Heavy-Handed Politics: March 9, 2008

Hey. I have an idea:

Al-Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups live in a shadow world where they plot to kill you and me.

Let's treat them like illegal immigrants. Give them U.S. citizenship so we can get them "out of the shadows."

I am apalled. This is hurtful to the male species, unfair, and out of line. Heh.

Ashley Herzog: Will Feminists Again Attempt To Censor Science?

Last week, Science Daily reported on a study from Northwestern University which proved "that girls have superior language abilities than boys...and gender differences in language appear biological."

Charles Krauthammer: An Election About Identity, Not Policy

Elections can be about policy, personality or identity. The race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is surely not about policy. The differences between the two are microscopic.

But .......

David Limbaugh: A War of Worldviews

When Barack Obama promises change for America, I graciously assume, for now, that he doesn't mean he will change America to conform to his apparently racist pastor's vision for this country.

Kathleen Parker: Mothers and Racists and Sexists, Oh My!

Race and gender, once the courted darlings of the Democrats, are becoming party poopers. Free speech, it seems, is no longer so free in the political arena.

Burt Prelutsky: The High Cost of a Free Lunch

Growing up, as I did, in the home of Russian Jewish immigrants, it figures that I'd start out thinking that, by all rights, FDR belonged on Mount Rushmore.

John Hawkins: Why I Am A Conservative

Long ago, when I was a mushy headed moderate, I studied conservatism and liberalism to try to figure out what the best philosophy was for my life and for my country.

How We Beat the '70s

A cap-gains cut was part of the answer.

Obama on Offense

For someone who's done so well, Michelle has a decidedly bleak vision of America.

Obama and the Race Card

The Senator can't have it both ways.

The Importance of Fallon's Fall

"State and CIA are filled with professionals educated in elite universities dominated by the left and, while not as wacky as their professors, have come away with the default assumption that liberals are always right. Many military officers, who increasingly have graduate degrees from such universities, seem to have imbibed similar habits of mind."

Read more of Michael Barone's The Importance of Fallon's Fall.

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: Super Delegates Lining Up for Barack Obama

A funny thing is happening. While Hillary and Bill appeal to super delegates to override the will of the voters and back Hillary, the super delegates are doing just the opposite.

“The Democratic party is very close to being the [Communist-controlled Progressive] party of Henry Wallace... Today’s left sees the world pretty much in the same terms as the Stalinists did. What has happened is that it has lost its faith in the working class, so its agenda is entirely negative. They’ve dropped the dictatorship of the proletariat and they all say they’re democrats, but so did Lenin. The vast bulk of the American left is a Communist left and they’ve introduced some fascist ideas like ‘identity politics,’ which is straight out of Mussolini. They don’t talk about the working class, they talk about women and race. There’s not much that they’ve learned from the history of the 20th century.” —David Horowitz

WHAT A BUNCH OF B.S.

Fox News:
Obama Condemns Pastor's Controversial Remarks

“Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy,” he said in the statement. “I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.”
Obama said he never personally heard Wright preach the statements at the center of the controversy, but that he first learned of them when he launched his presidential campaign.

There, quite simply, is no way that you can be a member of a church for twenty years, get married there, have your children baptized there, have the preacher as your mentor, and not know the things he has said and what he and the church stand for. If Barack "vehemently" disagrees with or profoundly disagrees with such statements or positions of the church and its' minister, he would leave the church. I know I would.

NEWS FLASH: TERRORISTS USE HUMAN SHIELDS

Hamas Admits to Using Women, Children As Human Shields
Jerusalem – A Hamas parliamentarian has openly admitted to developing a “death-seeking” culture that uses women, children and the elderly as human shields against Israeli military attacks...

STUPIDITY REIGNS:

AND OUR LEGISLATORS HAVE AN UNCONTROLLABLE APPETITE TO SPEND OUR MONEY. THIS IS NOT A GOOD 1-2 COMBINATION.

We have runaway oil prices. We have food prices increasing (like the rising prices of corn) due to government meddling in the energy field (such as corn based ethanol). We are in, or entering into, a recession we are told on a daily basis; whether this is true or not is still up for debate. This is the worst economy since the great depression the left screams.

So what is their answer?

