“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Monday, January 31, 2011

Obama wants an Internet kill-switch.....just like Egypt's

What's the first thing the Egyptian government did when the citizens rose up to oppose it's policies? Kill the Internet, cell-phone communications, Facebook, and Twitter so the rabble couldn't organize. Essentially the government wanted them to be more easily controlled. Well, there's a bill in Congress right now that would give Obama, or whoever the chief executive is, the same authority without judicial oversight or authority.....

From QandO -- A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a "national cyberemergency," and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.

Launching nuclear weapons requires at least two people. Should any one man have the power to shut down the Internet for what he alone perceives to be a "national cyberemergency"? No one man should have the authority to seize control of the Internet or communications between citizens and with the outside world. Even if you argue that he'd never use it, why grant the man occupying the white house that authority in the first place?

E*Trade talking-baby outtakes.....hilarious!

I don't care what anybody says, the E*Trade talking-baby ads are brilliant and hilarious. If I was smart enough to trade myself, I'd use E*Trade on the strength of these ads alone. Here are some outtakes that you probably won't see on TV.

Killing teenagers that Americans won't kill

Remember George Bush telling us how illegals are just doing jobs Americans won't do? Well there are some other things that Americans won't do that illegals are happy to help us out with. Killing teen girls during botched carjackings is one of them......

From FoxNews -- Three Mexican men who were wanted for the murder of an American teenager have turned themselves in at an Arizona border crossing point, Reuters reports.

U.S. officers tell Reuters that Orel Vasquez, 20, Christian Vasquez, 26, and Juan Leon, 29, turned themselves in Saturday for the 2009 murder of 15-year-old Brenda Arenas of Tucson.

Arenas was shot in the head during a botched carjacking and died in her mother's arms.

Or as Jerry Rivers(Geraldo Rivera) would lecture us, this is a crime problem, not an illegal problem. But I would argue that, but for these aliens having snuck across our border illegally, this girl would still be alive. It is an illegal alien problem and it's not going away until we take seriously border security....something that neither party seems eager to do, to their shame.

Obama and Bush should have to personally explain to the families of every American killed by an illegal why that death is acceptable and why they did nothing, NOTHING to stop them from coming in.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Egyptian demonstrations expose an unpleasant social pathology


What is it about large crowds of protesters that make them want to loot and destroy the businesses and homes in their own neighborhoods?

From DailyMail -- Yesterday mummies in the country's national museum were destroyed by looters attempting to steal the treasures of King Tutankhamun.

Soldiers were positioned at the Pyramids and Cairo’s Egyptian Museum – the holding place for Tutankhamun’s priceless golden mask and other artifacts – on the fifth day of anti-government demonstrations in the country’s capital.

This reminds me of the Rodney King riots when those morons burned, looted, and basically destroyed businesses and homes in their own backyards. The same every-man-for-himself pathology was on display in New Orleans after Katrina. The pharoic treasures are the pride and joy of every Egyptian....what compels them to steal it?

Is it that people who but for the threat of being caught by the police, are criminals who take advantage of the anonymity of huge crowds because the police can't arrest everybody in those situations? Are human beings really that maliciously tribal given the slightest chance?

Exit question: what percentage of adult humans would steal from another person if they knew they could get away with it? Or to put it another way, are we all potential criminals who given the opportunity, do not have the best interests of our neighbors at heart? That thought is extremely disappointing.

Pakistan

POSTED BY BILL

The Pakistani police holding our official from the consulate is a very bad situation - that could get really, really bad.  A lynching isn't out of the question in that country.  In October, 2000, a mob in the West Bank city of Ramallah did lynch two Israeli soldiers after attacking a police station where they were being protected.  The Palestinian cops, to their credit, suffered some injuries trying to save the Israelis.  Recently, the Governor in Pakistan was murdered by his own bodyguard - who is now a hero!

A lot of folks may have a problem with diplomatic immunity, but it is absolutely necessary for diplomacy between nations to occur.  In severe cases, the miscreant should be (and has been in the past) tried in the home country.

Of course, in this case, it appears the guy did nothing wrong, merely defended his life.  The related case of the citizen killed by a car coming to rescue the guy appears to be a simple tragedy that should be compensated the legal way.

What do suppose are the odds that at least some people high up in the State Department aren't thinking, "Why couldn't this guy have just gotten himself robbed and killed?  Then we could be the aggrieved party."   The U.S. government better pull out all the stops to get this guy out safely.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

An "unserious speech"

POSTED BY BILL

I couldn't force myself to watch the SOTU address - I don't need the aggravation.  I have watched and read much of the reaction.  The "Sputnik Moment" analogy from the guy who just gutted our space program is priceless.  Somebody he listens to just LOVES analogies.  Remember the "car in the ditch?"

In case you're not familiar with Peggy Noonan, she was one of Ronald Reagan's speech writers and a great wordsmith.  She is also one of those mostly conservative folks who really, really want Obama to do well, for all the usual reasons.

She can be maddening at times, seeming to drink "The One" kool-aide, and at other times see right through him.  Today's column in the WSJ is a great example of the latter, as the snippet of the title in my title suggests.  I commend the column to you.  At the end she admits, "I actually hate writing this.  I wanted to write 'A Serious Man Seizes the Center'."

You just can't make this stuff up

POSTED BY BILL

On Friday, a woman in Dekalb County, GA either held her son out from high school or signed him out, it's not clear which.  Two friends and classmates also missed school for the mother's planned "day at work."  She took the three teenagers on a job - a "bank job" complete with masks, hoodies, and guns.

Sadly for this attempt at "being an involved parent", a nearby good citizen watched the whole thing and followed the getaway car while calling 911.  Dekalb Police took over for a high speed chase that ended in a crash at an I-285 exit ramp and arrests.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Can a representative democracy thrive in the middle east?

Some journalists are crediting Condi Rice's 2005 speech at Cairo University for the current political upheaval in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen. In that speech she said.....

"For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither, now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."

I can see where the Tunisian students and other youth may have been emboldened by that speech to affect change in their country. Now the Arab countries are toppling like dominoes as their angry, disenfranchised youth take to the streets to demand government overthrow in what's been called the first Facebook/Twitter revolutions.

