Sisterhood of the Mommy Patriots

THE COLLISION OF CHURCH AND STATE

2012-02-13T21:10:00.000-05:00

A firestorm has erupted over the Obama administration's enforcement of yet another of those little goodies Nancy Pelosi promised we'd find out about eventually. In one more in a laundry list of examples of the contempt in which they hold the Constitution, the administration is subjugating the first amendment to birth control. Pelosi has dismissed claims of unprecedented violations of constitutionally protected religious liberty as merely an "excuse". The way they talk, you'd think women who worked for Catholic institutions were physically restrained from purchasing birth control. Well, except for the 98% of catholic women who use birth control, of course.

That's right, they are attempting to use opposing straw men (straw women?) to support their attack. On the one hand, the women are being victimized, unable to be truly healthy because they don't have employer-paid access to IUDs and the abortion pill. The way they talk, birth control pills are a cross between super vitamin and miracle cure. On the other, all catholic women are on birth control and owe their lives and fortunes to their ability to be ~~parasite~~ baby free. But ultimately, if you oppose this measure, you are a troglodyte who wants to take women back to the stone age just because you are a mean old meany head. And paranoid.

Push back to these bogus arguments has been quick and vehement, and completely dismissed or misunderstood. What is being forgotten is that trying to explain the impact it will have on people of faith is a wasted argument, because it would require politicians and media ideologues to understand morals, principles and answering to a higher power. Please note the high level of derision on the left in regards to the issue of the violation of our religious freedoms. Attempting to make people feel silly for believing something might work in politics, but it is much less effective in matters of faith.

They can muddy the waters all they want, but it's pretty evident that this is all about placing the diktats of the state over the church's fundamental tenets. Under this administration, the much-vaunted separation of church and state is apparently a one-way street.

I could spend time arguing about the war on Christianity in this country, but this is far more cut and dried, and it is something every American, regardless of religion, should think deeply about. This is a full frontal assault on our religious freedom, no matter what that religion is. Demanding that the catholic church ignore a fundamental article of faith - the sanctity of life - in order to comply with the requirements of the state is exactly why our founders created the first amendment. It wasn't to protect the State from the Church as we have been led to believe over the past few decades as much as it was to protect the Church from the State. According to Thomas Jefferson, in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 in an effort to clarify the issue (emphasis mine):

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

The phrases I emphasized, "that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions" and "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" are key to this argument because the Obama administration is demanding that the Church change its long-held belief and opinion that contraception and especially abortion are against the will of God. This has been a teaching of the church for centuries; it is a matter of conscience, not convenience, to be tossed aside on a whim - or mandate.  By forcing religious entities to fund such things, they are unable to freely exercise their religious conscience. It is a clear violation of our founding document.

The Constitution is being tested as never before under this regime (yes, regime). While most of the other power grabs under this president have been swept under the carpet, this is an affront on an epic scale. The attempts by the media and various administration personnel to argue that this is about "right-wing radicals" trying to take away women's right to birth control or don't want them "healthy" has done nothing to blur the issue. People don't buy the argument that women can't get birth control if they want it. We all know it can be gotten at any pharmacy in this country. As for the poor, well, isn't that what left-wing darling Planned Parenthood is all about? The argument that the Pill saves women from ovarian cancer is an interesting argument, if you want to totally disregard the fact that the pill also increases your chances of getting breast, cervical and liver cancer. Please note, too, that those who are championing this abomination studiously avoid the topic of abortifacients such as the 'morning after' pill. Making the topic only about contraception is a deceptive little ploy to cloud the issue and attempt to get concessions. Oh, its just contraception we're talking about, what's the big deal about that?

We the People may be a little lethargic, a little pre-occupied, maybe even a little numbed by all that has happened to us in the past decade, but we're not blithering idiots.

If there's one thing We the People know, it's our rights, and we don't like having them taken away. Spin it however you want, we know when our rights are being stripped from us.

No doubt there will be a rash of polls from such unbiased bastions of ~~propaganda~~ information as the Washington Post (who no longer publishes poll data) and the New York Times in the next few days that will support the administration's actions in an attempt to legitimize this assault on our liberty. There usually is these days. But the thing is, on the subject of faith, people are going to believe their lying hearts before they allow a political poll to dictate their conscience.

The argument I'm hearing most often is whether the administration's many missteps, over-reaches,  and overall disregard for the rights and freedoms of the American people is a product of incompetence or design. The refusal of the President to back down on this points to design, particularly when combined with his protestations of dissatisfaction over the years with the "negative" structure of the Constitution. But even still, the best-case scenario - the argument for incompetence- is being used far too frequently in this administration and brings up a plethora of other issues in it's wake, most rightly involving suitability for reelection.

In an attempt at "compromise", the administration offered to grant a one-year waiver to come into compliance. How generous of them, to offer an extra twelve months to come to terms with betraying a belief system that has stood for thousands of years.

On a side note, am I the only one who has noticed that "compromise" under this administration has meant bowing fully to their demands? These people need not only a copy of the Constitution, but a dictionary.

And now the administration has come out with a new "compromise". Apparently the insurance companies are expected to pony up the funds to offer free contraception and abortifacients to all religious organizations without passing on the cost to the employer. Riiiiiight.  There's no chance in the world that they will pad their premiums to offset the cost, ultimately passing the cost on to the protesting employer anyway, is there? Things like that just never happen. Obama's compromise is his ironclad bond, right Bart Stupak? And, in typical fashion, this 'compromise' is not negotiable.   Take what they give us and be happy, right?

He seems to have grossly underestimated the intelligence of the American catholic with this one, 'cause they're not buying it.

Americans across the board should be outraged by this trampling of our first amendment rights. And everyone, regardless of party, should consider this action when they are considering Obama's reelection. If he is willing to hold the line on a blatantly unconstitutional action like this in an election year, what will he be willing to do over the next four years, when reelection is no longer an issue?

8.3-ISH

2012-02-03T14:02:00.000-05:00

The latest unemployment numbers are out today, and the unemployment rate has dropped to a heartening 8.3%. No doubt there are lots of happy dances in the White House today. But, as with most things in this administration, things are not as they appear. While the administration touts the more than two hundred and fifty thousand jobs created in January, a deeper look at the numbers tells a different story.

Here are some other numbers to consider before breaking out into a happy dance of your own:

1.2 million is our first number. That is the number of people who dropped out of the work force entirely last month. That's a record, by the way.

63.7% is the rate of participation in the job sector - also a record. And not in a good way - which brings us to....

30, which represents the thirty-year low we have reached in work force participation. We haven't had this few people in the work force since 1982, when the US population was a hundred million people fewer.
In reality, counting all the people who have dropped out of the work force, unemployment is at about eleven percent. Add in all the people who are working part-time jobs because they can't find anything else, and you're looking at an unemployment/underemployment rate north of fifteen percent. But hey, Mr. President, happy dance it up!

Just for fun, let's see where those people who dropped out of the workforce have gone over the past three years. Well, it seems a lot of them have managed to make their way to the food stamp line, where we have a record 46.3 million Americans. That's up significantly from the 28.2 million Americans who were on food stamps when President Obama took office. One in seven Americans are now enrolled in the program.

How about Welfare? Well, since Obama repealed the major welfare reforms of the 1990's, it's on the rise. This isn't going to change anytime soon, either, as states are once again being paid to add recipients to the welfare rolls.

Oh, and almost half of the jobs gained were "low wage" jobs. Which is better than nothing, to be sure, but when we're losing high-paying jobs and replacing them with low wage jobs, that doesn't bode well for the economy.

False numbers, false hope, false change. That's all we have here. Still in the mood for a happy dance?

1,000 DAYS

2012-01-23T14:22:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow night, President Obama will be giving his State of the Union address. In it, he will doubtless take the opportunity to throw some barbs at the Do Nothing Congress™ he has become so fond of demonizing. He will push his "We Can't Wait™" schtick, trying to sell the idea that Congress or that pesky Constitution are holding him back from the fundamental change he so desperately wants, in a vain attempt to justify his unconstitutional power grab.

Interestingly enough, tomorrow is also another major milestone for America. It marks the one thousandth day since the democrat-led Senate last passed a budget.

So who is more do-nothing - the House republicans who have passed nearly thirty jobs bills since they took power a year ago, or the Senate democrats who refuse to bring a single one of them to the floor for a vote in an effort to carry water for President Obama's Do Nothing Congress™ campaign push?

When the president talks about the obstructionist Congress, he's not just whistling Dixie. But in true democratic fashion, he is projecting the inactivity for which his own party is responsible onto House Republicans, while his lapdog press happily echo it for all it's worth. He has to run against a Do Nothing Congress™, because the other option is to run on his record, and we all know that's a non-starter. And if you don't have a Do Nothing Congress™, why, good ol' Harry Reid is there to make sure you do!

It will be interesting to see how his 'free markets are evil' meme goes over, considering polls like this. According to that, it certainly doesn't seem like pushing a top-down, government managed economy is going to be a big seller in November. But when you live in a bubble and refuse to give credence to such polls, the most unexpected things happen.

There's another benefit to Senate dems refusing to pass a budget. One can't help but come to the conclusion that passing a budget that calls for, say, $1.6 trillion in deficit spending would raise a hue and cry and put the excessive federal spending of this administration in the spotlight, as happened with President Obama's (I use the term loosely) "budget". Passing contentious continuing resolutions instead keeps the spending blurred and harder to keep track of - and offers the additional bonus of a handy bludgeon to go after republicans to make them seem stingy and mean for saying no to the out-of-control spending. Think about it. When are you more responsible with your money - when you are trying to keep to a budget or when you just spend as the need (or desire) arises? It's a no brainer. Well, except in Washington.

Delusional lefties whine that republicans have kept them from passing a budget with filibusters and other dirty tricks since Obama took office. Well, as far as the past year goes, that's a stretch considering the House actually passed a budget, the Ryan Plan, which the Senate refused to even acknowledge and a second, President Obama's, that the Senate voted down unanimously - but at least it got a vote. But what about the other two years of the Obama administration - one of which featured a democratic House majority and Senate super majority, and the other with just plain old democratic majorities in both houses? How is it that they were able to pass Obamacare - arguably the most unpopular piece of legislation to be signed into law in recent memory - but they couldn't pass a budget?

One thousand days of irresponsibility at the hands of Democrats in Washington. Here's hoping we only have 287 more to go before REAL change comes to town.

A SCANDALOUS EDUCATION

2012-01-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of news out of our public schools over the past few months of varying degrees of importance. From epic fails to blatant corruption, our schools have become less about education and more about social agendas and the illusion of success.
First - and silliest - on the list is the school lunch fiasco out in California. The Los Angeles Unified School District implemented Michelle Obama's program for healthier school lunches and created a new menu that was apparently taste-tested in the exclusive, vegetarian enclaves of Beverly Hills. The new, upgraded menu had such teen-friendly gems as quinoa and black-eyed pea salad and black bean burgers. These exotic offerings have resulted in a record number of students dropping out of the lunch program, opting instead to bring Flamin' Hot Cheetos and sodas from home. How bad is it? Well, according to the LA Times, a junk food black market has sprung up in the wake of the new menu:

At many campuses, an underground market for chips, candy, fast-food burgers and other taboo fare is thriving.

Oh, if only liberals were as good at encouraging the growth of the free market as they are at encouraging the growth of black markets due to their policies....
They are now revamping the menu, hoping to find healthier versions of the foods kids love, such as pizza with a whole wheat crust, reduced fat cheese and reduced sodium sauce. Might I also suggest baked chicken nuggets instead of fried? Perhaps a salad bar (maybe with an optional grilled chicken breast) or hamburgers made of a beef/turkey blend to reduce fat but keep flavor on whole wheat buns with lettuce, tomato and reduced fat cheese. Some kids might still turn their noses up at the food, but there is a better chance of the kids' palates "adjusting" to these changes than vegetable curry and lentil and brown rice cutlets. One would think that would just be common sense, but, then again, this is California we're talking about.

On a more serious note, there are a few school scandals coming out of the state of Georgia that deserve attention. The first involves school faculty cheating on tests for their students. This one engulfed first the Atlanta school system and then the Dougherty county school district a few months later. While the falsely improved test scores made the schools - and thus the teachers and faculty - look great for a while, the reality is that there are hundreds of students who have been sent out into the world not just unprepared, but actually illiterate:

“The disgraceful situation we found in the Dougherty County School System (DCSS) is a tragedy, sadly illustrated by a comment made by a teacher who said that her fifth-grade students could not read, yet did well on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT).

Remember when teachers took up their low paying, mostlly thankless careers in hopes of reaching and opening young minds? It seems that for every dedicated, devoted teacher these days there is one of the new breed, out for tenure and an easy ride, using their classrooms to push political agendas and leveraging themselves in any way possible, even to the detriment of their own students. Right now, the former outnumber the latter. But in a system where merit means little and tenure and the unions make it impossible to get rid of bad teachers, that paradigm is destined to shift.

The cheating scandals are being blamed, in part, on No Child Left Behind. Yup, it's Bush's fault. While there is a lot of consternation on the left about "teaching to a test", the reality is, teachers have always been teaching to a test of some major or minor magnitude, from pop quizzes to midterms and finals to the Regents exams I took as a high school student in New York lo those many years ago. The test is to make sure the kids got the lesson or grasped the overreaching arc of the class. A standardized test means a standardized curriculum with a (one would hope) balanced, well-rounded approach to education encompassing all the major requirements of a basic education. Teaching to a test does not make it impossible to produce graduates who can read a job or college application or figure out how much they will owe if they want three pounds of apples at $2.59 per pound.

In Atlanta, 78 teachers and the principals of 44 out of 56 schools were found to have cheated. In Dougherty county, 49 teachers and 11 principals have been implicated. Hundreds, if not thousands of Georgia students have been cheated of an education. There will probably be lawsuits over this, which means that the taxpayer will be paying the price for these unethical public servants. What a waste, all the way around.

The second Georgia school scandal is about a little blended-lesson oopsie over at Beaver Ridge elementary school. Nine third grade teachers, in an attempt to do a "cross-curricular activity" combining a segment on Frederick Douglass with math word problems, sent home work in which some problems referenced slavery:

The first asked, “Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” The other said, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”

The thing about Frederick Douglass was that, while his life in slavery was violent and brutal, he escaped to freedom at the age of twenty and spent the rest of his life as an outspoken abolitionist and suffragist who affected change through his oratory. His gift for words eventually won him the respect and friendship of none other than Abraham Lincoln, and it isn't hard to imagine that long fireside talks between Lincoln and Douglass helped keep the steel in the president's spine and the fire in his belly. It is, unfortunately, unsurprising that the teachers at Beaver Ridge chose to focus on the twenty years Douglass was enslaved as opposed to the fifty-seven years he spent crusading for the final fulfillment of the Founders's vision of a truly free people. Their students would have been better served with questions like, "If Frederick gave four speeches on abolishing slavery and two hundred people came to each one, how many people heard him speak?" or "If Frederick's abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, published twenty-one editions per week, how many editions were printed each day?".   But no, one must push the America-is-a-mean-country meme at every opportunity, mustn't one? Yes, slavery happened in this country. Yes, it was a bad thing. But was his enslavement the point of his life, or was it his breaking of the bonds of slavery and rising from those horrible circumstances to create a bold, outspoken life that lead to enlightenment and, eventually, freedom for all? Instead of that fine legacy, all those kids will remember is that he was a slave who was supposedly beaten every day and apparently had to pick oranges. Again - what a shame.

Our public schools are rotting from the inside out.  The widespread corruption and lack of ethics, combined with the complete disregard for the harm they are doing to the students in their care is breathtaking. What makes it worse is that these cases in Georgia are just the tip of the iceberg. In the past three years, FairTest (the National Center for Fair and Open Testing) has documented confirmed cases of test cheating in thirty states, as well as the District of Columbia.

Many parents feel as though they are hostage to the school in whose district they live. While they desperately wish there was another alternative, for most families private and parochial schools are out of reach. While there are some great charter schools out there, there are also some really, really bad ones, too and it's pretty much a crap shoot on what might pop up in your neighborhood.  So what's a parent to do?

Get involved.

Let's face it. Parents who are involved in their child's education are going to realize that little Timmy, while in 6th grade, is reading at a first grade level.  Involved parents will hold teachers and schools accountable. Widespread corruption resulting in hundreds of kids falling through the cracks can only happen when people aren't paying attention. Not only have we gotten used to the idea that our schools are solely responsible for teaching our children everything they need to know about life from mathematics to birth control, but we apparently don't even feel the need to make sure they're competent at it.

What a shame.

FOUR REASONS Updated

2011-12-10T19:31:00.001-05:00

There has been a lot of talk in both the media and the republican establishment about Mitt Romney being the only truly electable GOP candidate. It is common opinion amongst the pundits that Romney is the best person to go up against President Obama and win and polling seems to support this theory.  The problem is, many conservative voters just aren't buying what they are selling.  His inability to garner more than twenty-five percent support, spun in the press as consistent front-runner status, was more about the other seventy-five percent looking for someone else.  He ran in 2008; we know who he is and what he's done and we see some major problems with his candidacy. The pundits are happy to write it off as tea partiers being too stupid to know what's good for them, but when you look at the facts, their spin just doesn't add up.

As a little reminder, these are the same group of people who sold us Sen. John McCain as the only reasonable, electable, moderate candidate, blah, blah, blah. The problem isn't that the Tea Party is too conservative. The problem is that the country has been dragged so far to the left by the rise of Obama, Pelosi and their radical progressive ilk that anything not progressive or borderline socialist seems excessively conservative by comparison. Let's not forget, too, that Romney's electability is a bit of a myth in that the man has run for senate, governor and president in the past with only one resulting win, his single term of office as Governor of Massachusetts. If being 1-3 is a winning record, then my Eagles aren't doing nearly as bad as I thought!
That aside, there are four main reasons why Tea Party conservatives tend to want anyone but Mitt Romney as the Republican nominee:

1) Romneycare. This is a no brainer, and the biggest hurdle he faces. Romneycare knocks out one of the biggest political bones of contention - Obamacare - thus neutralizing that line of attack. Mitt can talk about the difference between state mandates and federal mandates until he's blue in the face, but for many in the electorate, a mandate is a mandate. If he felt able to mandate once before, who's to say he won't mandate again? After all, even Obama himself on the campaign trail in 2008 reassured Americans that he would not sign any bill that had an individual mandate.

2) Job Growth. I won't call it 'job creation' because, as we all know, government doesn't create private sector jobs, it only creates the environment for job creation. Anyhoo. Romney's record on job growth in his years as Governor of Massachussetts is pretty dismal. Forty-seventh out of fifty isn't very good, no matter how you slice it. In addition, the state's unemployment ranking went from twenty-ninth to seventeenth after three years of Romney's stewardship. Considering jobs are second only to the economy at large for voters, this record can hardly be seen as a recommendation.

3) Bain Capital. Obama and his DNC operatives have been working overtime on ginning up some good old-fashioned class warfare, and a Romney candidacy might be at the heart of it. This picture sure doesn't help. It will be easy for Obama and democrats to tie Romney in with the Wall Street crowd. Plus, Bain was all about buying failing companies and dismantling them - thus putting lots of people out of work. Bain + Romney = Rethuglican Meaniehead.

4) The Cool Factor. President Obama and Mitt Romney have something other than Obamneycare in common - their cool quotient. And I don't mean 'cool' like James Dean Cool (sorry, Obots). I mean cool like cold fish, unapproachable, chilly. The reason conservatives haven't warmed up to Romney is because he's just not, well...warm. Herman Cain made it to the top tier, even with his abysmal foreign policy chops, because he's a genuine, likeable guy. He is also someone who sees life the way a majority of Americans do; not from a lifetime of privilege and politics, but as someone who worked his way to prosperity against the odds. His enthusiasm for and love of country was also a winning combination for patriotic Americans tired of being told to be ashamed of their country.

The American people have been through a lot over the past ten years or so. When Barack Obama was elected into office, we thought we were getting a charismatic, empathetic young dreamer who wanted to unite this country and move it forward into the new century. Instead we got an arrogant man whose ideology is a throwback to 1933; someone who has spent most of his term of office attempting to gin up disagreements between various and sundry factions in America.

Right now, most of us just want someone to tell us it's going to be okay, that the future will bring a return to the heights we once enjoyed; that we will some day be the shining city on the hill once more. Instead we get an absentee president who is too busy vacationing, fundraising or trash talking us to spend any time on the myriad crises we face here at home - one of which is a crisis of confidence. It is this crisis that many Americans have a hard time seeing Mitt Romney ease. His aloofness and untouchable, Candidate Ken™-like quality is off-putting.   He will be easily depicted as an elite, upper crust persona, reinforcing the idea of a ruling class and an inability to empathize with average Americans.   Obama, on the other hand, the beneficent redistributer of all things welfare, will be painted as the saint of the working class in contrast by his lapdog press.

The complicit media is certainly doing their part to steer the masses towards Romney, and it's not hard to see why. Ultimately, people aren't warming up to Mitt and probably won't. It will once again be an election where people hold their noses and vote for the lesser evil. The saving grace in the general election is the enormous enthusiasm gap between conservatives and liberals, but having to rely heavily on the electorate's dislike of Obama instead of enthusiasm for their candidate to turn out voters is a risky chance against an opponent who is as well funded and organized as the president.

The 2012 election isn't going to be just about getting rid of Obama (although that alone would do an awful lot to restore confidence), it's also about what his successor will do when he/she take office. If we have learned anything from the election of Barack Obama it is that a) we need to thoroughly vet candidates and b) we need more than 'hope and change' as a platform. For many independents, there won't a lot of daylight between Obama and Romney. Quite often, when you put people in a position where they must choose either the devil they know or the devil they don't, they will either vote for the status quo or abstain altogether.

There's a good chance that whoever the republicans nominate will win over President Obama. After all, the man has ushered in an age of food stamps, persistently high unemployment, over-regulation and out-of-control spending. Even the worst RINO would be hard pressed to match his record. But the American people are tired of choosing the lesser of two evils. We want someone who will give us a different choice, and Romney just doesn't seem to be the guy for that.

Let's face it. If Romney wins the nomination, tea partiers will vote for him.  To stay home would be to give their vote to Obama, and that is something no self-respecting tea partier will do. But nominating Romney will keep the GOP on the ropes in the general election by taking away all the major points of attack. It's bad strategy, pure and simple. Independents who haven't been paying attention are an unknown quantity and the target of persuasion in a general election, so a strong case based on the issues must be made against Obama to combat the mud, smoke and mirrors sure to be on the offing from the DNC.

There is far too much riding on the outcome of the 2012 elections to allow a Romney nomination to take such vital weapons out of the quiver.

UPDATE: ABC's Jake Tapper has three reasons why Mitt Romney shouldn't be the conservative frontrunner.

PUTTING TWO AND TWO TOGETHER

2011-12-06T10:00:00.000-05:00

My last post poked a little fun at the Occupy movement. What can I say? I just can't resist such low hanging fruit! Seriously though, aside from hygiene and a disturbing number of anarchists, anti-semites and commies, at the heart of it, it could be argued that Occupy is sort of following in the Tea Party's footsteps. Both want to end the FED, both are vehemently against bank bailouts, and both see crony capitalism as the disease that is crippling this great nation. Unfortunately, the most glaring difference between the two groups is that the Tea Party holds government responsible, and Occupiers think government is the solution.

At least, until now.

In an interesting series of events, it came to light that the Mayor of Richmond, apparently an Occupy sympathizer, has been passing on the costs of the occupation to the taxpayer, instead of requiring the Occupiers to foot the bill as the Tea Party was. Over the past three years, the local Tea Party chapter has held Tax Day rallies and were required to pay for permits and other fees, to the tune of about $8,500. When the Tea Party realized the Occupiers were getting a free ride, they submitted an invoice to City Hall for reimbursement of the fees they have paid, citing fair treatment under the law.

The city's response? Why, an audit, of course.

The Tea Party isn't going down fighting, and is preparing a lawsuit. What is really surprising is the group that is standing with the Tea Party against the democrat-led City Hall. This weekend Occupy Richmond voiced their solidarity (via Fox News):

“Occupy Richmond believes in absolute free speech, including the right to criticize the government without fear of retribution," Occupy Richmond said in a statement posted Thursday on its website. "Given the duplicitous and violent manner in which the city government chose to raid our peaceful occupation, it would not surprise us if the recently announced city audit of the Richmond Tea Party were retaliation for their criticism of the mayor.”

The statement also called audits "bureaucratic harassment" and "one weapon oppressive regimes use to silence dissent."

"Not only do we call on the city to drop the audit, but we also demand the immediate refund of any money paid specifically to secure the Tea Party's free speech and assembly privileges,” the Occupiers said.

Okay, so there's still a little room for improvement. Apparently the Occupy spokesperson doesn't understand that the charges don't just disappear. Those fees cover the cost of cleanup or damage to facilities incurred during the exercise of free speech. The magical creatures who pick up the tab for the mess are not social justice fairies flitting from camp to camp, happy to spend their stardust for the cause. In reality, the people who pay are fellow Americans who have been busy working, not camping, and will see their taxes go up as a result of the shenanigans in cities across the land. Tea Party spokeswoman Colleen Owens was happy to have the moral support, but commented that they don't want the taxpayer to foot the bill - that isn't the point of the suit:

“But this has never been about the money. It was about the principal," Owens said. "A public official should not be able to pick and choose which groups are charged."

