.

The problem is that this President has lost the benefit of the doubt. Too many people whose basic political beliefs differ from the President have been too badly insulted, and their policy positions too badly denigrated, by the most partisan administration in memory.

Witness:

1. The Department of Homeland Security issued a "report", cribbed from the Leftist SPLC, and entirely devoid of facts, accusing Americans who believe in Federalism of being lurking "domestic rightwing terrorists." Washington, Madison, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Jay, Monroe, etc., were all, under this description, "domestic rightwing terrorists." That is an insult that still stings me personally, as I consider myself to be a strong Patriot.

2. The reaction to the Tea Party movement, in which I have played a small role. We are "the mob", cranks who are out to destroy the President, rather than concerned citizens who see real problems in the bailouts, the spending, the health care proposals, etc.

3. ObamaCare. Here's a guy who wants to rush through a 1000+ page bill to do, well, we don't really know because no one actually read the damn bill, to 1/6 of the U.S. economy. The smart money is on the intended final outcome being "single payer" health care. We all see how badly the NHS and Canadian systems fail, and yet this President told people who opposed this mad, blind rush to legislate to, literally, shut up and get out of the way. That's not how things work in this country, and as a former Senator (albeit for about 8 minutes) should damned well know better.

4. Government Motors. If anyone seriously doubts the real intent behind ObamaCare, look only as far as GM and Chrysler. This President's default position is "nationalize". Oh, and if you have to vitiate private citizens' contracts (especially those evil people called "investors"), then those are just so many eggs that have to be broken to make an omelette.

5. Van Jones. This guy is emblematic of this Administration's problem. Here's a guy whose views are so far outside of mainstream American thought as to be falling of the left end of the chart. Yet, he gets an appointment, without benefit of Senate confirmation, to a high-level policy position controlling $30 to $60 BILLION of our tax dollars. He's a self-avowed 'former' Communist, a Truther, and an eco-nut. He's what we used to call a Watermelon - Green on the outside, Red on the inside. How the hell does this guy get _any_ position in the White House, much less that one? My view is that he was hired precisely because he's a leftist nut - just like all the other leftist nuts in the White House.

6. FOB's. Once upon a time, that meant "Friends of Bill" - Clinton, who got to do stuff like sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom, carouse with Billy Jeff, etc. Now it means Friends of Barack, and is much more sinister. This group includes Bill Ayers, an _actual_, and entirely unrepentant, domestic terrorist, who openly advocates propagandizing school children to advance leftist programs. Maybe the Mainstream Media (Rush is probably right to call them the "State Run Media" these days, witness the near complete blackout on Van Jones reporting) didn't notice this, but a lot of other Americans did. Rev. Wright, too. Barack Obama sat in that guys pews for 20 years. It is not possible that Obama was not aware of this leftist, and blatantly racist, garbage flowing from that man. "That's not the Rev. Wright I thought I knew" was just about the most unbelievable comment ever made by a politician - a Herculean feat in and of itself.

So, President Obama has squandered not just trust, but the willingness of his opponents to cut him some slack. He doesn't get any benefit of the doubt, because every time he's gotten any, he's proved that he'll do the most leftist thing possible.

So, it is unreasonable for parents to assume the worst? Maybe, maybe not. But it's certainly _not_ unreasonable to not trust this President to overreach. It's a perfectly reasonable, and respectable, reaction on the part of parents who don't want their children to be subject to _potential_ propaganda to just avoid the chance at all.

So, Mr. President, this reaction is your fault. You abused the (limited) trust you had with much of America, and now you won't get the benefit of the doubt any more. You have shown that we are right to assume you will be the hard core leftist we were worried about, so we won't even tolerate the possibility of you talking directly to our kids - because we assume you will act badly.

New Poster

Hello, I'm glad to join this blog and hope to put up a few items now and again. I'd just like to start with the proposition that President Obama is a hard core Leftist who is easily the most radical President in our history. His domestic agenda is easily the most un-American set of policies ever; designed to squash our traditional liberties and elevate the power of the central government, as aloof from the People as possible. That's a good start for now.

Happy to meet you all.

Yukball

Why Is President Obama Siding With Tyrants?

From Iran to Honduras, it seems that President Obama is failing to support the opponents of tyranny. In Honduras, it appears that his administration is actually working against them. Why?

Comrade Red Square at The People's Cube has a guess.

Just who are the 47 million "uninsured"?

Michael Ramirez illustrates:

Which makes for some interesting observations and questions:

--If we got rid of the illegals, our emergency rooms would not be busted out, and our American born "uninsured" would have a modicum of care.

--Are those affluent who choose to pay out of pocket, and the young workers 18-25 to be forced to buy insurance in order to make a larger pool so that others who buy insurance will have lower per capita costs?

--In a prolonged recession, like the one we are going to get when bogus "stimulus" does not work, the "in between jobs" category is going to explode, and presumably the sob stories about not having insurance will too. Could it be that non-working "stimulus" and tax hikes were deliberately engineered to crash the economy and thus raise the sob stories???

Another Michael, in Michigan, has interesting discussions on the matter here and here.

The "Obama Birth" Delusion

One of the sadder delusions going around today, even among a blogger I otherwise like and admire, is the delusion that President Obama isn't really an American citizen.

Wasn't his mommy American? Yes, she was....

As much as I loathe Obamunist policies, the "Obama Birthers" are the right-wing version of "9/11 Inside Job Troofers", and I think we make ourselves silly with that. There is more than enough to attack Obama about in terms of communistic policy alone.

Some say that it is a simple matter to put to bed, all Obama has to do is produce a "Legitimate" Birth Certificate. Which he did, and which, duh, was in the State of Hawaii. Case closed. Is there any credible evidence he was born in Kenya? (So what if it was called "A Certificate Of Live Birth"??? Why do I think I am entering crazyland with some of these Obama Birther people?)

Moreover, has it occurred to them that this is a "rope-a-dope" move on his part? They get worked up on a phony non-issue, waste all their energy and credibility, and then the Obamunist rams through socialized medicine. (I am terrified that he and "Rommel" Emmanuel are just this cunning).

And riddle me this: why would the egomaniacal Hillary Clinton NOT bring this up during her bitter primary fight? A woman who we all just know feels rooked out of the Presidency that she thinks was her birthright/marriageright for the taking, and no doubt is seething and biding her time and will probably desert the Obamunist ship once the Porkulus Non-Stimulus fails and Obama becomes Carter II.

Why? Because she knows there is nothing to it.

When McCain's citizenship was questioned by the Senate during the campaign the Senate investigated McCain and found, he was, a legitimate citizen. And would Obama not qualify as well if McCain did? So what is the point of wasting time on this when there is so much crap coming from the Obamunists to fight?

I loathe the Obamunist policies, but the fantasy that somehow he will be dismissed from office isn't going to happen. Like it or not, enough of the American people are dupie dupes and voted for this crap. Elections DO have consequences.

How much energy squandered on this Obama Birther campaign could be devoted to getting REAL Republicans (not RINO phonies) voted into your Congress District in 2010, and the Senate Seat in your state if 2010 is an election year for one of them?

Two articles in American Thinker explain why this delusion is happening: (1) because the lamestream media gives the Obamunists and other Democrats so much political cover that it is extremely frustrating, and (2) Obama has been so evasive that it's easy to believe it:

There are two reasons why so many find the Birther theory compelling. One is the opaqueness of Obama himself. There is much about our president we still do not know.

For example, throughout 2008 the media showed little interest in Obama's connections to the underworld of Chicago politics, regarding Hillary Clinton's references to fraudster "slumlord" Tony Rezko as mere fear-mongering. When the Blagojevich scandal exploded in December 2008, many journalists were quick to accept Obama's assurances of innocent naïveté.

Other details about the president's past remain hidden or suppressed. Obama has never, for example, provided a convincing explanation of why he disposed of his papers from the Illinois State Senate, or how he managed to lose the thesis he wrote at Columbia. He sometimes fibs about essential details of his personal life -- such as where he met his wife -- and offers inauthentic projections of empathy with ordinary
folk, such as references to arugula or memories of "Cominskey Field."

The Obama team also has a habit of releasing information in cryptic drips and drabs, and Friday-afternoon document drops. During the campaign, he suddenly revealed
that he had taken a trip to Pakistan in 1981 -- a voyage he had not alluded to in either of his two memoirs -- and his staff only belatedly acknowledged his authorship of an unsigned Harvard Law Review article on abortion.

The candidate who promised transparency has been anything but transparent, feeding the suspicion that drives the Birther theory.

The other reason the Birther theory has caught on -- particularly among conservatives -- is the weakness of the Republican opposition.

Despite the GOP's success in slowing down ObamaCare, Democrats still have a huge majority in the House, a filibuster-proof margin in the Senate, and a White House that is aggressively expanding its executive power. One Republican leader after another has stepped down or been tarnished by scandal.

Many Americans -- including some who had convinced themselves that Obama was a moderate -- are eager for a way to stop the runaway left-wing agenda of Obama and Nancy Pelosi's Congress. In the absence of strong Republican leadership, some find the Birther theory a compelling, if desperate, solution.

Yet it is ultimately a self-destructive one -- not just because it is almost certainly false, but because it contradicts the essential spirit of the conservative movement.

The philosopher Robert Nozick distinguished between two approaches to political thought: the "invisible hand" and the "hidden hand." Those who embrace the "invisible hand" believe that people, given the freedom to make their own choices, tend to achieve social goals without being forced to do so.

Sometimes the invisible hand fails, and strong central leadership is needed. But as a general rule, free markets and civil liberties have worked well in promoting human progress. They have certainly proved better than the alternative, in the form of state control, which has produced only poverty, war, and misery.

"Hidden hand" thinkers, by contrast, believe that everything is controlled by unseen forces -- not spiritual but human in nature. Socialism thrives on such ideas.....In fact, socialism depends on conspiracy theories to justify its war against personal liberty, to blame for its inevitable failures, and to cover up its own very real machinations.

Come on, patriots, we are better than this.

Open Letter To President Obama

Lou Pritchett is a former vice president of Procter & Gamble whose career at that company spanned 36 years before his retirement in 1989, and he is the author of the 1995 business book, Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat.

Mr. Pritchett confirmed that he was indeed the author of the much-circulated "open letter." “I did write the 'you scare me' letter. I sent it to the NY Times but they never acknowledged or published it. However, it hit the internet and according to the ‘experts’ has had over 500,000 hits:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Memorial Day

"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."John 15:13 NIV

Click here for a riveting account of the World War II battle of Tarawa in 1943, as told by the late Gil Ferguson, who, at age 19, survived the battle, and later served 10 years for pro-family, conservative values in the California Assembly. Tarawa was the first US amphibious assault against a defended beachhead. Victory here came at the price of 3,000 dead or wounded U.S. Marines.

US to Expand Immigration Checks to Local Jails‏?

At first, the Washington Post article made me think that I have to give the Obamunists credit where credit is due:

The Obama administration is expanding a program initiated by President George W.
Bush aimed at checking the immigration status of virtually every person booked into local jails. In four years, the measure could result in a tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and identified for deportation, current and former U.S. officials said.

But upon reading further, I find that:

The effort is likely to significantly reshape immigration enforcement, current and former executive branch officials said. It comes as the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress vow to crack down on illegal immigrants who commit crimes, rather than those who otherwise abide by the law.

In other words, the Bush administration WAS deporting illegals as illegals, and the Obamunists just intend to deport those who are illegals and commit other felonies too? In other words, Amnesty! Oh boy!

Or does it really? Since:

But even some supporters of the program wonder whether it can be implemented smoothly and whether there will be sufficient funding. A surge in deportation cases, noted Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of homeland security for policy, would require more prosecutors, immigration judges, detention beds and other resources.

Wait a minute, I thought the article said the Obama administration would be more selective? So which is it? Way to muddle the issue, Washington Post!

Nancy Pelosi--dishonest

The case against Nancy Pelosi remaining Speaker of the House is as simple as it is devastating:

The person who is No. 3 in line to be commander in chief can't have contempt for the men and women who protect our nation. America can't afford it.

To test how much damage Speaker Pelosi has done to the defense of our nation, ask yourself this: If you were a young man or woman just starting out today, would you put on a uniform or become an intelligence officer to defend America, knowing that tomorrow a politician like Nancy Pelosi could decide and proclaim publicly that you were a criminal, even though she previously approved of what you were doing in private, if she needed to appease her leftist voting bloc?

The controversy swirling around Speaker Pelosi isn't political -- SHE may think it is, other liberal Democrats may think it is, and the media may want it to appear that way...But this isn't just about politics. It's about much more than that. It's about national security.

At issue is whether Speaker Pelosi was informed, at a briefing by intelligence officers on September 4, 2002 when she was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, that the CIA had used and was using enhanced interrogation techniques -- specifically "waterboarding" -- on captured al Qaeda terrorists.

Prior to her now infamous press conference last week, Speaker Pelosi insisted that the CIA had not told her in 2002 that waterboarding and other enhanced techniques were being used. At last week's press conference she went beyond this position to assert, "the only mention of waterboarding at [the September 2002] briefing was that it was not being employed."

In contrast, Leon Panetta, the current CIA director, wrote a memo last Friday to CIA employees in which he stated, "our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of [Al Qaeda terrorist] Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed.'" To his credit, Panetta is honest.

And so the question, prior to her rambling press conference, was one of memory: Did Speaker Pelosi remember correctly the briefing she received in 2002?

If she had confined the controversy to her memory versus the CIA's, Speaker Pelosi may have saved herself. She would be guilty of irresponsibility and incompetence perhaps, but that would basically be it. Not good, but not disqualifying.

But Speaker Pelosi did not confine the question to the reliability of memory. Instead, she made the allegation last week that the CIA intentionally misled her -- misled Congress -- and not just once, but routinely.

"They mislead us all the time," she said.

She charged that the CIA, deliberately and as a matter of policy, violated the law by lying to Congress.

And with that allegation, refuted by Leon Panetta among many others, Speaker Pelosi disqualified herself from the office she holds.

And the question that remains is why? Why would Speaker Pelosi escalate the small skirmish she found herself in over the 2002 briefing into a full-scale war with the CIA?

Perhaps it's because if America knew that Speaker Pelosi consented to waterboarding, fully informed and without complaint, back in 2002, it would reveal the current liberal bloodlust over interrogations for what it is: The Left's attempt to dishonestly smear its political opponents.

If Nancy Pelosi believed that waterboarding was justified in 2002 -- just like Porter Goss, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Tenet believed! -- then a policy of selectively using enhanced interrogation techniques in carefully circumscribed ways in order to prevent future attacks (in other words, the Bush Administration policy) is vindicated.

But rather than admit that President Bush, when faced with an array of difficult choices, made the hard choice that kept the nation safe, Nancy Pelosi has instead retreated into the cheap sanctity of "ignorance". She didn't know... so she claims. THAT'S why she didn't do anything about it.

But President Bush did know. It was his job to know, and he made the tough choices needed to save American lives.

It was Nancy Pelosi's job to know too. But to avoid culpability for the choices she supported, she's now telling us she didn't know. And she's calling the intelligence officials who say otherwise liars and criminals.

What a bitch.

Bolshevik / Brownshirt Buttpirates bash Carrie Prejean

I thought about this during the recent flap over Carrie Prejean's (Miss California) answer to a loaded question from a nasty little scumbag who goes by the pseudonym Perez Hilton - one of the judges in the Miss USA pageant. It's not just that a question about gay "marriage" would have been unthinkable in a Miss USA contest not that long ago, it was an outrageous question even in today's upside-down America.


What in the world does anyone's personal opinion about gay marriage have to do with being a worthy Miss USA? Obviously, nothing. So, why did this Hilton character pose the question to Ms. Prejean? Because, having taken control of the body politic in Washington, the Demunist Commiecrats are feeling their oats. Agree with us, or else, Comrade! Much like a Red Guard youth having to swear his allegiance to Stalin or Mao back in the day of either, having the "right" opinion of gay marriage is a litmus test for liberal Demunists.

As to the gorgeous-times-10 Ms. Prejean, her answer, under enormous pressure, earned her an A+ for poise on my scorecard: "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage," she said.

And you know what ... I think ... in my country ... in my family ... I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised.

Would it have been possible for her to be any nicer ... any more tactful ... and still have the courage to say what she believed in? Now, juxtapose her gracious response to the Barney Frank-like hysterical babble of gay militant Perez Hilton.

Until I saw him in the news, I had never heard of this little creep. In fact, I just now looked him up on the Internet and found that his real name is Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr. Converting that to "Perez Hilton" took quite an imagination. Though I would never be one to disparage anyone who calls himself a Hilton, as far as I can tell he is a nobody whose only achievement to date has been to find a way to mingle with minor celebrities.

After he stated, on camera, that Carrie Prejean lost the Miss USA contest because "she's a dumb bitch," the media was all over the story. When Sean Hannity asked her about the remark, Ms. Prejean politely replied that he was obviously a very disturbed individual and that she felt genuinely sorry for him. I believe she meant it. I wish I could be so generous. I personally hope he dies of AIDS contracted by getting sodomized one too many times.

I know, waah, the Commiecrats will cry, I'm a "hater". But really, no. Homosexuality, of and by itself, is a yawner.

In fact, I think that I CAN sympathize with the plight of "gay" people. Like anything else that makes a person feel like a outcast, I have to believe that homosexuality has to be the source of an enormous amount of pain and frustration for those saddled with that condition from birth, or came to it as a result of experiences in one's formative years, or whatever (as opposed to those who simply choose to lead a perverse lifestyle). A gay person has a right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, the same as anyone else, and I'll stand up and be counted on that every time.

What is distasteful, however, is the in-your-face, hateful attitude of a significant number of "gay" men and women. If only they were smart enough, and secure enough, to just go about their business in private and leave others alone.


But being an integral part of the Commeicrat "progressive" movement, they cannot settle for that. They feel compelled to force others to think as they do. Probably nothing short of outlawing the traditional family will appease them.

After watching Mr. Lavandeira-Hilton-Butthole spew out his hateful remarks, I couldn't help but think about a gay actor, Richard Chamberlain. In his 2004 book "Shattered Love", Chamberlain discusses, in a calm, forthright, dignified manner, the trials and tribulations of his formative years and his coming to grips with his homosexuality. What sticks out in my mind is that he came to realize that his homosexuality was actually a "pretty uninteresting fact."


So you see, Mr. Mario-turned-Perez Butthole, you can be as gay as a "Thorn Bird" if you want, without feeling the need to shove it in everyone's face. Sorry, but your sex life is about as interesting to the rest of us as is Rosie ODonnell's - and interest in her sex life hovers around zero. And whether we - and, for sure, a contestant in a beauty pageant - are against gay marriage is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. And that's the politically incorrect truth.

But none of this will stop the leftist Red Guards. They are furiously digging up dirt on Carrie Prejean. Their latest gambit is to call her "hypocrite" because--gasp--she had cosmetic surgery, namely, lovely breast implants:



Oh, puhleeze, Commiecrats. As if conservative women don't like to look good. Many beauty pageant women have had work done -- nose, lips, cheeks, breasts, buttocks -- and yet there's a rather large firestorm about this particular woman's breast enhancement. I hate to be cynical, but for some reason, I think people are leaking stuff about her -- and the media is eagerly running with those leaks -- because she dared to express an unpopular thought.

Did I say "unpopular thought"? My error. It's the OVERHWELMING majority thought in the country, but it's unpopular with those who matter, namely, those in the liberal media-political industrial complex. As noted admirer of the female form Perez Hilton said, she's a "dumb bitch," and deserves to be destroyed.


The Commiecrats also want to accuse Carrie Prejean of "hypocrisy" because she modeled lingerie and made racy poses. As if conservative women don't like to feel sexy for themselves, let alone their husbands or boyfriends:

This really is leftist retardation in motion - You Commiecrats make pretend, caricatured standards of what conservatives and patriots care about and then call balls and strikes based on your fantasy.

Oh, but she claims to be a Christian, the leftists simper.

Let me get this straight: for you leftists hamster-stuffing, fisting, and buttpiracy is all right? But if a beauty pageant contestant poses semi-topless that’s the heighth of hypocrisy because she’s a Christian? What’s next? Releasing audio of Christian truck drivers who curse? Publishing photos of Christian plumbers who show booty crack? How about surveillance photos of Christians who SKIP church!? Will the hypocrisy never cease?

The reason any conservative’s failing is always major news is that it allows liberals to engage in their very favorite taunt: Hypocrisy! Hypocrisy is the only sin that really inflames them. Inasmuch as liberals have no morals, they can sit back and criticize other people for failing to meet the standards that liberals simply renounce. It’s an intriguing strategy. By openly admitting to being traitors, philanderers, liars, weasels and cowards, liberals avoid ever being hypocrites.

Special Election May 19: VOTE NO ON EVERYTHING

I looked it over, and it is all a crock. Even Props 1D, 1E and 1F, which seem good at first.

NO on Prop. 1A - Tax Hike and Phony Spending Cap

In a state that already has the highest aggregate tax levels in the nation, Proposition 1A would impose the "temporary" sales tax and income tax hike for *another* full year, the increased car tax for another two years, and would continue punishing parents with a pseudo-tax of $210 per child (a two-thirds reduction in the state child tax credit) for another two years.

So these taxes are not even "progressive" (although frankly California has played the "progressive" card so often that businesses that earn the high incomes are progressively leaving the state, making everyone poorer and decreasing revenue as a result).

Prop. 1A is nothing more than a massive tax increase masked as a phony spending limit.

Here’s the year-by-year tax increase if 1A is passed or defeated.

Vote NO on 1A to limit the tax increases on California families. Vote NO to defeat 1A, which will also defeat the $9.3 BILLION “bribe” of Prop. 1B. But most of all, vote NO on 1A to force the Governor and the California Legislature back to the drawing board to make the politically difficult but necessary changes to save us tens of billions of dollars and never raise taxes again. (as you might have guessed, the politically difficult changes involve illegal aliens and stifling unions).

NO on Prop. 1B - Exempts schools from said spending cap

So just when they try to sell you with a phony spending cap in Proposition 1A above, they then turn around and say, "But not for the schools!" The effect of this is to undo the spending cap, as (1) schools are such a massive part of the budget, and (2) funding for a good many infrastructure projects can fall under the schools banner.

Just as Prop. 1A is deceptive and tricky because it doesn’t talk about extending tax increases, Prop. 1B is based on a fundamental deception not adequately explained by the ballot pamphlet.

In 1998, California voters passed Prop. 98 to guarantee K-12 public schools and community colleges at least 40% of the state budget revenues. Yet since revenues are down due to lost income, lost jobs, and depressed property values, the amount of funding to government schools under Prop. 98 has also declined, just like the amount of funding available to anything else.

But the government education unions can't face this fact, so they have taken an odd reading of the law, claiming that the state has to pay back the funds they "lost" the last two fiscal years. This amounts to around $7 BILLION. However, most Prop. 98 experts agree that government schools are NOT entitled to be paid the money now or in the future as a constitutional guarantee.

Yet in order to avoid a lawsuit and avoid negative press relations, the Legislature agreed to place Prop. 1B on the ballot to satisfy the government education unions. But it’s much more money – $9.3 BILLION, not $7 BILLION. This is a very expensive "bribe" just to avoid an unjustified lawsuit. And there would be no education reforms at all in exchange for this money. This is deceptive and wrong, making 1B perhaps the worst proposition on the ballot.