Egypt receives more US foreign aid(in the billions each year) than any country but Israel, and we can debate the wisdom of giving billions of taxpayer dollars to Egypt and Israel, but in my opinion I'd rather that money go to support the most democratic, honest and open, representative governments that foster an environment of economic liberty guided by the rule of law. I realize those types of governments in the middle east are less stable with the rabble-rousing, Muslim hordes constantly agitating the citizenry against the government, but I'd rather give representative democracy a chance than consciously underwrite a quasi-dictatorship because it's more stable. But that's just me.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Rand Paul....budget slasher

Rand Paul is serious about cutting the budget and getting America's fiscal house in order, and getting it done pretty darn quick.....

From Boortz -- His plan would gut the Education Department, fold the Energy Department into the Department of Defense and completely get rid of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Other victims on Paul's chopping block are seven independent agencies including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and national endowments for the arts.

About the only thing we can do is throw out entire agencies and departments. Heck, most of them are redundant anyway and exist solely to torment the citizenry with onerous regulations, and provide lavish jobs and benefits packages to useless, navel-gazing bureaucrats. The problem is getting mainstream republicans like Boehner, Cantor, and McConnell to go along with it. They enjoy the trappings of power too much to risk it all by alienating the press with this much budget cutting at one time.

Social Security crash starts this year, not in 2016

It's news to only the stupidest of Americans that politicians have been lying to us for decades about social security. The nonpartisan congressional budget office announced today that the SS deficit starts this year, not 5 years down the road like we've been told......

From CBSNews -- (AP) Social Security's finances are getting worse as the economy struggles to recover and millions of baby boomers stand at the brink of retirement.

New congressional projections show Social Security running deficits every year until its trust funds are eventually drained in about 2037.

This year alone, Social Security is projected to collect $45 billion less in payroll taxes than it pays out in retirement, disability and survivor benefits, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

I got my annual SS statement last weekend that projects what I would be getting each month at various points in retirement, more if I delay retiring and less if I retire at 59 or whatever. I had to chuckle at the lie that was staring me right in the face. If I decide to retire at 65, I am promised something like $3,000 a month in SS benefits. But that's 17 years away. Is there anybody dumb enough to think that if SS is sinking fast this year that there will be anything left when I get there? The year of complete insolvency for SS is projected to be 2037 but with baby-boom voters retiring with massive senses of entitlement to all that money and the implied threat to kick anybody out of office who dares suggest a cut in benefits, there won't be anything for me when I get there. Heaven help my kids...it'll be even worse for them.

The barbarism of the Religion of Peace

Yesterday in Afghanistan, the Taliban stoned a couple to death because she(19 years old) left the "husband" to whom she'd been SOLD, to be with the man she loved...

About 200 people listen to a Taliban mullah describe why a man and woman deserve to be killed. A few dozen spectators – people from the local community -- start throwing rocks at the woman, who had already been placed in a 4-foot-deep hole. They throw with relish and yell, "Allah akbar."

At one point a large rock strikes her head and she falls down, her burqa red with blood. After the rock throwing ends, a few people debate whether she should be shot. Eventually one of the spectators shoots her with an AK-47. She falls into the hole, out of sight. There is a short period of absolute silence, and then the spectators turn to each other and start talking.

Then the man is brought into the crowd and blindfolded with his own tunic. The same scene proceeds, but with larger rocks and more abandon. He cries as he is killed.

How many of these stories do we need to hear before we finally admit what an abhorrently primitive religion Islam is when practiced by much of the middle east. And don't try to tell me this is an isolated incident when Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other middle eastern countries have all had stonings, hangings, and other outrageous state murders because of some perceived insult to Islam.

The sad state of American education

This in a nutshell is what's wrong with the American school system. Teachers' unions have a strangle hold on education policy and fight tooth and nail to prevent parents from having any choice in which schools their children will be educated. If there's anything teachers detest, it's the possibility of competition from better schools that will expose their own failures as educators. One desperate mom in Ohio learned that the hard way.....



Thanks to decades of teacher-union bribery, democrats' slavish devotion to the union, and more recently Obama's policy on school choice, kids are stuck in whatever dreadful school the government forces them to be. If they attached the education dollars to the kids, then let the parents send their kid to whatever school they wanted, the schools would have to compete for that money...everybody wins except bad schools and bad teachers. You may have guessed that the teachers' union is having none of that.

Somebody will argue that the parents can always move, but families shouldn't have to move to find decent schools for their kids.

Neal Boortz maintains that the single greatest threat to our republic is the teachers' unions and I tend to agree with him.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Happy Australia Day

POSTED BY BILL



We have allies in the wars for freedom, and like our guys, they have both supporters at home and those who would stab them in the back.  Here's a poster girl of the former, via Blackfive.

Do the birthers have a legitimate point?

I hate to keep returning to this story but it won't go away. Much to the delight of Obama birther conspiracists everywhere, Hawaii's dopey governor Neil Abercrombie has been keeping the birth-certificate issue alive for months. He's been promising to produce the document, from the one hospital on the island where babies were born in the early 60's, that proves once and for all that Chairman Zero was born in Hawaii. But he has yet to produce it.

As an Obama lick spittle, gov. Ab cannot accept that his hero may not have been born in the US and is therefore disqualifies from being President. Lapdog Obama supporters point to the newspaper announcement as proof, but any grandparent could have called in the birth announcement. Also, not a single doctor who worked at that hospital at the time can be found who remembers the Obama birth. A black baby being born to a white woman would have been remembered in the early 60's....even in Hawaii.

I've never been a birther but I'm starting to pay attention to the glaring questions right in front of me, thanks to Abercrombie's incessant rambling about, but failure to produce, the document. Specifically, if the Constitution says that the President must be born in the US, why isn't every candidate compelled to prove that? Just askin'.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Hezbollah officially takes control of Lebanon

The terrorist organization Hezbollah, heavily financed by Iran, just completed their political coup-de-tat in Lebanon, sparking violent demonstrations by opposition supporters, and have installed their Sunni stooge as prime minister....

From NYTimes -- After days of political wrangling, the candidate supported by Hezbollah and its allies, Najib Miqati, a billionaire and former prime minister, won 68 seats in Lebanon’s 128-member parliament, enough to name the next government in a country as divided as it is diverse. His elevation was a clear victory for Hezbollah, which has ruled out Mr. Hariri’s return to power, and was the culmination of what was already accepted as a fact of life here: that Hezbollah is the country’s pre-eminent military and political force.

