Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Marriage Versus the Obama/Pelosi Nanny State

2009-12-05T23:07:00.000-08:00

The nanny state, with its ever-increasing regulations and handouts, encourages the development of weak, immature, self-indulgent people who expect the government to care for them.

Marriage, on the other hand, helps build a strong nation by encouraging the development of morally strong and thus self-sufficient people who are capable of making their own choices and who expect to earn their own way. In a very brief time, we shall see whether today's generation will succumb and heedlessly go down the path of "bread and circuses."

Tyrannical political leaders wanting more and more power have baited their traps and seek to seduce the public into letting them increase the size and power of the already bloated government. They may very well succeed unless we recognize those privileges that we enjoy, those that we take for granted, those we hold so lightly.

Dare we forget that our freedom and independence were only a distant dream until they were bought for us with horrible sacrifice and the blood of patriots who declared, "Liberty or death!"? Unless we remember how priceless our heritage is, it could very well become a thing of the past, beyond the reach of our grandchildren, swallowed up by a relentlessly expanding bureaucratic state. What will future generations say of us if we blithely let politicians trade us phony promises of security for our liberty until bit by bit, it once again becomes only a dream?

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Assessing Pre-Blame for Climate-Change Summit

2009-12-05T22:49:00.000-08:00

One can only HOPE it fails. U.S. sovereignty hangs in the balance!

Next week’s Copenhagen summit on climate change already seems doomed to failure, and voices on both sides of the global-warming debate are trying to pin the blame on Climategate. Republicans on Capitol Hill are trying to use Climategate to scuttle the Democrats’ cap-and-trade legislation. Even the Saudis — who like fossil fuels even more than Tiger Woods likes the ladies — are getting in on the act, saying the scandal casts the entire case for global warming in doubt.

“Climategate,” aka Warmerquiddick, aka the CRUtape letters, aka the Mother of All Publicity Disasters, refers to the leaking of vast numbers of e-mails and other documents from a leading British global-warming outfit, the Climatic Research Unit. The e-mails show, depending on your outlook, anything from sloppiness, pettiness, and dishonesty to outright fraud among some of the world’s leading climate scientists.

Climategate is a big deal, but we should be clear: It’s not why cap-and-trade should be scuttled, and it’s not why Copenhagen will produce nothing, save enormous expense-account submissions for cookie-pushing climate diplomats (and a massive amount of greenhouse gases; the U.N. estimates the twelve-day “green” confab will produce 40,584 tons of CO2 equivalents, roughly equal to Morocco’s carbon footprint in 2006).

Here is one simple, inconvenient truth: No developing country with significant and remotely accessible stocks of fossil fuels will agree to leave the stuff in the ground.

“Ten countries ruled by nasty people control 80 percent of the planet’s oil reserves — about 1 trillion barrels, currently worth about $40 trillion,” writes energy expert Peter Huber in City Journal. “If $40 trillion worth of gold were located where most of the oil is, one could only scoff at any suggestion that we might somehow persuade the nasty people to leave the wealth buried. They can lift most of their oil at a cost well under $10 a barrel. They will drill. They will pump. And they will find buyers. Oil is all they’ve got.”

Here’s another inconvenient truth: The United States will not agree to draconian carbon caps either, for the simple reason that it would be political suicide for all but a handful of politicians. Unless you represent hyper-wealthy liberal enclaves or the ethanol moonshine industry, it makes no sense to vote for anything like cap-and-trade.

That’s why the Kyoto Protocol never made it out of the crib in the United States.

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Don't Confuse Copenhagen-bound Obama With Global Warming Facts

2009-12-05T22:38:00.000-08:00

Despite the unfolding international "climate change" scandal involving the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, President Barack Obama's ideological presuppositions on global warming remain unshaken, and he will still happily attend the Copenhagen global warming conference.

This unprecedented fraud by a "team" of politicized scientists whose research has generated some $20 million in research grants for the CRU hasn't deterred Obama from his energy- and economy-destroying agenda any more than double-digit unemployment figures have dissuaded him from his failed Keynesian policies. Nor is Obama bothered by the incestuous relationship among the CRU, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Copenhagen summit.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sniffed that corruption at the highest levels of climate change intelligentsia -- corruption, mind you, that bears directly on the underlying science -- doesn't alter the president's firm opinion that "climate change is happening."

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We-Don't-Want-To-Talk-About-It-Gate

2009-12-05T22:30:00.000-08:00

Americans honor the courageous informant, the gutsy citizen who stands against the savagery of the profit-mongering conglomerate. Well, sometimes. It appears, believe it or not, that there are those who aren't religiously tethered to this sacred obligation.

For now—because of revelations of the ClimateGate scandal, in which hacked e-mails revealed discussions among top climate scientists about the manipulation of evidence—Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in Britain, has stepped down from his position. Michael Mann, architect of the famous "hockey stick" graph, is now under investigation by Pennsylvania State University. Similar inquiries should follow.

Yet Barbara Boxer, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is off hunting bigger game.

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Taking the Tenth

2009-12-05T22:23:00.000-08:00

Are you a “Tenther?”

No, that’s not someone who lives in a tent to remain off the grid – although that may be something we Tenthers will soon consider. No, “the Tenthers are the ones who keep citing the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution every time there is a proposed bill they don’t like, claiming the Constitution prohibits it,” as liberal commentator Alan Colmes explains on his Web site.

Well, get ready, because if the health insurance reform legislation now under consideration in the Senate passes, the Tenth Amendment could be all that stands between Americans and the road to socialized medicine.

The amendment is direct and clear. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

It defines the entire reason we have a written Constitution. It hammers home the point that the federal government is one of limited powers. Lawmakers in Washington may only do what the Constitution specifically gives them the power to do – everything else is reserved to the states or to the people.

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Obama: Health Care Reform Is Our Jobs Program

2009-12-05T22:13:00.000-08:00

In the last couple of days, President Obama has been pushing back against critics, both Republican and Democrat, who say that by focusing so heavily on a national health care bill, which is not the public's top priority -- and which is opposed by a plurality of the American people -- he is neglecting the issue of jobs, which is, by far, the public's top priority. Obama's answer is not that he is going to spend less time on health care and more on jobs. It's that health care reform is a jobs program, so that when his administration works 24/7 on a national health care makeover, it is in fact working on jobs for the American people.

"What has happened is a lot of the debate in Washington has been around health care, so people think, well, I guess they must not be working on jobs," Obama said Friday in Allentown, Pennsylvania. "No, we’ve been working on jobs the whole time. Health care is part and parcel with where we need to take our economy."

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Uncertain Trumpet

2009-12-05T22:02:00.000-08:00

We shall fight in the air, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, we shall fight in the hills -- for 18 months. Then we start packing for home.

We shall never surrender -- unless the war gets too expensive, in which case, we shall quote Eisenhower on "the need to maintain balance in and among national programs" and then insist that "we can't simply afford to ignore the price of these wars."

The quotes are from President Obama's West Point speech announcing the Afghanistan troop surge. What a strange speech it was -- a call to arms so ambivalent, so tentative, so defensive.

Which made his last-minute assertion of "resolve unwavering" so hollow. It was meant to be stirring. It fell flat. In August, he called Afghanistan "a war of necessity." On Tuesday night, he defined "what's at stake" as "the common security of the world." The world, no less. Yet, we begin leaving in July 2011?

Does he think that such ambivalence is not heard by the Taliban, by Afghan peasants deciding which side to choose, by Pakistani generals hedging their bets, by NATO allies already with one foot out of Afghanistan?

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What if We Fought the Nazis Like We're Fighting the Taliban?

The War On Cops

2009-12-05T21:57:00.000-08:00

The Left’s police-hating chickens are coming home to roost. While partisan liberals have gone out of their way to blame conservative media and the Tea Party movement for creating a “climate of hate,” they are silent on the cultural and literal war on cops that has raged for decades – and escalated tragically this year.

The total number of law enforcement officers shot and killed this year is up 19 percent over last year, according to the Christian Science Monitor. More officers have died in ambush incidents this year than any other since 2000. The Lakewood, Washington massacre on Thanksgiving weekend claimed the lives of four dedicated officers getting ready for work at a coffee shop Sunday morning. Maurice Clemmons – the violent career thug who received clemency from former Arkansas GOP governor Mike Huckabee and benefited from fatal systemic lapses in the criminal justice system – had many other enablers.

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The Road to Decentralization

2009-12-05T16:36:00.000-08:00

The heat is rising and the stakes are certainly high as our state sovereignty movement continues to grow, reflecting the mainstream nature of the principles that bind us as lovers of liberty and natural rights.

As the movement grows, so have charges from the supporters of centralized government, framing the sovereignty movement as many things. Those in the corporate media seek to characterize our cause in a disparaging light- some say that we are simply a radical wing of the republican party, others claim that we are corporate operatives seeking only to damage the Democratic momentum.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

As this movement continues to mount it is of utmost importance to counter these notions. One of the most vital requirements for success for our cause will be to demonstrate through our words and actions that we are not a partisan movement, not simply a manifestation of the Republican scheme but rather a group of Americans rallying around the most mainstream elements of the American ideal, that being liberty and self determination.

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John Stossel : Free People Create Jobs!

2009-12-05T16:29:00.001-08:00

Obama Shifts Copenhagen Visit to Boost Climate Deal

2009-12-05T14:31:00.000-08:00

This is a very telling quote:

"World leaders...are aiming for a deal that includes commitments on reducing emissions and financing for developing countries."

So the plan is to slap struggling US industries with even more restrictive regulations and destroy our economy even further, and then redistribute Americans' hard-earned taxpayer money to third-world countries because we're supposedly "guilty" of "polluting" the earth with our technology?

The flip side to this coin, of course, is that environmentalists don't want to see third-world nations develop beyond the bark hut peasant lifestyle, because that would "endanger the environment". Let poor people suffer and die in dismal conditions so you can feel better about saving lizards and owls. Brilliant.

President Barack Obama on Friday abruptly altered the timing of his upcoming appearance at an international climate summit in Copenhagen, hoping to capitalize on steps by India and China and build a more meaningful political accord, the White House said.

The move means Obama will be at the summit on Dec. 18, considered a crucial period when more leaders will be in attendance, as opposed to his scheduled stop in Denmark on Wednesday on his way to Nobel Peace Prize events in Oslo.

With the U.S., India and China all with specific proposals on the table for the first time, a political agreement seems more likely. World leaders are no longer expected to reach a legally binding agreement, as had long been the goal, but are aiming for a deal that includes commitments on reducing emissions and financing for developing countries.

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Inhofe: It’s ‘Dishonest’ for Obama to Attend Global Warming Summit and Say America Will Cap Carbon Emissions

The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom

2009-12-05T12:59:00.000-08:00

If you want to understand the subtle marketing strategies that radical leftists are using to convince the public to go along with their agendas, I highly recommend this book.

GLSEN Fundraiser Sexualizes Santa Claus

2009-12-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

These activists are so twisted and sick that they think it's FUNNY to see parents struggle to shield their young children from over-sexualization and the destruction of their innocence.