Congress Says Yes to Tax Hikes
(CNSNews.com) - Both the House and Senate have now passed budget plans that envision tax hikes for most Americans. On Thursday, most House Democrats -- all but 16 -- voted for a 2009 budget plan that includes the single largest tax increase in the nation’s history, House Republican Whip Roy Blunt said...

What a bunch of useless morons. They say the economy is horrible and their answer is to take more of your money.

Unbelievable.

European Parliament Fines Members for Opposing EU Treaty

By Michael Hunstman

In theory the European Parliament ought to be the most open and democratic of the EU institutions: it is, after all, composed of those who, unlike any other EU creature, have sought and won election via the ballot box. The Bovine & Ovine (European Branch) have, however, a refined Brownshirt flavour about them. (continue reading)

Sarkozy the Savior?

By Paul Belien

During the presidential campaign his Socialist opponent, Segolene Royal, warned that a Sarkozy victory would lead to violence in the Muslim neighborhoods. The French refused to be intimidated into appeasement and rose to the occasion. French men and women who normally do not vote because they distrust politics turned out en masse to elect “Sarko.” The “thugs” have since begun to ambush police and no longer refrain from shooting at officers, but the Sarkozy government had not clamped down on them.

Today, 10 months after his victory, Mr Sarkozy’s approval rate has tumbled from 65 to 38 percent. He has not lived up to his promise to reclaim France’s lost territories from the “thugs.” Moreover...... (read more)

THE RACIAL SPLIT THAT'S TEARING THE DEMOCRATS APART

By Shawn Steel

Barack Hussein Obama's recent ridicule and rejection of Hillary Rodham Clinton's suggestion that he be her VP running-mate squashes the "dream-team" fantasy of many Democrats.

It also means the racial division within the Democrat Party between Blacks and Latinos will continue to widen into a disastrously unbridgeable abyss. What's happening in my home town of Los Angeles is instructive.

The Los Angeles Times has been documenting with Pulitzer quality reporting, the racial gang wars in the L.A. basin. The largest and oldest Latino gang, the Mexican Mafia, has ordered ethnic cleansing of formerly all-black neighborhoods. This has led to an increase in black vs Latino violence.

Close to my home, the Gateway Harbor area, several blacks have been murdered by Latino gangs in this expressed racial hate crime wave. A six year old black boy was shot in the head and is fighting for his life at Harbor UCLA Medical center -- two Latino gang members were arrested for the "random" shooting. Hate crime charges may be filed.

These hate crimes help explain the growing division in the national Democrat Party.

Read more...

The Man Without A Party
By Seton Motley

Ronald Reagan often said "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me."

For floundering and foundering New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- a twist on the Gipper's words. Spitzer didn't leave the Democratic Party: the Media just didn't see the need to mention the fact that Spitzer was -- at least until noon Wednesday -- one of the most powerful Democrats in the nation.

On Monday afternoon, the Big Three Networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) and the Associated Press led the charge of the wall-to-wall coverage of the breaking news that Spitzer was involved with an interstate prostitution ring. And with near unanimity they failed to mention that Spitzer is a Democrat. (read more)

USS Cole back in action: Fleet dispatched to deter Syria
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has sent at least three ships to patrol the coast of Lebanon as well as monitor neighboring Israel and Syria.

Pentagon official: China may already be at cyberwar with U.S.

World Tribune —

China’s growing cyberwarfare capabilities are an emerging threat already being felt by the U.S., a senior Pentagon official said.

David Sedney, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, said “there continue to be around the world, not just in the United States but around the world, many, many computer intrusions that are sourced back to ........

How do liberals fight poverty?

From the American Conservative Union:

"How do liberals fight poverty? They make more people poor.

No, it makes no sense whatsoever, but if you're a liberal, it's a viable solution... after all, it's "fair."

Of course, we're talking about the newest liberal-inspired plan to allow a United Nations style tax on American citizens.

It's the Global Poverty Act (S.2433), and according to some conservative sources, this sickening bill could potentially force the United States to spend as much as $845,000,000,000.00 on welfare to third-world countries.

If the Democrat-controlled Congress passes this bill, the United States will have taken the first step toward the complete surrender of our national sovereignty.

