Off to See an Old Friend

The other day I received an email at the email address that I set up for this blog. It started out, "Hi its Kara, remember me?"

I hated Florida when I first moved here. I was fresh out of college, newly divorced with two small children and I didn't know anybody except my parents and my great aunt.

Then on my first day of my first (real) grown up job I met Kara. She was working while her husband was in college. We went to lunch together and became best buds. We joined the bank's mixed softball team. Kara played second base and I played third. My kids were the bat boy and bat girl and Kara's husband would cheer us on from the stands.

Then her husband graduated and got a job in Dallas. We promised we would stay in touch but twenty-five years ago neither of us had email and eventually the letters petered out.

Long story short (yeah, I know), Kara and her husband have moved back to Florida. One day she was surfing the Conservative blogs online and viola! I'm off to spend New Years with Kara and her husband. I'll be back some time New Years day.

In the mean time:

A Wish for a Friend

Wishing you a rainbow
For sunlight after showers—
Miles and miles of Irish smiles
For golden happy hours—
Shamrocks at your doorway
For luck and laughter too,
And a host of friends that never ends
Each day your whole life through!

Happy New Year,

Carolyn

Traficant for Congress

Why not?

Traficant hinted at the possibility of returning to Congress two weeks ago when he hosted a press conference in Canfield to unveil plans to develop a casino/resort in the Mahoning Valley. He said then that he would be circulating petitions in the three districts to assess his political strength and support in the region, but stopped short of announcing he would jump in the race.

Traficant’s announcement comes just four months after the former congressman was released from a federal prison in Rochester, Minn., where he served a portion of a seven-year sentence for racketeering and bribery. The congressman was convicted in 2002 and became the second member to be expelled from of the House of Representatives since the Civil War. (emphasis added)

Seven years in federal prison for racketeering and bribery? Sounds like he would be a perfect fit for the current congress.

So Who is Paying for Nelson's 30 Second Holiday Bowl Ad?

From Michelle Malkin:

Cornhuckster sellout Sen. Ben Nelson will grovel before Nebraskans in a 30-second political spot airing tonight during the Holiday Bowl game.

Can you disguise the taint of Demcare bribes and beclowning with half a minute of folksy chatter?

Methinks not:

As a fresh poll measured the political cost of Sen. Ben Nelson’s health reform vote, he prepared Tuesday to take his case directly to Nebraskans during Wednesday night’s Holiday Bowl game.

Nelson will air a new TV ad in which he attempts to debunk opposition claims that the Senate legislation represents a government takeover, and he makes the case for health care reform.

“With all the distortions about health care reform, I want you to hear directly from me,” the Democratic senator says in the ad.

Nelson, dressed in an open-necked shirt and sweater, speaks directly into the camera during the 30-second ad.

The message will be launched during the Nebraska-Arizona football game and continue to air statewide for an undisclosed number of days. (emphasis added)

Okay. A thirty second ad during the Holiday Bowl and the ad will continue to be aired for an undisclosed number of days. That must cost a pretty penny. Who the Hell is paying for it?

I would assume that the taxpayers aren’t paying but these days, anything is possible. Is money left over in his campaign fund? If that is the case, it really doesn’t concern me because I’ve never contributed to Nelson’s or any other Democrat’s campaign. On the other hand, if I had contributed to Nelson and he used the money to bail his butt out of a freefall I would be pissed.
Maybe Nelson is paying out of his own pocket. Does anybody know?

Related posts via Memeorandum

Teach Your Children Well

Children really are little sponges eagerly sopping up everything, good and bad, around them. Children are born hard wired to process enormous amounts of information and with an almost maddening amount of curiosity. As parents, and grandparents, we hold our small children on our laps and read aloud, pointing at the pictures and using different voices. Just as we reach the final page we hear, “read it again” and we do. We sing the ABC’s and count our 123’s and somehow manage to answer all those “whys.” Then one day we excitedly and nervously send our little ones to elementary school where we trust that the lessons we have begun will be continued. Imagine the pain and frustration of finding out that you’ve sent your child to a school where learning is discouraged.

The two students each received $50,000, and two family members who filed the suits on their behalf received $25,000 apiece ....

Title VI prohibits allowing a racially hostile educational environment in schools and programs receiving federal financial assistance and provides for a private cause of action for violations....

Both students were African-American, and so was most of the elementary school’s student body, according to [the students’ lawyer, Lawrence C.] Kobrovsky....

[The younger student] claimed she suffered emotional trauma because she was subjected to racial and sexual slurs at ... elementary school ... Despite complaints, school administrative staff and district officials allowed the abuse to “escalate to the point where [she] was physically threatened, assaulted and battered,” the suit alleged.

“You have a culture where to act like you want to do well in school is considered acting white. And that is part of why we’re saying that it was racial, even though the students were all of the same race because they weren’t acting how the others thought they should be acting as members of that race,” Kobrovsky said....

This is elementary school. At this early stage a child’s attitudes are formed by their home environment. This story says to me that children were taught by their parents that education has no value and that those who seek to become educated are to be mocked and in the case of the little girl, physically assaulted. Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon. Yesterday Charles Payne related on the Glenn Beck Show that he was ridiculed as he was growing up for “acting white” because he excelled at academics. He credited his mother for instilling in him the value of education and her insistence that he do well in school.

The love of one’s child isn’t determined by race. The desire to see one’s child succeed in life is not determined by race. So why does it seem that the value of education, is determined by race?

When black children see Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, Bill Cosby, on and on and on, do they see people who are acting white or do they see successful people?

Parents of all races need to explain to their children that for every Ludacris or Eminem there are thousands on food stamps living day by day without hope or a chance of a brighter future. Children, all children, need to be taught at home, that succeeding at education is the ticket to succeeding at life.

h/t Instapundit

Are We the Next Israel?

Christopher Hitchens writing in Slate:

What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims. Our civil aviation is only the most psychologically frightening symbol of a plethora of potential targets. The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. The battle will go on for the rest of our lives. Those who plan our destruction know what they want, and they are prepared to kill and die for it. Those who don't get the point prefer to whine about "endless war," accidentally speaking the truth about something of which the attempted Christmas bombing over Michigan was only a foretaste. While we fumble with bureaucracy and euphemism, they are flying high. (emphasis ended)

Watching a news show or special or something several months back I remember them showing a schoolyard playground in Israel. Among the slides and swings and jungle gym were brightly colored bomb shelters. Even the youngest of the young children in Israel know that when the siren blows they have mere moments to get in the shelter. Every building, every event, every person is a target. Is that our future?

I agree with every word that Hitchen’s writes but I disagree with the finality with which he writes. There is a certain acceptance, an “it is what it is” about his words. I don’t accept that we are incapable of defeating our enemies. I want Hitchens to write one more paragraph, the happy ending, so to speak. I don’t think he’ll do that nor is it his job. We have an enemy bent on depriving us of our lives and our freedom. We must find the resolve to write our own happy ending.

The Danish Are Taking This Whole "Messiah" Thing A Little Too Seriously

AllahPundit:

Think about it. Jesus? The miracle of the loaves and fishes. The One? The miracle of jobs “created or saved.” Jesus? Water into wine. The One? Money from thin air. Jesus? Capable of being everywhere all at once. The One? Ditto. And of course, people have been known to pray to both.

