Voter ID frauds: A few weeks ago, I excoriated the Obama Justice Dept. for blocking South Carolina's voter ID law. Every time I mention voter ID laws, liberals tell me voter ID is racist (because voter ID is applied equally to all voters, by definition it cannot be racist). Liberals also tell me there is no voter fraud problem to justify the implementation of voter ID. As usual, liberals are lying:

South Carolina's attorney general has notified the U.S. Justice Department of potential voter fraud.

Attorney General Alan Wilson sent details of an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles to U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles.

In a letter dated Thursday, Wilson says the analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead. In 71 percent of those cases, ballots were cast between two months and 76 months after the people died. That means they "voted" up to 6 1/3 years after their death.

Because voter ID laws would have prevented every one of these fraudulent votes by dead people, I'm left once again to conclude that liberals are in FAVOR of voter fraud. There is no other rational explanation for their position on the issue.
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On The Brink: The European Union announced an oil embargo against Iran in response to Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. Iran's response:

Tensions in the Gulf could reach a breaking point as a senior Iranian official said Iran would “definitely” close the Strait of Hormuz if an EU oil embargo disrupted the export of crude oil, the semi-official Fars news agency reports.

The announcement came in response to a decision by the European Union on Monday to impose an oil embargo on Iran over the country’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

“The pressure of sanctions is designed to try and make sure that Iran takes seriously our request to come to the table,” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

The Strait of Hormuz is the vital link between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

It is also one of the most strategic chokepoints in the world when it comes to oil transit.

With world oil output estimated at some 88 million barrels per day in 2011, the US Energy Information Administration estimated that some 17 million of those barrels passed through the Strait.

If economic sanctions sufficiently pressure Iran to retaliate by closing down the Strait, nearly 20 per cent of worldwide oil trade would be impacted, resulting in a massive spike in global energy costs.

However, with Washington’s decision to deploy a second carrier strike group in the Gulf, the EU’s attempt to pressure Iran economically could greatly increase the likelihood of all-out war in the region.

If Iran tries to close the Strait Of Hormuz, there will be war, period, and this time, it really will be what liberals have been crying wolf about for years, a "war for oil". The reality is, a closed Strait Of Hormuz would bring the west to it's knees economically. The United States will never allow that to happen.
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Dismal State Of The Union: Here's an opinion/analysis piece from the Washington Times that hits the mark. Not much for me to add to it:

There is one person — one American among the 300 million of us — who is not to blame for the state of the union. Everyone else, each of you, in some small or large way, bears some share of the blame, but not this guy. Not one little bit.

This guy is Barack Obama. He is not the least bit to blame for the dismal state of the U.S. economy. George W. Bush is, for sure, and that evil Dick Cheney, oh, no doubt. House Speaker John A. Boehner — evil, too — is, of course, to blame. But guess what? So is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and every Democrat in the House and Senate.

Now, President Truman made it very clear: The buck stops with him. No passing the buck for that guy. But Mr. Obama blames everyone but himself. Mr. Bush, he says, left the nation in a ditch, a deep ditch, and he’s been digging out since he took office. And Congress? Those guys are just plain awful, he says. So mean. Wah, they won’t do anything I want done! Mr. Obama feels so sure about it that he’s basing his re-election campaign on bashing Capitol Hill.

But with the president delivering his State of the Union speech to Congress Tuesday night, let’s pause here to take as hard look at the real state of America, by the numbers, using only cold, hard facts.

The unemployment rate when Mr. Obama was elected was 6.8 percent; today it is 8.5 percent — at least that’s the official number. In reality, the Financial Times writes, “if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.”

In addition, there are now fewer payroll jobs in America than there were in 2000 — 12 years ago — and now, 40 percent of those jobs are considered “low paying,” up 10 percent from when President Reagan took office. The number of self-employed has dropped 2 million to 14.5 million in just six years.

Regular gasoline per gallon cost $1.68 in January 2009. Today, it’s $3.39 — that’s a 102 percent increase in just three years. (By the way, if you’re keeping score at home, gas was $1.40 a gallon when George W. Bush took office in 2001, $1.68 when he left office — a 20 percent increase.)

Electricity bills have also skyrocketed, with households now paying a record $1,420 annually on average, up some $300.

Some 48 percent of all Americans — 146.4 million — are considered by the Census Bureau either as “low-income” or living in poverty, up 4 million from when Mr. Obama took office; 57 percent of all children in America now live in such homes.

Since December 2008, a month before Mr. Obama took office, food-stamp use has increased 46 percent. Total spending has more than doubled in just four years to a record high of $75 billion. In 2011, more than 46 million people — about one in seven Americans — got food stamps. That’s 14 million more than when Mr. Obama took office.

Median household income has dropped nearly 7 percent in the last six years, taking inflation into account. What’s more, nearly 20 percent of males age 25 to 34 now live with their parents.

Low- and middle-income Americans 65 and older now hold more than $10,000 in credit card debt, up 26 percent since 2005. The average age of the American car is 10 years; in 1990, it was 6.5 years old (by the way, in 1985, Americans bought 11 million cars; in 2009, less than half that, 5.4 million).

On the macro side, America’s annual budget has jumped to $3.8 trillion — and yet the United States brings in only about $2.1 trillion in revenue. The U.S. trade deficit for 2011 was $558 billion. America’s total public debt stands at $15.23 trillion; in January 2009, the debt was $10.62 trillion. Mr. Obama is on pace to borrow $6.2 trillion in just one term — more debt than was amassed by all presidents from Washington through Bill Clinton combined. The debt is rising by $4.2 billion every day — $175 million per hour, nearly $3 million per minute.

So, America, that is the State of Your Union. But remember, Mr. Obama had not one thing to do with it. So don’t blame him when you go to the polls. Blame everyone else, especially yourself.

The era of big government is back with a vengeance, and has been for the last decade. The negative results are plain to see, and President Barack "The Buck Stops There" Obama is preparing to argue that the answer is…BIGGER government, where the lines between pubic and private enterprise are blurred even further. Heaven help us if we give this man a second term. American liberty hangs in the balance.

I spent the last week in Las Vegas, where I purposely avoided television, the internet, talk radio, and newspapers. I didn't even check in on my own blog. All things political were jettisoned from my life for an entire week. It was fantastic. I'd be quite happy to remove politics from my life completely, but alas, I cannot…not while the systematic destruction of the U.S. Constitution is underway in this country…not while the fascists leading our government are hell-bent on destroying the underpinnings of American liberty…not while our so-called leaders are busy destroying our collective economic future. I can't simply sit back and ignore these things, much as I'd like to.

It seems I missed a lot in my week away. On the plus side, the Iraq War ended. Thank goodness for that. I'm happy our troops are finally coming home, even if warmongering politicians like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are not happy. That war should never have been waged. It took the lives of 4,500 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis to get rid of the evil Saddam Hussein. There had to be a better way.

On the down side, the Bill Of Rights is about to take another big hit. The House voted in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), 283-136, which eliminates the Due Process clause from the Bill Of Rights. The NDAA would allow Americans to be detained indefinitely without trial, and President Obama made sure Americans were included in the "you don't have no stinking rights !" group:

As [Senator Carl] Levin (D-MI) said last week, it was the White House itself that demanded Section 1031 apply to American citizens.

“The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved...and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,” said Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Obama was insistent on nullifying the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, a curious position to take for a man who is allegedly an expert in Constitutional Law. Then again, Obama already has a history of ignoring the Constitution, as he did when he perverted the Commerce Clause by signing ObamaCare into law. The President is not alone in wanting to discard those quaint old rights found in our Constitution. 93 of his fellow Democrats also voted to discard them by voting for the NDAA. This is what Democrats means when they talk about a "living" or "evolving" Constitution. They mean they want to destroy it when it gets in the way of their political goals.

Even more interesting is the way the alleged limited government advocates on the Republican side of the aisle voted. The small government Constitution-adhering GOPers in the House voted FOR the NDAA by a margin of 190-43. What a bunch of phonies. Here's the money quote from Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC):

“It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,” remarked Graham. “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”

And here I thought Kim Jong Il died. Guess not. He's a Senator from South Carolina. We should build a Lindsay Graham Memorial in D.C. with the words "Shut up. You don't get a lawyer" inscribed on it to inspire future generations of fascist Americans.

The only bad thing about voting the totalitarian Obama out of office is that one of these Graham-like Republicans will probably take his place, assuming Ron Paul (R-TX) can't win the GOP nomination, which he probably can't, despite the fact that he's currently leading in Iowa.

When the Great Prevaricator, Obama, isn't eliminating our Constitutional rights, he's busy regulating us into submission. The Great Prevaricator does this while simultaneously pretending that the GOP wants to strip away all regulations and turn the country into the Wild West all over again. Obama says the Republicans want "dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance" to cover up for the fact that regulations have exploded during Obama's tenure in the Oval Office. The Wall Street Journal exposes the truth:

A lack of regulations is not the problem, despite what the Great Prevaricator would have us believe. Our problem is the control freak nature of the Obama administration.

Coming next, those skyrocketing electricity rates Obama promised us a few years ago:

In the next few days, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue another final regulation directed at electricity utilities. This rule, known as the Utility MACT, will impose an estimated $11 billion each year in new costs on our economy. It will threaten electricity-generating capacity in many parts of the country. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this administration’s runaway rulemaking.

Obama's three-step plan for our economy is 1) Regulate 2) Control 3) Repeat.

And it doesn't matter how many jobs it costs us. It doesn't matter how negative are the effects on the economy. Those like Obama will use the negative effects of their policies to call for yet more control, more regulation, and less Constitutional restrictions on their power. That's the way totalitarians roll.

CNN exit polls from the 2008 presidential race yielded some interesting results, as follows:

Voting by race and gender
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White men voted 57-41% for McCain.
White women voted 53-46% for McCain.

Black men voted 95-5% for Obama.
Black women voted 96-3% for Obama.

Latino men voted 64-33% for Obama.
Latino women voted 68-30% for Obama.

Other races voted 64-32% for Obama.

In addition to his strength with minority voters, Obama had a significant advantage with young voters and lower income voters. I've read reports in the past that Obama won the college graduate vote (liberals like to pretend this makes them smarter), but that also depends on the race of the college graduate. White college graduates voted 51-47% for McCain. Non-white college graduates voted 75-22% for Obama. As for party affiliation, Democrats and Republicans voted like Democrats and Republicans usually do. Not much to tell there. The story is the independents, who voted for Obama 52-44% overall, but once again, that vote also hinged on race. White independents voted for McCain, 49-47%.

I'm not leading up to any grand discussion of race by citing these statistics. What I'm leading up to is a discussion of 2012 campaign strategy, particularly the strategy of the Democrats. That strategy has been obvious to me for a long time, but it was nice to finally see it in writing, as I did this morning. The writing was done by a left-wing think tank, the Center For American Progress (CFAP), which is run by former Clintonista John Podesta and funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros (aren't the terms "left-wing" and "billionaire" supposed to be a contradiction in terms ? How can someone be both ? Maybe we should check in with the Occupy movement's brain cell for clarification. The Occupiers can form a circle, beat on some tom-toms, do some bong hits, and get back to us with an answer in 3-6 months). Anyway, the CFAP (which is not to be confused with the PFJ) has produced a guide for Obama's 2012 re-election, called The Path To 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election. 270 is the number of electoral college votes it takes to win the presidency. Here are some of the CFAP's observations:

With a little under one year to go before the 2012 presidential election, next year’s battle looks increasingly competitive, with ongoing economic distress and a highly energized Republican base potentially neutralizing the incumbency advantage that President Barack Obama would traditionally hold…In August 2011, Gallup reported record low public approval of President Obama’s handling of the economy, with barely one-quarter (26 percent) approving of the president’s performance on this key indicator. No president in the past 50 years has been re-elected with unemployment as high as it is today. Historically, administrations with unemployment problems have seem them mitigated with significant employment change ahead of an election.

Translation – the economy stinks, and the advantage that gave Obama over the Republican nominee in 2008 now works against Obama. If the 2012 election is about Obama's record and the economy, he loses.

…it is clear that two large forces will ultimately determine the outcome: the shifting demographic balance of the American electorate, and the objective reality and voter perception of the economy in key battleground states. The central questions of the election are thus fairly straightforward. Will the rising electorate of communities of color, the Millennial generation, professionals, single women, and seculars that pushed Obama to victory in 2008 be sufficient and mobilized enough to ensure his re-election in 2012?

Translation – the "shifting demographic base" means that white people comprise an ever falling percentage of the electorate, and minorities comprise an ever rising percentage of the electorate. Latinos in particular are the fastest rising demographic. The percentage of white voters in 2008 was the lowest in election history, and that trend will continue. The Democrats hope to appeal to the rising minority demographic to counter their disadvantage on the economy. The Democrats also count on getting the votes of young people, single women, and the non-religious. What's interesting about this to me is who this "progressive" vision leaves out – white men, married white women, Christians, and adults. I'm not sure who the CFAP is referring to when it says it wants the vote of "professionals". Maybe they meant to say "professors". I consider most adult working people to be professionals, and they aren't particularly fond of the tax and spend policies of Democrats. Successful professional people tend to vote Republican. They don't want their hard-earned wages to be "redistributed" to someone who didn't earn them.

The financial crisis and the Great Recession have severely clouded the electoral picture, making it clear that 2008 marked only the potential for a new progressive alignment in American elections, rather than its consolidation.

Translation – The "progressives" hoped Wall Street's sins would result in an anti-capitalist backlash that would bring the socialist policies of leftists into favor. That has not happened to any large extent, and remains confined to fringe elements like the Occupiers. America has not yet lost it's collective mind and decided to eat the rich. Thus, the "progressives" have more work to do.

CFAP restates it's conclusions:

As we’ve previously argued in other CAP reports (see “New Progressive America,” “State of American Political Ideology, 2009” and “Demographic Change and the Future of the Parties”), the shifting demographic composition of the electorate—rising percentages of communities of color, single and highly educated women, Millennial generation voters, secular voters, and educated whites living in more urbanized states or more urbanized parts of states—clearly favors Democrats and has increased the relative strength of the party in national elections in recent years. In contrast, the Republican Party’s coalition of older, whiter, more rural, and evangelical voters is shrinking and becoming more geographically concentrated and less important to the overall political landscape of the country.

In CFAP's view, the Grand Old Party is just that…old. And as they say on New Year's day, it's out with the old and in with the new. In this case, what is jettisoned from the "progressive" coalition is small town white Christian America. Screw Norman Rockwell. The "progressives" don't care about him. He's so yesterday.