And by the way, THE HOUSE HAS ALREADY PASSED THIS BILL! We MUST stop it in the Senate!"

Find out more here.

Obama Floats Like a Butterfly

—David Davenport

"I recently realized that Barack Obama is the Muhammad Ali of presidential politics.

You remember when traditional fighters stood in the middle of the ring and tried to hit Ali, they rarely could because, as he put it, he floated like a butterfly. Ali said he was too pretty to be hit, that your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.

That captures Barack Obama who, so far, has floated like Ali above the fray of traditional politics. We don't know where he stands, which has been part of his appeal. Amazingly, Obama himself wrote that he serves "as a blank screen on which people of vastly different stripes project their own views."

With Hillary Clinton's and Obama's views so similar, the Democratic primary has not forced him to stand and fight on policies and positions. Perhaps when he meets a Republican contender in the fall, he will have to come down to earth and actually tell us what he stands for."

"If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 33, 3 January 1788)

Tension in the Andes

Pass Colombian free-trade agreement, curtail Chavez’s influence.

"But the isolationist fervor on the Democratic campaign trail has further exhausted Congress’s willingness to approve pending free-trade deals with important allies such as Colombia. Our Latin American friends have long complained that we treat them like a forgotten backwater. We sit on our heels, however, at our own peril. Our reluctance to deepen our economic ties with Latin America leaves a vacuum to be exploited by our adversaries. Venezuelan socialist megalomaniac-in-chief Hugo Chavez is making this point abundantly clear."

--Rep. Eric Cantor

Read his whole column on South America here.

“Who ever said that it is the responsibility of government to make life easy?” —Jim Geraghty

"Non-Judgmental" Nonsense

Many in the media refer to Eliot Spitzer as some moral hero who fell from grace. Spitzer was never a moral hero. He was an unscrupulous prosecutor who threw his power around to ruin people, even when he didn't have any case with which to convict them of anything.

Because he was using his overbearing power against businesses, the anti-business left idolized him, just as they idolized Ralph Nader before him as some sort of secular saint because he attacked General Motors.

What Eliot Spitzer did was not out of character. It was completely in character for someone with the hubris that comes with the ability to misuse his power to make or break innocent people.

Spitzer's Media Enablers

Many reporters built careers on the prosecutor's leaks intended to bully innocent people.

BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Read it here.

Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax

By Walter Williams

Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers -- all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.

Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone. There's something else wrong with this picture.

If Congress and ....

Future of Coal Power Under Fire

Cellulosic Ethanol: Not Likely to Be Viable

Man the Lifeboats - Global Warming Alarmism Is Swamping Debate
Media ignore opposition, call scientists 'flat Earthers' to sink climate change dispute.

ElectionWatch: Clinton's Rate Foreclosure Freeze Could Cause 'Chaos'

Media gloss over details and effects of liberal candidates' proposed mortgage bailouts.

By Julia A. Seymour and Amy Menefee
Business & Media Institute

While the Democratic candidates battle it out, the media haven’t gone very in-depth about their respective mortgage bailout plans. Economists say Clinton’s could cause a financial and legal “disaster,” while Obama’s is another massive giveaway/redistribution of taxpayer money.

Read more.

Iraq buildup: Half a million troops and growing

BAGHDAD — Iraq plans to deploy 600,000 military and security forces by 2010 as long-delayed massive equipment deliveries have finally started to arrive. (more)

U.S. military points to new evidence of Iran's involvement in Iraq

BAGHDAD — U.S. military officials are charging Iran with renewed operations to destabilize Iraq. Rear Adm. Greg Smith, a spokesman for American forces in Iraq, said Sunday that U.S. troops recently uncovered a cache near Baghdad of weapons made recently in Iran. Smith also said the Iranians had been recruiting and training Iraqis in Iran, according to statements by Iraqi detainees. (Read on)

Iranian and Syrian trainers killed by Israeli strike on Gaza missiles

JERUSALEM -- Israeli military intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet last week that an air force strike killed several Iranian, Lebanese and Syrian instructors sent to improve Hamas's military and missile capabilities.Yadlin said the death of the instructors marked a...(click here for more)

YOU ARE HEALED

Rise!!
Rise!!
Rise to your feet!!
You are healed!!

