Inauguration Day Psalm

PSALM 2008-2012
FIRST BOOK OF DEMOCRAT

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

PETA's ironic Google Ad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

California is dead last in respect for life

At least according to "Americans United For Life".

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

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

The real Bush legacy: Why the Left hates him so

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

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

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

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

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

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

(...)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My own scorecard on President Bush the Younger:

Big minuses, in this order:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Valiant Tried But Fails:

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

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

Big pluses:

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

2. Alito -- ditto

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Generation X" is back

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

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

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

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

Now what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

"Who is this man?" you ask.

You think you know, don't you?

Well, guess again.....


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Years: Rex Babin's Obama Fetish

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

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

An atheist justifies Christianity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things will get worse before they get better

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Case of Karma?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mind you, the prosecution of Bernie Ward began after:

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

It 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.