Given the voting demographic the "progressives" hope to capture, what policies do you suppose they might endorse ? Might they endorse wealth redistribution, higher taxes for successful people, no taxes for the less successful, big new entitlement and government spending initiatives, lax immigration policies, higher minimum wages, more government re-engineering of society, etc ? You're darn tootin' they would. Would they demonize wealthy and successful people, act like success is an accident of birth as opposed to being the result of hard work, pile demand after demand onto the shoulders of the business sector, and try to control the minds of our children via a monopoly on government education ??? Absolutely. And if all these "progressive" policies have a negative economic effect on the country, lead to higher prices, fewer jobs, an overall poorer citizenry, stagnant economic growth, the erosion of our founding principles of liberty, and an end to the American dream, do the "progressives" care ? No, they certainly do not. After all, they have election battles to win, and class warfare is their weapon of choice. If someone has their hand out, the "progressives" intend to fill that hand, and the consequences be damned.

In his 2011 book, "To Save America", GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich wrote the following (from Bloomberg):

[The two companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae] “are so thoroughly politicized and preside over such irresponsible lending policies that they need to be replaced with smaller, private companies operating without government guarantees, whose leaders focus on making a profit, not manipulating politicians".

I certainly agree with that. As I've detailed on this blog, government manipulation of the mortgage market is what led to our current financial crisis. The government created the housing casino market over a period of many years.

But Newt has some 'splainin' to do to Republican primary voters, and most especially to Tea Partiers who want to dismantle the ties between government power and private enterprise that transform free markets into government-manipulated markets, resulting in markets driven by politics rather than sound business decisions. Newt has to explain why his consulting firm, The Gingrich Group, was paid between $1.6-$1.8 million over a period of eight years for consulting services Gingrich rendered to none other than Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) Freddie Mac. Freddie and big sister GSE Fannie Mae got into big trouble in the housing market, and the taxpayers have bailed them out to the tune of $150 billion and counting. Fannie and Freddie are both asking for more bailout money, even as Congress is slamming F&F for paying millions of dollars in bonuses to F&F executives, as F&F lives on the taxpayer dole. F&F are poster children for crony capitalism.

Gingrich had this to say about some of his consulting fees from Freddie:

When asked at the debate what he did to earn a $300,000 payment in 2006, the former speaker said he “offered them advice on precisely what they didn’t do,” and warned the company that its lending practices were “insane.”

If that's true, good for Newt…but unnamed Freddie Mac officials are disputing that account:

None of the former Freddie Mac officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Gingrich raised the issue of the housing bubble or was critical of Freddie Mac’s business model.

We should withhold judgement until we find out who these anonymous Freddie Mac officials are. After all, Gingrich is running for President, and the anonymous officials could be Democrats looking to derail Gingrich's presidential train. We've already seen what happens to GOP presidential contenders when they make a significant showing in the polls. When Perry was riding high, there was the ridiculous charge about the racist word on a rock at his family's hunting lodge in the 1980's. When Cain reached the top, all of a sudden 14-year old charges of sexual harrassment arose. And how many more times does the media have to discuss the fact that Romney is a Mormon ? That has become particularly nauseating.

There is one former Freddie official who has spoken about Gingrich's work with Freddie on the record:

Gingrich’s first contract with the mortgage company was in 1999, five months after he resigned from Congress and as House speaker, according to a Freddie Mac press release.

His primary contact inside the organization was Mitchell Delk, Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist, and he was paid a self- renewing, monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000 between May 1999 until 2002, according to three people familiar with aspects of the business agreement.

During that period, Gingrich consulted with Freddie Mac executives on a program to expand home ownership, an idea Delk said he pitched to President George W. Bush’s White House.

“I spent about three hours with him talking about the substance of the issues and the politics of the issues, and he really got it,” said Delk, adding that the two discussed “what the benefits are to communities, what the benefits could be for Republicans and particularly their relationship with Hispanics.”

That sounds like a pretty far cry from Gingrich calling Freddie policies "insane", and it's no secret that Bush was on board with the goal of increasing home ownership as part of his Ownership Society initiative.

The Bloomberg account makes it clear that Gingrich was never a lobbyist for Freddie Mac, but in the early years of his association with the GSE, it sounds like Gingrich wasn't raising any red flags. It sounds like he was working in concert with Freddie Mac's goals.

As for the later years of Gingrich's Freddie association:

Former Freddie Mac officials familiar with his work in 2006 say Gingrich was asked to build bridges to Capitol Hill Republicans and develop an argument on behalf of the company’s public-private structure that would resonate with conservatives seeking to dismantle it.

He was expected to provide written material that could be circulated among free-market conservatives in Congress and in outside organizations, said two former company executives familiar with Gingrich’s role at the firm. He didn’t produce a white paper or any other document the firm could use on its behalf, they said.

Gingrich's mission was to "build bridges" with disapproving conservatives of the wisdom of Freddie's policies ??? Hmmm. It seems to me that Gingrich SHOULD HAVE BEEN one of those disapproving conservatives.

In summary – AFTER the housing meltdown, Newt Gingrich became a big critic of Fannie and Freddie's loose lending practices. Lots of politicians with their fingers in the wind fall into that category, and we shouldn't trust them for obvious reasons. Newt's problem is, he might be one of them.

The Lord Of The Flies movement takes baby steps…

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others: “We need to limit the amount of food we’re putting out to curb the influx of derelicts.” – OWS kitchen volunteer Rafael Moreno

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others, Part II: "If you’re going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back. There’s a lot of takers here and they feel entitled. – OWS protestor Lauren Digiola (link)

Yes, we certainly can't have any entitlement-seekers infecting the Occupy movement of…um…entitlement-seekers. Gotta keep those losers out. The stuff the Occupiers have is THEIRS, dammit !!! They can't be expected to redistribute THEIR wealth to the less fortunate !!! We Are The 99%…except for those homeless derelicts !!!
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Robbing Peter To Pay Paul: "With nine days to go before the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) faces default, a Senate committee on Wednesday is expected to vote on a new plan to address the crisis. … The legislation would … provide USPS billions in cash from taxpayers. Specifically, it would hand over some $7 billion in supposedly 'surplus' contributions the government has made to the Federal Employees Retirement System. Such temporary surpluses, however, are common and are typically erased by normal financial swings or amortization over time. Transfer of the entire pot to USPS leaves taxpayers vulnerable if USPS later falls behind (which, given its condition, is not unlikely) while allowing needed structural reforms to be delayed. … USPS, and mail delivery itself, faces an uncertain future. Comprehensive change is needed to prevent massive losses and virtual bankruptcy. The reforms being considered by the Senate, however, fall short — while putting taxpayers even more at risk for the consequences of failure." –The Heritage Foundation's James Gattuso

I call this the Social Security financial oversight model. When the government sees a pile of money, it can't keep it's grubby mitts off of it. Btw, there is about $17.5 trillion sitting in the retirement funds of Americans if you add all of them together. How much do you think the government money-grubbers would love to gain control of that pile of cash ??? You'd have to subtract the $2.5 trillion sitting in the Social Security Trust Fund from the $17.5 trillion amount, because those SS funds don't really exist (the government already "borrowed" that money), but still, that leaves $15 trillion in our retirement funds, which is almost the exact amount of the national debt. When the cash-strapped government is already thinking about "borrowing" money from the pensions of federal employees, how long will it be until your IRA's and 401K's are taken over ? Lest you think I'm engaging in some fanciful paranoid delusion…the Obama administration already has plans to takeover your 401K's, which it could then "borrow" from. Beware.
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National Debate Loser: And what can we say about Rick Perry ? Trying to list the federal departments he would eliminate, Perry had an epic debate brain fart instead…

"Commerce, Education and the, uh, what's the third one there? Let's see…The third agency of government I would — I would do away with, Education, uh, the, uh, Commerce and, let's see,…I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops."

Doh !!!! I think the third government department Perry was going for there is Lingerie, or maybe Junior Miss. Commodore Perry's presidential battleship may have just sunk.
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When Life Gets Tough, Make Things Up: "From a policy standpoint I think it's really important to know that President Obama was a job creator from day one. Now, was the ditch that we were in so deep that when you're talking to people and they still don't have a job, that's any consolation to them? No. But I'll tell you this: If President Obama and the House congressional Democrats had not acted, we would be at 15 percent unemployment." –House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

For the record, under Obama, the alleged "job creator from day one", we have lost about 2.4 million jobs, and nobody outside Pelosi's vivid imagination believes unemployment would have been at 15 percent without Obama's failed stimulus package. Pelosi is a perpetual brain fart.
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Top 1% Denier: Here's an exchange between left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore and a CBS reporter…

Reporter: How are you helping these [Occupy protesters]?
Moore: Because I do well, I want taxes raised on people who do well, including mine.
Reporter: How are you helping these people with your $50 million?
Moore: I don't have $50 million.
Reporter: That's what it's rumored you are worth.
Moore: Well, really. Is that what you do is sell rumors?
Reporter: We're asking you for the truth.
Moore: You're just punk media is all you are. You lie. You lie to people. Stop lying to people. Stop lying.
Reporter: Are you not part of the 1 percent?
Moore: Just don't lie, okay?

I'm still waiting for the FIRST left-wing multi-millionaire like Moore to give their own personal riches away for the "cause". When they start doing that, I'll start taking them more seriously, and not a moment before. Before the wealth redistributors start spending other people's money, how about they spend their own ???
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Unitary Executive Back In Style: "If the Republican Congress won't join us, we're going to continue to act on our own to make the changes that we can to bring relief to middle-class families and those aspiring to get in the middle class". – VP Joe Biden

Whatever you say, Joe, but what about those 15 jobs-producing bills the Republican House has already passed that are sitting in the Senate waiting for the Democrats to bring them up ? In addition, why does every Democrat "jobs package" have to end up costing the taxpayers between $450 billion and $1 trillion ? Do Democrats simply not know our national debt is about to pass $15 trillion any day now ? Maybe their entire party has had a brain fart. The Democrats idea of stimulus is to take a bucket of water out of one end of the pool and pour it into the other end. They seem to believe they can fill up the pool this way. It won't ever work, because it CAN'T work. The real answer is to take money out of the government's hands and put it back into the hands of the private sector where it can do some good. The private sector is where growth comes from, not the government.
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And To Think, THIS Is the Guy They Call The Father Of The Democratic Party: "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." – Thomas Jefferson

While I'm quoting Jefferson, who in today's society believes these words ?…

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition". – Thomas Jefferson

Not the political left, I can tell you that for sure.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestors are frauds. They hold up signs protesting against crony capitalism and the influence of special interests, while at the same time every proposal we hear from them is about redirecting wealth into OWS hands and OWS causes. They aren't against crony capitalism. They are FOR crony capitalism, provided they are the cronies. OWS is a movement with it's hand out. The OWSers ARE lobbyists. They ARE special interests.

The so-called Robin Hood Tax proposed by the OWSers is mis-named (proving for the thousandth time that the OWSers ain't none too bright). As Michelle Malkin points out on her website, Robin Hood stole from the tax man (the government) to give to the poor. Robin stole from Prince John and his IRS agent, the Sheriff Of Nottingham. The OWSers are in effect a pro-government group, advocating for Prince John, in the hopes he will be a generous Prince (the vaunted 'benevolent tyrant') and redistribute stolen taxpayer funds back to the OWSers. That makes the OWSers not only lobbyists, but lobbyists against liberty, who want to use the gun of government to forcibly extract funds from the people who earned them. In a more honest world, the Robin Hood Tax would be called the Sheriff Of Nottingham Tax.

Speaking of honesty, or rather the lack thereof, President Obama called Rick Perry's 20-20 flat tax plan a "giveaway to the rich". How much longer are we going to tolerate Democrats calling it a "giveaway" when people are allowed to keep their own money ??? You can't "give" people something that already belongs to them. If I don't steal my neighbor's television set, I don't pretend that I "gave" him anything, and I certainly don't demonize him because he won't let me steal his television (as Democrats demonize "rich" people). Democrats reinvent language to make things appear the opposite of how they really are. That's how we get a President who says the wealthy don't pay their "fair share", when in fact the wealthy pay the most in taxes. That's also how we get a President who "cuts" income taxes for people who don't pay income taxes in the first place. That's also how what we traditionally call "theft" has been transformed into terms like "redistribution of wealth" and "social justice".

The OWS protestors have been complaining about their belongings being stolen while they are busy marching, shouting at people, and creating a nuisance. Apparently, the OWSers don't like it when "social justice" is used against them. How "greedy" those OWSers are, eh ? I can reinvent language too.

Given recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, it appears the Arab Spring may turn into the Islamist Spring. If so, what was the point of our involvement ?

Why do Democrats believe they can tax and spend the American citizenry into prosperity ? That's an oxymoron if I ever heard one.

Borrowing money to spend in order to stimulate the economy doesn't stimulate the economy at all. It just delays economic contraction a bit. Such stimulus is like treating a toothache with Anbesol. It gets rid of the pain for the moment, but the tooth problem remains untreated and gets worse. Borrowed stimulus spending may be good to generate some votes on election day, but it actually harms the economy, because the borrowed money must be repaid with interest.

How in the world did we ever get to the point as a nation where the government is spending 46.7% of GDP ($6.9 trillion), we're $14.6 trillion in debt, we have a $1.3 trilion deficit for 2011, we've run up $4.2 trillion in debt since Obama took office…AND OBAMA IS TOURING THE COUNTRY SAYING THE PROBLEM IS THAT WE HAVEN'T SPENT $447 billion more on some cockamamie jobs program that will at best produce a few temp jobs for a year ? What kind of mass psychosis has infected this country when such an unprecedented level of fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the White House is met with anything but jeers and calls for his removal from office ??? Obama's fiscal policy is sheer insanity. This country is literally being eaten by debt, and we can see all across Europe where that leads. There should be bumper stickers on every car in this country that say Anybody But Obama In 2012. It would also be helpful if the mainstream media noticed our enormous fiscal problems, but they'll probably be busy for the next year trying to get Obama re-elected, because, you know,…they like Democrats !!! Unreal. Party over sanity.

VP Joe Biden said he won't rule out running for President in 2016…well, that certainly takes a load off my mind. As if…

There have been approximately 2,400 people arrested at American OWS protests over the last month, not counting yesterday's arrests in Atlanta and Oakland. There have been numerous OWS clashes with the police. I have a question. When is the media going to get all worried about dangerous political rhetoric and the possibility of violence, like they were during the Tea Party protests (where there were ZERO arrests). Anyone ? Anyone ? Buehler ?

The 'Vote No On Issue 2' anti-SB5 ads being run by the group We Are Ohio are possibly the most dishonest political ads I've ever seen in my life, and I don't say that lightly. I've seen lots of dishonest political ads. The citizens of Ohio can't make an informed decision when they are being lied to outright, which I suppose is the whole point of the ads. Baffle 'em with you-know-what. Such a shame.

