New Years: Rex Babin's Obama Fetish

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

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

An atheist justifies Christianity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things will get worse before they get better

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Case of Karma?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mind you, the prosecution of Bernie Ward began after:

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

It turned out to be pictures of at least 15 and possibly up to 150 underage children.

It gets better:

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

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

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

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

Who are the REAL Climate Deniers?

Indeed. The hoax just keeps on rolling....

Thomas Sowell: The Meaning of Mumbai

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good thoughts courtesy of Brian Corbino:

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

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

More good thoughts:

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

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

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

Auburn Dam Stopped Again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Leftist vision of "Community Service"

As usual, Thomas Sowell is onto them:

One of the most innocent-sounding examples of the left's many impositions of its vision on others is the widespread requirement by schools and by college admissions committees that students do "community service."

There are high schools across the country from which you cannot graduate, and colleges where your application for admission will not be accepted, unless you have engaged in activities arbitrarily defined as "community service."
The arrogance of commandeering young people's time, instead of leaving them and their parents free to decide for themselves how to use that time, is exceeded only by the arrogance of imposing your own notions as to what is or is not a service to the community.
Working in a homeless shelter is widely regarded as "community service"— as if aiding and abetting vagrancy is necessarily a service, rather than a disservice, to the community.

Is a community better off with more people not working, hanging out on the streets, aggressively panhandling people on the sidewalks, urinating in the street, leaving narcotics needles in the parks where children play?

This is just one of the ways in which handing out various kinds of benefits to people who have not worked for them breaks the connection between productivity and reward, as far as they are concerned.

But that connection remains as unbreakable as ever for society as a whole. You can make anything an "entitlement" for individuals and groups but nothing is an entitlement for society as a whole, not even food or shelter, both of which have to be produced by somebody's work or they will not exist.

What "entitlements" for some people mean is forcing other people to work for their benefit. As a bumper sticker put it: "Work harder. Millions of people on welfare are depending on you."

The most fundamental problem, however, is not which particular activities students are required to engage in under the title of "community service."

The most fundamental question is: What in the world qualifies teachers and members of college admissions committees to define what is good for society as a whole, or even for the students on whom they impose their arbitrary notions?

What expertise do they have that justifies overriding other people's freedom? What do their arbitrary impositions show, except that fools rush in where angels fear to tread?

What lessons do students get from this, except submission to arbitrary power?

Supposedly students are to get a sense of compassion or noblesse oblige from serving others. But this all depends on who defines compassion. In practice, it means forcing students to undergo a propaganda experience to make them receptive to the left's vision of the world.

I am sure those who favor "community service" requirements would understand the principle behind the objections to this if high school military exercises (like Junior ROTC) were required.

Indeed, many of those who promote compulsory "community service" activities are bitterly opposed to even voluntary military training in high schools or colleges, though many other people regard military training as more of a contribution to society than feeding people who refuse to work.

In other words, people on the left want the right to impose their idea of what is good for society on others— a right that they vehemently deny to those whose idea of what is good for society differs from their own.

The essence of bigotry is refusing to others the rights that you demand for yourself. Such bigotry is inherently incompatible with freedom, even though many on the left would be shocked to be considered opposed to freedom.

Why Mumbai (Bombay) got hit

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

India has draconian gun laws.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What they never talk about the number of deaths, and gang rapes which
can be prevented by guns during a riot. India may not have a gun culture, but it
definitely has a Riot Culture.
In an average riot at least a 100 people are killed and dozens of women are raped and murdered.

How are they so easily able to do such things?

Because people don’t have guns.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Thanksgiving vindicates capitalism

A Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Sowell on "Excessive" CEO Pay

Once again, Thomas Sowell points out the shorsighted mentality of the Left:

There is an old Russian fable, with different versions in other countries, about two poor peasants, Ivan and Boris. The only difference between them was that Boris had a goat and Ivan didn't. One day, Ivan came upon a strange-looking lamp and, when he rubbed it, a genie appeared. She told him that she could grant him just one wish, but it could be anything in the world.

Ivan said, "I want Boris' goat to die."

Variations on this story in other countries suggest that this tells us something about human beings, not just Russians.

It may tell us something painful about many Americans today, when so many people are preoccupied with the pay of corporate CEOs. It is not that the corporate CEOs' pay affects them so much. If every oil company executive in America agreed to work for nothing, that would not be enough to lower the price of a gallon of gasoline by a dime. If every General Motors executive agreed to work for nothing, that would not lower the price of a Cadillac or a Chevrolet by one percent.

Too many people are like Ivan, who wanted Boris' goat to die.