It is a refreshing change to see the Occupiers starting to identify the government - and not just republicans, but majority party democrats, too - as a major player in the ills of the day. It was almost heartwarming to see them actually protesting President Obama on one of his many, many, many trips to Wall Street for fundraising cash. They grow up so fast, don't they? Gee, perhaps if the Occupiers went home and sat down and talked to their Tea Party parents, maybe common ground could be established. And maybe, after that, common sense.

Two things to remember about these angry, disillusioned kids: First, as Churchill said, show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains. Second, sometimes a conservative is just a liberal who was mugged by reality. There has been a mass mugging (sometimes literally) in parks and plazas across the country over the past few months as those who were once embraced and celebrated became those who were being either co-opted or ignored (Tea Partiers can definitely empathize with that). Some poor souls have even been traumatized by it all.

All we can hope is that the rest open their ears (and minds) and start thinking. Many of our centers for higher education, where we send our children to learn how to think, have become indoctrination centers where they are taught what to think. Perhaps the disillusionment of their failed experiment in commune-ism will get them thinking. If Richmond is any indication, the worm may be turning.

Could it be that the spring might bring a new crop of protests featuring not just Occupiers, but Tea Partiers, too, standing together as one against the banks and politicians? Now there's a thought.

And if that doesn't work? Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em! (or become a competitor!)

MY OBAMAVILLE

2011-11-29T07:09:00.002-05:00

MY OBAMAVILLE
(sung to Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville)

Nibblin' on soy cake
Man, I am so baked
All of those hippies covered with paint
Bangin' my drum kit
I bet you hate it
The smell might make you want to faint

(Chorus)

Wasted today again in my Obamaville
Lookin' for my last baggie of pot
Some people say that it's just Wall Street to blame
All I know is it's not government's fault

I don't know the reason
Private property seizing
Nothin' to show but some lice and some fleas
But I got of easy
I'm not that sleazy
So at least I don't have STD's

(Chorus)

Wasted today again in my Obamaville
Lookin' for my last baggie of pot
Some people say that it's just Wall Street to blame
Now I think
It might be government's fault

Government fat cats
Gettin' their kickbacks
I'll wash yours if you wash mine
How can this not be
Laundering money
Robbin' the taxpayers blind

(Chorus)

Wasted today again in my Obamaville
Lookin' for my last baggie of pot
Some people say that it's just Wall Street to blame
Now I know it's crony government's fault
Some people say that it's just Wall Street to blame
But I know it's crony government's fault

Cross Posted at The Ripley Report

THE PALINIZATION OF CAIN Updated

2011-11-06T18:23:00.005-05:00

Politico and the liberal media in general are in the process of "Palinizing" Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. The anonymous, vague allegations of gestures and comments that might make some people "uncomfortable" are the thinnest of gruel, but Politico has managed to squeeze not one or two, but over ninety stories out of the "scandal".   When shock jock Howard Stern opined that it's nothing more than a smear campaign, sidekick Robyn rebutted that 'that's what politicians do'. This is par-for-the-course liberal equivocating, but the fact is that this wasn't done by a politician, it was done by an alleged news publication - an entity that, if nothing else, opens itself up to litigation when it resorts to peddling fact-less innuendo.  It seems the future of journalism is distortion and allusion - turning allegations into convictions - and the future is now. Don't forget to stir the coals and ~~implicate more republican candidates~~ report on speculation over where the leak is coming from (when you already know damn well)!

When Sarah Palin emerged on the national stage, she was immediately perceived as a threat to the democratic ideal that minorities -women included - are strictly democratic voters. Well, the ones not suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, that is. They managed to bring her down with an overwhelming number of legal challenges to her in her capacity as governor. These bogus suits were costly not just in terms of dollars, but also in terms of the time spent dealing with them instead of the business of the state (which she was then criticized for neglecting). The fact that none of the suits had any merit and cost the Alaskan taxpayer millions means nothing. The ends justified the means.

Herman Cain poses an existential threat to the locked-in democratic votes of the black community.  There is a possibility that a choice between a black democrat and a black republican might cause some to reassess their true political leanings, rejecting the traditional knee-jerk liberalism. This cannot be allowed to happen.

And so the palinization of Cain has begun.

His portrayal of himself as a non-political everyman has encouraged a perception of him as having an aura of decency and strong personal ethics. He comes across as a man of integrity - plain-spoken, patriotic and honest.  These are all things sorely lacking in the current occupant of the White House. This is NOT a comparison democratic operatives want the public making in the general election. Since it is impossible to attempt to recast Obama as a man of integrity, patriotism and a champion of personal responsibility, it is necessary to instead bring Cain down. They simply had to drop his credibility level.

Don't forget that this was also attempted in 2008 against Senator John McCain after he won the primary. Allegations of an affair between McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman were dismissed rather quickly. The New York Times - purveyor of the smear - ended up settling the dispute with a retraction in January of 2011 (one of several the NYT has had to print in recent months in regards to smearing conservatives).

The media meme of "where there's smoke, there's fire" is quite convenient for palinization, considering as many anonymous accusers as necessary can be ginned up to smear Cain and plant the seed of doubt about his ethics without any need for pesky things like facts or corroboration. The best part is, instead of having to file costly lawsuits like the antics in Alaska, all that's required are barrels of ink and reams of paper. So much cheaper! This new trend towards "take my word for it, it's bad" journalism is quite a change from the traditional standard of verifiable sources and hard evidence.

Apparently there is no need to discover if allegations are true nowadays. Just the fact that someone has been accused by anonymous sources is enough to convict - at least in the press. So much for innocent until proven guilty. Proof of a settlement is no proof at all, particularly when it comes to sexual harassment allegations. It is routine for large companies to pay off on claims like this as it is far cheaper (even at $45,000) than investigating and defending a suit. Ultimately, a southern man - particularly of a certain age - calling someone 'darling' is as much sexual harassment as Brigadier General Michael Walsh's calling Senator Barbara Boxer 'ma'am' was an attempt to somehow demean her. Ridiculous.

That Cain has enjoyed a bump in not just contributions but polling, too, shows that the public just doesn't seem to be buying what Politico is selling. The question is, has it cast at least a shadow of a doubt on his character? The media are certainly trying to imply that, but his support seems to be as strong as ever, even after a week-long journalistic full court press. NRA's consent for the non-disclosure agreement to be lifted should put an end to the matter once and for all. At this point, the accuser restricted by the agreement is unwilling to go public, and none of the others seem too keen to step forward either.

The big question is, will this palinization work?

So far, it hasn't. In fact, his less than stellar handling of the situation might do more to damage his prospects than the initial allegations themselves.  There is also the possiblity of another accuser stepping forward, but if her accusations are as flimsy and vague as the other three, it's more likely the public will take it with a boulder of salt, roll their eyes and move on. Don't get me wrong - if Cain has skeletons in his closet they must, by all means, be brought to light. It's called vetting. If the media had done half as good a job vetting candidate Obama, we'd be talking about running against incumbent President Rodham-Clinton today - you know, the one who wasn't hanging out with Ayers, Wright, and Rezko.

But that would be to imply that those associations carried just as much political import as those of Jane Doe numbers One, Two and Three.

How silly.

UPDATE: Herman Cain has suspended his campaign after a woman named Ginger White stepped forward and claimed a thirteen year affair with the candidate. It seems that this particular bit of smoke had some fire behind it. Cain blames the media for his sinking polls and thus the suspension of his campaign, but it would be more likely that his poor performance in interviews and debates - particularly on foreign affairs - did him in. If allegations of affairs with presidential candidates were disqualifiers, Bill Clinton would never have been elected. But the Lothario-in-Chief got into the Oval Office because his responses and debate performances were as strong and rock-solid as his libido.   In my opinion, Herman Cain's campaign was over with that infamous question on Libya. It's painful to watch. I'm with S.E. Cupp. He just wasn't up to the task and it was only a matter of time before it became obvious.

THE FALL OF FUN

2011-10-17T11:08:00.000-04:00

John F. Kennedy Elementary School principal Ann Foley sent out an email to her teachers last week informing them that she was banning all fall holidays, claiming they are "insensitive". The teachers at the Somerfield, MA school had already been instructed to tell their students that there would be no dressing in costume on Halloween, which falls on a Monday this year. In the email she stated (via Fox News):

"When we were young we might have been able to claim ignorance of the atrocities that Christopher Columbus committed against the indigenous peoples," Kennedy School Principal Anne Foley wrote.
"We can no longer do so. For many of us and our students celebrating this particular person is an insult and a slight to the people he annihilated. On the same lines, we need to be careful around the Thanksgiving Day time as well."

Okay, get a grip.

Look, to be honest, I always thought it was sort of silly celebrating Columbus Day, considering the man never actually set foot on American soil. But honestly, couldn't this have been handled a little better? Just a hint to Principal Foley - use of the word 'atrocities' in an elementary school memo about holiday parties is a bit excessive. Perhaps raising the possibility that Leif Ericsson (or Polynesia or China) was the first to discover America might have been a better, less explosive angle. As for parents going to the school superintendent to get the ban lifted, they are probably in for a long slog:

Superintendant Tony Pierantozzi told The Herald that Halloween is “problematic” because of connections to witchcraft.

Yes, the roots of Halloween go back to paganism, but Celtic pagans were not witches. For them, Samhain (also known as the Winter Solstice) was a mystical night. It was the Celtic New Year's Eve - the end of the harvest, the end of the year. The work was done - crops harvested, herds culled, land fallow, flora and fauna easing into winter sleep. They believed that on that night, the wall between this world and the next came down and the souls of the dead roamed the earth. The Celts would leave offerings and say prayers for those lost over the preceding year and indulge in a little ancestor worship on the Solstice - a tradition adopted by the Romans when they conquered Celtic lands and, eventually, the Catholic Church, who changed the name to All Hallow's Eve.

Taking away the Halloween and Thanksgiving parties for elementary school children is just ridiculous. It's a real shame that the kids can't dress up. It is, after all, elementary school. My girls really looked forward to the annual Halloween parade at school, followed by a little "Monster Mash", cupcakes and juice in the classroom. It was, if nothing else, an hour-long oasis of fun from the monotony of the daily routine.

As for Thanksgiving, perhaps Principal Foley should google the origins of the holiday. According to Thanksgiving-day.org (emphasis mine):

In the summer of 1621, owing to severe drought, pilgrims called for a day of fasting and prayer to please God and ask for a bountiful harvest in the coming season. God answered their prayers and it rained at the end of the day. It saved the corn crops.

It is said that Pilgrims learnt to grow corn, beans and pumpkins from the Indians, which helped all of them survive . In the autumn of 1621, they held a grand celebration where 90 people were invited including Indians. The grand feast was organized to thank god for his favors. This communal dinner is popularly known as “The first thanksgiving feast”. There is however, no evidence to prove if the dinner actually took place.

How atrocious. The Indians saved the pilgrims and the pilgrims repaid them by sharing the bounty. The horror.

On a side note, am I the only one who feels a little sad for her that, instead of seeing a beautiful moment of outreach, peace and harmony between two very different peoples, she sees atrocities and insults? It must be stressful carrying around all of that anger and hate. Sounds like somebody needs a hug.

There will surely be a new memo circulating soon, detailing how Principal Foley is going to suck the fun out of the Winter Holidays, too (better not call it Christmas - her head might explode). Considering there are more religions observed in this country than just Christianity and some religions celebrate a special event - such as Hanukkah - in December, if schools want to call it a Holiday Party instead of a Christmas party, that's just fine. But let the kids have their parties, whatever PC name you pin to it!

They're kids - they don't care about the impact of Columbus' exploitation of the indigenous population of San Salvador, the religious puritanism at the root of the Salem Witch Trials or the separation of church and state issues that some use to attack Christmas celebrations. All they care about is that they get out of classwork, they get to eat cupcakes and maybe - just maybe - they get to play a few games and have some fun. At Halloween, they look forward to showing off their costumes to their friends, not recruiting a coven and practicing black mass. It's a break from the routine, a way to cut loose. Since many schools no longer offer music or art programs, recess or gym, these parties are some of the only outlets for fun left to them during school hours.

So Principal Foley, how about we keep the politics out of it and let the kids be kids and have some fun?

"NOBODY IN THIS COUNTRY GOT RICH ON THEIR OWN" Updated

2011-09-22T23:56:00.002-04:00

Progressive Elizabeth Warren is in the running for Republican Scott Brown's Senate seat in Massachusetts. There's no mushy middle ground for this lady, so it should be an interesting race. At a recent campaign stop, Ms. Warren said this:

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

First of all, companies aren't like sourdough bread, where you reserve some of the yeast for the next batch. Business owners already "pay it forward" in many ways - by providing intern programs, scholarships or mentoring, to name a few. Second, the "big hunk" government allows companies to keep doesn't go right in the owner's bank account. It makes payroll, buys materials and machinery, advertising, shipping, and myriad other things. Most small business owners don't see a profit for the first five years. Most businesses operate with a lean 2-5% profit margin. Every new tax, fee and license the State demands cuts into that. People aren't in business for philanthropy, they're in it for success and money. Profits are NOT evil - if nothing else, without them who would be footing bills like this?

The Boston Globe actually tries to spin her comments as conservative, if you can believe it. It's an interesting take, but what author Ben Jacobs misses is that for conservatives, a good faith 'social contract' between the factory owner and the taxpayers who pay for the infrastructure upon which he is dependent isn't about an unspecified increase in taxes (how much is fair? when is it enough?) or punishing regulation. The factory owner fulfills his obligations by giving the homeowner whose property taxes paid for the infrastructure a silly little thing called....a job. You know, the thing people do to earn the money to pay the property taxes to keep the road that they themselves use every day to get to work at the factory or one of the many other businesses that crop up around manufacturing centers like restaurants, shops, hotels, apartment complexes, car dealerships - need I go on?

By the way, isn't it interesting how greedy old business owners apparently don't pay any taxes at all? At least, that's how progressives make it seem lately. (Maybe it's because so many of the progressive ~~cronies~~ business owners they know don't) So we're to believe there are no property taxes on the building housing the factory - no permits, fees or licenses needed, at the very least? What about business taxes? Payroll taxes? Or don't those count? Some go into the federal piggy bank, others to state and local. But make no mistake, everybody gets a slice - including the workers who take their portion as paychecks, perks and bonuses.

Yes, there is a social contract between a large business and the community that supports it. It is a symbiotic relationship that, when done right, nurtures and supports both parties. Many businesses even participate in community outreach such as Target, who partnered with Oprah Winfrey to give my daughters' school a new library in appreciation for their dedication to promoting reading. Just think of it as private sector voluntary redistribution of wealth from Target to the kids of Ocoee Middle School. But when government steps in and begins punishing businesses for their success through excessive regulation and confiscatory taxation, they are not only sabotaging the businesses, but the communities with whom they are so closely tied by taking the resources that would have gone into the local community and redirecting it to Washington.

As of now, Warren is the front runner in her race against Brown for the Senate. It will be interesting to see how her comments are taken by the Massachusetts public. We truly are at a crossroads with the 2012 election. Which will we choose - a further slide into the floundering European model of high unemployment, high taxes, excessive regulation and low productivity or a return to the founding principles of smaller federal government, more power to the states and, above all, fiscal sanity. If Warren remains the front runner, it will be clear that there really is a desire to punish the private sector and grow the public as the press has been claiming. There was certainly no ambiguity in her statement to confuse voters about where she stands. She has pinned her hopes on class warfare and redistributionism. If Brown retakes the lead, well...if even uber-liberal Massachusetts gets it, there's hope for the rest of the country.

UPDATE: Oh dear God in Heaven. Looney old Paul Krugman is calling Warren a "financial reformer" whose "eloquent" comments have spoken truth to power. If by "financial reform" you mean more of the same tax and spend policies that the democrats have been shoving down our throats for decades (and really put on steroids since 2007) then sure, she's a real "reformer".

NEVER FORGET

2011-09-11T14:41:00.000-04:00

It has been a struggle to write a post to commemmorate the tenth anniversary of September 11th. It is still, even ten years later, such a difficult thing to come to grips with. Watching the footage - planes flying into buildings, mushrooming clouds of orange flame and black smoke, people plunging to their deaths, the stunned, ash-covered survivors wandering through the debris after the towers came down - it's all still so sharp and painful, like a knife to the heart.

So I've tried to focus on the silver lining, as I am wont to do.  The open wound that was Ground Zero in past years has given way to the rapidly climbing Freedom Tower, rising up towards its goal of dominating the American skyline 1,776 feet above the plaza surrounding the seemingly endless Footprint Waterfalls in Memorial Park. The memorial at the Pentagon with it's graceful commemmorative benches and their invitation for a quiet, pensive moment of reflection and the ever-growing memorial at Shanksfield are a testament to our deep desire to honor and remember. But they are also symbols of our desire to move forward and show that we were bowed but not broken. The American spirit will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of despair to greet the new day. Morning in America will dawn once more.

The most important change this year, though, is that America finally got justice, and it seems to have changed the tone of the day. While it is still a sad, solemn occasion, it seems to be tempered this time; less anguished, more mellow. Perhaps it's just because ten years have passed, and time heals all wounds. But it's more likely because the focus of our national rage has been, literally, deep-sixed. We have closure. We were struck, and we struck back. The killing of Osama Bin Laden has done much to help the healing. Does that make us bloodthirsty? No, it makes us human. Although we, in this most Christian of nations, prefer forgiveness to vengeance, we also recognize sometimes it is necessary to go a little Old Testament. It's hard to imagine another event deserving of an eye-for-an-eye retributive strike (and for those who think 9/11 was an inside job, do they also believe President Obama is a murderer for killing Bin Laden who, after all, was an innocent man according to their theories?).  Bin Laden's death was a healing salve on the national wound; the final step in our recouperation.

On this tenth anniversary, there seems to be a bit of a feeling of letting go. A real, solid sense of healing. A new understanding that, truly, this too shall pass. We must never forget the events of that day, or allow the issue to be clouded. But we are learning that it is possible to be ever vigilant, that it's possible to pay homage, and yet still move on; to progress, to prosper, to thrive. And therein lies our ultimate victory over those who sought to bring us low.

Therein lies our power, the thing they will never understand. When terror strikes at our hearts, it strengthens our resolve. We will not cower like beaten dogs before a cruel master. We are stronger than that. We are better than that. We are American.

A BUFFETT OF MONEY

2011-08-30T18:58:00.000-04:00

Billionaire hedge fund guru Warren Buffett was the latest progressive recently calling for higher taxes on the rich* with an op-ed in the New York Times (somebody please send him this link). He claims he only paid seventeen percent in taxes last year; far less than others in his own company:

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Why do they feel so compelled? Are these "blessings" being showered upon them done out of the kindness of legislative hearts, or could there be other, more base reasons? Could it possibly be the millions of dollars people like Buffett shower on political campaigns? Perhaps the one-on-one exposure with certain members of government - exposure of which their own constituents (and the ones who ultimately pay the price for these dealings) can only dream? Or maybe the odd coincidence of so many former federal employees finding themselves jobs on Wall Street or K Street with the help of crony connections? A spotted owl is made endangered through no fault of it's own. The same cannot be said about the 'coddled rich'. It's called corruption, Mr. Buffett, and you are complicit.

In his op-ed, he raises good points about capital gains and other loopholes but ultimately, he isn't looking for tax reform, he's calling for tax increases.

Big difference.

What we need is tax reform - removing loopholes and carve-outs and widening the tax base. So why would he call for tax increases instead? Well, it seems there is a little piece of information that Mr. Buffett and the NY Times forgot to mention (full disclosure is for suckers). Apparently Mr. Buffett's company offers certain investment plans that, if taxes were to go up, would see a marked increase in business due to their sheltering natures, and thus a tidy profit for Mr. Buffett. Who will then instruct his small army of tax attorneys and accountants - who surely couldn't be part of the reason he only paid seventeen percent - to find every loophole possible (conveniently provided by his pals in Congress after some vigorous lobbying) to keep from paying as little of the new taxes as possible.

What a racket.

Lets not forget, too, that he gets to play the patriotic hero, swooping in to the rescue as well as giving his good buddy Obama a nice little talking point for the campaign trail. Everybody wins! Well, except the middle class, whose 'millionaires and billionaires' in the $200,000 tax bracket take one on the chin.

But wait, there's more!

Not only will Buffett profit quite tidily by the increase in business, but it turns out Omaha's favorite son's business has had a bit of a problem paying it's taxes. It seems that Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett's influential investment firm, hasn't paid it's taxes in almost a decade - since 2002, to be exact.

Which begs the question: Why, exactly, he is demanding taxes be raised because of 'shared sacrifice', when he isn't even paying what he owes now?

But wait, there's more!

Last week, President Obama made a little phone call to his dear friend Buffett, giving him a heads up on the situation with the floundering Bank of America. Buffett had a bathtub epiphany and decided to invest $5 billion (the article is really wonky but highly enlightening) in the company. Except he really didn't. Technically, the warrants BofA offered him equals about half the amount he invested - $2.45 billion:

So Buffett is really only injecting $2.55 billion of new capital into Bank of America and receiving $300 million per year in interest (6% * $5 billion). If you divide $300 million by $2.55 billion, you get an effective interest rate on Buffett’s investment of 11.8%. That’s pretty expensive for a bank that claims it doesn’t need any new capital!

Guess what else he got out of the deal? A nifty little tax break. It doesn't take an oracle to see why he jumped all over this deal. Did I mention Buffett is throwing a big fundraiser for Obama at the end of September? Apparently the party favors will be back scratchers.

The only problem for Buffett is that it is beginning to seem like he is using his reputation of having a nose for deals to promote the Obama agenda and people are starting to question whether his famous instincts haven't been dulled by ideology. The cash infusion into BofA was supposed to foster confidence. Instead, there are grumbles about how much trouble the bank is really in.

With our paychecks shrinking and the cost of goods rising, it's getting harder and harder to pay the bills and put dinner on the table. Getting lectured by the billionaire buddy of the Spender-in-Chief about "shared sacrifice" as his political connections help him make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits while simultaneously evading taxes is rather hard to swallow.

* "Rich" being 'millionaires' and 'billionaires' making a staggering $200,000 and up. Also known as making enough to be taxed but not enough to be able to afford the accountants and lawyers to get out of the taxes, like real millionaires and billionaires. Bye-bye small business and middle class!

THE OPTICS OF R&R

2011-08-25T22:53:00.002-04:00

There has been a lot of argument this week over the First Family's current vacation on Martha's Vineyard. Liberals argue that all presidents take vacations, they need vacations, and how dare anyone begrudge him a vacation! (and besides, the eeeevil Bush took, like, twice as many!!!1!) Many conservative pundits have agreed with this argument, and for good reason. Presidents never really take vacations. Their staff travel with them everywhere (thus incurring a goodly chunk of the expense) and they are constantly being briefed - even on the golf course. It is a ridiculously stressful job and no matter who is in the White House, a little time away from the official residence is understandable.

(On a side note: it doesn't really resonate, though, when he promises a new jobs plan...but we have to wait until he comes back from vacation to unveil it. What? Are you kidding? Granted, the August recess is rather long, but this isn't a tv show where there have to be cliffhangers to keep people tuned in. It's real life and we're dealing with 9.1% unemployment here)

But let's put this in perspective, shall we?

Yes, George W. Bush spent a good deal of time of vacation - certainly more than President Obama at this point in his presidency (although the claims of only 26 days in Obama's three years in office is incorrect - that number was for his first year alone). It is important to note that he went to either Camp David or his ranch in Texas for his vacations. It should also be noted that several of those trips to the ranch were diplomatic or otherwise official business, not just pure pleasure. An invitation to the ranch was a coveted thing back in the day, even for heads of state. But even then, his vacation numbers are pretty high, and he got duly thwacked for it in the press.

The thing is, aside from the travel expense of Air Force One and all that entails (can someone explain to me why the Obamas had to take two separate planes, four hours apart, for this trip instead of flying together?), Bush's vacations were relatively cheap for the taxpayers, as he and his staff were ensconced on his ranch. This meant no buying up of entire floors of hotels, no room service, no inconvenience for other vacationers.  For the Bushes, the problem was the amount of time spent 'on vacation', not the expense of it. Comparing the two is apples and oranges, but every liberal you discuss this issue with will bring up ad nauseum how many days Bush spent on vacation to keep from talking about the costs involved. It doesn't matter what the true issue is. They know which arguments they can win, and those are the arguments they are sticking with.

The First Lady is not immune from criticism either on this issue. This Daily Mail article skewers Michelle Obama's expensive vacation tastes, so that naturally brings up the question of former First Lady Laura Bush's vacation habits in contrast. Unfortunately for Mrs. Obama, she doesn't compare quite as favorably as she'd no doubt like. It turns out that Laura Bush took a girls-only trip every year of her husband's presidency.   But whereas First Lady Michelle Obama's idea of a getaway with friends involves glitzy, paparazzi infested five-star resorts in Spain, Mrs. Bush preferred to quietly meet with old friends and go...camping.