Even if 1B weren’t a "bribe," more money still won’t solve education problems in California. Already, the average cost per pupil exceeds $11,000 for substandard education. A quarter of California public schoolchildren are so uninspired by establishment schools that they drop out. It’s even a bigger problem among blacks and Hispanics where the drop-out rate hovers around 50%. (And again, there's that proverbial elephant in the room called illegal aliens).

California public schools receive more than 40% of the state budget yet have chronic problems: "multicultural" agendas that teach falsehoods when they teach at all, low academic performance, high drop-out rates, lack of accountability, language confusion, negative socialization, sexualization, and violence. In the mid-1960s, California had an admirable public school system and spent $3,000 per pupil in year-2000 inflation adjusted dollars. Now, California taxpayers spend much more for a vastly lower quality of education. Current per-pupil spending statewide averages $11,626, a 27% increase in real, inflation-adjusted terms over the past decade. But all these billions of dollars aren't meeting the academic needs of children. And still, the well-moneyed government employee unions continue to call for more spending and higher taxes, which shouldn't even be considered when public school enrollment is declining.

NO on Prop. 1C - Lottery Manipulation

Prop. 1C would put Californians in greater debt and greatly expand gambling. This measure borrows $5 BILLION against future lottery sales and would immediately spend all of it in an attempt to decrease the budget deficit – without slashing billions of dollars in anything. Even worse, 1C allows unlimited future borrowing – without cutting anything.

Prop. 1C was placed on the ballot by the California Legislature to enable it to continue its foolish overspending instead implementing substantial structural reforms. If 1C passes, all of the $5 BILLION borrowed from the lottery fund would be spent in one fiscal year beginning in July. But these funds would have to be paid back with interest, increasing taxpayer debt. 1C is risky because it’s unknown whether the state can pay back this debt and avoid digging an ever bigger financial hole. Interest rates are low for the moment, but with inflationary "stimulus" pressures, will that remain the case?

Our school system receives around $1.1 BILLION each year from lottery funds. Yet, under Prop. 1C, these payments won’t be paid from the lottery fund but from the deficit-ridden state general fund. But where will this $1.1 BILLION per year – in addition to the $50 BILLION or so every year in Prop. 98 funds, plus the $9.3 BILLION in Prop. 1B funds – come from? It’s time for our state government to cut up the credit card and slash spending just like families and businesses have had to do. Vote “no” on Prop. 1C.

NO on Prop. 1D - Fund juggling (Children's Services) -- although not so bad

Prop. 1D started off as a good idea – to pay down the state budget deficit by billions in surplus money from Prop. 10 (Rob Reiner's cigarette tax from 1998 to fund big-government “universal childcare”). But in the legislative process, the idea of using the money to pay down debt was scuttled in lieu of diverting only $340 million in immediate funds. In the final analysis, 1D doesn’t do very much except to co-dependently enable the state government’s overspending problem.

Prop. 1D would instead use a portion of these funds – $340 million now and then $268 million a year for the next four years – to spend on “children’s programs” in the state general fund. In the big picture, Prop. 1D only takes a little bit of wasted funds and gives it to the irresponsible California Legislature. To vote “yes” on 1D would be to endorse the Legislature’s irresponsibility and fake reform. To vote “no” on 1D is to say you know better and aren’t going to facilitate any more dysfunction. Vote “no” on Prop. 1D.

NO on Prop. 1E - Fund juggling (Mental Health) -- although not so bad

Prop. 1E is similar to 1D, and admittedly is better. Instead of slashing wasteful spending, the Legislature is proposing Prop. 1E to divert $230 million a year for two years from Proposition 63 (a 1% surtax on millionaires from 2004 to fund children’s mental health programs) to offset general fund debt. Mind you, paying down debt is good, but like Prop. 1D, this is too little, too late. Prop. 1E allows unsustainable, wasteful government to continue instead of reforming. Vote “no” on 1E.

NO on Prop. 1F - Pay Raises -- although not so bad

At first, this sounds just great. Prop. 1F says California state elected officials can’t get a raise in pay during a deficit year. It sounds good, but this “cure” is actually worse than the problem.

Proposition 1F was placed on the ballot by the Legislature to help a couple of legislators -- Republicans at that -- feel better about violating their promises not to raise taxes. (yes, Abel Maldonado and Mike Villines, I'm referring to you two). This ridiculous waste of ballot space allowed these legislators, among others, to pretend that they got something in return for supporting large tax increases.

Proposition 1F does not really change anything. It prohibits constitutional officers and legislators from receiving pay raises in deficit years. The salaries for these elected officials are set by the California Citizens Compensation Commission (not the Legislature), and that Commission has never increased salaries in a deficit year anyway.

Proposition 1F does not even accomplish what it pretends to do. Pay increases, when they are authorized by the Commission, do not take effect until after the next election. So they are not likely to have any influence on any legislator’s vote.

I share the outrage that many voters have toward our state’s dysfunctional budget process. I do not believe that "deficit years" should be allowed to exist at all, since our spending should decline whenever revenues decline. However, Proposition 1F does nothing to improve that situation. All it does it allow a few legislators to pretend that they got something valuable in return for breaking their campaign promises. We get to pay tens of billions of dollars in new taxes while they brag that future legislators might not get raises, maybe.

I urge a "NO" vote on Proposition 1F. First, 1F’s goal is to apply pain to legislators and the Governor to get them to balance the budget. But 1F doesn’t have the teeth to motivate the legislators. The majority of them primarily get their power from the unions, and that money will continue to be their “security.”

The current salary for nearly all legislators is $116,208. Yet in the last 10 years, the California Citizens Compensation Commission has only increased pay a few times.

Prop. 1F is a tortured and tricky way to try to make you think the California Legislature is interested in reforming itself, which it is not.

Aftermath

Turnout was low, but those who turned out essentially told the Demunist Commiecrats and RINO Republicans like Ah-nold to get lost. I must say, I am heartened by the results of yesterday's election. The faux reform propositions were rejected and Proposition 1F, the one symbolic F-U to the legislature, passed. (I opposed that because it was symbolic, but the results are great anyway). I don't know if we just got lucky and dodged a bullet or if this has greater implications vis-a-vis voter attitudes in 2010 as regards government spending and overreach.

Flashback to this day in 1975....

Saigon was falling to the communists, and "boat people", "killing fields" and "re-education camps" were to follow. Noam Chumpsky, Howard Zinn, and associated commie minions were high-fiving each other.

But what obsessed Time, Newsweek, and US News And World Report at the time?

Global cooling!

A fine short history of warming and cooling scares has recently been produced. It is available here.

If we had the media then that we do now...

Scores Killed, Hundreds Injured as Para-Military Extremists Riot in Boston Area

BOSTON , April 20, 1775 (AP)

National guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned weapons were ambushed on April 19th by elements of a paramilitary extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.

Speaking after the clash Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement. Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices. The governor, who described the group's organizers as "tea baggers," and “white separatists”, has issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government's efforts to secure law and order.

The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed widespread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed weapons. Gage issued a ban on military-style assault weapons and ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a meeting earlier between government officials and magistrates at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms. One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out "none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned over their weapons voluntarily."

Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily armed extremists who had been tipped off regarding the government's plans. During a tense standoff in Lexington 's town common, National Guard Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly fired by one of the right-wing extremists.

Eight civilians were killed in the ensuing exchange. Ironically, the local citizenry blamed government forces rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths. Before order could be restored, armed citizens from surrounding areas had descended upon the guard units. Colonel Smith, finding his forces over-matched by the armed mob, ordered a retreat.

Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state/royal joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor has also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack against the government troops. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, who have been identified as ringleaders of the extremist faction, remain at large.

The Tea Parties and The Liberal Media

On April 15, 2009, something happened that has not happened before in the memory of living Americans. For the first time, Middle America took part in a mass national protest. Millions of people actually got off their butts and took a public "right wing" stand about something.

In the recent past, the national stage was filled with white-hating Black protests like the "Million Man March" (sic), illegal alien sedition and treason protests, man-hating so called "feminist" protests, gay and lesbian protests, etc. -- all of them smaller than the Tea Parties, all of them with much more top-down organization than the Tea Parties, and all of them "progressive" or "Politically Correct" (barf). The liberal mainstream media reported on these ad nauseum, and quite sympathetically.

This time, however, something happened that scared and enraged the largely liberal and often anti-American national media. Middle America (the ones deemed stupid and racist by the national lamestream media) actually stood up in a mass protest of our government's irresponsible use of tax dollars.

As newsworthy as this is, however, most of the national media ignored the mass protests or had their reporters dismiss them as racist-driven media events. The New York Times and other major newspapers buried reports of the Tea Parties in the back pages. Where there was coverage, it was hostile. A CNN reporter, Susan Roesgen, asked a protester a question, interrupted his answer, and started barraging him with Politically Correct questions and a semi-lecture. Was she fired? No. Why would they fire her? She was doing what she was sent out to do.

(UPDATE 7/16/09: I was wrong, CNN has let her go! I have to give them credit for that.
More from Ace Of Spades here)

Actress and "Air America" (sic) bitch Janeane Garafalo opined that the whole Tea Party phenomenon was planned and attended by people who don't want to support our "Black"president. In other words, the Tea Parties are racist. That is ridiculous, but typical of the Commiecrat Left.

However, there IS a racial aspect to the Tea Parties, but not the aspect that the dishonest bitch will ever admit. Decent Middle Americans are tired of paying for the race-based "Affirmative Action" welfare plantations that leftist politicians and people like Garafolo have used and continue to use for political power. For years, decent and honest people who pointed this out were smeared by Garafolo and her media allies. But perhaps the times are changing. Perhaps a significant number of decent Americans are no longer willing to be afraid to speak out for fear of being called racist. Perhaps they are beginning to see that they are actually the victims of reverse racism more often than not. Perhaps they are tired of being identified as American villains and as the world's villains.

Middle America has had to bear the brunt of the racial and economic problems that the Left has foisted upon America for the last two decades (in other words, ever since the Left's idealized Sandinistas and Soviets fell apart and they changed tactics and focused upon the Achilles Heel of race relations). It is just possible that Middle America is starting to wake up. And this despite most television networks either ignoring the protests or dealing with them in a dishonest and condescending manner. Having been denigrated, robbed of their rights, and indoctrinated in "multicultural" (multicommunist) guilt, Middle America has for two decades been on the retreat. Perhaps that is changing.

So what finally got these people concerned? No, Janeane Garafolo, it wasn't anxiety about "people of color", you lying bitch. In fact, the Asian American and Mexican and other Hispanic American people in my area who run businesses were there in droves too. No, what got these people concerned was and still is the ways their tax dollars are being used. They are tired of their money being stolen by the government for things of which they disapprove. Of course, the liberal Demunists and RINO Republicans in the government have always used taxpayers' dollars to support their own political and social agendas. But now we are in an economic crisis, and the great masses appear to be paying attention.

For example, anyone with half a brain understands that the threat of Affirmative Action legal shakedowns (the stick), combined with indulgent underwriting by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the carrot), led banks to grant loans to too many people who could not pay them back. In addition, politically rigged unions and poor management have led some of our leading industries into near bankruptcy. George Bush responded to these two crises with an allegedly one-time bailout for failing financial institutions and for the struggling automobile industry. However, Barack Obama took this many steps further, and by spending more money at one time than had been spent in total by all other presidential administrations in our history, guaranteed that generations to come will be strapped by a monstrous, insurmountable debt. Why? In order to bolster our economy on a short-term basis. In addition to wild spending of an unprecedented nature, Obama also fired the CEO of an auto company and essentially gave control of the company to the U.S. government. Since then, the U.S. government has enacted policies that require banks to go under government control.

According to polls, the American people disapproved of bailouts, discovering in the process that what the American people want is irrelevant to America's national politicians. Nobody comes to bail out Middle America, do they? In truth, no government in history, American or otherwise, has ever been able to spend itself out of debt and out of deflation without paying for it a short time later with massive inflation. Since nobody seemed to be listening, a sizable number of people who understand this fact took to the streets.

Finally, many Americans are beginning to see that the government's policy is not about wise stewardship of their tax dollars but about ushering in more government control. So middle class Americans are finally protesting. They don't seem any longer willing to put up with their tax dollars being used to lower prosperous and hard-working middle class citizens into the level of poverty. The American middle class is tired of subsidizing both the failed rich and the criminal poor. They are also tired of their tax dollars being used to support a welfare system for illegal aliens and trashy people of all colors that threaten to take over American institutions and culture by virtue of higher birth rates. More power to these awakening Americans.

Of course, the American people often respond to governmental actions the way the liberal media leads them to respond. But it didn't work in the case of the scamnesty bill pushed by George Bush and Congress, and it wouldn't have worked in the case of bailout bills and liberal pet project funding pushed by Barack Obama and Congress if the people had a greater knowledge of economics.

There is however, one problem with the Tea Parties. There are plans to have the next ones on July 4? If this is not done early enough, it will conflict with privately scheduled parties with friends and family in a way that April 15 did not. As a result, they will be noticeably smaller, and the liberal media will write the Tea Parties off as just a one-day exercise of energy by people who have been beaten down so long by the media that they expended all they had on April 15.

What killed Kurt Cobain? Multicultural Commie Brainwashing

Fifteen years ago today, Kurt Cobain chose to end his life. Obviously, drugs, chiefly heroin, had much to do with it. To say nothing of a rather horrible family background.

But reading through Kurt Cobain's Journals and the biography Heavier Than Heaven by Charles Cross, I can't help but notice that Kurt really absorbed the "multicultural" leftist self-hating indoctrination, and I can't help but think that it was another factor that led to his suicide.

Although one suspects the monitoring of Courtney Love over both Cross' biography and all of the Journals contents (and I wonder how many pages of his Journals where he wrote less than flattering words about her were torn out and didn't get published), Journals is still fascinating and sadly revealing.

(That said, I have really had enough of the utterly unjust accusations of Courtney Love having anything to do with her husband's alleged "murder". There is no credible evidence to support any of that. Let's not forget he WAS the father of her child. One can argue that Courtney was (1) a bitch, (2) self-destructive in her own way, (3) was no help to Kurt and (4) even made matters worse for him, but that's it.)

It can be said that Kurt Cobain, in spite of not finishing high school, was occasionally witty. He had an undeveloped knack for word play. In his writings he refers to the MTV network as "Empty TV", loathing its hype while realizing that it was important to getting his music out. In another passage, he observes his fast rising stardom and writes:

I hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend.

But to find these gems one must go through lots and lots of ignorant leftist hatred, ignorant leftist posing, and perhaps most revealing, self-hatred. In a list of what Kurt liked that included "vinyl" (records), "to swim" and "girls with weird eyes", suddenly there is this:

I like to feel guilty for being a white, American male.

And this sort of leftist indoctrination is abundant throughout the Journals. Before meeting Courtney Love, he wrote this to ex-girlfriend Tobi Vail:

...all Isms feed off one another, but at the top of the food chain is still the white corporate, macho strong ox male....I mean, class ism is determined by sexism because the male decides whether all other isms exists.

"Corporate" and "macho strong ox" are contradictions in terms, but sadly that doesn't dawn on Cobain at all. Given his lack of a complete education with language combined with the Leftist indoctrination in the Olympia, Washington area, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised when he concludes in the same letter that:

Words suck.

This need to fit in with the leftist Olympia crowd was apparently strong. He had left his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington to try to make a go of it as a musician in Olympia. In his biography, Charles Cross observed that:

(Kurt) wanted nothing more than to be thought of as an Olympia sophisticate, not an Aberdeen hick. Class-ism would be a fight he would struggle with his entire life, because no matter how far away he got from Grays Harbor, he felt branded as a hillbilly. Most of the Greeners (Olympia college students) were from big cities--like many privileged college kids, their prejudice toward people from rural communities was in marked contrast to the liberalism they professed toward different races.

Typical phony liberals--not surprising. And this began to bear on Kurt as well. About his time in the Olympia, Washington punk rock scene and his dating Tobi Vail, he wrote:

Everything I do is an overly conscious and neurotic attempt at trying to prove to others that I am at least more intelligent or cool than they think.

And indeed, Kurt began to fabricate much of his past. In an interview with the gay magazine The Advocate, Kurt claimed to have been friends with a gay student at his high school, suffering bullying at the hands of homophobic students. However, his good friends Jesse Reed and Chris "Krist" Novoselic deny any such person ever existed. Kurt also claimed to have spray painted pro-gay slogans like "GOD IS GAY" and "HOMO SEX RULES" around his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington. However, friends who knew him and his one police arrest indicate that his vandalism was nothing like this, and actually consisted of silly statements like "Ain't got no how watchamacallit".

Hip poser gay-friendliness was matched by hip poser leftist anti-Americanism. After the smashing victory of the first Iraq War, he wrote a letter to Eugene Kelly of the Vaselines, a band he admired, where he complained about the sidewalk sale of:

Desert Storm trading cards, flags, bumper stickers....When I walk down the street, I feel like I'm at a Nuremburg rally.

Given that Saddam attacked Israel, dreamed of another holocaust, and was feeding his dissidents through wood chippers and putting women into "rape rooms", this statement is especially appalling. But such is the indoctrination of the Left.

Kurt's Journals also reveal an obsession with abortion. In his suicide note, he regretted "the self-destructive death rocker" he had become, and his journals show that he had been cultivating a personal culture of death for several years. Beginning in his Olympia years, he would often copy down in his journals and elsewhere (reportedly as graffiti) the slogans "Abort Christ" and "Mandatory Breeding Laws Now". Between dropping his first girlfriend/muse Tracy Marander (with whom, in retrospect, he should have stayed) and meeting Courtney Love, Kurt dated and bedded his share of leftist "riot grrls", Tobi Vail among them, and perhaps these leftist and pro-abortion platitudes were just a way to please and hop into bed with the ladies.

However, from reading his journals, I get the impression that Kurt thought that the "Politically Incorrect" people didn't deserve to live. Only one day it must have dawned upon him that *he* was one of those people who didn't deserve to live, either.

And yet, for all his leftist posing, there was something very conservative at the heart of Kurt Cobain's music, something that was an angry reaction to the leftist hipness of the late 1960's. He wrote frequently about how betrayed he felt when his parents divorced, and how he longed for a traditional mom and dad situation. The song "Territorial Pissings", with its opening mockery of the hippie era, was a big signal.

Steven Capozzola, "San Francisco Herald" e-zine columnist, explains in "A Brief Reflection on Kurt Cobain...":

I once had the chance to talk with one of the major figures of the Sixties, one of the main characters profiled in Tom Wolfe's ‘Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.' This fellow had been intimately associated with psychedelia, rock ‘n roll, and the Counterculture. We happened to talk about rock music and began to discuss Kurt Cobain. This famed Sixties fellow sneered at Cobain, calling him “insipid" and “an idiot." I told him how strongly I disagreed, at which point he commented that Cobain's music was “garbage."

What I found most interesting, though, was that the guy didn't have the slightest idea why Cobain had succeeded. This Sixties figure had his money and his house and his Generation X children, but he had no awareness of single-parent homes, mass divorce, children of alcoholics, stabbings in schools, shootings in school, all the things that his Sixties generation had wrought. For me, one glance at Cobain, one listen to him speaking to a reporter, and I felt a kinship. I knew he'd been through the same grief as the rest of us. He was pissed-off. That anger is what scared the hell out of the Sixties fellow.

And in spite of his leftist indoctrination and his obvious self-destruction, I must admit the guy did in large part speak for Generation X. I was born just a few months after Kurt, and he summed up how we all felt about life at the time.

It was late 1991 and I had just turned 24 when "Nevermind" hit the airwaves. I had just graduated from the University of California at Berkeley the previous spring, and I was feeling a whole lot of malaise. While I was a full-time student, I felt the same malaise, but I thought that it was just temporary, that I was just serving time, that things were going to be great once I graduated and left the "politically correct" crap. I thought I would work a good job in a glass box in the Financial District, and while I knew I would have to kowtow to some boss or another, and he or she might even be really nasty, I figured at least I would get paid enough for a nice little condo or townhome in the East Bay or Peninsula burbs. And once I had "the career thing" in order, I might even achieve "the relationship thing".

But that didn't happen. Opportunities dried up or were otherwise non-existent for new grads in the recession of 1990-1994, and I found myself interviewing for what few jobs there were along side laid off older fellows with years of experience already. Worse still, in those job interviews, I discovered that the "politically correct" crap had burst out of campus and infiltrated into the workplace! Nor were even the crummiest of rentals all that affordable. Eventually, I gave up, came home to Ma and Pa, and became an office temp for a host of Silicon Valley electronics firms. I was stuck in that rut for the next several years, while studying to obtain various professional credentials (CPA, Tax Preparer, Property Manager, Broker)

The despair I felt in the 1980's, days of high school and university, was due to not being able to get to the party fast enough. The despair I felt in 1992 was of knowing that:
--The party was over, and that there probably never would be another party like it.
--All those hopes and dreams I had in college were unrealistic and weren't going to come true.
--My education was in large measure a ripoff.
--Life was a LOT more complicated than I thought it was.
--I could trust hardly anything or hardly anybody.

During that malaise period, Kurt and Nirvana wrote songs about angst, alienation, and depression that really hit home for me (plus they had a great beat and you could rock out to them). And for a time, it seemed to an ignorant observer like me that Cobain had triumphed, had turned his inner demons into money, had found a kindred soul in Courtney Love and had a baby. And despite diminished career prospects, perhaps Generation X could have a happy ending after all.

It wasn't just Cobain either. I remember when those punk kids in Green Day were just high school kids happy to get a gig at The Gilman Street Project in Berkeley and play before 30 people. In 1993 they were appearing on Saturday Night Live. So anything was possible.

And 4 days after he did it, while I was in the middle of studying for the upcoming Certified Public Accountant exams, I heard the news that Kurt Cobain -- the media's official Generation X spokesperson, the man who had put our disappointments and frustrations to music, good music that we could rock out to and escape our disappointments, if only for three minutes, the man who seemingly had achieved wild success from humble origins -- had blown his brains out.

To paraphrase that Edwin Arlington Robinson "Richard Cory" poem:

"And on I worked, and went to school by night, and couldn't get any pussy, and cursed my lack of bread, and Kurt Cobain, one rainy spring night, went home and put a shotgun to his head."

Meanwhile, Spencer Elden, the naked baby on the cover of Nevermind, is now 17 going on 18:

And Tracy Marander, Kurt's first love (and the woman he should have stayed with if he had had any sense), is now 44 years old, married, and a mother of two:

After having lived with Cobain for three years in Olympia, Wash., Marander still
has artwork potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Her collection
consists of four paintings and an oil pastel, all made when Cobain was in his
early 20s, before the world knew the word "grunge." One painting depicts a white
skeletal figure with knees upraised--a self-portrait with a touch of tortured
German expressionism. "Kurt always thought he was too skinny," she says. Other
subjects include fetuses, a homeless man and even Charles Manson. "He didn't
paint happy-looking flowery stuff."

A married stay-at-home mom....Marander says she'd consider unloading one or two pieces to put a down payment on a house or send her two children to college. The rest she'd like to save for their inheritance. "Some guy harassed me for two weeks to sell him something," she says.

Here are four photos of her, two from when she was with Kurt 20 odd years ago, and two recent ones:

Life goes on, and those of us who don't kill ourselves get older.

What's in the Porkulus Monster?