In fairness, to a left-wing atheist, I’d imagine this is a toughie.

He's referring to an article in the Danish newspaper Politiken titled Obama greater than Jesus.

No, really.

I would laugh except that in a very real way it just isn't funny. I don't mean from a religious point of view. Anybody who would compare Obama to Jesus and find Jesus wanting is beyond any words that I could say. It just strikes me as sad that anybody, even some editor unknown to me, feels the need to deify any mortal. Denmark must be a very bleak place.

Sorry, it is so over the top it is a little funny. Or as Jim Geraghty said:

Come on, you wimp, call him greater than Mohammed.

I doubt we will be seeing angry Christian mobs rioting in the streets, burning Danish flags or issuing death threats against the editor of Politiken.

Image from gettomass.com

Why O' Why Won't Dems Defend Obama?

Giggle Alert! Doofus Crossing! Hmmmm:

Are Democrats so cowed by Republican attacks on Obama’s foreign policy that they’re unwilling to defend him?

It’s now been five days since the attempted bombing of Flight 253 in Detroit, and Congressional Democrats are still turning the other cheek to Republicans who are using the incident to attack Obama’s entire approach to national security.

At first, I thought this line of attack, pushed by Rep. Peter Hoekstra and Rep. Peter King, might fizzle out, but this is clearly not going away. Take South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint’s comments to Fox News yesterday, which were featured in this morning’s lead POLITICO article on the Republican response:

“[S]oft talk about engagement, closing Gitmo, these things are not going to appease the terrorists,” he said. “They’re going to keep coming after us, and we can’t have politics as usual in Washington, and I’m afraid that’s what we’ve got right now with airport security.”

Once again, these are not just complaints about the Homeland Security bureaucracy; Republicans are calling Obama, and his strategy, weak on terrorism. While Democrats have shown a willingness to ding DeMint for putting a hold on Obama’s nominee to head the TSA, they have been completely silent in the face of these wider criticisms, even after the president articulated a defense of his foreign policy yesterday.

Yada, yada, yada. I don’t suppose anybody ever told His Verklemptness that you can’t defend the indefensible? After spending more political capitol than they process (see: Nelson, Ben) Democrats sure aren’t going to climb out on the ledge for Obama over this. Let’s face it, it took Obama three days to respond and then his response sucked. And, there is plenty of blame to go around, so it isn’t surprising that Democrats prefer to engage in a rousing game of “duck and cover.”

As far as Republicans calling Obama weak on terrorism, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

h/t Instapundit

Ponder This

In Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s own words:

"I imagine how the great jihad will take place, how the muslims will win, insha
Allah and rule the whole world, and establish the greatest empire once again!!!” reads one Feb. 20, 2005, post. The words “insha Allah” are the phonetic translation of the Arabic for “God willing.”

Sheesh! And the Left worries about the “Religious Right”! What will it take before the Left recognizes the threat that radical Islam poses to freedom? People like the “Underpants Bomber” aren’t interested in living in harmony with the rest of us, they want to dominate us and they are quite willing to use violence to achieve their goals.

The Left needs to remove their blinders and instead of harping over Conservatives take a moment to consider what their lives would be like under Sharia.

And So it Begins

Cardiologists sue Sebelius over Medicare fee cuts:

Heart specialists on Monday filed suit against Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in an effort to stave off steep Medicare fee cuts for routine office-based procedures such as nuclear stress tests and echocardiograms.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, charges that the government's planned cutbacks will deal a major blow to medical care in the USA, forcing thousands of cardiologists to shutter their offices, sell diagnostic equipment and work for hospitals, which charge more for the same procedures. (emphasis added)

"What they've done is basically killed the private practice of cardiology," says Jack Lewin, CEO of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), which represents 90% of the roughly 40,000 heart specialists in the USA.

The issues raised in the lawsuit are not related to the health reform legislation being hammered out on Capitol Hill. But the dispute offers a revealing case study of the impact of payment reform on one specialty — cardiologists — and, ultimately, their patients.

It also illustrates the vulnerability of the heart doctors, who over the past few decades have invested heavily in nuclear scanners and other costly tools of their trade only to discover that they may be too expensive to operate in an era of increasing restraint on medical costs.

I doubt that by the time the “reforms hit the pavement” that cardiology will be the only field affected. The problem with cost containment is that bureaucrats, not doctors, decide who will be allowed to be treated and what that treatment will be. If a panel in Washington decides that mammograms are unnecessary for women under the age of fifty younger women will not be given routine screenings despite the fact that breast cancer is the leading cause of death for women between the age of 15 and 54.

It is easy to call any particular medical procedure unnecessary unless you or your loved one needs it. That decision should not be taken away from doctors and their patients.

More at Memeorandum

Nelson Takes a Tumble

Rasmussen has a current poll out that can be summed up in four little words, sucks for you, Bennie:

The good news for Senator Ben Nelson is that he doesn’t have to face Nebraska voters until 2012.

If Governor Dave Heineman challenges Nelson for the Senate job, a new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows the Republican would get 61% of the vote while Nelson would get just 30%. Nelson was reelected to a second Senate term in 2006 with 64% of the vote.

Nelson's health care vote is clearly dragging his numbers down. Just 17% of Nebraska voters approve of the deal their senator made on Medicaid in exchange for his vote in support of the plan. Overall, 64% oppose the health care legislation, including 53% who are Strongly Opposed. In Nebraska, opposition is even stronger than it is nationally.

Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters in the state believe that passage of the legislation will hurt the quality of care, and 62% say it will raise costs.

Looks like Nelson is learning the hard way the voters send their representatives to Washington to act in their interest not in the representative’s interests. Gone are the days that once elected a congressman can do any damn thing they like and still count on the shmucks back home to support them. The voting public has found their voice and congressmen need to listen or ignore the voters at their own peril.

I have a great deal of faith in the American public and that faith has been reaffirmed by the polling numbers coming out of Nebraska, particularly that Nebraskans overwhelmingly oppose the deal that bought Nelson’s vote. Voters don’t want perks, they want fiscal responsibility.

Nelson won’t be up for re-election until 2012. Between now and then, he has a lot of road to make up and fences to mend.

Related:

Hot Air: Rasmussen: Ben Nelson down 30 points to Heineman after health-care reversal

The Weekly Standard: Rasmussen: Obamacare Vote Puts Nelson 30 Points Behind

Sister Toldja: 2012 election: Is Ben Nelson in trouble?

Memeorandum

Synthenol? I'll Stick With the Real Thing

Where you go:

Synthetic alcohol, or synthenol, produces a hang-over free high perfect for escape and revelry. The main ingredient is found in Valium, so it works on the brain to relax. Unlike natural alcoholic beverages, however, synthenol does not affect brain functions that alter moods. Synthenol will not affect the areas of the brain related to addiction.

This type of alcohol can be imbibed all night without causing extreme drunkenness. Synthenol can also come with an antidote, perhaps in pill form, which will immediately stop the euphoria—in case, for example, driving home or operating heavy machinery is necessary.

Hang over free alcohol? Does it come in beer flavor?

Look, I can see the advantage of synthenol but I like my drink just the way it is now, thank you. My sloppy drunk days are years behind me so I can go out and have a good time without any “extreme drunkenness.” Learning to handle your drink is a part of growing up, which I suddenly did somewhere in my mid forties.