It is not even that the average corporate CEO makes as much money as any number of professional athletes and entertainers. The average pay of a CEO of a corporation big enough to be included in the Standard & Poor's index is less than one-third of what Alex Rodriguez makes, about one-tenth of what Tiger Woods makes and less than one-thirtieth of what Oprah Winfrey makes.

But when has anyone ever accused athletes or entertainers of "greed"?

It is not the general public that singles out corporate CEOs for so much attention. Politicians and the media have focused on business leaders, and the public has been led along, like sheep.

The logic is simple: Demonize those whose place or power you plan to usurp.

Politicians who want the power to micro-manage business and the economy know that demonizing those who currently run businesses is the opening salvo in the battle to take over their roles.

There is no way that politicians can take over the roles of Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods or Oprah Winfrey. So they can make any amount of money they want and it doesn't matter politically.

Those who want more power have known for centuries that giving the people somebody to hate and fear is the key.

In 18th century France, promoting hatred of the aristocracy was the key to Robespierre's acquiring more dictatorial power than the aristocracy had ever had, and using that power to create a bigger bloodbath than anything under the old regime.

In the 20th century, it was both the czars and the capitalists in Russia who were made the targets of public hatred by the Communists on their road to power. That power created more havoc in the lives of more people than czars and capitalists ever had combined.

As in other countries and other times, today it is not just a question of which elites win out in a tug of war in America. It is the people at large who have the most at stake.

We have just seen one of the biggest free home demonstrations of what happens in an economy when politicians tell businesses what decisions to make.

For years, using the powers of the Community Reinvestment Act and other regulatory powers, along with threats of legal action if the loan approval rates varied from the population profile, politicians have pressured banks and other lending institutions into lending to people they would not lend to otherwise.

Yet, when all this blows up in our faces and the economy turns down, what is the answer? To have more economic decisions made by politicians, because they choose to say that "deregulation" is the cause of our problems.

Regardless of how much suffocating regulation may have been responsible for an economic debacle, politicians have learned that they can get away with it if they call it "deregulation."

No matter what happens, for politicians it is "heads I win and tails you lose." If we keep listening to the politicians and their media allies, we are all going to keep losing, big time. Keeping our attention focused on CEO pay— Boris' goat— is all part of this game. We are all goats if we fall for it.

The global warming definition fraud goes on

It would be funny if it didn't have such serious implications for one's personal freedom, mobility, and standard of living:

The polar ice is accumulating faster than usual, and some of the experts now concede that the globe hasn't warmed since 1995. You may have noticed, in fact, that Al and his pals, having given up on the sun, no longer even warn of global warming. Now it's "climate change." The marketing men enlisted by Al and the doom criers to come up with a flexible "brand" took a cue from the country philosopher who observed, correctly, that "if you've got one foot in the fire and the other in a bucket of ice, on average you're warm." On average, "climate change" covers every possibility.

This is similar to the science practiced by Dr. James Hansen at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the source of much of the voodoo that Al Gore has been peddling since the doctor showed up at a Senate hearing in 1988 and told ghost stories that Al swallowed whole. Only last month Dr. Hansen's institute announced that October was the hottest on record, and then said "uh, never mind." The London Daily Telegraph calls this "a surreal blunder [that] raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming."

In this account, the institute had to make the humiliating climb-down after two leading skeptics of the global-warming scam, Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist, and Steve McIntyre, a Canadian computer analyst, discovered that temperature readings from September had been carried over and repeated for October.

We should sigh, shrug and give the scientists at NASA the benefit of the doubt that this was a mistake and not a deliberate howl at the moon. A spokesman for the institute explains that readings borrowed from Russia, which had been described as 10 degrees higher than normal for October, distorted the figures but, after all, the data had been obtained from others. So we should blame someone else.

This is the science we're expected to take on faith. The false figures - we must be generous and not say "faked" - were supplied by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. These are the most widely quoted readings, and consistently show higher temperatures than other "data sets." Would the United Nations lie? (No giggling, please.)

This sets a new standard for hubris, arrogance and haughty self-importance. Skeptics of the global-warming scam, even those with unquestioned academic and real-world credentials, are treated as ignorant pariahs by pundits, presidential candidates and other politicians who know better, or ought to.

This is not the first time, writes Christopher Booker in the Daily Telegraph, that Dr. Hansen's methodology has been sharply questioned. Two years ago, Messrs. Watts and McIntyre, the bloggers who caught the October fiasco, forced him to withdraw his published findings on surface temperatures in the United States, to correct his claim that the hottest decade of the 20th century was the 1990s. It was the 1930s...

The Extortion of E-Harmony

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope Eric McKinley and his lawyers get mugged.

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

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

The global warming fraud is unraveling...

The global warming fraud is unraveling...