Here's Some of What's in The So-Called "Stimulus" (A complete breakdown here):
$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
$380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children welfare program
$300 million for grants to combat "violence against women"
$2 billion for federal child-care block grants
$6 billion for university building projects
$15 billion added to Pell Grant college scholarships
$4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for "youths"
$1 billion for community-development block grants
$4.2 billion for "neighborhood stabilization activities" (funds for ACORN and other radical groups)
$650 million for digital-TV coupons
$90 million to educate "vulnerable populations" (more money for radical activists non-profits, such as ACORN)
$83 billion for the earned income credit (which are just "tax refund" payments to people who don't pay taxes)
$150 million for the Smithsonian
$34 million to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
$500 million for improvement projects for National Institutes of Health facilities
$44 million for repairs to Department of Agriculture headquarters
$350 million for Agriculture Department computers
$88 million to help move the Public Health Service into a new building
$448 million for constructing a new Homeland Security Department headquarters
$600 million to convert the federal auto fleet to hybrids
$450 million for NASA (for "climate-research missions")
$600 million for NOAA (for "climate modeling")
$1 billion for the Census Bureau
$89 billion for Medicaid
$30 billion for COBRA insurance extension
$36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits
$20 billion for food stamps
$850 million for Amtrak
$87 million for a polar icebreaking ship
$1.7 billion for the National Park System
$55 million for Historic Preservation Fund
$7.6 billion for "rural community advancement programs"
$150 million for agricultural-commodity purchases
$150 million for "producers of livestock, honeybees, and farm-raised fish"
$2 billion for renewable-energy research ($400 million of which is for global-warming research)
$2 billion for a "clean coal" power plant in Illinois
$6.2 billion for the Weatherization Assistance Program
$3.5 billion for energy-efficiency and conservation block grants
$3.4 billion for the State Energy Program
$200 million for state and local electric-transport projects
$300 million for energy-efficient-appliance rebate programs
$400 million for hybrid cars for state and local governments
$1 billion for the manufacturing of advanced batteries
$1.5 billion for green-technology loan guarantees
$8 billion for innovative-technology loan-guarantee program
$2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects
$4.5 billion for electricity grid
$79 billion for State Fiscal Stabilization Fund

Adding all of the above up, that's just $420 billion, 926 million of it.

This will not help the economy. This will further destroy our economy. This is a massive transfer of wealth from citizens and businesses to government, labor unions, and far-left non-profit organizations. The legislation also effectively repeals welfare reform, the single most successful domestic policy of the 1990s.

US Troops Are Getting Too Fat!

So says liberal jackass Gregg Zoroya in USA Today.

The number of troops diagnosed as overweight or obese has more than doubled since the start of the Iraq war, yet another example of stress and strains of continuing combat deployments, according to a recent Pentagon study.

Let me see if I have this right....Obesity is in large part a product of inactivity. Being deployed in a war zone entails many hazards, but becoming a couch potato is not one of them. If servicemen really are packing on the pounds while deployed in Iraq, it doesn't mean they're too stressed out, but that they don't have enough to do over there.

As it turns out, however, Zoroya's story is remarkably thin (bad pun, I know). Just for starters, the headline is wrong in declaring that obesity has doubled. Here's what the piece actually says:

From 1998 to 2002, the number of servicemembers diagnosed as overweight remained steady at about one or two out of 100. But those numbers increased after 2003, according to the study, and today nearly one in 20 are diagnosed as clinically
overweight.

Zoroya's lead paragraph combines "overweight" and "obese," which are two *different* levels of weight, and the headline writer settled on the latter, which is inaccurate, although obviously both more sensational and a shorter word. But all the study finds is that the percentage of overweight servicemen has increased, to 5% from 1% or 2%. Wow. Big deal.

The military has physical-fitness requirements, so that the likelihood of a soldier being *obese* is quite slim.

By contrast, Zoroya writes, "one in five Americans between ages 18 to 34 is obese, the study says." In other words, by the study's numbers, a young American adult not in the service is four times as likely to be *obese* as a military man is to be merely *overweight*, which is a lower weight level.

And even then, some obvious questions need to be asked:

1) Are the numbers adjusted for age? If not, it may be that the expanding number of overweight soldiers is a function of the average soldier's being older, as a result of higher re-enlistment and the deployment of reserve and National Guard units into active duty.

2) Are servicemen--and especially older servicemen--more likely to be examined by military physicians during wartime than peacetime?

The most amusing flaw in this story, though, is that Zoroya quotes the study as saying the exact opposite of what the reporter claims it says:

"Stress and return from deployment were the most frequently cited reasons" for gaining weight, the study said.

Not deployment--return from deployment. This makes perfect sense: On coming home after months in a war zone to the land of McDonald's, home cooking and alcohol, who wouldn't indulge enough to put on some pounds?

There is a reason for this new liberal media tack. They have realized that they can't smear our brave troops as monsters and baby-killers anymore, so now they fall over themselves to portray them as victims, unfortunates, and otherwise losers. The media depiction of vets as victims is obviously superior to its depiction of them as monsters, but it is full of its own condescension.

Porkulus Health Care

The bill will allow HHS to decide who is worth spending money on for medical care.

Feeling old? Just die and save the feds from making the decision for you.

Only In San Fransicko

San Francisco officials seek toilet torcher

Investigators are puzzled by wave of potty pyromania

SAN FRANCISCO - Construction workers are anxious and investigators are puzzled. Someone has been sending San Francisco's portable toilets up in flames in a wave of potty pyromania.

"It's an outrage," said Scott Johnson, a 57-year-old contractor who has been working on apartment building renovations on Russian Hill, the elegant neighborhood that is home to famously crooked Lombard Street and has had most of the fires.

Since November, at least 20 of the ubiquitous construction site toilets have been set afire in the city, creating a trail of malodorous wreckage and causing an estimated $50,000 in property damage, according to fire officials.

Most fires set at night

Investigators have little to go on. Most of the fires have been set at night, although one portable potty burst into flames during a recent afternoon.

"Somebody's getting very bold," said Fire Department Lt. Mindy Talmadge. It's not unheard of for vandals to strike the portable restrooms but "this is unusual," she said.

Contractors have been trying to foil the attacks by securing or camouflaging their industrial outhouses. A walk around Russian Hill last week found almost none of the familiar bright blue toilets, save for one lashed to a large metal trash bin and another tucked discreetly behind folds of black material.

Theories vary on who is responsible.

"Kids would be my guess," said Johnson.

Restroom arson claims units

Alex Rodriguez, president of Concord-based Far West Sanitation & Storage Containers, thinks whoever is doing it is motivated by the thrill of lawlessness, "trying to play catch-and-seek with the police." His company has lost a couple of units to the restroom arson.

The loss of a portable toilet can amount to several hundred dollars.

Plus, there is the unenviable job of cleaning up a disgusting mess, and there is the threat that a fire could spread.

"It kind of worries me and worries everybody that I talk to," Rodriguez said. "These people, I don't think they're criminals, but they are kind of out of their minds to do that."

Inauguration Day Psalm

PSALM 2008-2012
FIRST BOOK OF DEMOCRAT

OBAMA IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT.
HE LEADETH ME BESIDE STILL FACTORIES.
HE RESTORETH MY FAITH IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
HE GUIDETH ME IN THE PATH OF UNEMPLOYMENT.
YEA, THOUGH I WALK THROUGHT THE VALLEY OF THE BREAD LINE,
I SHALL NOT GO HUNGRY.
OBAMA HAS ANOINTED MY INCOME WITH TAXES,
MY EXPENSES RUNNETH OVER MY INCOME,
SURELY, POVERTY AND HARD LIVING WILL FOLLOW ME ALL THE DAYS OF MY LIFE.
THE DEMOCRATS AND I WILL LIVE FOREVER, IN A RENTED HOME.
BUT I AM GLAD I AM AN AMERICAN,
I AM GLAD THAT I AM FREE.
BUT I WISH I WAS A DOG
AND OBAMA WAS A TREE

PETA's ironic Google Ad

It doesn't get better than this for Ingrid Newkirk and her bad of vegan communists.

These are people who want us to eat like we lived under the rule of Pol Pot, then they can impose that sort of rule upon us--all for our own good, of course.

I used to think these people were naive bambi-ists who never had a pet cat. (Seriously, cats will teach you just how cruel and carnivorous nature is). And for some of these liberal dupie-dupes, that is the case.

But as for the ringleaders like Ingrid Newkirk? She and her kind are not dumb. They know perfectly well that Mother Nature can be a real bitch. They like it that way. They want everyone (except themselves) to be poor. They hate humanity. Really, they do.

Talk to an "animal rights" liberal. Talk to many people on the Left, for that matter. See if they can get through two minutes of conversation without making some kind of insulting remark about Americans or some self-loathing remark about humans in general. Liberals hate the world as it is, and hate other people. They have their own fantasy of how things should be, and loathe the real world because it isn't their fantasy.

Think of how often they fantasize about American defeat in Iraq, which would mean the death of millions. You doubt that? Remember how the older ones among them cheered American defeats in South Vietnam and Cambodia, which meant the deaths of millions.

Think about how they prefer plants and animals to people. Think about how much contempt and hatred they have for every aspect of modern American life.

They are pure, distilled evil. They want you to die. And sadly, they are now in control of many levels of government and the media in our country.

Larger image of Omaha Steaks ad for "Sea Kittens" here.

Woo hoo! California is dead last in respect for life

At least according to "Americans United For Life".

Their criteria is not just based upon abortion, but also upon other factors, like the stem cell hulabaloo.

But what about those of us who just oppose state funding of foetal stem cell research because 5 years later it has proven to be nothing but a corporate welfare pipe dream?

The real Bush legacy: Why the Left hates him so

So today is President Bush's last day. Gee, I thought Chimpy Bushitler was supposed to have a coup by now.

I have always wondered about the visceral hatred shown toward Bush by the Left. Was it due to his very narrow victory in 2000? Possibly. Was it due to his religion? Perhaps, although one wonders what these militant atheists are so afraid of?

Certainly, it WASN'T because he thwarted their schemes to increase the nanny-state; heck, he joined in with Ted (Glug-Glug-Drunk-Drunk) Kennedy to expand the Federal Department of Education, which once upon a time we were *supposed* to abolish and send back to the state governments where it belonged. Bush also signed onto bogus and fraudulent "Comprehensive Immigration Reform."

So what was the reason behind all the Bush hatred exactly? William McGurn has an idea: it was because Bush didn't lose in Iraq like he was supposed to:

Simply put, there are those who will never forgive Mr. Bush for not losing a war they had all declared unwinnable.

Here in the afterglow of the turnaround led by Gen. David Petraeus, it's easy to forget what the smart set was saying two years ago -- and how categorical they all were in their certainty. The president was a simpleton, it was agreed. Didn't he know that Iraq was a civil war, and the only answer was to get out as fast as we could?

(...)

For many of these critics, the template for understanding Iraq was Vietnam -- especially after things started to get tough. In terms of the wars themselves, of course, there is almost no parallel between Vietnam and Iraq: The enemies are different, the fighting on the ground is different, the involvement of other powers is different, and so on.

Still, the operating metaphor of Vietnam has never been military. For the most part, it is political. And in this realm, we saw history repeat itself: a failure of nerve among the same class that endorsed the original action.

As with Vietnam, with Iraq the failure of nerve was most clear in Congress. For example, of the five active Democratic senators who sought the nomination, four voted in favor of the Iraqi intervention before discovering their antiwar selves.

As in Vietnam too, rather than finding their judgment questioned, those who flip-flopped on the war were held up as voices of reason. In a memorable editorial advocating a pullout, the New York Times gave voice to the chilling possibilities that this new realism was willing to accept in the name of bringing our soldiers home.

"Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave," read the editorial. "There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide." Even genocide. With no hint of irony, the Times nevertheless went on to conclude that it would be even worse if we stayed.

Worse still, Bush turned the Vietnam analogy around on the leftists, and then they *really* started squealing....

This is Vietnam thinking. And the president never accepted it. That was why his critics went ape when, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he touched on the killing fields and exodus of boat people that followed America's humiliating exit off an embassy rooftop. As the Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti noted, Mr. Bush had appropriated one of their most cherished analogies -- only he drew very different lessons from it.

Mr. Bush's success in Iraq is equally infuriating, because it showed he was right and they wrong. Many in Washington have not yet admitted that, even to themselves. Mr. Obama has. We know he has because he has elected to keep Mr. Bush's secretary of defense -- not something you do with a failure.

And I suspect Obama's action is what *really* gets them steamed.

Meanwhile. Bush speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen claims that in the end, Bush will be vindicated and thought better of by history, like Harry Truman was.

My own scorecard on President Bush the Younger:

Big minuses, in this order:

1. "Hispandering" and a mixture of romantic naivete and tone deaf greedheadedness on the immigration issue. Indeed, if Bush The Younger was really serious about being a "Compassionate Conservative" who would reach out to constituencies that Republicans normally are accused of not caring about (read: BLACKS / AFRICAN AMERICANS--that's why he appointed quite a few of them), he wouldn't be hell-bent on importing another underclass that crowds them out for entry level jobs, public assistance, etc. And then that new underclass turns around and votes down the Republicans anyway!

The once solidly Republican Southwest (AZ, CO, NM, NV) has largely been lost because of this foolish Hispandering. California may have been lost as an ironic outcome of the Cold War (defense industries decline, arts and entertainment industries increase, leading to weenie liberal gains), but Hispandering made matters worse in this state as well.

2. Caving in on the auto and bank bailouts. Bush's lack of spine in this sets the tone for the rest of this auto bailout saga and any other bailouts, particularly where TARP money is involved. Bush is handing Obama a precedent - using the largely unsupervised TARP funds for any random pet project, special interest pandering scheme, etc. that he chooses - that the GOP will be hard-pressed to fight now that Bush has used it.

Not only could have Republicans argued that it was bad economics, but they could have screamed bloody murder that that was not what that money was there for and it was being used as a dirty slush fund to bail out Obama's Democrat union campaign contributors. Now that Bush has already done it, the GOP will have a harder time opposing Obama's inevitable misuse of TARP money when he gets going in office.

3. "No Child Left Behind". He didn't create the bogus Department of Education (which we all know SHOULD be a state and local matter), but he did give the Frankenstein's monster new life.

4. Signing off on "McLame-Feinbrass". "SarbOx" is a nuisance, but it's not damaging to liberty in the way that "McLame-Feinbrass" is.

5. Inability to articulate and communicate just about *any* vision at all, making even his good ideas (like Social Security reform) crippled from the outset, although I still give him kudos for even *daring* to touch what has been "the third rail" of politics.

Valiant Tried But Fails:

1. Social Security reform. Yes, it failed, but to even TOUCH the 3rd rail of USA politics was gutsy, no doubt about that.

2. Reform of Fannie and Freddie, shouted down by Barney Frank and the Professional Minority Malcontents, back in 2003 and 2005. McLame, believe it or not, also sounded the alarm early on this too.

Big pluses:

1. Roberts -- a REAL judge, in the mold of Scalia

2. Alito -- ditto

3. Iraq, which, when it is all said and done, he WILL be vindicated. Reverse Domino Theory.

4. Afghanistan, ditto. Then again, the Demunist Party Line is that this is the "Good" War, which Iraq supposedly diverted from. Which is bullshit, because Iraq is frankly a far easier task than Afghanistan, as it is not landlocked, not linked to the utterly unstable Pakistan, and has a literate population and oil revenue.

5. A new alliance with India, which I think will be very beneficial in the decades to come.

6. This was the first Administration whose Justice Departments, under both Ashcroft and Gonzales, fought for the 2nd amendment as an *individual* right, not a phony collective commie one. You can't get more libertarian than *that*. Which is also a reason why the hysteria about the Patriot Act is overblown to me. The federal "assault weapons" ban is DEAD, and I really don't think Barry O will touch it, as he doesn't want to reinvigorate that lobby and he would rather win battles elsewhere than spend political capital there.

(And I think is another reason why the lib media really hated him---here, he really did roll back their commie agenda)

For all the hysteria about Chimpy Bushitler, I don't recall anything remotely like the Waco Massacre under Attorney Generals Ashcroft and Gonzales, do you? As wacky as David Koresh and his cult may have been, the gov'ment had and still has yet to prove its case.

"Generation X" is back

Kathleen Parker thinks she has spotted a "new" trend:

...two young old friends are catching up and comparing notes over breakfast.

Anyone seated nearby quickly learns the story. They met in graduate school; both hold MBAs. Both recently joined the swelling ranks of America's unemployed.

Their shared tales, if once unthinkable, are becoming increasingly familiar. First, blue-collar jobs disappeared. Now white collars are fading. The young and briefly affluent, accustomed to earning more than $75,000, suddenly have time on their hands, the latest victims of the economic crunch.

Now what?

The young woman has some consulting work "kind of lined up." Her severance package is too large for her to qualify for unemployment, and she's not sure how long her funds will last. She might head home to visit her dad, whom she hasn't seen in a year — "too busy." Or, she always wanted to drive cross-country.

Her male companion, similarly laid off, is freelancing real estate development projects but looking for a permanent job.

Something has gone terribly wrong with the American dream. No longer is a college degree — or even an advanced degree — a guarantee of employment or job security. Suddenly, there seem to be an awful lot of "consultants" floating around, lingering longer than usual over coffee because there's no office to get back to.

Kathleen Parker obviously wasn't paying attention 14-18 years ago, when those of us who were "Generation X" were experiencing the exact same situation.

My 28-year-old niece, with whom I am staying (the rate is unbeatable), is similarly and suddenly "consulting" — mostly through the want ads on Mediabistro and Craigslist these days. The magazine for which she's been a marketing strategist is suffering financial woes and has had to cut several positions, including hers.

"Consulting" and "freelancing" are old euphemisms for a new demographic, the upscale terms for "outta work." Down on their luck, these newbies to the unemployment lines aren't living paycheck to paycheck. "We're living gig to gig," says my niece.

At least they HAVE Craigslist these days. But the euphemism "consulting" is not new either. Those of us who actuallly DID "consulting" and could not stomach the euphemism used to call it "temping", and it involved work through agencies like Adia (now Adecco), Manpower, Kelly Services, and a whole host of others. I am surprised she didn't note how people well into their twenties are moving back home to Mom and/or Dad to save money.

How many consultants can dine on the dime of a tanking economy? A new poll by Tina Brown's Daily Beast and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates confirms that the Sarabeth's pair and my niece are not isolated anecdotes but are part of a trend no one would have imagined a few years ago. "Gigonomics," Brown calls it.

For a supposedly educated Englishwoman, that term seems awfully lame.

The poll, conducted online among 500 employed Americans over 18, found that a third are working as freelancers or in two jobs. Of those who call themselves freelancers, 58 percent previously had a staff position with the company for
which they're now doing "gigs."

This not-so-rosy scenario raises questions for which there are no ready answers. How long will it last? What if they can't find even temp work?

Well, maybe they will have to "do the jobs American's won't do", and all the goo-goo nonsense about illegal immigration will stop.

In a few short days, an African American man will...

In a few short days, an African American man will move from his private residence into a much larger and infinitely more expensive one owned not by him but by the taxpayers. A vast lawn, a perimeter fence and many well trained security specialists will insulate him from the rest of us but the mere fact that this man will be residing in this house should make us all stop and count our blessings - because it proves that we live in a nation where anything is possible.

Many believed this day would never come. Most of us hoped and prayed that it would, but few of us actually believed we would live to see it. Racism is an ugly thing in all of its forms and there is little doubt that if this man had moved into this house 14 years ago, there would have been a great outcry - possibly even rioting in the streets. Today, we can all be both grateful and proud that no such mayhem will take place when this man takes up residency in this house.

This man, moving into this house at this time in our nation's history is much more than a simple change of addresses for him - it is proof of a change in our attitude as a nation. It is an amends of sorts - the righting of a great wrong. It is a symbol of our growth, and of our willingness to "judge a man, not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character."

There can be little doubt now that the vast majority of us truly believe that this man has earned both his place in history and his new address. His time in this house will not be easy - it will be fraught with danger and he will face many challenges. I am sure there will be many times when he asks himself how in the world he ended up here and like all who have gone before him, the experience will age him greatly.


But I for one will not waste an ounce of worry for his sake - because in every way a man can, he asked for this. His whole life for the past 14 years appears to have been inexorably leading this man toward this house.

It is highly probable that that in the past, despite all of his actions, racism would have kept this man out of this house. Today, I thank the Lord above that I am an American and that I live in a nation where wrongs are righted, where justice matters and where truly anything is possible.

"Who is this man?" you ask.

You think you know, don't you?

Well, guess again.....

Post sent to me courtesy of Patrick Boll, The Poemdog.

If you are going to vandalize a church....

....make sure it's the right one, says a Catholic "Liberation Theology" scumbag!

Sadly, a lot of these sorts of creeps have infiltrated the Catholic Church. Yes, they tend to be the ones who also molest the boys and mollycoddle the illegal aliens (yes Cardinal Mahony, I'm talking about you). I have to vomit at how KCBS spins it:

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) -- Vandals may have marked up the wrong church Saturday night in an apparent revolt against Proposition 8 supporters.

Black spray-painted swastikas marred the front of Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco's Castro district. Though the church itself is gay friendly, the proposed ban on gay marriage had support from prominent Catholics up to and including Pope Benedict.

Pastor Steve Meriweather told KCBS his parishioners actually share the vandals' sentiment against Prop 8. "I think it's unfortunate that they selected our community to attack," said Meriweather, "because it's the wrong one."

Some attending mass at Holy Redeemer in the heart of the Castro are calling it a hate crime. San Francisco Police have been called in to investigate.

Gee, you think? But "hate crimes" only happen when white heterosexuals are involved. Silly me, I forgot my Commiecrat Rules Of Justice.

New Years: Rex Babin's Obama Fetish

From a pathetic local editorial cartoonist, Rex Babin, in my loathsome local rag, the Sacramento Bee (Ess):

Oh Christ. Do we have to politicize New Years too? Why don't all of you saps go suck off Obama's you-know-what as well? And yes, this would be just as lame if not lamer if "Baby New Year" was a hypothetical Republican candidate.

An atheist justifies Christianity

Matthew Parris, although an athiest, makes a case for Christianity based upon his experiences in Africa:

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

He first used to praise the missionary good works, while discounting their faith. But he admits that Christianity also changed the Africans who embraced it:

Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.
(...)
Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

How did this happen? Parris dispenses with the multicommunist doublethink:

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and (is fact much worse, in) that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole
idea of a loyal opposition.

So in other words, Christianity in Africa makes democracy and individual rights possible. Mr. Parris goes on:

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. (As a result) People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps (UK and Africa), explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change (in itself). A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike shoes, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

To say nothing of enslavement by Islam, which would be even worse....

Things will get worse before they get better

It's a sour note for Christmas Eve, but HOLMAN W. JENKINS explains why in the WSJ:

....the mistake in assuming that, even if we had a coherent view of what should be done, coherent polices would therefore be implemented.

This has little relation to how policy is made in a democracy.

Policy is always bad to a degree, but long periods of prosperity tend to be self-reinforcing since powerful interests are born with the means and motive to preserve the status quo. That status quo may really be a contributor to prosperity, such as regulatory restraint and moderate tax rates. That status quo may in some respects be ill-advised, such as excessive subsidy to housing debt.

But once prosperity blows up, the quasi-virtuous policy circle becomes an unvirtuous one as new interest groups come to the fore to exploit an appetite, previously weak, to impose their costly or vindictive wish lists. And even well-meaning policy gets twisted and rendered incoherent.

It's already happening to our banking bailout. If injecting government capital to improve confidence in banks was a good idea, it did nothing to improve the banks' own confidence in their borrowers. Yet now that banks have government capital, they're being pressed to lend to politically favored constituents regardless of their own judgment about whether the borrower is good for the money.