When President Obama announced that all US troops will be coming home from Iraq by the end of the year, he said it was a campaign promise fulfilled. He didn't bother to remind us it was George W. Bush's promise that was being fulfilled, not his own. Obama's campaign promise was to have us out of Iraq in sixteen months. That Obama promise was broken. Bush is the one who negotiated with the Iraqis to have US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Obama stuck to the Bush timetable. Obama also forgot to tell us that the USA has been negotiating to extend our troop stay in Iraq:

Obama campaigned on ending the war in Iraq but had instead spent the past few months trying to extend it. A 2008 security deal between Washington and Baghdad called for all American forces to leave Iraq by the end of the year, but the White House — anxious about growing Iranian influence and Iraq’s continuing political and security challenges — publicly and privately tried to sell the Iraqis on a troop extension. As recently as last week, the White House was trying to persuade the Iraqis to allow 2,000-3,000 troops to stay beyond the end of the year.

Those efforts had never really gone anywhere; one senior U.S. military official told National Journal last weekend that they were stuck at “first base” because of Iraqi reluctance to hold substantive talks.

That impasse makes Obama’s speech at the White House on Friday less a dramatic surprise than simple confirmation of what had long been expected by observers of the moribund talks between the administration and the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which believes its own security forces are more than up to the task of protecting the country from terror attacks originating within its borders or foreign incursions from neighboring countries.

In Washington, many Republican lawmakers had spent recent weeks criticizing Obama for offering to keep a maximum of 3,000 troops in Iraq, far less than the 10,000-15,000 recommended by top American commanders in Iraq. That political point-scoring helped obscure that the choice wasn’t Obama’s to make. It was the Iraqis’, and recent interviews with officials in the country provided vivid evidence of just how unpopular the U.S. military presence there has become — and just how badly the Iraqi political leadership wanted those troops to go home.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, for instance, is a hugely pro-American politician who believes Iraq's security forces will be incapable of protecting the country without sustained foreign assistance. But in a recent interview, he refused to endorse a U.S. troop extension and instead indicated that they should leave.

"We have serious security problems in this country and serious political problems," he said in an interview late last month at his heavily guarded compound in Baghdad. "Keeping Americans in Iraq longer isn't the answer to the problems of Iraq. It may be an answer to the problems of the U.S., but it's definitely not the solution to the problems of my country."

Shiite leaders — including many from Maliki’s own Dawa Party — were even more strongly opposed, with followers of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatening renewed violence if any American troops stayed past the end of the year. The Sadr threat was deeply alarming to Iraqis just beginning to rebuild their lives and their country after the bloody sectarian strife which ravaged Iraq for the past eight and a half years.

Only the Kurds were willing to discuss the possiblity of US troops staying longer. The Sunnis and Shia are against it. Maliki recently said the only way US troops could stay was if they had no immunity from prosecution under Iraqi laws, which he knew the Pentagon would never agree to.

We're leaving because the Iraqis want us to leave, not because of any campaign promise. The Iraqis don't want US troops in their country, period. You can't blame them. It is their country, after all. I think it was a mistake to go there in the first place, even though Saddam was a complete scumbag who deserved his fate. Things in the Middle East are never as easy and straightforward as our leaders would like them to be, and getting involved there is fraught with risk and unintended consequences.

Thus, Obama is doing his usual spin job and trying to take credit, also as usual, but what the heck, the important thing is that we're leaving !!! Our troops can come home at long last !!! Iraq will be left up to the Iraqis, as we knew it ultimately would be. It's not like we were ever going to make Iraq our 51st state.

Now everybody should be happy, right ???

Of course not. This is politics. The last time everybody was happy in politics was probably back during Garden Of Eden times, before Democrats and Republicans started arguing about whose fault it was that Adam and Eve got booted. Let the naysaying begin:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in a statement that the Iraq withdrawal represents an “astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq.”

Romney also said it could put U.S. gains in the war at risk. “The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government,” Romney said.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said Obama is “putting political expediency ahead of sound military and security judgment.”

Jon Huntsman Jr. and Michele Bachmann, two other Republican presidential contenders, also released statements criticizing the withdrawal as premature and the result of a failure to work out a deal with Iraqis to protect U.S. troops.

Arizona Senator John McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent in the 2008 election, said the withdrawal “marks a harmful and sad setback for the United States in the world.”

McCain, a prominent voice in his party on defense matters, said military commanders have told him the Iraqi military still needs assistance from U.S. forces.

Sigh. You just can't please some people. Is this all merely partisan political posturing by GOP presidential contenders ? Sounds like it to me. Remember, BUSH was the one who originally setup the Iraq withdrawal timetable, not Obama. Haven't we been in Iraq long enough ? Haven't our troops paid enough of a price ? Here are some Iraq statistics from Bloomberg:

There have been 3,525 U.S. personnel killed in action in Iraq; an additional 957 died of other causes. More than 32,000 have been wounded. The war has cost at least $752 billion, including training for Iraqis and related diplomatic missions, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in January.

GOP presidential hopefuls are not the only ones saying an Iraq pullout is premature, a big mistake. Some generals are saying the same thing, including an architect of the 2007 troop surge that transformed the Iraq War. That general called the pullout an "absolute disaster":

“Forty-four hundred lives lost,” Gen. Keane said. “Tens of thousands of troops wounded. Over a couple hundred thousand Iraqis killed. We liberated 25 million people. There is only one Arab Muslim country that elects its own government, and that is Iraq.

“We should be staying there to strengthen that democracy, to let them get the kind of political gains they need to get and keep the Iranians away from strangling that country. That should be our objective, and we are walking away from that objective.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday warned Iran not to miscalculate the U.S. decision to withdraw its troops.

“No one, most particularly Iran, should miscalculate about our continuing commitment to and with the Iraqis going forward,” she said in an interview with CNN from Uzbekistan.

“In addition to a very significant diplomatic presence in Iraq which will carry much of the responsibility for dealing with an independent, sovereign, democratic Iraq, we have bases in neighboring countries, we have our ally in Turkey. We have a lot of presence in that region,” she added.

Are we making a huge mistake ? I wish I could tell you, but I don't know. I'm in Akron, Ohio, not Baghdad. If this is a mistake, I guess we'll soon find out.

As the political class bickers over the debt ceiling, I can't help but wonder – How did we get to trillion+ dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see ? How did this country get so far off track ? Could you have even imagined trillion+ dollar deficits prior to 2009 ? I couldn't.

The recession is the obvious answer, but it goes beyond that. The recession technically ended in the middle of 2009, but try telling that to the American people when unemployment is still 9.2%. The recession may have ended, but the recovery has been anemic, and this country's finances are in the crapper (which explains why the recovery is anemic. The future don't look so bright, and the people with the money know it).

Near the end of 2008, President Bush okayed the $700 billion TARP bailouts, and the term 'Too Big To Fail' was added to our lexicon. That shocked everyone, myself included. Who ever thought the American taxpayers would have to bail out the fat cats ? Unbelievable. Then President Obama came along and fired his economic weapons, in the form of a trillion bucks of so-called stimulus (much of which wasn't stimulus at all). That shocked everyone, myself included. Obama asked the taxpayers to bail out the government and the auto companies…more fat cat bailouts. Obama also asked the taxpayers to bailout the unions, and asked the taxpayers to bail out pretty much everyone, including the taxpayers themselves (strange concept that).

The Democrats keep asking for tax increases to close the trillion+ dollar spending gap the Democrats have largely created (yes, I said it). The Republicans think spending cuts are in order.

For myself, I say we adopt the 'let's get back to 2008' plan as a start. I should probably call it the 'let's get back to 2007' plan, because in 2007 the deficit was only $160 billion. Who would have ever thought a few years ago that a $160 billion deficit would look so damn good by comparison ? But we'll go with 2008, when the deficit was $458 billion. Even that sounds good compared to the $1.6 trillion deficit we have today. Obama would be dancing in the halls of the White House if he could reduce the deficit to the LARGEST DEFICIT BUSH EVER HAD IN A FULL YEAR AS PRESIDENT. As I said before, the media would probably canonize Obama if he merely reduced the deficit to the LARGEST DEFICIT IN THE HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY PRIOR TO 2009. It seems expectations have been substantially lowered these last few years (I'm trying really hard to push the joke about affirmative action out of my head right now. Forgive me).

What would it take to get back to 2008 ? I call it the Before Barack plan, if you will.

Let's look at the numbers to see where we went so far off track. Here's a spending comparison between 2008 and 2011. That's B.B. and A.B. (Before Barack and After Barack).

Total federal spending
2008 – $2.98 trillion
2011 – $3.81 trillion

Well, shoot ! There's most of the problem already ! Spending is $900 billion more than it was a few short years ago. Add that new spending to the Bush's $458 billion 2008 deficit, and that drives the deficit up to $1.35 trillion right there.

But we need to know where to cut, so lets' dive a little deeper into those numbers. Here's a spending breakdown.

Defense Spending
2008 – $729 billion
2011 – $964 trillion

Aha ! The "anti-war" Obama (suckers) has shot Defense spending through the roof ! Let's cut $235 billion off Defense spending to get back to 2008 levels. Bye bye Afghanistan. Bye bye Libya. Bye bye Iraq. It's time to defend America, in many senses of the word. Btw, the pantywaist Democrats just proposed a $90 billion Defense cut over 10 years as part of the debt ceiling deal. They should be much bolder than that, and you're lucky if you ever hear a Republican talk about Defense cuts. They should be much smarter than that. Our Defense budget is much too large, and should be discussed BEFORE discussions of Social Security and Medicare cuts are brought up (though we need to trim those also).

Pensions Spending (Social Security, etc)
2008 – $659 billion
2011 – $800 billion

Here's another $150 billion increase. It breaks my heart to cut Social Security, because that program would be sound had the government thieves not robbed it blind all these years, and had they invested the money in consverative instruments instead. There is supposed to be $2.5 trillion in the Trust Fund, but as I've said many times before, that's a mirage. The government stole the money. The government should have to make good on that money without putting the taxpayers on the hook all over again. This is a great argument for privatization, but that's a subject for another time. The problem is, the government is broke…or is it ? The government owns about 650 million acres of land in this country. It's time to hold a government land sale to raise some money for the stolen Social Security funds (can the citizens sue Congress over it's SS thievery ? That would be interesting). And it goes without saying that the government should keep it's grubby mitts off SS in the future.

Health Care Spending (Medicare, Medicaid, etc)
2008 – $671 billion
2011 – $900 billion

There's another $230 billion increase. Health care costs have been increasing rapidly, but this is government health care were talking about. The government dictates the reimbursement rates. Cut it.

Education Spending
2008 – $101.8 billion
2011 – $100 billion

Well, shut my mouth ! Obama actually cut something. Only by a billion dollars, but it's better than nothing. This probably infuriates liberals, which is nearly always good for the country these days (things weren't always like this. Liberals used to accomplish some good things in this country, before they were taken over by Leftists).

Welfare Spending
2008 – $322 billion
2011 – $500 billion

A $178 billion increase. Some of this increase is attributable to the recession. No doubt about that. The solution here is mostly to get people back to work, which is why Obama and the Democrats anti-business policies are so friggin' stupid. Speaking of which, did I say yet that we should repeal ObamaCare ? If not, we should. The last thing we need right now is MORE welfare. Let's get our fiscal ship of state back on solid ground first. That and job creation are jobs number one and number one (note to Democrats – thus spending cuts AND targeted tax cuts for job creation, instead of your counterproductive 'soak the rich' class warfare policies).

Let's total up these spending increases so far ($235 billion + $150 billion + $230 billion + $178 billion = $793 billion). Let's round it to $800 billion in needed spending cuts. Some of these cuts can come from the rest of federal spending (about $500 billion) that I haven't talked about.

$800 billion in spending cuts reduces the deficit by half. We have $800 billion left in deficits. Now let's talk about revenue. In order to get to the 2008 deficit of $458 billion, we need to raise revenue by $342 billion yet. That's easy. We just need to put people back to work (okay, it's not easy, but it's straightforward). If we return unemployment to the 5% range, we'll get the needed revenue. In 2008, federal revenue was $2.534 trillion. In 2011, it's $2.2 trillion. There's your revenue gap. My friend The Reverend will talk about how "revenue is at a 60-year low", but that's ridiculous. Federal revenue was lower in 2005 than it is now. That's six years, not sixty, and high unemployment is the ONLY reason revenue is down now. How he does go on though. What a sight.

After ALL this is addressed, then we can talk about taxing corporate jets, millionaires, and billionaires to help with the rest. Our tax code is a holy mess, like nearly everything else the government does, and it needs to be straightened out.

Getting to Before Barack doesn't solve all the problems. It leaves us with the problems we had under Bush, and those are still some pretty big problems. But they pale in comparison to what has happened under Mr. Hopeandchange.

I will get all the usual criticism from liberals about how I'm so mean and don't care about the people, and so forth. I'm used to it. It's just how liberals are, as if $14.4 trillion in debt, a $1.6 trillion deficit, and the current path to bankruptcy is somehow going to help the people. It isn't, of course. Just the opposite is true. These things are the greatest threat to the American citizens, and that's why I keep harping about these issues. Liberals believe we can tax and spend our way out of our problems, but their view is childish and not based in reality. There aren't enough rich people in the country to fund everything for everyone else, and reversing the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% is a drop in the bucket compared to our fiscal problems. Those tax cuts won't change anything. Liberals are always on the lookout to grab somebody else's money, and they act aggrieved when they can't do it. That's the mindset of a thief, and also of a Leftist. I have never felt entitled to another person's money. I don't understand how people can think that way. I believe in helping the truly poor and needy, but that doesn't cost $3.8 trillion per year. Not even close. Government at all levels consumes over 46% of the entire GDP of this country. That is way out of kilter, and it has happened due to the ascendancy of big government liberalism in BOTH major political parties. It's time to stop it now, before it's too late.

President Obama's thursday meeting with Congressional leaders didn't resolve the issues associated with the imminent debt ceiling crisis. More meetings will be held on sunday.

Make no mistake. If the debt ceiling isn't raised, it WILL wreak havoc on this nation. I've been hearing some politicos, mostly conservative ones, saying the country could still operate if the debt ceiling isn't raised. This is poppycock, and it's dangerous poppycock. Yes, the country still could operate without going further into debt, but that doesn't meant we should operate that way. Without a debt ceiling increase, government services would have to be seriously curtailed (we're currently borrowing over 40 cents of every dollar the federal government spends). Without a debt ceiling increase, 40% of the federal government would effectively shut down.

I do believe some kind of agreement will be reached to avoid a debt ceiling disaster (I sure hope so), but right now, Congress is playing chicken with our fragile economy. Each side of the aisle is making demands. In broad strokes, the debate boils down to this – the Republicans are demanding spending cuts. The Democrats are demanding tax increases. Who is right ? Do we have a spending problem, or do we have a revenue problem ?

A few historical charts should clear things up pretty quickly. The following charts are stated in dollars.