Secession? Yes. From Those Who Would Destroy America

By Douglas MacKinnon

In an article that ran recently in The Washington Times, the Montana Secretary of State made it quite clear that he and many of the elected officials of his state take the rights granted by the Second Amendment very seriously.

In response to the news that the Supreme Court is about to hear oral argument regarding the District of Columbia’s ban on gun-ownership as defined by its twisted interpretation of the Second Amendment, Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson said in a letter to the newspaper, “The U.S. would do well to keep its contractual promise to the states that the Second Amendment secures an individual right now as it did upon execution of the statehood contract.”

Mr. Johnson refers to the fact that back in 1889, the people of...... (Read on)

David Strom: The Hidden Cost of 'Good' Ideas

What happens when politicians and pundits succumb to the notion that it is all right to micromanage our daily lives?

Thomas Sowell: The Costs of Crime

For more than two centuries, the political left has been preoccupied with the fate of criminals, often while ignoring or downplaying the fate of the victims of those criminals.

Cal Thomas: Hide and Seek

The campaign manager for Sen. Barack Obama has a point. David Plouffe wants Hillary Clinton to release her income tax returns for the last several years.

Denver Post:
Child rapists could face execution in Colorado

Yahoo! News/AP:
Minn. lawmaker wants scent-free schools

One Man's War on Terror

A very interesting read.

The American GI from Berlin
SPIEGEL ONLINE - News
By Ullrich Fichtner

Berlin-born Jeffrey Jamaleldine wanted to do something about terrorism in the world and so he joined the US Army to fight in Iraq. Now he's back in Bavaria, his face nearly destroyed by a bullet -- but he's still convinced that it is his calling to fight for peace.

H/T to United Conservatives of Virginia.

A Primer on Oil Prices
By Alan Caruba

The U.S. energy policy, as it presently stands, is designed to drive up the cost of oil and its derivatives for every American because it will not permit exploration and extraction, and it will not encourage or permit new refineries to be built. The mandate for ethanol use also increases costs. In addition, it is likely to increase gasoline taxes at some point. This isn’t a policy. It is a plan to reduce the buying power of Americans for every necessity…

Dumb-ass Quote of the Weak Week

"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world."

"I hope you'll join me as we try to change it."

Barack Obama

H/T: Maggie's Farm via United Conservatives of Virginia.

The Chávez Democrats

WSJ.com-

"What is it about Democrats and Hugo Chávez? Even as the Venezuelan strongman was threatening war last week against Colombia, Congress was threatening to hand him a huge strategic victory by spurning Colombia's free trade overtures to the U.S.

This isn't the first time Democrats have come to Mr. Chávez's aid, but it would be the most destructive. The Venezuelan is engaged in a high-stakes competition over the political and economic direction of Latin America. He wants the region to follow his path of ever greater state control of the economy, while assisting U.S. enemies wherever he can. He's already won converts in Bolivia and Ecuador, and he came far too close for American comfort in Mexico's election last year.

Meanwhile, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe is embracing greater economic and political freedom. He has bravely assisted the U.S fight against narco-traffickers, and he now wants to link his country more closely to America with a free-trade accord. As a strategic matter, to reject Colombia's offer now would tell everyone in Latin America that it is far more dangerous to trust America than it is to trash it.
[Hugo Chavez]

Yet Democrats on Capitol Hill are doing their best to help Mr. Chávez prevail against Mr. Uribe. Even as Mr. Chávez was doing his war dance, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus was warning the White House not to send the Colombia deal to the Hill for a vote without the permission of Democratic leaders. He was ....."

(Read on)

Global View

By Bret Stephens
WSJ.com

A President, Not a Symbol

Sometime before Barack Obama's middle name slipped into the realm of the unmentionable, it was supposed to be a selling point of his candidacy. "Well, I think if you've got a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, that's a pretty good contrast to George W. Bush," Mr. Obama told PBS's Tavis Smiley on October 18, 2007. "If you believe that we've got to heal America and we've got to repair our standing in the world, then I think my supporters believe that I am the messenger who can deliver that message."