It's not the fact that the Obama's are vacationing that rankles - quite frankly many conservatives see their being away from DC for a few weeks as a welcome respite, if nothing else - it's where they are doing it, and with whom. The Vineyard screams old money and privilege and in this economy, where many, many people are not only not taking vacations, but have no jobs from which to vacate, it really hits a sour note.

Expensive, extravagant vacations do not send out an "I feel your pain" vibe, especially when the public is on the hook for a large portion of the cost. If the President or his staff were at all concerned with optics, they would have had the First Family vacation at Camp David. It offers a lot for a young, active family - horseback riding, basketball, bowling, tennis, swimming, hiking, skeet shooting, even golf - with all the comforts of a top-notch resort and the added bonus of the appropriate optics for a man presiding over two (three? four?) wars and a down economy. There is ample space for staff and Secret Service, it's secure and, most importantly, it's already paid for.

Camp David has been a favorite of Presidents since it was converted into a presidential retreat by FDR in 1942. In times of war and peace alike, presidents vacationed there, cushioned in the lap of secure luxury.   True, Reagan loved nothing more than to vacation in exclusive, expensive Santa Barbara, but when he did, he was staying at his own ranch. JFK frequently vacationed at expansive family homes in the elite stomping grounds of not just Martha's Vineyard, but posh Palm Beach Florida as well.  But President Obama does not have a family spread at the Vineyard, and while people are understanding about going home for vacation (even if home is a wealthy 'compound' or, say, Hawai'i), he has no roots there, no reason for the expense aside from the fact that they simply want to vacation at the Vineyard. If they had decided to scrap their plans for the Vineyard this year and vacationed instead at Camp David citing sympathy for the suffering of their fellow Americans, there would probably have been an awful lot less grumbling and they might have even managed to turn it into a PR coup.

Unfortunately, our president and his lady - chic, cool, hip young urbanites that they are - require more public digs, and damn the optics. It's hard to imagine the level of headache this is for the Secret Service. It's easy, however, to imagine the level of cost this incurs, and it's also easy to imagine who is picking up the bulk of the tab.

The problem for the president is that, in his quest for reelection, he is trying to persuade the American people that he, too, is a simple man of the people - that he feels their pain and is sharing their sacrifice. It's hard to paint someone who is hobnobbing with the elite in the poster town for wealth and privilege as an 'everyman' when the real everyman is taking a staycation (code for a week on the sofa with Netflix) and thanking their lucky stars that they have a job. For now, at least.

Which is a concern the president might be more sympathetic with next summer.

THE SPENDING IS NUTS

2011-08-07T11:42:00.000-04:00

My husband sent me this (thanks, Joe!), and I just had to post it. It is a short film by Justin Folk called "The Spending is Nuts". It's a charming story about a nation of squirrels gone awry. This film is so good, you might even want to show it to your kids (via ebaums world):

Looks like it's up to us to give those squirrels a happy ending in 2012!

ATTACK OF THE DEBT TERRORISTS

2011-08-02T22:45:00.001-04:00

The best way to defang a verbal attack is to own the label being applied. The past few weeks have shown that the newest label for Tea Partiers is "terrorist". Perhaps it's because the accusing liberals are struck with fear every time they realize the Tea Partiers really were elected with a mandate, refuse to back down and actually gain strength by standing strong against politics as usual. Perhaps it's just political hackery at it's most base. But when even the Vice President is using the smear (a charge he has since denied), you know it's gone mainstream. Go figure - the tea party movement is all about defusing the debt bomb progressives from both parties have spent decades building, but they are the terrorists. Huh.

So I have a suggestion. For all you tea partiers who are offended by the slur (as was I at first), rethink your offense. Let's take it and make it work for us. They want to call us terrorists? Well, okay. Let's take a look at the movement first, and what motivated it on it's current...well, for want of a better word, jihad. It really has its roots in the Bush administration, specifically those who voted out republicans in 2006 due to their RINO tendency to spend like a debutant with daddy's credit card. The grumbling grew in the summer of 2008 when the TARP scheme was hatched and ushered in the age of Obama. The movement really exploded in 2009 in the run-up to the passage of the failed nearly trillion-dollar "stimulus" bill and has established itself as a fiscal conservative David battling the Goliath of tax and spend Washington. They dealt the beast quite a blow last November and gained some power as a result. The victims of the Tea Party onslaught were strewn across both sides of the aisle then; the only common thread being their profligate, politics-as-usual ways.

It might help to swallow the bitter pill of the terrorist label to know that you are, actually, in excellent company.

The newly minted "Debt Terrorists" should release their manifesto:

Be warned, all you big spenders on Capitol Hill, your days are numbered. The agenda is clear. There will be no stopping until these demands are met:

1) Cut spending on a deep, meaningful, long term level

2) Cap spending levels by tying them to GDP

3) Balanced Budget Amendment

4) Reform Social Security (a good place to start is means testing)

5) Reform Medicare (means test here, too)

6) Repeal of the economy killing ObamaCare legislation

7) Rein in the out of control EPA and NLRB

8) Revamp tax code - lower it, flatten it out and get rid of the loopholes

If you do not give in to these demands, you will be replaced with someone who will in the next election. If you think we're not as good as our word, consider the sixty-three who didn't come back in 2010. We mean business.

Please note "create jobs" is not on the list. Why? Because government doesn't create jobs it only creates the conditions to create jobs, that's why. But if the things on that list are done, jobs will follow.

If that is what the left calls "terrorism" these days, then terrorists we are. And if part of the jihad is having to stomp on Harry, Barry and Nancy's toes to get them to open their mouths and take the medicine We the People voted for last year, well so be it.

The debt jihad has begun.

CONGRESSIONAL HYSTERIA

2011-07-29T11:14:00.000-04:00

The democrats' keening over the debt ceiling debate has reached such a fever pitch that the sound is rapidly reaching dog-whistle decibels. It's quite amazing, really.

First was President Obama's warning to seniors that if he doesn't get the plan he wants, Gramma doesn't get her check (baseless fear mongering, at best). Ah, the Chicago way. As Capone said, you can get much father with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word alone. (so whatever happened to that "lockbox", if there's no money for checks, Mr. President?)

Then came allegations that republicans are hoping for a default, which they can then somehow blame on President Obama (I'm not really clear on how that happens considering how well he polls against republicans on this issue but, like most things liberal, it requires a certain amount of blind faith, so just go with it). Unfortunately, there are Tea Party members who don't want to raise the ceiling because they think either it is possible to avert surpassing the ceiling with spending cuts alone or that there won't be a default even if we pass the deadline. Both of these notions are wishful thinking. Period. Something must be done, and it must be something that can pass BOTH houses of Congress, including the democratic majority in the Senate. House Tea Partiers need to hold their noses and pass the Boehner bill and put it firmly in Harry Reid's court. Once it passes the House, it's up to Reid to either table it or vote it down, and then he can deal with the fallout. If, by some miracle it lands on Obama's desk, keep in mind that although the spending cuts are much smaller than hoped for, the tax increases Obama demanded aren't there at all and the ceiling increase is just as low as the cuts are; that's a win. This bill will buy Congress six more months to debate real solutions, hopefully including entitlement reform and some seriously meaty cuts.

Attempts have been made to play the race card in the debt wars, too - surprise! But that's not the only fun we've been having with our calmer, gentler, less reactionary members on the left side of the aisle. The Boehner plan, with its limited increase, would require another ceiling hike over the holidays, so of course the democrats have jumped on that one, too, claiming republicans hate Christmas or something stupid like that. Speaking of gross exaggerations, check out these charts, which rebut the liberal argument that this debt crisis lies solely at the feet of the eeeevil Bush. Just look at those numbers - nauseating, isn't it?

Of course, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz (or Debbie Downer, as I prefer) deserves a paragraph of her own for her unhinged, grossly false accusations. How false? Even liberal media are taking her to task on her lies. From her accusations of Republicans hating women, seniors, and God only knows who else, to her allegations that republicans want to "literally drag us back to Jim Crow" (I'm not sure she knows what 'literally' means) or "throw us to the wolves", she's a real piece of work. In fact, her rhetoric is so unhinged that, even as DNC chief, she isn't getting the kind of media play she was just a few short weeks ago. My hometown newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel (hardly a conservative rag - we call it the "Slantinel"), even called her an embarrassment to her party. Ouch! The one thing I will say in favor of Wasserman-Shultz is that she was willing to do what no other democrat would - take ownership of the economy in the name of President Obama and the democrats. Good on ya, Debbie. (unfortunately, she thinks that's a good thing, because she thinks the economy is 'turning around'. It seems high office does not necessarily denote high IQ)

But the pièce de résistance in this tour de force of hysteria comes from the one and only Queen Nan. Ms Pelosi is sounding a bit, well.....unhinged (via Gretawire):

“What we’re trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget,” she said. “We’re trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.”

Good gracious. Somebody needs a Xanax, stat! Obviously clear heads are not prevailing if our Penelope Pitstop of the Hill is running around, arms flailing, shouting "Hey-elp! Hey-elp!" Sorry, Nanny P., Chugga-Boom and the Anthill Gang aren't members of Congress and they won't be riding to our rescue (although it does seem like Dick Dastardly has taken up residence in the White House and his good buddy Mutley is currently running the Senate).

It really seems all the democrats have to offer is demagoguery and derision. Well okay then, guys - fair enough. If you insist, the republican bills stink on ice and should never see the light of day. Happy now? Okay then, so WHERE'S YOUR PLAN????!

Quite frankly, put up or shut up. Or better yet, both.

PATRIOTISM AND PARADES

2011-07-04T16:04:00.000-04:00

Happy 235th birthday, America!

Harvard University published a report last week on a study regarding the politics of the Fourth of July. The results aren't very startling, really. It starts off by confirming that republicans tend to be more patriotic than democrats. This shouldn't be a revelation to anyone - after all, democrats are the party that vowed, just two short years ago, to fundamentally transform America. We won't even get into the apology tour some on the left felt was required to atone for America's first world superpower status and overall general awesomeness. The point is, if you love something, you love it for what it is, where it came from and where it's going. You don't dismantle it to build something else in it's place.

The study went on to show that children who are, shall we say, 'exposed' to Independence Day celebrations and parades have a higher chance of growing up into patriotic Americans, and even *gasp* republicans (via the Huffington Post):

According to their research, attending one rain-free July 4 celebration before the age of 18 increases the likelihood that children will identify as Republican by two percent and increases the likelihood that they will vote for a Republican candidate by the time they turn 40 by four percent. It also increases the likelihood that young attendees will vote in elections by 0.9 percent and boosts the chances that they'll make political campaign contributions by three percent, the study claims.

But wait, there's more:

The study finds no evidence that attending July 4 celebrations results in an increased likelihood of identifying as a Democrat.

Move over, Christmas - when do you think the 'War on Independence Day' will begin?

This study is no surprise. It is nearly impossible to hear the story of our founding, the men and ideas that joined together to create something bigger than themselves - something truly great - and not fall in love with this country.

The sorry state of our schools is a frequent topic of discussion on this blog. A recent study that shows our children are aggregiously underserved when it comes to American History and civics education in our public schools. Whatever the reason for the deficit, the Harvard study shows us that we have a way to alleviate it on a grassroots level. The underlying point of the study, at least to me, isn't the creation of republicans, it's the creation of future patriotic citizens, whatever their political stripe. ].

So take your kids to a parade today. Pack a picnic and find a good place to watch fireworks. And while you're waiting for the festivities to begin, talk to your kids about the meaning of the day. It isn't just about BBQ and sparklers, it's about the birth of a nation. It's about brave men of principle standing up to the status quo (and risking their lives to do so) in a quest for something better for all. Stir their patriotic souls and help them fall in love with this great country. It will stay with them for a lifetime.

Have a happy and safe Fourth of July.

Happy 235th birthday, America!

BREAKING: PARENTS ALLOWED TO MAKE PARENTAL DECISIONS (EVEN IN NEW HAMPSHIRE)

2011-06-24T23:16:00.000-04:00

This week in New Hampshire there was a major victory for the parents of that state. The legislature passed a law requiring parental notice 48 hours before minors can receive abortions. Governor John Lynch, ever the good democrat, vetoed the measure. Belief in this bill was strong though, and the legislature overrode the veto - 266-102 in the House and 17-7 in the Senate. In ultra-blue New Hampshire. To borrow a phrase, unflippingbelievable!

This is a major victory for parents in the Granite State. In 2003, there was a parental notification law on the books, but it went unenforced and was eventually repealed four years ago mainly because there was no judicial option. The key to the current law is that girls can go before a judge sans parents and get permission in certain cases - but even this is an unacceptable option for Planned Parenthood (via PPNNE Action Fund):

Under HB 329, a young woman who cannot tell a parent about her unintended pregnancy would be forced to stand in court and explain her circumstances to a judge. This intimidating court process could delay medical care and put young women’s health at risk.

What do you think the odds are that there will be an up-tick in girls who "fear violence or retaliation at home" and are seeking judicial waivers for parent-free abortions? On a side note, from the looks of that article in PPNNE, someone should look out for a little extra something in his reelection fund for his valiant effort...

Yet again, Planned Parenthood is hiding behind the guise of "women's health" and how it's "at risk" with these proposed regulations. For all the talk about women's health being "at risk" from anti-abortion policies, they certainly shy away from giving those same women the real facts about the health risks of abortions (check out the differences between the two links in the 'risk'category). The fact is, an abortion is a surgical procedure, with all of the potential risks of any other outpatient procedure, including infection and hemorrhaging. Both of those are potentially lethal. If my child can't get an aspirin from the school nurse for a headache without my say-so because of state guidelines, why in hell can she have a surgical procedure without my written consent?

As for the argument that there are girls who "fear violence and retaliation in the home", those girls might very well be victims of rape or abuse at home; perhaps making them wards of the court for the purpose of abortion might be the first step in calling attention to and addressing abuses at home. Those girls don't know where to go or who to turn to. Enabling secret abortions may only perpetuate their misery. The Lila Rose project illustrates how concerned PP is for underaged girls being impregnated by 30-something men. Just keep your mouth shut and get your abortion, honey. We don't want to know.

Well as a parent I, for one, do want to know. It is my right as a parent, until that child turns eighteen, to know of and approve of every surgical procedure, prescription drug and doctor appointment my child requires.

Let me see if I've got this straight. According to democrats, my under-aged child should have sole responsiblity for making adult decisions including which surgical procedures she should undergo, but when it comes to things like, oh, say...health insurance, mommy and daddy are the go-to people until junior hits adulthood at the tender young age of twenty-six.

Riiiight.

THE FACTS ARE COMING! THE FACTS ARE COMING!

2011-06-05T17:04:00.000-04:00

Sarah Palin has the liberals twittering away again, much like after her "party like it's 1773" comment last year that had them in stitches - until they realized she was right.

This time, Palin made a few remarks on Paul Revere's midnight ride. In her remarks, she mentions the tolling of bells, beating of drums and Revere warning the British that the Americans are coming. Wait, what? our intrepid media wondered. Warning the British the Americans are coming? What a buffoon!

The press chuckled at this latest illustration of their narrative that she is a blathering idiot. They crowed gleefully about the hypocrisy of this woman on a bus tour to educate people about America not knowing the basic facts about something as well known as Revere's ride. They even mocked her reference to the ringing of bells and beating of drums in the wake of Revere's alarm.

The thing is, she's right. It seems Mr. Revere personally wrote an accounting (spelling original, emphasis mine) of his famous ride (via Massachussetts Historical Society):

I observed a Wood at a Small distance, & made for that. When I got there, out Started Six officers, on Horse back,and orderd me to dismount;-one of them, who appeared to have the command, examined me, where I came from,& what my Name Was? I told him. it was Revere, he asked if it was Paul? I told him yes He asked me if I was an express? I answered in the afirmative. He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up. He imediately rode towards those who stoppd us, when all five of them came down upon a full gallop; one of them, whom I afterwards found to be Major Mitchel, of the 5th Regiment, Clapped his pistol to my head, called me by name, & told me he was going to ask me some questions, & if I did not give him true answers, he would blow my brains out. He then asked me similar questions to those above. He then orderd me to mount my Horse, after searching me for arms

Hmmm. Sounds like a warning to me. And how did the militias, once alerted by Revere, warn the countryside and call their members to arms? Why, by ringing church bells, beating drums, and firing shots in the air of course. How else would it be done in 1775? Twittering a flash mob? Phone tree?

Yet again they underestimate her and make the mistake of buying their own false narrative. Yet again they have egg on their faces.

Talk about summer fun!

LEST WE FORGET

2011-05-30T13:04:00.000-04:00

Today we honor our war dead - from the Revolutionary War minutemen who helped win our freedom all the way up to our present day heroes, who help us keep it. Freedom isn't free, and those brave men and women who gave the greatest measure of devotion to their country have paid the ultimate price for the rest of us.

The Memorial Day tradition was begun during the Civil War, when women would take it upon themselves to decorate the graves of the fallen to honor their sacrifice. In 1868, General John Logan, in his General Order #11, created an official day of remembrance for our Civil War dead. With the advent of WWI and WWII, the observance was expanded to include all war dead, and the date was made official in 1971 when Congress passed the National Holiday Act, making the day a federal holiday (and a three-day weekend).

In 1915 Moina Michaels wrote a poem about remembering those who died in war:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies.

She started a tradition of wearing red poppies to commemorate the Memorial Day. She sold poppies to friends and co-workers and donated the money to servicemen in need.   The idea was picked up by a visiting Frenchwoman who took the tradition back home to France, where it spread throughout Europe. In fact, Europeans have managed to cling to that tradition far better than the Americans who started it.

If you would like to make some poppies for your Memorial Day observances, here's how.

Unfortunately this country seems to have forgotten the meaning of Memorial Day. It seems the purpose has been lost, and many Americans think it is a day to remember all of our dead, not just those lost in war.   Or, even worse, it is just the official start of summer and the first day of barbeque season. Our reverence for those who have fallen in service to their country has dimmed over the decades, starting with our nearly forgotten Korean conflict. Observances really started to wane during the Vietnam war era, when it was much easier for radicals to blame drafted soldiers for the violence than the democratic leadership that ramped up operations in the first place. In fact, the day had so lost its meaning that Congress passed the "National Moment of Remembrance" resolution in 2000, which calls for all Americans to offer a moment of silence at 3pm on Memorial Day to honor our war dead.

Just last year, Arlington National Cemetery was embroiled in a scandal that illustrated how low we have fallen as a nation when it comes to proper reverence for our fallen military. In response to that scandal, a seventeen year old patriot in Virginia, Ricky Gilleland, has taken it upon himself to create a database with photos of the graves of those killed since 9/11 at Arlington, so relatives can 'visit' the grave sites of their loved ones whenever they wish. He started it with $200 of his own money and countless hours wandering through Lot 60 at Arlington, photographing graves and posting them on his website, preserveandhonor.com.   Patriots like Gilleland remind us that honoring our dead is necessary to remind us of just how precious our freedom is, and what a great price we have paid for it as a nation.

So at 3pm today, take a moment to reflect on this great country and those who died to make it so.   The roots of the Tree of Liberty have been watered with the blood of patriots, and it is our duty, not just to them but to ourselves, to ensure their sacrifice wasn't in vain and is remembered throughout the ages.

LEVEE-ING A WAR ON WATER

2011-05-19T23:29:00.000-04:00

Some residents in the path of the flooding Mississippi, facing certain loss of property, have taken matters into their own hands. With true American ingenuity, these intrepid souls have built their own personal levees. Be sure to visit the Daily Mail to see more pictures:

Some have even gone so far as covering the levees with plastic to ensure against erosion:

Where else but America do you see such creativity in the face of looming disaster? Such determination in the face of overwhelming odds? With a lot of hard work and a little luck, there's a chance these mini levees won't fail and at least a few homes will be saved. Above all, hopefully opening the floodgates and inundating these areas will have the desired effect of saving the city centers so the loss in the rural areas wasn't in vain.

The south has been through so much this spring - wildfires in Texas, the second deadliest tornado outbreak in US history, and now the slow, relentlessly creeping onslaught of water from the mighty Mississippi. If you can, please give to the American Red Cross. For Florida and Georgia residents, you can add your donation to your grocery bill at your local Publix; all donations go to the Red Cross.

CONGRATULATIONS ALL AROUND ON A JOB WELL DONE

2011-05-02T15:42:00.000-04:00

Osama bin Laden is dead.

It took almost ten long years, but the deed is done. The titular head of radical islamic terrorism is, quite literally, sleeping with the fishes.

The wave of patriotism and joy that is sweeping over the country is a sight to behold. Today is a day of elation, unity and national pride. Three things that have been in short supply for far too long.

Osama bin Laden took more than American lives that fateful day in 2001. He took something deeper; he took our sense of infallability. But yesterday our fine military - the best in the world - reminded us "that you can hit us, you can knock us down, but we're gonna get up and when we do, we're gonna find you and kick your ass!" Some may lament the 'eye for an eye' attitude, but sometimes that is exactly what is called for (no small irony that he actually was shot in the eye). Let's not forget that this slaughterer of innocents, in his final moments, used a woman as a human shield. A heartless coward to the end.

I had originally planned to do a post on how unusually quiet May Day was yesterday. Europe, in particular, is usually awash in riots on May Day, but it seemed almost preternaturally quiet. I thought it might have something to do with the residual comraderie from the royal wedding, but now, in retrospect, it's almost like it was the calm before the storm.

Of course politicians on the left are attempting to take all the credit for the get. It is important to give President Obama high marks for making the call to send in the SEALs. It was a risky call, and if it had gone badly, he would have taken a lot of heat, especially since the Pakistan government wasn't informed of the operation. He took a big chance, and it paid off. But it is also important that credit should also be given to the CIA and George W. Bush for their interrogation techniques in secret prisons that got the initial information that started us down the path to bin Laden.

Yes, those hated programs that democrats - including our current president - went after, demonized and shut down as soon as they could are directly responsible for the actionable intelligence that led to the raid on bin Laden's compound for which they are now taking credit. We certainly didn't get a tip-off from our "allies" in Pakistan. No doubt there will be more investigation into their role in covering up his residency, but that is a story for another day. No, the reality is, the Bush administration knew what needed to be done, and Obama is the beneficiary, as are we all. The problem is, now that the head is off the hydra and we've taken away the weapon that enabled us to decapitate it in the first place, what do we do when the replacements step in?

There is a good chance al Qaeda will attempt to retaliate, so we must be ever vigilant, but for today, let's indulge in some national therapy and celebrate!

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

A ROMANTIC INTERLUDE

2011-04-29T06:56:00.000-04:00

I am all set for the royal festivities today. I'm taping the wedding so that I can watch it with my girls when they get home from school, but of course I'll be sneaking peeks all day. I'm only human, after all!  I'll be serving tea, finger sandwiches and scones, and even found a recipe for devonshire cream! I'm hoping to lure my husband in with some Guinness Stout but he is a man, after all, and I'm a realist.  Some people may think the whole affair is silly and that's just fine - if ever we needed some silliness, now is the time. Weddings are wonderful things; royal ones even more so. And when the bride is a 'commoner' - a regular girl who nabbed a real-life prince - why, it's practically magical. They seem like a great match; certainly far, far better than his parents.

This wedding really has a different feel to it than other royal weddings. It feels...genuine.  Yes, it's formal and conforms to official state tradition - he is, after all, heir to the throne, but there is also a joyousness, most notably in the bride and groom, that has been markedly absent from prior royal weddings. Instead of keeping a stiff upper lip and doing his duty for queen and country, William found his match, and took a long time doing it, just to make sure it was right. But, happily, 'Waity Katie' got her man. The big event at Westminster Abbey will be followed by a carriage ride and a turn on the balcony at Buckingham Palace for the traditional kiss. A formal luncheon reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth is to follow.   In the evening, there is a dinner and dance in the offing. The Queen and Prince Phillip will have vacated the palace and retired to Norfolk by then, so you know what that means - it's time to party!!

This particular dinner and dance party, hosted by Prince Charles and organized by the bride's sister Pippa for 300 of the bridal couple's closest friends and family, sounds like it will be a cracking good time. After all, history is being made - there will be disco balls hanging from the ceiling of Buckingham Palace's Royal Throne Room. Now that's a party. For those die-hards who just won't quit 'til the sun comes up, Prince Harry is hosting a "fry-up" at six in the morning on Saturday.  Speaking of Prince Harry, he won't be giving his best man speech until after the Queen retires. Considering his notorious sense of humor, one can only hope that's for a reason (and that someone leaks it on youtube).

Charles and Diana's wedding was so formal and traditional. An engineered match for dynastic reasons. William and Kate, on the other hand, are a love match, and it shows in the youthful exuberance and hands-on approach to the event by not just the happy couple, but by their friends and family.