On the other hand, alcohol addiction has destroyed many families and many lives. If alcoholics could successfully substitute an addiction to alcohol for an addiction to synthenol, which at least on the surface appears far less harmful, I am all for it. Yes, I know, better not to be addicted at all, but in the real world it is easier said than done.

But somehow the thought of “relaxing” with synthenol and then taking a pill to counteract the effects just seems creepy. After all, isn’t it the negative effects of over imbibing that leads people to the decision to not over imbibe? There is something about creating a “fix” for something that most people will fix on their own that seems nannyish.

It will be years before synthenol is available. Until then I’ll just kick back with a Bud Lite and see how it plays out.

Asking Questions

By now we know that the attempted airline bombing on Christmas day was planned by two former residents of Gitmo who were released and sent back to Saudi Arabia. We know that the “Underpants Bomber” was trained in an al Qaeda camp in Yemen and we know that Obama has plans to send up to eighty current Gitmo residents back to Yemen. We also know Mr. Underpants was initially in a chatty mood, opining that there are plenty more like him out there. How much more will we know in the coming days? Not much.

By arresting Mr. Underpants and processing him through the civilian courts, giving him Miranda rights and providing him with a lawyer we effectively ended any chance that we could have had to gather information necessary to thwart other attacks. Not only did Homeland Security fail before the attack, they failed miserably after the attack.

Marc Thiessan has an informative article in today’s USA Today that deals with just this problem. We no longer question terrorists. We either kill them in air strikes or we lawyer them up. Thiessan:

Instead of looking for ways to release these dangerous men, we should be capturing and interrogating more of them for information on planned attacks. But that is something the U.S. no longer does. President Obama has shut down the CIA interrogation program that helped stop a series of planned attacks — and in the year since he took office, not one high-value terrorist has been interrogated by the CIA. (emphasis added)

The job of Homeland Security is to prevent attacks against Americans, not release ridiculous statements after the fact. When it comes to national security, what we don’t know will kill us.

Related:

No Sheeples Here: Clowns To The Left Of Me, Jokers To The Right. Homeland Security Stuck In The Middle.

Ruby Slippers: Underwear Bomb Contained Enough Explosives to Bring Down Plane

Another Black Conservative: Great Balls of Fire: Photos of the Underwear Bomber’s briefs

American Power: The Politically Correct Myth of Airline Bombers

2009 Tax Stinkers

Howard Gleckman has posted on The Ten Worst Tax Ideas of 2009. The TaxProf lists his favorites, here are mine:

8. Obama’s Middle-Class. This is a rerun from last year, but it is too good to leave out. The President thinks we will somehow reduce the deficit and fix the tax code without raising taxes by a dime for those poor souls making a quarter million dollars-a-year or less. Unfortunately, that's 95 percent of us. Can’t wait to see how he does it.

4. California. It claims to be the fifth largest economy in the world but can’t pass a serious budget, and can’t govern itself. It is the poster child for dysfunctional state governments and fiscal crises everywhere

3. The homebuyer credit. Congress started the year by giving away $8,000 in subsidies to "first-time" homebuyers, as many as 74,000 of whom, it turned out, never quite got around to buying a house. Then, it extended the boondoggle to current owners who buy up. Bottom line: People who were already going to buy will get billions of dollars in government subsides. But you gotta make those real estate agents happy

The problem with the Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class is that it just doesn’t pass the smell test. You can’t go off the social agenda deep end without raises taxes to break the fall. Then there is the fact that if that stinker Cap & Trade passes it is the middle class who will be overwhelmingly impacted. Don’t even get me started on the VAT and the middle class. No offense but when I buy something I find out what it costs right up front. When my government is trying to sell me something, I want the cost right up front. Which brings us to…

California is living proof that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. In the Land of Perpetual Good Deeds every good deed is now being punished. The citizens of the state tried to turn their state in to a social utopia and what they ended up with is a fiscal cesspool. You really can tax, spend and regulate yourself out of business and now that California has reached the end of the road they still aren’t willing to take the necessary actions that will allow the state to (slowly) rebuild. They deserve their lot.

The Homebuyer’s Credit speaks for itself. It was just another government program that “enticed” people to buy something that they were already planning to buy. Oh, and like every other government program it is rife with fraud. Double whammy.

Actually, taxes are an easy target for ridicule. Problem is, when you spend, you tax, so we’re far more likely to see more stinkers in the years to come.

h/t Ed Driscoll

Bush vs Obama: The Vacation Pictures

You can tell a lot about a man by how he chooses to use his down time. For instance, this looks like a man of action who is willing to do the heavy lifting necessary to get the job done:

On the other hand:

I'm just say...

h/t Don Surber

"Terrorists - 1, United States of Fear - 0" My A$$

Let me share with you a comment I received on my earlier post "Lefties: What's the Big Deal About Blowing Up a Plane Full of People?":

Anonymous said...
Terrorists won the moment the "war on terror" was declared. The goal of terrorism is not to destroy, it is to undermine a society by TERRORIZING it, and that is EXACTLY what they have done.Terrorists - 1, United States of Fear - 0.

Where to begin?

First, I admire the simplicity of the commenter’s thought processes. “Anonymous” seems to be saying that if we simply ignored terrorists terrorism would not exist. Poof!

But no, we (read: Bush) declared the “war on terror” and in the thinking of Anonymous, we (read: Bush) created terrorism.

Anonymous opines that terrorists aren’t actually trying to kill us, they just want to scare us. Well it seems to me that the 9/11 crew and Maj. Nidal Hasan caused a great deal of destruction but I doubt that the people who stand on Anonymous’ side of the fence spend much time thinking about the lives of Americans lost or their loved ones left behind.

I think the part of the comment that bothers me, aside from its total inanity, is this: “Terrorists - 1, United States of Fear - 0.” Speak for yourself, puppy. I don’t see my fellow citizens crouching in fear. Just the opposite. Most Americans recognize the threat that radical Islam poses and rather than cowering they are resolute and fearless.

Reading between lines of the comment’s silliness is the typical Lefty assertion that America deserves to be a target. Bull hockey. We are the Land of Opportunity and Freedom. To this day scores flock to our shores to be part of the greatness that cannot be found in any other country on Earth. And it is, to paraphrase Tolkien, by the blood of our people that countless lands are kept free.

No, the terrorists have not won and they never will so long as patriotic Americans fearlessly face them down.

The "I Wish I Had Said That" Award

Ruby Slippers wins the “I wish I had said that” Award for this spot on title:

Max Baucus Imitates Drunk Sailor on Spending Binge

Obama Doesn't "Get" It

Related to yesterday’s post Why is Obama Silent on Iran-Again? is this post from Nile Gardiner writing in the Telegraph (emphasis added):

Now once again huge street protests have flared up on the streets of Tehran and a number of other major cities, with several protesters shot dead this weekend by the security forces and Revolutionary Guards, reportedly including the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and dozens seriously injured. And again there is deafening silence from the Commander-in-Chief as well as his Secretary of State. And where is the president? On vacation in Hawaii, no doubt recuperating from his exertions driving forward the monstrous health care reform bill against the overwhelming will of the American public and without a shred of bipartisan support.