Let's hear it for Elton John

A voice of sanity among the gay hysteria:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gay Mafia wants Boycotts? Let's have Buycotts!

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

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

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

The post election GOP factions

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

Tensions between factions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Obama Supporter Economic Mentality

What I believe is the misunderstanding of the Barack Obama followers is that they truly believe he is going to be "Robin Hood" and take from the rich to give to them.
Wrong. The government will take from the rich to benefit its government programs, some of which will go back to the right politically connected "rich" so enough of them are in on the Big Government Con Game.

For example: The machine operator believes that Barack Obama and his minions will bring him up closer to the level of, say, his supervisor or the business entreprenur in salary, benefits, etc. But in reality, Barack Obama and his minions will lower the supervisor's salary to match the social-economic status of the machinist, and the balance goes to the government. Of course, at some point the supervisor, or entrepreneur, decides the rewards are not worth it, and productivity and the economy decline.
Kill the ambition and you kill the spirit. Should you receive according to your needs, not wants, and all have more or less the same household income (according to their needs)? Then why spend 12 years in college to become a heart specialist when you can go to a trade school for 15 months and work less hours with less stress?

As that spiral cycle begins and the country starts to lose its productivity, the government must once again step in "for the good of the country" and, to keep Utopia as is, tell you what your career will be - because, after all, that is "service." Again, does this sound sadly familiar?
Our Constitution states that each American has the right to liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness. Our Constitution did not promise anything else to anyone.  It gave Americans the freedom to succeed or fail according to their thought process. And if one should fail, they have the freedom to change direction.

The Left and The Truth

Throughout Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency, as I watched him backtrack on the nature of his many questionable relationships, on issues such as gun control, abortion rights, and taxation, and on his feelings about the United States, the words of another famous revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin, kept coming to mind. Said Lenin, "To tell the truth is a petty bourgeois habit, whereas for us to lie is justified by our objectives."

Lenin, along with Leon Trotsky and his other comrades in arms, was a character right out of the book Eric Hoffer published years later (in 1951): The True Believer. Whether it's global warming or cooling, gay marriage, animal rights, or any other "cause," a genuine true believer has no problem telling blatant lies in order to further that cause.

After all, if one believes that the end he seeks is truly noble, then any means is justified, no matter how immoral the means or how harmful they may be to others. As the esteemed college professor William Ayers dispassionately pointed out, "In revolutions, innocent people have to die." His humanitarian words are enough to warm the cockles of your heart.

Buttpirate Blacklisting

The Commiewood Left said back in 2004 that if George W. Bush was re-elected, entertainment industry figures would be blacklisted for taking unpopular political views. And, with apologies to Glenn Reynolds, they were right, as the Sacramento Bee reports:

Gay and lesbian artists called Monday for an artistic and audience boycott of California Musical Theatre after learning that its artistic director donated $1,000 to a campaign that backed banning gay marriage in California.

Scott Eckern was not available for comment Monday as the revelation has gained stunning momentum on the blogosphere. . . .

Richard Lewis, the organization's executive producer, said the board of directors will conduct an emergency meeting on the matter this afternoon. He said it was too early to tell how this would affect Eckern's 25-year employment with California Musical Theatre.

In a statement released Monday, Lewis said: "Any political action or the opinion of Scott Eckern is not shared by California Musical Theatre. We have a long history of appreciation for the LGBT community and are truly grateful for their longstanding support."

The Bee reports this afternoon that Eckern, apparently yielding to the pressure, has resigned.

A Gay Against "Gay Marriage"

An interesting point of view.

I mean it, let's not panic

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

So consider this, my fellows in arms:

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

Yielded a result of 52%.

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile in California:

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

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


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

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

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

Niall Ferguson: Affirmative Action Housing

Here’s an excerpt from Harvard financial historian Niall Ferguson’s massive Vanity Fair article explaining it all: “Wall Street Lays Another Egg:”

The Lessons of Detroit:

In July 2007, I paid a visit to Detroit, because I had the feeling that what was happening there was the shape of things to come in the United States as a whole. In the space of 10 years, house prices in Detroit, which probably possesses the worst housing stock of any American city other than New Orleans, had risen by more than a third—not much compared with the nationwide bubble, but still hard to explain, given the city’s chronically depressed economic state. As I discovered, the explanation lay in fundamental changes in the rules of the housing game. 

I arrived at the end of a borrowing spree. For several years agents and brokers selling subprime mortgages had been flooding Detroit with radio, television, and direct-mail advertisements, offering what sounded like attractive deals. In 2006, for example, subprime lenders pumped more than a billion dollars into 22 Detroit Zip Codes.