With all that is going wrong in the world, all the things that weigh us down on a daily basis, setting it all aside for a few moments to embrace the pomp, circumstance and love on this happy day is a much needed escape from reality. Luckily, this should be a heck of a wedding. Let's not forget the bride's family are party planners. From disco balls in throne rooms to trees in Westminster Abbey, this wedding may well prove to be the benchmark for weddings for years to come.

And I, for one, plan on enjoying every silly second of it. Cheers!

MARIA TALKS TRASH

2011-04-21T00:28:00.000-04:00

The state of Massachusetts has been forking over $100,000 per year to the AIDS Action Committee, which in turn funnels a portion of that money into a web site called Mariatalks.com, which is a teen-friendly site focusing on sex ed. It answers questions ranging from birth control to STDs and everything in between in a candid, teen to teen way. But where the two sites differ is a doozy, so much so that it makes PP look almost conservative. (Please note the 'almost' - but more on that later)

In a report in the Boston Herald:

Maria tells teen readers abortion is a “hot topic” but that the procedure is “more common than you might think” and “safe and effective, though some people may experience temporary discomfort.” The site’s discussion of risk is limited to advising that it is better to get an abortion sooner rather than later.

Planned Parenthood, by contrast, at least mentions the possible side effects, such as “infection,” “blood-clotting,” “injury to the cervix or other organs,” and “an incomplete abortion.” Gee, it doesn't seem to be such a walk in the park now, does it? This might have some repercussions! As for the psychological issues, Maria counsels that it:

“can be pretty tough for some people, especially emotionally.”

Oh wait, that's what she said about adoption. Here's what she said about abortion:

...one of her fictional friends found it a “difficult decision” but decided the procedure was the “best choice . . . for herself, her boyfriend, her family and her future.”

Yup, just a choice; no deep thinking here! No guilt, no sadness, no second thoughts - it's the best choice! It's the only choice! The hardest part about it is the decision, really.

But if it's no big deal, why is it such a difficult decision? It's not like there's a life hanging in the balance, right?

Which brings us to facilitation:

“The reality of getting an abortion is much easier than it sounds here.”

Really? How easy? After all, MA state law requires parental consent for any girl under the age of 18 to get an abortion. No problemo, good ol' Maria has an answer for everything, including the caveat for my praise of PP's site that I mentioned in the first paragraph (emphasis mine):

Maria notes that state law allows minors to skirt that approval through a confidential judicial hearing, saying, “I know it sounds crazy . . . this really can be done and young women do this all the time here in Massachusetts.”

The site then directs teens to Planned Parenthood, saying that agency will either help them talk to parents or provide a lawyer to guide them through the judicial process.

PP is now offering underaged girls lawyers so they can get secret abortions? Who's paying for that? It would be nice to know that no taxpayer dollars are going into that kitty. As the parent of two daughters, this enrages me. This movement to help our underaged daughters obtain abortions in secret has to stop. As mentioned above, these surgical procedures bring risks because they're surgical procedures. If nothing else, parents need to be notified so they can care for their daughter on a medical level, not to mention the many emotional issues she might experience. The problem is, notifying the parent would give them the opportunity to talk to their child and help her make an informed decision. Yes, they might be angry. Maybe disappointed. Definitely sad. But for the majority of parents faced with this dilemma, the health and well being of their daughter outweighs it all and they help and support her.

Unfortunately, what Maria Talks, Planned Parenthood and others are telling our daughters is that making a life-changing decision like abortion and getting a secret judicial bypass (not to mention the abortion itself) is easier than having to tell their parents about it.

Posters for Maria Talks are being put up in high school nurse's offices across the state. The website has crashed due to the controversy. One hopes that when it is restored, the segments on abortion will have been purged and replaced with a more realistic, less happy-go-lucky view of the topic, as well as no further reference to bypassing parental consent laws. That the state is sponsoring a site that facilitates secret abortions for underaged girls is disgraceful. If the AIDS Action Committee cannot get Maria Talks to remove the information about judicial end runs around parental rights and cannot separate the money they receive from the state from their funding for the site, the state should pull all funding until they can.

As a side note, an investigation into PP's legal defense arm would no doubt be enlightening, too. How many of those underaged girls seeking judicial bypass for abortions are being molested or victimized in some way, and how many are getting the help they need - and I don't mean an abortion.

OVERCOMING THE LINE IN THE SAND

2011-04-12T22:49:00.000-04:00

The budget debate high drama last week was a real eye opener. The resulting compromise - a smashing success all the way around when one considers how it seems absolutely no one is happy with it - not only temporarily postponed a potential economic disaster, it also drew a line in the sand. The democrats made it perfectly clear that they are willing to send the country over the fiscal cliff in order to protect and fund Planned Parenthood. The republicans managed to get a small concession in the banning of abortion funding for the Washington D.C. area only - something Reid et al bemoaned, even though they have enforced the ban in the past - without republican pressure.

Planned Parenthood claims no federal dollars are spent on abortions. In that they don't send a bill to Washington for each abortion, okay, yes, the money isn't going straight to abortions; but in that they use the money they receive from taxpayers to pay doctor's and nurse's salaries and the electric bill that powers the suction machine, it certainly is.  Consider, for a moment, smoking in restaurants.  At first, regulations required a seperate seating area for smokers. Eventually is became evident that even though the smokers were being quarantined, their smoke was not. In fact, it was permeating every inch, as smoke is wont to do. And so smoking in restaurants was banned entirely.   The federal funding of Planned Parenthood is like the smoke - it may not be directly used for abortions, but it is ending up that way in the long run by permeating every inch of the organization's day to day expenses. Let's not forget that federal funding of abortions is barred, according to the Hyde Amendment. No matter how "compassionate" it might be (it certainly isn't for the baby in question), banned is banned, period. Not one thin dime of taxpayer money should go to any enterprise that performs non-emergency abortions on demand.

The fact is, Planned Parenthood is a private enterprise. It makes a profit each year, and may even be expanding in the near future. As such, our federal government has no business subsidizing them for anything, let alone abortions. Perhaps PP should consider tapping their celebrity friends to assist them in a fundraising drive every year. Hopefully some of them will donate not just their fame to the cause but actually put their money where their mouths are for a change. In fact, online donations to PP since the budget battle have increased a whopping 500%. See? They don't need federal funding - just whip up some hysteria and voila! it's payday!

Unfortunately, the furor with which this issue has been met by the left is, as usual these days, over the top to the point of cartoonish. Republicans are coming to "kill women" according to Rep. Louise Slaughter. The GOP is out to keep women from health care services, apparently out of nothing more than sheer spite and ideology. You would think there were no other clinics or health care facilities in the US other than PP, wouldn't you?  It's almost as if, were PP to shut down tomorrow, there would no longer be any abortions available anywhere and Roe v. Wade would somehow, in a miraculously simultanious event, be reversed.

The hysteria has to stop. The fact that we are giving more than $350 million a year to a private - and profitable - entity is reason enough to end the gravy train. That it might, even indirectly, pay for abortions with taxpayer funds makes defunding even more imperative. $350 million a year won't make a big dent in our debt, but when you add it in with other cuts and, most importantly, entitlement reform, it makes a tidy sum. Much like environmentalists are always urging us to "do your part", no matter how small,  a whole bunch of littles add up to a lot.

The issue isn't access to abortions or women's health care - there are plenty of outlets for both with or without Planned Parenthood. The issue is money. Simply put, we don't have any. And yet democrats keep insisting we continue to fund PP, a private organization, even when it means forty cents of every dollar we give them is borrowed. It's time Planned Parenthood (and other crony corporations) was weaned from the public teat.

Defunding Planned Parenthood may not happen this year, but there's always 2012 and the potential of not just a Senate flip, but the White House, too. Good things come to those who wait.

NOW IT'S TIME FOR SOME HISTORY

2011-03-23T00:59:00.000-04:00

"Comedian" (I use the term loosely) Bill Mahr, in what one would assume was intended to be a comedic monologue, called Sarah Palin a very naughty name. Not only was the "joke" not funny, it was crass, juvenile and really showcased his latent misogyny beautifully. It is a small, petty man with a little, narrow, nearly neanderthalic mind who stoops to such depths. This is what you resort to, Mr, Mahr? Are you so apoplectic in your rage and revulsion of all things Palin that it leaves you with only curses in your vocabulary? Speaking as a mother, you need a time out and a big hug. And maybe a few years of intensive therapy.

NOW has finally, finally stepped up and called him out on his base misogyny. They also call him out for hiding behind 'compassionate' progressivism to shield them from criticism.

But NOW doesn't stop there. They then lambaste the right ("we are on to you right-wingers") for wasting their time calling out the incivility. Because they've been so quick to speak out for conservative women in the past, right? Their animus against all things conservative reverberates throughout the release, as did their comment yesterday in response to Fox News inquiries:

The National Organization for Women (NOW) refused to comment on Maher’s use of the derogatory term. A rep told FOXNews.com it is a “known fact” that NOW does not correspond with FOX News.

Wow, that's a bit...petty and cranky of them. Wouldn't want them to sully themselves dealing with Fox, now would we? For people who are all about talking with adversaries and messaging, they sure are clueless about getting their side of the story to the opposition (read:Fox) viewing audience.

Anyhoo. NOW communications director Lisa Bennet writes:

“Did you speak up once on behalf of a woman politician before you learned the name Sarah Palin? Did you work toward equality for women in any way prior to August 2008?” wrote Bennett. “It would be nice to think that you’ve suddenly discovered sexism and are interested in joining us in the struggle for full equality. But this really smacks of the worst kind of hypocrisy: Folks with no history of working on an issue trying to discredit those who have been working for decades on the issue. Ridiculous.”

Uh, Ms. Bennet, perhaps you've heard of a little thing called Women's Suffrage? Yeah, well, according to none other than Susan B. Anthony,

“I voted for the Republicans. They gave us the vote”

Not convinced? How about this:

Republicans led the fight for women’s voting rights — and the Democrats, as a party, opposed civil rights for women. All of the leading suffragists — including Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — were Republicans. In fact, Susan B. Anthony bragged, after leaving the voting booth, that she had voted for “the Republican ticket — straight.”

The suffragists included two African-American Republican women who were also co-founders of the NAACP: Ida Wells and Mary Terrell, great leaders of our party, both of them.

Maybe it's time to set aside the rhetoric and lame, erroneous portrayal of eeevil republicans and brush up on your history, Ms. Bennet.

Ridiculous, indeed.

Shrill, too.

9.1

2011-03-12T14:00:00.000-05:00

My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan. Since the massive 9.1 magnitude quake (revised up from the initial estimate of 8.9) earthquake yesterday, they have suffered upwards of 150+ aftershocks - many of magnitude 6.0 and higher - and a devastating 23-30 ft tsunami that swept a path of destruction up to 6 miles inland.

The quake opened up a 250 mile long rupture in the ocean floor that is 100 miles wide and was so intense that it actually shifted the Earth's axis. The coastline of Japan has shifted 8 feet.  Within hours of the initial quake, an Indonesian volcano erupted.

To make matters worse, one japanese nuclear power plant, Fukushima Daiishi, has been seriously compromised and four others are in distress. The japanese govenrment has declared five seperate nuclear emergencies. A 20km radius around the Fukushima Daiishi has been evacuated, and explosions have been reported. This map shows how close the reactors are to the quake's epicenter. Yesterday, in an attempt to keep the reactor from melting down, a cloud of radioactive steam was released, apparently to little effect. The government is passing out potassium iodine to the public in an attempt to shield their thyroids from the effects of any leaked radiation. They are now considering inundating the plant with sea water in an attempt to cool the core.

The tsunami rippled across the Pacific Ocean, eventually making it's way to Hawai'i and the west coast of the U.S., where a photographer was swept out to sea and the harbors of California's Crescent City and Santa Cruz were heavily damaged.   The damage to California as a whole is in the $10 million range. There's a good deal of cleanup in the Golden State's future, but in the grand scheme, the U.S. really got off lucky.

Meanwhile, over in Europe the global warming alarmist corps piped up with their opinion of the cause of the disaster. Staffan Nilsson, the president of the European Economic and Social Committee of the EU, is attempting to claim that the earthquake was caused by climate change. Of course it was. Isn't everything?  Nilsson's opinion was released mere hours after the quake:

"Some islands affected by climate change have been hit...Mother Nature has again given us a sign."

Yes, because before man became a plague on the earth, there were no earthquakes, plate tectonics or tsunamis. Give me a break. Don't they realize that they delegitimize their cause when they attempt to blame everything that happens - from brain shrinkage to Bulgarian brothels suffering an economic downturn to this new theory on plate tectonics in the "Ring of Fire" - on global warming?

Global warming hysterics aside, Japan is suffering from a series of major disasters, both natural and, in the case of the nuclear reactors, man-made. Honestly, if Godzilla arose from the depths of the 250 mile long rift and started lumbering towards Tokyo, I wouldn't be surprised at this point. What is going on over there is already like something out of a big budget Hollywood disaster movie. Luckily, there is no 30ft lizard on the horizon, and the people of Japan are a hardy, resilient lot. The world community will offer as much aid as they are willing to accept, so there is a good chance that Japan will not just rebuild, but they will use these disasters to improve their infrastructure and take their society to the next level, like a phoenix rising.

In the meantime, we who look on from the other side of the globe can only offer our prayers and moral support to the people of Japan. Traditionally, the japanese govenrment has declined international aid in times of crisis, but this is a disaster of unprecidented proportions, so hopefully they will accept the aid of not just the American 7th Fleet which is stationed there, but also the aid of the international community at large. Even in this time of fiscal crisis, there is little doubt that average Americans will dig deep into their own pockets to give what they can for our Japanese friends.

Those who want to help can go to http://www.redcross.org/ and donate to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami. People can also text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific. At this time, the Japanese Red Cross is not requesting blood donations from the American Red Cross. The best way to contribute is financially at this point. Give what you can, even if it is only raising your voice in prayer.

DID THEY REALLY JUST SAY THAT?

2011-02-23T21:48:00.000-05:00

There may be hope yet! The first step towards recovery is admitting there's a problem, right? Can we consider this the first step?

Considering this is coming from the network that has been, by far, the most egregious offender, this is quite
an admission, isn't it? Mika's tangible dismay is priceless. You can see her having a "darn it, we do it too!" (or was it a "darn it, why were they stupid enough to get caught on camera?") moment. I'm sure she won't stymied by it for long.

Oh, and don't you just love their nonchalance about something they are normally fervently, ardently and vociferously denying? No need to deny when you're in the echo chamber, eh boys?

TAKING HOSTAGES

2011-02-16T16:12:00.002-05:00

The teacher's unions in Wisconsin are protesting Governor Scott Walker's proposed stripping of their collective bargaining rights. This is due to the contract running out - it's the state's prerogative to not renew it, and it would basically turn Wisconsin into a right to work state overnight. There is also a proposal in the budget that would require union members to contribute to their own pensions and health care plans like the rest of us. Educators have gone so far as to do an illegal "sick-out" two days in a row. Numerous districts have had to close schools for two days running because more than 40% of their teachers called in sick in protest. Thousands of children are having their education neglected by their own teachers so that those teachers can go demand more special treatment at taxpayer's expense (and claim it's for the kids!).
There were also students in attendance, many brought to the festivities by their teachers. Let's hope they got their permission slips signed first! This so-called "solidarity" is bogus because many of the students don't know why they are there or what they are protesting. Being teenagers, they just jumped at the chance to play hooky and hang out with their friends at a rally:

Fox News commentator Mary Katherine Hamm put it best when host Stuart Varney asked if this behavior was causing public opinion to shift against unions:

"I think it is, and I don't think it helps unions to be skipping their jobs and coming out and getting paid to protest to get more taxpayer money while being paid taxpayer money. I don't think that works for them. It's not a great argument."

Using their students as human shields isn't such a great idea, either. HotAir's Ed Morrissey sums the issue up nicely:

Most of the students marching with their teachers had no idea of the finer points of Governor Scott Walker’s proposal to bring teacher pension contributions in line with the private sector, a position the union called “slavery” just a couple of months before conceding the point. Nor do they understand the budget gap that Walker faces, or the nuances of economic policy, tax burdens, and growth policies. All they know is what their teachers told them — and that speaks to political indoctrination conducted in public schools by activist teachers, and the inability of parents and communities to weed out inappropriate politicking in classrooms.

Why are parents and communities unable to weed out these politically motivated teachers? Because unions make it nearly impossible to fire a tenured teacher, and our democratic leaders block any legislation that might tie the hands of their union ~~cronies~~ fundraisers. And what do we get for it? We spend more than 5% of GDP yearly on education, and in return we enjoy a global ranking of "average". Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and a seriously disheartening 25th in math.

To add to the chaos, Wisconsin state senate democrats snuck out the back door, boarded a chartered bus and are currently holed up in a Best Western in Illinois. Seriously, I kid you not.  I sure hope they aren't using their state credit cards for this little...junket. Cowards. Meanwhile, back in Madison, the ~~grownups~~ republicans were unable to make a quorum to vote on the budget due to a complete lack of democrats and so were forced to go home.

This is what one might call a "government shutdown". You may have heard that term recently, because congressional democrats for some reason have been saying it's allegedly what republicans are planning on doing. Please note that the only party either talking about or doing it is the one on the left side of the aisle. Not only do they refuse to make the hard decisions, they refuse to allow anyone else to, either.  The democrats who fled to Illinois have announced their solidarity with the unions over the greater good of the state and have, with their dereliction and defection, effectively gone on strike and should be held accountable for their actions.

Our esteemed President has also weighed in on the subject - three guesses on which side he's taking! The DNC also apparently has a horse in this race, because they are organizing their little guts out in the Madison community these days.  Twittering twit Michael Moore has also piped up, of course, likening Wisconsin to the New Cairo, and called Gov. Walker "Mini-Mubarak". There are plenty of "Recall Walker" signs to support Moore's idea, but it's highly doubtful Walker will resign over this, so hopefully they aren't getting their hopes up too high.   Fascinating how they are all working together, no? Obama, unions, and the DNC all ~~in lockstep~~ arm in arm - how cozy....

No doubt there will be more protests tomorrow, and the democratic delegation in exile doesn't seem too keen on growing backbones and coming back and dealing with the $3+ billion budget gap their state elected them to deal with any time soon. How in the world are we supposed to get out of the looming fiscal ruin we are facing not just in individual states but nationally if no one is willing to make the cuts?

We are all going to get hit by austerity measures eventually - on both federal and state levels in most cases, and that has to include our heretofore untouchable union members. To paraphrase President Obama, "they are our neighbors, they are our friends" - so maybe they should chip in and help shoulder the burden instead of hold us hostage, dontcha think? You know, as neighbors and friends?   Obama says that this is an attack on the unions. You bet! Public sector unions have become too powerful and too expensive. Other states are watching this closely to see if they, too, can bust the unions and save themselves. Bottom line, unions should not have the ability to shut down a government and hold it hostage until their demands are met. That is what the mess in Wisconsin really boils down to.

In order to work in a public position in Wisconsin you are required to join a union. Once you join that union, you are required to pay dues to said union - they are automatically garnished from members wages. And yet they call being asked to kick in for their own pensions to take some of the burden off the taxpayer "slavery".   Breaking the collective bargaining agreement will break the union stranglehold, allowing members to opt out if they so choose. Considering how membership is already slipping nationally, no doubt the unions are really sweating this prospect. It might mean losing untold numbers of members, which, of course, means fewer dues.  This translates into smaller donations to democrat fundraisers. Unacceptable, in other words.

What originally started out as a small protest by teachers has blown up into a near revolt by the public unions and their democrat supporters. They should proceed carefully, however because this could really backfire in a big way. Disapproval of unions is on the rise, and these demonstrations and shutdowns could well be a tipping point, and not in their favor.

Taking hostages is always a tricky proposition. It's also usually a sign of desperation - something Walker and the GOP senators should keep in mind as the pressure is applied to them.  Time for a counter protest!

WASHINGTON STANDARDS

2011-02-11T18:40:00.000-05:00

So, let me get this straight.....Rep.Christopher Lee (R-NY) sent a topless photo of himself to an adult woman as part of a flirty exchange in response to a 'woman seeking man' ad on Craigslist and has resigned over the ensuing scandal. Granted, he said he was a divorced lobbyist instead of the truth, that he's a married congressman, and no doubt he has quite a few uncomfortable nights on the sofa in the future, but in the grand scheme, the whole "scandal" is pretty, well, meh. Still, this guy is resigning not because he broke some laws and is under investigation, but because he simply doesn't want to be a "distraction".

And yet, on the other side of the aisle, we have Rep. Charlie Rangel, who has been investigated and found to be culpable for breaking tax laws - that he helped write - and was censured by his own party, and he's still a sitting member of congress.

Sure. Why not.

Michael Ramirez has a somewhat different take on Lee's escapades:

ON REAGAN

2011-02-06T18:24:00.000-05:00

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan. I was just eleven years old when John Hinckley shot him. I saw the assassination attempt on tv and was horrified by it. I felt helpless and couldn't believe that such a thing could happen. I was too young to know about JFK, RFK and MLK - political assassination was new to me.

I wrote my president a letter letting him know that he was in my prayers. I sent my silly little letter to the White House, and felt better, even though I figured he would never see it.

To my surprise, two months later I received a card in the mail, and the return address was 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was just a little white card, embossed with the presidential seal, thanking me for my concern and well wishes. There was no personal signature, of course, but all the same, it meant a lot to an impressionable young girl worried about her president. Ever after, I have felt a connection to and deep affection for our 40th president. The card is long since gone, a casualty of a nomadic childhood, but the affection remains.

Reagan was the first president to survive an assassination attempt. He came to believe that God has spared his life so that he could fulfill a greater purpose. Many believe that purpose was fulfilled when the Iron Curtain fell in 1989 and the "Evil Empire" was destroyed, due in great part to pressure from Reagan's administration.

Unlike the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he believed that America truly was a force for good in the world, and that our strength would help keep the peace:

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

Love him or hate him, it is hard to deny that he improved this country's place in the world. His ideology of peace through strength was forged in a youth that saw not one but two world wars. He saw himself as the leader of the free world and, as such, performed his duties with dignity and humility. He was known for his wit, and even after all these years, his words still reflect his wisdom in how the world works.

Time Magazine, in it's "Ronald Reagan at 100" special edition, calls Reagan the

"mythic embodiment of all that was best about America, at a time when Americans perhaps needed it most,"

It could be argued that he is just as needed today as he was then.

One hundred years ago today, a great man was born. He left this world in 2004, but his legacy will remain:

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

Amen.

TO PLEDGE OR NOT TO PLEDGE

2011-02-02T19:22:00.000-05:00

San Francisco's District Six Supervisor Jane Kim, a newly elected Board of Supervisors member is stirring up controversy because of her refusal to pledge allegiance to the American flag:

"I don't think our flag represents a nation where there's liberty and justice for all," argued Kim.

"And I reserve my right to disagree or to even protest when I think our government isn't representing the best of our ideals or principles."

For a private citizen, this is a non-issue - if you want to 'protest' that way, knock yourself out. However, Kim is an elected official who represents the government of the United States, even in the limited capacity of the Board of Supervisors. As such, it is distasteful in the extreme that she refused to pledge allegiance to the nation that she has been elected to serve. The question inevitably arises that if you refuse to include yourself in the country, should you really be representing it and, more importantly, do you have the best interests of the nation at heart, or your own, or even someone else's?

There is no law that compels her to say the pledge, of course, but there is an expectation of it from government employees. One wonders how the administration of the oath of office went - after all, she has to pledge to uphold the laws of the land, doesn't she? Did she cross her fingers behind her back? Or is she planning to continue in the liberal fashion and just ignore the things she doesn't agree with?

In the grand scheme of things, it is probably more notable that her conduct is causing controversy at all. This is, after all, San Francisco we're talking about. Honestly, isn't it more surprising that they actually say the pledge before beginning than that she refuses to participate? It's nice to know there are a few people willing to admit they still consider themselves to be part of America there. But, then, the city does boast it's own Bay Area Tea Party chapter, believe it or not, so all hope is not lost. I'm still expecting the city to officially secede from the union any day now, a la the Conch Republic.

As for the possibility that Kim will change her behavior, don't hold your breath:

Kim said it's a personal decision of how to honor the flag and country.

"How to honor the flag and country" - by snubbing it. Talk about mental gymnastics. At least she's not completely disrespectful - she does stand up for the pledge, even if she doesn't repeat it. But still, one just sort of expects one's elected officials to at least like the country for whom they work. Or am I out of line here?

HORROR IN PHILADELPHIA Updated

2011-01-27T21:08:00.001-05:00

In West Philadelphia an abortion doctor, Kermit Gosnell, has been arrested and held without bail for the murder of a 41 year old woman and seven live babies. The more information that comes out about this man and his squalid back alley abortion clinic, the more appalling it becomes. If you have the stomach for it, the full grand jury report is here.

Under his "care" (and I use the term very, very loosely), numerous patients suffered from perforated bowels, cervix and uterus. He was known to stitch up the problem and not mention it to the patient or their loved ones. The grand jury report is chilling (via lifenews.com):

One woman, for example, was left lying in place for hours after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon while trying, unsuccessfully, to extract the fetus. Relatives who came to pick her up were refused entry into the building; they had to threaten to call the police. They eventually found her inside, bleeding and incoherent, and transported her to the hospital, where doctors had to remove almost half a foot of her intestines.