Here's a chart of government federal spending from 1900-2011:

As you can see, spending has gone through the roof. Since the advent of big government in the later half of the 1960's and 1970's, we've pretty much seen the size of government double every decade, far above the rate of inflation. Beginning in 2000, things got even worse. Government spending has more than doubled since then. In 2000, federal spending was $1.789 trillion. In 2011, it is estimated to be $3.8 trillion. That means spending has increased by $2 trillion per year in just eleven short years. That increase is more than the ENTIRE government spent in 2000. When Republicans say spending is the problem, they are standing on solid ground. The facts back them up.

Now, let's look at federal revenue from 1900-2011:

Government revenue has also gone way up over time. This is the "revenue problem" of which Democrats speak ? All I see is revenue increasing. If there's a problem, it's only that revenue hasn't kept up with the skyrocketing spending. This brings to mind a drunken sailor analogy. If a drunken sailor spends all his money on booze and can't afford to buy any more, does he have a revenue problem, or does he have a drinking (spending) problem ? Democrats are trying to tell us the drunken sailor has a revenue problem. I beg to differ.

Liberals like my blogger pal The Reverend will counter by saying things like 'federal revenue is at a 60-year low as a percentage of GDP !!!'. This is roughly true, and would make sense except for a key omitted fact. What the left leaves out of it's hysterical equation is this – GOVERNMENT SPENDING IS PART OF THE GDP CALCULATION, and that skews the numbers. For example, if government spending was $10 trillion this year instead of $3.8 trillion while revenue remained constant, revenue would fall to a much lower percentage of GDP than it is now. Would that be a revenue problem ? No, it would be a spending problem. It's disingenuous to skyrocket government spending and then blame the resulting deficits on a lack of tax revenue. That's little more than a political parlor trick. Btw, government spending at all levels accounts for a whopping 46% of GDP these days. That's the cause of the "revenue problem". Our federal, state, and local deficits represent artificial inflations of GDP. They are not real. That's why I keep saying we are living in a fictional economy. On the federal government level, it's about 40% fictional.

In the above chart, you'll notice a big dip in revenue starting in 2008. That's the recession. To the extent we have a revenue problem, the recession is the cause.

The argument being put forth by liberal Democrats, that we have a revenue problem, is very weak. The facts say otherwise. What the liberals are really saying is this – we don't have enough revenue to pay for all the government programs and social engineering desired by liberals. I doubt we'd ever have enough money for that. As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "the trouble with socialism is, eventually you run out of other people's money".

Here's how fictional our economy is right now. This is a chart of federal deficits:

The final chart I'll show is our federal debt. Notice how the debt chart tracks almost exactly to the spending chart:

We have a lot of Democrats running around these days calling for "shared sacrifice". What Democrats mean by "shared sacrifice" is this – the bottom 50% of wage earners pay nothing, while the top wage earners, who already pay the lion's share of the taxes, pay even more. I'm not sure how that represents "shared" anything, but then again, I don't speak liberalese. I'm still trying to figure out what "social justice" means.

Vote For…Generic Republican !

A new Gallup poll showed that 44% of the electorate would vote for any Republican nominee over President Obama in 2012. Only 39% would vote for Obama. That's good news for the Republicans, eh ?

Not quite. It's only one poll, and while the public may prefer Mr. or Mrs. Generic Republican over Obama, the GOP can't run a nameless, faceless candidate. They have to run an actual person, and once a name is attached to the Republican candidate, things poll much differently. When Obama is polled against Romney, Pawlenty, Gingrich, Paul, Cain, Palin, Bachmann, or Huntsman, Obama beats them all.

Hmmm. Anyone heard from Chris Christie lately ? Ah, no matter. The election is nearly a year and a half away, so polls don't mean much now. Why did I even bring it up ? I don't know. An awful lot can happen between now and election time.

Obama Ignores White House Office Of Legal Counsel

According to the New York Times, President Obama ignored the legal advice of his own Office Of Legal Counsel (OLC), which told him the Libyan War required the consent of Congress under the War Powers Act. When the OLC told Obama his pursuit of the war was illegal, Obama did what any law-abiding President would do, he simply sought out other legal advice and found lawyers who would tell him what he wanted to hear – that the Libyan War was not a war, that dropping bombs on Libya does not constitute hostilities, and that the President wasn't violating the law. Here's Senate Majority Leader and human disinformation machine, Harry Red (D-NV), running with the ridiculous:

As they say, you can always tell when Harry Reid is lying…his lips move.

Senate Votes to End Ethanol Tax Credits

By a vote of 73-27, the Senate voted in bipartisan fashion to support Sen. Diane Feinstein's (D-CA) bill to stop subsidizing ethanol. Well, knock me over with a feather. I didn't think Congress would agree on anything between now and November 2012. Tea Partier and head of Americans For Tax Reform, conservative Grover Norquist, said the agreement violated Republicans anti-tax pledge unless it was paired with a tax-cutting amendment, but Grover should take a chill pill. I view this as a step in the right direction. I detest crony capitalism, where the government picks winners and losers in business. That's why we have so many lobbyists and special interests in Washington D.C. jockeying for their slice of the pie. It leads to corruption. I favor low or no taxes on all business endeavors to stimulate the economy and produce jobs, but I don't like one set of rules for Business A and a completely different set of rules for Business B. Now, if we could only get rid of the other thousand or so subsidies and replace it with a level, pro-growth playing field…I can dream, can't I ?

Obama Regulatory Expansion Indefensible, Says…Obama's Chief Of Staff !

Simply awesome.

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley took heat from business executives Thursday for the Obama administration’s regulatory expansions. Daley also said he didn’t have any good answers for some of what President Obama is doing and expressed frustration about the “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”

“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” Daley said at a National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) meeting.

Daley couldn’t answer basic questions and continually faced criticism from the executives in the room. The business leaders even applauded each other’s criticism of the administration. “At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts utility executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government ‘throws sand into the gears of progress,’” wrote Peter Wallsten and Jia Lynn Yang in the Washington Post.

I don't know what the deal is with Obama blocking construction to protect fish. My best guess would be that Obama's daughters really like the movie Finding Nemo. I bet Daley has some 'splainin' to do when Obama returns from the golf course.

AARP says what ?

I must be hallucinating this morning. The AARP just said…

AARP, the powerful lobbying group for older Americans, is dropping its longstanding opposition to cutting Social Security benefits, a move that could rock Washington's debate over how to revamp the nation's entitlement programs.

The decision, which AARP hasn't discussed publicly, came after a wrenching debate inside the organization. In 2005, the last time Social Security was debated, AARP led the effort to kill President George W. Bush's plan for partial privatization. AARP now has concluded that change is inevitable, and it wants to be at the table to try to minimize the pain.

First, the AARP signed onto ObamaCare, with it's Medicare cuts and rationing boards, and now this. It wouldn't even take a feather to knock me over with this news. I can't figure AARP's game here. Anyone have a theory ?

There's been a hypothesis floating around that the enhanced interrogation techniques implemented by President Bush following 9/11 may have helped get Osama Bin Laden. If you ask the politicians, you get two answers – 1) politicians who are against enhanced interrogation techniques say they didn't help, and 2) politicians who favor enhanced interrogations say they did help. That's about what I'd expect from politicians. They promote their own beliefs.

Politicians do what politicians do, but what do the facts say ? I did some checking.

Everyone following the Bin Laden story knows by now that we found Bin Laden by tracking one of his couriers. That is unquestioned. That courier's name is Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. I'll let NPR take it from here:

To find Osama bin Laden, U.S. officials first had to find the man who served as his courier. But the operation that killed the al-Qaida leader has stirred up some controversy: Some of the information about the courier may have come as the result of harsh CIA interrogations.

NPR has learned that the courier was a Kuwait-born Pakistani who went by the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. It was in his house that U.S. forces found and killed bin Laden.

We tracked al-Kuwaiti and found out Bin Laden was living at al-Kuwaiti's house, or at least we were pretty sure Bin Laden was living there before we attacked. The key question then becomes – how did we find out about al-Kuwaiti ? Back to NPR:

The Guantanamo documents describe al-Kuwaiti as a senior al-Qaida facilitator and courier. The footnotes reveal how — and when — this information was acquired.

Some of the first leads came from detainees who were interrogated while in CIA custody; this is where the controversy arises.

About a third of the CIA detainees were subjected to what the agency euphemistically called enhanced interrogation techniques.

Among those who provided information while under CIA control was Hassan Gul, a senior al-Qaida operative from Pakistan. According to the detainee documents, Gul told interrogators that Kuwaiti traveled with Bin Laden. A senior U.S. official says the information Gul provided was key to identifying al-Kuwaiti as Bin Laden's courier.

But he may have provided it under stress.

A 2005 document indicates that Gul was one of the CIA detainees subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques." He is now free.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [KSM], a mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and one of three CIA detainees subjected to waterboarding, indirectly confirmed information about Kuwaiti.

It's clear we gained information leading ultimately to Bin Laden from detainees at Guantanomo Bay. It's also clear that detainee Hassan Gul, who identified al-Kuwaiti as Bin Laden's courier, and detainee Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confirmed that information, underwent enhanced interrogation techniques. The link between enhanced interrogations and Bin laden is getting pretty strong, but this still isn't absolute proof. Critics could say it wasn't the enhanced interrogation techniques that got the detainees to talk. They could say this:

Critics of "enhanced interrogation techniques" say they are tantamount to torture, and they argue that intelligence gleaned from those interrogations is unreliable. They also point out that some of the most useful information that came from Mohammed and others was obtained only after the harsh interrogations ended.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden agrees, BUT….

"I'm willing to concede the point that no one gave us valuable or actionable intelligence while they were, for example, being waterboarded," he said. "The purpose of the enhanced interrogation techniques was to take someone who was refusing to cooperate with us and to accelerate the process by which we would move from a zone of defiance to a zone of cooperation."

In other words, the CIA would use the enhanced interrogation techniques to "break" Al Qaeda detainees, and after that they would talk to us. Saying that detainess only talked AFTER the enhanced interrogation techniques is actually proof that those techniques worked. It's not like Al Qaeda members were eager to give Americans high-value intelligence on their operations. Al Qaedans wouldn't want to tell us anything, which is why enhanced interrogation techniques were used in the first place.

Current CIA director Leon Panetta practically admitted inadvertently that enhanced interrogations gave us info leading to Bin Laden:

"They used these enhanced-interrogation techniques against some of these detainees, but I'm also saying that the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches, I think, is always going to be an open question," Panetta said.

By saying maybe we COULD have gotten the information with other approaches, isn't Panetta in effect saying we DID get the information with the enhanced interrogations approach ? Sounds like it to me.

Former chief speechwriter for President Bush, Marc Thiessen, confirmed the Hassan Gul/Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to al-Kuwaiti to Bin Laden connection, and added some more depth to the subject last night on Fox News:

THIESSEN: Well, the headline is CIA interrogations work. I mean, the fact is in the period after 9/11, we knew absolutely nothing about the enemy who attacked us. We did not know that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind of 9/11. We didn't know who his key operatives were. We didn't know what they had planned. And then we started capturing these terrorists. We captured Abu Zubaydah [Da King here - Zubaydah was one of the three who were waterboarded at Gitmo], who was a key Al Qaeda facilitator, and he gave us information that led us to Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was one of KSM's key operatives. And they together led us to KSM. And KSM was resistant when he came into the — when he was captured by the CIA. When they asked him about new plots, he said soon you will know. And he said I will tell you everything when I — when I get to New York and see my lawyer. And he didn't see a lawyer. He was put under enhanced interrogation techniques and he went — once he went through those, he made a decision to cooperate. And when he was done, he was running a graduate level class on Al Qaeda operations for the CIA…

THIESSEN: Well, I mean, they — we had very little information about Al Qaeda's courier networks. What happened was first — Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who were the first guys brought into the program, gave us some general information about couriers and some code names for those folks. When KSM was interrogated after he underwent waterboarding; not during it, afterwards. When he was going — when he was being questioned, he acknowledged that he — they had given us the name of this fellow al-Kuwaiti which was a nom de guerre and KSM admitted that he knew him. Then in 2004, we captured a fellow named Hassan Ghul who was a senior Al Qaeda operative. He was captured in Iraq, and he told us that this courier al-Kuwaiti was a key lieutenant of KSM's successor Abu Faraj al-Libi…

O'REILLY: Now, did he do that under duress — let me just — did he do that under duress or did he just tell us?

THIESSEN: Well, this is the thing that people don't understand. You're hearing a lot of the left is trying — the deniers of this program are trying to say, well did they use — did they tell us this under waterboarding or under standard interrogation later and that misunderstands how interrogation works. Enhanced interrogation was never used to get intelligence; it was used to get cooperation. So you took a detainee like KSM, who is in the state of total resistance, and you used the enhanced interrogation techniques to bring him to a state of cooperation. And when he's under enhanced interrogation techniques, they are asking him questions they already know the answers to in order to gauge whether he had stopped lying and made the decision to cooperate. And then, once he starts cooperating, the technique stops. In most cases with enhanced interrogation, the detainees went under them for a couple of days. And KSM — he was a really tough, tough guy. He was — he went for about a month. But once that month ended, the interrogation, the enhanced interrogations stopped and we had a — they had a conversation with him like you and I are speaking today.

O'REILLY: All right. So you are convinced then that the information provided by KSM and then the other guy Ghul who was captured a couple of years later…

THIESSEN: Yes.

O'REILLY: …pinpointed for the CIA this courier and then they started to tail him and that led to bin Laden's demise. Is that correct?

THIESSEN: Well, actually, yes, well, Abu Faraj, I'm sorry Hassan Ghul told us that he was a key operative of Abu Faraj al-Libi, who was KSM's successor after he was captured. So they capture Abu Faraj in 2005 and he's brought into the CIA interrogation program. He's not waterboarded, but he undergoes enhanced interrogation and was resistant, brought into a state of cooperation. And then, he starts giving them information about the courier networks and he's identifying individuals and giving them information about how the couriers operate, where the drops are and so on and so forth. And then they ask them about al-Kuwaiti, and he says I don't know him. And you know, people say that's proof that he, well, he lied. But we knew that he knew him because Abu — because Hassan Ghul had told us that he was his key deputy. So one — that was the red flag that told the CIA this is the guy he's protecting. This is the guy we have to go after. So if it had not been for that process, starting with Abu Zubaydah in 2002, identifying the names; KSM confirming the name; Hassan Ghul telling us he was Faraj's deputy and then Faraj denying that he even knew the guy, then they — the CIA would have never known this is the guy to zero in on and they went after him, found him and it took years to do it. Found him and eventually followed him to bin Laden's lair.

Aside from the multiple spellings of Hassan Ghul's last name, the stories of NPR and Marc Thiessen on Fox News match. Thiessen provides more detail. I think we can safely conclude that enhanced interrogation techniques resulted in us getting tons of information about the Al Qaeda terrorist network, and the link is very strong between those techniques and intelligence leading eventually to Bin Laden, from all the facts I've read. Could we have gotten the information another way ? Maybe, but if so, I'd like somebody to tell me what that way is, and I'd like them to tell me how many other terrorist attacks and deaths would have been acceptable had we done things the "nice" way. There are two sides to that morality coin. When somebody is trying to kill innocent Americans, as is Al Qaeda, I tend to err on the side that favors saving American lives. But that's just me.