It has been widely reported that Hezbollah operatives intimidated and threatened anybody who would oppose them. I wonder if Obama will continue to funnel 100's of millions in taxpayer dollars to Lebanon now that terrorists officially run the joint? As long as he's promising to cut spending, might as well start by stopping all aid to Lebanon and cutting of all funding of UN operations. That would be a good start.

There are those(I'm talking to you Glen) who would suggest that we stop all aid to Israel too. It may surprise you to find that I would support a gradual draw down of financial support of Israel as they build up their economy toward independence. 60 or so years of underwriting care of US taxpayers is probably enough already. On the other hand, we'd need to balance the money savings with the likelihood of an attack by the Arab community that would wipe Israel off the map. Is that an acceptable eventuality in the 21st Century?

My opinion is that Israel needs to stand economically more on her own but we should always make sure her enemies know that she enjoys our military protection. But that's just me.

Justice - long delayed

POSTED BY BILL



My son, who is now 26, went to a nice elementary school on a quiet tree lined street in Atlanta. Two years BEFORE he ever started there, a young woman named Julie Love had the misfortune to run out of gas nearby and start walking. She was kidnapped, raped, and shot in the head with a shotgun by one Emanuel Hammond. A year later, Hammond's erstwhile girlfriend, who had been there that night, turned him in. Seems she had gotten wind that he considered her a dangerous loose end. Hammond was convicted and sentenced to death in 1990 - 21 years ago.

Finally, tonight at 7, barring his defense attorneys finding a judge to listen to their contention that the drugs to be used aren't "safe", he will at last receive justice. He has had 23 years to make his peace with the Lord, something Julie Love never had.

Oh puke!


House majority leader Eric Cantor has reportedly asked his counterpart, house minority leader Nancy Pelosi on a date for tonight's SOTU speech. In a mind-numbingly stupid display of what can only be described as kabuki theater, members of opposite parties are supposed to sit together to help heal the partisan riffs between them. And this is supposed to prevent another crazed madman from shooting anybody, ever again.

Did we award the republicans control of the House only to have them cozying up to the likes of Nancy Pelosi, just for the cameras? It's like some bizarre Sadie Hawkins dance or something. It's just a bunch of meaningless, feel-good BS and who besides the media is falling for it? Good grief, how stupid!

The two biggest stories tonight will be who sat next to whom and whether the supreme court justices show up after Obama kicked sand in their faces last year. I'm not sure I can bring myself to watch it....my stomach isn't strong enough.

UPDATE: Pelosi turned down Cantor's offer. How humiliating! Once again a democrat has owned and abused a gullible republican. Stop already with the pointless gestures. Do the work you were installed by the voters to do and stop trying to be liked by the press. They hate you and they always will. You will never change that.

Sharon Tate would have been 68 today...RIP


Actress and model Sharon Tate would have turned 68 today. She and her unborn child were murdered along with 8 others during a two day killing spree in California directed by Charles Manson. To this day, I can't think of a more horrific, personal mass murder than the LoBianca/Tate murders. Obviously 9/11 cost more lives but this was 1969, America was no more prepared for this at that time, than we were for 9/11 when it happened. Manson was trying to ignite a race war with the murders and failed, but he did rob a nation of a little bit of innocence and trust. It'll be a good day when the devil finally comes to drag Manson off to hell at long last.

Delusional globalists think China isn't our enemy

Liberal globalists think that China is our friend and partner but the Chinese have a slightly different opinion of America....

From NYPost -- WASHINGTON -- Chinese-born pianist Lang Lang gave a musical shout out to America-hating patriots in his homeland when he played at the White House state dinner last week.

During his performance, Lang tinkled the ivories with the famous anti-American propaganda tune "My Motherland" -- the theme song from the Chinese-made Korean War movie "Battle on Shangangling Mountain."

Chinese President Hu Jintao, the guest of honor at the dinner, surely recognized the melody. The song has been a favorite anti-American propaganda tool for decades.

The Chinese have nothing but contempt for Americans, our weakness, lack of national pride, lack of economic self control, our obsession with celebrityy and decadence, etc. Not all of us are like that but our political ruling class certainly is. That the Obama administration would allow such an in-your-face display shows how beholden Obama is to his debt masters. Even the Chinese bloggers are having a field day with this humiliating, insulting slap in our face..... 

"Those American folks very much enjoyed it and were totally infatuated with the melody!!! The US is truly stupid!!" wrote one blogger.

If we continue to bow to the Chinese and beg them to keep financing our reckless spending, then we truly are stupid and deserve to be taken over economically by our overlords, the communist Chinese.

Monday, January 24, 2011

This is so cool

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba (Jan. 14, 2011) Lt. Cmdr. Jeffery Laubaugh, left, administers the oath of enlistment to Chief Intelligence Specialist Jared Pringle during an underwater reenlistment ceremony. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. j.g. Matthew Gray/Released)


If you've ever taken the oath of enlistment in the U.S. military and are anything like me, you get a kind of lump in your throat as you repeat the words:

I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God. 

 Oaths used mean a lot more to many people than they seem to nowClearly Major Nadal Malik Hasan and PFC Bradley Manning did not take their oaths seriously.  Somehow I think that Chief Intelligence Specialist Jared Pringle does take it seriously.

POSTED BY BILL

Obama's fake-out

Posted by Bill

Let me begin by saying that I consider the constant year round public opinion polling to be a scourge on our democracy.  It turns legislators into "finger-in-the-wind" cowards and every issue into a "horse race" in the media with only superficial attention to the issues.

That said, I admit to looking at them, and it's hard not to notice the recent rise of Obama in the approval polls.  Since we all know that trees grow to the sky and trends continue forever, this means it is now a done deal that he, like Slick Willie before him, will successfully "tack to the center" and win re-election.  Right?  How discouraging.

Today's Wall Street Journal editorial page provides a useful reminder that Obama is no more moving to the center than is Keith Olbermann.  The Journal provided valuable op-ed space to Ed's "Chairman Zero" where he impressed one and all with his new regulatory review emphasizing cost benefit analysis.  Yea!

Now we learn that among the "benefits" to be considered are "values that are difficult of impossible to quantify, including equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts."  Wow!  So vague and sweeping are these alleged benefits, that a regulation could cost Industry X $10 billion and yet stand if it "increased human dignity" by $11 billion in the bureaucratic mind.

Please folks, don't be fooled.  

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Dispicable trial lawyers smell CO2 in the water

This is how harmfully predatory the trial lawyers are in this country...