On another occasion, Gosnell simply sent a patient home, after keeping her mother waiting for hours, without telling either of them that she still had fetal parts inside her. Gosnell insisted she was fine, even after signs of serious infection set in over the next several days. By the time her mother got her to the emergency room, she was unconscious and near death.

A nineteen-year-old girl was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus. As a result of the delay, she fell into shock from blood loss, and had to undergo a hysterectomy.

One patient went into convulsions during an abortion, fell off the procedure table, and hit her head on the floor. Gosnell wouldn’t call an ambulance, and wouldn’t let the woman’s companion leave the building so that he could call an ambulance.

He performed late term (6,7,8 months) abortions regularly (often telling first-time mothers they were only 24 weeks along), and when the baby survived as a live birth, he would kill it by severing it's spinal cord with a pair of scissors.

What is most horrifying of all is that there are few records, which means there is just no telling how many times he did this. The reason there are only seven counts of murdering live babies is because those are the only documented cases (via CBS Philly):

Gosnell is suspected of killing hundreds of living babies over the course of his 30-year practice. However, he is not charged because the records do not exist.

Among other complaints were his use of a 15 year old high school student to administer anesthesia. He used unsterilized equipment and performed the procedures in rooms that often had animals and even litter boxes in them. Eight members of his staff were also arrested, some of them for being unlicensed. Gosnell himself wasn't even certified as an OB/GYN.

His abortion mill truly was a house of horrors. There were bags and bottles containing aborted fetuses throughout the clinic, and there were jars of severed baby feet lining a shelf in his office.
Gosnell was in the business for thirty years, and it seemed to be a very lucrative living for him:

DA Williams said Gosnell made approximately $1.8 million in one year alone performing the procedures.

So why was he never shut down? According to reports, even with numerous complaints and 46 malpractice lawsuits against Gosnell, there had been no inspections of his facility since 1993. There are allegations that politics were the reason for the lack of oversight. The Pennsylvania Departments of Health and State provided no oversight whatsoever for reasons unknown, and so he was allowed to victimize a community of poor, minority women with impunity. It seems they came to the decision that it is better to have a butcher ~~slaughtering innocents~~ performing abortions than close him down and not have an abortion clinic in that neighborhood (not that there isn't another clinic about a mile away).

This man should be thoroughly evaluated by a mental health professional. It's one thing to have a dirty facility (although probably not to the level that has been alleged), but it's a whole other thing to save severed feet in jars on a shelf. They're almost like...trophies.

The "doctor", his wife, and eight staff members have been arrested. No one from Health or State has even been reprimanded. Animal slaughterhouses have more oversight than this man's facility, and the methods are more humane than those undertaken by Gosnell.

To top it all off, this week marked the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It's hard to believe that in 38 years we have managed to go from dirty, back alley abortions to...this.

Of course certain factions on the left are using this as a rallying cry for federal funding of abortions, arguing that if it were allowed, Gosnell would never have been able to do what he did. In actuality, if the Departments of Health and State had done their job with regular inspections - heck, just investigated the multitude of complaints against him - he most likely would have been shut down years ago. Instead, no one checked it out, because abortion is a political hot button and no one wanted to deal with the possible repercussions of an investigation.

In this case, it wasn't just the lives of the children that meant nothing, but the lives of the mothers, as well. This man victimized a whole community, for decades, in the most debased, disgusting way imaginable, and it makes barely a blip on the national media scene.

God only knows how many women died or were permanently damaged from complications due to his botched abortions, and God only knows how many live babies were slaughtered at his and his staff's hands. That there has been very little media coverage of this outrage practically assures that it will happen again, in another city, with another doctor. It probably has already. With our bureaucrats too frightened of the political ramifications of dealing with abortion issues, the odds are good that another house of horrors will crop up somewhere.

According to CBS News, Gosnell is "confused" by the murder charges and the fact that he was refused bail. This man destroyed records and lied to patients about how far along they were so that he could perform illegal abortions, because he knew late term abortions were illegal in Pennsylvania. He routinely murdered viable babies that would have lived had they received medical care (and not had their spinal cords severed with scissors). He injured patients and never notified them or their caregivers of the injury. His actions go beyond mere negligence. He even went so far as to segregate white women who came for his services in cleaner rooms, because he thought they would be more likely to complain. He knew what he was doing. But don't be surprised if his "confusion" could well be the beginnings of a mental competency plea.

When he does go to trial, if he is found guilty and gets a death sentence, I humbly suggest that he die via his spinal cord being severed with a pair of scissors.

UPDATE: The Abbess has a great piece on how the media is not covering the Gosnell story, and makes quite a compelling argument for why they should. She also reminds them of another story that also deserved (and got) lots of media attention which helped to root out the evil.
In Pennsylvania, twenty-two abortion clinics have been investigated and fourteen have had issues - although nothing on par with Gosnell, thank God.
Delaware AG Beau Biden is investigating a clinic Gosnell worked at one day a week for a number of years. He would often start abortions in DE and send the patient up to his clinic in Philly to finish the job due to Delaware's abortion laws. He is also being investigated for defrauding the Delaware Pro-Choice Medical Fund by giving some of his PA patients DE addresses.
The Delaware clinic is owned by the same people who own a clinic in Louisiana that is so bad that a group of lawyers has threatened to sue the state Dept. of Health if they don't shut it down.
We seem to have forgotten that Roe v. Wade didn't just provide for legal abortions, it provided for safe legal abortions. It's bad enough we're killing the babies; do we really need to be maiming and killing the mothers, too?

IN ONE EAR AND OUT THE OTHER Updated

2011-01-13T01:00:00.001-05:00

Well, that was the oddest memorial service I think I've ever seen. The speakers were good, including President Obama, but the audience seemed to think it was at a pep rally, not a memorial service for the victims of a massacre. It was a bit surreal, watching the speakers with their somber messages of healing and hope, having to shout over the whooping and cheering.

Obama's speech was good. He hit the right tone; no preaching, just reaching out. There was also a finger wag at the left's rush to judgement and the accusatory nature of their ridiculous hypotheses.  Better late than never, I suppose. Ultimately, the only person responsible for this tragedy is Jared Loughner, and Obama made that clear. Although a politician was targeted, it was because of mental illness, not politics.

What I find most ironic is that all of those people raging against the incivlity and violent rhetoric are actually whipping up their base to...incivility and threats of violence. Makes ya dizzy sometimes, doesn't it?

Loughner was non-political. He wasn't left, he wasn't right, he was just plain unstable. Anyone who doubts that should take a nice looooong look at that mugshot. If you don't see crazy when you look in those eyes, you are willfully blinding yourself.

It's too bad that at least one of President Obama's most ardent, tingly admirers didn't pick up on what he was throwing down in his speech. You know the message hasn't been received when the words "can't exonerate" are used in relation to people who have neither committed a crime nor even, according to all the evidence we have so far, incited a crime. Get a grip, Tingles. Jared Loughner is the defendant, not Palin or Beck. Not even if you wish really, really hard.

The other oddity was the branding of the memorial. Right down to "Together We Thrive" t-shirts.   It seems a bit..tacky, no? Or was this the rollout for the 2012 campaign, and we just didn't get the memo? At least no one is fundraising on the tragedy...oh, wait. Never mind. Well, at least the speech was good.

UPDATE: Ugh. The California chapter of the Tea Party Express actually sent out a fund raiser of their own to counter leftists attempts of "trying to exploit" the tragedy. Um, I hate to tell you this, guys, but fundraising off a national tragedy is also "trying to exploit" it. Disgusting. Shame on you.

THE POLITICS OF MURDER Updated

2011-01-09T13:04:00.001-05:00

Yesterday's Arizona Safeway massacre was a horrific act by a seriously disturbed individual. Eighteen people were shot. Six died, including a federal judge, a congressional staffer, and a nine year old girl.

Judge John Roll ,63; Dorthy Murray, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; Christina Greene, 9; Phyllis Scheck, 79; and Gabriel Zimmerman, 30 all lost their lives yesterday, in a senseless act of violence by a mentally unstable young man named Jared Lee Loughner. His motivations are unclear. Unless, of course, one can make sense of a rambling rant about government mind control through grammar.

Twelve people were injured, including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head but is, thankfully, expected to survive her injuries. Rep. Giffords was fresh off a legislative victory, having successfully passed legislation reducing congressional pay by 5%. The legislation passed the House with a whopping 410-13 majority. Giffords was interviewed by Fox News' Bill Hemmer Friday morning, before the vote, so she could explain the legislation. She was concise, articulate and pleasant. Her proposal was timely and well received, and it is a crying shame that we will not have her moderate, common-sense voice on the Hill for the foreseeable future.

Gabriel Zimmerman was an aide to Rep. Giffords who was loved and respected for his outreach in his community. Judge Roll had simply come by to say hello to his friend Giffords after church. Christina Green, born on Sept. 11, 2001 and a member of her school's student government, was there to learn about the political system and meet her congresswoman. None of them should have died yesterday.

But a madman took their lives, violently and, at least so far, without reason. Even if his attack on Rep. Giffords was politically motivated, his subsequent random shooting of onlookers defies reason. Can we really argue that nine year old Christina Green was a political threat?

The reason those six people are dead is because they were attacked by a mentally unstable young man. Before his name was even released, some on the left were painting him as a right-winger and tea partier. As usual. They did the same with Joseph Stack, who flew his plane into an IRS building. Amy Bishop, the socialist professor who killed three of her colleagues was also initially accused of being right wing. Let's not forget, too, Michael Enright, the liberal volunteer who slashed a NY cabbie after first asking if he was Muslim, and Bill Sparkman, the Census worker who committed suicide in such a way as to make it seem like murder solely for insurance purposes. Both of them were also erroniously labeled right-wingers reflexively, before any investigation had been done.

Instead of pointing fingers and manipulating information to score political points, how about we do something novel and unheard of in these hyper-political times - refrain from accusations until an investigation has been conducted and concentrate, instead, on supporting the victims and coming together as a nation to express and work through our grief?

Six innocent people died yesterday, and twelve more were injured. THAT is the important story of the day. We may eventually learn Loughner's motivation, we may not. But this finger pointing is not productive and only lowers the level of discourse in this country and ratchets up the anger even more.

We are not allowed to grieve in this country anymore. Instead we are expected to become even more enraged as pundits attempt to place blame to score political points before the facts are in. Those who scream about "accountability" should consider the effect their unfounded accusations have, as well as their non-existent or whispered retractions when they are proved wrong. That we have come to the point where political opponents are considered an "enemy" that deserves to be "punished" is indicative of a national malaise that will only fester and grow with every false accusation and politically motivated exaggeration.

As for me, my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families - particularly Christina Green's parents. As a mom, my heart breaks for the loss of that beautiful, promising child. What a horrible, horrible waste. The person(s) I hold accountable for her loss is Jared Lee Loughner and his as-yet unidentified accomplice. Period.

So please, America, let's have a little perspective, shall we? Let's focus on the victims for now, and allow the police to interrogate and investigate. There will be plenty of time during and after his trial to affix blame.

UPDATE: Let's hope the Patriot Guard Riders are saddling up, because the despicable Westboro Baptist Church is planning on protesting nine year old Christina Green's funeral. Will the insanity never end?

UPDATE II: Jared Loughner has been exhibiting extremely disturbing behavior for some time now, to the point where he was asked by the school to go in for a mental evaluation before allowing him to return to school:

The suspect was suspended from a Tucson community college in October after what the school said were multiple run-ins with campus police that led to his suspension.
...Pima Community College warned Loughner in a follow-up letter that to return to campus, he had to present a doctor's note stating that his presence would not be "a danger to himself or others."

His college math teacher and fellow classmates were terrified of him. He had had contact with Rep.Giffords before and it is beginning to look like she was indeed the main target of the shooting (some had been speculating that Judge Roll might have been the target). There is no accomplice - the person in question was a cabbie who had followed him to the venue when Loughner didn't pay the fare.

NA NA NA NA, HEY HEY HEY, GOOD-BYE

2011-01-05T20:21:00.000-05:00

I've been singing the chorus to this all day. Here's the picture of the day:

The votes are in. Speaker Boehner won his spot with a unanimous republican vote. Former Speaker Pelosi? Eh, not so much. The interesting part about the 19 who voted for just about anyone but Pelosi is that many of them are truly an endangered species - conservative democrats. So the question is, if they are angry enough to publicly refute her via a roll call vote, are they angry enough to work with republicans to reverse her job killing, government expanding, budget busting agenda?
Perhaps they just simply have no confidence in her anymore, which wouldn't be surprising after the shellacking they took in November. Add in her utterly delusional take on her term of office yesterday, and it really just isn't surprising at all. Deficit reduction has been their mantra, indeed. Perhaps she sensed that the country needed a good laugh after her ~~reign of terror~~ tenure - intended or not, it was hilarious. If spending $5 trillion in four years is fiscal responsibility, I'll eat my hat. Thanks, Queen Nan, for reminding us why we dethroned you.

Here's hoping the 112th Congress is a damn sight better than the 111th. Luckily, Pelosi's set the bar pretty low.

Congrats, Speaker Boehner.

Now don't screw it up. We're watching.

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

2011-01-04T17:21:00.000-05:00

Senator Harry Reid has apparently decided that, in the absence of Pelosi's leadership, he is going to step up to the post of top congressional dictator. He and a few senior senators have taken it upon themselves to attempt to dictate to the House what laws they can and cannot pursue.

In a letter to Speaker Designate Boehner, Reid, Schumer, Durbin, Murray and Stabenow all "warned" Boehner not to attempt to repeal Obamacare, particularly the so-called "donut hole" provision. Or else.

Speaker Boehner has responded with a terse, 65-word response (via The Hill):

Senators Reid, Durbin, Schumer, Murray and Stabenow:

Thank you for reminding us – and the American people – of the backroom deal that you struck behind closed doors with ‘Big Pharma,’ resulting in bigger profits for the drug companies, and higher prescription drug costs for 33 million seniors enrolled in Medicare Part D, at a cost to the taxpayers of $42.6 billion.

The House is going to pass legislation to repeal that now. You’re welcome.

- Speaker-Designate John Boehner’s Press Office

Oh, this year is going to be fun!

,

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2010-12-25T23:07:00.000-05:00

May God bless you and keep you on this most glorious of days.

KARMIC BOOMERANG

2010-12-19T19:25:00.000-05:00

The Wikileaks scandal has been quite an eye opener, but this week really takes the cake. First, the mainstream media was in a tizzy over the conditions Pfc. Manning was suffering under. Apparently people who become traitors to their country at a time of war deserve better treatment than 1-6 hours of basic cable per day, reading materials and visitors on weekends and holidays. Even his jail cell, at 6'x12', is larger than the average prison cell. Poor baby. This hero of the left stole military and diplomatic secrets during war time and sold them to someone whose sole mission in life seems to be to discredit and damage the United States. Pfc. Manning is a traitor to his country; he has committed acts of treason. The size of his cell and how many hours of cable he gets per day are the least of his worries.

Then there was Julian Assange's arrest and subsequent bail. Media ~~whore~~ darling and self-appointed mouthpiece of the far left Michael Moore bragged about posting $20,000 of Assange's bail in an article in the New York Times. One wonders if he is rethinking that show of support, considering the very next day Wikileaks released cables from Cuba referring rather unflatteringly, to Moore's movie "Sicko". Moore posted a response on the HuffPo:

So what do you do with about a false "secret" cable, especially one that involves you and your movie? Well, you wait for a responsible newspaper to investigate and shout what it discovers from the rooftops.

But yesterday WikiLeaks gave the 'Sicko' Cuba cable to the media -- and what did they do with it? They ran it as if it were true!

Hmm...so, basically, he got a tiny taste of what the Bush administration got from the media for eight long years. This time, though, instead of cheering for yet another example of the glories of free speech and the patriotism and bravery of the people who exercise it, he is whining about the horrible unfairness of it all and the media malpractice being perpetrated. Wah!

And finally, in the most ironic irony of the year, the lawyers for Assange are moaning and complaining about the nerve of the media to actually release the details of the rape allegations Assange is facing in Sweden. Here's my favorite quote, via the Australian:

"I do not like the idea that Julian may be forced into a trial in the media. And I feel especially concerned that he will be presented with the evidence in his own language for the first time when reading the newspaper. I do not know who has given these documents to the media, but the purpose can only be one thing - trying to make Julian look bad."

It's like the dictionary definition of being "hoisted by your own petard" brought to full, vivid life.
Although his supporters (including Mr. Moore himself) tried to chum the waters with the lie that the women were just complaining about broken condoms, the reality is more creepy and violent than that. What is even worse is that information about the women who brought the charges, namely who they are and where they live have been released to a public eager to attack them. But Assange - Mr. Transparency himself - wants the courts to keep his address and the details of the charges against him secret. This guy is such a dirtbag. His followers, who condone and facilitate this behavior, are as well. "Sex by surprise", indeed.

Karma is a funny thing. Sometimes it takes a while for the karmic boomerang to come back around - years, even. But sometimes, the wrong is so egregious that karma just can't wait to teach it's lesson. Unfortunately, Assange and his merry band of cretins will most likely be oblivious to the karmic thwacking they just received. Sometimes karma has to come a knockin' a few times before it manages to break through the arrogance and self-importance.

But it's a start.

TRIANGULATION TANGO

2010-12-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

President Obama enraged his base last night when he announced his plans for a two-year extension of the current tax rates, potentially saving the country from a massive tax hike that it simply cannot afford right now. Hopefully the lame duck congress will see that and support the plan Obama and the GOP hammered out. To all those disappointed lefty millionaires and billionaires who were pushing him to raise their taxes (and everyone else's, too, because misery loves company, doesn't it?), sorry you didn't get your wish - but you can still feel free to put your money where your mouth is and make as large a deficit-reducing donation to the US Treasury as you would like - here's the link to help you out.

Obama's progressive base are beside themselves with outrage. He has betrayed them, he has given in to those eeeeevil republicans (who most likely tied him up and waterboarded him to get him to cave), he has lost his morals, his values...his very soul. No less a lefty luminary than Dan Rather is hinting at the possiblity that his base will primary him for this offense.

There are plenty of righties who are just as angry as the left at the deal that was struck. After all, it includes another 13 months of unfunded unemployment benefits, something the White House is, ironically, touting as "stimulus". Interesting how one president's evil, economy destroying tax cuts are another president's stimulus. Ah, politics.... As for me, I applaud Mr. Obama. I don't agree with him very often, but I agree with this deal, warts and all. Compromise was needed, and compromise was reached.

Mr. Obama and his progressive pals like to blame Bush's tax cuts for the failing economy but in reality, tax revenues increased (as did employment, median income, new wealth, and the stock market) under the cuts. Which means the problem comes down to the policies the administration has pursued over the past two years. If they hadn't spent like a pimp with a week to live, created an anti-business atmosphere of invasive regulation and oversight and the threat of heavy taxation, as well as shackling businesses (although more and more are getting waivers) and the public with the health care "reform" law, we would have bounced back from the recession that ended over the summer of 2009 and jobs would have begun to be created again.

Ultimately, President Obama did what most presidents do - they govern according to what is best for the entire country, not just their hard-core base. But it seems progressives despise anyone who doesn't walk in lockstep with them; even The One, who was practicallly deified two short years ago, is facing their wrath. But while they are busy stomping their feet and having hissy fits, threatening Obama and anyone else who has a commonsense, rational option to the crisis at hand, the grown-ups are trying to right the ship of state and make the hard decisions. Obama has made a first step in abandoning ideology and embracing the realities on the ground. This well may be a watershed moment in his term, but not necessarily in the way his base thinks.

Obama also added in a little bonus goodie for the peons - a reduction in Social Security payroll taxes of 2%. A six-month suspension of federal payroll taxes would have been most welcome, but this will do. Add in the new death tax rate of 35% (as opposed to the 55% it was set to spike to on Jan. 1) that has been agreed on and the whole package seems to have a little something for everyone. No, no one will be completely satisfied, of course - that is the nature of compromise. But at least the country can move forward. A tone has been set - compromise is possible.

As compromises go, this was a pretty good one. Obama gets his unemployment extension, the GOP gets a tax rate extension, businesses get a two-year window of stability which should result in some job creation, families who lose someone don't also lose the lion's share of their inheritance, too, and, most importantly, taxes aren't being raised during an economic downturn.

The progressives need to start understanding that their far-left agenda has been soundly rejected by the rest of the country. The historic losses of last month apparently didn't sink in, or they are actually buying their own lame spin. Hopefully this will do the trick for them. Progressivism is a noble theory, but, like many theories, it fails when put into action. For a large portion of the country that reality was evident from looking at other countries who had gone the progressive route and failed.

The recently revealed Fed documents outlining just how much American taxpayer money went to bail out those failing states illustrates this point. The only reason Europe, in particular, has managed to survive (albeit in genteel poverty) all these years, as opposed to outright collapse, is due to the largesse of the US government. If we follow the same path, who will subsidize our descent into the mediocracy that Europe has enjoyed for decades now on our dime? For that matter, who will pay to allow Europe to continue down the progressive path once we collapse under the weight of excessive regulation, taxation and an ever growing welfare state? China? Could it be that in the 21st century countries will be liquidated and bought out instead of invaded and conquered with military might? A checkbook conquest, if you will. The thought would be laughable, if it weren't for the huge debts we are racking up. How long before we default and China 'forecloses'?

So bravo, Obama and the GOP, for meeting halfway and forging a compromise for the good of the country, if not their respective parties. It would have been nice if Obama hadn't demagogued the issue and accused the GOP of being "hostage takers", but whatever. The two year experiment in progressive social engineering has failed. It's time to start looking at other options. This is a step in the right direction. Our system of free market capitalism is what made us into the global powerhouse we were until recently. It's success is evident in our meteoric rise to world power in the short time (globally speaking) we have existed as a country. Capitalism is the secret to our success; it's failure (and the country's) was due to it having been over regulated, over spent and taxed nearly to death over the past decade or so. It's time for a resurrection.

The progressives are howling right now, forecasting doom for Obama's reelection hopes, but this compromise could well be his first step towards reelection, because it is his first step towards the middle, after two years spent on the far left. Perhaps he realized that appeasing his base, which constitutes less than 20% of the electorate, meant alienating moderates and independents, which constitutes nearly 40% - a substantially larger pool of voters. That was the lesson he learned on Nov. 2nd.

Viva triangulation!

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL LAME

2010-12-01T14:36:00.000-05:00

In a highly successful attempt to put the "lame" in 'lame-duck session', the Senate has illustrated once again why years of service do not necessarily add up to competence.

Yesterday, Senators were patting themselves on the back and touting their latest accomplishment, S510 - the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. They sent out press releases and crowed about the bill practically being of a historic nature (aren't they all, these days?) because it is apparently one of the most major pieces of legislation to pass a lame-duck Senate session evah.

Today, however, the miracle bill has been sent back to chambers as unconstitutional. Ooops! What makes it worse is that they were purposely focusing attention on what was originally an obscure bill so that they could toot their own horns and score a few political points. If it had been allowed to continue unheralded, they could have quietly pulled it back with no egg on their faces.

In Section 107 there is a set of fees, which are classified as revenue raisers. According to Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution, only the House can create tax provisions. The House holds the purse strings, not the Senate, and the Ways and Means Committee is preparting to "blue sheet" the bill, which will block it. It's unclear whether the House will pursue a bill of their own - if they are, they'd better get cracking, because time is running out on the lame-duck session.

Perhaps there should be a requirement that our elected representatives, who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, are actually familiar with the document. This is Civics 101, for heaven's sake.

HOLIDAY FUN

2010-11-24T14:45:00.001-05:00

A little Thanksgiving week giggle for you, courtesy of the Onion:

Obama Outlines Moral, Philosophical Justifications For Turkey Pardon

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

HEROIC TRIBUTE

2010-11-21T17:15:00.000-05:00

This week has been a tribute to heroes. On Tuesday, President Obama bestowed our nation's highest honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor, on Staff Sargeant Salvatore Giunta - the first living endowment since the Vietnam War. Sgt. Giunta's humility and his dismissal of his actions as merely doing his duty stood in stark contrast to the political spinning and inside ball going on in Washington. It was like a brief, cleansing shower of courage and humility, washing off the muck and mire that is our current reality. Congratulations, Sgt. Giunta. You are a man among men and an inspiration to us all. If only there were more like you.

The other tribute comes from little Pittston, PA. This week they laid to rest a native son, killed in Afghanistan November 7th. Wednesday, a public wake was held for Spc. Dale Kridlo (he was interred with full honors at Arlington Thursday). I got a call from my sister about it. She lives near Pittston, and called to ask what I knew of Westboro Baptist Church. She had heard that they were planning a demonstration at Spc. Kridlo's funeral, and the town was up in arms about it. According to the church's website (via the Times Leader):

“Military funerals have become pagan orgies of idolatrous blasphemy, where they pray to the dunghill gods of Sodom & play taps to a fallen fool.”