There are many reasons the idea of an Obama presidency appeals to so many Americans, and not the least of them is that it appeals to so many non-Americans. He blends his several identities so seamlessly as to seem to be part everything -- and so for everyone, everywhere, to feel as if they have a part of him. He combines style, eloquence, youth and a common touch in a way the world hasn't seen in an American president since 1961. His soft-left brand of foreign policy, with its emphasis on global "challenges" rather than American interests, is broadly appealing to the rest of the world (or at least the segment that's in the business of writing op-eds that are later quoted back to American audiences). Read more....

Earmark Showdown

A proposed amendment has the support of all three presidential candidates.

Spitzer's Rise and Fall

One might call it Shakespearian if there were a shred of nobleness in the story of Eliot Spitzer's fall. There is none.

Crucial Questions for Obama

By David Aikman

"Whether Obama or Clinton secures the Democratic nomination for president, there are some crucial questions that still need to be asked of Senator Obama.

While it's right to take him at his word that he's a Christian, the issue of his Muslim father won't go away so easily. According to Shariah, Islamic law accepted as normative by the world's one billion Muslims, if you are born to a Muslim father, you yourself are a Muslim. It's against Muslim law to stop being a Muslim, and if you do so, you are an apostate. In some Muslim countries apostasy is a crime punishable by death and those who murder apostates are often not even punished.

Does Obama's fondness for the religion of his father and step-father extend to that? Is he willing to denounce Islamic law on apostasy as barbaric and anti-American? As Americans, let's hope so."

ABOUT NANNYISM

“The fact that an obese person becomes ill, or a cyclist has an accident, and becomes a burden on taxpayers who must bear the expense of taking care of him, is not a problem of liberty. It’s a problem of socialism where one person is forced to take care of another. There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another... Forcing one person to bear the burden of health care costs for another is not only a moral question but a major threat to personal liberty. Think about all the behaviors and lifestyles that can lead to illness and increase the burden on taxpayers. A daily salt intake exceeding 6 grams can lead to hypertension. A high-fat diet and high alcohol intake can also lead to diabetes. A sedentary lifestyle can lead to several costly diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and heart failure. There are many other behaviors that lead to a greater health care burden, but my question is how much control over your life you are willing to give government in the name of reducing these costs? Would you want government to regulate how much salt you use? What about government deciding how much fat and alcohol you consume? There are immense beneficial health effects of a daily 30-minute aerobic exercise. Would you support government-mandated exercise? You might argue that it’s none of government’s business how much fat, salt or alcohol a person consumes, even if it has adverse health care cost implications. I’d ask: Wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to helmet laws and proposed obesity laws?”

—Walter Williams

“How can limited government and fiscal restraint be equated with lack of compassion for the poor? How can a tax break that puts a little more money in the weekly paychecks of working people be seen as an attack on the needy? Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes—one rich, one poor—both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?” —Ronald Reagan

“I favor a policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the government. Every dollar that we save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.” —Calvin Coolidge

“[I]f industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.” —James Madison

We must be terminated ....

NEWS ALERT: All of mankind and all living, breathing animals must be exterminated. Why? To eliminate carbon emissions, including carbon dioxide so we can save mother earth.

Washington Post:
Studies Say Nothing But Zero Carbon Emissions Will Do
Carbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger

Going down the crapper .......

We get headlines and news stories such as this:

High School Offers Homosexual Porn, Parents Complain
(CNSNews.com) – "Parents in Deerfield, Ill., are upset that a local high school is using books in advanced English classes this spring that they say are laced with graphic sexual content, pervasive expletives and mockery of religion..."

And when concerned parents feel that our schools have gone off the deep end and feel that it is their right, and in the best interest of their children to be home schooled, they have to be worried about this:

California Home-Schooling Ruling Called ‘Assault on Family’
(CNSNews.com) - A ruling by a California appeals court that parents “do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children” drew harsh criticism from religious conservatives on Friday, one of whom said the decision makes tens of thousands of parents into criminals...

Boy, we are going to hell in a hand basket and the hand baskets are running in short supply.

Liberal Guilt

Chain, Chain, Chain, Chain of Fools When everybody’s a victim, nobody’s a victim.
By Mark Steyn

NPR listeners rankled by segments on right

By Jennifer Harper

Some angry National Public Radio listeners have objected to a new program, "Conversations with Conservatives," hosted by Steve Inskeep with a guest conservative of the day with much on his mind......