From Google -- From being a marginal and even mocked issue, climate-change litigation is fast emerging as a new frontier of law where some believe hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake.

Compensation for losses inflicted by man-made global warming would be jaw-dropping, a payout that would make tobacco and asbestos damages look like pocket money.

Imagine: a country or an individual could get redress for a drought that destroyed farmland, for floods and storms that created an army of refugees, for rising seas that wiped a small island state off the map.

Let's forget for a minute the fact that man-made global warming is an entirely imaginary menace hatched in the fascist fever swamp that serves as Al Gore's mind. How can you assign cause, and therefore damages, to any one company or government when everybody on Earth uses fossil fuels to live and contributes CO2 molecules to the atmosphere. Even if you could show that there was more CO2 on one region than another, CO2 molecules in Paduka, Ky are indistinguishable from CO2 molecules in the air over Marrakesh, Morocco....and they flow freely in the Jet Stream between the two. How could any skeevy lawyer show cause?

So far the judgements against anybody for CO2 contributions are zero, but with literally trillions at stake, there will be a first. The jackal-like lawyers keep pecking away at the issue and sooner or later they'll find the right judge and 12 stupid people and they'll get a win. Then the flood gates will open and entire economies will crumble under the weight of pointless litigation that does nothing but enrich the evil trial lawyers.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Romney ignores the tea parties at his own peril

Apparently while most other declared or likely 2012 GOP POTUS candidates happily interact with the tea parties in various states, presidential want-to-be Mitt Romney is keeping the Mass. tea party at arms length. I'm not sure what his calculation is but my sense it that he's doing it at his own peril.

Clearly the tea parties wield considerable and demonstrable electoral power and neglecting to woo them is a dangerous game to be playing if one entertains national elected-office ambitions. It's probably that Romney is an old-school republican and he's essentially re-running the 2008 election, calculating that if he can win over the moderate center, he can afford to ignore what he perceives as the radical right tea-party caucus. What his handlers have failed to tell him is that the tea parties occupy both the center and right bases. Having broad appeal is good, but it's not necessary to alienate half of the base while posturing as a centrist to win the other half.

If Romney is the nominee, I guess I'll have to hold my nose and vote like I did with J.Mac but I won't like it. I don't want to have to cast another vote for a luke-warm centrist who's already lost a national nomination. Romney thinks it's his turn to be the GOP nominee. That's how these old-school guys think. He had his shot. Time for some new, untainted blood.

South Koreans kick some pirate butt

When it comes to Somali pirates, the South Koreans are kicking ass and taking names....

From FoxNews -- South Korean special forces stormed a hijacked freighter in the Arabian Sea on Friday, rescuing all 21 crew members and killing eight assailants in a rare and bold raid on Somali pirates, South Korea said.

Excellent! All crew safe and all pirates either dead or captured. That's how you deal with maritime pirates. Good for the South Koreans. If all countries dealt with these pirates this way, Somalia would quickly run out of pirates.

Mobster Name Generator

Because mobsters love to give each other colorful nicknames, I thought I'd get one for my self. I headed over to Mobster Name Generator and it gave me Sylvio Hankypants as my mobster nick-name....heh heh. You should get one for yourself and report back here. Let's see who's got the best one. Click on the link and see what comes up.

Top-20 nick-names of mobsters who got pinched in NY yesterday


You may have heard about the huge MOB bust in New York yesterday. The feds grabbed guys associated with all 5 major crime families. If there's anything that's cool about mobsters it's that they give each other some terrific nick-names. Head on over to VillageVoice and read the top 20 best MOB nick-names of those who got pinched. Here are #11-#15.....

15. ANTHINO RUSSO, also known as "Hootie"

14. FRANK BELLANTONI, also known as "Meatball"

13. CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS, also known as "Burger"

12. VINCENZO FROGIERO, also known as "Vinny Carwash"

11. JOSEPH CARNA, also known as "Junior Lollipops"

My personal favorite is #17. ANTHONY CAVEZZA, also known as "Tony Bagels". He got robbed. Any mobster with the name Tony Bagels should easily crack the top 5.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Volunteer dhimmitude

Posted by Bill

There are an unfortunate number of examples of the referenced phenomenon.  However, the current "National Review" had an unusually cringe-inducing one.

It seems that Trevelez, in Granada, Spain, is famous for air-cured ham.  The mention of this fact by a school teacher in Cadiz earned him a student complaint and a visit from the police, and local prosecutors threatened him with charges under Article 525 of the penal code for "offending the feelings of the members of a religious confession."  The complaint was later dismissed, but one can imagine the teacher got the message loud and clear.

I respectfully ask Ed if I can offer one of his "virtual cookies" to anyone correctly guessing which religion the offended student identifies with.

John Lewis embarrasses the good people of Georgia once again

Embarrassingly stupid representative from Georgia, John Lewis, fantasizes that a constitutional right for government-mandated purchase of health-care exists. The hilarity happens around the 1:20 mark....



The idiotic comparison that the media and democrats love to make is the states' mandate that car operators have auto insurance. But this is because you might hurt somebody else with your car. That's not an issue with your health. Moreover, Lewis is confusing the guarantee of actual happiness with the pursuit of happiness. Government should not be in the business of guaranteeing anybody happiness. Additionally, the equal protection clause, which guarantees that all citizens are treated the same by government, has nothing to do with access to health-care no matter how you twist it.

If there was ever a poster boy for rising to the level of your own incompetence, it's John Lewis. He's a perfect product of dreadful government schools. He is willfully and entirely clueless about the Constitution and doesn't realize this reporter is humiliating him with these questions.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Steve Cohen validates Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies

Tennessee democrat Steve Cohen, who I'm guessing might be a Jew, has simultaneously disobeyed Chairman Zero and validated Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies by comparing republicans who want to repeal Obamacare, to Nazis.....

From Hotair -- “They say it’s a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels,” Cohen said. “You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That’s the same kind of thing. And Congressman Cohen didn’t stop there.

“The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it–believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care. Politifact said the biggest lie of 2010 was a government takeover of health care because there is no government takeover,” Cohen said.

Wasn't it Obama who suggested both parties tone down the hysterical vitriol and partisan rancor? I'd say that calling somebody a Nazi ranks as hysterically vitriolic and rancorous.

Also as you know, Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies clearly states that, "as a discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." A commonly accepted corollary of Godwin's Law points out that anybody who invokes the Nazi analogy officially cedes the argument and loses.