Or take the gathering auto bailout: Taxpayer dollars are being thrown at Detroit auto makers to make them "viable," even as Congress imposes new fuel-mileage mandates requiring them to incur tens of billions in costs unlikely to be recouped from their customers -- the definition of "nonviable."

Question: Will the Republicans gear up NOW, have another "Contract With America" ready for 2010, and tell the American people, "we have REAL change if you vote for us"? I can only hope so....

A Case of Karma?

Remember Wade Sanders? He was one of the "band of brothers"-- one of only two Swift Boat veterans who supported John Kerry's presidential campaign and appeared onstage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention before Kerry's "reporting for duty" speech.

On the campaign trail, Sanders was one of Kerry's nastiest surrogates. In August 2004, he likened the president to a "trapped animal." In September, he compared Swift Boat Veterans for Truth chief John O'Neill, who respresented the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of Kerry's fellow sailors, to Josef Goebbels. He repeatedly referred to the president and his men as "chicken hawks."

This is where Karma comes in, as the term is also slang for a child molester as well as a derisive term for a nonveteran who favors a strong defense. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that he "pleaded guilty yesterday to a federal charge of possessing child pornography":

The investigation into Sanders began in October 2007, according to a statement filed in the case by San Diego FBI agent John Caruthers.

Another FBI agent working undercover signed on to a file-sharing computer network and entered a search term that is used for accessing child pornography images.

Among the responses to that search term was one for a specific computer address that the agents eventually traced to Sanders' home in South Park in San Diego. The agent then obtained a list of files that were being shared on the computer and downloaded 11 files, including at least two that contained images of child pornography.

On May 2, 2008, agents executed a search warrant at Sanders' home and seized his computer. During the search, Sanders admitted he had downloaded child pornography using the file-sharing program, but said he deleted the files once he noticed they were downloaded, according to the FBI statement.

Sanders acknowledged in court that he had "possessed computer files containing 600 images of minors, including a 21-minute video that depicted girls engaging in sex acts with an adult man." But don't worry--his motives were "pure and innocent":

In a telephone interview last night, Sanders said he had downloaded the files as part of his research for an article on the sexual exploitation of children in foreign countries. He said his work for the Clinton administration had included aiding victims of child sex abuse in the former Yugoslavia.

"I have no sexual attraction to children whatsoever," Sanders said. "There was no evil intent."

Sanders, a lawyer, said he didn't realize federal child pornography laws barred downloading or viewing the material even by researchers. He said that is why he decided to plead guilty.

"I thought since my motives were pure and innocent, that would make a difference," he said. "I'm technically guilty of the crime."

This explanation sounds familiar. I remember Bernie Ward, the liberal--no, make that communist; this guy used to regularly perform political fellatio on the Sandinistas and Fidel Castro's banditos in Cuba--San Francisco talk-show host who in August was sentenced to seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to distribution of child pornography. As the San Jose Mercury News reported, he claimed he was working on a book:

[Ward's] lawyer urged [Judge Vaughn] Walker to impose the lowest possible sentence, saying Ward began downloading the images as part of journalism research that went awry, spiralling out of control when he began drinking heavily. Doron Weinberg, Ward's attorney, told Walker the child porn downloading "spanned a brief period in an exemplary life.''

Mind you, the prosecution of Bernie Ward began after:

...an investigation that was triggered by his online chats with an online dominatrix who turned him in to police when she grew concerned about images he had of young children.

It gets better:

The government's court documents alleged that Ward possessed images of sex acts on children as young as three years old, and revealed his online exchanges with the dominatrix in which he discussed his sexual attraction to children."These images depicted these minors suffering the most horrific torment,'' Steve Grocki, a Justice Department lawyer who led the Ward prosecution, said to Walker. "He traded in the currency of human suffering.

Don't you just know odd things like that can happen when journalism research goes awry?

Self-righteous Sanders used to say that "Those of us who are real swift boaters know something about judgment and responsibility for our decisions."

Perhaps he studied the kiddie porn "in a fashion reminiscient of Jen-Jiss Caan", like his buddy John Kerry would say.

Thomas Sowell: The Meaning of Mumbai

Thomas Sowell hits hard on the Leftist fools and / or traitors again:

Will the horrors unleashed by Islamic terrorists in Mumbai cause any second thoughts by those who are so anxious to start weakening the American security systems currently in place, including government interceptions of international phone calls and the holding of terrorists at Guantanamo?

Maybe. But never underestimate partisan blindness in Washington or in the mainstream media where, if the Bush administration did it, then it must be wrong.

Contrary to some of the more mawkish notions of what a government is supposed to be, its top job is the protection of the people. Nobody on 9/11 would have thought that we would see nothing comparable again in this country for seven long years.

Many people seem to have forgotten how, in the wake of 9/11, every great national event — the World Series, Christmas, New Year's, the Super Bowl — was under the shadow of a fear that this was when the terrorists would strike again.

They didn't strike again here, even though they have struck in Spain, Indonesia, England and India, among other places. Does anyone imagine that this was because they didn't want to hit America again?

Could this have had anything to do with all the security precautions that liberals have been complaining about so bitterly, from the interception of international phone calls to forcing information out of captured terrorists?

So they want to "Call In Gay" to work tomorrow...

It just does not stop, and it won't until the judicial tyrants rear their ugly heads again.

"I can't make it to work today. I feel faaaabulous..."

The only people who can get away with this are the ones who work for guilty liberals who sympathize with them in the first place. Hence, their action will have no impact.

In a tight job market this is a fine way to let your employer know you are dispensible and easily replaced! "Call in gay" day and watch how fast your head spins when your out of a job! Then again, that's the plan, isn't it? Next: Gays launch class action lawsuit over workplace firings, claim dismissals related to absenteeism are "discrimination".

This is apparently inspired by leftist illegal alien coddlers who wanted "A Day Without A Mexican". Did anyone even notice that one? Let's see outside of the entertainment, hair care and fashion industries, crucial to be sure, what is there maybe 1-2 gays per 100 employees? Yes, that should REALLY shutdown the economy. Can we just call it a "Day without drama" instead?

Good thoughts courtesy of Brian Corbino:

You are judged by the company you keep. And in the era of identity politics, "the company you keep" has been expanded.

Those on the left wanted to pursue identity politics so they could become more powerful. Well, now that whole thing is getting in the way of (their) individualism. How's that working out for ya?

More good thoughts:

That's as may be, but whether you voted for them or not, they (militant leftists) have become the public face of all gays.

Just as Hamas has become the public face of all muslims.

When normal members of subgroup X refuse to stand up and shout "you do not speak for me, douchebag!", then you oughtn't be surprised when people think that all members of X are douchebags.

Auburn Dam Stopped Again

Damn the Luddite eco-fiends. In a state prone having either a drought or a flood every 3-4 years (the El Nin~o effect), and badly in need of clean renewable (i.e., hydroelectric) energy, we can never have enough dams. Those who get goo-goo over "wild and scenic rivers" need to be committed.

Damn them to hell. The eco-fiends scared us with phony earthquake claims (somehow mysteriously, earth and rockfill dams like Oroville and Lake Berryessa seem to have no problem with this).

Let's see, we had heavy rains and snows in January 2008, which we couldn't entirely store behind Folsom. Then we had a drier than normal February and March 2008, and by late spring they were issuing drought warnings. When everything west of Watt Avenue is under water some very rainy winter, or when nothing comes out of our taps, someone will come up with the bright idea to revisit Auburn Dam.

The "no new dams" approach to water supply, like the "no new roads" approach to traffic, has just been wonderful, hasn't it? We didn't build the infrastructure, and people came anyway.

It seems that Auburn dam opponents are of the belief that "there are too many people in California", and that development should be curtailed for the sake of the environment, and that Auburn Dam would only spur more development. Sorry, but the facts are that:

(1) even in spite of no major dams and water infrastructure since the late 1960's, people kept on coming anyway in the 1970's and 1980's.

(2) If you really feel that too many people and too much development is a problem, then you should be demanding immigration restrictions. From 1990 to 2000, California actually lost U.S. citizens, per the Census figures. The net outmigration of U.S. citizens from California was offset by increases in legal immigrants and resident aliens and presumably even more so by illegal aliens. Even the "dot-com" economic recovery of the late 1990's did not reverse that. And I will wager that the Census figures from 2000 to 2010 will be much the same.

If the eco-luddites were serious about immigration restriction, I would take their carping about "evil" development seriously.

Why Mumbai (Bombay) got hit

Here is a letter that gun expert Doctor Ignatius Piazza received from someone in India who knows the real reason why terrorists would strike Mumbai, India over Tel Aviv, Israel or even Houston, Texas. You won’t see this talked about on the evening news…

India has draconian gun laws.

To currently keep a gun you have demonstrate a direct threat on your life, and surrender it as soon as the threat is gone. You need to go to the police station every month and show your gun for a checkup to the police officer there, show the bullets you have, in case if you fired them then show the casings and tell them where you used them.

Not just civilians even police officers who use their weapons have to collect the casings to be included in their report of where and why did they fire their weapon.

In simple words, it is an example of a society which has completely disarmed itself. It is like a bunch of sheep.

The terrorists which landed in Mumbai through sea routes were armed to the teeth.

They got into a car, and shot people, moved a bit forward, threw a grenade here and there, and moved forward again to wreck havoc. They knew one thing, it will be impossible for the police to react in that short amount of time, and public has no guns to use on them.

They finally got into the Five Star hotels where they would find plenty of foreigners, mainly American, British and Israeli citizens and held them hostages. Again nobody has any guns anywhere.

The Indian government quickly mobilized their police officers, but the best of them were shot dead by the terrorists.

I have made the case for Gun Rights in India from a long time, and every time I talk about relaxing the gun laws, I am usually kicked out of the discussions and banned from online forums. One moderator even said “We take proud in being a society free from guns, and where Guns are not easily
accessible to people.”

Indians are always afraid of having a “gun culture”(the term given to
America’s fascination with guns), coming to India. Every time there is a school
shooting incident in India, they claim “we’re afraid that gun culture has come
to India”.

What they never talk about the number of deaths, and gang rapes which
can be prevented by guns during a riot. India may not have a gun culture, but it
definitely has a Riot Culture.

In an average riot at least a 100 people are killed and dozens of women are raped and murdered.

How are they so easily able to do such things?

Because people don’t have guns.

When a Hindu or Muslim(the biggest riots in India are among Hindus and Muslims) family which has nothing to do with riots is hiding in the safety of their house, they have nothing to defend themselves from, and a rioting gang comes in armed with nothing but Molotov cocktails and long blades.

The whole family is killed, if there are women in the house they are caught and raped then killed. If there are no women, then the family is just burnt alive.

Many people say that the rioters might be more armed than the family if gun laws are loosened, well even in that case, the rioters will not be able to go far, they will not be able to cover more houses if they keep on taking even small amount of casualties from each house.

Maybe a suicide bombing may not be prevented by civilian ownership of firearms, but an attack of Mumbai’s nature and this scale can definitely be tackled by the scores of people affected by the attacks.

Why did the terrorists attack Mumbai, India? BECAUSE THEY COULD WITH NO RESISTANCE.

Terrorists don’t attack places where they will be met with immediate and heavy resistance by an ARMED populace.

Can you imagine how fast the terrorists would be killed, along with their twisted agenda, trying to walk down a crowded street in Israel when every citizen is a soldier and everyone who chooses to be armed IS ARMED?

Even in those cities in the US, where citizens are free to carry a concealed handgun or have a shotgun or rifle in the trunk of their car or cab of their pickup truck, we could stop a handful of terrorists, preventing them from wreaking mayhem on a world stage.

Cities and countries foolish enough to disarm their citizens create a town and nation of sheep just waiting to fall prey to the wolves.

Robert Heinlein was right: An armed society is a polite society.

How Thanksgiving vindicates capitalism

A Happy Thanksgiving to all!

If you ever get the chance, do read the History Of Plymouth Plantation, the memoirs of Plymouth governor William Bradford.

The members of the Plymouth colony had arrived in the New World with a plan for collective property ownership. Reflecting the current opinion of the aristocratic class in the 1620s, their charter called for farmland to be worked communally and for the harvests to be shared.

The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice.

So what happened on this Pilgrim Commie Commune? The colonists starved. Men were unwilling to work to feed someone else’s children. Women were unwilling to cook for other women’s husbands. Fields lay largely untilled and unplanted.

And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.

Famine came as soon as they ate through their provisions. After famine came plague. Half the colony died. Unlike most socialists, they learned from their mistakes, giving each person a parcel of land to tend to for themselves.

At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other thing to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end

The results were overwhelmingly beneficial. Men worked hard, even though before they had constantly pleaded illness. Fields were not only tilled and planted but also diligently harvested. Newly enterprising colonists traded thier surplus with the surrounding Indian nation and in so doing learned to plant maize, squash and pumpkin and to rotate these crops from year to year. The harvest was bountiful, and new colonists immigrated to the thriving settlement.

This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

The colonists threw off the statist intellectual fashions of their day. They concluded that the ancient principles of private property as recorded in the Ten Commandments were superior to the utopian speculations of Plato and his 17th-century imitators. Human nature was a fact of life, self-centered, fallen. No cadre of elite philosopher kings could change the cold facts of reality.

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; and that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense.

The Extortion of E-Harmony

Damn faggot legal extortion scum....is that "hate speech"? Well, TOUGH, because this is just racketeering:

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Online dating site eHarmony will create a service for same-sex matching in a settlement of a 2005 complaint that the company's failure to offer such a service was discriminatory.

Under terms of the agreement with the New Jersey attorney general's office, eHarmony Inc. will start the service, called Compatible Partners, by March 31.

"With the launch of the Compatible Partners site, our policy is to welcome all single individuals who are genuinely seeking long-term relationships," said Antone Johnson, eHarmony vice president of legal affairs.

The company and its founder, Neil Clark Warren, admit no wrongdoing or liability.

"Even though we believed that the complaint resulted from an unfair characterization of our business, we ultimately decided it was best to settle this case with the attorney general, since litigation outcomes can be unpredictable," eHarmony attorney Theodore B. Olson said.

I understand this; it's hard to fight the coercive power of the State, but I wish they had fought this tooth-and-nail. This is nothing but extortion.

Under the settlement's terms, eHarmony will post photos of successful same-sex couple matches on the company's Web site and in promotional material. The company has also agreed to revise statements on its Web sites, handbooks and other publications to indicate that it does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

News flash! There are all kinds of dating services out there for gays, should we go sue THEM for not being more accomodating to heterosexuals?

Gee, how about letting some enterprising person set up an E-Harmony sort of service for homosexuals who seek long term commitments? Let that person or group corner that market. What is that called again? The free-enterprise system? Yes, that's right. How alien that concept increasingly is....

Some time ago, as I recall, some gay militants wanted to sue "Sandals" resorts, because their accomodations and activities were set up for for heterosexual couples. (Gee, I wonder why people who want to vacation alone didn't try to sue too?) As I recall, that was dropped because of "Olivia Travel" and some other travel agencies and resorts that catered to homosexuals wouldn't support it.

Good for them. Let Olivia Travel and the like run tours for lesbians, and the corresponding travel businesses run tours and resorts for gay men. Everybody wins!

The settlement also requires eHarmony to pay plaintiff Eric McKinley $5,000 and to pay the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights $50,000 to cover administrative expenses.

I hope Eric McKinley and his lawyers get mugged, assaulted, raped, killed and otherwise harmed. Yeah, that's "hate speech". Don't like it? Tough.

"I applaud the decision of eHarmony to settle this case and extend its matching services to those seeking same-sex relationships," said Frank Vespa-Papaleo, director of the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights.

Sure you do, you little petty tyrant. Use gays to push your power trip. God what an asshole.

Let's hear it for Elton John

A voice of sanity among the gay hysteria:

I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership. The word "marriage," I think, puts a lot of people off. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.

This has drawn the wrath of the Gay Militant Mafia here and here:

Elton, Sir Elton, I respectfully say, "You're wrong!" While in the United Kingdom, civil unions grant all the rights of marriage and are available for same and opposite sex couples, in California, only same-sex couples may have a civil union.

Gee, why do heterosexual couples need a civil union? So in other words, the real agenda of the gay militants is to devalue marriage among heterosexuals. Letting the proverbial cat out of the bag. They don't simply want equality under the law: they want to force acceptance of their sexual practices upon those who find them abhorent.

More importantly, in California, civil unions are granted the same 400 state rights as marriages but--and this is a huge but-- are ineligible for the 1069 federal marriage rights, should the Defense of Marriage Act be overturned. President-elect Barack Obama's political platform calls for a full repeal of DOMA.

That's how federalism works, nancies. Butch up and hash it out in the legislatures.

Gay Mafia wants Boycotts? Let's have Buycotts!

So the tyrants of the Left are trying to blacklist anyone who contributed to Proposition 8?

Let's go out of our way to patronize these businesses and support these people. They can make their consumer choices, I will make mine.

As it stands, I am getting ice cream from Leatherby's Creamery from now on. Ditto if I ever need catering for any reason. I didn't even know this place existed until the Bolshevik Buttpirates put out the word to boycott them.

The post election GOP factions

There are three main factions in the Republican party. 3 legs of the stool. (1) Business Cons (I include libertarians in here mostly), (2) Defense Cons, (3) Society Cons. Hey, BDS, perfect for annoying moonbat marxists!

Tensions between factions:

1. Sexuality (abortion and "gheyness" lumped in here). Bus Cons don't care, are sometimes even hedonistic on these issues (think the late Malcom Forbes here). Social Cons are fuming mad.

My take: these issues are starting to have economic reprecussions. Think about how leftist anti-family policies spurred the welfare state, and rampant crime among young men. Think about how sexual libertinism led to deadly diseases, and again lots of money that needed to be spent on public health. Bus Cons and Soc Cons need to meet each other halfway.

2. Trade. Bus Cons think Globalization is great. Soc Cons see their once steady steel mill or other such job going bye-bye and their communities torn apart. Def Cons say wait a minute, is getting our machine tools from potential enemy Red China really such a good idea?

My take: some protectionism in the name of national security is OK.

3. Immigration. Bus Cons (WSJ greedheads in particular) think this is great, cheap gardeners and maids for them. Soc Cons say there goes the neighborhood, and one needs only look at increasing race riots and the Mexican flag waving and US flag burning demonstrations last year to see their point. Def Cons see a wide open Mexican border, while we are guarding Iraq's borders with Syria and Iran?

My take: Greedheads fuck off, Lenin was right, you would sell them the rope with which they would hang us. We need all illegal immigration stopped, and a "time out" curtailment of legal immigration, until we can expunge the "multicultural" Leftist poison from the body politic.

4. Size of Government: Def Cons think Big Gov't okay. Big Military means to some extent big government. Heck, even the Interstate Highway System and Bureau of Reclamation water and power projects were justified in the name of national security. Bus Cons fuming, Social Cons supportive or opposed depending upon how it positively or negatively impacts their communities.

My take: Limit the *tasks* government takes on, rather than focusing so much on the size. A VERY Big Defense Department made sense during WW2 and Cold War, for example. Education, Health Care and the like should be sent down to state and local levels as much as humanly possible. Abolish Dept of Ed--for real.

A Gay Against "Gay Marriage"

An interesting point of view.

I mean it, let's not panic

Bill Whittle sees the very silver lining in the supposedly dark clouds:

So consider this, my fellows in arms:

On Tuesday, the Left -- armed with the most attractive, eloquent, young, hip and charismatic candidate I have seen with my adult eyes, a candidate shielded by a media so overtly that it can never be such a shield again, who appeared after eight years of an historically unpopular President, in the midst of two undefended wars and at the time of the worst financial crisis since the Depression and whose praises were sung by every movie, television and musical icon without pause or challenge for 20 months… who ran against the oldest nominee in the country’s history, against a campaign rent with internal disarray and determined not to attack in the one area where attack could have succeeded, and who was out-spent no less than seven-to-one in a cycle where not a single debate question was unfavorable to his opponent – that historic victory, that perfect storm of opportunity…

Yielded a result of 52%.

Folks, we are going to lick these people out of their boots {next time around}.

It's debatable that this is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; the late 1970's and even the early 1990's were worse so far, but yes, it's bad. And that John McCain couldn't seem to point out the Affirmative Action roots of the financial disaster was truly sad.

Dennis Prager also sees silver linings. Most notably, the race card will be revealed for the despicable ploy that it is, all the nonsense about how "the world will love us again" will be debunked by hard reality, and that the Right can rethink it's approach, and stop the pork-barrelling, amnesty-granting, and entitlement granting ways that made it not much better than the Commiecrats.

But I wouldn't be so sure about that race card playing, Dennis!

Meanwhile in California:

--in spite of being propagandized by "the beautiful people" to vote NO on Prop 8
--in spite of the Yes on 8 forces being utterly outspent
--in spite of weasel wording By Attorney General Moonbeam to make Proposition 8 look sinister on the ballot ("eliminates right of gays to marry")
--in spite of the thug tactics of Prop 8 opponents (such as extorting corporations to contribute to their campaign)
--in spite of the demagoguery of the Prop 8 opponents (bogus racial comparisons, claiming that proponents want to violently attack homosexuals directly)
--in spite of this state being rather liberal (we can't even get parental NOTIFICATION about a Minor's abortion, let alone consent)....

We STILL approved Prop 8 53% to 47%!!!!!


Why throw away a winning issue? And why not preempt sleazy activist judges on a federal level with a Defense of Marriage Act? Call it a National Ban-Hammer. NOWHERE has gay marriage been approved by the people, not even Commiechussetts.

That said, I am a realist. Where I live will be pro-abortion to the end of time. If the monstrosity of Roe v. Wade is overturned as it should be, there will be 24 hour abortion mills going full blast in Truckee (Interstate 80) or Needles (Interstate 10). The difficulty in obtaining an abortion will have increased by the price of a Greyhound ticket. The pro-life side of the GOP will have to account for that and make allowance for it if they are ever to get pro-gun, pro-defense, tax cutting, gov't program slashing conservatives elected in CA and quite a few other states.

So perhaps we conservatives should practice "triage" with social issues. Trumpet the winners (immigration, keeping the definition of marriage as it has always been), and cut loose others in the name of federalism (abortion, domestic partnerships).

The Obamunst as President? Let's not panic...

Everybody stop panicking!

Congress, with the urging and support of the administration, would spend time
'investigating' the 'crimes' of the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress. These hearings would have little purpose other than to tarnish the Republican party and avoid a repeat of the 1994 elections.

Let them try. The truth would come out about the Demunists' even greater scandals, even with a slanted liberal media.

Seriously, folks, if the Obamunist wins and the Commiecrats maintain their *very* shaky majority in Congress, then it's 1977-1980 at worst or 1993-1994 at best all over again. Which means bad times. (Everybody buy gold and guns and reread either (1) Howard Ruff's "How To Prosper During the Coming Bad Years" if the Obamunists unleash inflation, or (2) James Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg,'s "The Great Reckoning" if Obamunist protectionism causes deflation).

But eventually it means a massive Republican revival!!!!

Don't forget that now, as then, there are / were sizeable numbers of non-commie Democrats--they were the ones who won back the Congress for Democrats in 1996. Webb, Breaux, Baucus, and the like and other Blue Dogs and Boll Weevils will not go Commiecrat.

The "Fairness Doctrine?" (sic) They couldn't revive it when the Commiecrats were at high tide in 1993.

Buck up--we will retrench, the Obamunist will really fuck things up (never before have we seen such an unqualified putz running for office--I long for Hillary now!), and we will re-emerge triumphant with Congressional victories that make 1994 look like chump change.