It's like a predator finding sinister joy from watching a mother trying to pry its young from the lion's jaws. Absolutely evil.

It’s sad that GLSEN, which claims that it wants to protect kids, has chosen to use a fundraising tool that perverts the innocence of Christmas and sexualizes the longtime, child-revered icon of Santa Claus.

Public comments made by the play’s writer and performer, Jeffrey Solomon, provide more enlightening insight into the true agenda of homosexual activists and groups like GLSEN.

In recent interviews, Solomon explained that he “was inspired to write Santa Claus is Coming Out by his research into the parents’ rights movement to keep gay issues out of the classroom.” He said the central message of his play is “a challenge to speak truthfully to children.” What is his version of “speaking truthfully?” Consider this anecdote Solomon shared:

I was dressed as Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and I had a sign saying ‘Rudolph Supports Sexual Diversity.’ And the owner of the pharmacy on Commercial Street came out [shouting]. ‘I’ve got kids inside. Get out of here. They’re asking questions. I don’t want to see that. I don’t want to see that sign.’ … We love this lie of Santa Claus and when we mess with that ‘they’ [the anti-gay activists] get very upset. The same summer I was promoting the play, and I had the poster ‘Santa Claus is Coming Out.’ A straight couple with a very young boy about 7 asked me directions, and the kid was kind of looking at the poster. Suddenly, the mother clenched her hands over his eyes as I was giving them directions, and she held them there the whole conversation. And it’s very funny.
Apparently, GLSEN wants to have it both ways: On one hand, it wants to be perceived as a mainstream group for public schools that’s worthy of parents’ trust. On the other, it wants the freedom to desensitize kids and attack parents’ God-given rights to protect their innocence.

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'Safe Schools' Czar Recommends Child Porn For Classroom Reading

2009-12-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

The purpose of the "Safe Schools Czar" is not to prevent violence, but to indoctrinate children with Leftist values. Therefore, the assumption is that any child being raised with traditional values is potentially "unsafe" - that they will be prone to engage in "intolerant" thought or behavior, such as bullying, unless they are brainwashed to reject the "intolerant" values of their parents.

Never mind that most bullying come from kids who have not been taught traditional values such as "love your neighbor as yourself" and the golden rule.

Keep in mind: Obama deliberately selected this man because he agrees with his radical agenda, and he has harsh words for anyone who dares to criticize him!

Warning: The following article includes descriptions of adult themes and objectional subject material.

A new report is raising alarms that the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, a homosexual advocacy organization founded by Kevin Jennings, now head of the U.S. Office of Safe Schools for the Obama administration, is recommending XXX-rated sex writings for children as young as preschoolers.

"We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren't merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between preschoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air," said the report.

"One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one's self-esteem. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview," it advised.

The report was posted online by Jim Hoft at the Gatetway Pundit blog after it was obtained from Breitbart.tv co-founder Scott Baker, who said the recommended children's reading assignments need attention.

The team whose members assembled the report said a handful of books from the more than 100 titles on GLSEN's recommended reading list for school children were picked randomly. Writings were reviewed with titles such as "Queer 13," "Being Different," "The Full Spectrum," "Revolutionary Voices," "Reflections of a Rock Lobster," "Passages of Pride," "Growing Up Gay/Growing Up Lesbian," "The Order of the Poison Oak," "In Your Face," "Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son" and "Love & Sex: Ten Stories of Truth."

"What we discovered shocked us. We were flabbergasted. Rendered speechless," the report said.

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These people will do anything not to be exposed: Gateway Pundit Comes Under Cyber Attack After Report On Obama Safe Schools Czar’s Child Porn Books

Do You Know What Textbooks Your Children Are Really Reading?

2009-12-05T00:25:00.000-08:00

Estate Tax a Killer for Family-Owned Businesses and Their Workers

2009-12-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

The death tax is a drag on America's family-owned businesses, destroys jobs, and lowers wages while raising little revenue. As such, Congress should repeal the estate tax once and for all to remove an unfair burden from the backs of American family-owned businesses and their workers.

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Entrepreneurs Fight Death Tax’s Resurrection

House Votes To Resurrect 'Death Tax'

2009-12-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

They don't care how much it hurts small business - our job creators - to pile on an additional tax burden at a time when unemployment is still in the double digits. How anyone coulds still be delusional enough to believe that Democrats represent the "little guy" is beyond me!

The House of Representatives passed on December 3 an estate tax bill, H.R. 4154, introduced on November 19 by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-North Dakota), a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and 11 cosponsors.

The bill would extend the 2009 estate tax level to 2010 and make permanent the estate tax at a $3.5 million level for an individual and $7 million level exemption for couples and impose a 45% maximum tax rate as proposed by the Obama Administration. The bill now moves to the Senate. More than one Republican lawmaker has said the bill would be dead on arrival in the Senate; Democrats said they expected it would pass Senate muster.

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The Brave New States of America

2009-12-04T12:32:00.000-08:00

Reflecting on Brave New World, twenty-seven years after writing it, Aldous Huxley explains how political control would be achieved in the future:

The society described in Brave New World is a world-state, in which war has been eliminated and where the first aim of the rulers is at all costs to keep their subjects from making trouble. This they achieve by (among other methods) legalizing a degree of sexual freedom (made possible by the abolition of the family) that practically guarantees the Brave New Worlders against any form of destructive (or creative) emotional tension. In 1984 the lust for power is satisfied by inflicting pain; in Brave New World, by inflicting a hardly less humiliating pleasure.
This kind of political machination has been going on for decades in the United States. There is a concerted, consistent effort to sexualize children through compulsory so-called comprehensive sex-education encouraging sex with anyone at any time (now trying to get into kindergartens) and through highly sexualized media aimed directly at children. In fact, 9 of 10 school aged kids have seen pornography online and those in positions of power in our federal government do nothing to stop it, including the simple enforcement of existing laws against obscenity online.

If Huxley and Hezbollah are right, one could speculate that at least some of our leaders want this to happen. If they can foment distorted sexual desire at a young age and then promise to fulfill the sexual fantasies they intentionally create, they will have an army of supporters who will fight against “moral” efforts to end this tyranny which is often hidden behind patriotic calls to preserve “free speech.” Welcome to the Brave New States of America.

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Do Smoking Guns Cause Global Warming, Too?

2009-12-04T11:54:00.000-08:00

Global warming cheerleaders in the media were quick to defend the scandalous e-mails, explaining that, among scientists, the words "trick," "hide the decline" and "garbage" do not mean "trick," "hide the decline" and "garbage." These words actually mean "onion soup," "sexual submissive" and "Gary, Ind."

(Boy, it must be great to be able to redefine words right in the middle of a debate.)

Also, of course, the defenders said that the words needed to be placed "in context" -- the words' check was in the mail, and they'd like to spend more time with their families.

I have placed the words in context and it turns out what they mean is: gigantic academic fraud.

But then last weekend -- in the middle of the "Let's Cook the Books!" e-mail scandal -- the CRU said that all its data on the Earth's temperature since 1960 had been irretrievably "lost." (Although I suspect "overcooked" might be a more apt term.)

Liberals won't tell us why Congress passed a law outlawing incandescent lightbulbs by 2014 -- a bill solemnly delivered to the president in a Prius hybrid (making it the slowest-moving bill in U.S. history). Instead, they tell us there's a "scientific consensus" that we have to use fluorescent lightbulbs or we'll all die.

This is precisely what liberals accuse Christians of doing, but which Christians never do. We don't cite the Bible as authority -- and then refuse to let anyone read it. We certainly don't claim to have "lost" it, so you can't check for yourself. But that's exactly what the CRU has done with its secret data allegedly showing a warming Earth.

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All the President's Climategate Deniers

2009-12-04T11:44:00.000-08:00

"The science is settled," we've been told for decades by zealous proponents of manmade global warming hysteria. Thanks to an earth-shaking hacking scandal across the pond, we now have mountains of documents from the world's leading global warming advocacy center that show the science is about as settled as a southeast Asian tsunami. You won't be surprised by the Obama administration's response to Climategate.

With pursed lips and closed eyes and ears, the White House is clinging to the old eco-mantra: The science is settled.

Never mind all the devastating new information about data manipulation, intimidation and cult-like coverups to "hide the decline" in global temperatures over the last half-century, they say. The science is settled.

Yet, the pro-sound science president has surrounded himself with radical Climategate deniers who have spent their entire professional careers "settling" manmade global warming disaster science through fear mongering, intimidation and ridicule of opponents.

-- Science czar John Holdren, who will testify on Capitol Hill this week at a hearing on Climategate, infamously hyped weather catastrophes and demographic disasters in the 1970s with his population control freak pals Paul and Anne Ehrlich. He made a public bet against free-market economist Julian Simon, predicting dire shortages of five natural resources as a result of feared overconsumption. He lost on all counts. No matter.

Holdren's failure didn't stop him from writing forcefully about mass sterilization and forced abortion "solutions" to a fizzling, sizzling, overpopulated planet. And it didn't stop him from earning a living making more dire predictions.

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Did the Founders Understand the Constitution?

2009-12-04T10:06:00.000-08:00

Is the above just a stupid question? Did our founders, the ones who hammered out the Constitution of the United States, several of whom became presidents, fail to understand the Constitution of the United States of America? Why would anyone even ask a question like that?

Because either the Founders misunderstood the Constitution they drafted and the states ratified, or the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals is clueless as to the meaning and intent of the Constitution and our founders, as is evidenced by the order to Roy Moore, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, to remove the Ten Commandments from public premises.

That makes the title question valid. Either the Founders had no idea what they meant, or the federal courts and the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has invented another document out of what our forefathers wrote, and meant when it was written!

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Obamacare: How the Unions are "Getting Well"

2009-12-04T10:03:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder why our founders didn't give the federal government the power to tax income or otherwise fatten their purse? Because it gives them the power to bribe, coerce and corrupt. Aren't you glad to know that your hard-earned tax money is being used to buy votes for an unconstitutional Big Government entitlement program that will destroy even MORE of your liberties?

Congressional "representatives" are now anything but. They bow to the power of big federal pay-outs for their states, fight one another for more space at the trough, and come groveling back for more.

It's time to cut them off at the source, and starve the federal government back to it's constitutional size and power. It's time to repeal the 16th Amendment.

It’s already being called the “Second Louisiana Purchase,” but the sad truth is that a controversial payoff to U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu’s home state of Louisiana is among the smallest of the thinly-disguised bribes and kickbacks that are being offered in Washington D.C. to secure passage of President Barack Obama’s socialized medicine proposal.

In fact, at “only” $300 million, this disgustingly transparent (and yet transparently successful) effort by Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid to “negotiate” for Landrieu’s support on a key health care vote doesn’t hold a candle to the real graft that’s going on in our nation’s capital.

For example, you’d have to multiply that dollar amount dozens of times over to arrive at the $10 billion in so-called “reinsurance” money that has been tucked away for organized labor in the $2.6 trillion House bill.