As always, if anyone has credible information contradicting what I've written here, I'm all ears.
===
Breaking News – President Obama launched a predator drone attack in Yemen on thursday in an effort to kill another high-level terrorist, the American born Anwar al-Awlaki. This is the second time Obama went after Awlaki. The attack was done with the cooperation of the Yemeni government, but Awlaki escaped.

Even though I write about politics, I hate politics. More precisely, I hate most politicians. I have never seen a bigger bunch of lying thieves in my life than the people we elect to run our country. It would take a hearty dose of sodium pentathol to get most of them to tell the truth. I think the first definition of the word 'politician' in the dictionary should be 'professional liar'. Mirriam-Webster should be notified immediately.

Not that I'm cynical or anything.

And when I think about our current President, the word 'politician' springs immediately to mind. With all the problems this country faces, we badly need a leader in the Oval Office right now, but instead we have a politician. We have a politician who cares more about his political party than he does about solving the problems of our country.

Obama rips Republican proposals to eliminate the deficit/debt to shreds, but if you notice, he proposes nothing of his own to eliminate the deficit/debt. He only proposes measures to massively increase the deficit/debt, as he did with his 10-year budget proposal. That's not a leader. That's a politician.

Obama formed a Deficit Commission in 2010 to make it appear he was committed to addressing the deficit/debt, and then he completely ignored the recommendations of his own Deficit Commission. That's not a leader. That's a politician, putting forth a smoke screen.

Obama is STILL talking about eliminating the Bush "tax cuts for the rich". What he doesn't tell you is, he could have eliminated those tax cuts any time he desired in 2009 or 2010. The Democrats had complete control of the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government for those two years. As much as Democrats whine about the rich ONLY paying a 35% federal income tax rate, the highest rate, you'd think they would have reversed those tax cuts on day two of Obama's presidency, but they didn't. Why not ? There are two main reasons. First is the fact that reversing the Bush "tax cuts for the rich" won't come anywhere near to solving our deficit/debt problem, and the Democrats all know it. Secondly, the Democrats WANT to keep that issue alive so they can use it as a weapon in the 2012 elections. If they had reversed those tax cuts, it would not be an issue (and the deficits/debt would still be going up by trillions year after year). Democrats want to keep using that issue as a smoke screen. These are not the actions of leaders. They are the actions of politicians.

Obama's own life doesn't even match his class warfare rhetoric. Here's what the President said about taxing the wealthy:

"I believe that most wealthy Americans would agree with me. They want to give back to the country that's done so much for them. Washington just hasn't asked them to."

But on Obama's own tax return, our wealthy Prez made every effort to pay LESS in taxes to the government:

"[I]n 2009, Obama took itemized deductions of $514,819, a foreign tax credit of $59,372, and a deduction for interest on his home of $52,195. He was also able to take a deduction for $49,000 he contributed to his self-employed retirement fund. If he had not taken these deductions, he would have paid taxes on an additional $675,386, which in his income bracket would have meant he owed somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 more in taxes at the top marginal tax rate of 35 percent. Furthermore, he instructed the Nobel committee to donate his entire $1.4 million Nobel Prize directly to 10 charities, thereby avoiding the necessity of declaring the money as income on which he would have owed an additional $490,000 in taxes. If the president is so appalled at the rich and their ability to hire accountants to take advantage of each and every deduction, why doesn't he simply take the standard deduction on his tax return, like most Americans?" –columnist Linda Chavez

Clearly, the President doesn't have the strength of his own stated convictions. That's because he's not a leader. He's merely a politician.

So here we are, $14.3 TRILLION in debt, with the highest single year deficit in American history at $1.65 TRILLION, and all our President can do is conjure up doomsday scenarios of what wil happen if the Republican spending cuts go through. Here are a couple excerpts of Obama ripping proposed Republican spending cuts:

"Worst of all, this is a [Republican] vision that says even though America can't afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can't afford to care for seniors and poor children…Under [Republicans'] vision, we can't invest in roads and bridges and broadband and high-speed rail. I mean, we would be a nation of potholes, and our airports would be worse than places that we thought — that we used to call the Third World."

According to Obama, we will become a Third World country if the Republican cuts are enacted. Well, I have a question for our President. What kind of country will we become if we keep borrowing 40 cents out of every federal dollar spent, as we are doing now under Obama's "leadership" ? What kind of country will we be when the debt is $20 TRILLION or $25 TRILLION, and the people we are borrowing from realize we are a terrible credit risk ? It's coming, sooner rather than later. This President's "leadership" is like the captain of the Titanic saying the real danger to the ship would be in changing course and NOT hitting the iceberg. With all due respect, I don't think so Skippy.

The President is basically endorsing the unsustainable status quo. That may be smart politics. It may even win elections for Democrats in 2012, as a popular backlash against Republican spending cuts manifests itself….but it sure as hell ain't leadership.

If you want to know how much of a tax increase it would take to close our federal budget gap (that would take a $1.65 TRILLION tax increase this year), here's Mark Alexander of the Patriot Post to put it in perspective:

Stop reading this and add up all the paychecks you received from January 1 through April 12 of this year. Now, write a check for that amount to the government. In essence, you have done just that, for as the Tax Foundation recently announced, April 12 was this year's Tax Freedom day, meaning "Americans will work well over three months of the year, from January 1 to April 12, before earning enough money to pay this year's tax obligations at the federal, state and local levels." According to the Cato Institute's Dan Mitchell, this is the good news. "The bad news is that Tax Freedom Day only measures the direct and immediate impact of taxation. It doesn't measure the overall burden of government." If the federal government were to collect enough taxes this year to fund all its spending, Tax Freedom Day wouldn't come until May 23.

In order to fully fund our federal government, we'd have to work another month and half each year just to pay our federal taxes. And this doesn't even count the taxes necessary to cover the state and local government budget shortages. It's not a stretch to say we'll soon be working half the year just to pay the government unless spending is seriously curtailed. Government has grown and grown and grown over the years, and our current fiscal nightmare is the result. It would take oppressive, economy-killing tax increases to merely tax our way out of it. That is the truth. Working half the year for the government is basically what the Democrats are offering as a "solution", and things will only get much worse as the baby boomers retire and Medicare/Social Security expenses start to skyrocket. The Democrat model is European socialism, which is a very odd thing to model when you consider the European socialist countries are all going broke too. Modeling failure isn't very intelligent. When our President starts to get serious about our fiscal challenges, that's when you will know you have a leader instead of a politician. Until then, good luck America. You'll need it. Wear a lifejacket, because we ARE going to hit the iceberg. Hope the water isn't too cold. And until we find a leader and unite behind him/her, you can also expect to hear a blizzard of obfuscation, finger pointing, blame shifting, lies, spin, equivocation, and outright BS from all the usual politicians.

The new format has presented some challenges, and I'm working with ohio.com to get some of the issues corrected. If anyone has any complaints, register them here (if you can. Getting comments posted is one of the issues). I have a couple issues I'm currently trying to get addressed, namely…

Issue – Commenters receive e-mail notifications every time somebody replies to one of their comments. This one drove me nuts because as moderator, I receive e-mails every time anyone comments. I was getting lots of e-mails.

Solution – If you are registered through DISQUS, login to your account and select SETTINGS. There you can disable the e-mail notification feature. If you are registered through Facebook or one of the other facilities, I assume there is a way to turn off the notification feature on those also.

Issue – When typing a comment, the comment text disappears when you get to the line that says 'POST AS". I don't have a solution to this one yet, but I will update this post when I do.

Issue – You type in a comment and it disappears, never showing up on the blog. This happens when the system doesn't know who you are. I've had this happen to me, though I'm not sure why the system doesn't know who I am after I've logged in. The system accepts the comment text and flags it as being from 'Anonymous'. I can see these comments, but you can't.

A couple fixes have already been implemented. The order of the comments should be better (first to last), and a relatively accurate count of the total number of comments is being tallied now.

I'm going to make ohio.com's tech guy aware of this post so he can track issues here as well.

Now that we're already backing the Libyan rebels and have gone to war to assist them against Qaddafi's troops, President Obama has decided it's time to figure out who these rebels are that we're defending with our military and money. Great thinking, Mr. President. We sure wouldn't rush to war without having all the facts first. Wait a second. That phrase "rush to war" sounds vaguely familiar…hmmm. Must be my imagination, right Democrats ?

In his effort to reverse the positions of the cart and the horse, our Prez has sent in the CIA:

The Obama administration has sent teams of CIA operatives into Libya in a rush to gather intelligence on the identities and capabilities of rebel forces opposed to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, according to U.S. officials.

The information has become more crucial as the administration and its coalition partners move closer to providing direct military aid or guidance to the disorganized and beleaguered rebel army.

Although the administration has pledged that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed to Libya, officials said Wednesday that President Obama has issued a secret finding that would authorize the CIA to carry out a clandestine effort to provide arms and other support to Libyan opposition groups.

Um, Obama's "secret finding" isn't much of a secret when "officials" blab it to reporters. The administration knows Qaddafi has a superior military and superior firepower to the rebels even without his airforce and heavy weapons. The rebels are in retreat. The only thing propping them up is the airstrikes of the America-led coalition.

"Our volunteer forces in the front have only got light weapons and are facing a very large military might,” said a rebel spokesman, Col. Ahmad Bani. The largely untrained and poorly organized force lacks anti-tank and other heavy weapons.

Bani called on NATO forces to intervene more forcefully, although a U.S. military official said coalition airstrikes, including attacks by U.S. AC-130 gunships, had continued apace in combat areas along the Libyan coast, with 32 U.S. and 23 coalition airstrikes in the 12-hour period through midday in Libya.

Administration officials said U.S. participation in the strikes would subside rapidly once NATO formally takes overall command this week of all aspects of the operation.

This idea of American participation subsiding once NATO takes over has been bugging me for awhile now too. NATO is…largely the United States from a military standpoint. The commander of NATO is also an American. It sounds like we're going to be handing control of operations over from the United States…to the United States. That strikes me as a distinction without much of a difference.

How many of the rebels are radical Islamic militants is unknown, and that's what the CIA is tasked with finding out. The CIA's mission may go far beyond that, however. They may also be guiding the rebel forces:

The CIA’s efforts represent a belated attempt to acquire basic information about rebel forces that had barely surfaced on the radar of U.S. spy agencies before the uprisings in North Africa.

Among the CIA’s tasks is to assess whether rebel leaders could be reliable partners if the administration opts to begin funneling in money or arms.

Under law, the CIA requires special permission from the president to carry out activities designed to influence foreign events. A finding establishes a framework of legal authorities for specific covert activities, and in some cases for future actions that can be taken only after specific permission is given.

Such operations are fraught with risks. The CIA’s history is replete with efforts that backfired against U.S. interests in unexpected ways. In perhaps the most fateful example, the CIA’s backing of Islamic fighters in Afghanistan succeeded in driving out the Soviets in the 1980s, but it also presaged the emergence of militant groups, including al-Qaeda, that the United States is now struggling to contain.

Giving the CIA an expanded role in Libya would enable the administration to bridge the gap between the restrictions on coalition airstrikes and Obama’s stated goal of bringing Gaddafi’s four-decade rule to an end.

The CIA’s Special Activities Division includes paramilitary operatives who could help guide rebel operations as well as allied airstrikes.

There is a very disturbing report about the rebels which, if true, does not bode well for coalition forces:

During "In the Arena," Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer for The New Yorker reporting from Benghazi, Libya, tells Eliot Spitzer that the number of opposition fighters on the front lines are fewer than anyone would think and that they are poorly armed and badly trained. Anderson says, "Effective number of fighting men, well under 1,000. Actual soldiers, who are now in the fight, possibly in the very low hundreds on the opposition side."

That ain't much of a rebel force for us to support, but never fear, "help" for the rebels may be on the way:

As the battle for the future of Libya continues, the excitement is almost palpable among Libyan-born al Qaeda fighters and other Arabs hunkered down in Pakistan's remote and lawless tribal area. According to Afghan Taliban sources close to Osama bin Laden's terrorist group, some of the 200 or so Libyans operating near the Afghan border may be on their way home to steer the anti-Gaddafi revolution in a more Islamist direction.

Since the anti-Gaddafi revolution began last month, al Qaeda—especially Libyan-born affiliates—have viewed the fighting as an opportunity to spread their radical Islamist ideology. Indeed, as one Afghan Taliban operative who helps facilitate the movement of al Qaeda militants between the tribal area and Pakistani cities told The Daily Beast earlier this month: "This rebellion is the fresh breeze they've been waiting years for. They realize that if they don't use this opportunity, it could be the end of their chances to turn Libya toward a real Islamic state, as Afghanistan once was."

Yikes. Could we actually be facing the prospect of an American President supporting Al-Qaedan Islamist rebels in a fight against Qaddafi's military ? Talk about your no-win situation. Maybe we should cut an arms-for-Al Qaeda deal with the Libyan rebels. They give us a terrorist, we give them a few weapons.

How can Libtards be for social freedom, but against economic freedom ? This has never made much sense to me, because these two freedoms are intertwined. They are two sides of the same liberty coin. They are inseparable, yet Libtards can't see it.

Allow me to explain.

Ask Libtards if women have the right to choose abortions or not, and they will say 'yes' without hesitation. They will say abortion is a basic human right. They are certain of it.

Then ask the same Libtards if people have the right to choose health insurance or not, and you will get a completely different answer. The Libtards will shift gears out of personal freedom mode and shift into Massah Gotta Tell Us Po' Darkies How To Act mode. The Libtard pose about being pro-choice and embracing constitutional privacy flies right out the window.

Thus, we end up with the extremely dubious Libtard proposition that human life is a LESS important matter than an insurance policy. Libtards want the government to mandate and control the latter, but not the former.

As another example, Libtards are for gay marriage, a social freedom issue, but if you start advocating low taxes, an issue of economic freedom, Libtards revert once again to the Master-Slave mindset, where the Massah government (run by Libtards, of course) should decide how much money us po' darkies can have. Lord knows we cain't haves too awful much. We'd prob'ly just drink, gamble, and ho it all away, cuz we ain't gots no sense anyhow. Ya knows how us chillun' fritters away dat ole money. Bettuh tuh have Massah hold it fo' us.