These were not the old 30-year fixed-rate mortgages invented in the New Deal. On the contrary, a high proportion were adjustable-rate mortgages—in other words, the interest rate could vary according to changes in short-term lending rates. Many were also interest-only mortgages, without amortization (repayment of principal), even when the principal represented 100 percent of the assessed value of the mortgaged property. And most had introductory “teaser” periods, whereby the initial interest payments—usually for the first two years—were kept artificially low, with the cost of the loan backloaded. All of these devices were intended to allow an immediate reduction in the debt-servicing costs of the borrower.

In Detroit only a minority of these loans were going to first-time buyers. They were nearly all refinancing deals, which allowed borrowers to treat their homes as cash machines, converting their existing equity into cash and using the proceeds to pay off credit-card debts, carry out renovations, or buy new consumer durables. However, the combination of declining long-term interest rates and ever more alluring mortgage deals did attract new buyers into the housing market. By 2005, 69 percent of all U.S. householders were homeowners; 10 years earlier it had been 64 percent. About half of that increase could be attributed to the subprime-lending boom.

Significantly, a disproportionate number of subprime borrowers belonged to ethnic minorities. Indeed, I found myself wondering, as I drove around Detroit, if “subprime” was in fact a new financial euphemism for “black.” This was no idle supposition. According to a joint study by, among others, the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, 55 percent of black and Latino borrowers in Boston who had obtained loans for single-family homes in 2005 had been given subprime mortgages; the figure for white borrowers was just 13 percent. More than three-quarters of black and Latino borrowers from Washington Mutual were classed as subprime, whereas only 17 percent of white borrowers were. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, minority ownership increased by 3.1 million between 2002 and 2007.

Here, surely, was the zenith of the property-owning democracy. It was an achievement that the Bush administration was proud of. “We want everybody in America to own their own home,” President George W. Bush had said in October 2002. Having challenged lenders to create 5.5 million new minority homeowners by the end of the decade, Bush signed the American Dream Downpayment Act in 2003, a measure designed to subsidize first-time house purchases in low-income groups. Between 2000 and 2006, the share of undocumented subprime contracts rose from 17 to 44 percent. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also came under pressure from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to support the subprime market. As Bush put it in December 2003, “It is in our national interest that more people own their own home.” Few people dissented.

As a business model, subprime lending worked beautifully—as long, that is, as interest rates stayed low, people kept their jobs, and real-estate prices continued to rise. Such conditions could not be relied upon to last, however, least of all in a city like Detroit. But that did not worry the subprime lenders.

Although the number of defaults in the Greater Detroit region have been high, I suspect the dollars lost are small compared to here in California. See this map again, and change the Affirmative Actioneering in housing from blacks to Latinos?

The other item I would add is the effects of political correctness and discrimination lawsuits on financial institution’s ability to perform reality checks on their own actions. Nobody can send a memo to their colleagues saying “We lent a billion dollars to Detroit?” without being in severe danger of it turning up in the discovery of a "redlining" discrimination case.

Steve Sailer was right; it was a “diversity recession”.

Flashback: Ted Kennedy in 1965

It is often said that no-one anticipated the 1965 Immigration Act’s floodgate-opening consequences. Certainly its key supporters denied that anything untoward would happen. Senator Edward Kennedy notoriously said:

“…our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same … Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset … Contrary to the charges in some quarters, S.500 will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia. In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.”

Election Post Mortem

Ann Coulter, as usual, tells some painful truths:

Have you ever noticed that whenever Democrats lose presidential elections, they always blame it on the personal qualities of their candidate? Kerry was a dork, Gore was a stiff, Dukakis was a bloodless android, Mondale was a sad sack.

This blame-the-messenger thesis allows Democrats to conclude that their message was fine — nothing should be changed! The American people are clamoring for higher taxes, big government, a defeatist foreign policy, gay marriage, the whole magilla. It was just this particular candidate's personality.

Republicans lost this presidential election, and I don't blame the messenger; I blame the message. How could Republicans go after B. Hussein Obama (as he is now known) on planning to bankrupt the coal companies when McCain supports the exact same cap and trade policies and earnestly believes in global warming?

How could we go after Obama for his illegal alien aunt and for supporting driver's licenses for illegal aliens when McCain fanatically pushed amnesty along with his good friend Teddy Kennedy?

How could we go after Obama for Jeremiah Wright when McCain denounced any Republicans who did so?

How could we go after Obama for planning to hike taxes on the "rich," when McCain was the only Republican to vote against both of Bush's tax cuts on the grounds that they were tax cuts for the rich?

And why should Republican activists slave away working for McCain when he has personally, viciously attacked: John O'Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans, National Right to Life director Doug Johnson, evangelical pastors Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and John Hagee, various conservative talk radio hosts, the Tennessee Republican Party and on and on and on?