Let's just regroup for 2010. If McCain in 2008 seemed determined to sputter and stall out in the face of a hopey changey phony like Bush the Elder did in 1992, then we just have to make 2010 into 1994 again. Even granting the Demunists some victories, Congress will be nowhere near as bad as it was in 1993.

Meanwhile, VDH sees Jimmy Carter all over again:

Why do so many conservatives think that an Obama-elect might prove a centrist, and so why do they use phrases like “I pray” or “I hope” that Obama might turn out, well, not to be Obama?

Jimmy Carter did exactly what he promised: raised taxes, grew the government, told the world he had no inordinate fear of communism, trashed our (3rd World) allies as retrograde right-wing authoritarians — and we got the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian hostage-taking (have we forgotten that the “Great Satan” originated as a slur against Nobel laureate Carter?), communism in Central America, the Cambodian Holocaust, and spikes of 12% inflation, 18% interest, and 7% unemployment.

For his first two years (until 1994 Gingrich’s ‘Contract with America’ revolution, and Dick Morris’s ‘triangulation’), Bill Clinton, as promised, raised taxes, raised spending, tried to ram through socialized medicine, and by fiat wanted to force the military to accept those openly gay.

So why would any conservative think that Obama — friend of Ayers, Khalidi, Meeks, Pfleger, and Wright, veteran of mysterious campaigns in which rivals in 1996 and 2004 simply dropped out or were forced out, erstwhile advocate of repealing NAFTA, controlling guns, stopping new drilling and nuclear plants, zealot for bringing all troops home by March 2008, advocate of a trillion dollars in new spending, and raising the tax burden on the 5% who now pay 60% of the aggregate income taxes, supporter of more oppression studies and racial reparations — would not likewise try to govern as he has lived the last 20 years?

Why would anyone think that an Obama would not wish to enact the visions of those who first backed him — the Moveon.org crowd, ACORN, The Huffington Post, Sen. Reid, Rep. Pelosi, a Chris Dodd or Barney Frank — rather than the late pilers-on like Colin Powell or Scott McClellan? We should remember that, unlike the cases of Carter and Clinton, Obama would have both houses of Congress, and a (Republican) precedent of the federal government intervening into the free market, in the manner of 1932.

Wow.

The choice tomorrow

...boils down to this. McAmnesty / McClimateFraud / McMaverick still has character, even when he is wrong.

Given the unpopularity of Bush, you would think Obama would have a landslide lead. But he doesn't. Why not?

Meanwhile, the cheerleading media won't ask the hard questions, and instead focuses entirely on the Republican Veep, even when the Democrat Veep makes some amazing gaffes.

2008 California Voter Guide - by freedomfan

Okay, Curmudgeon and I see eye-to-eye on most of the issues, but there are a few differences.


Proposition 1A: Rail Boondoggle - NO
This is a financial disaster waiting to drive businesses from the state over some utopian vision of rail travel. See my post below for a longer exposition on this. The short version is: We can't afford the $10 billion, the $10 billion is just a small downpayment on total construction costs that will likely top $60 billion, and it won't do what it's supposed to do even if we had a magic pile of money to throw at this sort of nonsense.

Proposition 2: Kinder, Gentler Slaughterhouse - NO
Are food prices not already high enough? This isn't about food safety, it's about people wanting to feel good about themselves. That's great. If you want to be nice to animals, then stop eating them. Otherwise, shut up and pass the steak sauce.

Proposition 3: Hospital Pity Pork - NO

Proposition 4: Parental Notification and Waiting Period for Minor's Abortions - YES
This is a marginal call for me. I am not enthused about the extra bureaucracy needed to administer this sort of scam, but the reality is that parents have a say in what medical procedures their minor children undergo. That's really the end of the question. Prop 4 has all the necessary exceptions for cases of parental abuse/neglect and so on, so it really is a issue of parents getting the same say over this serious medical procedure that they do over a piercing or a laser tattoo removal.

Proposition 5: Non-Violent Drug Offenses. Sentencing Alternatives - YES
Putting people in jail for consensual crimes is wrong, morally and practically. It wastes valuable law enforcement resources, encourages corruption of police, enriches criminals, punishes people who aren't hurting others, crowds our prisons (when we need the space for real criminals), turns otherwise productive people into burdens on the state, creates court backlogs, and DOES VERY LITTLE TO REDUCE DRUG USE. By the way, none of that is speculation, it's all documented over and over and is, in fact, an exact repeat of what happened eight or so decades ago when the same legal regime went under the name "Prohibition". This proposition is not an answer to the broader issue, but any step away from this disaster is a step in the right direction.

Proposition 6: Police and Law Enforcement Funding - NO
This law is another wasteful expansion of the state government into areas properly handled by city and county governments. It is a giveaway to law enforcement interest groups who understand that there is a "gravy train" effect of having a constitutionally mandated minimum spending level. Every one of those mandated minimum spending laws are bad policy, even when they are in areas that are appropriate functions of state government, which this is not. Most law enforcement is local and it is so for good reasons. Prop 6 will encourage dependence of local law enforcement on state bureaucrats and politicians in Sacramento while reducing local control and responsiveness to local needs. Be very clear about this: No money that comes from Sacramento will come without Sacramento strings. That means that politicians, primarily from Los Angeles and San Francisco will determine law enforcement priorities for your community, wherever you live.

In addition, this law (and others like it) are financial stupidity, where your state taxes will be raised (this money still has to come from you) so that you can send it to Sacramento and then it can be sent back to your community. Your community can already raise its own revenues to fund your community's law enforcement priorities, and then you have confidence that the money stays in your community instead of going to pay off political favors in Sacramento.

If you honestly don't feel you are paying enough for local government services, then feel free to support local measures to vote yourself a higher bill. But, 1) don't confuse increasing the cost of a government service with improving the service. They aren't ever the same and they are often unrelated. And 2) Don't be tricked into thinking that funneling money through the state government is a good way to improve local government functions. It is the opposite - a way to put important decision-making out of reach and in the hands of those over whom you have the least influence.

Proposition 7: Renewable Energy Mandates for Power Generation - NO
This is a dumb idea. It would be fine if it merely said that government-owned utilities were subject to the same generating regulations that the private utilities are. There is no reason to hamstring one type of utility more than another.

But, the real impact of the bill is in adding further requirements to all utilities which will unarguably make power generation more expensive. Those, in turn, will morph into rules to benefit special interests like corn and saw grass farmers so that they can get a bigger cut of the "renewable" fuels market. This, of course, will increase food prices at the same time power prices rise, all the while harming the environment by putting more currently untouched land to use in growing fuel crops, increasing runoff issues, soil erosion, transportation costs, and re-inflaming issues surrounding the water rights needed to grow the fuel crops.

Proposition 8: Banning the Name "Marriage" from Same-Sex Partnerships - NO
I actually agree that the California State Supreme Court's decision this Summer was the wrong one. It was a decision to change the name of a legal agreement from one thing to another with no substantive change at all in the nature of that legal agreement, when the voters had spoken clearly about what they wanted that agreement called. In other words, gay couples with domestic partnerships already had full legal equality in every area of law that the state of California could give it. The Court just decided that those domestic partnerships should be called marriages. I agree that the Court should not have done that.

So, if this were an amendment saying that courts are only allowed to review state law and policy for substantive legal issues and not for essentially aesthetic ones, I would be for it. But, Prop 8 does not do that.

Prop 8 is an emotional reaction to a bad decision that is based on the same immature approach to policy that the bad court decision itself was: aesthetics. The Court likes domestic partnerships being called marriage and now proponents of Prop 8 want that changed back because they don't like that name. Both parties are using their power to bicker over the name. This is silliness from start to finish. Same-sex couples have the same rights as straight couples in California and this proposition does nothing to change that. On the merits, the same legal standing ought to have the same legal name. People who actually want to turn back the clock on the domestic partnership law can take on that very separate battle. Otherwise, people just wanting to feel good about getting the name they prefer, whether liberal or conservative interest groups, need to find something more important to worry about.

Proposition 9: Parole Changes - NO
It's a waste of time and energy to fund special interests under the false premise of giving victims procedural access that they either already have or have at the discretion of prosecutors, judges, and parole boards, where such discretion appropriately rests.

Proposition 10: Alternative Vehicle Boondoggle - NO
BONDS ARE NOT FREE MONEY! If people want to purchase alternative fuel vehicles, that's great. If enough people want to do that, the market for such vehicles will grow, prices will come down, and more research will pour into developing the technology. But, it is not the taxpayers' job to buy people cars or to fund corporate research and development.

Proposition 11: Redistricting - Marginal YES
These redistricting schemes come up every so often and I have not seen one yet that ended up being worth half a damn. I haven't heard a compelling case that real change will come from this one either. The reality here is that there will be a huge pool of applicants. In any pool like that, it will be possible for the state auditors to picks sixty people that politicians like and then, among those sixty, to whittle that down to the 36 most compliant, and then find eight of those who want to do the same things the politicians who select them want to do. Basically, instead of politicians drawing their districts directly, they will get to pick the people to draw the districts for them.

The US Supreme Court ruling in Reynolds v. Sims is the bottleneck in this area, and it is not due to change any time soon.

Proposition 12: Subsidies for Real Estate Purchases by Veterans - NO
As time-honored as this program may be, it is another subsidy that increases taxes and increases home prices. I happen to have great respect for this particular special interest, but this is still undeniably special interest legislation.


Well, that's it for now. We've got one week until it's all over except for counting the bodies...

Let's Derail Plans for Government-Run Trains

We've heard of the magical high-speed rail proposal, right? Proposition 1A? This is a really bad idea, writ really large. And it's a scam. People need to understand that:

1) This state does not have money to waste. We only dug out of the latest budget impasse with a shift in how early people have to pay their taxes. You can rest assured that next year we will be in the same position, but without that gimmick to use again.

2) BONDS ARE NOT FREE MONEY!!! Man, that is a frustrating point to try and get across. How blind do people have to be to the headlines to understand that leveraging your future on credit is a bad idea? If we don't have ten billion to spend today, we also don't have twenty billion to pay back over the next 30 thirty years, starting next year as a 2/3 billion dollar annual dip into the general fund just for this one bond. Let me restate that: If this passes, there will be 2/3 of a billion dollars added to required state spending starting next year that will not go away for thirty years! Well, at least we're off the hook in thirty years, right? Well, actually, that's about the point at which major rehabilitation and rebuilding costs will kick in...

3) But, nevermind that we can't afford ten billion, because the ten billion isn't even the whole admitted cost of this thing! Even the lowball initial estimate of the project (before we are hooked into this and stuck paying whatever budget overruns occur) is $45 billion. Where do proponents hope to get the other $35 billion? Magic fairies? Well, almost. Back when the dreamland figure was 'only' $25 billion, the idea was that the private companies who will take care of day-to-day operations will pony up $5 billion, which is dubious at this point. Meanwhile, the remaining $10 billion was supposed to come from the federal government. When I say, "supposed to come from", I mean that is the totally unsubstantiated wish of the project backers. The Congress has absolutely not voted to send $10 billion dollars our way. Nor should they. As broke as the California state government is, the fed is even broker. Moreover, we aren't the only ones dreaming of laying our infrastructure finances on the tracks in front of an oncoming train. Similar boondoggles are afoot in other states and the federal government can't fund our bad idea unless they agree to fund every other bad idea, too. To them, our $10 billion plea looks like a $60 or $70 billion dollar commitment to the states that are being sold this high-speed rail bill of goods. And that's before bailing out rail programs from inevitable cost-overruns and the fact that states won't be able to get business partners to pour money into this sewer.

4) So, the unaffordable $10 billion dollar project is really a really unaffordable $45 billion dollar project that would still need another $35 billion in mystery money, right? Not exactly. This project will cost way more than even the $45 billion. With cost overruns that are absolutely typical of these projects, we are looking at about a $65 billion dollar project. Look up the cost overruns in Boston's Big Dig project, which was initially supposed to cost about $6 billion In 2006 dollars) but wound up costing over 14 billion. The 1A project is way bigger than the Big Dig - it would be the biggest construction project ever taken on by any state. That leaves even more room for cost overruns.

That's not a worst case scenario. That's the realistic low number. Period. And, don't count on the federal government or private businesses deciding to flush the extra $50 billion down this toilet. We will pay for it ourselves, with even more bonds, leading to even higher taxes, and politicians whining that businesses and high-income residents are leaving the state because they are such meanies for not sticking around to pick up the tab for every dumb idea that sweeps through the state.

5) The plans don't even specify where to lay the tracks yet. That's right: there isn't even agreement on where this monstrosity should cross over from the Bay Area to the Central Valley. That will affect costs, construction time, ticket prices, transit time, and ridership.

6) The primary business case for this system is already dead. The sales pitch for this plan was that it would replace the LA-SF air traffic by making a Northern California to Southern California trip "commutable" (apologies to math majors). In other words, the trip would be like a long commute, something inconvenient but doable on a frequent basis. One could, in theory, head toward a train station at one end at a reasonable time in the morning, zip to the other end in a couple hours, have a productive day of business meetings and so on, then zip back and get home by dinner. Well, that works if the time wasted ticketing and boarding is just a few minutes and the actual trip is two hours or so, maybe two-and-a-half. But that isn't going to happen. Realistically, the trip will be well over three and a half hours. That's right. The trip is now not commutable and has become the pain-in-the-ass red-eye trip or an overnighter that will keep business travelers in the sky. So much for relieving air traffic at LAX and SFO.

Oh, and the arguments that it will be so convenient - no waiting in flip flops to be X-rayed while TSA pokes through your laptop and checks that you don't have a full-sized water bottle - are utter baloney. There is no way that a high-profile, tens-of-billions-of-dollars rail system, with hundreds of passengers on it, moving at speeds that would make a spectacular crash, will not be a terrorist target. And, there is no way there aren't going to be TSA goons making sure you aren't sneaking any deadly, deadly nail clippers on board. If you think that's not the case, you are living in a dreamland.

BTW, all that extra security at the station will mean nothing, because there will be hundreds of miles of unguardable track. To a terrorist, that still equals a spectacular crash, but without the inconvenient suicide.

7) HSR invites a nightmare of urban planning and government control of private property development. Make no mistake: Every city with a rail station or hopes of getting one will now have an incentive to "plan" private property development so that everything is rail accessible. The state will come up with another "matching fund" gimmick to encourage cities to do just that, complete with a commission to evaluate whether a city's rail access development plan meets the visions of the geniuses in Sacramento. Were you hoping to get permits to put a couple retail stores on a lot you own? "Sorry. Permits are scarce unless you are on the tram route to and from the rail station. Why don't you rent some retail space in the new Rail Mall? Golly, those well-connected guys made a mint developing that empty field and they always seem to be able to get approval for new development!" Does your community need the city to add a couple lanes to the local highway to alleviate traffic snarls? "Sorry. Our resources are focused on redesigning downtown to make it more rail-friendly."

The one advantage of this is that it will serve to highlight the inadequacy of the eminent domain "reform" the planning commissions snuck through this last Spring. If you live in a rail city or a rail-hopeful city, your property rights will be seen just as an obstacle to those trying to design a rail utopia.

8) But, spending all that money that we don't have will create thousands of jobs in California, right? Don't be silly. Even ignoring the interests costs here, the old New Deal hokum that we can borrow ourselves to economic prosperity has been something of a joke among economists outside political circles and it's no different here. The problem is that that borrowed money has to come from somewhere and it comes from investors who would otherwise be lending it to projects with more direct economic value. In other words, that money the state borrows is coming largely from money that would otherwise be available to entrepreneurs and private companies looking to expand their businesses. The state gobbling up that money makes it harder for those businesses to grow.

Meanwhile, the higher taxes needed to pay back the 1A bond loans will necessarily make it less attractive for businesses to locate here in California. I sure hope the people who vote for this understand that when we suffer sluggish growth as businesses and high-income earners look to locate in states that don't punish them as much as we do.

Anyway, that's government-run high-speed rail in short. Kids play with trains. Good for them. The rest of California needs to grow up and stop throwing money it doesn't have at pie-in-the-sky projects that won't fix actual problems.

Veep double standards...

What have we learned?

1. Objectivity is gone

2. "Feminism" is a fraud

3. Joe Biden can basically say *anything* and not get called on it.

This is not surprising. President Bush is soon not going to be the President. Who will the desperate Democrats and their leftist base have to displace/project all that rage? Who will they have to focus their own inadequacies and unacceptable feelings onto?? In anticipation of that dreadful day, they have had to find a substitute for him so they can make the upcoming election all about that person, instead of answering any questions about their ideal, blemish-free Messiah (who they project all their fantasies of perfection onto).

Sarah Palin is perfect for the part because--as in the case with Bush--her very existence is an affront to all they believe about themselves and the world. In other words, she fits their psychological needs perfectly and can become the projective vessel for all their displaced and unacceptable emotions. Obama is the probably the most unqualified person ever to run for the office of President from a major party, and Veep Joe Biden's gaffes are legendary, but Democrats in droves (and a few Republicans) have accepted the idea that somehow it is Sarah Palin's "inexperience" that is a threat.

And so is her sexuality. I don't have to recount all the insanity and utterly ridiculous assertions that have been directed her way because she happens to be a female who doesn't follow the leftist script for women and has dared to think and behave independently of their victimhood rules. But there is more to it than just that.

You see, sexuality is the ONLY thing that is really sacred to liberals. Their entire platform goes back to the deification of sex - people should be able to have as much as they want, where they want, with no moral judgment and especially no consequences. They believe we are all just rutting pigs ruled by our genitalia, and that the only true happiness of humans is in the flesh. Any attempt to place any moral judgment or legal restrictions on the consequences of unlimited sex is the ultimate threat to them. "Punished with a baby"? You betcha. That's EXACTLY how liberals look at it. Spending billions on AIDS research and drug subsidies? Of course! The public should have to share the cost of their unbridled, unclean homosexual practices, so "there isn't any moral judgment." Sex education for five year olds? Of course! The sooner they start praying to the god of their genitalia, the better!

Surely you all know that the main reason Democrats are pushing so hard for nationalized health care is so that taxpayers will pay for abortions and AIDS treatment. It has nothing to do with all those poor uninsured families.

The MSM's Faustian Bargain

We all know the lamestream media is in the tank for vague hopeychangeyness. But why?

Because their industry is declining as new modes of media open, and this is a last ditch bid to lock up power and prestige.

Clarence Thomas on How To Be A Judge

This WSJ article says it all so well.

Oh My YES on Proposition 8.

I am sure that Freedomfan will disagree on this, but Oh My YES on Proposition 8. Here's why: (1) Judicial tyranny and the usurpation of legislative powers, judges pronouncing as "final" issues that still need to be legislatively sorted out. (2) The dubious dogma behind "gay marriage". (3) There are disturbing societal consequences to redefining "marriage" and there is a compelling justification for "heterosexism", as the gay activists call it. (4) There is a rather sinister -- and totalitarian -- political agenda behind all this. Taking these one at a time:

(1) Judicial Tyranny (hat tip to Drew M. at AOSHQ)

Contrary to what the Left will claim (Waah! Hater!) I do not oppose some kind of legal code for same sex relationships. So if someone would say, "for homosexual relationships, we need to inventory aspects that marriage touches -- not testifying against registered sexual partner in court, innocent spouse provisions in tax code, survivors' benefits, joint tax filing, community property, domestic violence laws, child custodianship issues, intestate inheritance, hospital visits, etc., etc., etc.....and figure out what makes sense for government to be involved with, and figure out what the sensible arrangement should be, and figure out reasonable changes in the law to get to that point from where we're at" -- well, I might object on the details maybe, but I certainly could support such a legislative procedure.

In fact, the Legislature in California had already done this, with the Governor signing it into law.

However, four judicial tyrants in black robes, acting on the demand for some undefined notion of "equal protection", decided to butt into the legislative process.

PDF of decision is here.

I began reading, looking for quotes and key findings. But it was 172 pages long and took a while!

After noting the state's domestic partnership law is "virtually" the same as marriage, the court announces it's deciding the Big One. Examining the constitutionality of the current compromise regime under which...

"... the union of an opposite-sex couple is officially designated a “marriage” whereas the union of a same-sex couple is officially designated a “domestic partnership.” The question we must address is whether, under these circumstances, the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution."

So this is for full marriage, including the designation "marriage."

"It also is important to understand at the outset that our task in this proceeding is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated a marriage rather than a domestic partnership (or some other term), but instead only to determine whether the difference in the official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution."

After mouthing this platitude about judicial restraint the four tyrants in black robes then proceed to "discover" an always-existing constitutional right to gay marriage. Having discounted their own policy impulses and announced they would be deciding the issue based solely on the state constitution as written, they immediately announce their new "enlightened" understanding of homosexuality changes previous constitutional law:

"Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."

Whoa, now there's a leap. It's one thing to note that non-traditional child rearing arrangements happen, even frequently, it's quite another to boldly assert that raising children who are by definition fatherless (or in a few cases motherless) makes no difference to society and the State of California. And don't you know it, sexual orientation is treated as tantamount to race, dogma that is unfounded and frankly insulting to African Americans and other ethnics (more on dogma later).

Before this they make some pro forma claims, using italics to let you know this is somehow "constitutional law", that they've determined that marriage is a basic substantive right, which is just jargon for "we're going to overrule the legislature and the people acting through the initiative process, just because." That's really all it means. Categorizing something as a "fundamental" or "basic" "substantive" "right" is just a bit of judicial code for "We "progressive" tyrants get to decide and no one else does."

It is, in legal terms, an ipse dixit, an "it's this way because I say it is," and you can always tell when a court is resorting to ipse dixit because it stops citing the actual constitution and previous decisions and begins speaking of hitherto-unknown "fundamental rights." How did they become "fundamental rights"? Who knows?

The ipse dixits roll on. The right to establish a family becomes part of the living, breathing, sexy constitution, and with it comes the also newly discovered secondary right of that family to be treated with "equal dignity and respect."

In fairness, this is the "conclusions" part of the ruling, so a lack of citations is to be expected. However, of course, this being a new right and all, they won't have actual citations for any of these propositions later, either; that's part of what makes this new law, after all. There are no actual precedents!!!!

"We need not decide in this case whether the name “marriage” is invariably a core element of the state constitutional right to marry so that the state would violate a couple’s constitutional right even if — perhaps in order to emphasize and clarify that this civil institution is distinct from the religious institution of marriage — the state were to assign a name other than marriage as the official designation of the formal family relationship for all couples. Under the current statutes, the state has not revised the name of the official family relationship for all couples, but rather has drawn a distinction between the name for the official family relationship of opposite-sex couples (marriage) and that for same-sex couples (domestic partnership). One of the core elements of the right to establish an officially recognized family that is embodied in the California constitutional right to marry is a couple’s right to have their family relationship accorded dignity and respect equal to that accorded other officially recognized families, and assigning a different designation for the family relationship of same-sex couples while reserving the historic designation of “marriage” exclusively for opposite-sex couples poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect. We therefore conclude that although the provisions of the current domestic partnership legislation afford same-sex couples most of the substantive elements embodied in the constitutional right to marry, the current California statutes nonetheless must be viewed as potentially impinging upon a same-sex couple’s constitutional right to marry under the California Constitution."

Oh puhleeze.

Next follows the typically slippery (and ipse dixit) "analysis" under equal protection. It's all a game of categorization -- if a law restricts a right the court categorizes as "fundamental" and imposes this restriction on the basis a "suspect" (i.e., what we judicial tyrants call "bad and wrong") classification, the court imposes a compelling/necessary test on the law, that the law must serve a compelling state interest and must be necessary to serve that state interest.