What’s that “reinsurance” money for, exactly?

That’s simple - it’s a bailout for union leaders who have grossly “mismanaged” funds that were supposed to pay for their retirees’ insurance claims.

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Big Government Knows Better?

2009-12-04T09:04:00.000-08:00

Who do you think, here on Earth...would you like to make these decisions for you — Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, George Bush, a czar appointed by Obama or a committee of Washington bureaucrats?

I bet that if these people were to forcibly make housing or marital decisions for us, most would deem it tyranny.

You say, “Williams, Congress is not making such monumental decisions that affect my life.” Try this.

You are a 22-year-old healthy person. Instead of spending $3,000 or $4,000 a year for health insurance, you’d prefer investing that money in equipment to start a landscaping business.

Which is the best use of that $3,000 or $4,000 a year — purchasing health insurance or starting up a landscaping business — and who should decide that question: Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, George Bush, a czar appointed by Obama or a committee of Washington bureaucrats?

How can they possibly know what’s the best use of your earnings, particularly in light of the fact that they have no idea of who you are?

Neither you nor the U.S. Congress has the complete knowledge to know exactly what’s best for you. The difference is that when individuals make their own trade-offs, say between purchasing health insurance or investing in a business, they make wiser decisions because it is they who personally bear the costs and benefits of those decisions.

You say, “Hold it, Williams, we’ve got you now! What if that person gets really sick and doesn’t have health insurance. Society suffers the burden of taking care of him.”

To the extent that is a problem, it is not a problem of liberty; it’s a problem of congressionally mandated socialism. Let’s look at it.

It is not society that bears the burden; it is some flesh and blood American worker who finds his earnings taken by Congress to finance the health needs of another person.

There is absolutely no moral case, much less constitutional case, for Congress forcibly using one American to serve the purposes of another American, a practice that differs only in degree from slavery, which we all should find morally offensive.

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Big Government Can't Put Young Americans to Work

2009-12-04T08:56:00.000-08:00

The uncomfortable reality is that creating many millions of useful, interesting, psychically rewarding new jobs is something only the private sector can do. And it does it, as we saw during the prosperous quarter-century from 1983 to 2007, in ways that government planners are unable to predict.

In the meantime, the big-government policies of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have worked to stifle private-sector job creation. A large share of the $787 billion stimulus package has gone to keep current state and local public sector employees on the payroll (and paying union dues). That does nothing for young people seeking work.

In addition, the Democrats' health care bills would raise the cost of health insurance for young Americans, who would in effect be subsidizing their elders. And the staggering federal deficits that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, loom as far as the eye can see will mean more national debt that young Americans will have to pay off.

Obama in his autobiographies records how he spurned private-sector work and opted instead for community organizing and political office. Public-sector careers can provide good incomes and the satisfaction of doing useful work. But only for a comparative few. A vibrant and competent public sector depends on a vibrant and competent -- and much larger -- private sector.

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Critics Not Invited to White House 'Jobs Summit'

2009-12-03T23:47:00.000-08:00

Politico reports:

President Barack Obama heard from a wide range of attendees at his White House jobs summit on Thursday – each of whom brought ideas squarely rooted in their own particular experience.

Corporate titans said they wanted Obama to lower the corporate tax rate. Union representatives suggested the government create more government jobs. And a teacher’s union representative urged the feds to build new community schools in rural areas.

Conspicuously absent were those who know the most about free market economics and private sector job creation:

Missing from a partial list of attendees released by the White House are the self-proclaimed voices of business - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business - both of which have been critical of Mr. Obama's proposed health care overhaul.

Confirmed attendees include liberal economists credited with shaping the $787 billion stimulus package, union leaders, environmental advocates and executives from Google and other blue-chip firms.

"He's going to get lots of recommendations to spend more money," said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. "These are the very same people who gave us the stimulus package. My feeling is we're not going to get what we need, and that's a complete change in direction on economic policy."

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View From West Point: We Are Not The Enemy

2009-12-03T23:39:00.000-08:00

These are the brave men and women who are fighting to protect our freedoms. It's disgusting that they even have to address such an insulting and ridiculous statement!

On Tuesday night, President Obama addressed the world and announced his decision regarding the conflict in Afghanistan.

The President chose the United States Military Academy at West Point as his backdrop carefully and deliberately. As one of America’s great bastions of military power and a crucible for teaching leadership, the cadets and those who work to teach them are among the most affected by his words. Unfortunately, the President’s decision to place his podium at West Point and the reaction of the Corps of Cadets to his speech has been criticized by the media almost as much as the new strategy itself.

In the most polemical of criticisms, TV pundit Chris Matthews stated that in coming to West Point, the President made an “interesting” decision speaking at the “the enemy camp.” He said that the crowd exhibited “if not resentment, skepticism” and that it lacked “warmth.” Later acknowledging the potential ramifications of such a controversial statement, he attempted to assuage critics by stating that “maybe earlier tonight I used the wrong phrase, ‘enemy camp,’ but the fact of the matter is that he went up there to a place that’s obviously ‘military.’”

This is perhaps the most vapid response one could muster, especially in an attempt to retract such a scathing statement.

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White House aides insisted F-22 be removed from Obama speech venue

2009-12-03T23:32:00.000-08:00

He's willing to pose shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, but he's not willing to be photographed with an F-22? What PLANET is this guy from?!

When President Obama spoke to troops at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base last month, the unit there parked a shiny new F-22 fighter plane in the hanger. But according to multiple sources, White House aides demanded the plane be changed to an older F-15 fighter because they didn't want Obama speaking in front of the F-22, a controversial program he fought hard to end.

"White House aides actually made them remove the F-22-said they would not allow POTUS to be pictured with the F-22 in any way, shape, or form," one source close to the unit relayed.

The airmen there took offense to the Obama aides' demand, sources told The Cable, seeing it as a slight to the folks who are operating the F-22 proudly every day. They also expressed bewilderment that the White House staff would even care so much as to make an issue out of the fact that the F-22 was placed in the hanger with the president.

The Obama administration fought hard and successfully to cut off production of the F-22 at 187 planes, a number Defense Secretary Robert Gates endorsed but that was hundreds less than originally planned and about half of the 381 planes Air Force leadership lobbied hard for in the years preceding Obama's inauguration.

"It's one thing to be against further production; quite another to slight the folks who are flying them in the operational world," one source said, adding that "the F-15 pictured was put into service roughly around the same period when Obama graduated from college. It's vintage."

Read More Here

Researcher: NASA hiding climate data

2009-12-03T23:09:00.000-08:00

The fight over global warming science is about to cross the Atlantic with a U.S. researcher poised to sue NASA, demanding release of the same kind of climate data that has landed a leading British center in hot water over charges it skewed its data.

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.

"I assume that what is there is highly damaging," Mr. Horner said. "These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this."

Read More Here

Climategate A Scandal for Journalism, Too

2009-12-03T23:01:00.000-08:00

For Decades, the Media Chose to Champion, Not Scrutinize, Claims of Global Warming Alarmists.

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby observed Wednesday: “Assuming the e-mails are genuine, they are nothing short of scandalous. They reveal celebrated climate scientists apparently conspiring to corrupt the peer-review process, to suppress or finesse temperature data at odds with global-warming alarmism, to silence or discredit climate experts who criticize their work, and to hide or eliminate the raw data on which their own much-trumpeted claims have been based.”

Yet since the story broke, the MRC’s Business & Media Institute (BMI) discovered just one broadcast news reference to the “Climategate” e-mail scandal, on ABC’s This Week November 29; CBS and NBC have yet to inform their viewers. The media’s current silence is made worse by the decades they spent promoting the Left’s alarmist global warming agenda and excluding any doubters from the discussion, as documented by numerous MRC studies.

Read More Here

Senator Boxer Demands Investigation Into 'ClimateGate' Hacking

2009-12-03T21:42:00.000-08:00

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Lets chase the little dog that pulled it away!

Senator Barbara Boxer, the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is pretty sure she knows who the real villains in the climate-gate scandal are. Oddly enough they are not the scientists accused of data suppression and fraud.

According to The Hill, Senator Boxer believes that the hacking of the e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit is a "criminal matter" worthy of investigation of the United States Senate and will be part of any hearings conducted by her committee. The ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator James Inhofe, has asked that hearings be conducted into accusations of wide spread attempts by climate scientists to manipulate and hide data that casts doubt on human caused global warming and to suppress the views of skeptics.

Some observers would seem to be taken aback at the priorities expressed by Senator Boxer over the climate-gate scandal. On the one hand there is the suggestion that science fraud is being employed to cause world governments to impose draconian measures to reduce carbon emissions in order to alleviate a climate change problem that actually may not exist to the tune of trillions of dollars. One the other hand there is the theft of e-mails and other documents from a research center that would seem to indicate that fraud is taking place. It seems curious that Senator Boxer would focus like a laser beam on the latter and not the former. Also what jurisdiction the United States Senate has over a computer hacking operation that took place in the United Kingdom is unclear.

Read More Here

Leftists are now also peeved that the e-mails were released just in time to upset their plans to sign away US sovereignty at the upcoming Climate Summit in Copenhagen.

That wouldn't, by chance, have been part of a deliberate - *gasp* - conspiracy to derail the Global Warming agenda, now would it? Only ideology-driven scientists are allowed to get away with conspiratorial tactics to advance their agenda, don't you know?

Awww, it stinks when the other side plays dirty, doesn't it?

Gore Cancels Personal Appearance in Copenhagen

2009-12-03T20:07:00.000-08:00

I guess nobody wants to pay $1200 to shake his hand, especially after ClimateGate.

Former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday abruptly canceled a Dec. 16 personal appearance that was to be staged during the United Nations' Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, which begins next week.

As described in The Washington Times' Inside the Beltway column Tuesday, the multimedia public event to promote Mr. Gore's new book, "Our Choice," included $1,209 VIP tickets that granted the holder a photo opportunity with Mr. Gore and a "light snack."

Berlingkse Media, a Danish group coordinating ticket sales and publicity for the event, said that "great annoyance" was a factor in the cancellation, along with unforeseen changes in Mr. Gore's program for the climate summit. The decision affected 3,000 ticket holders.

Read More Here

Climate Treaty May Threaten U.S. Sovereignty

2009-12-03T19:48:00.000-08:00

The United Nations' Copenhagen Climate Change Conference starts next week and experts say the outcome of the meetings could mean the beginning of the end of U.S. sovereignty.

The countries gathered will attempt to form a strategy to fight global warming that includes:

• Greenhouse gas emission targets
• Money sent to "developing" countries to aid in making them "eco-friendly"
• Cutting-edge green technology sent to those countries at no charge

If President Obama signs the treaty, some say an international board would have the authority to regulate U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions and demand billions of dollars in payment for the scheme. Any international agreement reached, would dictate policy on global warming for decades.

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, said the effects of such a treaty would be destructive.

"The purpose of this conference in Copenhagen is to get the United States and other countries, to sign a binding treaty that will limit how much energy our economy, our nation can emit," he said, "and that would have devastating consequences for our country."