The web posting says the above message will be “preached in respectful, lawful proximity to the memorial of Spc. Dale J. Kridlo” on Wednesday at the church service.

The web posting then states: “Spc. Kridlo gave his life for the Constitutional right of the Westboro Baptist Church to warn America. To deny our First Amendment rights is to declare to the world that Spc. Kridlo died in vain, and that America is a nation of sodomite hypocrites.”

The Westboro posting ends by stating, “The Lord no longer builds the American house; nor does the Lord watch over and protect America. These soldiers are dying for the homosexual and other sins of America. God is now America’s enemy, and God Himself is fighting against America.”

So this is their idea of "respectful"? One shudders to think what constitutes disrespect for these people.

The reaction in Pittston to Westboro's plans was swift and impressive. These are salt of the earth people who don't take kindly to strangers attacking one of their own. The area where Westboro was permitted to protest was surrounded by American flags, effectively blocking any protesters from view. Bikers from the Patriot Guard Riders were there in force, as were a huge number of Pittston residents. Hundreds turned out to pay their respects and drown out the lunatic rantings of Fred Phelps and his Westboro minions.

There are more and more stories of towns rising up in protest of the disgusting displays at the funerals of our military, and it seems to be working. First was Weston, MO, whose residents managed to block Westboro picketers from tormenting the families of Sargeant C.J. Sadell as they attended his funeral and graveside service. Then there was McAlester, OK, where the tires of the Westboro van were slashed and they were refused repair by every service station in town after they attempted to protest the funeral of Sgt. Jason James McCluskey. This after being confronted by up to a thousand counter-protesters earlier in the day.

And now the events in Pittston. The town mobilized in a big way, but it hasn't made much news beyond the local stations. It was the story of the week for the locals, heavily covered in the days prior to the funeral. Perhaps all that coverage, combined with the projected turnout to pay tribute to Sgt. Kridlo and protest Westboro was too much for Phelps and company.

Because this time, they didn't even show up.

For those who say that the people of Pittston were infringing on Westboro's right to free speech, they forget that the people of Pittston also have a right to free speech as well. In this case, their speech is in opposition - and, like the other towns that have rallied around their fallen heroes, they vastly outnumber Westboro's representatives. The first amendment protects free speech from being stifled by the government. There's nothing in there about protection from being drowned out by fellow citizens. Westboro has every right to protest those funerals (although some of the things they say can - and should - be seen as hate speech - please note the church's website is "godhatesfags.com"), and the people of Pittston had every right to honor their dead by protesting that protest.

More and more towns are realizing this, and Westboro seems to be getting the message.

Our heroes and their families deserve honor, not derision; tributes, not protests. The upswell of patriotism and support for our troops and their families is a beautiful thing. They deserve our respect, and it's wonderful to see them getting it.

NO BIGGIE - IT'S JUST A MISDEMEANOR....

2010-11-17T19:47:00.000-05:00

CNN reported a story on Nov. 5th about an elementary school teacher who attempted to kill her husband but is still teaching. Rebecca Allwine and her husband were having an argument and both had been drinking. She allegedly hit him a few times on the head and neck (he didn't hit back) and then eventually dropped 10 ambien and about 18 melatonin tablets into his beer. She left shortly after she gave him the drugged drink. He noticed a sludge at the bottom of the glass after a few sips and called 911. Mrs. Allwine was initially charged with battery and aggrevated assault but later pled down to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Because the crime had been pled down to a misdemeanor, Mrs. Allwine returned to her teaching job.

Okay, so she was drunk and wasn't thinking clearly. Obviously. The argument was over whether or not her husband had been to see his girlfriend that day, so it's pretty clear the relationship is rocky, at best. Apparently she was not aware of just how it is easy to get a divorce nowadays. Was this a spur of the moment crime of passion? Certainly. At best, we can establish that she has serious impulse control issues - always an asset in the classroom.

So, since this woman was so imbalanced that she tried to off her husband, is it really a good idea that she be allowed to continue shaping the young minds in her classroom? Shouldn't the parents of her students have been informed of the situation, perhaps given the choice on whether to keep their child in the class? Does Georgia really have such a shortage of good teachers that she could not be replaced? It's good that she was up front with the school and kept them informed on the progess of the case, but is she really a suitable person to have in a class full of seven year olds? Isn't there some sort of administration position she could have been moved to?

No, of course not, because it all comes down to tenure. That job is her entitled right, and even attempted murder cannot keep her from her post. Thanks to her union contract, a misdemeanor is not grounds for termination, according to Julie Smith, a human resources consultant:

"Legally, they can't terminate based on a misdemeanor," she said in a telephone interview. "It's got to be a felony conviction."

Allwine's return to work has been greeted with disbelief, needless to say:

That rankled Bob Bowdon, an education expert.

"It's another 'Thank you, tenure,'" he told HLN's "Prime News." "Despite the teacher unions' refrain to be 'treated like professionals,' these are the moments when it becomes clear they also demand job guarantees that no other professionals have. How long would a CEO, a lawyer or a broadcast journalist get to continue their employement after admitting to poisoning his/her spouse? I think we all know."

Yes, we do. But, after all, those people don't have tenure. Once again the unions have shown that it's not about safer, better schools with talented, qualified (non-homocidal) teachers - it's about keeping tenured teachers working and paying dues no matter what.

No wonder so many people are home schooling these days.

THANK YOU

2010-11-11T09:47:00.000-05:00

Veterans Day Tribute - A funny movie is a click away

It's the Veteran... not the preacher,
who has earned for us freedom of religion.

It's the Veteran... not the reporter,
who has earned for us freedom of the press.

It's the Veteran... not the poet,
who has earned for us freedom of speech.

It's the Veteran... not the campus organizer,
who has earned for us freedom to assemble.

It's the Veteran... not the lawyer,
who has earned for us the right to a fair trial.

It's the Veteran... not the politician,
who has earned for us the right to vote.

It's the Veteran... who salutes the flag,
who has protected and served under the flag

Thank you.

MEMORANDUM FOR SLAUGHTER

2010-11-09T19:01:00.003-05:00

On October 25, 2010, President Obama signed a memorandum that will exempt four countries from 2008's Child Soldiers Prevention Act - Yemen, Sudan, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This Act was a bipartisan effort to block countries that recruit child soldiers from getting US military assistance or buying US arms. Two other countries mentioned in the law, Myanmar and Somalia, are still prohibited.

So let me get this straight - if a kid in this country makes a gun shape with her finger and pretend 'shoots', she is suspended for making a "terroristic threat" to a teacher. But if some third world hellhole forcefully 'recruits' a kid, gives him a real gun, trains him and sends him off to war, they get Uncle Sam to supply the weapons and foot the bill.

Isn't this genocide? Why are we now supporting this?

For those not aware of the genocide in Darfur, many of those fleeing the violence are seeking refuge in Chad - another of the four exempted countries. Could there possibly be a spillover of violence?

This has gotten little notice, but it should. How can Obama in good conscience exempt these countries? What in the world is he thinking? The reason given for the exemptions is 'national security', and yet there is no explanation forthcoming on how, exactly, this affects our national security. Is there some crisis he sees down the road where we will need armed children at our disposal? Or does he believe the armed youth will be the voices of reason that will overthrow the government and then create a peaceful utopia?

Darfur is already in chaos. Tacit approval of child soldiers by the US government is like throwing gasoline on a brushfire. Please remember that this isn't economic aid, aid for reugees or food and other supplies for the poor. This is a block on military aid. Places like Darfur most definitely do NOT need more weapons. What they need is a functioning, accountable government and a return to sanity. This memorandum all but ensures they will not get it.

Cross Posted at RipleyReport.com

SHOWING RESPECT

2010-11-07T21:58:00.001-05:00

This is a truly great country. Not just for her innovation or military might, not because of our bread basket that feeds the world or our economy which drives it, but because of her freedoms and the people who enjoy them.

On the one hand. we have a free society that enjoys truly free speech. Case in point, Westboro Baptist Church - the ultimate bullies. This tiny church which boasts a congregation of barely 200 (most family members, at that), but they have made quite a name for themselves. Their greatest joy, it seems, is to protest the funerals of our fallen military. No matter what you may think of the signs they hold or the things they shout at the grieving families, no one can deny that they have the right to do it. The question now seems to be at what distance, so that the families can grieve without suffering the emotional an psychological trauma Pastor Phelps and his minions would like to inflict upon them.

On the other hand, we have Rebecca Rooney. Ms. Rooney, upon hearing about Westboro's plans to protest at the funeral of hometown hero Sgt. First Class C.J. Sadell, took action. She rallied the people of tiny Weston, MO to join together in support of Sgt. Sadell and his family. They filled up parking spaces, and came armed with patriotic music and American flags. The best part? It worked:

"If you think about it, they've all gone to serve just so we could be able to do this," said Rebecca Rooney who organized the supporters. "He didn't die in vain."

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

2010-11-04T20:33:00.000-04:00

We here in Florida's 8th CD did our civic duty Tuesday and took out the trash:

You're welcome, America!

(Hat tip to Joe for his sharp eye and quick photography skills, and the public library for putting this election in a nutshell!)

ONE MORE DAY....

2010-11-01T22:12:00.000-04:00

One more day to go. Tomorrow the die is cast, and a decision will be made on which direction the majority of Americans want to head. Do we continue with the tax and spend social justice of the progressives, or a return to the small government, free market principles our founders envisioned. It has been an exhausting, vicious, hard-fought election, with a lot of mud-slinging, accusations and vitriol.

The most egregious harm done in this election cycle, though, is the inability of our states to get absentee ballots to our military serving overseas in time for them to be returned and counted. Those brave men and women who are fighting and dying for this country, of all people, should be the ones whose votes are counted first and foremost, and yet every election cycle is filled with reports of the military being denied the ability to cast a vote. It got so bad that in 2009 Congress passed the MOVE act. This is the first year the states need to comply, and the project seems to be off to a rocky start. States are required to mail out ballots 45 days before the election. Unfortunately, there are some states that are seriously late, giving their servicemembers less than 30 days to receive, fill out and return their ballots. That's a pretty quick turnaround for a war zone.

Michael Ramirez captures the issue perfectly, as usual:

(Unless, of course, he's originally from Chicago! Ba-dum-bum!)

Well, they weren't able to get the military their ballots, but at least they managed to hand deliver ballots to these worthy recipients. After all, which group deserves to have their voice heard more? Why, the one that is a reliable democrat vote, of course! Whatever happened to those laws keeping felons from voting, anyway? Oh.

No, there's nothing funny going on this election cycle...and if there is, don't worry, the SEIU is on the job! Now that's reassuring!

If you should happen to notice something at the polls, be it intimidation or fraud, make a record of it. The iphone has an app for that, but taking a picture or video with a regular phone or camera is good enough. Report anything suspicious immediately to your local election board.

Most importantly, get out there tomorrow and exercise your hard fought right to have your voice heard. Happy Voting!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

2010-10-31T07:00:00.001-04:00

Happy Halloween everyone! In case you haven't carved your pumpkin yet, here's a technique you might want to try:

Happy carving!

TARGETING YOUTH

2010-10-22T00:03:00.000-04:00

The youth vote is being targeted in a big way by the administration again. The obvious pandering to the various voting blocks in the past week has been pretty blatant. But the war being waged for youth votes is beyond belief. (Although the fact that Illinois hand delivered ballots to prisoners comes pretty close - are the cemeteries next?)

Last week, President Obama did a town hall meeting in conjunction with MTV, BET and CMT. Hopeful participants had to give their political point of view and a headshot to be considered. He will also be appearing on Mythbusters and The Daily Show. After all, nothing says 'presidential' like satire. No doubt the stoners watching the Daily Show will get a kick out of seeing him on the show, but don't expect them to get off their sofas on Nov. 2nd to vote. In the vernacular, they tend to 'flake out' a lot. As for the Mythbusters episode which will air Dec 8th but was recorded recently, ironically enough the myth has already been busted. But, true to form, Obama is simply not one to admit when something didn't work, and so it's deja vu all over again.

Trying to grab their attention on tv isn't enough for this oh so desperate party. So now they are resorting to actually raiding Cincinatti high schools for (hopefully) voting aged kids to take to the polling place to vote, give them sample ballots for only democrat candidates, and then an ice cream afterwards (at least it's not cigarettes this time) for their contribution to the cause. Did they get a pat on the head, too? How about a participation ribbon - we want to make sure everyone feels really good about the choices they made, now don't we?

Needless to say there is a lawsuit pending on that one, but there are also four more high schools targeted for GOTV efforts next week, too. Shameless.

There has also been a flurry of campus speeches as well, but none of it seems to be doing the trick. Attendance at the rallies has been good, but the numbers look bad for the party in power. Many of their followers are disillusioned by the reality of Hope and Change and are more interested in getting a job than furthering the Pelosi/Obama agenda. As for me, I'd just like to know how much all this campaigning is going to cost.

Considering how focused on the halcyon days of the '60's and '70's the party is, they must surely be thinking about the last time the youth were seriously disillusioned. The Nixon-era ripples must be in the backs of their minds. Surely they are seeing how things are trending, knowing there is a chance of generational defection. They have a hardcore base, to be sure, but they have seriously overestimated their numbers. Only 18% of the electorate self-identify as liberal. As opposed to 54% conservative and 27% for moderates. They can't afford to lose any more liberals off the reservation, so they are desperately trying to ride herd on them. And therein lies the identity politics rub: it's hard to unite groups that are steeped in division. It is time consuming, if nothing else, having to address each individual group in their own setting.
Until recently, one of the largest democrat voting blocks, both for turnout and reliability, has been women. That they are slipping there, too, is making them redouble their efforts with the youth voter. And so they are pulling out all the stops to woo back the youth. Even to targeting high school kids and plying them with a field trip/day off and an ice cream. So what if a few laws are broken in the process? As our good buddy Saul says, the ends justify the means

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MEME BUSTERS Updated

2010-10-14T21:46:00.001-04:00

This week seems to be meme destruction week. It has been a devastating week for some well-worn liberal canards. Two different vehemently upheld liberal/progressive beliefs have been proved wrong and one is under heavy fire. We seem to be reaching a point of implosion for the democrat party and the fallout is not restricted to just the halls of Congress.

First on the chopping block was the much-hyped "shovel ready jobs" that were used to sell the Porkulus bill. According to President Obama in a recent New York Times piece, he has since learned that

"there's no such thing as shovel ready projects".

Apparently the only thing shovel ready about that bill was the bill itself.... Too bad Mr. Obama couldn't have figured out the futility of the effort before he spent a trillion dollars of other people's money.

And then there is the meme that the Tea Parties are chock-a-block full of racist signs carried by white-hooded klansmen out for blood. All the press and liberals have been talking about is how incredibly, overtly racist and dangerous the movement is. Eh, not so much, it turns out. The woman who did the study has liberal creds, inasmuch as she is a graduate student from UCLA. For anyone who has attended a Tea Party, the results of this study are unsurprising. What is surprising is the fact that the Washington Post actually carried the story. Doubtless the rest of the neo-pravda media will be all over this story and apologize for their biased, flat-out wrong coverage of the movement. Yeah, riiiiiiiight.

Another meme that is in the process of being busted is the one about conservatism being solely the jurisdiction of whites. In a piece in Ebony Magazine entitled "The Browning of the GOP", author Armstrong Williams makes the case for the growing number of self-identified Black Republicans and their place in the history of the GOP. He also explains the single event that caused the exodus from republicans to democrats in the 1960's - an exodus that has been the norm for so long that Democrats have managed to fool the black community into thinking they were always democrats. But, as Mr. Williams states:

But today, the great flight has the chance to be met by the great return as a new breed of Black conservative has emerged and taken center stage in the Republican Party.

This meme has not yet been busted, but it seems to be coming off the tracks. The best argument in favor of the Ebony article is the unprecidented fourteen black republican candidates running for Congress this fall. Primary season boasted a whopping thirty-two black conservative candidates vying for the republican nod. There is a very good chance that three of them will win their elections, which would set a record for the most black republicans since Reconstruction. It is a small number, but it is a start, and hopefully more black conservatives will step up and run in the future. If Messrs. West, Scott and Frasier are any indication of the caliber of candidate in the offing, the Republican party could hardly do better.

The liberal/progressive talking points seem to be going down like a line of dominoes. Not only are their recent claims being proven to be false, but even long-held positions are being challenged.

The information age is a beautiful thing, isn't it?

UPDATE: Uh-oh, another one bites the dust!

MELTDOWN IN VANCOUVER CITY

2010-09-29T20:56:00.000-04:00

Today's dose of bad government reality comes to us from Vancouver City, Washington. Councilwoman Jeanne Harris is in definite need of a chill pill.

Ah, petty tyranny....such an unattractive thing:

Not only is Ms. Harris inexcusably obnoxious, but the rest of the council, with the sole exception of Jeanne Stewart, were a study in enabling. The mayor's half-hearted gaveling of the second man was breathtaking in it's ineffective weakness. He knew Harris was in the wrong, but did not speak up or even attempt to. When Ms. Stewart finally called Harris on her incivility, Mayor Leavitt had a perfect opportunity to put Harris in her place. Instead he sat there like a spineless lump while Harris then dressed down her own colleague, to the point of making unsubstantiated allegations that the people who were speaking were supporters of Stewarts.

In her quickly issued apology - two days after the incident - she states:

Two days after she told another Vancouver City Council member at a public meeting to “get out of here” and “shut up,” Councilor Jeanne Harris publicly apologized.
She said Wednesday in a statement that she had “behaved in a manner that is not normal for me,” and wished to apologize to the council, the mayor and the public.

Hmmmm....Considering the reactions of her colleagues - heads down, eyes averted, refusing to speak or engage - it is far more likely that she was behaving in a manner that is quite normal for her. Those people have obviously had to deal with that behavior before. They are taking the "don't attract her attention or you're next" posture. That is something that comes after having to deal with certain behavior over a period of time.

Here's the kicker, though. The next day, two of the councillors decided to man up and file a complaint about her treatment of Stewart (apparently it's okay to treat constituents like she did - but that's another post). They sent a request to the mayor's office for an ethics investigation into her behavior.

Harris took offense to the fact that they filed a complaint without coming to her first. Apparently she found out about it from a voicemail from a reporter:

“This is rash and uncalled for,” she wrote. “Especially to send out a press release without talking to me first and hearing my side of the story … I take this allegation as a very serious matter and yet no one had the courtesy to call me?”

Yeah, because she's all about courtesy.

Now she is demanding they drop the complaint and ...:

She also asked for an apology and said she won’t be at the Sept. 20 meeting, when the council is supposed to decide on whether to form an ethics committee to investigate the complaint. She said that she will be at a fellowship

Most likely working on her martyrdom. By the way - the fellowship was a privately funded trip to Germany. Her position? "Goodwill Ambassador", of course. No, really.

The newly minted goodwill ambassador had this to say in an email to her colleagues:

“Looks like I’ve lost two policies and we’ve received numerous rude phone calls that my 19 year old customer service rep has had to listen to. Apparently the gavel incident is now on utube (sic). Thanks for making my life hell.”

Yup, it's all their fault people are calling to protest her boorish behavior and have decided not to do business with her. It's also their fault that the clip of her acting like a shrewish petty dictator got on youtube. Who else's fault would it be?

Harris has mentioned a difficult divorce as a contributing factor to her outburst. It might be feasible to blame a quick outburst on stress, but the prolonged haranguing, the attacks on her peers, and the continued aggression in emails speaks of deeper issues. This does not seem to be her first outburst, it's just the first one caught on tape and posted on Youtube.

The citizens who were attempting to speak were residents who did not want the light rail to go where it was going. They wanted to be heard - something Leavitt and Harris have apparently have not given them the opportunity to do. They have every right to be heard. Which is why Councilwoman Stewart was right to try to call Harris out on her behavior. Which brings us to the question - is Councilwoman Harris drunk with power or cracking under pressure?

Either way, she should not be in office.
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PROJECTING FAILURE

2010-09-23T14:38:00.000-04:00

The latest meme by the administration, which has officially hit the echo chamber that is the neo-pravda media, is an attempt to paint the tea party and conservatives as 'radicals'. I'll give you a minute to stop laughing....

Yes, the administration that brought us communist Van Jones, Mao lover Anita Dunn, Ecoscience author John Holdren, and 'fisting' fan/NAMBLA supporter Kevin Jennings are pointing the finger of radicalism at the tea parties.

It's called 'projection'.

I honestly never thought I would see the day when groups of americans gathering together to show their love and support for their country and demand a return to the observance of our founding documents would be called radical, while those who support marxist ideals, the welfare state and global governance are being portrayed as mainstream. They assert that the call to "Take our country back" is some sort of attempt at a radical overthrow of the administration. They miss the point entirely. It is about taking our country back to it's constitutional roots; taking it back to the system that made it great, before it was perverted by the welfare state and yes, to a certain extent, taking it back from the career politicians on both sides of the aisle that have exploited and perverted the system.

This latest attempt to control and distort the debate is about as transparent as saran wrap. They cannot run on Obamacare. they cannot run on the so-called 'recovery summer'. They cannot run on any of their legislative wins, because of how unpopular they are. All that is left is demonization of their favorite target, the tea party. They are preaching to the choir on this one, attempting to motivate their base. Unfortunately, their base seems rather lethargic. Instead, what they are doing is motivating the so-called radicals they are busy slandering.

When in heaven's name did it become sound political strategy to demonize a large portion of the voting public? How can this possibly work in their favor? Not only did they misread their mandate in 2008, but now they are miscounting their base. They seem to think that the 53% that Obama won by in 2008 is their new base. In reality, only about 20% of americans consider themselves democrat/liberal/progressive. About 40% self identify as conservative/republican, with 36% being fluid, identifying with neither party.

There is a good chance that they will succeed in stimulating their base with all of the radical rhetoric they are spewing, but this level of discourse has traditionally been rather off-putting for moderates. This is why most campaigns wait until the final weeks to sling mud. This election season, there has been no attempt to debate the issues; mud slinging has gone from being the last-ditch 'nuclear option' to the only option for endangered democrats. While this new tactic might just motivate their base, the demonization merely strengthens the resolve of conservatives to get out and vote. This will backfire on them, simply because conservatives outnumber liberals by a 2-1 margin. Add in the disillusioned moderates and the moderates who were on the fence but have been turned off by the negativity, and it's not a pretty picture for democrats.

Bottom line: is it really worth rallying 20% when it also means you will be alienating and energizing somewhere in the neighborhood of 60+% in opposition? I'm no politician, but the logic seems a little...off.

But, then again, this administration isn't really known for it's math skills.

CONSTITUTION DAY Updated

2010-09-17T23:28:00.001-04:00

Here is my ten-year-old daughter's contribution to Constitution Day. She rearranged these refrigerator magnets to quite cleverly express her support of not just our founding document, but also our nation as a whole. Can you tell she's been to a few Tea Parties?

That's my girl!

UPDATE: Big thank you to Michelle Malkin for linking to this post via her Twitter page!!! It's a thrill to have someone I watch and admire not only respond via email but want to send her followers to one of my links! Thanks Michelle - you rock!

REBRANDING FEVER

2010-09-16T21:53:00.000-04:00

The democrats are in a tizzy of rebranding this week. This is their go-to tactic when things are falling apart. Don't try to come up with a new message/legislation/platform, just slap a new name on it, hype a different angle and keep on truckin'.

Rebranding is a not uncommon thing, but it has had a long history with progressives in particular. Waaaaaay back at the turn of the 20th century, the progressive party took hold. Unfortunately, their policies eventually fell out of favor and they had to start calling themselves liberals in the mid 1900's. After a few decades of the same failed policies under the new label, they managed to make the term liberal unattractive, and so they pulled "progressive" back out of the closet, dusted it off, and have been using that term to describe themselves ever since.

More recent examples of their rebranding fervor was just last year, when the highly unpopular health care bill was rebranded. "Single payer" became "public option" which then became the "consumer option" with a little side trip to "co-op".

The war on terror became an overseas contingency operation. Violent attacks on our country by jihadis were no longer terror attacks or suicide/homocide bombers, they were man-caused disasters. Just a few weeks ago, President Obama declared an end to combat operations in Iraq, while leaving 50,000 active troops in the country. Operation Iraqi Freedom was rebranded as Operation New Dawn, and voila! we're no longer at war in Iraq (even though we still have troops dying over there).

Just this week, the democrats launched their new website and logo in an attempt to rebrand themselves as...well, no one's really sure. I just hope they didn't pay a lot of money for the logo design and website, because it sure looks like they didn't.

Now Science czar John Holdren has offered up rebranding for climate change. Which, you may recall, was once called global warming. Well, now they want to call it "global climate disruption". After all, trying to sell us that we were actually changing a global phenomenon like the weather was a little far fetched, so they must be hoping "disruption" is more palatable.

The other rebranding taking place this week is a rather odd, ham handed thing involving the much debated Bush tax cuts. Nancy Pelosi managed to really paint herself into a corner on the whole tax cut thing. She was adamant that the cuts would expire, all of them, top to bottom. Now she is being forced to backtrack because so many economists are warning of dire consequences to the economy if they are allowed to sunset. So what is her brilliant plan? She gives them a different name and suddenly, instead of a Bush era payoff to the evil rich, they are an Obama-sent gift from above to the poor, suffering middle class. She used the new term during her weekly press briefing today, talking about extending the "Obama middle income tax cuts".