As liberal Democrat E.J. Dionne Jr. exuded about McCain in The Washington Post during the Republican primaries, "John McCain is feared by Democrats and liked by independents." Dionne proclaimed that McCain "may be the one Republican who can rescue his party from the undertow of the Bush years."

Similarly, after unelectable, ultraconservative Reagan won two landslide victories, James Reston of The New York Times gave the same advice to Vice President George H.W. Bush: Stop being conservative! Bush was "a good man," Reston said in 1988, "and might run a strong campaign if liberated from Mr. Reagan's coattails."

Roll that phrase around a bit — "liberated from Mr. Reagan's coattails." This is why it takes so long to read the Times — you have to keep reading the same paragraph over again to see if you missed a word.

Bush, of course, rode Reagan's ultraconservative coattails to victory, then snipped those coattails by raising taxes and was soundly defeated four years later.

I keep trying to get Democrats to take my advice (stop being so crazy), but they never listen to me. Why do Republicans take the advice of their enemies?

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

Everybody stop panicking!

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

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


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

But eventually it means a massive Republican revival. Don't forget that now, as then, there are / were sizeable numbers of non-commie "Boll Weevil" or "blue Dog" Democrats--they were the ones who won back the Congress for Democrats in 1996. Webb, Breaux, Baucus, and the like and other Blue Dogs and Boll Weevils will not go Commiecrat.

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

Buck up--we will retrench, the Obamunist will really mess things up (never before have we seen such an unqualified putz running for office--I long for Hillary now!), and we will re-emerge triumphant with Congressional victories in 2010 that will make 1994 look like chump change.

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

Meanwhile, VDH sees Jimmy Carter all over again:

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

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

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

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

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

Wow.

Thomas Sowell: Affirmative Action and Gay ‘Marriage’

Once again, Thomas Sowell points out what should be painfully obvious, but is apparently not politically correct to say....

The politically clever way to get special privileges is to call them "rights"— especially "equal rights."

Some local election campaigns in various states are using that tactic this year, trying to get special privileges through affirmative action quotas or through demands that the definition of marriage be changed to suit homosexuals.

Equality of rights does not mean equality of results. I can have all the equal treatment in the world on a golf course and I will not finish within shouting distance of Tiger Woods.

When arbitrary numerical "goals" or "quotas" under affirmative action are not met, the burden of proof is put on the employer to prove that he did not discriminate against minorities or women. No burden of proof whatever is put on the advocates of "goals" or "quotas" to show that people would be equally represented in jobs, colleges or anywhere else in the absence of discrimination.

Tons of evidence from countries around the world, and over centuries of history, show that statistical disparities are the rule, not the exception— even in situations where discrimination is virtually impossible.

Anonymously graded tests do not show the same results from one group to another. In many countries there are minorities who completely outperform members of the majority population, whether in education, in the economy or in sports, even when there is no way that they can discriminate against the majority.

Putting the burden of proof on everybody except yourself is a slick political ploy. The time is long overdue for the voting public to see through it.

Another fraud on the ballot this year is gay "marriage."

Marriage has existed for centuries and, until recent times, it has always meant a union between a man and a woman. Over those centuries, a vast array of laws has grown up, all based on circumstances that arise in unions between a man and a woman.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that law has not been based on logic but on experience. To apply a mountain of laws based specifically on experience with relations between a man and a woman to a different relationship where sex differences are not involved would be like applying the rules of baseball to football.

The argument that current marriage laws "discriminate" against homosexuals confuses discrimination against people with making distinctions among different kinds of behavior.

All laws distinguish among different kinds of behavior. What other purpose does law have?

While people may be treated the same, all their behaviors are not. Laws that forbid bicycles from being ridden on freeways obviously have a different effect on people who have bicycles but no cars.

But this is not discrimination against a person. The cyclist who gets into a car is just as free to drive on the freeway as anybody else.

The question is not whether gays should be permitted to marry. Many gays have already married people of the opposite sex. Conversely, heterosexuals who might want to marry someone of the same sex in order to make some point will be forbidden to do so, just as gays are.

The real issue is whether marriage should be redefined— and, if for gays, why not for polygamists? Why not for pedophiles?

Despite heavy television advertising in California for "gay marriage," showing blacks being set upon by police dogs during civil right marches, and implying that homosexuals face the same discrimination today, the analogy is completely false.

Blacks had to sit in the back of the bus because they were black. They were doing exactly what white people were doing— riding a bus. That is what made it racial discrimination.

Marriage is not a right but a set of legal obligations imposed because the government has a vested interest in unions that, among other things, have the potential to produce children, which is to say, the future population of the nation.