Now, that may seem like a test that can be passed under the right circumstances, but actually, it's not. No law ever survives that test, ever. Once the court has, by declaration citing the authority only of itself, categorized the classification as "suspect" and the restricted "right" as "fundamental," it's all over.

Any court just has to claim those magic words apply and it's all over. No deference whatsoever is owed to the legislature (or, in this case, the actual people of the state writing the law through the initiative process). The moment the court decides, on its own authority, to categorize (suddenly) the right as fundamental and the restriction of it as suspect, they rewrite the law however their consciences may impel them.

This passage begs the question:

"Finally, retaining the designation of marriage exclusively for opposite sex couples and providing only a separate and distinct designation for same-sex couples may well have the effect of perpetuating a more general premise — now emphatically rejected by this state — that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects “second-class citizens” who may, under the law, be treated differently from, and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals or opposite-sex couples."

This is of course pure rubbish, as "the state" did not in fact "reject" treating homosexuals differently as regards marriage law, but actually encoded this distinction into the law itself!!! Had "the state" wished to "reject" this distinction, it would have passed a different law specifically "rejecting" the distinction.

The court is speaking here, it seems, as a tyrant, "l'etat, c'est moi" (the state, it is I, I believe it goes).

California has the citizen's option to re-elect or reject judges for another term after they are appointed. Not only must we vote YES on Proposition 8 to stop this judicial tyranny, but also--the next time their terms come up, reject these four arrogant judges:
1. Ron George, nominated to the California Supreme Court in 1991
2. Kathryn Werdegar , nominated in 1994
3. Joyce Kennard, nominated in 1989
4. Carlos Moreno, nominated in 2001

As you can see, being nominated by a Republican Governor is no guarantee that judges will not become arrogant.

It is sickeningly hilarious / hilariously sickening how the "established precedent" of 35 years is the absolute last word on why we CANNOT overturn the abortion of legislative power (even those of us pro-choice can acknowledge that) that is Roe vs.. Wade, but 6000 years of history regarding the purpose and function of marriage??? Hell, that can be discarded at will.

"Precedent" only matters if it's a leftist commie liberal precedent, otherwise, "Stare Decisis? Whuzzat? Never heard of it!!!

"Perhaps the most revolting is the dogma that somehow marriage as is is "discriminatory" and discrimination is against the California Constitution. Wrong on both counts. Proposition 22 already made it clear what the people intended when the legislature passed the anti-discrimination laws (which pertained to employment, housing, etc., NOT marriage)

That's the sort of thing a judge ought to take into consideration when construing written language -- be it a contract, commercial paper, a statute, or a constitution, you always have to ask "what did the drafter likely intend?" The best datum to make that determination was the overwhelming passage of the proposition, and the Court ignored it.

Here, the Court not only ignored it, but fabricated their own reality to come up with their result. Now please don't take me for arguing that all legal questions turn on majority will -- they manifestly do not. James Madison wrote extensively against tyranny of the majority, as well as tyranny of the minority.

But the Cal. Supremes essentially had to claim that their constitution, which did not formerly mandate gay marriage, now does, and to so claim THAT, they had to pretend that society accepted that gay marriage is now a fundamental right. But that is simply a fraud. Empirically speaking, even in hard-core liberal California and Massachusetts, the only relevant datum shows that society has not demanded gay marriage -- that it has in fact done the opposite.

Contrast this with SCOTUS decisions prohibiting racial discrimination. When the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964 were legislatively passed, it proved that American society had in fact evolved to the point that freedom from racial discrimination was a fundamental right. The vast majority of Americans believed it, and they so manifested by through their political representatives.

When the gay marriage advocates can produce results like that, then judges can plausibly rule that gay marriage has become a fundamental right. But they can't just invent the facts.

(2) Dubious Dogma

A funny debunking of the dogmas behind gay marriage can be found here.

Tom McClintock, the last Honest Politician in this state, wrote this short but great letter on the subject:

The argument for "gay marriage" is founded on the premise that marriage is simply a profound statement of devotion made between individuals, and denying homosexual couples this option is therefore discriminatory. It is a classic case of a perfectly logical conclusion arising from a perfectly false premise.

Marriage is an institution through which we propagate our species and inculcate our young with the intrinsic social behaviors that human society requires.

A child does not ask to be brought into this world - it is summoned by the willful act of a man and a woman. By so doing, that man and woman acquire a profound responsibility to the child - and to each other in the raising of the child.

A body of law has grown up around this natural institution. A marriage is solemnized to legally establish the unique tapestry of duties and responsibilities inherent in raising a child. Spouses cannot capriciously walk away from their responsibility to the family they have created. Their resources and earnings are pooled to assure the mother has the support and security she will rely upon as she makes the sacrifices of motherhood. Inheritance is arranged so that the resources of the family pass immediately to the surviving spouse to carry on the responsibilities both have mutually entered.

Centuries of experience have shaped the legal status given to marriage. Not the least of this experience is that children acquire critical social understanding from both the mother and the father, and that such an environment offers by far the best chance of successful social and emotional maturation for the children. Other experience also enters into the law. Polygamy is forbidden because of the stresses it places on the stability of the home. Marriage involving unemancipated minors is forbidden, as is marriage between close relatives.

It is true that some marriages are childless by either fate or design. But that does not alter the fundamental institution or the desirability of a society establishing, maintaining and protecting it.

This traditional concept of marriage has been undermined to the point that a third of all children are today born out of wedlock. No-fault divorce laws have weakened the responsibility parents have to maintain a stable environment. Welfare laws have made fathers disposable by replacing their earnings with a more reliable check from the state. Out-of-wedlock births that were once the object of societal disapproval
are now casually accepted.

And the societal damage is substantial. A wealth of sociological data warns that a child raised outside of a traditional marriage faces much greater obstacles in becoming a well-adjusted adult.

One aspect of the assault on marriage is the movement now afoot to blur the distinction between marriage and homosexual partnerships. And it's an important
distinction. A partnership exists when two or more individuals come together to associate with each other on mutually agreeable terms for a defined purpose. In partnerships the only responsibilities are to the other partners under terms
freely negotiated and agreed to by them. No third party is involuntarily summoned into it. A homosexual relationship is obviously in the nature of a partnership and not a marriage.

True, some homosexual couples seek to raise children. But such an arrangement does not alter the fact that it is a fundamentally different relationship than a marriage. Nor does it negate the child's right and need to draw fundamental and unique sociological guidance from both a mother and a father. No matter how loving and caring, a homosexual couple cannot offer that.

Abraham Lincoln once asked, "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one."

Nor does calling a homosexual relationship a marriage.

But let me go on to my own thoughts:

There is a dogma that somehow sexual behavior is an immutable characteristic, like race. Sorry, I know a good many women who had a period of same-sex experimentation, but can no longer be considered "gay" or "lesbian", as they are now married or otherwise steady with the opposite sex. I know of no one who stopped being "black". Calling "gayness" akin to "blackness" is, frankly, lameness.

Indeed, the whole nature of the "GLBT" Movement drops the lie on that idea. "B" is for bisexual, and "T" is for transgendered, or more accurately, those who mutilate their gender. Or even those who dress up and try to appear as the other gender. And those activities have waxed and waned over different cultures throughout history.

What I mean by that is, no one knows what percentage of the outwardly heterosexual population is actually bisexual, and might sometimes act on the homosexual side of their desires if it were much more socially acceptable to do so. But while no one knows the exact percentage, I think that many people in both the "straight" and "gay" demographics have a definite inkling that there are substantially more bisexuals than anyone is quite comfortable admitting. And anxiety about that drives a lot of the controversy over other gay-rights issues; if there were really a stark dichotomy between hetero and homo, and it were unheard of for anyone to straddle the fence or "switch teams" (and tear apart someone's marriage and kids in the process) then a lot of the other controversies would be relatively easy to settle.

There is also an undeniable trend to make bisexuality, among females anyway, chic. They even have Top Ten pop songs about it now. Young straight women making out with each other at parties was not happening at *any* of the parties I attended as a collegian 20 years ago. Now, it's become so ubiquitous in the culture that in a good many campus and twenty and THIRTYsomething parties you can't swing your arm out without knocking over two faux-lesbians kissing to the delight of their fellow party-goers. Now, is that because young women spontaneously decided to start making with each for no reason whatsoever, or has there been a culture shift in, for example, the entertainment media that gives young women the message that behaving like this is what they should do? I think you know the answer.

And if you do buy the "gayness is inherent" claim, then what about people who claim bisexuality? Are we to believe that they simply have to have sex with both men and women? If so, then I think we really are going to have legalize polygamy next. No compelling state interest in marriage between only one man and only one woman, means polygamy.

Now, I certainly wouldn't want to live in Saudi Arabia (home of the bin Ladens) or that wacked out FLDS neighborhood in New Mexico, or was it Utah. But that's exactly what's coming. Barack Obama himself was the product of a bigamous/polygamous "marriage" between a then 24 year old married man from Kenya and a then 17 year old girl (his mother).

The current gay response to the polygamy question is "oh come on" and condescension. Funny, that was the typical response to the demand for "gay marriage" 20 years ago.

I actually had a gay activist tell me that "Polygamy argues that the fundamental structure of marriage should be dissolved. Same sex marriage is an argument for inclusion in the institution as it already exists."

Absurd; that is just engaging in self-serving semantic games. The "fundamental structure" of marriage is and always has been in part defined by the fact that the people involved in one are of different genders. They're taking one requirement of the contract (the most important one by far, I would argue) and declaring it invalid simply because it's inconvenient to their personal belief system. You can't take the gender restrictions out of play and then pretend that the numerical ones are sacrosanct. Not convincingly, at least.

And this is where the hilarity and quite frankly disingenuousness of gay activists come in. They are willing to divorce marriage of a component, actually the key component...the one part that has never in the history of the institution changed, the sexes of the participants. And then they have the audacity to claim it's being changed unfairly to hurt gays? Can they say this with a straight (sorry, couldn't think of another expression) face?

"So just out of curiosity how do you explain homosexuality in the animal kingdom to your kids?" So said the same gay activists. Homosexual behavior happens (as does a sea lion trying to mate with a penguin), but it isn't the norm among creatures that require a male and female to reproduce, obviously. You'll also notice that most animals who engage in homosexual behavior will also mate with any animal of the opposite sex who comes along, as well as a tree stump or your leg. (It should be noted that rituals among animals that establish dominance or pecking order in a pack are not really sexual, and that some people interpret them as sexual says more about those people than about the animals!!!).

Some animals also kill and eat their young. I do not try to convince my children that this is normal, either. I do not use evidence of cannibalism in the animal kingdom to try to pass laws allowing cannibalism among humans. In fact, I bring up animal sexual behavior and animal cannibalism as rarely as possible.

Incest also occurs in the animal kingdom, along with chewing off another animal's leg (I've seen that twice in rodents). Indeed, animals will sometimes fight to the death or bite off each other's head (I'm thinking spiders here). Appealing to animals as role models for behavior is not something I often find it necessary to do. We ought to raise our children to be rise above animal impulses.

The nice thing about being human is that we can make choices. We can even make laws. We can say, "even if pedophilia FEELS right to me, maybe it's still wrong for me to act on that impulse." As thinking humans who are not controlled by our sexual impulses, we can also make choices about what constitutes a marriage, and in making that choice we can think about what's best for children. We can even go way, way out on a limb and decide that every marriage should include a potential mom and a potential dad, not two moms with no dad or two dads with no mom!!!

The definition of marriage has been the same throughout history, a union of a man and woman. Even the gay-friendly ancient Greeks didn't change that. A same sex union may be many things, but one thing it isn't nor ever will be is Marriage, no matter what any amount of Judges say. As I stated before, I could go with domestic partnerships, but calling those "marriage" is like calling a cat a dog because it, too, has four legs and a tail. It's still a cat.

Men don't have husbands and women don't have wives. Insisting otherwise doesn't make it normal or natural, and insisting on it does not make one "hateful" or "bigoted".

Reality on reality's terms, folks. Sorry.

(3) Societal Consequences and the need for "heterosexism".

The gay activists ask why this undermines marriage for the rest of us. The short answer is that undermines the purpose of state-sanctioned marriage: raising healthy kids. Out of wedlock births are already an epidemic in the US (and the reason for expanding, liberal government.)

Anything that waters down marriage isn't helping. To which I sometimes hear the rampant divorce argument. To which I can only reply, well, gee whiz, the institution is in enough trouble, so now you want to take it apart further???

One of our more annoying (and driving while intoxicated) politicians, Carole Migden, has her own way of taking it apart further.

Some might think that If two guys or two women (preferably not good looking, unless of course they are open to 3-ways, see bigamy and polygamy above--ha ha ha) want to legally bind their lives together, pay their taxes, own property, do some gardening etc. with or without children doesn't that benefit society? Sorry but no. We could acknowledge it with a domestic partnership or other sort of contract, and, sure, we could all wish them well. Happy for them. But how does that benefit society?

The state has a compelling state interest in the raising of healthy and happy children and this is best accomplished by marriage between a man and a woman. The government has been involved in marriage as long as I can remember in this country. When we made out of wedlock children to be the norm via no fault divorce law and welfare state regulations, we created millions of angry kids and the gang problem we have now.

(4) The sinister agenda -- totalitarian "politically correct" thought control

Once gay marriage is legally enshrined, won't it be illegal to give any favoritism whatsoever to heterosexual couples when assigning children to foster car or approving adoptions? Presumably, we won't even be allowed to consider the possible negative side effects because it won't be politically correct to do so. Brave new world.

Dennis Prager wrote a great column about all this:

Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming -- to do so would be declared "heterosexist," morally equivalent to racist. Rather, they will be told to imagine a prince or a princess. Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female ways alone. Little girls will be asked by other girls and by teachers if they want one day to marry a man or a woman.

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity -- especially females -- can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction -- until now, accomplished through marriage. But that of course is "heterosexism," a bigoted preference for man-woman erotic love, and therefore to be extirpated from society.

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law. Companies that advertise engagement rings will have to show a man putting a ring on a man's finger -- if they show only women fingers, they will be boycotted just as a company having racist ads would be now.

Films that only show man-woman married couples will be regarded as antisocial and as morally irresponsible as films that show people smoking have become.

Traditional Jews and Christians -- i.e. those who believe in a divine scripture -- will be marginalized. Already Catholic groups in Massachusetts have abandoned adoption work since they will only allow a child to be adopted by a married couple as the Bible defines it -- a man and a woman.

Anyone who advocates marriage between a man and a woman will be morally regarded the same as racist. And soon it will be a hate crime.

Indeed -- and this is the ultimate goal of many of the same-sex marriage activists -- the terms "male" and "female," "man" and "woman" will gradually lose their significance. They already are. On the intellectual and cultural left, "male" and "female" are deemed social constructs that have little meaning. That is why same-sex marriage advocates argue that children have no need for both a mother and a father -- the sexes are interchangeable. Whatever a father can do a second mother can do. Whatever a mother can do, a second father can do. Genitalia are the only real differences between the sexes, and even they can be switched at will.

And what will happen after divorce -- which presumably will occur at the same rates as heterosexual divorce? A boy raised by two lesbian mothers who divorce and remarry will then have four mothers and no father.

We have entered something beyond Huxley's "Brave New World." All thanks to the hubris of four individuals. But such hubris never goes unanswered. Our children and their children will pay the price.

And this has already happened. Charities in Massachusetts shut down their decades long and very successful adoption services in MA after "Same Sex Marriage" was declared a "right" there. Why? Because MA state sued the charities for discrimination because they placed children with married hetero couples and didn't place with gay couples.

And this totalitarian push is happening with the teachers unions as well:

Here’s a pop quiz: Who’s donated the most money to an effort in California to defeat Proposition 8, an initiative on the November 4 ballot that would define marriage as between a man and a woman in the state?

A) Gay-advocacy organizations
B) Civil-rights groups
C) The California Teachers Association

If you guessed “C,” you understand the nature of modern liberal politics. And if you didn’t, perhaps you’re wondering what exactly gay marriage has to do with K-12 public education. The high school dropout rate is 1-in-4 in California and 1-in-3 in the Los Angeles public school system, odds that worsen considerably among black and Hispanic children. So you might think the CTA, the state’s largest teachers’ union, would have other priorities.

Yet last week the union donated $1 million to the “No on Proposition 8″ campaign. Of the roughly $3 million raised by opponents of the measure so far, $1.25 million has come from the teachers’ union. “What does this cause have to do with education?” said Randy Peart, a public school teacher in San Juan who was contacted by a local television station. “Why not put that money into classrooms, into making a better place for these kids?”

In fact, the CTA and its parent organization, the National Education Association, have used tens of millions of dollars in mandatory teachers’ dues to advance all manner of left-wing political causes. And members like Ms. Peart are right to ask questions. In some years barely a third of the NEA’s budget has gone toward improving the lot of teachers themselves.

In addition to vigorously fighting school choice and other reforms that benefit underprivileged children but threaten the public education monopoly, the NEA has directly (or via state affiliates) bankrolled Acorn, the Democratic Leadership Council, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and, naturally, the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights.”

Public school teachers of America, take note. This is your dues money at work.

Jeff Goldstein snarks:

B-but — who can be against “equal rights”? And how dare the WSJ question educators who are using their money to fight hate!

Why, they must be RACISTHOMOPHOBES! BURN THEM!

– Or, and here’s another (racist, homophobic) way of looking at it: why would the CTA and NEA presume to “speak” — and make no mistake: this is in effect what they are doing by requiring mandatory dues, and then using those dues to fight political policy battles — for the entirety of their rank and file as if that rank and file was politically homogeneous?

And the answer is, quite simply, that part of the requirements for membership in the fraternity of teachers is an acquiescence to the ascendant totalitarian groupthink narrative as defined by the union “leadership”. In this sense, heretical teachers are much like gays or blacks or women who wander off the liberal plantation and express individual ideas at odds with the sanctioned positions of their representatives — with the added indignity that they must continue to pay for the privilege of being misrepresented.

And then there are the parents, who in many instances have little choice but to take advantage of the public school system. Which means more and more these days, sending your child off to a left-liberal indoctrination camp dedicated to the politicizing of anything and everything in the curriculum (with some schools even mandating that each field of inquiry dedicate a portion of its time examining its precepts through the smudged lens of race and gender — making for some interesting lessons, no doubt, on the systemic oppression of fruit flies by an institutionalized white patriarchal logic). The personal being the political, it makes sense that the child under the charge of those who believe such a cheap bumper sticker attempt at mass contextualization be primed for his or her necessary political consciousness raising.

What does gay marriage have to do with the California Teachers Association?

Everything, if the the CTA is run by the likes of Bill Ayers and dedicated to his communistic vision of "social justice". Joe Sixpack probably sees this differently, which just proves how racist, sexist, and homophobic he really is.

Therefore his vote does not count. Joe: just shutup and pay your goddamn taxes. The CTA may not be able to influence you, but they can program your kid so that he will be one with the hive mind.

Oh well.

Indeed, many gay totalitarian types use "Same Sex Marriage" as the issue to shut down anyone that dissents from their "Party Line". A public school teacher that says marriage should be one man/one woman? Disciplinary action! A marriage therapist that won't take gay couples? License revoked. A wedding photographer that won't take a "Same Sex Marriage" gig? Business license revoked.... all cases that have already happened.

All based upon a twisted interpretation of the "Equal Protection" clause of the 14th Amendment.

Which raises an important question: does this twist on the Fourteenth Amendment trump the First Amendment? Because I'm telling you in no uncertain terms that being forced to recognize homosexual marriage as akin to "holy wedlock" by the State is tantamount to the State meddling - deeply - in the "free exercise of religion".

I would go so far as pointing out that such meddling is an example of the State respecting an establishment of religion ...in outright contradiction to the First Amendment ...to wit, it is tantamount to forcing the practice of leftist dogma as a quasi organized religion.

Hell, this current election is ALL about devout Leftists embracing an (Oba)messianic figure ...it creeps me out.

More directly illustrative of the point ...let's say I'm a preacher of some church, and the State says that regardless of my church's stand on marriage and sin, only it can sanction and license "holy wedlock" and choose whether to allow me to join couples as such together ...do you now see that it may be no stretch at all to see the State requiring me to perform such ceremonies? Or lose my license to perform such?

Or - as I see someone has already noted - say that I'm running an orphanage and I am now required to place children into homes where homosexuality is openly practiced.

You see, the problem isn't simply granting gays due process rights under the 14th Amendment by allowing them to legally marry.

Marriage is by definition ...of a Western (at least, if not only) cultural tradition dating back thousands of years ...the "joining together" of those of the opposite sex in a consensual contract recognized by law (of the State? OR by the Church? Or by what exactly). And therein lies the heart of the problem.

The problem is that for the State to grant (especially through judicial fiat) gays a "right" to what in essence is inherently a religious ceremonial concept - a religious ceremony that the State has usurped - ends up coming smack up against the First Amendment. Because marriage is NOT simply a civil matter: it touches upon fundamentally held beliefs of Judeo-Christianity which are at the core of Western culture.

This is a hot potato. First, judges are jerks whenever they rush pell-mell into the culture wars like this. Second, there is simply no give in Christianity about homosexuality ...none whatsoever. Third, there IS a constitutional crisis at the heart of this ...and it's being forced upon cultural Christians by gays ...and you bet your ass that they have every right to be resentful about it.

Surprisingly, given all that, that there is a "fair" solution in our modern society that acceptably meets both the First and Fourteenth Amendments. And that gays would likely agree meets due process. And that wouldn't harm the practice of marriage and the sanctity of the vows of holy wedlock within the Christian community.

Namely: the State should get out of the marriage "business" entirely. It should license only civil unions under state laws. Gays can - then - quit feeling like they're being legally dissed even though under law civil unions ALREADY have the force of marriage ...and us moralistic folks can go back to rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's.

Heh. Make you a bet: it ain't gonna happen ...not in the good ol' USA. Even Democrat politicians are smart enough to recognize that the day they propose such a thing - let alone try and enact it - is the day they are tarred and feathered and ran out of town on a pole. Let alone try and win an election. Americans won't put up with it ...especially us bitter clingers.

And really, militant gays won't accept it either (I'd point out that they have obviously not accepted it) because they don't simply want equality under the law: they want to force acceptance of their sexual practices upon those who find them abhorent.

Which brings us to the impasse.

California Election Manifesto November 2008

OK, it's time for me to tell y'all how to vote. I was told by some friends and family that they were eagerly awaiting my ranting. :)

In a way, I wonder if it matters, since so many people seem to vote early absentee nowadays, even weeks before the actual election. That's a bad trend, frankly. Front loaded primaries, front loaded elections, before all the facts can come out.

I also wonder if it matters anymore, because California will be politically constipated for some time. We are still living with the Betrayal of 2006. Last time around in 2006, when I said that if Conan the Pseudo-Republican didn't help his fellow Republicans win offices, and especially help Tom McClintock win Lieutenant Governor, we could stick a fork in California and turn it over, I meant it.

And what was worse, Ah-nold stabbed Tom in the back, along with the rest of the California Republican Party candidates. At least McClintock has moved to Roseville and will pick up the 4th Congressional seat from which John Doolittle is retiring.

But oh well, let's get on with the initiatives. Since time is short and California seems increasingly doomed, I will make it quick:

PROPOSITION 1A -- High Speed Choo-Choos -- Oh Hell NO.