Read More Here

What Americans Need to Know About the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference

Climate Challenges

2009-12-03T16:11:00.000-08:00

On December 7, 2009, President Obama will send a delegation to Copenhagen, Denmark, for the U.N. Climate Conference. So what exactly is the goal of this conference? A few months ago, Al Gore explained the ultimate goal: global governance. If the climate alarmists get their way, the U.S. economy would be subject to the whims of a U.N.-led climate government, unaccountable to American taxpayers but most certainly using American taxpayer funds to operate.

Since so many countries are happy to blame the U.S. for the vast majority of what they amusingly claim is a catastrophic slide into global devastation, I am sure that a new U.N. Climate Government will be all too eager to call on the American taxpayer to foot the bill. In fact, the two-hundred-page draft document says just that. We will be billed by an unelected bureaucracy for our "climate debt." And we will yield our sovereignty to international law.

I noted earlier that this has been a discussion. Unfortunately, it has not been a debate. The alarmists refuse to debate; they say that the science is settled. Nonsense! There is no such thing as settled scientific theory -- only settled scientists. If Al Gore believes his science is settled, he should agree to debate and prove the skeptics wrong. Yet he has been running from debate for years.

To those who ask who would be hurt if we were wrong about CO2 and reduced the amount in the atmosphere, I say only the 1.6 billion most vulnerable people in the world. They are desperate for more CO2 so they can grow food. Their lives are brutal and short. They desperately need what we have enjoyed over the past hundred years.

There is no need for any climate treaty at Copenhagen. It is time to disband the U.N.'s self-serving and serially dishonest climate panel. Officially sponsored environmental extremism is a danger to our national security.

Read More Here

Green Totalitarianism

2009-12-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

All the manipulation, distortion and suppression revealed by these emails took place because it would seem these scientists knew their belief was not only correct but unchallengeable; and so when faced with evidence that showed it was false, they tried every which way to make the data fit the prior agenda. And those who questioned that agenda themselves had to be airbrushed out of the record, because to question it was simply impossible. Only AGW zealots get to decide, apparently, what science is. Truth is what fits their ideological agenda. Anything else is to be expunged.

Which is the more terrifying and devastating: if people are bent and deliberately try to deceive others, or if they are so much in thrall to an ideology that they genuinely have lost the power to think objectively and rationally?

I think that the terrible history of mankind provides the answer to that question.

Read More Here

More about Scientism and Totalitarianism

Abortion is a "God-Given" Right, Liberal Leader Declares

2009-12-03T15:51:00.000-08:00

It's a "God-given" right to murder your own innocent unborn child? I'd like to see which Bible HE'S reading!

Rev. Carlton Veazey, president and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, told a small crowd of pro-abortion protesters that women have a “God-given right” to abortion and that opposition from pro-life congressmen and religious leaders would never take it away.

Veazy, closing speaker at a “Stop Stupak” rally on Capitol Hill staged by major pro-abortion groups such as Planned Parenthood, NARAL-Pro Choice, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) told the crowd that not only did they have a constitutional right to abortion, but that they had a God-given one as well.

“Don’t let anybody tell you that religious people don’t support choice,” Veazy said at the gathering in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. “You not only have a constitutional right for abortion, but you have a God-given right.”

The rally was held to inspire abortion rights protesters ahead of a day of lobbying for federal funding of abortion in health care reform legislation. The event also served as an outlet for the activists to vent anger at the amendment offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) to the House health care bill.

Read More Here

Senate Health Care Bill Amendment Would Define Abortion as Preventative Care

2009-12-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

It's downright Orwellian, the way these people try to redefine reality by playing with terminology. "Preventative?" Pretty hard to "prevent" a pregnancy after it's already started, isn't it?

"Termination" is at least closer to reality, though it's still a whitewashed term for "ripping an unborn baby into little pieces and vacuuming it into a sink". Doesn't flow off the tongue quite as easily, does it?

With polls showing as many as 63 percent of Americans oppose abortions and strong majorities against taxpayer funding of it, abortion advocates are desperate to mainstream abortion. One pro-abortion lawmaker has an amendment to the Senate health care bill to do just that.

Yesterday, the Senate began the process of considering amendments to Senator Harry Reid's pro-abortion health care legislation.

The first amendment offered was Mikulski Amendment No. 2791, sponsored by pro-abortion Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, dealing with federally mandated coverage of "preventive care."

The amendment would essentially define abortion as preventative care and could result in mandates to private insurance plans that they define abortion as such and provide coverage of it.

Read More Here

Obama's Dismal Security Record

2009-12-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

Less than a year into Obama's presidency, we're already seeing the dangerous results of taking national security too lightly. In one serious lapse, 13 unarmed soldiers and an unborn baby lost their lives.

The most recent incident - a breach of White House security by a couple of fame-seeking party crashers - didn't result in anything tragic, thankfully. One might even find it humorous.

But the fact that a couple of imposters can still easily waltz into the White House after all the lessons we're supposed to have learned from 9/11 and subsequent threats is no laughing matter.

The Risk Posed by Obama's Uninvited Guests:

Would-be reality-TV stars Michaele and Tareq Salahi, as the world now knows, weren’t invited to President Obama’s first state dinner. That didn’t stop them from sashaying past multiple layers of supposedly high security to hobnob with, among others, Vice President Biden, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. The Secret Service is finally saying that it really failed here.

Officials did try to assure us that the potential harm to the president was minimal, if not nonexistent, because everyone entering the White House goes through metal detectors. But it’s plausible that the Salahis could have had an undetectable weapon on them, such as anthrax, or picked up a knife from a dinner table. In a world where terrorists can commandeer airplanes using household items, even the unimaginable is possible.

We were supposed to learn some lessons from 9/11. But this and other high-profile security lapses — the parents of “balloon boy” launching an unregistered craft into airspace, say, or the sluggish reaction of federal aviation officials to the two errant Northwest pilots — make me wonder if we’ve become complacent as memory fades.

Left Exposed: Get the Race Card Advantage

2009-12-02T23:47:00.000-08:00

Sonja Schmidt offers the perfect gift for the holiday season, race cards. They're cheap, easy to carry and, when played with skill, they can get you a free pass on literally everything. Get yours today!

Why States Rights Are The Answer Today

2009-12-02T23:17:00.000-08:00

Not well written, but very true.

Resolutions are fine, but they have no teeth right? Remember the Real ID Act? The one that said if we didn’t have a “real ID” we would not be able to enter a federal building or board an airplane. You do not have one today and can still do everything you could before, why not? Because the States said no.

Read More Here

New Rules of Engagement Endanger Troops

2009-12-02T20:57:00.000-08:00

The Washington Times reports:

Dozens of U.S. soldiers who spoke to The Washington Times during a recent visit to southern Afghanistan said these rules [of engagement] sometimes make a perilous mission even more difficult and dangerous.

Many times, the soldiers said, insurgents have escaped because U.S. forces are enforcing the rules. Meanwhile, they say, the toll of U.S. dead and injured is mounting.

The Times compiled an informal list of the new rules from interviews with U.S. forces. Among them:

• No night or surprise searches.

• Villagers have to be warned prior to searches.

• ANA or ANP must accompany U.S. units on searches.

• U.S. soldiers may not fire at the enemy unless the enemy is preparing to fire first.

• U.S. forces cannot engage the enemy if civilians are present.

• Only women can search women.

• Troops can fire at an insurgent if they catch him placing an IED but not if insurgents are walking away from an area where explosives have been laid.

Rumor has it they are also forbidden to attack mosques, even if they know those mosques are being used to store weapons or as operation centers for enemy fighters.

In September, these stringent battle restrictions cost four marines their lives, when they were denied the protection of helicopters and artillery rounds after they were trapped by Taliban fighters.

Obama is willing to sacrifice the lives of brave young American soldiers for the sake of political correctness, rather than "offend" the muslim propoganda machine.

Columnist Jed Babbin observes:

Like every liberal, Obama thinks of war in terms that do not define it. Liberals believe every war is a “war of choice” that does not require total commitment. He thinks of war in terms of its financial cost, delaying and reducing his domestic spending spree. War is not a question of “should we,” but “must we.”

The issue isn’t whether a war is popular: either it has to be fought or it doesn’t. It is a president’s duty to define the war and lead the nation to victory. And if a war is worth one American life, it is -- by definition -- worth however many dollars it takes to win. Domestic spending must be curtailed to fund a war, not the other way around.

[Another] reason Obama’s strategy will fail is the way our forces are limited in this fight. We have an Army chief of staff who believes that if diversity were “damaged” it would be worse than the Fort Hood massacre. And we demand of our best warriors behavior that is irrational in war.

As blogger Ace concludes:

"Either we're going to give our troops every advantage in an effort to allow them to win or we should, in fact, get out. If Obama has in mind a Nixon-style "decent interval" where we are going to let troops be killed in an effort not to win a war but to simply contrive a politically-palatable "defeat with honor," then get them out of there."

Jon Stewart on ClimateGate: 'Poor Al Gore - Global Warming Debunked Via Internet You Invented'

2009-12-02T15:41:00.000-08:00

For those people who get their news from the oft-profane Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, you may finally have a perk here: ClimateGate, like ACORN, is yet another embarrasing-to-the-Left story that Stewart is willing to poke fun at while the rest of the mainstream media ignores it. We know you liberals don't watch Fox or listen to talk radio, so at least you have ONE source for stories the Left doesn't want you to pay attention to.

NewsBusters reports:

If you needed any more assurance the growing ClimateGate scandal is far more significant than America's media has been portraying, you got it Tuesday night from Comedy Central's Jon Stewart.

Somewhat surprisingly, "The Daily Show" host in his opening sketch tore apart the scientists involved in sending the obtained e-mail messages for showing "a clear effort to raise fears about global warming, and hide evidence against it."

Stewart even mocked the man responsible for spreading more fear on this subject than anyone on the planet [Al Gore].

Sandra Bullock: A Blessing To Meet, Portray A Real Christian

2009-12-02T15:24:00.000-08:00

Actress Sandra Bullock says meeting Leigh Anne Tuohy, who she portrays in The Blind Side, showed her there really are some Christians who "walk the walk."

The film, which opened the week before Thanksgiving, presents the true story of the Tuohys -- a well-off white family in Tennessee -- who welcome a homeless black youth into their home and then adopt him as their son. That young man, Michael Oher, became an All-American selection for Ole Miss and a first-round draft pick. He now plays for the NFL's Baltimore Ravens.

Bullock says thanks to the Tuohys, who attend Grace Evangelical Church in Memphis, she now has "faith in those who say they represent a faith." Getting to know Leigh Anne Tuohy, says the actress, showed her that religious faith can be authentic. "She was so open and honest and forthright," Bullock shares, "and I said, wow, I finally met someone who practices but doesn't preach."

Read More Here

White House Still Listening to Van Jones 'Green' Advice

2009-12-02T15:20:00.000-08:00

I knew he wouldn't be going far. Obama brought him on board for a reason: he agrees with his radicalism!