Ergo, by comparing republicans to Nazis, Steve Cohen loses the health-care debate.

Harry Reid uncharacteristically tells the truth

On a local radio show, Harry Reid may have caused a tear in the fabric of time/space by telling the truth for a change.....

"I am going to go back to Washington tomorrow and meet with the president of China. He is a dictator," Reid told local TV talk show "Face to Face with Jon Ralston." "He can do a lot of things through the form of government they have."
"Maybe I shouldn't have said dictator, but they have a different type of government than we have and that's an understatement," Reid said.

Dingy Harry shocked even himself by telling the truth. But then like all smarmy politicians he recovered and took it all back. What a classless oaf!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Great, another governor/preacher


This is just perfect. Another Alabama governor who's a preacher first and governor some other time.....

From FoxNews -- Alabama Republican Governor Robert Bentley said in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day message Monday that he does not consider Americans who do not accept Jesus Christ as their savior to be his brothers and sisters.

''Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters," he continued. "So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

I don't care if a governor is a Christian. That's a good thing, but being a Christian has very little if anything to do with managing a state, making economic decisions, recruiting business, lowering taxes and spending, and improving in general, the lives of ALL Alabama citizens. There was plenty of talk of the corruption of Robert Bentley during the election. I doubt seriously if he's the choir boy he's trying to portray himself as. I'm sorry, but I'm just not comfortable with a politician who wears his religion on his sleeve like he's trying to show everybody how pious and correct he is. The national media are already making fun of how stupid and backwards we are in Alabama based on these comments. Sadly, they may be right because this kind of transparent pandering to the bible-belters seems to work for politicians down here.

As stupid as claims about the violation of the establishment clause usually are, this is the closest thing I've seen to it actually being violated. Essentially Bentley's saying the if you don't believe as he does, you're a second class citizen in his eyes. In his mind, there is an established acceptable religion. Good grief.....I thought Judge Roy Moore's quixotic tilt to get the ten commandments posted everywhere was stupid.

Lower my taxes, improve the jobless numbers, and recruit industry to the state.....then I"ll be impressed.

Chris Matthews makes a useful stooge out of Michael Steele


Liberal toads like Chris Matthews love to invite black RINO's like Colin Powell and Michael Steele on their shows because they let him get away with using the racism charge against the GOP every time. It's embarrassing. Here's Matthews to Michael Steele.....

From Newsbusters -- "I go to Republican convention; I go to Democrat [convention] and as a white guy one of the things I notice about the difference – one thing I notice about black people at different conventions [is] you go to the Democrat convention [and] black folk are hanging together, having a good time. They’re smiling and enjoying themselves. They feel very much at home. You go to Republican [convention] – you get the feeling you are all told individually ‘now don’t bunch up; don’t get together, don’t crowd or you’ll scare these people’. Is that true in the Republican Party? Is that still true in your party?

Did you fear that if you got together with some other African Americans that white guys might get scared of you?"

By not calling him on that lie right on the spot, Steele basically confirmed the demcrats' favorite meme regarding the GOP...that they are racist bigots who are afraid of blacks in groups of more than three.

Also, did you notice how Matthews said, "Is that still true in your party?" He had to couch the question in the framework of the historical racism of the GOP. Why didn't Steele point out that it's always been the republican party that fought for equality and civil rights and the democrat party that resisted it? Why didn't he point out that democrat party policies have kept blacks dependent, poor, and uneducated and that republican policies would free minorities to achieve and succeed, limited only by their own selves? Michael Steel, like Colin Powell, wants desperately to be liked by the DC media so they let the racism charge slide.

I am ashamed of Steele for not standing up to that and I'm glad that he's no longer the RNC chair for that reason. He let Chris Matthews use him like a stooge on national TV. When he and Colin Powell get together at the next DC cocktail party, I wonder if their white hosts will get nervous?

Obama humiliates republicans in their own back yard

It's embarrassing that Pres. Obama is the one who's calling for deregulation of the business environment in which we've toiled lo, these many years.....

From CNBC -- President Barack Obama Tuesday ordered a government-wide review of regulations with the goal of eliminating those that hurt job creation and make the U.S. economy less competitive.

Obama took action after unveiling his plan in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he said some rules have placed "unreasonable burdens on business — burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs."

Where are the new small-government republicans on this? With jobs having been front and center of the American psyche for like 3 years, it's shameful that a quasi-socialist President is calling for regulatory reform and not the republicans. I"ll believe it when I see it, but I"ll applaud Chairman Zero if this turns into an actual relaxing of the onerous regulations that stifle growth and tamp down entrepreneurship in the business world. To help out the President, House republicans should have at the ready a laundry list of idiotic federal regulations that should be reviewed and tossed out. Republicans aren't known for their political daftness so I doubt they saw this coming and were as surprised as I was.

Even Fox engages in spin......I'm disappointed

This was one of the headlines on FoxNation this morning:

Politicians Want Bath Salts Banned

Pretty alarming from a conservative point of view. I reflexively imagined a smarmy politician like Bloomberg banning bath salts because it contained the world "salt". Fox knew it would get it's readers all worked up into an over-regulation, anti-government lather. Turns out that the government isn't planning on banning bath salts, but that a new, very dangerous, synthetic form of methamphetamine has surfaced and is being marketed as a bath salt to get around the usual regulations about herbal supplements and such. Apparently some kids in Mississippi have committed suicide after taking this drug and law enforcement is already trying to get laws passed to ban the sale of this drug as a bath salt.

It's completely not what the headline would lead you to believe. I resent Fox manipulating it's readers by luring us in with outrageous, intentionally misleading headlines. Fox and Friends does the same thing in the morning. They regularly tease a story in a salacious way but then when you watch it, it turns out not to be about what they teased, rather something innocuous and trivial. Fox should stop this practice as I'm starting to tune out and watch other stations in the morning.

The Swiss get exposed


I can't imagine this is going to make the famously private Swiss banking community happy....

From DailyMail -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has threatened to reveal confidential offshore bank accounts of hundreds of the rich and famous.
A former Swiss banker handed the whistle-blower two CDs reputedly containing details of up to 2,000 wealthy individuals and corporations, including 40 politicians and various celebrities.
The ‘high net worth’ individuals are from Britain, America, Germany, Austria, Asia and ‘all over’, according to Rudolf Elmer, who said he wants to expose mass tax evasion.