This is not however a time for fence-sitting by the leader of the free world. The president should be leading international condemnation of the suppression of pro-democracy protesters, and calling on the Iranian dictatorship to free the thousands of political dissidents held in its torture chambers. Just as Ronald Reagan confronted the evils of Soviet Communism, Barack Obama should support the aspirations of the Iranian people to be free. The United States has a major role to play in inspiring and advancing freedom in Iran, and the president should make it clear that the American people are on the side of those brave Iranians who are laying down their lives for liberty in the face of tyranny.

It seems to me that the only person who doesn’t get that the leader of the United States is expected to step up when freedom is threatened is Barack Obama. It is embarrassing and frustrating and disheartening that we are being led my a man who rushes to defend tyrants but remains silent when freedom is being crushed in the streets of Iran. It calls in to question Pres. Obama’s priorities and his loyalty to freedom and democracy.

Why is Obama Silent on Iran-Again?

Prof. Jacobson asks, Will Obama Remain Silent About Iran Protests Again? So far it appears that the answer is, "Yep."

It seems an obvious assumption that the President has been briefed on the protests. Surely he has seen the pictures, or at least has been told, about the protesters risking the their own lives to save their countrymen from the gallows.

As the professor notes, the White House did release a statement earlier today, but White House statements are not what the freedom fighters in Iran need. They need the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, to take ten minutes from his vacation to make a personal statement. The man is be no means camera shy and if ever there was a good time for him to take to the air this would be it.

By not making a personal statement strongly condemning the actions of the Iranian government, Obama is projecting weakness. It debases the United States in front of the Middle East and emboldens not only Ahmadineja but his imitators as well.

Obama needs to show leadership now.

My Cats are on a ROLL!

My Kentucky Wildcats are 13-0 and there is no slowing them down! They play Florida on January 12th, so Doug, let the smack talk commence. My Cats will be eating Gator tail appetizers for dinner.

Oh, did I mention that on my lovely daughter’s birthday, my Cats won their 2,000th game? We’re busting records baby!

I'm Familiar With Drunk Blogging but Drunk Legislating?

Via NewsBusters

I've heard of drunk blogging, drunk calling and drunk emailing, all of which I'd advise using extreme caution, assuming that one can be drunk and cautious at the time, but drunk legislating is a whole different game.

Far be it for me to cast aspirtions on the esteemed Sen. Max Baucus but if I were a betting woman I'd say the man has a snort full. As they say, I report, you decide.

Don't Put Your Faith in "Blue Dogs" When it Comes to Cap & Trade (or anything else)

Politico is reporting that Senate Democrats are trying to convince the White House to drop Cap & Trade:

Bruised by the health care debate and worried about what 2010 will bring, moderate Senate Democrats are urging the White House to give up now on any effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.

“I am communicating that in every way I know how,” says Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least half a dozen Democrats who've told the White House or their own leaders that it's time to jettison the centerpiece of their party's plan to curb global warming.

Call me cynical but I would sooner believe that Landrieu (D-Show me the money) is angling for another multi-million dollar deal than I would hope that she realizes that Cap & Trade is one big crap sandwich nobody outside of the watermelon crowd wishes to dine upon.

Further down in the article we treated to this gem:

“I’d just as soon see that set aside until we work through the economy,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). ?“What we don’t want to do is have anything get in the way of working to resolve the problems with the economy.”

Well, we know that Nelson can be bought and sold like a cheap hooker, or as my friend Bob Belvedere likes to put it, Ben Nelson is a cheap whore. Hooker/whore aside, any supposedly “pro-life” man who would sell out our unborn children has far too much blood on his hands to ever be trusted to do the right thing.

Look, I pray that Cap & Trade disappears down the rabbit hole but I’m not counting on self-serving Blue Dog putzes for aid nor comfort. While we continue to fight the abominable ObamaCare, we must recognize that Cap & Trade, like health care “reform” is just another means of taking the American economy hostage. We must continue to fight against all government takeover programs whatever form they take.

Oh, and if you live in S. Carolina, home of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Sell out), get loud and tell the good senator that if he keeps pressing for Cap & Trade you will replace him with someone who gives a damn about this country.

Did Radical Islamist Dr. Khalid al-Mansour Pay Obama's Way Through Harvard?

The Daley Gator brings some astounding news:

…However, one of Sutton’s most notable moments is absent from the media hagiographies I have seen: he stated on television that he knew that an Islamic supremacist, Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, and advisor to a wealthy Saudi, had paid for Barack Obama’s education at Harvard Law School.

The details of Obama’s education have long been murky at best. Obama himself has refused to release any details of how he ended up at Harvard, how his education was paid for or what he did while he was at Harvard. Considering that a huge element of Obama’s aura is his ‘remarkable’ life, it has always seemed odd that his years at Harvard are a blank.

The video:




Read Doug’s entire piece here.

Another Airline "Incident" UPDATED

Fox News has just broken in to the program I was watching to announce that there has been another "incident" on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. The plane is on the ground and everyone appears safe. Other than that, there is no information. I will update as soon as information becomes available.

UPDATE:

They are now announcing that a thirty year old Nigerian boarded the flight in Lagos without any luggage and then switched planes in Amsterdam. Mid-air he locked himself in the restroom and when he refused to exit, an air marshal broke the door down and took the man in to custody.

Nobody knows at this point what the man's intentions were but he followed the exact flight pattern followed by the Northwest flight 253 bomber.

Napolitano in Denial: “The system worked.”

Jonah Goldberg writing in The Corner:

Napolitano has a habit of arguing that DHS is a first responder outfit. Its mission is to deal with "man-caused-disasters" after they occur. It appears she really believes it. If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning by the way), they could start by firing this patently unqualified hack.

Goldberg is being kind.

Upon learning of the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253, our President continued his golf game and then went to the gym. That is this administration’s idea of taking the war on terror “seriously.” Their whole “alls well that ends well” attitude would be merely frustrating if it didn’t belie how unseriously they take the war on terror and by extension, the safety of the American people. One wonders what, if anything, these people think their job is.

We did not hire these people as janitors. It is not their job to come along after the fact and mop up the mess. If Napolitano doesn’t understand that, and it doesn’t appear she does, then Goldberg is right, she needs to go.


More at:

Memeorandum
The Other McCain
The Riehl World
Michelle Malkin
Hot Air

Incredible Act of Bravery in Iran

Doug Ross is reporting that protesters in Iran rushed the scaffolding where two men were being hanged, saving their lives. The protesters have shown incredible bravery in the face of overwhelming force and without so much as a word of encouragement from President Obama. It is past time for this Administration to stand up on the side of freedom.

Read more here.

Video here.

Lefties: What's the Big Deal About Blowing Up a Plane Full of People?

Prof. Jacobson, following up on his earlier post, brings us this gem from Matthew Yglesias:

Obviously, people shouldn’t be lighting anything on fire inside airplanes. That said, all the big Christmas airline incident really shows to me is how little punch our dread terrorist adversaries really pack. Once again, this seems like a pretty unserious plot. And even if you did manage to blow up an airplane in mid-air, that would be both a very serious crime and a great tragedy, but hardly a first-order national security threat....