Communist-group founder on team influencing environmental policies.

Van Jones, President Obama's controversial former "green jobs" czar, serves on the advisory board of an independent environmental organization actively working with the White House, WND has learned.

Jones resigned in September after it was exposed he founded a communist revolutionary organization and signed a statement that accused the Bush administration of possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

Jones is one of 20 advisers to the University of Colorado–based Presidential Climate Action Project, or PCAP, which draws up climate-policy recommendations for the White House and has been working with members of the Obama administration.

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Rumsfeld to Obama: What Requests For Troops in Afghanistan Are You Talking About?

2009-12-02T15:14:00.000-08:00

Rumsfeld is apparently peeved by an inaccurate statement made by President Obama last night in his speech: "Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive." He wants Obama to provide the proof.

Doesn't Rumsfeld know by now that the lap-dog media will never require a Liberal to back up any of their assertions with facts or proof?

Red State reports:

One line in President Obama’s orgy of blame-Bush-for-everything speech last night has prompted former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld, who managed the Afghan war for five years, to call for the President to back up his assertions. Secretary Rumsfeld’s statement, issued in a press release this morning:

“In his speech to the nation last night, President Obama claimed that ‘Commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive.’ Such a bald misstatement, at least as it pertains to the period I served as Secretary of Defense, deserves a response.”

“I am not aware of a single request of that nature between 2001 and 2006. If any such requests occurred, ‘repeated’ or not, the White House should promptly make them public. The President’s assertion does a disservice to the truth and, in particular, to the thousands of men and women in uniform who have fought, served and sacrificed in Afghanistan.”

“In the interest of better understanding the President’s announcement last night, I suggest that the Congress review the President’s assertion in the forthcoming debate and determine exactly what requests were made, who made them, and where and why in the chain of command they were denied.”

Chris Matthews Calls West Point the "Enemy Camp"

2009-12-02T14:52:00.000-08:00

Just in case you were still naïve enough to believe that the Left actually supports our troops...they actually consider our brave men and women in uniform to be "the enemy".

The Foundry observes:

"The left in the United States has always had an uncomfortable, at best, relationship with our nation’s armed forces. Last night the official network of the American left, MSNBC, did nothing to help that trouble relationship when host Christ Matthews described the United States Military Academy at West Point as an “enemy camp.” And fellow MSNBC host Rachel Maddow agreed!"

Is “Black Friday” Racist?

2009-12-02T14:45:00.000-08:00

Forget the fact that the term "Black Friday" is actually a positive thing, referring to the biggest shopping day of the year, when retailers finally have the sales they need to get back "in the black", as opposed to "in the red".

But to witch-hunting liberals who need an excuse to be offended and somehow spot racism behind every tree, even this innocent term is now suspect. Joy Behar provided a classic example on The View, when she asked "Isn’t it a little racist to call it Black Friday?"

Puh-lease!

Co-host (and "African-American") Whoopie Goldberg gave her permission to skip the white guilt - this time. "No, it’s like when you make all the money. You’re in the black." Glad we cleared that up. Not racist, not negative. Move on.

American Vision unpacks this liberal obsession with skin color in their recent article, "In the Black: Some People Only See Race":

"...there are people today who define everything by race. Farrakhan and Rev. Jeremiah Wright are extremist examples of keeping the issue of race front and center in American politics. There are others. But what’s most irritating is the way some people see race in everything and make a point of keeping the wound of racial conflict festering."

Govt will need to help shape U.S. media: Waxman

2009-12-02T12:49:00.000-08:00

Actually, the market is working just fine, thank-you-very-much. Viewers are sick of traditional media outlets telling them how to think and they're finding alternatives. The only people who are worried about traditional newspapers and stations going under are the politicians and special interests who count on them to get their spin out.

Will these Statists stop at nothing? They can't compete in the free market of ideas, so they're willing to have government take over the media if that's what it takes to get their propaganda out? These people are so radically ideological they don't care how many of your liberties they have to crush to get their way - even a free press! They're deranged, dangerous and sick!

A top Democratic lawmaker predicted on Wednesday that the government will be involved in shaping the future for struggling U.S. media organizations.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, saying quality journalism was essential to U.S. democracy, said eventually government would have to help resolve the problems caused by a failing business model.

Waxman, other U.S. lawmakers and regulators are looking into various options to help a newspaper industry hurt by the shift in advertising revenues to online platforms.

Read More Here

Left-Wing Activist Hiring Spree

2009-12-02T00:15:00.000-08:00

Want to make some real money? Try working as a "grassroots volunteer" for a left-wing organization!

How about getting paid to push a huge tax increase in the middle of a recession?

Or spread "Global Warming" hysteria?

Or lobby for Gay "Marriage"?

If you're a left-winger, take heart! There's no shortage of special-interest funded jobs available (especially from organizations that specialize in squeezing taxpayers to fund their agenda)!

If you're on the Right, though, tough luck. Too bad that grassroots organizations on the Right are dependant on real volunteers - as in unpaid.

If I got even a portion of what right-wingers are repeatedly accused of supposedly getting for their activism, my husband wouldn't be out there right now looking for a job in this lousy economy.

If there IS a "big business" out there paying right-wing activists, my check is long overdue!

Obama to Spend $10.3 Trillion on Welfare

2009-12-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

The Left won't rest until everyone is dependent on government entitlements in one area or another. "Free" money and services are the hook, reeling people under the control of the Nanny State.

Since the beginning of the War on Poverty, government has spent vast sums on welfare or aid to the poor; however, the aggregate cost of this assistance is largely unknown because the spending is fragmented into myriad programs.

As this report shows, means-tested welfare or aid to poor and low-income persons is now the third most expensive government function. Its cost ranks below support for the elderly through Social Security and Medicare and below government expenditures on education, but above spending on national defense. Prior to the current recession, one dollar in seven in total federal, state, and local government spending went to means-tested welfare.

Read More Here

Obama Shatters Spending Record for First-Year Presidents

2009-12-01T23:41:00.000-08:00

President Obama has shattered the budget record for first-year presidents -- spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history.

In fiscal 2009 the federal government spent $3.52 trillion -- $2.8 trillion in 2000 dollars, which sets a benchmark for comparison. That fiscal year covered the last three-and-a-half months of George W. Bush's term and the first eight-and-a-half months of Obama's.

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116 U.S. Troops Died in Afghanistan While Obama Pondered Reinforcements

2009-12-01T23:26:00.000-08:00

God rest their souls.

One hundred and sixteen U.S. troops died in Afghanistan between August 30 when Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in that country, first reported that reinforcements were needed, and today, when President Barack Obama is set to announce that he will send 34,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

There were 59 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan in October alone, making that the deadliest month of the eight-year-long U.S. war. There were also 37 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan in September, making September the third deadliest month of the war. In November, the U.S. casualties in Afghanistan dropped to 17.

On Aug. 30, Gen. McChrystal submitted a 66-page assessment of the war in Afghanistan to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The assessment said that without additional resources the war would “likely result in failure.”

Read More Here

Obama Announces Troop Increase in Afghanistan

2009-12-01T23:10:00.000-08:00

Well, he finally did it. He made a decision. 116 troops died while he stalled and pondered, trying to figure out how to appease his radical left-wing base while giving his generals at least a fraction of what they asked for. And in the end, of course, he pleased no one.

"...I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions."

Translation: I'm still under the liberal delusion that wars can be won with the least possible force. And nobody but peacemongers truly consider the "long-term consequences" of war, which is why I spent months dithering while troops needlessly died, waiting for reinforcements.

"I have signed a letter of condolence to the family of each American who gives their life in these wars. I have read the letters from the parents and spouses of those who deployed. I have visited our courageous wounded warriors at Walter Reed. I have traveled to Dover to meet the flag-draped caskets of 18 Americans returning home to their final resting place."

Translation: It's all about me, didn't you know? I'm the best president you've ever had! (And by the way, you troops make a great photo op!)

"I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Finally, something we agree on.

"This is not just America's war."

Translation: Heaven forbid America stand for anything special. It's the "world community" that really matters.

"I want the Afghan people to understand — America seeks an end to this era of war and suffering. We have no interest in occupying your country."

Translation: Because Big Bad America has been in the imperialist habit of "occupying" nations (though I can't think of a historical reference right now), I just need to clear that up.

"...the absence of a time frame for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government."

Translation: National security doesn't provide enough urgency for us. We have to announce to our enemies exactly when they can expect our departure so all they have to do is wait us out.

"...We simply cannot afford to ignore the price of these wars. All told, by the time I took office the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan approached a trillion dollars. Going forward, I am committed to addressing these costs openly and honestly. "

Translation: We can't afford to let runaway spending on federal government's legitimate expenditures - national defense - take away from my precious domestic agenda and entitlement programs (which, by the way, are NOT constitutionally the federal government's role). Forget the fact that I spent $3.5 trillion of borrowed money in my first year in office - adding more to the national debt than every president from Washington to Dubya COMBINED.

And not that anyone expects to hear it from him by now, but two words were conspicuously absent: "win" and "victory". I'll guess we'll have to settle for the PC reference to a "transition to Afghan responsibility."

Michelle Malkin observes:

Bush-bashing? Check.
Noxious complaining about the cost of fighting a necessary war? Check.
Disingenuous denial that he dithered? Check.
“Let me be clear”s/”clear”s = 9.
Self-congrats for sticking to Gitmo closure policy = 1.
Self-referential “As your Commander-in-Chief”s = 2.
References to global jihad = 0.

Charles Krauthammer tonight called the speech “strange,” “defensive,” “hedging,” and full of “uncertainty compounding uncertainty.”

Way to restore America’s standing in the world, eh?

Pajamas Media lightened things up with a little drinking game: "Drunkblogging Obama’s Afghanistan Speech"

Want to Teach? Toe the Ideological Line!

2009-12-01T19:01:00.000-08:00

Do you believe in the American dream -- the idea that in this country, hardworking people of every race, color and creed can get ahead on their own merits? If so, that belief may soon bar you from getting a license to teach in Minnesota public schools -- at least if you plan to get your teaching degree at the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities campus.

In a report compiled last summer, the Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U's College of Education and Human Development recommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of "the American Dream" in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace -- and be prepared to teach our state's kids -- the task force's own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.

The task group is part of the Teacher Education Redesign Initiative, a multiyear project to change the way future teachers are trained at the U's flagship campus. The initiative is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers' lack of "cultural competence" contributes to the poor academic performance of the state's minority students. Last spring, it charged the task group with coming up with recommendations to change this. In January, planners will review the recommendations and decide how to proceed.

The report advocates making race, class and gender politics the "overarching framework" for all teaching courses at the U. It calls for evaluating future teachers in both coursework and practice teaching based on their willingness to fall into ideological lockstep.

What if some aspiring teachers resist this effort at thought control and object to parroting back an ideological line as a condition of future employment? The task group has Orwellian plans for such rebels: The U, it says, must "develop clear steps and procedures for working with non-performing students, including a remediation plan."