Gays were on their strongest ground when they said that what they did was nobody else's business. Now they are asserting a right to other people's approval, which is wholly different.

None of us has a right to other people's approval.

The choice tomorrow

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

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

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

Election Pre-Mortem

Sadly, it looks like we are about to get the most leftist President in recent history, which, coupled with the most leftist Speaker Of The House and Senate Majority Leader in recent history, means a shift toward socialism in the USA, even as the ashes of the Soviet Empire grow cold.

First, let us understand what the Obama campaign did that worked. The Obamunists:

1. Raised huge sums of money, all the while demonizing "fat cat donors" who apparently didn't take that rhetoric seriously. Perhaps this is because, like General Electric, they intend to be the beneficiaries of "green jobs" government spending, "high speed rails" (choo choo!) and "stem cell research" (California has been at it for four years and we are still waiting....)
2. Understood that there was no reason for Obama to be available to the lamestream media, who would fawn all over him anyway.
3. Responded to all efforts to probe Obama's past with claims of "racism", and relied on the lamestream media in #2 above to cover up, which they did.
4. Targeted Southeastern Atlantic Coast states like VA, NC, GA, and FL, which are not as solidly Republican as believed.
5. Had no harmful leaks.
6. For the most part, kept open communists like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers out of the spotlight.
7. Managed to find a way to win without having to owe anything to the Clintons.

What the Obama campaign did that didn't work:

1. Picked Joe Biden, who hasn't really helped them at all.
2. Failed to build popular support for all the leftist policies Obama intends to implement after the election. Expect a major Congressional reversal in 2010.

And now, let us think about what the McCain campaign did that worked:

1. Made some very entertaining ads ("The One" and Paris Hilton).
2. Had a reasonably successful convention, mending fences with rivals and at least papering over differences in the GOP.
3. Brought Sarah Palin, a potential future star, into the national spotlight.

What the McCain campaign did that didn't work:

1. Failed to recognize that the Left would try to destroy Palin, and that any damage to Palin would also hurt McCain.
2. Failed to stop campaign officials from leaking to the press.
3. Were cowed by bogus "racism" charges from the liberal media, and did not consistently go after Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal.
4. Completely mishandled the economic crisis.  McCain should have opposed the bailout.
5. Did not recognize until very late that the voters care more about domestic policy than foreign policy.
6. Did not articulate a persuasive economic argument.
7. Failed to understand that the lamestream media only liked him when he was a useful tool to get at George W. Bush, and with him gone, the lamestream media turned on McCain with a vengeance.

Turning to Election Day, it is clear that for all of John McCain's alleged "maverick" differences with the Bushyrovies, essentially under John McCain many of the Bushyrovie policies, particularly on immigration, will remain the same. But at least McCain's policies are undeniably pro-growth, pro-military, and pro-American.

Obama's record is that of a hard-core sleazy Chicago politician and communist "community organizer". Since the general election began, however, Obama has tried to sound more like a moderate conservative on economic and foreign policy issues. The man who has never voted to eliminate wasteful spending now says he'll "go through the budget line by line and eliminate programs that don't work" as well as "give tax relief to the 'middle class." The man who has opposed every major military weapons program now claims he'll "modernize our military," too!

So who's the real Barack Obama? The one who wants America to emerge stronger from this economic crisis, or the one who wants to "bankrupt the coal industry"? Maybe we should ask people who've known him since he kicked off his political career. Does anyone have Bill Ayers's e-mail address?

Sarah Palin continues to be the bright spot in the McCain campaign (which explains why the lamestream has been ambushing her while letting Joe "Gaffe Machine" Biden slide), and she'll be a force in the conservative movement for years to come. It was sadly predictable that John McCain used precious time and energy Saturday night courting the media elite by appearing in an Saturday Night Live skit ridiculing Palin.

If McCain loses, we will remember this truth: He's always been more comfortable blasting Republicans and conservatives than his liberal friends. And in the homestretch of this campaign, he chose to give a wink to those who spent the past several weeks working overtime to destroy a good woman. So if McCain loses, it is time for the GOP to send him out to pasture.

The media apparatchiks are bemoaning the "ugliness" of the campaign in its final hours. (Translation: McCain and his supporters are finally telling us what we need to know about Obama, and it's not pretty.)

The Obama cheerleaders at NBC have been giddy about the prospect of an Obama presidency all along. But today NBC hit an all time low when its goateed political director Chuck Todd came out and declared the race over. In front of his magic electoral map, he said McCain had "zero percent" chance of winning the election.

It was this sort of thing that had Carter supporters crying foul in 1980, and if in 2012 Obama is the one on the ropes and even some of the liberal media are writing off his chances, the Obamunist supporters will cry foul and charge "voter suppression".