Ultimately, it does no favors to anyone to blow this sort of thing out of proportion. The United States could not, of course, be “devastated” by anything resembling this scheme. We ought to be clear on that fact. We want to send the message around the world that this sort of vile attempt to slaughter innocent people is not, at the end of the day, anything resembling a serious challenge to American power. It’s attempted murder, it’s wrong, we should try to stop it, but it’s really not much more than that.

Then there is this post from Donald Douglas at American Power:

But there's something more significant to consider with regards to how the left perceives this terror plot. I'm reading Spencer Ackerman's post on this, "al-Qaeda’s Desperate Bid For Relevance, The Failed Plane Attack & Afghanistan." Despite his purported national security "credentials," Spencer Ackerman's woefully unserious about war and terrorism. Recall that this is the guy who called for President George W. Bush's death at the Hague, and for that reason alone his rants will garner the attention of leftist foreign policy vultures. A good example of this childishness is Ackerman's tweet from yesterday, seen here:

What is it going to take for the Left to take the threat that terrorists pose to this country serious? Let people gather for a peaceful Tea Party protest and the Lefties are screaming their fool heads off about "radicals" but let a real radical attempt to blow up a plane with 300 people on it and all you get from the Left is "eh, no biggie."

Of course, if they took the threat seriously then they would also recognize the need for action. Let's face it, the men of the Left aren't exactly known as real men of action. No, for this crowd, the only action they are interested in consists of the bong and sushi fete after the gallery opening.

The "pee pee pants" crowd ignores and/or downplays the dangers that radical Islam poses to all free people in part because their worldview doesn't allow for 'good vs. evil' or 'right vs. wrong'. Again, recognizing evil or wrongdoing requires action, and that is a no go.

Let them going quietly back to their fetes. Serious issues should be dealt with by serious people.

All Hail Our New Overlords at Interpol

This just in from Andrea Shea King at RadioPatriot:

With Obama, always, always look at the other hand…

Yesterday, it was brought to my attention by Pierre Legrand that President Obama signed an Executive Order on December 17th that no one and I mean no one, reported on. Cue the crickets… As horrifying as the health care legislation is and I personally believe it is worthy of revolt, this Executive Order has the potential to be monstrous.

Here is the Executive Order:

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate ReleaseDecember 17, 2009
Executive Order — Amending Executive Order 12425
EXECUTIVE ORDER- – – – – – -AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER 12425 DESIGNATING INTERPOLAS A PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION ENTITLED TOENJOY CERTAIN PRIVILEGES, EXEMPTIONS, AND IMMUNITIES
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), it is hereby ordered that Executive Order 12425 of June 16, 1983, as amended, is further amended by deleting from the first sentence the words “except those provided by Section 2(c), Section 3, Section 4, Section 5, and Section 6 of that Act” and the semicolon that immediately precedes them.
BARACK OBAMA

Nudge, nudge folks… This seems a minor change but let us break it out for you as we see it. Let’s look at the section from Executive Order 12425.

Here’s the text of 2(c), which this Executive Order now has applying to Interpol:

(c) Property and assets of international organizations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, unless such immunity be expressly waived, and from confiscation. The archives of international organizations shall be inviolable.

This now says that Interpol is no longer subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Their premises or staff can no longer be searched either. Their files are not subject to legal subpoena or discovery. Our government could just hand documents and files over to Interpol and Americans would no longer have access to them. Interpol can legally keep files now on all citizens of the US with no right to redress.

In reality, we have just handed over our sovereignty. Interpol headquarters in the US is currently headquartered in the Department of Justice. A ‘separate’ Interpol agency has been created in the DOJ – let that sink in for a moment. Interpol has been granted diplomatic immunity now by Obama – they have exemption from being subject to search and seizure by law enforcement, US taxes and immunity from FOIA requests, etc. This action could also be used to divulge American military secrets and a whole host of horrific practices having to do with going after our military. It’s the road to internationalism on steroids.

I contend this is the foundation for an international governing and policing body. A modern day SS here in the US if you like. Remember how Obama wanted to create a civilian police force? Well, it’s here, just from a direction I never saw it coming from. I really believe you will see Interpol police forces on US soil in the near future. It will resemble the Gestapo and their intelligence gathering techniques. This police force would not be subject to our normal Constitutional oversights – remember, no search and seizure etc. You have to admire the evil genius behind all this. Just stunning.

"Stunning" doesn't begin to describe this move by Obama. This is a travesty. But the bigger travesty is that this Executive Order was signed on December 17th and not one outlet in the "main stream" media has reported on it. What further proof does anyone need that the media have long ceded their mantle as watchdogs and have become full fledged members of Obama's Fifth Column.

Read the rest of the story at RadioPatriot.

Officials Have Known About Northwest Airlines Bomber for Two Years

I am sitting here watching Fox's America's News Headquarters, who are reporting that an un-named source is claiming that our government has known about the terrorist who attempted to blow up Northwest Airline flight 253 for two years! And there is this report from Don Surber:

Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, 23, who tried to blow up Flight 253 flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, is the son of Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, the recently retired chairman of First Bank in Nigeria.

From AllAfrica.com: “According to the family members, Mutallab has been uncomfortable with the boy’s extreme religious views and had six months ago reported his activities to United States’ Embassy, Abuja and Nigerian security agencies.”(emphasis added)

Coming on the heels of the Ft. Hood massacre, how the Hell could this happen? How is it that our government has evidence that people are dangerous yet they fail to protect us? Prof. Jacobson has written Terrorist Attacks Plane, Think Progress Attacks Pete Hoekstra, detailing the Left's attack on Rep. Hoekstra because Hoekstra dared to say “People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration,” said Hoekstra.

Apparently this guy was on the "Watch List" but not the "No Fly List". Fat lot of good it does to watch someone if the government doesn't lift a finger to act on the information they receive. Hoeksra is on Fox right now pointing out that both Hasan, of Ft. Hood, and the Northwest Airlines bomber have ties to Yemen and radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki.

The Left can say anything they want but the fact is that President Bush did keep us safe for the seven years after 9/11. In Obama's first year we have already had one successful terrorist attack and we would have had a second one yesterday had it not been for dumb luck. I for one don't want to rely on dumb luck for my family's safety.

Fads

Mark Steyn writing in McCleans:

According to the CIA’s analysis, “detrimental global climatic change” threatens “the stability of most nations.” And, alas, for a global phenomenon, Canada will be hardest hit. The entire Dominion from the Arctic to the 49th parallel will be under 150 feet of ice.

"Climate change" was all the rage back in the seventies. We were told that if we didn't act, and act soon, we were all going to freeze to death. As memory serves me, we pretty much ignored all the hysteria, we didn't freeze to death and the scientists moved on to the next crisis.


I have reached the age where I don't pay much attention to fads. I didn't pay that much attention to the predictions of the impending Ice Age back in the seventies because quite frankly, I was more worried that Gary liked Rene more than me. (He did. They married)


That is the thing about fads. They come and go. And we forget about them. But there are fads and there fads. When Nehru jackets were the craze, I just had to have one. But the only thing that suffered due to the purchase of my tan leather Nehru jacket, that went out of style the day after it was bought, was my parent's bank account.

Back to Steyn:

The man with the sandwich board announcing the end of the world on Jan. 7 is usually unfazed when he wakes up on the morning of Jan. 8. He realigns the runes, repaints the sign, and reschedules Armageddon for May 23. The rest of us, on the other hand, scoff.