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Russia Building Arms Plants in Venezuela

2009-12-01T18:47:00.000-08:00

Maybe they would stop if Obama asked "please" real nicely....

Russia is building arms plants in Venezuela to produce AK-103 automatic rifles and cartridges and is finalizing contracts to send 53 military helicopters to the Andean nation, Moscow's envoy to Venezuela saidMonday.

Ambassador Vladmir Zaemskiy told a news conference that Russian engineers and Venezuelan construction firms were building the rifle and cartridge plants which, when operational, would employ more than 1,500 workers.

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Al Gore Asking $1,200 To Shake His Hand In Copenhagen

2009-12-01T18:39:00.000-08:00

He must be joking.

What about the "little people" who don't happen to have $1200 lying around (or if they did, they sure have better uses for it)?

Of course, it begs the question: how much would he charge his adoring enviro-cult followers for the privelage of kissing his posterior?

NewsBusters reports:

Still think there's no money in spreading global warming alarmism?

Well, how'd you like to make $1,200 just for shaking someone's hand and having your picture taken with the sycophant?

This is what Al "I'm Only Doing This To Save The Planet" Gore is charging for such an honor at next week's climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Nice work if you can get it, huh?

Global Warming Scandal Makes Scientific Progress More Difficult, Experts Say

2009-12-01T18:33:00.000-08:00

You mean people won't consider scientists to be infallible gods anymore? Heaven forbid!

The trustworthiness of the scientific community's global warming data pool is being called into question as the scandal over climate data continues to unfold.

The latest revelation came on Sunday with the publication of a report by The Sunday Times of London that scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom confessed to throwing out most of the raw temperature data on which the theory of global warming is founded.

The loss of the data prevents other scientists from checking it to determine whether, in fact, there has been a long-term rise in global temperatures during the past century and a half.

"They are making scientific progress more difficult now," says Willie Soon, a physicist, astronomer and climate researcher at the solar and stellar physics division of the Harvard University-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "This is a shameful, dark day for science," he said in an interview with FoxNews.com.

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ClimateGate's Jones Steps Down Pending Investigation

2009-12-01T18:29:00.000-08:00

The British scientist in the middle of the growing ClimateGate scandal is temporarily stepping down from his position as head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit pending an investigation.

Phil Jones was one of the scientists on the sending and receiving end of many of the controversial e-mail messages obtained from the University's computer system.

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EPA Overreach: Tailoring Themselves into a Corner

2009-12-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

The Obama administration is so desperate to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that they are willing to illegally rewrite statutes without authorization from Congress.

In an obvious administrative overreach, EPA wants to rewrite the 1970 Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. The agency just released a proposed rule that would allow them to “tailor” the Act to regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources that have the potential to emit more than 25,000 tons per year. This rule is a clear violation of the black letter law of the Act, which states that major stationary emitters are classified as “stationary sources with the potential to emit 250 tons or more of any pollutant.”

EPA is in a bind because if they enact their long-sought greenhouse gases regulations as the Clean Air Act actually instructs, they will have to regulate 1.2 million businesses, manufactures and farms, this according to a study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This regulation would place a crippling burden on the country and tie the EPA in knots trying to administrate the avalanche of new permits. This result would also raise a political firestorm that would force the Obama administration and/or Congress to step in and stop the runaway regulators.

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The Inquisition of Global Warming

2009-12-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

After the leak of highly embarrassing e-mail messages from the University of East Anglia's influential Climatic Research Unit, CRU has been forced to admit that it dumped "the original raw" climate data used to bolster the case for human-caused global warming, while retaining only the "value-added" -- read: massaged -- data.

In short, the CRU dumped the scientific data, but archived information that supports its conclusions. "It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years," wrote Times environment editor Jonathan Leake.

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Obama’s Achilles Heel

2009-12-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

A new study shows Obama has fewer advisors who’ve made a living in the private sector than any other American President in the last 108 years.

We should not trust a Chief Executive to know how to fix the private sector or “create competition” in health care when there is hardly a person near him who knows anything about job creation.

The American people, at the end of the day, believe in, work in, and want to support the private sector. Contrary to the Obama and New York Times spin that there is no stigma attached to food stamps, the American people do not want to be dependent on the government for their food, health care, or income.

But that is Obama’s solution. To every problem, Obama offers government. He can offer no other because he has surrounded himself with no job creators, no producers, no captains of industry, and no free market champions.

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They Call It Fiscal Responsibility; We Call It Socialism

2009-12-01T09:41:00.000-08:00

With the information that has now come to light about the costs of "reform," there is no other rational explanation for Obama's obsession to enact Obamacare than his desire to increase government control over every aspect of our lives.

As others have noted, Obama and company have employed multiple gimmicks to conceal and misrepresent the true costs of Obamacare. Like other groups wanting to destroy America from the outside, liberals are patient. By backloading their spending, they hope to deceive Americans into thinking their plan is budget-neutral.

Thus, their bills disguise their true net costs by deferring most new spending for five years (while increasing taxes and cutting Medicare almost immediately). This trick is so transparently deceitful that if attempted by a Republican administration, we'd have already heard rumblings for impeachment.

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New EU President Confirms He Wants New World Order

2009-12-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, Belgium Prime Minister Herman van Rompuy was appointed president of the European Union. Here's what he has to say about his vision for the world:

President of European Union Puts Us One Step Closer To A One World Government.

Obama Finally Makes Up His Mind On Afghanistan

2009-12-01T09:07:00.000-08:00

How many troops have needlessly died in the time since General McChrystal first asked Obama to send reinforcements?

Chuck Norris notes:

Alas, after nearly three months of military deliberations, our commander in chief finally is coming out of the closet with his Afghan strategy. But is his plan based more upon politics than it is upon national security?

A big question that keeps coming to our minds is: How is it that President Barack Obama fast-tracks borrowing, bailouts and Obamacare but is slower than molasses when it comes to decisions regarding the military?

Of course, it wouldn't be an Obama decision without the fanfare of a formal announcement with all the bells and whistles. Move over, Charlie Brown Christmas - the Obamessiah wants your time slot.

Funny, I don't see why it's either necessary or smart to explain our new military strategy to the WHOLE FLIPPIN' WORLD, terrorists included!

‘The Blind Side’ Should Trouble As Well As Inspire

2009-12-01T00:46:00.000-08:00

“The Blind Side” is a beautiful new film based on a magnificent and heartwarming true story. But I hope that the many who see it do not simply walk out all aglow. The movie should also produce some concern.

This story about hopelessness transformed into achievement should be a typically American story. We should be concerned that increasingly this is not the case — it is the exception that should be the rule.

Michael Oher’s story has already received much attention. A homeless black 15-year-old winds up in a Christian private school, where he is adopted by a white Christian couple who helps him develop to get the grades he needs to stay in school, become a star athlete, an All-American football player and a multimillion-dollar NFL draft pick.

Our wake-up call should be that the factors which saved and transformed Michael Oher’s life stand in stark contrast to the government solutions we hear from Washington, D.C., about dealing with our problems in poverty and education.

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Hide The Decline - Climategate

2009-12-01T00:40:00.001-08:00

Cleaning Out The Climate Science Cesspool

2009-12-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

As frigid Copenhagen prepares for the upcoming Climate Armageddon confab, a predictable barrage of hothouse horrors has been unleashed, to advance proposals to slash hydrocarbon use and carbon dioxide emissions, restrict agriculture and economic growth, and implement global governance and taxation.

However, the planet and science are not cooperating with the fear-mongering. There has been no statistically significant global warming for over a decade, despite steadily increasing CO2 levels – and for several years average annual global temperatures have actually declined.

Worst of all, newly released emails from leading crisis-promoting scientists have exposed a cesspool of intimidation, duplicity and fraud that could rock Copenhagen and the alarmist agenda to their core. Their views, data and models are central to reports by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Kyoto Protocol and proposed successors, and US cap-tax-and-trade bills, polar bear “protection” schemes and EPA “endangerment” findings.

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Why College Costs So Much

2009-12-01T00:34:00.000-08:00

In Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs So Much, Ohio University economist Richard Vedder lays out in plain language why, well, college costs so much.

Vedder, also a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, sat down at FreedomFest in mid-July with Reason magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch to talk about college costs and more.

Economist Richard Vedder on Why College Costs So Much

Academic Perestroika

2009-12-01T00:31:00.000-08:00

Charter colleges could provide real alternatives to a corrupt system.

The editors of The Chronicle of Higher Education—academe's trade journal—recently gave the well-read back cover of an issue to Hamid Shirvani, president of California State University-Stanislaus. Under a provocative headline—"Will a Culture of Entitlement Bankrupt Higher Education?"—Shirvani compared colleges and universities to the auto industry and noted that "resistance to change in academe has helped create inflexible, unsustainable organizations" like General Motors. He then, like Gorby in 1985, recommended a vague reform plan—"review redundancies, rethink staffing models, and streamline business practices"—along with several specific suggestions, such as larger classes and larger course loads for faculty.

One problem with such economically necessary reforms is that they will reduce traditional education's ability to compete with online offerings: If students don't get personal attention from classroom professors, they're often better off taking online courses (see "Class without rooms," Oct. 10). A second shortcoming is that Shirvani's reforms do not deal with the problem of left-wing-only campuses. American universities are not yet as disliked as Soviet institutions in 1989—football teams still spark loyalty—but as more donors and legislators rebel against campus intellectual repression, higher education's support base will shrink even as costs rise beyond the ability of financially beleaguered parents to keep up.

Rob Koons, the University of Texas professor removed last fall as head of a UT Western Civilization program (see "Losing a beachhead," Sept. 12), is proposing that Texas legislators back the creation of charter colleges, as they now support the creation of charter schools.

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Faithfully Angry Take Stand On Abortion, Marriage Conscience

2009-12-01T00:17:00.000-08:00

It took a while, we're talking decades, but finally some American religious leaders say they are fed up. A few days ago, a faith-based group including Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York issued a scathing indictment of secularism in the USA entitled "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience."

Why now? Why are some Christian leaders coming out of the sacristy at this point in time?

The declaration gives a strong hint, as abortion is the lead issue. The fact that so many Democrats in Congress are supporting public funding for abortions as part of health care reform has rocked the pro-life world.

With the stroke of a pen, the Christian writers have turned the tables on those who say gay marriage and unfettered abortion are civil rights and, therefore, should be constitutionally protected.

With polls showing that more than 80 percent of Americans believe in God, the question now becomes: Will they rally behind The Manhattan Declaration?

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Where the Real Fear Is

2009-12-01T00:07:00.000-08:00

You should be very afraid.

No, not of Islamic extremists plotting to kill their fellow Americans. After all, “At this point, there is no information to indicate Major Nidal Malik Hasan had any co-conspirators or was part of a broader terrorist plot,” the FBI announced almost immediately after Hasan allegedly opened fire at Fort Hood. That must be the federal version of, “move along, nothing to see here, folks.”

And you certainly shouldn’t fear a rapacious and steadily growing federal government. No. Your biggest concern should apparently be…the right-wing militia movement.