Now, maybe the woman is really stressed out - she certainly has reason to be - and is simply confused. Unfortunately, the more logical answer is that, since they have nothing else to run on and more and more economists are freaking out, this is a feeble attempt to show her party in a compassionate light while denying credit to the evil Bush. She seems to think that merely extending the tax cuts for a year or two will automatically make them the brain child of this administration, instead of a holdover from the last. Frankly, it's rather insulting to our intelligence, Madame Speaker. This is a blatant attempt to steal credit for something to score political points while simultaniously vilifying Bush for having done it in the first place.

You would think that they would have learned that a tactic like that doesn't work. After all, they tried that with the Iraq war, and got blasted for it. But hope seems to spring eternal on Capitol Hill. Either that, or she's having a nervous breakdown. It's hard to tell which.

NO GO LOGO

2010-09-16T09:26:00.000-04:00

So, is it me, or does the new Democrat logo that Tim Kaine was all excited about the other day look remarkably like a target? Not to mention it's a little boring. At least Obama's logo had flair, not to mention there was a bit of a Pepsi-inspired pleasant subliminal connection to it. The DNC logo (and the website, really) is very...industrial looking. They should have stuck with the jackass. At least then they would be a moving target.

Just sayin'.

PAIN, COMPASSION AND POLITICS

2010-09-11T21:38:00.000-04:00

September 11th is particularly pognant this year. It is a difficult day for many americans anyway; a day to remember and, even nine years later, to grieve. It is a day that we, the citizens of the most powerful country on earth, are confronted by our vulnerability. Nine years and one day ago, the US was on top of the world. We were the gentle giant, leading the world with our innovation and thriving economy. It seemed inconceivable that just 24 hours later, we would be brought to our knees in shared grief, anger and disbelief. The horror of it all is still a raw, gaping wound on the psyche of the country as a whole.

This year, 9/11 will be more emotional for many because of the proposed mosque scheduled to be built two blocks away in a building that was partially destroyed on 9/11 when it was hit with the landing gear of one of the planes. This project is an affront to all who lost loved ones that horrific day. For those who say "It's not the "Ground Zero Mosque" - it's two whole blocks away!" the response is simple - it was destroyed by the same forces that destroyed the Twin Towers. It is Ground Zero. Adding insult to injury, the mosque has been fast tracked, even though a Greek Orthodox church, which was destroyed on September 11, 2001 when one of the towers fell on it, has yet to receive approval to rebuild.

This past week has been a three-ring circus of outrages, from the unyielding determination of the mosque builders to the lunatic in Florida who has threatened to burn a Qu'ran today to the burning of american flags in protest of the qu'ran burning. The nearly 70% of americans who oppose the mosque have been called "islamophobes", racists, zionists, and a plethora of other insults in an attempt to shut them up. They have even been threatened, if you consider a warning of a potential explosion of rage in the muslim world if the mosque isn't built exactly where Imam Rauf wants it built as a threat. His assertion that "the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse" is laughable, at best. The "warning" he issued is quite indicative of exactly which radicals will take over the discourse and from where the violence will come. Michelle Malkin has an interesting rundown of some other incidents that have caused "explosions of anger" in the muslim world. This threat is nothing new. It is endlessly fascinating that, with all the rhetoric over the years that attempts to paint "radical christians" and right wing extremist opposition as somehow worse than jihadis, there has been no talk of the potential risk of a terrorist attack on the mosque.

Quite frankly, the constant threats have become tiresome, as is the perpetual kowtowing to these extremists. No, they don't represent a majority of muslims, but they certainly seem to be the only voice we hear on the subject. There should be no support whatsoever for the burning of the qu'ran, and the pastor who threatened it dropped the level of the debate to somewhere in the septic tank range. However, his attempt to equate the atrocity of burning the qu'ran with the atrocity of building an islamic center and mosque on the site of a devastating, deadly attack made in the name of islam has some merit. Both acts are an affront to all that is civil and respectful. The fact is, both acts are legal under our constitution, and both acts are morally objectionable. In the case of the pastor, he stepped back from the edge. In the case of the imam, he is refusing to budge from his position.

If the aim of this "cultural center" was really to build bridges between the muslim world and americans, Rauf is definitely going about this the wrong way. Part of building a bridge is to meet halfway. Demanding the submission of the american people to his will is most certainly not what most people would consider compromise. That President Obama is backing Rauf and his demands is not surprising either. After all, this is the man whose idea of compromise is for his opposition to shut up and support his agenda or be demonized.

Staking out a position on the legality of the situation but refusing to comment on the morality of it speaks volumes about Obama's inability to properly unite and lead this country. He may be charismatic, but he lacks empathy and he seems to lack the understanding that he is not just the commander in chief, but our moral leader as well. That he does not understand the pain the mosque is inflicting on his people is indicative of his problems in the polls of late. Because the wound is still raw, we need a leader who understands our pain. Sometimes, a president is like a mother - required to reassure, comfort and defend her children even when she doesn't understand the full extent of their pain. The fact that they are in pain is enough for her to act on their behalf. Instead, Obama comes off as some sort of frustrated step-father, who cannot understand why the child can't move on and has no interest in building a bond by attempting to empathize. It seems that all he sees are petulant children making his life difficult with their ridiculous demands for solace, understanding and protection from that which hurts them. For all of George W. Bush's faults (and there were many) he got this concept, and his approval ratings in the aftermath of 9/11 illustrate that quite clearly.

It is ironic in the extreme that the so-called party of compassion is so very uncompassionate when it comes to this grievous wound to our country. This year, when the hallowed ground of Ground Zero has become a political football for islamic radicals and the progressives who cater to them, our national loss is all the more poignant.

Cross Posted at the Ripley Report

STALKING ON A NATIONAL LEVEL

2010-09-02T20:43:00.000-04:00

The NAACP and various left-wing media groups have started up a new website, TeaPartyTracker.org. The point of this new website? Why, to monitor and report on any and all examples of "racism" and "extremism" in the Tea Party movement, of course. They are calling on bloggers and assorted lefties with camera phones to document any wrongdoing on the part of the tea party.

Good luck with that, guys. Oh, and here's a tip for you - the idiots on the fringes who carry the Obama is Hitler signs are LaRouchies - democrats. Just a little FYI for ya, 'cause so far you don't seem to have gotten the memo.

If the NAACP is so interested in rooting out racism on a national level, perhaps they should start here. Or here. And don't forget all of these. It's really amazing that their highly tuned 'racedar' didn't go off over this one - but, then, "death to cracka's" isn't really racist, so it's understandable that they would have missed that.

Even with a $100,000 bounty for video proving claims of racism in the tea party, there has still been no video tape to prove the point, even with the hundreds of cameras present - including ones in democrat hands. Perhaps the NAACP and their ilk should be focusiing on people like this who make their living off the back of racial prejudice, even when it is a hoax, and even when the result is violence and riots.

These constant, fruitless attempts to smear the tea parties as racist are wearing very thin. According to a press release from Project 21, a black activist group sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research:

"Progressives have hijacked the NAACP to the extent that the group stands silent as conservative blacks suffer indignities for their beliefs. Some NAACP even egg on this appalling behavior – providing political cover and lapdog services for these elitists," said Project 21 member Kevin Martin. "As a conservative black man, I have felt more welcomed and at home within the tea party movement than among those of my own who side with the this new NAACP. If a few random signs of President Obama looking like the Joker is indeed racist, then where was the NAACP when conservative blacks are depicted as lawn jockeys, Oreos and Uncle Toms?"

Actually, members of the NAACP themselves are guilty of this.

It's time to stop the race baiting. The damage being done is damage to themselves. As long as the NAACP and other progressive groups indulge in these antics, there will never be progress and there will never be healing. Resorting to baseless name-calling cheapens the NAACP and causes people to question their relevance. Attempts to make the dissent against the current administration (and just about every other issue) about race does a disservice to their cause.

BECK AND THE LIBERAL NARRATIVE

2010-08-30T18:39:00.001-04:00

Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial attracted huge crowds, with estimates up to 300,000+. The pictures are quite impressive. The rally was to benefit the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, a great organization that helps the families of fallen special forces with scholarships and counselling, as well as financial assistance to severely wounded special operations personnel.

The weeks running up to the event were filled with hysteria on the part of the neo-pravda media and particularly race-baiting huckster Al Sharpton, who had his own rally, "Reclaim the Dream" on the same day. He seems to feel that Beck was attempting to usurp MLK and the "I have a Dream" speech. This was not Beck's intent, as the actual event proves quite clearly. They acknowledged the importance of the day, and some spoke about MLK's speech and it's importance to the country, but ultimately the day was about loving and honoring our country and the troops who fight and die for us. According to some, Beck seemed to be stepping into Billy Graham's shoes, not Martin Luther King, Jr's.

The day seems to have utterly flummoxed the press. They simply don't know what to make of it. For weeks they have been lambasting Beck for his presumptions, his nerve in stepping all over MLK's dream and, of course, highlighting Sarah Palin's participation in an attempt to illustrate how ultra political and fringe-y the whole thing is. Apparently her mere presence made it a political event (what office is she running for, again?).

Because they could not attack the politics of the event (mainly because there wasn't any), they had to resort to their trusty favorite fall back position and point out the "predominantly/overwhelmingly white" audience. Interesting how none of them mention Sharpton's predominantly black audience for his rally. But that point isn't relevant or important. To hear the MSM report it, there wasn't a single minority face in Beck's entire rally, and besides, the few that were there were obviously confused/misled.

Today, the New York Times' Ross Douthat wrote an op-ed piece on Beck's rally titled "Mr. Beck Goes to Washington". This article is about as close to a grudging, backhanded compliment as a thing can be:

For a weekend, at least, Beck proved that he can conjure the thrill of a culture war without the costs of combat, and the solidarity of identity politics without any actual politics. If his influence outlasts the current election cycle, this will be the secret of his success.

The article was as fair a representation as one could hope for from the Times. No snarky comments (even though Sarah Palin was mentioned - a minor miracle in and of itself), and no mention of the overwhelming whiteness of the crowd that others are so fixated on. There was, however one paragraph that was a bit objectionable:

Similarly, one could call the rally a gross affront to the memory of King, who presumably wouldn’t have cared much for Beck’s right-wing politics. But one could also call the day a strange, unlooked-for fulfillment of King’s prophecies: 47 years after the “I Have a Dream” speech, here were tens of thousands of white conservatives roaring their approval of its author.

A "gross affront"? According to his niece, Alveda King, who spoke at the rally, Dr. King was a republican. Beyond that, as a reverend, he was a christian - a conservative christian - and as such, one would think that he might just embrace Beck's right-wing politics. One would also think that the good reverend would be happy that a huge crowd of "predominantly/overwhelmingly white" Americans who had gathered to celebrate this great country and restore the judeo-christian ethics at her heart would hail him as a hero and great American, whose teachings should be a guiding light for all Americans. What is so "strange" and "unlooked-for" about that? Isn't that what the dream was really about - the content of character, not the color of skin? One might wonder, however, at his thoughts on Sharpton's rally and march. Ms. King believes her uncle would have enjoyed Beck's rally (which is prompting critics to say she is "besmirching" his legacy), viewing it as an extension of his vision because it (via the Daily Caller):

“demonstrates the spirit of love and unity and peace.”

According to singer Lloyd Marcus:

“If Dr. King were alive today, he’d feel as if he stepped into the twilight zone,” Marcus said. “He’d feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened to my dream? And, are you telling me that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the likes of those guys now are running the civil rights movement? Oh, good Lord! What happened?’ He would be totally appalled.”

Sharpton has been at his race-baiting best. In his speech Saturday he said:

"They may have the Mall, but we have the message. They may have the platform, but we have the dream....
They want to disgrace this day, and we not giving them this day. This is OUR day and we ain't giving it away."

Which is more disgraceful - Sharpton's pitting the black community against the white in a shameless attempt to relive his glory days marching arm in arm through Washington while laying claim to a man simply based on his race - a man whose whole message was about surpassing identity politics - or a peaceful rally to honor not just Dr. King, but also the country he loved? Dr. King looked to the future - a future where race didn't matter. Rev. Sharpton's entire purpose in life seems to be a quest to highlight racial division and keep the country believing we have not moved past 1963. Unfortunately for him, race has nothing to do with it and his hystrionics merely illustrate how obsolete and out of touch he is.

This event was a defining moment in our history. There were many people who felt a vague discontent under the milder progressivism of Bush and Clinton, which became more pronounced when Barack Obama took office and embarked upon his quest to "fundamentally transform" America. It is this transformation that has people up in arms, and no matter who is driving the car, it is the inevitable transformative crash that is feared. This is not about race. This is a choice between wanting to restore this country to the judeo-christian ethics and values and dynamic free market system our founders put in place or fundamentally transforming it into an offshoot of the European Union, to freeze in time and slowly disintegrate into obscurity.

Sharpton and the media do not want to have that conversation and bring that choice to the fore, because they know they will lose. And so they bring the debate down to a level that they can get the upper hand on. Relevancy seems optional, at this point.
One final thought - isn't it amazing how those who have been squawking about tolerance for weeks now when it comes to the ground zero mosque are suddenly showing just how intolerant they really are? When it comes to Beck having a rally to stoke the fires of patriotism and love of God and country, suddenly the left is all about shutting him down and stifling his first amendment right to free speech. The intolerance over Beck's event has been overwhelming, from blatantly, transparently fraudulent and yet completely expected accusations of racism to outrage at his "usurping" MLK and his messsage of unity.

No hypocrisy here, move along, move along.

Cross Posted at the Ripley Report

STAMPING OUT OBESITY

2010-08-16T20:29:00.000-04:00

Last week, congress passed the "EduJobs" bill. This bill is ostensibly to help save teacher's jobs in states with budget deficits. In reality, many of the states that are to receive this "aid" don't need it, and it seems that the unions are the real beneficiaries, with $36 million going to the National Educators Association and an additional $14 million going to the American Federation of Teachers. Let's not forget that unions are some of the biggest contributors for democrat campaigns, with teachers unions at the top of the list.

The bigger question is how this $26 billion piece of legislation is going to be paid for? Why, by appropriating from other programs, of course. Let's remember before we discuss where funding is coming from, that this bill was sold as helping teachers and children. The teachers unions love to invoke the children, and yet most of their demands help no one but themselves and their members. The unions wanted the $26 billion to be counted as "emergency spending", but the democrats were afraid to give republicans more ammunition with yet another unfunded spending bill. Instead they decided to abide by their oft ignored PayGo legislation and raid a few piggy banks - at some point in the future. So where is the funding coming from (via Education Report):

Education Week reported that the bill takes $50 million from the Striving Readers adolescent literacy program, $10 million from the Ready to Teach program that pays for teacher telecommunications programs and $82 million from student financial aid administration. The bill would not take money from the "Race to the Top" fund, as earlier proposed, according to Education Week.

Some of the funding will also be coming from the charter school system - a system the teachers unions oppose - because most charter schools, like private schools, are not unionized. This is also why unions (and democrats) oppose school choice - most parents would chose a private or charter school over a public one, and most of them are union free. How very convenient for the unions that they are getting increased funding by ~~stealing~~ appropriating funding from the charter schools. No doubt that was a happy coincidence.

The remainder of the funding will be coming out of the food stamp program, to the tune of about $12 billion...but not until 2014. Why take the blame this year when you can pile it on another congress a few years later? Kicking the can down the road - congress' favorite sport.

Congress seems to think the food stamp program is the newest cash cow, because they are now proposing to dip into the kitty yet again to fund Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. Perhaps it's because there was little outcry from the public over the funding of the edujobs bill, perhaps because there's just no where else to get it from (hey, how about what's left of the non-stimulating stimulus?), but either way, the food stamp program seems to be the congressional pot of gold du jour.

Taking money from the food stamp program to fund Mrs. O's "Let's Move!" program makes sense, though - the easiest way to crack down on obesity, particularly in the poorer neighborhoods where it seems to be reaching epidemic proportions, is by taking away the means to buy food in the first place. There is a great deal of irony in taking food out of kids mouths in the name of education - aren't we told that good nutrition is essential to good education? Let's not forget, too, the war on cheap convenience food (led by Michelle Obama) - so they are taking away cheaper alternatives, thus forcing poor parents to pay more for food, while at the same time reducing the amount of assistance they receive to buy food.

Progressive humanitarianism - it's a frightening thing.

What is most galling about these programs and the way they are being funded is the moral superiority their backers are displaying. The teacher's unions and supporters of Let's Move! are crying that these programs are necessary for the good of the kids. No, they are for the good of the unions and progressive social engineering. It is appalling that these groups are using children as human shields to further their agendas - agendas that seem to be more harmful than beneficial in the long run. Unless, of course, your idea of beneficial doesn't include a decent education and food on the table.

As for the fruits of the liberal tree of knowledge, things are looking pretty grim. Better not be too vocal about questioning their success, though.

FUN IN PHILLY

2010-08-12T22:29:00.000-04:00

Our trip to Philadelphia was a fun one. We went to the Franklin Institute (a favorite of mine from when I was a child) and the National Constitution Center. We also saw Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, as well as the Reading Market and Pat's (King of Steaks!) for a cheesesteak.

The Constitution Center was great:

The kids were sure they were going to be bored, but they had a good time in spite of themselves! There are lots of interactive displays, and it goes through the Constitution from it's founding to the current day. And by current day, I mean they had new displays up questioning the constitutionality of a) the goverment directing cleanup of the Gulf oil spill, b) same-sex marriage and c) the Arizona Immigration law. There are post-it notes at nearby stations, and visitors are encouraged to vote yes or no and stick their post-it on the issue:

Founder's Hall was fun. The hall is filled with life-sized statues of the Founders, and many are in the poses of the iconic painting "Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States". Visitors are encouraged to join the signers by signing a large visitors book and pose for pictures with the various Founders:

The whole experience starts with a live-action multi-media presentation on the period just after the Revolutionary War, when the individual states were governing themselves and the union was close to splintering apart. The presentation discusses the founding; the men who started us off on the greatest political experiment in man's history, and the document they created. The exhibit hall is round, and after the presentation, visitors are directed to begin their tour through the center at the beginning and work their way around to the present day. The exhibit startes in 1787 with a display of books that influenced our founders and winds through the 234 years of our history. There are artifacts from each of our presidents, and information on how their policies affected both the Constitution and We, the People.

Patriotic geek that I am, I highly recommend the Center if you find yourself in Philly. They have created a mall-like complex, with the Constitution Center at one end and Independence Hall at the other, with the Liberty Bell and the excavation of the President's House in the middle.

Make sure to check out the Franklin Institute, too, especially if you have kids. Even my teenager had fun. Check out the planetarium shows, be sure to stop by the rooftop observatory to take a peek at the sun and don't forget to tackle the walk-through heart!

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." - Ben Franklin

UNEXPECTED PLACES

2010-08-02T10:33:00.000-04:00

I am currently on vacation in the beautiful Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. It had been a very stressful late spring/early summer, as my sister has been dealing with a fairly major health crisis over the past couple of months. We decided to come up to visit as soon as she was up for vistors. It's gorgeous up here, and my kids have been overwhelmed by the mountains, which they have never seen before, and their cousins (whom they have also never seen before), of which there are seven. It has been a wonderful week, full of much-needed laughter, and we will be heading down to Philadelphia in the next few days to take in the sights and visit with other family. I'm looking forward to visiting the Constitution Center, as well as the old city and possibly even a day trip to New York if we have time.

My sister lives in a lovely little town nestled in the gently rolling, ancient Poconos, in a house that was built in the late 1800's. The people here are what our president would call gun-toting bible-clingers. Real salt of the earth people, many of whom are farmers. As we were driving along one of the curving, undulating main roads one day, I saw a sign by the side of the road that led me to believe that Mr. Obama's policies aren't well liked here:

It was most unexpected. The sign belongs to a local farmer, who is obviously unhappy with the way Obama and Co. are handling things. Needless to say, I feel quite at home up here!

Cross Posted at The Ripley Report

IT'S TIME TO MOVE ON Updated

2010-07-23T21:19:00.001-04:00

Last week, Shirley Sherrod was merely another regional director for the USDA. She performed her job admirably well, and has spent much of her life helping the poor. But all of that was thrown out like last week's garbage when Andrew Breitbart posted video of Ms. Sherrod on his BigGovernment website.

The video showed Sherrod speaking before the NAACP last year, telling a story about a white farmer who, twenty-four years ago when she worked for a different agency, came to her for aid to keep his farm. At first, Sherrod was reluctant to help him, feeling her duty lay with the black farmers in the region. She helped him a bit, but not to the full scope of her capabilities, as she warred with herself over what to do with him. She finally referred him to a white lawyer, preferring to allow "his own kind" to help him.

Out of context, her remarks seem to promote discriminating against whites. But taken in context, her story wasn't about some sort of 'justifiable' racism, it was about racism never being justifiable. It was about the needs of the poor being universal, and the help from people such as her being colorblind. It was something she struggled with over the years, and continues to struggle with, but, at least in the case of the farmer in question, she saw the wrong she was doing and set it right.    She was not perfect, but she recognized her imperfection and strove to change it. She overcame her bias and wanted to use her story to inspire others to see things as she did.

But this story isn't really about Shirley Sherrod.   As compelling as her story may be, she is just the most recent in a long string of innocent victims to the racial narrative that has exploded in this country since Barack Obama took office.

Was this a setup by Andew Breitbart - an effort to draw out a racial accusation by the NAACP on an erronious spot judgement to prove a larger point? There have been several unfounded accusations from the left over the past 18 months, culminating in the NAACP's denouncement of the tea parties last week over implied but unproved slurs and slights. The NAACP demanded that the tea parties take ownership of and denounce any and all persons who make racial remarks at a tea party function, whether they are affiliated with the group or not. Because of this ridiculous, impossible stance, they were forced to live up to their own standards and so went after Sherrod as an example to prove their own, well, intolerance of intolerance.

Sherrod is more of an example than they know in that, much like the tea parties that are the left's favorite punching bags, she was innocent of their charges of racism. Much like the tea parties, the NAACP made judgements on Sherrod based on incomplete and incorrect information. Instead of checking their own archives, they just assumed she was in the wrong, much as they assume the allegations of racism in the tea party are correct, with no evidence to corroborate.

Which brings up another question - why were they so quick to think she really was making racist statements at an NAACP forum?  Considering how quick they were to come out on this story, without even researching their own archives first, that raises an important question - does it happen that often? Ben Jealous claims the NAACP was "snookered", but it seems more like they set themselves up.

Granted, it is one of Alinsky's Rules (Tactic #4) to hold the opposition to a higher standard (#4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."). The problem is, sometimes the hypocrisy is just too much and the blowback is worse than the initial assault. After the rantings of the New Black Panthers, Rev. Wright, and even members of the NAACP itself, there just isn't as much weight behind the accusation anymore. The race card has been played too much, with too little to back it up. In short, the country is suffering from race fatigue. This is an excellent example of why tactic #7 - "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag" - is a caution that should be heeded.

The NAACP doesn't seem to want the country to move on, though. They cannot afford to acknowledge the giant strides this country has made in race relations, because it would illustrate their eventual obsolescence. For every step forward, people like Jealous, Al Sharpton, Rev. Wright and Jesse Jackson try to drag us back to 1967, when they were relevant and necessary. Not to say there is no discrimination, it is just that it is becoming more rare, as opposed to the systemic corruption of bigotry from the Jim Crow era. With their broad brush accusations, they are trying to argue that the entire tea party 'system', as well as everyone sympathetic to it, are racists. Even with a surge of black conservatives denouncing the racial accusations, the NAACP has their narrative and they're sticking to it.

They are attempting to lay blame on, of all things, Fox News. This is interesting, since Fox did not air the video until hours after she had ~~been booted to the curb~~ resigned. The USDA blamed the White House, saying if she didn't resign, she would be on Glenn Beck. The White House is now blaming Vilsack, the head of the USDA, saying he "jumped the gun". It would be very interesting to know if the White House did demand her head out of fear of giving Beck fodder for another show. The threat of Beck coverage seems to be a pretty strong incentive for this administration. Odd, considering how stupid and crazy they keep saying he is.

The problem we have in this country is that we are unwilling or not allowed to see the strides made, only the original sins that propelled the change. It is nothing short of amazing to me that in this day and age, with the country being led by a man of african descent, that racial bias and the old stereotypes of decades past are still being trotted out as relevant today. Opposition to a political agenda is NOT racism.

The constant race baiting by left-wing groups has become nothing more than a distraction from the real issues. This is far too serious a charge to be bandied about in that way. If the Journolist scandal has taught us anything, it is that a surprising number on the left are perfectly happy to use the race card to change the subject, no facts required.