The explanation for this Libtard dichotomy between social and economic freedom is relatively easy to explain – Libtards want to get into YOUR pocketbook, so they can use YOUR money to carry out THEIR plans. And if you don't like THEIR hands in YOUR pocket, you better watch out, because the Libtards will call you all kinds of horrible names, like "racist", "hater of the poor", "greedy", "heartless", "corporatist", "fascist", "only care about the rich", etc, etc. The Libtards use these horrible names in order to distract you from the fact that THEY ARE ROBBING YOU. They are stealing the money you earned to take it for themselves. That is robbery, no two ways about it. And then they have the nerve to call YOU greedy if you object. Go figure. At least the guy who broke into my house and stole my stereo and television a few years ago didn't write me a note castigating me because I didn't have enough good stuff for him to steal. That thief didn't have the audacity to call ME greedy because I objected to being robbed. Libtards DO have that much audacity. They even believe their thievery puts them on the moral high ground. They must think the Ten Commandments says "Thou SHALT Steal". Going back to the abortion issue, Libtards are pretty relaxed about the "Thou Shalt Not Kill" Commandment as well. Libtards only invoke Thou Shalt Not Kill when it pertains to murderers and terrorists. They are fine with killing the innocent, just not the guilty. Again…Go figure.

The Libtards favorite bible quotation comes when Jesus said "Render Unto Caesar The Things Which Are Caesar's". Libtards, being natural thieves who are consumed with lust for the possessions of others (they missed the Commandment about coveting too), take this to mean Jesus would approve of Libtard thievery. They act as if Jesus was writing them a blank check. They miss the whole point of the story, of course, but that's what makes them Libtards. Jesus was actually saying he was concerned with the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of man. He wasn't offering an opinion on marginal tax rates (Note – Libtards reading this are polishing up their Jesus quotes to show Jesus was a liberal, or a socialist. The kicker is, many of those same Libtards will be atheists. They see no dichotomy there either).

When it comes to stealing money, Libtards know where to look. They look to the people who already pay the most in taxes, the wealthy, and then they make hysterical arguments that the wealthy, who pay the most in taxes by far, are not paying enough. My Libtard friend the Reverend writes entire posts about how the people who pay the most in taxes by far don't pay enough. He speaks fondly of days past when the highest marginal income tax rate was 70-90%. Like I said, Libtards are thieves. The Reverend is no exception.

The other thing Libtards hate is PROFITS. Even though business profits are what provide jobs and allows the entire middle class to exist in this country, Libtards hate profits. Even though without profits there would be no business sector providing all the fantastic products we have today, Libtards still hate profits. Even though Libtards cherished government revenue is completely dependent on the profits from the private sector, Libtards still hate profits. The reason why is simple – lots of those profits elude the clutches of Libtards (but they're working on that). Lots of those profits end up in the hand of, ugh, RICH PEOPLE. Libtards NEVER realize that those profits actually are what create the rich people in the first place, or that having a bunch of rich people in the country is REALLY GOOD. It's not like things would be better if we had nothing but poor people. We should be trying to create as many rich people as possible. That is called PROSPERITY last time I checked, but Libtards call it "evil", "greedy", and blah, blah, blah.

Libtards have the mistaken belief that every dollar of business profit is somehow stolen from someone else, generally a poor person. That's why Libtards are all socialists, even though every marxist state in the history of mankind has been a miserable, squalid, soul-crushing, human rights-destroying, abject failure. Nevertheless, Libtards remain undaunted by history in their quest for bigger and better miserable, squalid, soul-crushing, human rights-destroying, abject failures. And they think the way to get there is by allowing the government (led by Libtards, of course) to take over EVERYTHING. This is stupidity on a colossal level given our human history of government corruption, tyranny, and enslavement, but….that's what makes them Libtards. They not only don't learn from history, they pretend it doesn't even exist. They've grown up taking freedom for granted, which might be their worst miscalculation of all.

Liberals dishonestly condemned the protesters of the Tea Party movement as racist, fascist, extremists bent on violence. There was no violence by those protesters. They were peaceful, and they weren't racist or fascist either, but liberals found a few signs in the crowd that sounded kind of extreme. They used those signs to endlessly condemn the entire movement.

But as they say – what goes around, comes around.

Here are some signs from the Wisconsin union protesters. Let's see if liberals have the same reaction to these as they did to the Tea Party protests.

Keep in mind, these signs come from the people teaching your children:

Here we have a brainiac comparing Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker to Osama Bin Laden because Walker endorsed legislation to be considered in the Wisconsin Senate. Said legislature would be subject to a vote (the democratic process). Wisconsin Democrats ran away and hid rather than vote. That makes Walker a terrorist ? I hope the above sign-carrying clown doesn't teach civics.

Hmmm. Maybe they don't teach civics in Wisconsin.

Ah, yes. The inevitable Hitler reference. And nice move bringing your small child along to your demonstration of historical ignorance, buddy. Fascists are the ones who DON'T go along with the will of the people. They impose their will, as the hide-and-seek Democrat Senators in Wisconsin are attempting to do, and as the protesters who stormed the Wisconsin statehouse, beat on the doors of the assembly room, and shut down the legislature did. At least the original Browhshirts didn't have the gall to call their opponents Brownshirts.

The Hitler references were popular…

Yes, having a teacher contribute 12% of the cost of his own health insurance IS the same thing as slaughtering 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, isn't it ? Who can argue with logic like that ? They must not teach history in Wisconsin either.

If you can't beat 'em,…kill 'em. I hope this protester was standing right next to the guy with the Holocaust sign, for maximum ironic effect. Oxymorons unite !

Hey ! Where did this sign come from ??? Pssst. Quick, sweep it under this rug. We aren't supposed to TELL THEM we're socialists, remember ? We're supposed to deny it.

This last one contains profanity. Stop now if you are offended by that.

Classy. Obviously, an English teacher created this one. It took a bit of thought. Plus, they inadvertently got the "Fascist Union" part right.

There are all kinds of signs at the Wisconsin protests calling for Gov. Walker's impeachment. I hate to be a stickler for things like facts, but….can anyone identify an impeachable offense committed by Walker ? I can't. I'm fairly sure "because the mob says so " is NOT a valid grounds for impeachment.

Given the apparent lack of civics knowledge among Wisconsin's teachers and protesters, this seems like a good time to plug The Dreyfuss Initiative. It is dedicated to refocusing on teaching civics in America. Sounds like a real good idea, considering. Maybe it's time to get something besides cheese into the heads of some Wisconsin teachers, and I know this phenomenon isn't restricted to that one state.

Here's the video:

Nice to find this out nearly a year AFTER ObamaCare passed, isn't it ? Looks like the Republicans were on target after all when they named their ObamaCare repeal effort 'Repealing The Job Killing Health Care Law Act".

In January, noted liberal dunce Ezra Klein of the Washington Post/Newsweek, and a regular MSNBC contributor, tried to spin the ObamaCare job loss info this way:

the [CBO] report never says the bill will kill jobs. What it says, rather, is that the law will slightly reduce labor.

Huh ? ObamaCare won't kill jobs, it will just "reduce labor" ???? That's the same thing. Labor IS jobs. I suppose we shouldn't expect any better from Klein, whose previous inane statements include this one from December, where Klein attempted to argue that the Constitution "has no binding power on anything". I bet that came as a newsflash to the Supreme Court:

"The issue with the Constitution is not that people don’t read the text and think they’re following it. The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago".

Um, that oh-so-confusing Constitution was adopted in 1787. For the enlightenment of the mathematically-and-constitutionally-challenged Klein, that was over 223 years ago, not over one hundred years ago. My only question is, why does the Washington Post employ this idiot ?

Klein gives us further clarification on how ObamaCare will not kill jobs as it does kill them:

"It's not that employers will fire workers. It's that potential workers — particularly older ones — will retire somewhat earlier. "The expansion of Medicaid and the availability of subsidies through the exchanges will effectively increase beneficiaries’ financial resources. Those additional resources will encourage some people to work fewer hours or to withdraw from the labor market."

I consider this to be the perfect liberal argument, an example of completely nonsensical and backwards thinking. Here, Klein is saying that people will voluntarily choose to leave the labor market earlier because their new ObamaCare entitlement will enable them to do so. So, in addition to there being fewer workers (and thus less government revenue), we will have more people dependent on the government for survival (more government spending). Let's see, what happens when we have less government revenue and more government spending ? One of two things – either we raise taxes or we have larger deficits and debt. Only a liberal of Klein's (low) caliber could spin this into a positive, even if he was telling the truth, which he isn't. ObamaCare will "reduce labor" by placing more burdens on employers, allowing them to hire fewer workers. Klein didn't even mention this in his hack article.

Ezra the mental midget actually compared tax cuts to ObamaCare, by saying that tax cuts also enable people to stop working earlier by "shifting financial resources". This dolt is starting to make my head hurt. People keeping their own money and retiring is completely different than people retiring via government dependence. People who retire early with their own money AREN'T DEPENDENT ON THE GOVERNMENT. They are self-supporting. They aren't consuming the resources of other taxpayers. Even though retired, they are therefore still PRODUCTIVE in the economy. They spend their own money. I swear, we could reduce liberal loons like Klein by 95% if we made them all take courses in Basic Economics. Unfortunately, those liberal loons would expect somebody else to pay for those courses.

Ezra Klein is actually advancing the idea of having fewer workers as a plus. As I said, it's the perfect nonsensical liberal argument. Klein is advancing the ball toward a more non-working, non-productive society of idle people dependent on the government for their survival. Way to go, Ezra. We already have a big problem with paying for future entitlements, and Klein is endorsing the exacerbation of that very problem. Why does this guy have a job again ? Somebody actually pays him money to spew this ignorance ? Unbelievable.

P.S. – It will probably take about five seconds for liberal loons reading this post to morph it into "King hates the poor". Begin the countdown. 5…4…3…2…

Twenty six states are challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare.

The House Of Representatives voted to repeal ObamaCare.

A majority of Americans are against the ObamaCare mandate (60% in the latest CNN poll).

Two federal judges have declared ObamaCare to be unconstitutional (two other judges, appointed by Democrats, have declared it to be constitutional. I don't know what Constitution they were reading, but it couldn't have been ours).

A reading of the U.S. Constitution immediately reveals the unconstitutionality of the ObamaCare mandate. The Commerce Clause states that Congress shall have the power to "To regulate Commerce…among the several States". The ObamaCare mandate doesn't regulate Commerce, it forces people to engage in commerce or be fined. Forcing people to purchase a product from a private company is an egregious perversion of the Commerce Clause, and is therefore unconstitutional. The ObamaCare mandate forces people to engage in commerce where there was none before. If the ObamaCare mandate stands, the government could force the people to do anything it wished. It could force us all to eat broccoli, buy guns, buy houses, drink milk, go to church, take vitamins, etc, etc. If the ObamaCare mandates stands, the power of the government would be unlimited, exactly the opposite of what the Founding Fathers intended. I think even Democrats know this is unconstitutional, but they don't care. They believe the end justifies the means, a principle attributed to Macchievelli. I cannot dispute that the Dems are Macchiavellian, so I'll leave them to defend that.

Yesterday, the Senate held a vote to repeal ObamaCare. It was defeated by a vote of 47-51. All 47 Republicans voted to repeal the unconstitutional bill. 51 Democrats voted for unconstitutionality. No Democrat voted in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. None. Zero. Lieberman and Warner didn't vote.

The lone bright spot on the Democratic road to unconstitutional tyranny is that one aspect of ObamaCare was repealed:

Another amendment to the health care repeal law did see passage, however – an amendment to repeal a provision that requires businesses to file a 1099 form with the IRS for every vendor with which they've done $600 worth of business or more. Both parties were sympathetic to complaints from the business community that the provision would create onerous paperwork requirements, and the amendment passed easily and with bipartisan support, 81-17.

Thank goodness for small favors.

Senators vow to uphold the U. S. Constitution when they are sworn into office. Fifty one Democrats just violated that oath…so, why can't we remove them from office ? I'm not talking impeachment, because that wouldn't work. Congress has impeachment power over itself, and the Democrats would certainly vote against impeaching themselves. Forget impeachment. I'm talking about holding recall elections. The people can do that themselves by getting enough signatures on a petition. Our government has overstepped it's bounds time and time again, and the Constitution is becoming increasingly irrelevant because of it. It's about time we stand up and stop it. The power really does belong to the people, for now at least, but we need to be awake to exercise it.

With a popular Egyptian revolution unfolding in front of us, I thought I'd provide a little Egyptian background info. I'm not going to get into what the United States should do or should not do, because we don't control Egypt. Our options are limited. We can withhold aid and make a plea for human rights, but Egyptians will determine the future of Egypt, not us. Contrary to the belief of some, we don't run the world.

The best thing Jimmy Carter accomplished as President was to broker a peace deal between Israel and Egypt in 1979. That might be the only good thing Carter accomplished as President, but it was significant. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin received the Nobel Peace Prize for that peace treaty. You can tell it was a good treaty by who hated it – the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the Arab League, and assorted Islamic jihadists. The peace treaty was hated by the people who didn't want peace. Following the treaty, Egypt was suspended from the Arab League for ten years, and Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. While Egyptian Arabs still consider Israel the enemy, there have been no armed conflicts between the two nations in the subsequent 31 years.

As part of Carter's 1979 agreement, the United States began sending economic and military aid to Egypt, and also agreed to back subsequent Egyptian governments. We sent $38 billion to Egypt between 1979 and 2000. We gave Egpt an average of about $2 billion a year, and sent $1.3 billion last year. Most of that aid was military.

After Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the warmongering a-holes, Hosni Mubarak took over as the President of Egypt in 1981. America was committed to back him, and we have ever since. Egypt also helped us. Egypt was a member of the allied coalition to evict Saddam Hussein's Iraq forces from Kuwait in 1991. There was a payoff, of course. After the war, the U.S., England, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf forgave Egypt around $20 billion of it's debt.

In 2003, President Mubarak spoke out against the Iraq War, saying the Israeli-Palestinian situation should be resolved first, and also saying an Iraq invasion would create "100 Bin Ladens".

Mubarak had American backing, but his government was an authoritarian and corrupt one. He was re-elected by sham referendums in 1987, 1993, 1999. Mubarak was the only candidate in those "elections". Under pressure to make democratic reforms, Egypt amended it's constitution in 2005 to allow multiple candidates to run for President. It didn't make much difference, because the electoral institutions and the state run media was stilled controlled by Mubarak. In addition, there were widespread reports of Mubarak rigging the election, and there were political persections, including the arrest and conviction of the election runner-up to Mubarak in December 2005.

Wikipedia has more on Mubarak's corruption:

While in office, political corruption in the Mubarak administration's Ministry of Interior has risen dramatically, due to the increased power over the institutional system that is necessary to secure the prolonged presidency. Such corruption has led to the imprisonment of political figures and young activists without trials,[18] illegal undocumented hidden detention facilities,[19][20] and rejecting universities, mosques, newspapers staff members based on political inclination.[21] On a personnel level, each individual officer can and will violate citizens' privacy in his area using unconditioned arrests due to the emergency law.