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Pull Up A Chair

2009-12-01T00:03:00.000-08:00

In anticipation of Senate Democrats' introduction of an $849 billion dollar plan to overhaul the nation's health care system, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn last week announced his intention to press for a full reading of the 2,074 page bill on the floor of the Senate, a process estimated to require between 34 and 54 hours to complete. Not surprisingly, Coburn's effort to fulfill President Obama's pledge of transparency and accountability - a pledge Mr. Obama himself seems to have abandoned at this point - has been scuttled.

Critics of Coburn's move cited the Senate's longstanding tradition of waiving, without objection, the reading of bills on the floor before a vote. The notion that America's elected representatives might have an ethical responsibility to actually read legislation before casting their votes was met last week with incredulity:

"Believe it or not, they are going to require us... to stand up for 50 hours and read that bill on the floor," said Senator Tom Udall, a Democrat from New Mexico. "The normal thing we do to get to something is we waive the reading. But they are going to require it... I cannot understand that."

Believe it or not, America. Believe it or not-against all reason or logic-Senator Coburn believes that Congress should read legislation BEFORE they vote it into law. The nerve! The audacity! If you aren't offended by such presumption, well, you should be! After all, everyone knows that Senators have more important things to do than, well, the job they were elected to do.

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Democrats Created the "Wedge" That May Defeat Them

2009-11-30T23:58:00.000-08:00

Democrats have long complained about the “wedge issues” that Republicans allegedly exploit to “divide” the country. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that these so-called “wedges” are the issues where majorities or large pluralities of Americans are at odds with “enlightened opinion” as defined by liberals and the media: Abortion, affirmative action and immigration, just to name a few.

It’s now increasingly clear that Republicans have found an effective new “wedge” for the upcoming 2010 elections: Health care. Ironically, the Democrats are the ones who created it for them.

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Global Warming Consensus: Garbage in, Garbage out

2009-11-30T23:54:00.000-08:00

As Air Force One heads to Copenhagen for the climate summit Dec. 9, it will presumably not make a U-turn while flying over the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at University of East Anglia near Norwich, England. But perhaps it should.

The 61 megabytes of CRU e-mails and documents made public by a hacker cast serious doubt on the ballyhooed consensus on manmade global warming that the Copenhagen summit was called to address.

The CRU has been a major source of data on global temperatures, relied on by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But the e-mails suggest that CRU scientists have been suppressing and misstating data and working to prevent the publication of conflicting views in peer-reviewed science periodicals.

The most charitable plausible explanation I have seen comes from The Atlantic's Megan McArdle. "The CRU's main computer model may be, to put it bluntly, complete rubbish."

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Just the Beginning

2009-11-30T23:49:00.000-08:00

Last Friday was one of the most remarkable and memorable moments of my life. I’ll tell you why.

As I hope you know by now, last Friday, 20-some Christian leaders stood before the microphones at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. There, we announced the release of the Manhattan Declaration. And we proclaimed to the church—and put our nation’s leaders on notice—that we would protect the sanctity of life, that we would uphold the sacredness of marriage as a holy union between one man and one woman, and that we would defend religious freedom for all people.

The response to this declaration has been amazing, and at times overwhelming. Just four days after the press conference, approaching 100,000 people have visited ManhattanDeclaration.org and agreed to sign this historic document.

And that’s what I am going to ask you to do today. Go to ManhattanDeclaration.org. Download the document. Read it. Sign it. And then, just as important, send the link to your friends, your families, your pastor, and your church groups.

Just imagine what could happen if we could say to the world that a million Christians have made this pledge—that we will not compromise the faith, no matter what. I think that would have an extraordinary impact on American culture.

And just as important, I believe the Manhattan Declaration can help revitalize the church in America. One great weakness of the Church today is its biblical and doctrinal ignorance. This document is, in fact, a form of catechism for the foundational truths of the faith.

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Nancy Pelosi Spends $2,993 On Flowers

2009-11-30T22:56:00.000-08:00

Good to see them cutting back on taxpayer-funded frivolities at a time when the rest of the country is tightening its belt.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spent $2,993 in taxpayer money on flowers between June and October. House Majority Whip James Clyburn has a thing for Chantilly Donuts, spending about $265 at the Virginia shop in the past quarter. And Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), a fiscal conservative, decided to give about $2,000 in unused office funds back to the government to help reduce the deficit.

These expenditures – culled from thousands of line items released Monday by the Chief Administrative Officer of the House – are just a fraction of the $300 million spent last quarter by House offices. But while the bulk of congressional office spending goes to salaries and routine office expenses, some of the line items offer a window into the personalities and priorities of each congressional office.

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Health Bills Fail To Block Illegals From Coverage

2009-11-30T22:51:00.000-08:00

Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants could receive health care coverage from their employers under the bills winding their way through Congress, despite President Obama's explicit pledge that illegal immigrants would not benefit.

The House bill mandates, and the Senate bill strongly encourages, businesses to extend health care coverage to all employees. But the bills do not have exemptions to screen out illegal immigrants, who usually obtain jobs by using false identities and are indistinguishable from legal workers.

A rough estimate by the Center for Immigration Studies suggests that the practical effect of the mandates would be that about 1 million illegal immigrants could obtain health insurance coverage through their employers.

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Climategate: Follow the Money

2009-11-30T22:41:00.000-08:00

Last year, ExxonMobil donated $7 million to a grab-bag of public policy institutes, including the Aspen Institute, the Asia Society and Transparency International. It also gave a combined $125,000 to the Heritage Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis, two conservative think tanks that have offered dissenting views on what until recently was called—without irony—the climate change "consensus."

To read some of the press accounts of these gifts—amounting to about 0.0027% of Exxon's 2008 profits of $45 billion—you might think you'd hit upon the scandal of the age. But thanks to what now goes by the name of climategate, it turns out the real scandal lies elsewhere.

Climategate, as readers of these pages know, concerns some of the world's leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data—facts that were laid bare by last week's disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, or CRU.

But the deeper question is why the scientists behaved this way to begin with, especially since the science behind man-made global warming is said to be firmly settled. To answer the question, it helps to turn the alarmists' follow-the-money methods right back at them.

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What Took So Long?

2009-11-30T20:16:00.000-08:00

Sean Hannity and Dick Morris discuss Obama's Afghanistan strategy and changing attitudes towards health care.

Activists Across the Country Take Action A Week Before Copenhagen Begins

2009-11-30T20:02:00.000-08:00

TreeHugger reports:

Today, in cities across the country and one week before the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen, climate activists held demonstrations and workshops to bring urgent attention to issue of climate change.

Enviro-cult followers in San Franscisco staged a "die-in", lying like dead bodies in the middle of the street. Doesn't that just make you feel warm and fuzzy?

Environmentalism really has become a cult. And for the truly devout, it apparently doesn't matter that much of the scientific evidence that "Climate Change" hysteria depends upon has been brought into serious question by the recent exposure of e-mails which prove that many leading scientists weren't about to let anything or anyone get in the way of their agenda - much less the data.

However, they're not about to let a little thing like the truth stop them. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), insists that the leaked emails won't harm the UN climate body. Good luck with that, Pachauri. The credibility of the IPCC has been seriously compromised, and failure to acknowledge even THAT simple fact just reinforces the suspicion that you are so blinded by your ideology that facts don't seem to matter to you.

Even the New York Times understands that the credibility of Global Warming alarmists has taken a hit, describing science as a "blood sport" and debunking the popular notion of scientists "leaving their personal biases at home, scrupulously considering any confounding data or theories and willfully distancing themselves from the political implications of their research. How quaint."

TreeHugger has been circling the wagons with some interesting articles purporting to reveal the "truth" behind the exposed e-mails and claiming that anyone who sees the information in this scandal as a "smoking gun" is a conspiracy theorist. It's amazing that they still insist the data for Climate Change is overwhelming, completely ignoring the fact that most of the data they're referring to has actually been dumped - deleted, destroyed, gone missing - so that critics can't test or verify their information. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's a fact.

One especially sad explanation they try to offer is that "these emails reveal little besides the fact that scientists are people with (gasp!) the same professional and social instincts as anyone else." You mean like Wall Street tycoons who cook THEIR numbers to produce the desired results? Because frankly, I don't recall TreeHugger letting THEM off the hook for following their natural "instincts".

Thankfully, there are a few in the media who understand "Why You Should Be Hot and Bothered About 'Climate-gate'. As Fox reports: "A coordinated campaign to hide scientific information about climate change appears unprecedented." Indeed.

Sigh: ‘Tis The Season…To Start Targeting Christmas Again

2009-11-30T18:02:00.000-08:00

Bah, humbug!

Thanksgiving’s over. Time for the war on Christmas to begin anew. Groan. Goodbye, C*****mas tree. Hello, “diversity!”

The latest battlefield? Orange County, CA.

Mental State Cited in 9/11 Case

2009-11-30T17:55:00.000-08:00

This is how it begins. If Eric Holder and his activist lawyer friends have their way, terrorists are going to end up walking free on legal technicalities or insanity pleas. The Left isn't interested in protecting the American people. They're only concerned with advancing their ideological Utopia, in which terrorists "don't exist".

When five defendants are brought before a New York federal judge to face charges for the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the first question may be whether some of them are competent to stand trial at all.

Military lawyers for Ramzi Binalshibh, an accused organizer of the 9/11 plot, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, the conspiracy's alleged paymaster, say their clients have mental disorders that make them unfit for trial, likely caused or exacerbated by years of harsh confinement in Central Intelligence Agency custody.

The issue already has arisen in military-commission proceedings at the military's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. According to an August ruling by a military judge, prosecutors have made an "apparent concession" that Mr. Binalshibh "suffers from a delusional disorder-persecutory type" disorder. Mr. Binalshibh has been prescribed "a variety of psychotropic medications used to treat schizophrenia and/or bipolar disorder, including Haldol, Abilify, risperidone and Ativan," according to commission records.

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Resist DC: A Step-by-Step Plan for Freedom

2009-11-30T17:49:00.000-08:00

This summer, legislators from several states met to discuss the steps needed to restore our Constitutional Republic. The federal government has ignored the many state sovereignty resolutions from 2009 notifying it to cease and desist its current and continued overreach. The group decided it was time to actively counter the tyranny emanating from Washington D.C.

From those discussions it became clear three things needed to happen.
State Legislatures need to pass 10 key pieces of legislation “with teeth” to put the federal government back in its place.
The people must pass the legislation through the Initiative process if any piece of the legislative agenda fails.
County Sheriffs must reaffirm and uphold their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
With the advent of the Tea Party Movement, many people have been asking how exactly we can make the above reality. What follows is Part I of the outline of that plan regarding state legislation, the action steps any concerned citizen can take to see this legislation to fruition, and the brief history and justifications behind each.

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Health Care Bill Endangers Families and Freedom of Education

2009-11-30T17:43:00.000-08:00

While this article refers to the House version of the bill (HR 3200), nothing regarding this serious threat has changed with the Senate version, HR 3590. You can now find it in Section 2951 under the heading, "Early Childhood Home Visitation Programs".