Obama's Halloween Health Care Scare

The choice you'll have," said Barack Obama during last week's debate, as he told voters what to expect if John McCain's health-insurance proposal becomes law, "is having your employer no longer provide you healthcare....Don't take my word for it," he added. "The US Chamber of Commerce, which generally doesn't support a lot of Democrats, said that this plan could lead to the unraveling of the employer-based healthcare system."

This, coming from the man who wants to replace employer health care, with at least a few choices, with government single payer health care, where there will be no choice at all.

But leaving that aside, the fact is that a change away from only employer-based health insurance is exactly what the American healthcare market needs.

Far from being a calamity, it would represent a giant step toward ending the current system's worst distortions: skyrocketing premiums, lack of insurance portability, and widespread ignorance of medical prices.

With more than 90 percent of private healthcare plans in the United States obtained through employers, it might seem unnatural to get health insurance any other way. But what's unnatural is the link between healthcare and employment. After all, we don't rely on employers for auto, homeowners, or life insurance. Those policies we buy in an open market, where numerous insurers and agents compete for our business. Health insurance is different only because of an idiosyncrasy in the tax code dating back 60 years - a good example, to quote Milton Friedman, of how one bad government policy leads to another.

During World War II, federal wage controls barred employers from raising their workers' salaries, but said nothing about fringe benefits. So firms competing for employees at government-restricted wages began offering medical insurance to sweeten employment offers. Even sweeter was that employers could deduct those benefits as business expenses, and employees didn't have to report them as taxable income.

Unfortunately, this tax write off does not apply for individuals purchasing their own health care plans, unless they can somehow incorporate themselves.

Result: a radical shift in the way Americans paid for medical care. With health benefits tax-free if they were employer-supplied, tens of millions of Americans were soon signing up for medical insurance through work. And they were no longer paying attention to cost savings and making serious decisions about medical benefits the way they did when they paid themselves.

As tax rates rose, so did the incentive to keep expanding health benefits. No longer was medical insurance reserved for major expenditures like surgery or hospitalization. Americans who would never think of using auto insurance to cover tune-ups and oil changes grew accustomed to having their medical insurer pay for yearly physicals, prescriptions, and other routine expenses.

We thus ended up with a healthcare system in which the vast majority of bills are covered by a third party. With someone else picking up the tab, Americans got used to consuming medical care without regard to price or value. After all, if it was covered by insurance, why not go to the emergency room for a simple sore throat? Why not get the name-brand drug instead of a generic?

Unconstrained by consumer cost-consciousness, healthcare spending has soared, even as overall inflation has remained fairly low. Nevertheless, Americans know almost nothing about the costs of their medical care. (Quick quiz: What does your local hospital charge for an MRI scan? To deliver a baby? To set a broken arm?) When patients think someone else is paying most of their healthcare costs, they feel little pressure to learn what those costs actually are - and providers feel little pressure to compete on price. So prices keep rising, which makes insurance more expensive, which makes Americans ever-more worried about losing their insurance - and ever-more dependent on the benefits provided by their employer.
Making individual health plans deductible the way corporate health care plans are and then de-linking medical insurance from employment is the key to reforming healthcare in the United States. McCain proposes to accomplish that by taking the tax deduction away from employers and giving it to employees. With a $5,000 refundable healthcare tax credit, Americans would have a strong inducement to buy their own insurance, rather than only relying on their employer's plan. As millions of empowered consumers began focusing on price, price competition would flourish. And as employers' healthcare costs declined, most of the savings would return to employees as higher wages.

For 60-plus years, a misguided tax preference for employer-sponsored health insurance has distorted America's healthcare market. The price of that distortion has been paid in higher costs, fewer choices, and mounting anxiety. The solution is to restore market forces by fixing the tax code, and liberating Americans from an employer-based system that has made everything worse.

The Obamunist Associations

It saddens me how few people are willing to call out Barack Obama for the Communist turned Dhimmi he is. He may not be a Muslim, but frankly what he is--a member of Jeremiah Wright's Cult Of Amerca Hatred--is even worse. This includes supposedly sophisticated media people such as Bill O'Reilly, who never tires of spewing out drivel like, "I don't believe for a second that Senator Obama agrees with Reverend Wright's views." Sure, Bill. Based on his connections to communists such as his childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, I would guess that Barky the Obamunist had scores of one-on-one meetings with Reverend Wright about long-term plans to overthrow "white" America.

Even Sarah Palin, when she was asked by Glenn Beck if she believed Barack Obama is a socialist, hesitated, then carefully assured him that she wouldn't go so far as to say he is a socialist - even though she had just finished saying that his policies reflect socialism!