Sadly, Governor Ah-nold has championed an orgy of bond spending that probably cannot be paid for. The long-expected budget crisis has formed up in detail over the last few months. Gov. Ah-nold Schwarzenegger has tap-danced his way to the end of the fantasy budget road. He managed to sidestep a lot of potholes, but his luck ran out: the subprime "Affirmative Action Mortgage" meltdown punctured the housing bubble and revealed the disastrous extent of California's shaky finances and a history of irresponsible choices. If there was ever a time to engage in another Grand Project, that time is NOT now.

Moreover, the "Rebuttal To Argument In Favor of Proposition 1" says it well:

"Californians’ problem is not getting from San Francisco to Los Angeles, it’s getting into work each day."

How many local transportation projects go begging as it is?

Even if you are a "rail fan", simple actions like double tracking the entire routes of the existing Altamont Commuter Express, Capitol, Pacific Surfliner, Metrolink and San Joaquin trains would speed up service--at a fraction of the price of a high speed choo-choo project. Currently, existing passenger trains often have to pull onto single track sidings to let the freight trains go by, with delays of up to one half hour as a result.

PROPOSITION 2 -- Farm Animal Confinement Standards -- NO.

Bambi-ism. Run. Amok.

PROPOSITION 3 -- Children's Hospital Bond Act -- Oh Hell NO.

As noble as Children's Hospitals are, this ignores the obvious problem: The hordes of poor illegal aliens crowding the public hospitals. If the illegals weren't there, this wouldn't be a problem. And building more Children's hospitals is only an encouragement for more of those "anchor babies".

We have seen the Mexifornia future and it doesn't work. An economy built on the "cheap" labor of millions of illegal aliens, which isn't cheap once we factor in the billions of tax dollars in welfare and other public service costs, is not a viable system.California's deepening budget hole from berserk spending, no thanks to the Governator, simply cannot be papered over any longer. The massive costs of supporting a massive unskilled and often illegal foreign population now threaten existing basic services, let alone floating bonds to provide for new ones.

PROPOSITION 4 -- Parental Notification and Waiting Period for Minor's Abortions -- Oh Hell YES.

This proposed law has been rewritten several times over, in order to (1) be text neutral and not have a pro-life / anti-abortion implication, and (2) allow more contingencies for abusive, neglectful or otherwise nasty parents. This proposition is the latest draft to go up for a vote. And again, I will say YES, although I am by no means anti-abortion, for one simple reason: Who raises your kids?

It is absolutely ridiculous that a child can get an abortion without parental consent but they can not receive any other type of medical treatment, except life saving treatments of course, without parental consent. Who raises your kids--you or Planned Parenthood? As a parent YOU have the responsibility to provide all necessary care for YOUR children and YOU have the right to know if they request medical care. 30 other states already have these sorts of laws, with no dead teens from back alley abortions or abused teen daughters or other such nonsense (and don't tell me they all went to get abortions in the other 20 states).

Perhaps the most arrogant, condescending and insulting argument comes from the opponents:

"In the real world, LAWS LIKE THIS CAN’T FORCE TEENS TO TALK TO THEIR PARENTS...."

But in the real world, laws like this CAN HELP PROSECUTE STATUTORY RAPE OFFENDERS.

But hey, let's hear it for Planned Parenthood -- helping statutory rapist sugar daddies get nubile and naive underage poon-tang without consequence in California.

PROPOSITION 5 -- NonViolent Drug Offenses. Sentencing Alternatives -- NO.

While the idea of treating drug users rather than incarcerating them seems appealing at first, the realities are these:

--This proposition also shortens the penalties for dealers, not just users. And while we want to help drug users realize that "drugs are not the answer", the fact is that for dealers, drugs ARE the answer, if the question is: "How can I make money quickly without working too hard?" or "How can I get high as a kite?"

--Ostensibly, incarcerating drug offenders IS a way to get them treatment, in the sense that they are supposed to be in a controlled environment where they can get away and withdraw from the drugs in the first place. It's like being committed, after all.

--If non-violent druggie prisoners are getting abused by the nastier inmates, then we need lower security prisons just for druggies, or prisons where the more troublesome prisoners are sent to. That's why Pelican Bay opened.

--If prisons are overcrowded, well, there's that illegal alien problem again. Our inability to honestly confront this has a lot to do with the ease with which drugs come across the border as well.

This proposition has noble intentions, but is not realistic.

PROPOSITION 6 -- Police and Law Enforcement Funding -- YES.

While this proposition does mandate minimum spending, and some may oppose it for that reason, the fact remains. What is the first and foremost priority of Government? Think hard.....

That's right, public safety and law enforcement.

Schools? Roads? Hospitals? Transit? Libraries? Civic Centers? All of won't amount to anything and will be destroyed if law enforcement isn't there. Those idiots with the slogan "Schools Not Jails" are fools--you can't have effective schools without safe order in the neighborhood first.

One can fault this initiative for again ignoring the illegal alien problem, as rootless young men are a disproportionate source of the crime problems. But then again, law enforcement could be applied to stopping them from coming in, yes? If there was the political will....

PROPOSITION 7 -- Mandatory Renewal Energy Generation -- Oh Hell NO.

Pardon my language but quit f***ing with market forces. Tax and Rebate Incentives for solar? Sure! But DON'T mandate, unless a "green" version the Synfuel Disaster of the 1970's and the 1980's really appeals to you.

And don't you just know that the same sort of people who support this initiative are the ones who keep hydroelectric dams like Auburn -- which are cheap and clean renewable energy and are practical for the power grid--from being built?

PROPOSITION 8 -- Defending Marriage and Stopping Judicial Tyranny -- Oh Hell YES.

I was wrong--I cant make this one quick. This one requires an essay. See my forthcoming "Election Manifesto, Proposition 8" for analysis and argument. For now, let me go on to:

PROPOSITION 9 -- Parole changes -- YES.

See arguments for Proposition 6 above.

PROPOSITION 10 -- Corporate Welfare for Alternative Fuel Vehicles -- Oh Hell NO.

See arguments for Proposition 7 above, and add the downsides to corporate welfare too.

PROPOSITION 11 -- Redistricting -- YES, with reservations.

One has only to look at the way Senate and Assembly districts are currently drawn on a map to support this. No respect of existing city and county boundaries at all. Districts are created by a mixture of partisan gerrymandering (favoring Democrats) and "sweetheart gerrymandering" (favoring incumbents of either party).

The proposed Citizens Redistricting Commission might be better as an elected body.

In fact, districting was the real problem that led to the misguided "Total Recall" of 2003. The real problem with California wasn't Gray Davis. It was, and still is, a cabal of wretched State Senate and Assemblycritters, gerrymandered to stay in power no matter what, also protected by incumbency and by bogus "Campaign finance reform" laws that make it difficult for challengers.

The mostly moderate Gray Davis actually used to restrain these radicals with vetoes, before his political instincts deserted him and he decided to sign off on drivers licenses for illegal aliens, which was what set the recall drive in motion. A good many recall proponents--among them the NRA and the Campaign for California Families--didn't expect the recall to actually happen, but they wanted to use the threat of recall to push Governor Davis rightward and restrain with vetoes the more leftist of the gerrymandered Democrats.

Samples of these wretched gerrymandered radicals are Don Perata in the East Bay, Fabian Nunez (and the rest of the "Reconquista" politicians) in LA, Marco Firebaugh in Fresno, and Sheila Kuehl in San Diego. I could include Mark Leno in San Francisco, but his district isn't gerrymandered; the problem there is San Francisco, plain and simple.

To fight all of this, too many California Republicans, myself included, thought that we could short-circuit the process of fighting district by district and initiative by initiative. All we needed, so we thought, was a charismatic Governor to face the State Senate Soviets and Assembly Apparatchiks down, and so we got one--one who has led us right over a cliff. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it....

Ultimately, I wish California and all the other states need to go back to having the State Senates represent counties within the states, just as the US Senate represents states within the Union, and overturn the Supreme Court decision in Reynolds v. Sims, an abuse of the Warren Court. Justice Harlan was right. But that's not going to happen.

Proposition 12: Cal-Vet renewal -- YES, this always passes, although I give Kudos to Gary Wesley, Esq. who I think writes rebuttals for these initiatives when no one else will, as a sort of open minded "Devil's Advocate".

What has to be said about the market crash, over and over

Now, look at a 20-year Dow Jones Industrials / S&P500 / Wilshire 5000 chart (1988-200. The NADAQ is similar.

It’s slightly rising, through GB and Clinton, through 1995, when it begins to move up faster (the dot-com market). The dot-com bust happens in 2000 (Clinton). The dot-com era is a Democratic economic event.

The market sinks (Democratic-era fallout in a Republican administration) until 2003 (GWB)
During this time period (from 1998 to 2003) Fannie Mae pays $90 million to Mr. Raines, a Democrat and one-time advisor to Obama. His predecessor at Fannie Mae, also a Democrat, also made millions.

The market begins recovery and peaks in mid-2007 (GWB). During this time, warning bells are rung about sub-prime lending, and potential economic effects, in 2003 and 2005 by Republicans. Remember Senate Bill 190?

Meanwhile, Reps Maxine Waters (D), Barney Frank (D), among others (all Ds) publicly ignore / deny any problems (on video).

One week ago the market was at 10,500. The week before it was at 11,000.
Today, 09 October 2008 we are (still?) in a major economic meltdown. The Dow closed at 8,579.19, down 678.91.

Conclusion: this is an economic meltdown almost exclusively caused by Democrats and their policies.

When Sen. Obama, or anyone else says the current economic mess is the result of 8 years of George Bush, he or they are wrong. He or they are either misinformed (incompetent/lying advisors) or he or they are lying.

This (preferably a shorter, more polished version, with a timeline, names and dates) needs to be publicized heavily. Maybe a 30-second TV spot.

To the McCain campaign: you need to make the Democrats own this. It’s their mistake and their fault, and people are losing their homes and jobs because of the Democrats.

This may be negative campaigning, but the Democrats are shifting blame and advocating nebulous policies. If you want a chance to win in November, and are serious about the election, this seems the only way.

Hey Katie, answer this!

So Katie Couric wants to have ambush questions for Sarah Palin?

Dennis Prager has some questions for her.

Remember that a Couric is two and a half pounds of excrement.

Mortgage Crisis - Do Facts Matter?

Thomas Sowell asks this:

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fnie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.

Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing deology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?

We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.

Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?

Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.

Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.

Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!

The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.

The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama
has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions,
right after Senator Christopher Dodd.

Unfortunately, Thomas, facts don't matter, because the liberal media has a template! And the liberal media template is that there is “racial disparity” in loan application approvals. As if ability to pay didn't matter. The liberal media template is that we must have “fairness” of home ownership absent ability to handle it. The liberal media template is that there is inherent “virtue” in poverty and inherent “vice” in prosperity.

Just get everyone who wants one a home and the result will be grateful owners responsibly shouldering their good fortune. Poverty, as liberals see it, is nothing more than an accidental circumstance of birth resulting in the absence of wherewithal. Lack of judgement, ambition or a sense of responsibility has nothing to do with it.

Thus, when people start defaulting loans they never should have received in the first place, no one is more surprised than liberals.

Another interesting factor in the warped liberal media template is that all immigrants would be grateful mortgage payers. As a result, a huge number of these no-documentation-required "liar loans" were made to illegal aliens, who must have thought the gringo was crazy to give them a house with only a promise, made in Spanish, to repay the loan. No Social Security Number, no credit history...hey, this is easy. Now that these illegal Mexicans don't have jobs in the construction business anymore, they have stopped paying their mortgage along with their new truck payments and the credit cards that banks like Washington Mutual sent them. They don't worry about their credit being ruined. No Social Security Number to trace their movements, so why should they worry about loan defaults. They've haven't any stake in the future of this country, so when everything dries up they'll just drive back home to Mexico in their truck they didn't pay for, with the goodies they bought with plastic they didn't pay for, and lay low and wait until the next time America is offering goodies.

Al Qaeda STILL in Iraq

The New York Times just can't stop dissembling....The New York Times reports on last week's assassination of Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, a tribal leader who had cooperated with coalition troops:

The extremist group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq, another name for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led, claimed responsibility on Friday for the bombing that killed him.

Election Day: A new hope???

Until the selection of Sarah Palin as Veep, I pretty much thought of the upcoming election like this:



I feared it was 1976 all over again. Obama: Jimmy Carter with ethnicity. McCain: sadly all too much like Gerald Ford. When he talked of "cap and trade" and "comprehensive immigration reform", I was reminded of "WIN buttons" and "Poland is not enslaved".

Perhaps, I rationalized, we really needed 4 years of the Obamunist, just so we can have a congress upchuck in 2010 that will make 1994 look like a mere burp, and can get a real Republican candidate in 2012. The key question for that scenario, of course, was how much damage will Barry, Harry and Nancy be able to do in 2009-2010.


But along came the Wonder Woman from Wasilla. And McCain seems to have wised up a bit too. Photoshop from Slublog:




Bill Whittle explains it better than I can, so I will just link him here.

But let me quote snippets:

Many conservatives were arguing that it would be better to sit this one out, and let the country go to hell, so that we could send the Republican party a message and re-emerge from the ashes in 2012 with “the next Reagan.” I pointed out that there were two problems with this theory:

First, you may not like the fact that Grandma smokes in bed, and you may indeed want to get her attention. But if that message consists of letting her set the bed, the house and the grandchildren on fire, perhaps there was a better way to “send a message.” Second, it pained me to point out that there was no “next Reagan.” Ronald Reagan was on the political scene for almost two decades before he became President. Who was waiting in the wings to magically fill this role? No one.

Newt Gingrich’s fire-breathing army of young reform Republicans who stormed congress in 1994 grew, in about a decade, into the party of Duke Cunningham, Trent Lott, and the Bridge to Nowhere. I watched this unfold — especially after 2004 — and time and time again, the core conservative values of discipline and responsibility were betrayed, mocked, and ignored. Restraint is not an easy sell in a society this affluent — not compared with the view of government as a bottomless bag of candy. That’s why we’re supposed to be the party of adults.

Power corrupts, and I believe there is no power more intoxicating and corrosive than the ability to spend other people’s money at will. If Newt’s Army could go so far astray, you can bet the country was disillusioned, disappointed, and furious — not just ready for change, but eager for it, even change as ethereal and diffuse as what Senator Obama has been peddling. We lost the Senate and the House in 2006 because of this. We were going to lose the presidency in 2008 for it. And we deserved to lose it.

But does one tough MILF lady Veep really matter? Yes, because:

I have personally seen hundreds of crusty, old-school paleocons who despisedMcCain now saying “He finally listened to us.” By picking Palin — instead of Lieberman, who we all know he wanted — he has told conservatives that he gets it. They’re not holding their noses and voting any more. They want yard signs and bumper stickers — they can’t wait to vote GOP. And the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, folks: they are writing checks.

For the first time, I think the Republicans actually deserve to WIN, more than the Demunist Commiecrats deserve to lose. It's not enough to stand against the Commiecrats; although that is necessary, that is not sufficient. Palin reassures the base and provides the reasons Republicans deserve another stay in the White House.

Obama's American "Red Guards"

Why "Americorps" and other non-military "national service" programs are bad ideas. The potential for political indoctrination is too high. In his acceptance speech Obama equated serving in the military with “serving” the country at home by community organizing and such:

And we will keep our promise to every young American: If you commit to serving your community or our country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

Now we know what he has in mind. Nothing less than a boot camp for radicals.

The media as of today

Arnold Ahlert sums it up:

CEDARBURG, Wisc. — Hundreds of angry people in this small town outside Milwaukee taunted reporters and TV crews traveling with Sen. John McCain on Friday, chanting “Be fair!” and pointing fingers at a pack of journalists as they booed loudly.”–Washington Times, Sept 5th.

Isolated incident? Don’t bet on it. Americans are disgusted with the Fourth Estate, maybe more so now than at any other time in modern history. And despite what many people in the field believe, from network executives in corporate suites to reporters in the hinterlands, the anger “we the people” are demonstrating is not merely about politics. The people in Wisconsin weren’t shouting, “stop beating up on John McCain or Sarah Palin.” They shouted two words: “be fair.”

But Wesley Pruden looks further:

There is no media conspiracy, vast or otherwise. The average reporter, correspondent, columnist, pundit or editor couldn't conspire with the entire Harvard Law School faculty to change the oil in his wife's car.

It's worse than a conspiracy. It's a consensus. The newsrooms of the agenda-setting newspapers, the television networks and the newsmagazines have become strongholds of the elites that Barack Obama, he of Harvard Law, insists he is not one of. The young men and women in the newsrooms of flyover country emulate the elites and sometimes dream of one day being one of them.

September 11th, Seven Years Later

Everything I needed to know about radical Islam, I learned on 09/11/01. Unfortunately, our kids ARE NOT learning anything...

And the news won't show this man anymore....

Or any of these poor souls....

And few will credit the Bush Administration for keeping us safe from another attack like this for seven years. His thanks have been to be insulted and vilified and to have approval numbers which hover around 30%--which still makes them three times higher than those enjoyed Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in Congress.

Does that mean everything Bush has done is wonderful? Of course not. From illegal aliens to entitlements run amok, that is obviously not the case. However, there's a reason his approval ratings are three times higher than Nancy and Harry.

The left is trying to say that electing McCain would lead to a "third term for Bush". On this issue, we can only hope.

Sarah Palin and the Library Smear

The Commiecrats just don't give up, do they? *Nowhere* in any news article does it indicate that *any* book was actually banned. Nor does any banning *ever* appear on the City of Wasilla records. (Thanks to Confederate Yankee).

What the facts *do* indicate is that Mayor Palin, approached with petitions to take something off the library list, turned to the city librarian and asked “What is the procedure for these sort of complaints?” That’s hardly the same as actually taking action to ban anything. Asking for a clarification on “how we deal with complaints” is hardly the same as banning anything. The truth about this story is also between the lines in the Alaska local Wasilla paper, and the Anchorage Daily News, although the headlines are the usual sensational bias.

I can just imagine the flip side of this—what if something horrid like kiddie porn was smuggled into the library and Mayor Palin didn’t inquire about it. Then the media would be claiming “MAYOR PALIN SUPPORTS KIDDIE PORN IN LIBRARIES!” Why do I suspect a set-up?
The Anchorage Daily News asks: “Were any books censored banned? June Pinell-Stephens, chairwoman of the Alaska Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee since 1984, checked her files Wednesday and came up empty-handed.”

Meanwhile, Blogress Jessamyn West, a Vermont librarian, states that “there appears to be no truth to the claim made by the commenter, and no further documentation or support for this has turned up.”

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons (now Baker), was not fired but instead resigned in August 1999, two months before Palin was voted into her second term.

You don’t like her stance on abortion? Fine. But this story has no substance to it.

The book-banner tale seems to have originated in a widely circulated Aug. 31 email from Anne Kilkenny, who is not a "South Park" character but a Wasilla resident and harsh Palin critic.

On Sept. 2, Time magazine repeated the tale, attributing it to John Stein, Palin's predecessor as mayor, whom she defeated in the 1996 election.

Some asshat named Andrew AuCoin then posted "the list of books Palin tried to have banned"--90 of them in all. But another reader noticed that the list actually seemed to originate at this page--where it appears under the headline "Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United States."

But the phony list was already making its way around the Internet. The myth that Sarah Palin is a "book banner" has taken hold, at least on the left. It shows up, for instance, in two Salon articles (here and here) today.

There is also the issue of -- horrors! -- Praying for our troops! (shudder)

Blogger Jim Lindgren notes another example, a CNN report from yesterday:

[Palin] also talked to church members about "being saved" at the Assembly of God and suggested to them that the war in Iraq is a mission from God. Palin said, "our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we are praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

But this quote turns out to be out of context, which seems to be usual nowadays. Here's what Palin actually said:

"Pray for our military. He's [Palin's son Track] going to be deployed in September to Iraq. Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do also what is right for this country--that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan."

"I find it hard to believe that Anderson Cooper does not understand the difference between praying for something you hope is true and stating that it is true," Lindgren writes. (The article with the misleading quote actually is written by a correspondent for Cooper's show, not Cooper himself.) It's all too easy, however, to believe that journalists would be sloppy at best when reporting stories that fit their stereotypes about Palin in particular and conservative Christians in general.

On PBS's "Washington Week in Review" Friday, hostess Gwen Ifill reported encountering hostility on the floor of the Republican Convention: "There was a genuine grievance underneath all of that, this idea that she had been a victim and a victim of sexism and a victim of media bias." Jeanne Cummings of Politico disagreed:

"Well, I don't have any sympathy for them. I don't think there is any grievance that matters. John McCain put this woman--and she accepted--in a position to become president of the United States in the next 60 days. We don't have enough time to mess around with this. We need to know a lot more about this woman. And it's our job to find out everything we can about her, so the voters can make an educated decision about whether they want her that close to the presidency."

Even if "this woman" has nothing to complain about, don't readers and viewers have a right to expect that journalists report what they "find out" only if it is true?

The latest Sarah Palin smear

I think I can update this DAILY if I really want to....the Stupid Nonsense Of The Day Is:

What's the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick

"A theocrat is a theocrat, whether Muslim or Christian."

I admit I occassionally find something thoughtful from Slate, rare for a lefty website, but this recycled Xtian boogyman nonsense, dating from the early Reagan years, is tiresome.

Juan Cole's moral equivalency crap is eviscerated by Jeff "Protein Wisdom" Goldstein.

Q: What’s the difference between Dr Juan Cole and a pitbull?
A: You don’t generally point and laugh at a pitbull.
(...)
Rhetorically, Cole’s trick is to ascribe to Palin motives that he knows his readership, who’ve been conditioned to believe that Christian boogymen are out to replace the Constitution with the New Testament, will believe uncritically.

Sarah Palin Smear Fest

I knew this was coming, the lamestream media was in the tank for the Obamunist, but it is sickening:

You must understand printing lies about Republican candidates is OK. It’s called “vetting.” Printing the truth about liberals - that’s called “swift-boating.” From career MSNBC jock sniffer Keith Olbermann to Barney Frank’s favorite publisher Jann Wenner, the verdict on Palin is unanimous.

Victor Davis Hanson does some comparing and contrasting.

Truly sickening:

[L]ast week's media torpor and this week's journalistic wilding are part of the same phenomenon: the media's uncontainable passion to elect Mr. Obama.

I say this having mentally stacked the questions the media have already asked Mrs. Palin in two days of intrusive and pointless questions against the glaringly obvious questions the media have never asked Mr. Obama in two years. Mr. Schmidt noted that "the media is asking more questions about Palin's pregnant daughter" than about Tony Rezko, the Chicago fixer and Obama patron who was recently convicted on corruption charges. But that's just the first item on a long list of passes the media have given Mr. Obama — passes on vital matters of character, judgment and political belief.

These range from the media's protective hesitation on his long-term relationship with former Weather Underground leader William Ayers, to their near-total absence of interest in his recent campaign choice for Muslim outreach, a young man with affiliations to not one, but four organizations with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood....

But no one, and I mean no one, is taking the bait. And certainly not now. Not when a
conservative Republican woman's amniotic fluid is in the water.

Why didn't Obama choose Hillary as Veep?

In fairness to Barry Obama, he was pinned against the wall by the realities of the situation. He could have won in a landslide with Hillary, but he knew if the Clintons were on board, they would brush him aside and run their own show. (You've got to love the King and Queen of chutzpah, don't you?) And he was arrogant enough to believe that, with the backing of the liberal media, he could skip through the presidential campaign without having to give straight answers to any of the scores of tough questions about his corrupt past.