If there's anything the Swiss base their entire country on, it's privacy. Information like this getting out to the media will send a chill across the banking industry in that country and other banking havens such as Grand Cayman will stand to benefit greatly. It wouldn't surprise me if this guy Elmer were to mysteriously disappear at some point, just to send a message to any other snitches in positions of Swiss banking access.

Monday, January 17, 2011

On MLK Day, let a hustler hustle

Here's race hustler extraordinaire Al Sharpton blaming the violence, thuggery, drug addiction, and dereliction of today's black youths on the one white criminal he could think of, Scarface....



Point 1: Not one of those white reporters or other panelists had the guts to point out to Sharpton that it's black culture in general and entertainers who're setting the bad examples for black youths. I'll bet there isn't 1 black kid in 100 under the age of 25 who can tell you anything about the movie Scarface.
Point 2: Arizona has been celebrating MLK Day since 1992, yet not one panelist of the crowd of whites pointed this out. Where does Deutcsh get off suggesting that Arizona secede from the union? Because of the MLK Day that got resolved 18 years ago? Because they allow conceal/carry weapons? Because they oppose illegal immigration? Arizona should be celebrated for these things. What a tool Deutcsh is!

Every MLK Day all media people are obliged to nod stupidly and obediently agree lest they be called racists, while self-appointed black leaders spout off whatever they like about how white America is still keeping blacks down. At what point are these black leaders going to point the finger of blame at their own culture for encouraging government dependency, illiteracy with Ebonics, and always blaming others for their own failures? At what point is Al Sharpton going to admit that blacks are disproportionately responsible for violent crimes against other blacks, responsible for their kids' obsession with drugs, violence, and lawlessness through rap music, and responsible for the illegitimacy rate for blacks being around 70%?

Besides conservative black columnists, the only two blacks brave enough to speak up are Bill Cosby and Juan Williams, yet they are dismissed as Uncle Toms for daring to tell blacks that it's their own fault for failing. It's much easier for blacks, and less uncomfortable for guilty whites, to let a hustler like Sharpton repeat ad-nauseum the blacks-are-victims-of-opressive-white-patriarchal-society canard. It fits the race template everybody's comfortable with.

Ron Reagan Jr. smears his dad's legacy

Ron Reagan Jr., the back-stabbing liberal son of the former President, apparently can't make money doing anything else so he's reviving the old "Alzheimer's in office" meme about his father to drive sales of his stupid book...

From ABCNews -- Former President Ronald Reagan -- who diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease five years after leaving the presidency – elicited “shivers of concern” about his mental state as early as 1984, during his first term in office, according to a new book by his son, Ron Jr.


In his forthcoming memoir, “My Father at 100,” Ronald Reagan Jr. writes that he grew concerned that something was wrong with his father “beyond mellowing” in the early 1980s.

Everybody who was in the white house during the Reagan years, including all his doctors, are saying that this is absolutely not true and that Ron Jr. should be ashamed for attempting to smear his dad's legacy in order to sell some books. His publisher must have said, "Look Ron, nobody wants to read what you think about your dad. You've got to come up with something salacious and controversial to get people interested."

What a piece of crap Ron Jr. is!

Heh heh....Darwin


You can't write comedy like this folks....

(Reuters) - An Amtrak train struck and killed a woman who was listening to music while jogging along the tracks, police said on Saturday.

It's not like she didn't know where a train might be and by wearing ear buds, she prevented the one sure way of being alerted to it's approach.

Exit question: who jogs on train tracks anyway?

By taking both sides, Rudy tries to appear presidential....tries, and fails

Here's Rudy Giuliani trying to take both sides of the "rush to judgement" charge.....



How can he claim that the right rushed to defend itself when unhinged, leftist toad Paul Krugman took less than two hours after the shooting to start accusing the tea-parties of causing the shooting with their rhetoric? When you know that the lapdog media and all liberals will blame anything bad on the tea-parties, why isn't an immediate rebuttal of those charges in order?

Apparently Rudy has calculated that the American people want civility and bipartisanship to rule the day and so he's prudently taking that line in interviews. All this demonstrates is that Rudy is another pandering, self-interested politician who has no place in the current conservative movement.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

What if Loughner had been a Tea Partier?

Posted by Bill
 I thing we all know the answer to the question.  The left immediately blamed Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, etc. without any evidence and before any evidence could have been known.  The buffoonish Sheriff Dupnik engaged in baseless speculation at his first press briefing.  All have been proven totally wrong about the shooter's motivation.  But, let's just say for the sake of argument that Loughner had been motivated by a "right wing" philosophy.  I say, "so what?"

Am I responsible for the actions of everyone who may hold views that I may share?  Unless I subscribe to a philosophy that overtly advocates violence, I think not. 

Do you recall the "Unabomber?"  This anarchist hermit sent mail bombs that killed 3 and injured 23.  This acronym name derives from "UNiversity and Airline BOMBER.  Among his sources of inspiration were any number of leftist ideas.  His published manifesto is strikingly similar to Al Gore's alarmist book, "Earth in the Balance."    Al Gore later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and has never been routinely questioned by the mainstream media regarding the Unabomber.  I think Al Gore is profoundly wrong, but he is not responsible for the Unabomber.

Nearly every modern terrorist openly claims to be conducting his or her mayhem in the service of the Islamic religion.  Yet, we are constantly badgered to make the distinction between the "Religion of Peace" and the actions of the jihadists.  Remember Maj. Nadal Hasan, the alleged Ft. Hood shooter?  Everyone from President Obama to the Army Chief of Staff to the media bent over backwards to look the other way at his motivations.

My point is that there will be crazy people in any society.  In our modern times we have decided not to institutionalize most of these unfortunates.  Sometimes they latch onto what is in every other respect a good cause or a misguided but non-violent cause and go off the rails into violence.  That in itself doesn't automatically condemn the cause, which must stand or fall on the strength of its ideas.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Catholicism.....I just don't get it

I am in no way anti-Catholic but, I just don't get some things about Catholicism. Things that don't exactly jive with my sense of universal truths.....

From Yahoo -- Reporting from London — The late Pope John Paul II will be beatified this spring, the Vatican announced Friday after the current pontiff, Benedict XVI, certified that his predecessor had met the requirements.

The move puts the former pope a step closer to sainthood on what is already an unusually accelerated timetable that Benedict launched within weeks of John Paul's death almost six years ago.