The fact is that Global Warming is no different than the hula hoop and the slinky. It is a fad that has made it's inventors a boat load of money but the fad will pass. The difference is that with this fad it isn't just individual Moms and Dads getting suckered out of their hard earned money by their pleading children. If this fad doesn't pass soon everyone is going to pay and pay and pay.


The true believers in the Church of Global Warming are unfazed by ClimateGate or any other evidence that comes down the pike. Fortunately, the ObamaCare debacle has our esteemed Congressmen gun shy and battle weary, as well they should be, and thus Cap and Trade is being "put on ice", pun intended, for the time being. And with time, all fads pass.


I look at the picture of myself in flowered bell-bottoms and matching floppy hat and feel silly. I predict that long before the north polar cap melts, Al Gore and the entire Global Warming crowd will be looking pretty silly, too.

Let the Merriment Begin!

From Don Surber:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said the public would cheer Democrats when they got home, so beloved is Obamacare. When Democrats go home, Reid said, “Yes, we’ll hear an earful, but it will be an earful of wonderment and happiness.”

Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd arrived in Connecticut, and got this “earful of wonderment and happiness”:

A man cried out, “You’re not gonna get re-elected.”

Is it just me, or does “an earful of wonderment and happiness” sound like part of a saying of Chairman Mao?

Now, in the spirit of the Season, I'm not wishing bad on the people who've served up that crap sandwich known as ObamaCare, but I think I should be forgiven if I pop some popcorn and kick back to enjoy the show. What do you want to bet that our Congressmen go to avoid their constituents during their break?

Are Bonuses for “Fat Cats” Bad? Depends on Which “Fat Cat”

That was then:

US President Barack Obama has hit out at Wall Street "fat cats," expressing anger that banks bailed out by the government again plan huge bonuses as millions of Americans battle poverty and unemployment.

"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street," he said in an interview with CBS television to be aired today.

And this is now:

The Obama administration pledged Thursday to provide unlimited financial assistance to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, an eleventh-hour move that allows the government to exceed the current $400 billion cap on emergency aid without seeking permission from a bailout-weary Congress. (emphasis added)

The Christmas Eve announcement by the Treasury Department means that it can continue to run the companies, which were seized last year, as arms of the government for the rest of President Obama's current term.

But even as the administration was making this open-ended financial commitment, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac disclosed that they had received approval from their federal regulator to pay $42 million in Wall Street-style compensation packages to 12 top executives for 2009. (emphasis added)

Let’s see, the “fat cats” who are paying back the taxpayers are undeserving of bonuses but the crooks at Fannie and Freddie who were instrumental in causing the housing bubble and are permanently living off the taxpayer dime, now they deserve bonuses of up to six million dollars each. Gotcha.

While President Obama has been demanding accountability of Wall Street he sets a different standard, a lower standard, for himself and his administration.

Good Golly, Miss Molly! Did He Say, "Yield"?

Was Sen. Cornyn sucking on a hookah when he made this ass backwards pronouncement?

"Folks on the right, and frankly I'm one of them in terms of voting record, have to yield to the world as it is and not necessarily how they wish it would be," Cornyn told Reuters for a story about centrist Rep. Mike Castle's (R) bid for Senate next year in Delaware.

If I understand, and I hope I don't, Cornyn is saying that if a voter's candidate of choice does not meet Cornyn's definition of reality, that voter should dump their conscious and yield to Cornyn's reality. If that is the case, why don't we do away with primaries and just let Cornyn's little club just appoint our candidates for us? What a putz.

It is this "I know better than you" attitude that has turned voters in droves away from the Republican party and straight in to the arms of the Tea Party. And the Tea Party doesn't even exist.

I am trying to be a good Republican. I've been a Republican my entire adult life. But don't talk down to me. Don't tell me who to vote for. And by all means, get over any thought of taking me for granted.

That is reality.

Why Are We Adding Another Entitlement Program When The Ones We Already Have Are Broke?

Washington Post:

The recession's jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation funds so fast that according to federal projections, 40 state programs will go broke within two years and need $90 billion in loans to keep issuing the benefit checks.

The shortfalls are putting pressure on governments to either raise taxes or shrink the aid payments.

Debates over the state benefit programs have erupted in South Carolina, Nevada, Kansas, Vermont and Indiana. And the budget gaps are expected to spread and become more acute in the coming year, compelling legislators in many states to reconsider their operations.

Currently, 25 states have run out of unemployment money and have borrowed $24 billion from the federal government to cover the gaps. By 2011, according to Department of Labor estimates, 40 state funds will have been emptied by the jobless tsunami.

Chances are that on Christmas Eve we will be gifted with yet another entitlement program. Let’s look at the entitlement programs we already have-Medicare will be broke by 2017, Social Security may well beat Medicare to insolvency and now we learn that 25 states are out of their employment funds and that number will soon swell to 40.

In order to “rescue” these programs either benefits will be cut or taxes will be raised. Most likely, there will be a combination of both. Reid and Company recognized that ObamaCare would also require services/treatments be limited (rationed) so deep in the belly of the bill they hid a provision:

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment requires that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The good news is that this only applies to one section of the Obamacare legislation. The bad news is that it applies to regulations imposed on doctors and patients by the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels.

The Dem’s aim is to lock-in the Advisory Board’s ability to cut costs through rationing. In other words, while the Dems have been denying that rationing is a feature of government health care, they have been simultaneously planning for it.

Rather than pushing through yet another entitlement program that will increase taxes, increase hardship and decrease productivity our government should be concentrating on fixing the broken programs we already have. They should start by getting people back to work.

Reid Confuses "Compromise" and "Corruption"

From Politico:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) offered a vigorous defense Monday of the deals in the Senate reform bill that benefit individual states, saying “it doesn’t speak well” of senators who didn’t secure such deals.

..."That’s what legislations all about,” Reid said of the compromises. “It’s the art of compromise. In this great country of ours, Nevada has many different problems than does New Hampshire. Michigan has many different problems than does Georgia.”

Now, Sen. Nelson held out on the pretext that he was pro-life. Had that been the case, and had Reid added true pro-life language to the bill and because of that language Reid secured Nelson's vote, that would have been a compromise. But that isn't what happened. Nelson sold his vote, Reid bought it. That is corruption.

I understand why a smarmy son of a bitch like Reid would be confused. Knowing the difference between compromise and corruption requires knowing the difference between right and wrong. He's not alone in his deficiency. For too long our Capitol has been manned by amoral corruptocrats who've used the power that we gave them to entrench and expand that power while lining their pockets with taxpayer money. The best, and worst, that can be said of Reid is that he is typical.

Speaker Pelosi Breaths a Sigh of Relief

Whew, that was close! Originally the Senate version of ObamaCare included a 10% tax on cosmetic surgery but Speaker Pelosi will be relieved to know that among the backroom deals cut to get this stinker passed, the cosmetic surgery tax was dropped and a tax on tanning salons was substituted in its place.

Actually, it was the AMA that objected to the tax on cosmetic procedures. Seems like an odd thing for the association that represents about one third of the country's doctors to hold out for. The majority of cosmetic procedures are voluntary, not medically necessary and are not covered by insurance.