And this:

Egypt is a semi-presidential republic under Emergency Law (Law No. 162 of 1958)[23] and has been since 1967, except for an 18-month break in 1980s. Under the law, police powers are extended, constitutional rights suspended and censorship is legalized.[24] The law sharply circumscribes any non-governmental political activity: street demonstrations, non-approved political organizations, and unregistered financial donations are formally banned. Some 17,000 people are detained under the law, and estimates of political prisoners run as high as 30,000.[25] Under that "state of emergency", the government has the right to imprison individuals for any period of time, and for virtually no reason, thus keeping them in prisons without trials for any period. The government continues the claim that opposition groups like the Muslim Brotherhood could come into power in Egypt if the current government did not forgo parliamentary elections, confiscate the group's main financiers' possessions, and detain group figureheads, actions which are virtually impossible without emergency law and judicial-system independence prevention.[26] Pro-democracy advocates in Egypt argue that this goes against the principles of democracy, which include a citizen's right to a fair trial and their right to vote for whichever candidate and/or party they deem fit to run their country.

Mubarak is 82 years old, and different Egyptian groups have been planning for a post-Mubarak Egypt. Unfortunately, the number one anti-Mubarak group in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Islamist movement. Another major figure is Egypt is the former head of the Atomic Energy Commission, Mohamed ElBaradei. He has been calling for Mubarak to step down as well, as follows:

"You are the owners of this revolution. You are the future," the Associated Press quoted ElBaradei addressing the crowd after nightfall. "Our essential demand is the departure of the regime and the beginning of a new Egypt in which every Egyptian lives in virtue, freedom and dignity."

We don't know how the Egyptian situation will play out, but as far as U.S. interests go, the last thing we want to see is the Islamists take over for Mubarak. I don't know if that will happen, but it is a real possibility. We already have one Iran. We don't need another. Here's to hoping the revolution really does end up with democratic reform and human rights being the ultimate winners in Egypt.
===
Correction – Mohamed ElBaradei is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), not the Atomic Energy Commission. My bad.

I mentioned the abortionist murdering doctor Kermit Gosnell in my last post. Now, we have the grand jury report. Here are some of the findings:

This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.

Why didn't anyone put a stop to it ? Gosnell continued his vile practices for years. Here's a description of the conditions at Gosnell's clinic, which went by the name Women's Medical Society:

The clinic reeked of animal urine, courtesy of the cats that were allowed to roam (and defecate) freely. Furniture and blankets were stained with blood. Instruments were not properly sterilized. Disposable medical supplies were not disposed of; they were reused, over and over again. Medical equipment – such as the defibrillator, the EKG, the pulse oximeter, the blood pressure cuff – was generally broken; even when it worked, it wasn’t used. The emergency exit was padlocked shut. And scattered throughout, in cabinets, in the basement, in a freezer, in jars and bags and plastic jugs, were fetal remains. It was a baby charnel house. The people who ran this sham medical practice included no doctors other than Gosnell himself, and not even a single nurse. Two of his employees had been to medical school, but neither of them were licensed physicians. They just pretended to be. Everyone called them “Doctor,” even though they, and Gosnell, knew they weren’t. Among the rest of the staff, there was no one with any medical licensing or relevant certification at all. But that didn’t stop them from making diagnoses, performing procedures, administering drugs.

Here's what happened on a daily basis at Gosnell's "clinic":

…the real business of the “Women’s Medical Society” was not health; it was profit. There were two primary parts to the operation. By day it was a prescription mill; by night an abortion mill. A constant stream of “patients” came through during business hours and, for the proper payment, left with scripts for Oxycontin and other controlled substances, for themselves and their friends. Gosnell didn’t see these “patients”; he didn’t even show up at the office during the day. He just left behind blank, pre-signed prescription pads, and had his unskilled, unauthorized workers take care of the rest. The fake prescriptions brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

With abortion, as with prescriptions, Gosnell’s approach was simple: keep volume high, expenses low – and break the law. That was his competitive edge.

Gosnell operated in Pennsylvania, where abortion is legal within a framework. What Gosnell did was to specialize, by providing those "hard to get" abortions:

The real key to the business model, though, was this: Gosnell catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere – because they were too pregnant. Most doctors won’t perform late second-trimester abortions, from approximately the 20th week of pregnancy, because of the risks involved. And late-term abortions after the 24th week of pregnancy are flatly illegal. But for Dr. Gosnell, they were an opportunity. The bigger the baby, the more he charged.

But Gosnell did have that pesky law to get around. No problem:

There was one small problem. The law requires a measurement of gestational age, usually done by an ultrasound. The ultrasound film would leave documentary proof that the abortion was illegal. Gosnell’s solution was simply to fudge the measurement process. Instead of hiring proper ultrasound technicians, he “trained” the staff himself, showing them how to aim the ultrasound probe at an angle to make the fetus look smaller. If one of his workers nonetheless recorded an ultrasound measurement that was too big, it would just be redone

Gosnell learned how to streamline his abortion mill to maximize profits:

Babies that big are hard to get out. Gosnell’s approach, whenever possible, was to force full labor and delivery of premature infants on ill-informed women. The women would check in during the day, make payment, and take labor-inducing drugs. The doctor wouldn’t appear until evening, often 8:00, 9:00, or 10:00 p.m., and only then deal with any of the women who were ready to deliver. Many of them gave birth before he even got there. By maximizing the pain and danger for his patients, he minimized the work, and cost, for himself and his staff. The policy, in effect, was labor without labor.

There was one final problem. These late-term "abortions" resulted in a lot of live babies squirming around in Gosnell's "clinic". Again, no problem for Gosnell:

By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women’s Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn’t call it that. He called it “ensuring fetal demise.” The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that “snipping.”

You see, these weren't babies to Gosnell. These were "fetuses", just, you know, "tissue". So he had no problem with "snipping" them. How many were "snipped" ? LOTS, that's how many:

Over the years, there were hundreds of “snippings.” Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the “snipping” was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff. But all the employees of the Women’s Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn’t murder at all.

How does anyone get to the point where they don't think killing babies is murder ????? Would it have anything to do with a certain political belief that says abortion is nothing more than a simple matter of choice, that the issue is SOLELY about a woman's control over her OWN body, as if the OTHER living body inside her is NOTHING ??? Or am I way off base here ??? If so, how ???

This post only begins to touch on the extent of the horror that took place at Gosnell's clinic. Keep a vomit bag nearby if you decide to read the entire report.

The question remains – how did this go on so long ? The short answer to that is – political correctness. Abortion is one of our oh, so sacred "rights" now, and the Pennsylvania government didn't want to interfere with such a sacred "right":

We discovered that Pennsylvania’s Department of Health has deliberately chosen not to enforce laws that should afford patients at abortion clinics the same safeguards and assurances of quality health care as patients of other medical service providers. Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety.

Indeed, the department has shown an utter disregard both for the safety of women who seek treatment at abortion clinics and for the health of fetuses after they have become viable. State health officials have also shown a disregard for the laws the department is supposed to enforce. Most appalling of all, the Department of Health’s neglect of abortion patients’ safety and of Pennsylvania laws is clearly not inadvertent: It is by design.

Even worse, the state knew of Gosnell's horror chamber, and let it continue anyway:

State health officials knew that Gosnell and his clinic were offering unacceptable medical care to women and girls, yet DOH failed to take any action to stop the atrocities documented by this Grand Jury. These officials were far more protective of themselves when they testified before the Grand Jury. Even DOH lawyers, including the chief counsel, brought private attorneys with them – presumably at government expense.

Gosnell’s clinic – with its untrained staff, its unsanitary conditions and practices, its perilously lax anesthesia protocols, its willingness to perform late-term abortions for exorbitant amounts of cash, and its routine procedure of killing babies after they were delivered by their unconscious mothers – offers a telling example of how horrendous a
Pennsylvania facility can be and still operate with DOH “approval.”
The Department of Health conducted sporadic, inadequate inspections for 13 years, and then none at all between 1993 and 2010.

This is from the last page of the grand jury report:

We believe…that anyone responsible for permitting Gosnell to operate as he did should face strong disciplinary action up to and including termination. This includes not only the people who failed to do the inspecting, the prosecuting, and the protecting, but also those at the top who obviously tolerated, or even encouraged, the inaction. The Department of State literally licensed Gosnell’s criminally dangerous behavior. DOH gave its stamp of approval to his facility.

"Doctor" Kermit Gosnell operated his horror chamber for a LONG, LONG time before the current charges were brought against him. His "clinic" opened in 1979. He's been butchering babies for decades. We may as well call him what he is, a serial killer……operating right under the non-watchful eye of a state government that looked the other way and allowed him to do it.

I have stated before on this blog that I am pro-choice from a legal standpoint, as long as there are very strict definitions and controls in place. I've always felt a little guilty and conflicted about that position, so maybe it is the wrong position. Personally, I am against abortion, but I don't believe a woman should be forced to have a baby if she is raped, for instance, or if it will cause substantial risk to her life. I'm also old enough to remember what it was like before abortions were legal, when women had dangerous back-alley abortions. We don't want a return to that, but abortion is out of control is this country. I recently read an article that said 41% of pregnancies in New York City end in abortion. That's pretty disgusting, and shows our morals have gone way off track. What I detest is the political faction that insists abortion is nothing more than a simple choice. It is a lot more than that, and the further along the pregnancy goes, the less of a "choice" it becomes, and the more of a "murder" it becomes. If that terminology is too stark for some, well, too bad. It's not my job to make you feel better about your immorality.

met·a·phor -noun
1. a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our god.”
2. something used, or regarded as being used, to represent something else; emblem; symbol
——————————————————————–

Following the Tucson shootings, our professional media quickly reached the conclusion that metaphors were the root cause (i.e., Palin's metaphorical "crosshairs" map, Palin using the word "reload" metaphorically, Palin's face appearing on metaphorically-shaped television screens, etc). According to a recent CNN poll, a plurality of Democrats believe Palin's metaphors are partially responsible for the Tucson shootings (in related news, a plurality of Democrats also believe their computers are living beings, unlike their fetuses).

Thus, even though metaphors have a long, illustrious history as powerful figurative literary techniques, CNN moved to ban them after it was discovered liberals had no idea what words like "figurative" and "metaphor" actually mean. Liberals suspect they may be covert calls for political violence. The jury is still out on whether liberals understand the meaning of the word "historical", though it doesn't look good. History may have to be banned next, as well as all words containing more than five letters. A DailyKos diarist pointed out that if you rearrange the letters in the word "metaphor", it spells out "team orph", which might be a reference to a shadowy right-wing militia-type extremist group. One can't be too careful. Those right-wingers are freaking diabolical (that means 'evil', liberals).

Here's professional newsman John King of CNN to explain the problem:

King: "Before we go to break, I want to make a quick point. We were having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race. My friend Andy Shaw used the term 'in the crosshairs' in talking about the candidates. We're trying, we're trying to get away from that language. Andy is a good friend, he's covered politics for a long time, but we're trying to get away from that kind of language."

I can only assume liberals were flooding the FBI with calls demanding that John King's friend Andy Shaw be arrested for inciting political violence, so CNN's view is understandable. Laughable, but understandable.

There is rumor that President Obama may soon appoint a Metaphorical Oversight Czar (MOC) to monitor the situation and ferret out violations of figurative speech. I mean, without that, people might start going around saying all kinds of things, saying whatever they want to say. Imagine what kind of country that would be. Obama definitely should MOC speech like that before it gets out of control, don't you think ?

Congressional Democrats willl introduce their landmark Keeping An Eye On The English Teacher legislation next week, with a special 800-number for schoolkids to call in order to keep the authorities apprised of non-acceptable metaphorical speech. Upon hearing this news, Joan Copperfield, head of the Camden County Teacher's Union And Pancake Breakfast, commented that the new legislation "was like putting a gun to our teacher's heads". Copperfield was immediately relieved of duty for a speech violation, and was last heard being dragged off screaming, "but that was a simile ! It was a simile !" Liberals were not moved by Copperfield's pleas. Liberal spokesman Grant Inquisiter responded, "whatever a simile is, we don't like those either. Copperfield is acting like a horse's ass !" Inquister was also immediately relieved of duty. Liberals are looking for a mute to replace him as spokesperson.

Before that bitch Sarah Palin came along and ruined metaphors for CNN and everyone else, the Washington Examiner points out that CNN used THE EXACT SAME CROSSHAIR METAPHORS when referring to Palin and others. Here we go:

"Palin's moose-hunting episode on her reality show enraged People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and now, she's square in the crosshairs of big time Hollywood producer, Aaron Sorkin," reported A.J. Hammer of CNN's Headline News on December 8.

"Companies like MasterCard are in the crosshairs for cutting ties with WikiLeaks," said CNN Kiran Chetry in a December 9 report.

"Thousands of people living in areas that are in the crosshairs have been told to evacuate," Chetry said in a December 21 report on flooding in California.

"He's in their crosshairs," said a guest in a December 21 CNN discussion of suspects in a missing-person case.

"This will be the first time your food will be actually in the crosshairs of the FDA," business reporter Christine Romans said on December 22.

"The U.S. commander in the East has Haqqani in his crosshairs," CNN's Barbara Starr reported on December 28, referring to an Afghan warlord.

"We know that health care reform is in the crosshairs again," CNN's Joe Johns reported on January 3.

All these irresponsible "crosshairs" incitements were uttered on CNN in the month prior to the Tucson shootings. Coincidence ? Or subversive plot ? Only liberals know for sure. Maybe we should call the Truthers. They're always on top of things.

I made a phone call to CNN's Vice President In Charge Of Figurative News for an explanation of why CNN used the violent phrase "in the crosshairs" so often, and why that was different from what Palin did. CNN's FIgurative VP replied, "we're going to try not to do it in the future, but it was alright when we did do it, because we aren't Sarah Palin". Then he hung up on me.

Back to you, Soledad.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. – Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution

This is the infamous passage in the original Constitution that counts slaves as three-fifths of a person. Because yesterday was Martin Luther King day, it seems like a good time to bring this topic up. Almost every time I hear a reference made to this part of the original Constitution, it is offered up as proof that the Founding Fathers were racists. It is offered up as proof that they considered blacks to be subhuman. A caller to the Glen Beck radio program made this typical assertion:

"I noticed you reference the founding fathers a lot," said the caller. "And to me it's kind of offensive because most of those guys were slave-owners. The Constitution that they wrote up — they didn't even recognize my people as even human."

"Where'd you learn that, Josh?" Beck soon responded, after asking him to explain his question. The caller said he "learned that in school."