The Vatican said Benedict had approved findings by the church that John Paul had performed a miracle after his death, a prerequisite for beatification. A nun who suffered from Parkinson's disease, as did the late pope, said she was healed of her affliction after praying to John Paul shortly after he died.

First, and this may be a semantic bone I'm picking but, how is Pope John Paul II himself performing a miracle, rather than the miracle being performed by God through him, consistent with the idea of God being God and men being men? I mean it's a tad presumptuous to deify a mere man, isn't it? Do Catholics really believe that men can perform miracles because God is never mentioned in relation to these so-called "miracles".
Second, who approves the current Pope to be the final arbiter of who deserves beatification and then sainthood? Just because a hyper-politicized college of Cardinals elects him Pope, how does that bestow special God-like powers upon him?
Last, is it true that the church believes that JP-II actually performed a miracle after he died? You must be kidding? I don't recall anywhere in the Bible it being suggested that your soul can perform miracles on Earth from beyond the grave.
Third(I put it last because it doesn't go with the other three), what is the significance and purpose to God of stigmata and stigmata-like occurrences? What possible reason would God or Mary have of revealing themselves in ways like this?

Again, I'm not knocking Catholicism. I'm just wondering how these ideas and practices register with normal human beliefs about God, Jesus Christ, the afterlife, etc.?

Great....a Tucson victim blaming the right-wing now

The media's been waiting for one of the Tucson victims to blame the right-wing for the shootings. Now they have their stooge....

From Politico -- A wounded survivor of the Tucson shooting that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is blaming Sarah Palin, House Speaker John Boehner, Fox TV host Glenn Beck, and former Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle for the tragedy.

“It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Eric Fuller said in an interview with Democracy NOW
.


Oh, the main-stream media's going to love this guy. Just like the self-righteous 9/11 widows, about whom were lectured to by the media as being above criticism and question because they were victims of 9/11, this guy will be held up by MSNBC and the rest of the media as unquestionable and anyone who dares to disagree with him or his points is a hateful, right-wing SOB. You watch, it'll start with the evening news cycle tonight......

Predictable "outrage"


Posted by Bill



In north Georgia, we have had something unique in my life as a Southerner- a week long snow and ice event that has shut down just about every school district north of Macon. This has happened after just one week of the new semester. Most districts build in 3 or 4 makeup days for this sort of thing - they've already lost 5. Not a good situation. Parents are understandably going nuts, as are most children by now.

Thursday, school officials in Fannin and Gilmer counties (near the NC state line) announced that they would have to start back to school on Monday. I read that Charlotte, NC plans to do the same. Monday is, of course, the federal, state, and local holiday for Martin Luther King's Birthday. It's not really his birthday, which is the 15th, but we've got to have those Monday holidays. We're supposed to all have a day of "reflection and service" or something like that, for what it's worth. Martin Luther King was a great and courageous man who valued education, not meaningless symbolism.

They also plan to hold class on the Washington's Birthday holiday on February 21st. This is the holiday to honor the "Father of our Country" that nearly everyone insists on calling "Presidents' Day" incorrectly. I know I think Washington is clearly worthy having a holiday named for him, but that's another subject.

My point is that the usual self appointed "civil rights leaders" are "outraged" by this action. They are all over the news. It's so predictable. I've yet to hear of any Daughters of the American Revolution protesters.

The post office is also talking about delivering Sunday and Monday since they've missed the whole week, too. After this feigned "outrage" I'll bet they back down.

Censorship rears its ugly head

There seems to be a rash of infantile government censorship sweeping North America. They're removing the N-word from Huck Finn and now the dumb Canadians, based on a phone call from one activist, are banning the song Money For Nothing by Dire Straits.....

From TheSpec via MichelleMalkin -- The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has ruled that Dire Straits’ 1980s hit Money for Nothing is too offensive for Canadian radio.

The ruling, released Wednesday, was in response to a complaint against St. John’s radio station CHOZ-FM. The listener complained that the word faggot – which appears three times in the song is “extremely offensive” to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Since nothing of interest is going on up there in the great white north, the government censors have a lot of idle time to cause trouble for everybody, or did the 25 year old song just now get released in Canada? Just because civil people don't use the N-word or the Fa-word, doesn't mean that society must be scrubbed of every thing some aggrieved minority finds mildly offensive.

Whatever, at least one radio station in Edmonton is protesting by playing the song, unedited, non-stop for an hour. Here's the video for your own protest of solidarity. Turn up your speakers and see if any of your office mates get upset.


Federal Internet ID cards = the sign of the Beast


I doubt this has much chance of going anywhere but still, that Chairman Zero would attempt to have anybody who uses the Internet register with government goons, is astonishing in its boldness....

From WashingtonTimes -- The White House cybersecurity adviser joined Commerce Secretary Gary Locke on Jan. 7 to announce what amounts to a national ID card for the Internet.

For bloggers like me who're highly critical of all heavy-handed government, but especially Obama's government, this amounts to Christians accepting the sign of the anti-Christ on their foreheads. Ok, even I'll admit that's a bit of a stretch as metaphors go but I'd no sooner register with the government as a blogger than I would accept a government ID number tattooed on my body. I'd rather go underground.

As always, our benevolent overlords are patting us on the heads and telling us that it's for our own good...it'll make us more secure. Don't believe it. It'll be to control you, restrict what you say and to whom you say it, and make it easier to find you when you are too critical of them.

If all you do is shop on the Internet you probably don't care, but what happens when the government wants to know your shopping habits? Who'll fight for your rights to privacy and free speech then? This will affect all of us.

The welfare state illustrated in a 3 min vid. clip

Over at Wildfireapp.com, they hosted a Lessons from Atlas Shrugged video contest. Here is the #2 finisher, my favorite of the three finalists.....



If only politicians would put conservative principles in such obvious, easy to understand terms, more people would realize the folly of big, intrusive government that usurps the freedoms and liberties of the individual, rewards dereliction, and tamps down the entrepreneurial spirit of all.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Stupid phrase of the day...."brown relief"

NPR injects pointless race rhetoric into the Tuscon shootings by inviting a Latino feminist to rejoice that the shooter was a "gringo" and not one of her own....



Brown relief? She didn't sound horrified by the killings. Probably because killing is part of the Latino culture around the border. Her only concern was the race of the shooter. She didn't want all Latinos to be thought of as violent because of the actions of one. What about the law-abiding tea-party activists around the country who've been lied about repeatedly by the media and called violent, gun-toting, potential killers? By every account, Loughner was a liberal, yet democrats and their obedient allies in the media continue to lie about him being led to violence by conservative rhetoric.