In any case, fake tans will cost a little bit more and fake boobs will be surtax free. I'll pass on both.

Pro Abortion "Feminists" Won't be Happy Until They are Free to Kill Children Right up to the Age of Majority

This level of tripe is common among pro abortion "feminists":

I think there’s a bit of reverse psychology going on with respect to the issue of abortion. Let’s dispense with the term anti-abortion, shall we? Let’s call it what it really is: The movement to deny women the ability to decide for themselves whether to be parents as most persons endowed by their creators with unalienable rights have the right to do. With anti-abortion measures, women are not just subject to the state, they are forced to recognize a religious presence in their lives whether they have faith or not. Men do not need to recognize any faith. They are allowed complete freedom of conscience.

Aside from any other illogical, not to mention incorrect, frothing in the above paragraph, the writer has much in common with her pro-abortion sisters. There seems to be a hard-wired belief amongst these women that pregnancy is inevitable and unavoidable; sooner or later it’s going to get them through no fault of their own. Yet oddly, there are sexually active women who never find themselves under the brute force of the theocratic state compelled to become pregnant. How do they do that?

One wonders if “riverdaughter” is as pleasant in person as she is in paper. As a (somewhat) older woman I feel that I should pass on the wisdom of my years-lighten up, smile, enjoy life and for goodness sake, use birth control.

Happy Birthday, Nadia!

Happy birthday to my beautiful baby girl who has grown in to such an incredible woman. I am proud of the talented person and loving mother that you have become.

Even though we are on opposite sides of the country, you are always in my heart.

Have a wonderful birthday.

Love,

Mom

The Big Mouth From the Small State

How's this for the Spirit of Christmas:

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is a piece of work:

"Far from appealing to the better angels of our nature, too many colleagues are embarked on a desperate no-holds-barred mission of propaganda, obstruction and fear. History cautions us of the excesses to which these malignant, vindictive passions can ultimately lead. Tumbrils have rolled through taunting crowds, broken glass has sparkled in darkened streets. Strange fruit has hung from Southern trees. Even this great institution of government that we share has cowered before a tail-gunner waving secret lists. . . .

"We see it in Christmases and holidays ruined by the Republicans for our loyal and professional Senate employees. It’s fine for me. It’s fine for the president. We signed up for the his job, but why ruin it for all the employees condemned by the Republicans to be here?” (Emphasis added.)

Gee, don't hold back there Bucko. I'm going to skip over that first paragraph because frankly, it does little good to address the clearly unhinged. But as to your staffers ruined Christmas, go flipping home. The Republicans aren't keeping you there. Republicans don't want you there. Nobody asked you to cram this down our throats. In fact, we asked you not to. You didn't listen. You're not listening now. You stand on the floor of the United States Senate and speak like a petty, third world tyrant. Sen. Whitehouse, I will give the respect that you have earned. None. Kiss my ass.

India's Prime Minister was Teaching but was Obama Learning?

Doug Ross:

The Calcutta Telegraph offers a compelling and detailed view into the diplomatic machinations of Copenhagen. We're forced to turn to India's media outlets because state-run media in the United States continues to ignore the week's biggest stories from the climate summit (e.g., "Obama snubbed by Chinese premier at meeting", Economic Times of India).

In a last ditch effort to salvage a deal, Obama walked into a room unannounced where the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa were meeting.

When Obama entered the room, there was no chair for him. Obama himself was reported as saying that there weren’t any seats......At the “accidental” five- nation meeting, Prime Minister Singh told Obama that international review of voluntary mitigation action was unacceptable as he was answerable to Parliament. Any international review of India’s voluntary mitigation actions would go against public opinion, he said.Wen also had similar views, while Lula voiced concerns over imposition of trade barriers on developing countries under the garb of environment protection... The group stuck to its stand on review of voluntary mitigation action, which it said would be an intrusion on members’ sovereignty.

In short, India's prime minister gave Obama the "Acting Presidential 101" class: leaders of democracies are accountable to the people.

It is a shame that leader of the free world needs to be schooled by the Prime Minister of India. You would think it self evident that politicians are accountable to the people who elected them. But accountability doesn't appear to be one of Obama's strong points and I've seen no indication that he gives a flip about the will of the people.

We could have avoided all of this had so many people not have been willing to elect a complete unknown who had never done or accomplished anything simply because they believed that his election would be "historic". They may in the end be right, but for all the wrong reasons.

Civil Disobedience

Writes Pat at And So it Goes in Shreveport:

What kind of Senate does business like this? Voting in the dead of night, conducting business behind closed doors, totally and completely corrupting and hijacking the legislative process, buying votes and trading favors...it smacks of corruption, lies, and dirt. One feels used, ignored and belittled as an observer in this whole process.

Cheap. Tawdry.

Amen. As I wrote yesterday, McConnell rightly points out that were this not an attempt to deceive the American people, they would not be holding the vote at 1 A.M. on Monday morning. Thieves do their business under the cover of darkness. Is that what our government has become? The Dems ARE a bunch of thieves stealing our very liberty.

The question becomes what are we going to do about it? I can sit here and bang on this keyboard until Hell freezes over but what would does accomplish? The Tea Party movement has had an effect. Cap & Trade is being delayed. The Senate is sneaking in to the chamber to vote in the middle of the night. Congressmen in "safe districts" are announcing their retirement.

As I said in the comments at Legal Insurrection, defeated does not mean deflated. This battle has not gone well but the war is not lost. The Left is fighting for power. We are fighting for freedom and liberty. Momentum and history are on our side.

This is a comment that was left on an earlier post:

NATIONAL STRIKE JAN 20, 2010 to coincide w/ STATE OF UNION SPEECH NATIONWIDE STRIKE over Obamacare...

Call into work sick. Buy nothing. Find a union hall, congress creature office, State or Federal building and form picket lines. Come ready to party...

NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE! Put that right back in their face!

NATIONAL STRIKE JAN 20, 2010 to coincide w/ STATE OF UNION SPEECH NATIONWIDE STRIKE over Obamacare...TAKE BACK AMERICA

I don't know if this will catch on or not but I've put some thought in to it and I've decided that I will be spending January 20th sitting in front of Rep. Kathy Castor's office. I am aware that going on strike is not exactly number one with a bullet on the average Conservative's to do list but maybe it should be.

Any thoughts?

The Perfect Scam aka "Pay up, Sucker"

Having spent the last two and a half decades in banking on the branch level I've seen far too many people fall victim to scams. Scams take all manner of forms but the result is the same-the victims voluntarily give their money to the scammer. For all the millions of dollars that Nigerian scammers have suckered out of the pockets of willing victims, they are rank amateurs compared to the perpetrators of the "Global Warming" scam.

The "first name" in the Global Warming scam may be Al Gore but it turns out that Gore is a mere princeling compare to the King of the Fraud, Dr Rajendra Pachauri:

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international ‘climate industry’.

It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri’s links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how the world’s leading ‘climate official’ can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC’s recommendations. (emphasis added)

A long time criticism of the IPCC is that it ignores and very effectively silences scientists who present scientific evidence contrary to the IPCC's findings. Well, of course. The Nigerian scammer doesn't disclose negative information in the "Congratulations, you have won the Canadian lottery letter" and the chairman of the IPCC isn't going to allow information to become public that interferes with the "pay up, Sucker" conclusions that have made him one very, very wealthy gangster.