Many of those the NAACP would label racists for opposing the Obama agenda were the self-same people who helped vote Obama into office in the first place. The NAACP seems to be incapable of seeing the great strides towards equality that this country has taken since the civil rights era. They are unable to let go of the hate, and it has poisoned them nearly to the point of irrationality. Much like infection keeps a wound from healing, so too does the continued trumping up of racial charges keep the country from moving on in the quest for an equal society of free people.

UPDATE: Allen West weighs in.

THE PALINIZATION OF ARIZONA Updated

2010-07-12T20:25:00.001-04:00

The federal government has officially filed suit against the state of Arizona and Jan Brewer, in her official capacity as governor. In addition, there are six other suits brought by various entities that are currently pending. The American Bar Assoc. has filed an amicus brief against the state, urging the federal district court in Arizona to block enforcement of the law. In addition, there are lawsuits being brought by the ACLU, the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, the League of United Latin American Citizens and a group of Tuscon police officers, who claim they cannot enforce the law without racial profiling.

The most insulting suit, and one which appears to be in direct conflict with Amendment XI of the Constitution is a suit being brought against the state by the government of Mexico. That's right, Calderon and his corrupt cronies are jumping on the lawsuit bandwagon (via Jurist.org):

claiming a substantial interest in ensuring its "bilateral diplomatic relations" with the US remain "transparent, consistent and reliable, and not frustrated by the actions of individual US states." The government also claims an interest in ensuring that its citizens are "accorded human and civil rights when present in the US in accordance with federal immigration law."

No doubt their handing out maps of the desert to potential illegal immigrants back in 2005 was instrumental in "ensuring diplomatic relations". Not to mention their demands for human and civil rights in our immigration laws are laughable, considering their own laws. Put bluntly, the Mexican government wants to keep our borders open and unenforced so that their poor will come here and relieve them of the burden, while at the same time sending billions of American dollars back to Mexico - the country's second largest source of income.

Is it possible for Gov. Brewer to counter-sue the Mexican government for invasion, and demand repayment for the burden their illlegals are putting on the state?

In addition to those suits, the DoJ has also announced that they will file another suit if, once the law goes into effect on July 29th, there is evidence of racial profiling. The interesing thing about this threat is that racial profiling was the number one reason the administration gave for striking down the law. And yet, in their original brief, it isn't even mentioned - the brief is all about the supremacy of federal laws over state laws. It seems as though the DoJ is playing politics on this one, screaming to the high heavens about profiling so that it gets stuck in the minds of voters, even though there is no proof. In fact, the federal law is less strict in their requirements to ensure against profiling. But this administration has been attempting to stop all immigration enforcement in Arizona by using the racial profiling angle almost since the beginning, with little result.

All of these lawsuits are rather reminiscent of another attempt to force the submission of a foe to the progressive agenda - Sarah Palin. That campaign of litigation was successful, forcing her to step down as governor for two reasons - her inability to perform her duties as governor due to having to prepare and defend herself and her administration from numerous frivolous lawsuits and the cost incurred to the state and herself to defend against those suits. She should not have stepped down, because that decision, no matter the reasons for it, will haunt her for the rest of her life. It also, unfortunately, showed that the tactic of submission through litigation can be a winner.

The success of the legal campaign against Palin sets the precedence to resort to the same tactics to force Arizona into submission. The time Governor Brewer and her staff will have to devote to preparing and arguing against the lawsuits will divert her attention from the important needs of the state. In addition, Arizona, like many states, is suffering under the prolonged recession gripping the country. They have a budget deficit for 2010 of $1.5 billion. 2011's outlook is even worse, at $3.4 billion. Add in the boycotts and the costs of defending these lawsuits, and it is obvious to see that Arizoona is in a difficult position. A position, it seems, that is being used to maximum effect by the DoJ and other opposition entities.

With each new lawsuit, the resemblance to the efforts to destroy Palin becomes clearer and clearer. Except this time, it is an entire state that is being effected. It's reprehensible, especially in light of the fact that a majority of Americans support the legislation. A majority of Americans would also like to see the federal lawsuit dropped. Even Arizona democrats are begging the administration to stop this dog and pony show.

If adherence to federal law was such a priority to this administration, why are they not suing Rhode Island, which has had a similar law on the books for years, and has been enforcing it without issue. Or how about the so-called 'sanctuary cities', such as San Francisco, who flaunt their disobedience of federal immigration laws quite blatantly? This particularly sticks in my craw, because they are obviously in violation of federal laws, but have yet to be reprimanded in any way, shape or form, and their policies are costing taxpayers billions.

Considering how often we are lectured by President Obama and Eric Holder about this being a country of laws, it is interesting how selective they are in their enforcement of them.

Holder is insisting that politics have no weight in his decision to pursue litigation against Arizona, but all of the facts point to politics being exactly the reason why. Governor Brewer is not backing down because the safety of her citizens outweigh the threat of federal lawsuits. She is not alone in this - the legal defense fund she set up to fight the federal suit has already collected half a million dollars in contributions ($330,000 of which was donated after the DoJ announced their suit).

Sarah Palin had a total of 27 lawsuits filed against her in the year after her VP nomination (26 of which were dismissed). So far, in less than three months, Arizona and Brewer have accrued seven suits. No doubt there will be more. This is, of course, another lesson in Alinsky's ethics of means and ends (number 10):

10. You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.

The moral garments, in this case, is their assertion that the law is racist in that it will promote racial profiling. The fact that racial profiling wasn't added to the suit indicates that those allegations are merely window dressing, used to incite anger and opposition to the law and legitimize the federal stance.

The attempts to palinize Brewer and Arizona in order to keep the borders open and unsecured might not succeed. The Arizona law mirrors federal immigration law, and, since the feds have given up enforcing it, the state has a right to protect itself from the flood of illegals. Brewer - unlike Palin, who expected to go back to life as usual after the election - knew she was going to face a fight, and she is ready for it. She threw down the gauntlet when she signed the bill, and seems to be relishing the fight.

It's awful hard to litigate into submission when the target is telling you to bring it on. Something tells me this palinization isn't going to be as easy as the last....

UPDATE: Politico has just come out with an article profiliing the nearly two dozen lawsuits piling up against Arizona:

“I’m not in a position to [speak to] the motivation of others, but there does seem to be an excessive number of lawsuits,” said Dan Pochoda, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, one of more than two dozen plaintiffs involved in a class action lawsuit.

Plaintiffs in that suit, Friendly House v. Whiting, are represented by a platoon of 35 attorneys from a diverse coalition of organizations that includes the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Service Employees International Union, the Muslim American Society and the Japanese American Citizens League.

FALLING IN LOVE ALL OVER AGAIN

2010-07-04T07:00:00.012-04:00

I have to admit it - I just can't deny it. I'm in love.

I've been in love for quite a long time, really. I guess you could say it started out as a schoolgirl crush. I was just a child when I first fell, and boy, did I fall hard. And I've been deeply in love ever since. Not that I was blind about it - I saw my love clearly, warts and all, and it only made me fall deeper. For more than 30 years I have carried the torch, and this past year has been like meeting my love again for the very first time. I'm head over heels all over again.

I'm in love with my country.

I lived in Philadelphia in 1976. We lived in Society Hill - the old section of the city - and I spent my days exploring. I learned to make mob caps at Betsy Ross House, listened to tour guides at Independence Hall, and walked on the cobblestone streets once trod by our Founding Fathers. I even befriended a carriage driver who not only taught me how to drive a horse and carriage, but also taught me the wonderful stories of the Founders and the War and the city of Philadelphia. I would sing the Preamble to the Constitution (thanks Schoolhouse Rock!) as I skipped through the history that permeates those tree lined streets.

In that Bicentennial year, in that historic, beautiful city, I felt as though I was a part of it all.

Much of my childhood was in the Brandywine area of Pennsylvania. There was Revolutionary War history everywhere, and I was fascinated. I read every signpost, relived every battle in my mind. I loved going to Valley Forge, sitting in the tiny log huts the soldiers lived in. I couldn't get enough stories about patriots like George Washington, Henry Knox, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Molly Pitcher; they filled my head with visions of heroes and perseverence in the face of overwhelming odds.

Molly was a personal hero of mine, but she is not someone most people have heard of, although Glenn Beck mentioned her in his Founders Friday show this week. She was a remarkable woman, one who voluntarily suffered the same depravations as the soldiers at the bitterly cold Valley Forge camp so that she could be with and help her husband. She embranced the life, and was the personification of an American woman - strong, gutsy and capable. Like many camp followers, she cooked, cleaned, mended clothes and nursed the wounded and sick, but she was definitely not your average camp follower. She was a true patriot.

Her real name was Mary Ludwig Hays, but she earned her nickname by bringing much needed pitchers of water for the soldiers during battle, both to quench their thirst and to cool their guns. If a man was wounded, she was even known to hoist him up and carry him off the battlefield. Needless to say, the men had a great deal of respect and admiration for her.

Her husband, John Hays, was a gunner for the First Pennsylvania Artillery. During the Battle of Monmouth, he was wounded as Molly looked on. After first making certain he would survive, she then grabbed the rammer from his hands and took his place at the gun. She held her position all day and fired over and over at the enemy. At one point, an enemy cannon ball passed right between her legs, taking off a large chunk of her petticoats, but, thankfully, missing her. She shrugged it off, merely observing it was lucky the ball wasn't a little higher "for in that case it might have carried away something else", and continued loading and firing her cannon.

Her bravery and dedication to her country garnered her the adoration of the troops, and a personal meeting with General George Washington himself. He commended her for her actions and conferred on her the honorary rank of Sargeant. In later years, she was granted a pension for her service during the war, and was given a military funeral when she died. She was a remarkable woman, and one of my first heroes. It saddens me that her story isn't better known. She was a shining example of what an American woman could do and be.

As I walked the streets of the old city as a child in my mob cap and peasant skirt, I would pretend it was the 1700's. I was part of the adventure that was the Revolutionary War period. My companions were all of the fascinating people who filled the city in the 1770's - our Founding Fathers and the amazing women who bravely offered whatever support they could in pursuit of liberty.

I have often been asked who my favorite Founding Father is. Hands down, Benjamin Franklin. Don't get me wrong, George Washington was a man among men, a man of principle and honor; God smiled on this country when He graced us with Washington. He set the bar with his realization that the office is more than just one man, and a truly great man can step away from ultimate power - a lesson many of our entrenched politicians could stand to learn.

But Ben Franklin, well, he tickles me. To me, he is the epitome of American-ness. He was inarguably a brilliant man; his inventions and experiments affect our lives to this day. He was a unique individual - really quite a character. He was an entrepreneur at a time when most people took on their parent's vocation without question. He was a free thinker and rather scandalous. He loved women, music and 'air baths'. He spoke five languages, was our first Postmaster, a printer, a consummate Statesman, and a writer who is still quoted today. He gave us our first lending library and hospital. He is arguably the one Founding Father who could easily assimilate to America in 2010 - although he would be quite vocal in his disagreement with the direction the country has been taking in recent decades - most likely on a blog!

Beyond the people who helped create our nation, I have always loved the uniqueness of this great country in and of itself. There is no place on Earth quite like it. We are kind, generous people, but we won't back down from a fight. We are a shining beacon of freedom in a world of petty tyrants and sharia law. We are vibrant, innovative and a force for good in the world.

There has been a concerted effort in this country and around the world to belittle the US, to make it seem mean and petty and out of touch. I just don't buy the hype. This country has changed in the 30 years since I first fell in love, but at it's heart, our Constitution, it is the same as it ever was.

As distressing as current events have been, I still try to see the silver lining. It is hard, sometimes, because there is just so much going wrong and we are so far from where our Founders meant us to be. Even with all of that, or, more to the point, because of it, there is a resurgence of patriotism in this country. People are rediscovering our history, thwarting the best efforts of the progressive movement to change or ignore it. More and more people are falling in love with this glorious country. Once you know the history of it's creation, how can you not?

As a child, I fell in love. As an adult, my love is stronger than ever. But the best part of all is that I am not alone, and more people every day are joining me in my love and devotion for this great country. Happy 234th birthday, U.S.A.!

Have a safe, happy Fourth, and God bless America!

THE POLITICS OF T-SHIRTS

2010-06-30T14:22:00.001-04:00

The Arizona immigration situation has been particularly stressful for some. It is an understatement to say that tempers are running high. Those who live on the front lines, in our border states, are especially on edge. People are dying down there, and when the state of Arizona decided to take matters into their own hands because the federal government refused to enforce their own laws, tempers have flared on both sides.

I personally support SB1070, and I think that Gov. Jan Brewer is doing a heckofa job holding the administration's feet to the fire. The fact that the Arizona law holds law enforcement to a higher standard of reasonable cause than the federal law makes a mockery of the hysterical responses from the left. But, then, they wouldn't know that it is a stricter law than the federal one, because they refuse to read it and educate themselves on the reality of the situation.

The heated rhetoric of the controversy isn't restricted to just our political leaders and activists. It has been trickling down into our school systems, as well. The story of the high school kids who were suspended for wearing American flag t-shirts on Cinco de Mayo was a complete overreaction (it also impinged on the kids' first amendment rights), brought on by the passionate feelings some people in our education system have over the law. The lines have been blurred between personal opinion and public responsibilities. For some, political rhetoric is coloring every aspect of their lives and they find it impossible to maintain a professional, unbiased persona.

Unfortuantely, there have been objectionable reactions to this situation on both sides of the aisle. We now have another overreaction, but this time on the right. A twelve-year-old girl wore a t-shirt to her school in Big Bear, California a couple of weeks ago to support her favorite World Cup team. She was excited to wear it, because her team was playing that day and she was going to be watching the game in her performing arts class.

One of her teachers, however, took offense to the shirt, and went overboard. Coral Avilez was watching the game in class when her teacher saw the shirt and confronted her:

...her teacher saw her shirt emblazoned with the Mexican colors and, in front of the entire class, asked if she supported Mexico, according to Leroy Martinez, the vice president of the local League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).

According to Martinez, Coral thought she was being asked a soccer question, and answered yes.

“Then what are you doing in my country?” the teacher asked, according to Martinez.

Stunned, the American-born student asked, “Why?”

“Because people like you make me pay higher taxes and make my insurance rate go up,” the teacher replied, according to Martinez.

Confused and hurt, Coral then ran out of the class crying.

I am getting so tired of our teachers politicizing the classroom. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you are on, leave the kids out of it. Period.

But wait, there's more:

When Coral’s mother showed up to take the girl home, he said, she was told she would have to wait. Coral was being questioned about the incident by a group of school officials, including the teacher who allegedly made the remarks, and had to sign a paper before her mother could take her home.

It's hard to believe the school was "questioning" a twelve-year-old and not allowing her parents to be involved in the process. It would also be interesting to know what paper she had to sign before she was allowed to go home. Perhaps something to protect them from a lawsuit? It's hard to believe that a paper signed by a twelve year old under duress will hold much weight in court.

When Coral returned to school the next Monday, she asked for permission to not go back to that class. She was given two choices - either sit in the principal's office and read a book or pick up trash with the janitor. She chose to pick up trash because she felt uncomfortable in the principal's office. Can you blame her?

The school board has launched an investigation:

Now the girl and her mother, supported by local civil rights groups, are asking that the teacher’s conduct be investigated for possible disciplinary action. The teacher later apologized to the class, according to local newspapers.

“The school has agreed, and we will meet with the superintendent this week to make sure that the investigation doesn’t drag on,” Martinez said. He said that there had been similar incidents in the area but this was the first time someone had come forward to complain. He said kids were usually intimidated by the teachers and afraid of repercussions if they asked for help.

This level of fear and intimidation in the classroom simply must stop. It is bad enough that our children have to deal with bullies in their own peer group - they shouldn't have to deal with it from their teachers.

This teacher was clearly in the wrong, and should be disciplined. This is a California school, though, so who knows what will happen. They have a notoriously difficult time keeping rogue teachers in check, and firing teachers in the state is almost impossible. Although, considering his or her right-leaning ideology, the possiblity of a firing might just happen this one time... But should the teacher be fired? At best, they should be taken out of the classroom and put into a support position, perhaps in the front office. It's pretty obvious he/she is having difficulty interacting with children in a responsible way - a main requirement to be a teacher.

The problem isn't with a teacher having political opinions - this is a free country, after all. The problem is when these teachers bring their politics into the classroom and foist them on their students. This happened to my own child this year, and it was most definitely not appreciated. Children are not political pawns, and most of them, with a very few exceptions, never consider the potential political implications of their actions. Namely because they're kids.

This little girl is of Mexican descent (she is a natural-born US citizen), and was excited to support her favorite sports team. Back in the late Seventies and early Eighties, I was in middle school. During that time, the Irish Republican Army was wreaking havok with their war on the English government. As a child of Irish descent, if I had worn a t-shirt with the Irish flag on it to support their team during the World Cup, would I have suffered the same treatment? Most likely not, because back then, politics and the classroom (especially at the elementary and middle school level) were mutually exclusive.

It's time to get back to that mindset. Children are not political pawns, no matter what side of the aisle you find yourself on. Once they are 18 and can participate in the political process, all bets are off. Until then, leave the kids alone. And if they want to wear a t-shirt that represents this country or another, so what?

Have we really become so petty and rigid in our ideologies that our children have to consider the political implications of a t-shirt?

Enough already.

SUMMER PLANS

2010-06-21T12:35:00.000-04:00

Well, summer is here, the kids are out of school, and life is busier than ever. I have been rather sporadic in my writing over the past month due to all of the activities associated with the end of the year. Now that the kids are home for the summer, the bulk of my time will be spent with them.

For the duration of summer vacation, I have decided to cut down my posts to one or two a week. I have been trying to post more than that, but there just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day. Towards the end of August, I will begin ramping back up to my usual four posts a week. There will be plenty to write about then, what with the midterm elections right around the corner. Fun, fun, fun!

I'm excited to jump back into the game for the election cycle, but first I'm looking forward to taking care of my main priority, my kids. We are spending the summer at home this year, tightening our belts like everyone else, but we will be making a few day trips to the beautiful beaches we are blessed with here in Florida. No doubt we will also make a few trips to the Springs - hopefully those activists will be there, too, for a second round! Our summer will be an exploration off the beaten path. The kids and I are looking forward to discovering the wonders of central Florida this summer - the springs, the beaches, the non-touristy hidden gems. It should be quite an adventure, and I look forward to spending a lot of time with three of my favorite people in the whole world and sharing the adventure with them.

I hope that you have a great summer and get to recharge your batteries with the important people in your life. Come September, things are going to get pretty crazy. In the meantime, make hay while the sun shines, soak up some vitamin D and have a safe, fun summer!

Please be sure to check in on a weekly basis for more posts!

HERE COMES TROUBLE

2010-06-17T17:08:00.000-04:00

We've had friends visiting for the past week and yesterday we took them to a lovely central Florida secret - Wekiwa Springs. It's a great place to go in the summer. The spring is a cool 72 degress year round and bubbles up into a perfect, crystal clear swimming basin that is surrounded by an ampitheater-like grassy area that is great for picnics.

Today, however, was not a perfect day.

Shortly after we got settled and the kids hit the water, I was approached by two people with clipboards.

"Hi there! Do you support green energy?" one chirped at me perkily. I noticed their clipboards had :"Repower America" stickers on it. Oh goodie - minions of the Goracle, out to preach to the masses.

Not wanting the day ruined with their "green" drivel, I politely told them I thought that we weren't ready for green energy yet and before they could try to sell me further, the fates smiled upon me and my cell phone rang. Saved by the bell! It turns out they were going around getting info and signatures for letters to be sent to Florida's federal representatives demanding that they pass the pending Cap and Tax legislation

A little while later, they were talking to a group of teenagers who were sitting near me. None of the kids were old enough to vote, but they were Florida residents, so that was good enough, apparently. Those greenies sure do love uninformed youth! The two envirovangelists started in on their spiel, talking about how important passing the legislation is.

It is a rare event to hear such bald-faced lies told so brazenly and with such conviction. Not only did they watch President Obama's speech the other night, they memorized it. You name a talking point from that speech, and they brought it up. Wind turbines - check. Solar energy - check. Dependence on foreign oil - check.

Then they started in on the gulf spill. They blamed the evil oil companies, and asked, rhetorically, of course, why the kids thought they were drilling a mile under water and even further into the sea floor. "As deep as Everest is high" was the quote.

At this point, I couldn't resist piping up with an answer - "because the environmentalists have pushed them out that deep". Two of the kids looked over; one of them snickered into his hand. Ms. Perky glared, took a breath and kept going.

According to her (and Obama, as per his speech), we are drilling into mile-deep water because we have no more oil anywhere else, and that this is our last resort for trying to stop billions of dollars going to foreign countries that don't like us because we stubbornly refuse to switch to green energy. Confronted by that doozie, I was unable to clench my jaw fast enough to keep from blurting out "Well, that's an outright lie!" More glares came my way, of course, and they started pushing harder for signatures.

Long story short, two of the kids signed on, two declined. Ms. Perky and her partner in crime scurried off, glaring at me all the while, and I didn't see them for the rest of the afternoon. The lady camped out in front of me turned and smiled at me, saying that she was going to step in and say something, too, if I hadn't beaten her to it. She made it clear that if a discussion had ensued, she would have had my back. I've been hearing that more and more these days. I'm also hearing more and more people speaking up when confronted with such blatant misinformation. It's a wonderful thing.

The level of ~~lies~~ misinformation is quite staggering, really. It simply boggles the mind that these people are trying to say that we have no natural resources. They are fond of saying that we use 20% of the world's oil each year, but only have 2% of the natural reserves. Makes it seem like we're going to run out tomorrow, doesn't it? Which is the point, really. Nothing like a little fear to sell the agenda. The Goracle has made a fortune off it, and stands to make a whole lot more. So is it true? According to Kiplinger Magazine, in a word, no:

The U.S. is sitting on the world's largest, untapped oil reserves -- reservoirs which energy experts know exist, but which have not yet been tapped and may not be attainable with current technology. In fact, such untapped reserves are estimated at about 2.3 trillion barrels, nearly three times more than the reserves held by Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) nations and sufficient to meet 300 years of demand -- at today's levels -- for auto, truck, aircraft, heating and industrial fuel, without importing a single barrel of oil.

Not all of the oil is readily available, but the amounts that are are quite startling (via American Thinker):

The report acknowledges that the available oil reserves could be much larger, but the 3.0 to 4.3 billion figure represents oil recoverable right now with today's technology. In fact, there may more than 100 billion barrels eventually recoverable with continued developments in the technology necessary to extract the oil.

Then there is the most famous government-blocked area of oil reserves, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuges (ANWR). With 10 billion barrels available, ANWR is the most accessible of the major untapped oil reserve locations in the United States, and claims are that this oil could be extracted in a way that would have minimal negative environmental impact.

So while technically correct in saying that America is running out of places to drill for oil, those who push this line of spin are being disingenuous at best. The reason we are running out of places to drill is purely due to the environmentalists and their political cronies who are making it impossible for us to tap into our natural resources so that they can force us into green technologies that aren't ready for mass implimentation.

They are doing this by refusing to open up coastal areas for drilling, making ANWR off limits, and by confiscating massive tracts of land over inland oil reserves. Quite frankly, the whole scheme is reprehensible. They are willing to strangle us into submission to forward their green agenda, when salvation is right under our feet. Freedom from foreign oil, freedom from funding those who hate us, and freedom to exploit our natural resources in a safe way until we can ease into green alternatives.

I have no gripe with going green, but the fact is that we are just not ready. I am simply unwilling to allow Washington to cripple me with even more taxes to promote an unrealistic agenda that isn't ready for implimentation in a large city, let alone an entire country of 310 million. I refuse to pay $10 a gallon for foreign oil when there are billions of untapped barrels right here in this country. I object to my utility bill "necessarily skyrocketing" so that Obama and the Goracle can pat themselves on the back and get rich as our economy collapses under their unrealistic pipe dreams.

Am I disappointed that two of the kids signed the petition? Not at all. Before I piped up, all four had clipboards in hand, ready to sign on. After all, if you oppose the green agenda, you're not only not cool, but you are practically an ecoterrorist. The fact that I managed to put a kernel of doubt in two of those young minds was victory enough. Hopefully they went home today and started checking the facts. That's all we can do - speak up and hope that people take the initiative to look for the facts themselves.

Facts the government is fully aware of:

In fact, our own government has acknowledged the vast oil resources available to us. In an April 2008 study conducted by the United States Geological Survey, the group began its press release with the following: "North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation."

Let's not forget, too, the roadblocks environmentalists have put up against many green alternatives, such as solar panels in the desert, wind turbines, ocean wave farms and nuclear power plants. Apparently there are those in the movement who seem to think that the country can be powered by rainbows and unicorn flatulence, because they sure aren't leaving many other options.

The administration's attempt to politicize the oil spill to get a win for the agenda is shameless. Not only won't Cap and Trade do anything to affect the spill or cleanup it is taking advantage of, it will also damage our already fragile economy with a dramatic increase in utility bills and taxes. Unfortunately, Repower America and the various other appendages of the political elite are out in force and they are on a self-appointed mission to save the world. The ground forces have been deployed and the push is on. Pesky facts aren't going to stand in their way!

And on this one, don't expect a loss in November to stop them.