When NPR invites a conservative on to rejoice that this guy was not one of us, I'll give them some credit. Until then, "brown relief" will mean the same thing that NPR means.....a laxative commercial.

Government Motors....still a losing investment

As always, the American taxpayer gets screwed by our government....

From Yahoo -- WASHINGTON – By selling a block of its shares in General Motors Co. for $33 each — a price far below the "break-even" point — the government sharply reduced the chances of taxpayers fully recovering their $50 billion investment in the auto giant, a new report from a congressional watchdog says.

The irony is that the dreadful unions, who now basically own the car companies from whom they previously extorted undeserved billions, were the ones who destroyed GM and Chrysler in the first place. Obama sidestepped the intent of the Constitution and awarded ownership to villainous, union thugs....loyal-democrat, villainous, union thugs that is.

If the car companies had been allowed to declare bankruptcy as they should have, the union labor contracts would have been thrown out and the companies could have reorganized under a free-labor market environment, the way all companies should have to operate. As it is, GM and Chrysler continue to drown under the unbearable weight of union wage and pension contract obligations and their declining stock price reflects that. It's just too bad the American taxpayer has to absorb the billions in losses.

Obama takes credit for Gabby Giffords' miraculous recovery


True to craven democrat form, Chairman Zero couldn't resist taking credit for Gabrielle Giffords opening her eyes for the first time since the shooting....

From CNSNews -- At Wednesday’s memorial service in Tucson, President Obama announced that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had opened her eyes for the first time since she was shot in the head on Saturday.

But three days earlier, the Tucson Sentinel reported that Giffords had opened her eyes on Sunday:

Giffords is in a drug-induced coma in intensive care,” the newspaper reported on Jan. 9. “Doctors frequently awaken her to check her responsiveness, and she could open her eyes and respond to simple commands Sunday -- an encouraging sign, said [Dr. Peter] Rhee.”

Democrats love injecting themselves into historically significant events. Bill Clinton said that as a boy of 9, he gave up his bus seat to a black child when he heard about Rosa Parks. As it turns out, Arkansas schools were segregated so Clinton couldn't have ridden the bus with black children. He also claimed to be profoundly affected by black church burnings in Arkansas when the historical record shows that no black churches were burned in Arkansas. Hillary claimed to have been named after Sir Edmund Hillary who climbed mount Everest but, she was born 3 years before that.

Democrats believe that if they are associated somehow with historical events, it'll give them more gravitas and voters will be moved by their proximity to greatness. But it's all just Kabuki theater for media and gullible voter consumption.

Sexting and harassment charges are the least of Brett Favre's troubles


And the news for Brett Favre just gets worse and worse.....

From FoxNews -- The younger sister of Brett Favre was among five people arrested in Diamondhead, Miss., after police discovered a meth lab, police told Fox News.

Officers responded to the condo complex after allegedly witnessing a drug purchase nearby. Specific charges against the three men and two women have not been announced yet.

The suspects were reportedly taken to a hospital for decontamination before being taken to jail. Hazmat teams entered the condo unit to dispose of the chemicals.

No wonder Brett kept un-retiring from football, he didn't want to go home and have to deal with his family.

You know you've hit rock bottom when the cops send you to get decontaminated before throwing you in the clink.

Why would the sister of a fabulously rich NFL, Hall of Fame quarter-back be a drug dealer? Come on Brett! Can he not take care of his own family any better than that? Give the girl some money or at least pay somebody to keep her out of trouble.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Peace Corps....not so peaceful

This is disturbing....

From FoxNews -- More than 1,000 young American women have been raped or sexually assaulted in the last decade while serving as Peace Corps volunteers in foreign countries, an ABC News 20/20 investigation has found.

In some cases, victims say, the Peace Corps has ignored safety concerns and later tried to blame the women who were raped for bringing on the attacks.


The heads of organizations like this are usually the recipients of political favors for campaign donations and such. They have no real desire to operate or manage these foreign service organizations, nor do they care about the day to day goings-on in remote, third-world countries, and the chronic gang-rape of American women isn't considered polite conversation at DC cocktail parties.

If this number is true, 1000 American girls raped, then no amount of good charity work can outweigh the cost to these women of that. Isn't it about time for these miserably inept countries to mooch off somebody else for a few generations? I mean we're running out of women to supply for them.

I've never really got the whole Peace Corps thing. Do you learn a skill that'll help you get a job back home? I mean, helping people is a noble thing but at the cost of likely rape? I wonder if Obama will use this as an opportunity to push for his program of 2 years of mandatory youth volunteer service he's been talking about?

1000 girls raped! How has this gone unnoticed?

Et tu, Rep. King, et tu?

Whenever there's a tragedy involving a gun, predictable liberals rush to propose gun-control legislation, as if regulating law-abiding citizens would have stopped the Tucson shooting. What you don't expect is for a republican to have such a stupid knee-jerk response.....

From Hotair -- Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, will introduce legislation that will make it a federal crime to carry a firearm within 1,000 feet of federal officeholders and judges

Forget for a minute the unenforcability of such a stupid law. Are the police going to detain and search everybody within 1000 feet of any elected official making an appearance?
-Does that mean when Peter King walks down the street, anybody lawfully carrying a gun will be in violation of the law as he gets within 1000 feet?
-There are thousands of federal officials, how can any citizen know where they are at all times to make sure we don't violate the law?
-And is the 2nd amendment and the right if an individual to safeguard his own body superseded by the desire of federal officials to "feel" safe? I think not.

We all know this is unconstitutional but just for a minute, let's pretend it is a reasonable limitation on the legal carrying of a firearm. Would this have done any good in the Tucson shooting case? No. Furthermore, as an elected official, I would have wanted, as Gabby Giffords wanted, somebody with a firearm of his own, to shoot and kill this nut before he kills everybody.

It's the same argument we always have whenever somebody attempts to further restrict the lawful possession of a firearm....in every single case of a mass shooting, the survivors and relatives of the dead would give anything for somebody with a gun to have stopped the killing. If you restrict lawful people from carrying guns, only the nut jobs will have the guns. Then we're all defenseless. Peter King should know better.

UPDATE: Speaker Boehner quickly put the kibosh on this stupid idea. More gun regulation isn't the answer.