The Nigerians, and their counterparts, are able to pull off their scams over and over again because their victims are too embarrassed to speak out. ClimateGate is providing a (rare) window for the victims of the Global Warming scam, scientists and citizens alike, to speak out without embarrassment.

Read more about how Pachuri uses the IPCC to line his own pockets here.

For a pretty good clue about Pachuri's character read this post my Mark Steyn.

And to inject a bit of common sense in to the Global Warming nonsense: In other words, CO2 is not a pollutant in the air–it is air.

No War for Oil

Remember all those people who claimed that the invasion of Iraq was really just Cowboy Bush's way of stealing Iraq's bounty of oil and giving it to his buddies "Big Oil"? It seems that Michael Moore and Viggo Mortensen have moved on to tackle other evils (for the anti-America crowd there will always be something). Still, I wonder how they and their ilk react to this little bit of news:

Those who claim that the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to get control of the country's giant oil reserves will be left scratching their heads by the results of last weekend's auction of Iraqi oil contracts: Not a single U.S. company secured a deal in the auction of contracts that will shape the Iraqi oil industry for the next couple of decades. Two of the most lucrative of the multi-billion-dollar oil contracts went to two countries which bitterly opposed the U.S. invasion — Russia and China — while even Total Oil of France, which led the charge to deny international approval for the war at the U.N. Security Council in 2003, won a bigger stake than the Americans in the most recent auction. "[The distribution of oil contracts] certainly answers the theory that the war was for the benefit of big U.S. oil interests," says Alex Munton, Middle East oil analyst for the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, whose clients include major U.S. companies. "That has not been demonstrated by what has happened this week."

Of course, most thinking people realize that if the invasion of Iraq had really been about taking over the oil fields we would have just done it. You can't argue that America is a vast military-industrial complex bent on world domination and ignore the fact that a no point did we make any attempt to take over Iraq's vast supply of oil.

History will judge the war and President Bush based on the ideology of whomever writes it. One thing is certain-there was no "blood for oil."

Dems Gloat About Screwing Over the American People

I'm going to paraphrase Sen. Harkin's remarks during the announcement that the Dems have the votes for ObamaCare:

This is not a mansion. This is a starter home. It has has a good foundation and a good roof for protection AND IT HAS ROOM FOR EXPANSION.

Do not doubt for one moment that once the Dems jam this bill through the race will be on to expand it and expand it until they have the single payer, government run system that they have wanted all along.

Sen. McConnell, speaking right now, says that the Dems talk alot about "making history" but history will note that this is the moment that our government completely ignored the will of the American people. McConnell rightly points out that were this not an attempt to deceive the American people, they would not be holding the vote at 1 A.M. on Monday morning. Thieves do their business under the cover of darkness. Is that what our government has become? The Dems ARE a bunch of thieves stealing our very liberty.

Read about Sen. Nelson's sellout at The Other McCain. He sold out our nation's unborn children for a sweetheart deal for his state. He no longer has the right to call himself pro-life.

Marco Rubio on Fox Business

Watch Marco Rubio's appearance on Fox Business:

Mood Enhancement

Nothing improves a really crappy day like the utterly perfect Tweet.

Personal favorite: There are 27 bones in the human hand. I'm just going by sound here.

Golden Words

This, my friends, is eloquence:

Speak for yourself, pussy. But how emblematic of liberal weakness and the odd, seemingly contradictory arrogance that is its ugly, constant companion: this worm is so gutless he even loathes himself for his boundless self-loathing, and he can’t imagine that other intelligent people might not be as inclined to wallow in the shallow cesspool of impotent futility as he is. It’s every bit as pathetic as it is contemptible. And it’s remarkable that so many people are drawn to such a weepy, adolescent world view, seeing as how the only thing it really has to offer is misery and despair — ie, limits.

I read the paragraph, paused, thought, and then read it again. The writer could be talking about anyone, or everyone, on the Left. True Progressives are a (thankfully) small minority in this country. A movement simply can’t “catch on” when it is comprised of individuals completely devoid of basic survival skills.

The unyielding belief in self preservation is unheard of and unthinkable among our Progressive brethren. The first tenant of unworthiness espoused by the Left is that no man is greater (though often lesser) than the lowest creature. Human exceptionalism is mocked by those who take to the streets to save a snail but scoff at the mere idea of saving an unborn child. The utter backwardness of the Progressive movement is breathtaking.

I think too highly of myself to ever be accepted by the Left. I’m proud of that.

Read the entire glorious post.

The Jerk

What would any sane thinking person do when someone is saying “mean” things about them? Probably just ignore it, but hypocritical blowhard Rep. Alan Grayson (D) Jerk nixed the sane response in favor of writing a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that his critic be thrown in jail for five years.

Grayson is frothing over the website ”mycongressmanisnuts.com” which highlights Grayson’s penchant for irrational bluster. For those of you who can’t tell the nutty Democratic players without a scorecard, Grayson is the wacko known for calling an aid to Fed Chairman Bernanke a “K Street whore” and opining that Republicans “want you to die quickly.”

One would think that as an attorney Grayson would be aware that this country has something called the First Amendment which guarantees citizens the right to free speech. But lately it seems that Democrats care little for our Constitution or Bill of Rights.

Lefty Outrage Over ObamaCare

Doug Ross writes:

Over at 538.com, Nate Silver devotes significant attention to the faux liberal outrage erupting over the nationalization of health care. Silver analyzes the responses to 20 of his questions posed to Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) and Jon Walker (FireDogLake).

I'll save you the effort of reading their neural diarrhea. Suffice it to say that the "Reality-based" Community devotes thousands of words to government-run health care without mentioning:

• The "dangerous" amount of national debt that we are assuming ($50,000 for each and every American by 2019 without a health care takeover);
• The exploding and extremely risky deficit;
• The impending bankruptcy of Medicare and Medicaid (the time-bomb is set to explode in less than a decade);
• Slashing $500 billion from Medicare while claiming to "improve quality";
• And the utter accounting fraud associated with booking six years of benefits against ten years of tax revenues.

Bernie Madoff is serving time for running a Ponzi scheme like this, only a 100 times smaller. Best of all, Silver is the supposed "numbers guy" for the socialist left. So he turns out to be just as intellectually honest as the rest of the Soros-funded troupe.

The numbers are real. And they are dangerous to the future of this country, according not to me, but the Congressional Budget Office.

So the "Reality-based" Community is either delusional or intent on the utter destruction of the American experiment. Choosing which is an exercise best left to the reader.

Note: Yes, this is the same Nate Silver of the Dealergate beclownment. No one tell Natey that a variety of lawsuits by dealers alleging partisan activities by the Obama administration are still wending their way through courts.

To answer Doug's question as to whether The Left is delusional or intent on destroying the country, I'm going with both. The "Reality-based" Community that Doug speaks of has done quite well off of the "American experiment" yet they despise everything that they have profited from. They are delusional in that they believe they can take the country down and rebuild it in to some Socialist utopia and that only the "evil doers" will be affected. Perhaps they see themselves in the role of dominant over-seers in the New World order but toady schmucks is much more likely.

This the ugly result of emoting without thinking.