This kind of self-intimidation must stop. If John McLame loses the election, it will be because of his "reach-across-the-aisle" mentality. Had he stood up loud and clear for capitalism from day one, and explained loud and clear why Barack Obama is a Marxist (not just a socialist!), I believe he would be winning this election by ten points.

Of course the Obamunist is pretending to be "moderate" with an apparatchik media backing him all the way:

"Obama simply showed up the day after he won the nomination and declared himself a centrist. Everything since has been couched in reassuring, moderate terms in brilliant salesmanship worthy of the best minds at the American Marketing Association.
Obama's tax cut for 95 percent of working people is one of the reasons he has a 2-1 advantage on "helping the middle class," according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll. Obama's proposal doesn't actually cut income or payroll tax rates. Overall, John McCain's proposal cuts taxes more than Obama for typical families. But Obama sounds more zealous about middle-class tax cuts.
On health care, Obama has attacked McCain's proposal on conservative grounds, claiming it would trash the current system of employer-provided insurance and raise taxes. As for his own proposal? It's the centrist alternative. His advertising contrasts two approaches to health care — one government-run, the other allowing insurance companies to run amok. "Barack Obama says both extremes are wrong," says the ad.
On social issues, Obama says he opposes gay marriage. Never mind that he supports repealing the Defense of Marriage Act. He says he supports reducing the abortion rate. Never mind that he supports taxpayer funding of abortion. On gun rights, his campaign has been running advertisements explaining "Barack Obama and John McCain will both make sure we can keep our guns." In his public presentation, Obama might as well be an embittered rural voter clinging to guns and religion.
Then, there's his steady demeanor. He's so even-keeled, you could practically put a level on his head and its bubble would barely move. This quality served him well during the financial meltdown. But if Obama's elected, we may look back and wonder why everyone thought passivity in a crisis spoke of extraordinary leadership skills.
Obama is able to get away with all this because he has a thin record, and what record he has the press isn't willing to examine. In the Illinois Legislature, Obama voted against legislation protecting infants born alive after abortions — votes so outrageous the press acts as if they simply couldn't have occurred. Obama can reinvent himself at will, a political Gatsby with all of America as his East Egg.
If elected, Obama will return to Washington with expanded and emboldened liberal majorities in both the Senate and the House. Congress was the un-doing of his two Democratic forebears. Carter was stiff-necked with a Democratic Congress, and that made it nearly impossible for him to govern; Clinton accommodated his Democratic Congress in 1993-94, and it pulled him to the left to devastating effect in the 1994 congressional elections."

A full-blown commie President, combined with Communists running the House and Senate. We will regret this. But the Obamunist Associations get worse:

"There was Ali Larijani, for example, the Hezbollah- and Hamas-supporting speaker of Iran's parliament, who voiced Iran's preference for a "more flexible and rational" Obama over John McCain — not that he got what you could call a media roll-out. Nor did America's own anti-white, anti-Jewish Louis Farrakhan, who recently heralded an Obama presidency as the coming age of the "the Messiah." There was a newsflash for fluffy-con endorsements at home and abroad, arcing and sputtering on a thin mix of elitism and naivete, but virtually no one seems to have noticed an Obama endorsement that came in from the National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW).
Big yawn? Hardly. In its endorsement, the Columbus-based Muslim women's group described itself as "pro-family" and "pro-life." But, given the record of NAMAW chairwoman and CEO Anisa Abd el Fattah, it is also pro-Hamas.
As Patrick Poole has reported, Fattah has published Hamas-ian writings contending, for example, that Zionism "violates ... every norm of decency known to the human species." Fattah has also co-authored two books with Hamas spokesman and chief political adviser Ahmed Yousef ("The Agent: The Truth Behind the Anti-Muslim Campaign in America and Al-Aqsa Intifada"). And yes, that would be the same Ahmed Yousef, who, on behalf of Hamas, endorsed Barack Obama back in April.
Both Fattah and Yousef (who fled the country in 2005 to avoid prosecution in the terrorism-related Fawaz Damra trial) used to work for the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), an innocuously named organization founded by Hamas chieftain Mousa abu Marzook that has been described as "the political command of Hamas in the United States." The UASR, along with an interlocking network of Islamic organizations, has been designated by the government as both an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial, and an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian-founded organization that seeks to install the Sharia (Islamic law) worldwide. Other groups so designated include the Muslim American Society (MAS), which the government said was "founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States," and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), of which Fattah, it so happens, was a founding board member. (Fattah, according to her online biography, as Poole has noted, also helped develop the American Muslim Council, which was founded by convicted terrorist financier Abdurahman Alamoudi.)"