Having said that, if Barry Obama should win the election, he will be a one termer, as his Carter in mullato form governance causes a congressional revolt in 2010 and a new Republican in 2012.
And Hillary will run then, probably unopposed on the Democrat side.

And should Barry Obama lose the election, the Clinton's will swoop in and put a stranglehold on the Democratic Party for 2012. They were suckered punched once by a small-time "community organizer" with a Marxist message, but you can be sure they won't allow it to happen again. Woe be unto him who tries to run against the Clintons in any future primary.

Victor Vashi: Red Primer For Children And Diplomats

First published in 1967 in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Here and here you can find Internet versions of Victor Vashi's original book, which is long out of print and the publisher no longer exists. The message of this book is so vital and well delivered we felt it a shame not to share it with the world. Especially considering the recent attempts by Russia's ruling elite to bring back the glory of the good old USSR.

What's the difference?

From The People's Cube.

The fix is in for Sacramento commuters

Well, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) has made its transportation plans, and it appears that the fix is in for us hard pressed commuters.

Click here to go directly to the survey.

I should have been paying attention sooner. In any case, the survey continues until Labor Day and it's not too late to register your point of view to The Powers That Be at Regional Transit (RT), for what little that is worth.

Looking at the three choices presented to us, it becomes clear that the luddite goons and ECOmmunistS aren't content to stop road improvements, they want to saddle us with trolleys. And they have the ears of whoever runs RT. These trolleys have incredibly high fixed costs, so they are more expensive than simply increasing bus service in the areas where they are to be placed. They do not have exclusive rights of way and will only take space away from buses and cars, and thus congest streets further. But hey, for the ECOmradeS, that's the idea, isn't it?

But let us look over the three options:

Option A: Probably the least objectionable and most realistic. Double tracking on the Blue Line bottlenecks from downtown to Watt and I-80 would certainly help, as would an extension to Cosumnes River College (assuming the flyover ramps and exclusive right of way option at the RT website).

However, a light rail Stub to Richards Boulevard? Gee, how about a vehicle bridge between Truxel and 7th/8th streets that buses and even cars (gasp!) could go on? I know, cars are evil and we must all ride unicycles... never mind that people will use their cars anyway from Natomas to Downtown and turn I-5 from Natomas to Downtown into a permanently congested mess. Already RT runs bus lines between Natomas and Downtown that could easily be routed to serve the new Railyards urban renewal area if there was just a BRIDGE across the American River at Truxel.

Option B: The Trolley Wanking begins here. Not everything about this option is awful: The Gold Line to Folsom could use a good double tracking. However, couldn't they just do the Gold line double tracking with the money they intend to waste on the Richards Boulevard stub in Option A?

Trolley systems for downtown / West Sac and Rancho Cordova? As if expanded Neighborhood Ride shuttles couldn't achieve the same ridership at a fraction of the cost? What crack are they smoking?

But that's not the worst of it. Just think about where these trolley lines will go. That's right, at street level, taking away badly needed road space. It would be one thing if a new trolley line to West Sac was built as an extension of the existing RT line at R Street (where a railroad overpass already exists over I-5), and then on a *new* bridge over the Sacramento River from there. But will that happen? Noooooo. Instead that new trolley will putt-putt-butt-plug its way across the Tower Bridge, taking away already strained road space. Ditto for whatever they want to build in "Raunchy Cadaver".

Moreover, will an airport rail line really outdo Yolobus to the airport in terms of service? At least in this option they are beginning to think of a New Bridge at Truxel, which is a must. But I suspect that once again the new RT line will not be elevated and will putter its way at street level. In general, LRT at street level just is more congestion--if you are going to expand the Rail system at all, give it grade separation and it's own right of way.

Option C: Now this option just has to be a masturbatory fantasy of trolley fetishists. Gold Line towards El Dorado County? On an old railroad line that was used by loggers and meanders its way to Placerville? And yet more pathetic trolleys that poke along on street level, taking away badly needed lanes on Arden, Fair Oaks, Howe and J Streets! Once more: If you are going to build rail lines at all, build them with exclusive rights of way and grade separation.

So what are we to do?

1. *Don't* renew the Measure A half-cent sales tax. In the absence of ironclad language that says the revenue will go to real road improvements, all the money will only go to trolley fetishists.

2. *Don't* approve any additional tax, unless the initiative somehow has ironclad language that says the revenue will go to real road improvements. (Given shifty judges and shysters, I'd even be a bit skeptical here)

200,000 State Workers Facing Pay Cuts???

Or so says KCRA News.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to defer wages for 200,000 state employees, paying them federal minimum wage until lawmakers reach a budget deal.
But the plan has state workers upset with the Schwarzenegger.

"He's turning a budget process into a budget catastrophe," said Yvonne Walker, president of the Service Employees International Union.

SEIU workers are expected to hold a rally at the Capitol as soon as noon today.

A spokesman for the governor, Aaron McLear, said the idea is one of several options Schwarzenegger is considering as California faces a cash shortfall.

"Everybody agrees that we're going to run out of cash very soon," McLear said.

The governor is contemplating signing an executive order next week that would pay state workers the federal minimum of $6.55 an hour. That amount is $1.45 an hour less than California's minimum wage.

This move, along with some other measures, would possibly save the state $500 million a month in the near term.

But state workers said they would suffer.

"I'm already really struggling, and it's all I can do to get by each month," one worker said.

Some speculated that the plan may just be a bluff by the governor to get lawmakers to resolve the lingering budget battle.

"That makes me even more angry, because the reality is, why would you have people going through this kind of panic if it's not something that's real?" Walker added.

But the governor's staff said the plan is not a ploy, adding that the state faces a very real money crunch.

This wasn't a good move by the Governator. He is seen as taking his frustrations with the Demunists in the Legislature out upon the hapless state employees. Then again, the Governator championed an irresponsbile orgy of bond spending and implemented what will be costly and utterly phony programs to stop the "climate change" hoax, so I have no sympathy for him either.

Questions:

1. Why was there no State “hiring freeze” months ago? A state hiring freeze means no new positions. There *are* actual new hires in some places here and there, but the State workforce shrinks due to attrition. This tactic has been done by Governors again and again. Governor Wilson had one in place for most of his term! Yet only now is Ah-nold implementing one? Where has he been all these months? It had been clear for some time that the state wasn't going to balance its budget.

2. Why are there no "Overhead Savings" moves. Keep paying the non-essential state employees, but send them home, shut the buildings and other facilities down, and still save money on overhead. The state employees might actually love Ah-nold for this paid vacation. (This method of “cutting programs” was actually suggested back in the heady days of the Gingrich Revolution so that the Federal civil service would not object).

Meanwhile, Demunist State Controller John Chiang is posing as protector of the hapless state workers:

I will urge the Governor to rethink his proposal and work with us to ensure we manage our state finances in a responsible, realistic and honest manner.

(...)

For these many reasons, I have no intention of complying with the Order and continue to encourage you to work with the Legislature...

Gee Johnny, you're not a legislator, you're the Controller. Ah-nold has to work with the Legislature to pass a budget, and how can Ah-nold do that when the Demunist leaders of the Legislature have recessed themselves until next week?

Not only is John Chiang just plain wrong about the governor's authority to make pay cuts (state employees are part of the Executive branch), his pompous arrogance is revolting.

Not that this lets Ah-nold off the hook.

Sigh. Between Commiecrat legislative leaders, a RINO Republican Governor who fiddled with frivolous bonds while the situation got worse and worse, and the occassional pompous blowhards like John Chiang, we are truly screwed.

"The Surge" and the media

Ace has a great post on this.

This isn't entirely new. The liberal media didn't want to admit that the "devastating arms race" defeated the Soviets either, and that peace through strength actually worked.

Then the libmedia spin was "the Soviets were falling apart anyway", even though those who predicted the Soviet collapse in the '80s were ridiculed by the very same libmedia.

Remember how Gorbachev ended the Cold War (snicker)?

Even better: "The Democrats were behind Reagan every step of the way".

Quit Blaming 'Speculators' (futures and options traders)

Economist Walter Williams had a great column on this. I quote the best part of it:

Congressional attacks on speculation do not alter the oil market's fundamental demand and supply conditions. What would lower the long-term price of oil is for Congress to permit exploration for the estimated billions upon billions of barrels of oil domestically available, not to mention the estimated trillion-plus barrels of shale oil in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah. Some politicians pooh-pooh calls for drilling, saying it would take five or 10 years to recover the oil. I guarantee you we would begin to see a reduction in today's prices even if it took five to 10 years for us to get the first barrel. Put yourself in the place of an OPEC member knowing there would be a greater supply of U.S. oil five or 10 years, hence maybe driving oil prices lower to say $40 a barrel. What will you want to do now while oil is $130 a barrel? You would want to sell as much oil now and OPEC's collective efforts to do so would put downward pressures on current oil prices. Right now the U.S. Congress is OPEC's
staunchest ally.

Why did crude oil futures run up? Because futures contract traders (rightly) believed long-term demand would continue to outstrip supply, leading to an increase in price. This is why all it took was President Bush getting rid of the executive order banning U.S. offshore drilling to give the market the perception that we were about to get serious and increase the supply a little, to drive the price back down a little. If it took crude oil futures topping $145/barrel and gasoline hitting $4.50 per gallon to get our weenie politicians off their asses and allow us to go after our own natural resources, and "the speculators" were 100% at fault for driving prices to these levels, then they should be given medals and have heroic folk songs written about them.

Now I can just hear some of you quibbling about lowering demand rather than raising supply. In a world of growing Chinese, East Indian and other oil demand, fat chance, no matter how much it may make you feel good to conserve. Not that effective fuel substitutions wouldn't be a bad idea. (Hint: try making ethanol from sugarcane, not corn). But just look around your desk or walk around your house and count all the petroleum derived plastic and vinyl parts--we need petroleum, and we will for a long time to come.

With commodities, both buyers and sellers are absolutely necessary components of a functioning market. What it comes down to at the end of the day is that the nefarious and shadowy "Speculator" is an easy target for demagogic eco-weenie politician to blame for high gas prices in an election year since most of the public has no idea what one is.

Make no mistake that these crypto totalitarians are secretly desiring price and other controls on us, and "speculator" demagogery is useful in this aim. They tried demonizing the oil companies for years, but it has become apparent to all that oil companies are small fry compared to many "oil governments". Funny now nationalized oil companies always escape such criticism, isn't it?

Seriously, folks, the futures and options trading market for oil is NO different than the ones for gold, silver, wheat, pork bellies, or frozen concentrated orange juice (for those of you who remember the comedy "Trading Spaces").

Do airlines hedging their exposure to jet fuel costs ever plan to take delivery of the barrels of crude oil they order? Too funny that it was these liberal political asshats petioning the public to remove "the speculator" from the markets. Speculator defined as one not taking possession of physical barrels. (And yes, for every airline or trucking company trying to hedge against future oil price spikes, there's a so called "evil speculator" who has to buy or sell in the opposite direction.)

McClintock's Upset Victory--Wall Street Journal Notices

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal says "Bravo" for Tom McClintock's victory in the 4th Congressional District race.

He attributes McClintock's upset victory over Doug Ose in California's 4th Congressional District to principled conservatives disgust with pork barrel excess, of which Doug Ose was very much a part. True and Fair enough. Ose's heavy-handed smear campaign also generated a backlash among fair-minded conservatives.

However, Mr. Fund and the Wall Street Journal omit the immigration issue as a factor in McClintock's stunning upset victory. Then again, perhaps that is not surprising, given how utterly out of touch the Wall Street Journal is with the Republican base (and the American public in general) on that issue.

Just so Mr. Fund knows, Tom McClintock is very much a "restrictionist", or even a "nativist", to use the Wall Street Journal's own epithets, while his primary opponent Doug Ose continued to condone the "open borders" debacle. Tom McClintock opposes swarms of illegal aliens overcrowding schools, hospitals and other public services, causing crime as rootless migrants are prone to do, and driving blue collar wages down.

I suppose that means that the Wall Street Journal will now write editorials excoriating Tom McClintock. The Wall Street Journal simply refuses to get a clue about the problem that California and many other states are having with excessive legal immigration, let alone illegal immigration, which is per se evil and an undermining of the rule of law and property rights, which ostensibly the Wall Street Journal champions.

Cesar Chavez Unmasked

Facts always get in the way of myths. Cesar Chavez is a good example. Here was a rather vicious man, yet the world thinks he did wonders. His followers are still true believers—yet even they support the myth not the man:

So, the federal government will spend countless tax dollars to seek out Cesar Chavez-connected sites for inclusion in the National Parks System ("Law orders search for Chavez landmarks," May 27). Will they include the many fields and buildings that were torched or burned by Chavez and his followers during their years of "nonviolence"? Will they mark the spots where Chavez looked the other way when heads were smashed because field workers did not go along with him?

That man, a man not to be respected and honored, is the one I recall from my years growing up in the agriculturally rich Coachella Valley.

My father worked at a box-making company and packing houses. We were not rich; we did not own the companies. My parents worked hard for every penny they received. I recall many late-night phone calls. On several occasions, my sister and I went with my dad to see the blazing infernos that were once his places of business. Now, they were ash piles after the "nonviolent" UFW members got through with them. Many people were out of work because of their tactics - many people who had no quarrel previously with the UFW. Now, though, there was no sympathy, no support - only anger.

Ironically, Cesar Chavez was one of the first to argue and fight illegal aliens, yet now the next generation of Chavez followers are supporters of illegal aliens. What is now forgotten is how Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers were the first "Minutemen". Actually, that's not fair, they were far more violent than the utterly peaceful Minutemen, who use nothing more than 2-way and CB radios. Not only did Chavez and his goons regularly patrol the border and were vigilant about reporting illegal aliens to law enforcement, they also beat them up when they caught them.

Why? For the very sensible reason that these laborers were undermining wages for US born Mexican American farmworkers, just as illegal aliens today undermine wages for American workers in the building trades and other service sector industries.

But somewhere, "La Causa" of better wages and working conditions took a backseat to "La Raza" attempts to import a new lumpenproletariat, of which the radical communists in academia hoped (and still hope) to be the vanguard. And so the legend of Cesar Chavez was reinvented, or should I say fabricated. A strong-arm brawler who was really another Jimmy Hoffa now has his picture featured at pro-alien rallies with the stupid slogan "No One Is Illegal". That is certainly not a sentiment Cesar Chavez shared in his heyday.

There Is a Military Solution to Terror....

....you brainwashed liberal dupes!

...the best way to end an insurgency is, quite simply, to beat it.

Why was this not obvious before? When military strategies fail – as they did in Vietnam while the U.S. pursued the tactics of attrition, or in Iraq prior to the surge – the idea that there can be no military solution has a way of taking hold with civilians and generals eager to deflect blame. This is how we arrived at the notion that "political reconciliation" is a precondition of military success, not a result of it.

There's also a tendency to misjudge the aims and ambitions of the insurgents: To think they can be mollified via one political concession or another. Former Colombian president Andres Pastrana sought to appease the FARC by ceding to them a territory the size of Switzerland. The predictable result was to embolden the guerrillas, who were adept at sensing and exploiting weakness.

The deeper problem here is the belief that the best way to deal with insurgents is to address the "root causes" of the grievance that purportedly prompted them to take up arms. But what most of these insurgencies seek isn't social or moral redress: It's absolute power. Like other "liberation movements" (the PLO comes to mind), the Tigers are notorious for killing other Tamils seen as less than hard line in their views of the conflict. The failure to defeat these insurgencies thus becomes the primary obstacle to achieving a reasonable political settlement acceptable to both sides.

This isn't to say that political strategies shouldn't be pursued in tandem with military ones. Gen. David Petraeus was shrewd to exploit the growing enmity between al Qaeda and their Sunni hosts by offering former insurgents a place in the country's security forces as "Sons of Iraq." (The liberal use of "emergency funds," aka political bribes, also helped.) Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has more than just extended amnesty for "demobilized" guerrillas; he's also given them jobs in the army.

But these political approaches only work when the intended beneficiaries can be reasonably confident that they are joining the winning side. Nobody was abandoning the FARC when Mr. Pastrana lay prostrate before it. It was only after Mr. Uribe turned the guerrilla lifestyle into a day-and-night nightmare that the movement's luster finally started to fade.

June 2008 Election Guide

Fellow blogger Curmudgeon often posts a voting guide for elections here In The Land Of Fruits And Nuts. This time around, I live in a district with a ballot item (the Denham recall) worthy of comment, in addition to the two competing eminent domain propositions, so I will try my hand.


Denham Recall:

Summary: NO on recall

First, this won't be on everyone's ballot but, for people in Jeff Denham's California Senate District 12 (Merced, San Benito, and parts of Madera, Monterey, and Stanislaus counties), vote "no" on the recall. Little needs to be said about how the recall attempt is unadorned political persecution to punish Denham for refusing to vote for a bloated state budget and an effort by state Democrats to make legislation "Republican-proof" in the state Senate.

People in District 12 have doubtless heard that the Democrats have pulled official support for the recall. Nevertheless, it is still important to actually show up and vote (or absentee vote) NO on the recall, since it remains on the ballot. It would be ridiculous if a recall with so little public support succeeded because the people who oppose it forgot to go to the polls.

That aside, this is a larger lesson about the recall process. People of any political bent need to be judicious in supporting future recalls, because they will tend to leave us with spineless and populist politicians, of all stripes. When such a recall succeeds, it sends the signal that anyone who votes against a bad bill backed by powerful interests is at risk of being recalled. Denham isn't a marginal candidate - he's popular in his district and won re-election by a wide margin in 2006. Recalls make it tougher for legislators to stand their ground on any issue, knowing that they will have to waste time and money fighting a recall.


Propositions 98 and 99:

Summary: YES on 98, NO on 99

Aftershocks from the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 Kelo v. New London decision are still being felt and this is one tremor, though potentially a good one. Neither Proposition 98 nor 99 is perfect but, having read the texts of both bills, there is a big difference between them.

The summary: Proposition 98 puts actual curbs on the government seizure of private property for non-government use whereas Proposition 99 is papier-mâché shaped to look like eminent domain reform. It undermines the legitimate reform of Proposition 98 and does almost nothing to curb most eminent domain abuse.

Proposition 98 puts real limits on the ability of city and county planning boards to use government power to take private property and give it to a private developer. And most of it is accomplished by simply defining the government's eminent domain powers to be what most people understand them to be anyway: when government needs property for a legitimate government use (like a police station, roadway, etc.) and it cannot come to an agreement with that property's owner, it can take the property via eminent domain by paying fair market value for it. It cannot take property for "development plans" that are not for public use, essentially taking one owner's property to give to some other private developer.

Proposition 99 is the city/county planners' answer to Proposition 98. These planners are the people who use eminent domain and want free reign to continue to do so. 99 proposes a very narrow restriction on use of eminent domain, tailored to make sure it can still be used for transferring property from one private owner to another in the vast majority of cases. It essentially does nothing, providing no protection to rented homes, to farmers, to small businesses, etc.

Is it OK to vote yes on both? No. Proposition 99 contains a provision such that if it gets more votes than the competing proposition, only 99's ineffective provisions will go into effect. Essentially, 99 exists only to undermine 98. Vote YES on 98 and NO on 99.

Fabian Nunez is a slime--the LA Times calls him on it

Nunez say that if you oppose him, or if you point out he abuses donors money, or if you are a Union demanding your money back, you are a racist. Typical.

I am impressed that a columnist from the LA Times, usually slavishly pro La Raza Demunists, called him on it.

Nuñez went on Univision's Spanish-language political program "Voz y Voto" and lashed out at reports in The Times that he had spent lavishly from his campaign funds on foreign travel and luxury goods. As you may recall, last fall this paper's Sacramento bureau reported that Nuñez had spent nearly $50,000 donated by "friends" on air travel to Europe and Argentina. He spent $5,149 for "a meeting" in the cellar of a Bordeaux wine shop. More than $2,500 went to buy "gifts" at Louis Vuitton in Paris.

One of the more interesting extravagances was the $8,745 tab the then-speaker ran up at the Hotel Arts in Barcelona, Spain. The bill included the services of a "translator." Although nobody expects the speaker of the California Assembly to speak Catalan, and although not all Catalonians speak English, they all speak Spanish, just like Nuñez. (Actually, the apogee -- or nadir, if you will -- of the former speaker's generosity was the $2,701 handmade belt buckle Nuñez bought as a gift for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The zillionaire former movie star returned it as "too lavish.")

Now that he's no longer speaker, Nuñez addressed the subject head-on this week. "Everyone's done it like this," he told his interviewer. "The difference is there are some in politics who want to judge me in a certain manner. Because of the fact I am Mexican, they think I have to sleep under a cactus and eat from taco stands. ... The only thing that really results out of this is that groups that don't like Latinos use this as a weapon to inflame anti-Mexican, anti-Latino politics."

Really? Over the last 10 years, there have been six speakers of the Assembly. Three have been Latinos -- including Antonio Villaraigosa, the current mayor of Los Angeles -- two have been African Americans and one was a white male. None of them required the services of a Catalan translator or felt the need to hold meetings surrounded by aging barrels of Bordeaux. Nuñez's attempt to attribute any objections about his thoroughly objectionable conduct to his ethnicity is a perverse moral reductionism -- a mirror image, in fact, of the sort of racist view that categorically denied a person's achievements because of his race.

People criticized Nuñez's extravagance for a simple reason: They resent seeing public office used like a personal ATM, no matter what language their parents spoke at home. Moreover, they find this sort of conduct particularly hard to accept when the elected official comes out of the labor movement, as the former speaker proudly does, and belongs to a party that claims to represent the interests of working people.

Finally! A Survey of California Judges

Every election cycle Republican voters complain about the lack of information regarding judicial candidates appearing on their ballots. Recently, Republican voters were reminded of the power of Judges to make life altering decisions. The ruling of the California Supreme Court in the Gay Marriage cases further underscored the need for Republican voters to have information regarding who they are electing to these important and powerful positions. Judges appointed by RINO Republicans, not by Demunist Commiecrats, were to blame for that fiasco. In an attempt to provide Republican voters with the information they need, the California Republican Lawyers Association has prepared a statewide Republican voter guide on Judges.

Supreme Court and Court of Appeals Judges are initially appointed by the Governor, but subject to yes/no votes in subsequent gubernatorial elections. County Municipal and Superior Court Judges are elected, and these judges are all ostensibly non-partisan.

Thanks to the leadership of Steve Baric and the California Republican Lawyers Association, we have a first time guide to help us vote for judges. The next one, for the November election will be even better.

This is what we need: aggressive leadership from patriot non-RINO Republicans like Baric. I urge you to pass this along to your friends. Let them know there is a guide to voting for judges.

LA Times Calls Race Riot at School a "Brawl"

Move along--nothing to see here, says the LA Times.

Note how the Demuist Commiecrats are utterly silent about "racism" and "hate crimes" here, even though no doubt at least some of the African Americans involved here were innocent victims!

In the Demunist Commiecrat world, Black on White hate crimes don’t count, and Black on Asian hate crimes don’t count. But then again, Latino on Black hate crimes don’t count either.

Why is this? Because it’s the liberal agenda, baby! Import a larger and larger underclass of welfare dependents. African Americans used to be given the welfare plantation treatment all to themselves, but the Demunist Commiecrat commisars have decided they are not enough of them and they are not compliant enough. So they are importing a new underclass to augment them.

If that new underclass ends up displacing rather than augmenting them, well, you can’t make the perfect Soviet socialist omlette without breaking a few African American eggs now, can you?