I don't know what they are teaching in school these days, and it's true some of the Founders were slaveowners, but the three-fifths clause in the Constitution did not mean blacks were subhuman. It was actually designed to reduce the power of the slave-owning states in the U.S. Congress. Counting slaves as three-fifths of a person in the Census was actually a compromise position reached between northern and southern states at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. Delegates opposed to slavery didn't want to count slaves in the Census at all, because it would inflate the representation of the slave owning states in Congress. The number of representatives in Congress was determined by the number of people being represented. Counting slaves a full persons, as the slave owning states wished to do, would only increase the political power of the slave owners. Thus, the three-fifths compromise was reached. It would have been better if the wishes of the anti-slavery people had won out, and slaves were not counted at all, and only free persons were counted. (note – free black people were counted as full persons). After all, it's not like the interests of the slaves were being represented in Congress by the slave owners. Only the slave owners interests were being represented. Counting black slaves as full persons at that time would have only increased the power of their masters. Not a desirable outcome.

Even counting slaves as three-fifths of a person instead of non-persons, as odd as it sounds, had profound political repercussions. It increased the power of the slave states. From Wikipedia:

The three-fifths ratio, or "Federal ratio" had a major effect on pre-Civil War political affairs due to the disproportionate representation of slaveholding states relative to voters. For example, in 1793 slave states would have been apportioned 33 seats in the House of Representatives had the seats been assigned based on the free population; instead they were apportioned 47. In 1812, slaveholding states had 76 instead of the 59 they would have had; in 1833, 98 instead of 73. As a result, southerners dominated the Presidency, the Speakership of the House, and the Supreme Court in the period prior to the Civil War.

After the Civil War and abolition, the three-fifths compromise was superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which reads, ""Representatives shall be apportioned …counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed..." There was no longer a need to reduce the power of slave owning states after slavery was thankfully ended. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, gave black men the right to vote. That left women as societal outcasts. Women didn't get the right to vote for another fifty years, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920.

In summary, the next time you hear someone say the "three fifths of a person" clause means the Founders thought blacks were subhuman, know they are ignorant of history. The ones who thought blacks were subhuman were the SLAVE OWNERS, who wanted black slaves to be counted as full persons to serve their own nefarious ends.

I hate to get into this kind of tit-for-tat comparison of recent politically-connected violence, but I feel I must do it, due to some myths floating around the media about alleged right-wing violence. I'm not saying there is no right-wing violence, because extremists can pop up anywhere on the politiical spectrum, but because our media offers absolutely NO balance in this area, and focuses almost solely on the political right while barely even reporting violence on the left (and usually whitewashing it when they do report it), I feel I must provide some of that balance here. Also spurring this post is the mass hysteria that seems to be taking place in left-wing circles since the Tucson shootings.

Here's a quick reminder of some recent left-wing political violence and intimidation:

- It was not the fear of conservative violence that caused Ann Coulter’s speech at the University of Ottawa to be cancelled.
- It was a liberal who bit the finger off a man who disagreed with him on healthcare.
- It was Obama-loving Amy Bishop who took a gun to work and murdered co-workers.
- Joseph Stack flew his plane into the IRS building after writing an anti-conservative, anti-capitalist manifesto that quoted Karl Marx.
- It was liberals who destroyed AM radio towers outside of Seattle.
- It’s liberals who burn down Hummer dealerships.
- It was progressive SEIU union thugs who beat a black conservative man who spoke his mind.
- It’s doubtful that a conservative fired shots into a GOP campaign headquarters.
- In fact, Democrats have no monopoly on having their offices vandalized.
- Don’t forget it was Obama’s friend Bill Ayers who used terrorism as a tool for political change. SDS is still radical, with arrests in 2007 and the storming of the CATO Institute in July 2008.
- It was a liberal who was sentenced to two years for bringing bombs and riot shields to the Republican National Convention in 2008.
- It was a liberal who threatened to kill a government informant who infiltrated her Austin-based group that planned to bomb the RNC.
- It was liberals who assaulted police in Berkeley.
- It was liberals who intimidated and threw rocks through the windows of researchers.
- The two Black Panthers who stood outside polls intimidating people with nightsticks were probably not right-wingers.
- Every time the G20 gets together, it’s not conservatives who destroy property and cause chaos.

The above list is by no means complete, but all this stuff happened over the last one to three years, though you probably don't even know about half of it, because the media doesn't bother to report it. For much more, see Michelle Malkin's Progressive Climate Of Hate: An Illustrated Primer, 2000-2010.

In light of all this left-wing craziness, have you EVER heard the media openly worry about left-wing violence or left-wing speech in this country ? Have you ever heard them ask the left to tone it down ? I haven't, yet the overwhelming majority of politiical violence, riots, and protests in this country have come from the left during my lifetime. It's not even a close call. Now, all of a sudden we have right-wingers protesting for the first time I can remember (except for the pro-lifers) with the Tea Party movement, and half the media is acting like this is Germany in the 1930's. They have my poor blogger friend the Reverend so frightened that he thinks a second Civil War is about to break out, slavery will be reinstituted, we'll become a theological corporate dictatorship led by Goldman Sachs, and we'll use poor people for food (okay, maybe not that last one. I dont want to give people the impression that the Reverend is an extremist).

Let's also not forget that the EVIDENCE regarding Jared Loughner points a lot more to him being a lefty than a righty. It seems all of liberaldom has forgotten that in their mad rush to find a reason to blame the Tucson shootings on right-wingers. Even though I am not a lefty, it is my genuine hope that they return to sanity soon, because currently, they sound like a bunch of irrational nutjobs.

Literally minutes after the Tucson shootings, the media magically created a connection out of thin air between the the shootings and Sarah Palin's crosshairs map targeting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others for defeat in the 2010 elections. As profoundly dishonest as it is to suggest Palin was somehow advocating violence with that map, the media was undaunted. They embraced their dishonesty, and heaped blame on Palin, despite a complete lack of evidence. Tucson's Democratic Sheriff Dupnik joined in the clue-less chorus, blaming "violent" rhetoric and conservative talk radio for the murders, although Dupnik admitted he had absolutely no evidence to backup his claim either. 'Facts ? We don't need no stinkin' facts', bleated these dishonest media whores.

What has been the result of all this fact-less blame casting aimed at Palin ? Oh, irony of ironies, the unbased hatred appears to have further endangered Palin's life:

An aide close to Sarah Palin says death threats and security threats have increased to an unprecedented level since the shooting in Arizona, and the former Alaska governor's team has been talking to security professionals.

Since the shooting in Tucson, Palin has taken much heat for her "crosshairs" map that targeted 20 congressional Democrats in the 2010 mid-term election, including that of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was the main target of Saturday's attack.

Nice going, media. You have ginned up a fact-less controversy to smear Palin, and as a result of your lies, you have increased death threats against her to an "unprecedented level". You must be so proud.

Palin fired back at the media (oops, sorry. We aren't supposed to use words like "fired" anymore), saying:

"Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn," [Palin] said in an early morning Facebook post today.

Palin's comment nailed it, and the culpable media types should apologize, but because it is Palin saying these words, the media is instead all atwitter about Palin's NEW "controversial" comments (I swear, the media would call it "controversial" if Palin read the dictionary aloud). Here's the source of the "controversy" this time around, in case you missed it, as you probably did. From ABC News:

The term "blood libel" has been used historically to falsely accuse Jews of using Christian children's blood to prepare their Passover matzoh. The myth is said to have begun in Europe as early as the 12th century, perpetuated by the death of a small boy in England in 1144.

It's a term that Jews say has been used to incite anti-Semitism and justify violence against them for centuries.

Sarah used the words "blood libel", and now she's anti-semitic ? Oh, for crying out loud. That's ridiculous, but others say 'you betcha she is', as our media is only too glad to report:

The Jewish Fund for Justice assailed Palin for abusing a tragic episode in Jewish history.

"We are deeply disturbed" by her commentary, president Simon Greer said in a statement today. "Unless someone has been accusing Ms. Palin of killing Christian babies and making matzoh from their blood, her use of the term is totally out of line."

The National Jewish Democratic Council called the video a step in the wrong direction.

"This is of course a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries — and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today," it said in a statement.

Now, after Palin has been the target of a bunch of irrational hate speech in the wake of the Tucson shootings, she is suddenly and magically transformed once AGAIN into a purveyor of hate by using two words, "blood libel" (which seems like a perfect description of the irrational hatred directed toward her to me).

Liberal groups are naturally thrilled with this fresh cow manure being flung at Palin:

"The last thing the country needs now is for the rhetoric in the wake of this tragedy to return to where it was before," liberal group J Street said in a statement. "We hope that Governor Palin will recognize, when it is brought to her attention, that the term 'blood libel' brings back painful echoes of a very dark time in our communal history when Jews were falsely accused of committing heinous deeds."

I didn't realize the words "blood libel" were stricken from the English language, or that they had only one possible context. I must have missed the memo. I"m also beginning to realize what liberals mean when they refer to "hate speech". Hate speech to liberals is when words come out of a conservative's mouth. It doesn't much matter what the words are, as long as they are somewhere in the political sphere. It doesn't much matter because whatever the words are, liberals will magically transform them into "hate speech", just like they did with Palin.

There is a voice of reason crying out against the Palin Derangement Syndrome universe, and it comes from Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz:

"There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim."

Thank you, professor. Now, of course, the media wants to know WHY Palin chose those two words to use, as if it freaking matters. If I was her, I'd simply say, "because they fit".

Our media. Gotta love 'em. They lament the tone of our political rhetoric in the wake of the Tucson shootings, while at the very same time they are stirring things up against Palin based upon nothing. And here I thought Palin Derangement Syndrome was going to end after the 2008 election. Boy, was I wrong.

Update – Jennifer Epstein of Politico has taken Palin Derangement Syndrome to the next level with this:

Sarah Palin’s use of the charged term “blood libel” may not have been an accidental blunder, but a deliberate “‘dog whistle” appeal to her evangelical Christian supporters for whom the expression has meaning, commentators and others are saying.

The fact-free parade continues. Ooh, look at the straw men, mommy !

While the media attempts to spin the murders of 22-year old Jared Lee Loughner as being the product of right-wing speech, many facts are being carefully hidden from view. Most of those facts lead one to believe that Loughner is a left-winger.

First, we have the fact that a former classmate called Loughner a "left-wing pothead".

Then we have the fact that Loughner listed The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf as two of his favorite books.

Now we have more testimony from a former friend of Loughner's, one Caitie Parker:

Caitie Parker, a singer/songwriter from Oro Valley, AZ, says that she knows Jared Loughner, the gunman that shot 19 people in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday, January 8th…Not only did she go to high school with him, but college as well and was in a band with him. “There were 5-6 of us that hung out” in high school. Unfortunately, it was.

At that time, she said, he was very philosophical and leaned to the ‘left.’ She said, “For the Bush/Kerry election we all wore “1 term president” buttons. That election was HUGE to us.”

He had actually met Gabrielle Giffords in ‘07, and after asking her a question, told Caitie later that Gifford was “stupid and unintelligent.” The question he asked Giffords, Caitie said, “was odd & didn’t make sense, I can’t remember what it was. Just know it was weird.” The last time she had seen him in person was in 2007, in a sign language class.

Their [Loughner and Parker's] group was “liberal in wanting to change the way the world was run, we both wanted to. He took it to an extreme I never would’ve.” She said he was a “political radical” long before the teaparty, Glenn Beck, or Sarah Palin came on the scene.

Caitie also said he was a pot head and was into the music of Hendrix, The Doors, and Anti-Flag. “We listened to political punk in high school & agreed with their leftist opinions for the most part. Anti-Flag was our band.”

Caitie Parker hadn't seen Loughner since 2007, so it is possible his politics did an about face after that and he became a right-winger. Yes, it is possible, but it sure doesn't appear to be the case. From Volokh:

On July 7, 2010, Loughner posted his assertion that the war(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan “is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949”:

There was help with cleaning the uranium from the Iran and Iraq war in the 1980’s?

Article 33 of the Geneva Convention is the prohibit of pillage.

All military invasions with armed forces into a foreign country are war crimes in the Geneva Convention articles of 1949.

The Iraq and Afghanistan war of 2010 is a military invasion with armed forces into a foreign country.

Therefore, Iraq and Afghanistan war of 2010 is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949.

Ouch! For the thoughts of war.

Doesn't sound much like your typical right-wing fare, does it ?

Speaking of unemployment, Loughner talks about "rights" to money, food, housing, medical care, etc:

“the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity” and “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.”

Most right-wingers don't believe you have the "right" to anything you didn't earn.

Then we have Loughner's anti-god stuff:

Crap on God!
Crap on God!
Crap on God!

Talk to the toilet seat for a hour.

My purpose here is not to blame the left for Loughner's murders, nor is it to tell the left-wingers to stop engaging in political speech, as the left has attempted to do to the right. I could never be THAT big of a hypocrite. Engaging in political speech is what I do here, and it has never even once occurred to me to stop doing it because some unbalanced person might take what I say the wrong way. We don't stop engaging in political speech for that reason, any more than Jodi Foster stopped being an actress after Hinckley shot Reagan because of his weird obsession with Foster. Neither did the Beatles stop making music following Charles Manson's murders, which Manson said were inspired by the Beatles tune Helter Skelter. The blame for murders lies WITH THE MURDERER, not with politicians, actresses, or musicians. We don't cancel freedom because of a sick person. We didn't cancel technological advance because of the Unabomber.

We are witnessing a hysterical reaction to Loughner from certain left-wing circles. Some politicians are even attempting to cash in on the tragedy. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) is one of these jackals. Here's a fundraising letter he just sent out:

What should be understood is that the violence, and threats of violence against Democrats in Arizona, was not limited to Gabrielle Giffords. Raul Grijalva, an old friend of mine and one of the most progressive members in the House, was forced to close his district office this summer when someone shot a bullet through his office window. Another Democratic elected official in Arizona, recently defeated Congressman Harry Mitchell, suspended town meetings in his district because of the threatening phone calls that he received (Mitchell was also in the cross-hairs on the Palin map). And Judge John Roll, who was shot to death at the Giffords event, had received numerous threatening calls and death threats in 2009.

In light of all of this violence – both actual and threatened – is Arizona a state in which people who are not Republicans are able to participate freely and fully in the democratic process? Have right-wing reactionaries, through threats and acts of violence, intimidated people with different points of view from expressing their political positions?

Shame on you, Senator. There is NO evidence that Loughner was inspired by right-wing speech. There is little evidence he was a right-winger at all. There is more evidence he was a left-winger than a right-winger, but the facts don't stop Sanders. If we are going to start banning any political speech, shouldn't it be FALSE political speech, the kind Sen. Sanders is engaging in here ????? Gosh, if I was mentally deranged and believed his letter, Sanders' words might drive me to…..go after some Republicans or Tea Partiers.

Update – Loughner was also a 9/11 Truther whose favorite movies included the Truther conspiracy theory films Loose Change and Zeitgeist. Some right-winger.

Update II – Another friend of Loughner's said Loughner didn't watch television, disliked the news, and didn't listen to political talk radio. This friend characterized Loughner as neither politically left nor right. The left's theory that the heated politicial rhetoric of the right is the reason Loughner murdered people now rates less-than-zero on the credibility scale.