How would you feel about government employees coming into your home to teach you how best to rear your children? Sound like the plot of a futuristic novel? Unfortunately, it's not.

That's exactly what H.R. 3200, the national health care bill currently under consideration by Congress and being pushed by the president, provides for.

The bill offers funding to states to send government officials into private homes to teach moms and dads how to rear children according to state-approved criteria developed by “experts” and covering every imaginable aspect of parenting.

Home visits by state officials are, among other things, supposed to promote “activities designed to help parents become full partners in the education of their children.” (H. R. 3200, page 844)

Government clearly considers itself the primary educator of children and parents as potential full-time helpers – with the right training.

The Heritage Foundation points out that “Lawmakers have essentially inserted the “Education Begins at Home Act” – which was introduced in 2008 and again this year… – into the health care bill under the home visitation section.”

While the home visitation program of H.R. 3200 is voluntary, it still poses a great danger to the cause of independent education. The ultimate goal of the bill is for states to reach “as many families with young children (under the age of school entry) and families expecting children as practicable…” (page 842), but the most vulnerable would be targeted first – low income families, non-English-speaking families, those who could most easily be convinced that they are merely junior partners with the state in the education of their children and that their role is only to ensure “school readiness,” as instructed by the state (page 848).

Once trapped in a system of government “help” and surveillance (required under the bill in order to monitor the effectiveness of the program), it would be very hard for families to break free, both psychologically and literally.

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Senator Reid Wants to Talk about History

2009-11-30T17:32:00.000-08:00

On the evening when 60 Senators who caucus with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voted to move forward with debate on the 2,074-page "health care" bill, Senator Reid pointed to this as a historical moment:
What happened just now has never happened in the long history of the United States Senate.
Through congressional town hall meetings, tea parties, and other rallies, Americans have made clear that they oppose this particular health care plan. They do want reform -- such as portability and tort reform -- but not what was in the original 1,000+-page House bill (HR 3200) or what is now in the new 2,000+-page bills in both chambers. Most Congressional Democrats have neglected to listen to their constituents, who have made their opposition known. What is Obama's response? The man currently occupying the White House reportedly referred to the people he is supposed to serve as "teabag, anti-government people" and "extremists."

As Reid brought up history, I am reminded of a previous era in history when a president wanted to grow government. In his inaugural address, President John Quincy Adams (the sixth president and son of President John Adams) spoke about the debate as to whether internal improvements by the federal government were allowed by the Constitution.

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The States can Stop Obama

2009-11-30T17:27:00.000-08:00

By now we have all heard the cliches and seen the posters from the “Tea Parties” espousing freedom, less government, and perhaps most of all, how the federal government had better back off trying to shove their national healthcare down our otherwise healthy throats. The truth of the matter is all the slogans of “Don’t Tread On Me” or “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death” or “We’re Mad As Hell And We’re Not Taking It Anymore,” don’t mean a thing when compared to reality; the real and actual answer to all the protests, marches, and outrage.

The answer is in our own backyards! The States can stop every bit of it! That’s right, the individual States can stop “Obamacare” and all other forms of out-of-control federal government mandates and “big brother” tactics. If Arizona, Hawaii, New Hamshire, Texas, etc. want nothing to do with National Healthcare as proposed by Barack Obama or Congress, then all they have to do is say “No!”

For you skeptics who think the States could no more do this than fly to the moon, let’s look at the law. First, the U.S. Constitution is the ultimate and supreme law of the land. More specifically, the Bill of Rights was established, because some of our Founding Fathers, feared that the Constitution did not go far enough in restricting or limiting the central government. So the Framers of our Constitution came up with ten; ten God-given freedoms that would forever be held inviolable by our own governments.

The last of these basic foundational principles was the one to protect the power, sovereignty, and the autonomy of the States; the Tenth Amendment. This amendment and law underscores the entire purpose of the Constitution to limit government and forbids the federal government from becoming more powerful than the “creator.” Let’s be very clear here; the States in this case were the creator. They formed the federal government, not the other way around. Does anyone believe rationally that the States intended to form a new central government to control and command the States at will? Nothing could be further from the truth.

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Education Secretary Rejects D.C. Voucher Program As Parents Press Congress to Continue It

2009-11-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

Liberals don't really believe in "choice". They believe in making people dependent on government so that they can control even what your children are taught, and how - which is essentially controlling their future. Does that sound like freedom to you?

The cost for a "free" education is that American parents and children have actually given up their freedom of educational choice, and now must come before their government to grovel and beg for the quality and choice that they need. And if government says "no", these children are permanently trapped in failing government schools.

Our founding fathers would roll over in their graves!

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says no more low-income, mostly minority children will get taxpayer-funded scholarships to attend private or parochial schools in the District of Columbia.

Duncan told CNSNews.com that school vouchers are “not the solution” to fixing D.C.’s failing public schools.

Duncan made the comments just days after concerned parents made another trip to Capitol Hill to press U.S. lawmakers to continue funding the city’s Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP).

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7 Stories Obama Doesn't Want Told

2009-11-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.

No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.

A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.

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The Cloward/Piven Strategy of Economic Recovery

2009-11-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

Using borrowed money for a band-aid bailout of the economy should seem backwards to most people. However, it likely is a planned strategy to promote radical change. Those naively believing that President Obama is simply rewarding his far-left base, and will then move to the political center, must wise up.

The assumption that Obama will need the nation to prosper in order to protect the 2010 mid-term election incorrectly assumes that he esteems free market capitalism. He does not. Rather than win through superior ideas and policies, the Democrat plan for success in the mid-term elections is to win by destroying political opposition.

Obama adheres to the Saul Alinksy Rules for Radicals method of politics, which teaches the dark art of destroying political adversaries. However, that text reveals only one front in the radical left's war against America. The Cloward/Piven Strategy is another method employed by the radical Left to create and manage crisis. This strategy explains Rahm Emanuel's ominous statement, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

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Glenn Beck Examines 1960s Radicals Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven

ObamaCare’s Cost Could Top $6 Trillion

2009-11-29T23:51:00.000-08:00

Congressional Democrats are using several budget gimmicks to disguise the cost of their health care overhaul, claiming the House and Senate bills would cost only (!) about $1 trillion over 10 years. Now that critics have begun to correct for those budget gimmicks, supporters of ObamaCare are firing back.

One gimmick makes the new entitlement spending appear smaller by not opening the spigot until late in the official 10-year budget window (2010–2019). Correcting for that gimmick in the Senate version, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) estimates, “When all this new spending occurs” — i.e., from 2014 through 2023 — “this bill will cost $2.5 trillion over that ten-year period.”

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Obama Violates Osama Oath

2009-11-29T23:47:00.000-08:00

Why has the President stopped talking about defeating bin Laden and al Qaeda?

On December 18, 2007, then presidential candidate Barack Obama leveled the first of dozens of heavy criticisms against President George W. Bush. In a speech in Des Moines, Obama blasted President Bush for taking his “eye off the ball in Afghanistan." He continued: "It’s time to…increase our military, political, and economic commitment to Afghanistan. That’s what…I’ll do as president.”

This was Barack Obama’s first “eye off the ball” speech. It was the beginning of a barrage of campaign speeches accusing the Bush administration of “taking our eye off of Osama bin Laden” (Denver, 1/30/08).

On July 15, 2008 in Washington, D.C., then Senator Obama vowed to deploy “the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11." In fact, Barack Obama specifically used the name of Osama bin Laden at least 40 times in speeches during his Presidential campaign while definitively pledging to focus all necessary resources against bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban in the countries where they live and operate.

Today, it has become completely obvious that President Obama has taken his eye off the very ball that he defined as candidate Obama. As President, he has virtually stopped talking about defeating Osama bin Laden.

In the year since elected, during the dozens of speeches and press conferences he has given as president and in dramatic contrast with his own persistent and repetitive warnings about “taking our eye off of Osama bin Laden,” Obama has uttered the name bin Laden only four times. It is even more significant that not once since his election has Obama repeated his oath to “finish the fight against bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorists.”

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Obama Issues Special Hajj Message To World's Muslims

2009-11-29T23:40:00.000-08:00

He really does consider himself "President of the World". He's the first president to honor the annual Muslim Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), and he does it the day before Thanksgiving!

But he didn't issue a public message of Thanksgiving in honor of the day Americans were about to celebrate. He also refused to honor our nation's traditional "National Day Of Prayer", which, if he wants to choose religious observances to commemorate, is far more American and worthy of notice by an American president.

By the way, does anyone else consider it a conflict of interest for the Saudi King to be paying for Obama's grandmother's Hajj, and welcoming her as his honored guest? I wonder how the media would have reacted if the Saudi's had garnered such a favor for the Bush family?

Climate Change: This Is The Worst Scientific Scandal Of Our Generation

2009-11-29T23:28:00.000-08:00

A week after my colleague James Delingpole, on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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Global Warmists Caught Red-Handed

2009-11-29T23:25:00.000-08:00

I assume all readers of this column are aware of polite society's theory of Global Warming. According to the theory, anthropogenic (once known as "man-made") gases waft into the atmosphere, causing worldwide temperatures to soar and our imminent doom.

Yet, how many of you are familiar with my theory of Kultursmog? According to it, our culture is polluted by political ideas, prejudices, and false pieties advocated by the soi-disant liberals or progressives or People of Conscience or whatever the hell they are calling themselves nowadays. They keep changing their designations, and every designation they opt for becomes an honorific, at least for them. Liberal, indeed -- they actually favor government coercion and regimentation. Progressive, indeed -- they are for a political system that was recognized as archaic late in the last century when socialism was found to be obsolete even by the Indians and the Chinese.

At any rate, my theory of Kultursmog has just been buttressed by some 3,000 emails of cold probative evidence that Kultursmog is real. That the emails come from the Global Warmists is most gratifying. I have always suspected that they are leading contributors to the smog. That is to say, they are leading polluters of our culture. The Environmental Protection Agency should take note.

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Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren involved in unwinding “Climategate” scandal

Covering their tracks: Climate change data dumped

ClimateGate Totally Ignored By TV News Outlets Except Fox

2009-11-29T23:18:00.000-08:00

I'm not even going to pretend I'm surprised. True journalism has been dead for a long time...

The Obama administration has another reason to hate Fox: it appears to be the only national television news outlet in America interested in the growing ClimateGate scandal.

Despite last Friday morning's bombshell that hacked e-mail messages from a British university suggested a conspiracy by some of the world's leading global warming alarmists -- many with direct ties to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- to manipulate temperature data, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC through Monday evening have completely ignored the subject.

LexisNexis searches indicate that NPR appears to also be part of this news boycott.

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The Truth of Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T23:12:00.000-08:00

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! I appreciate your patience during the lag in my blog. I was away for the holiday and my family's computer wouldn't let me post. Thanksgiving may be over, but I found this article very insightful, and I'd like to share it anyway:

Our nation has dramatically changed since the inception of this special day.

I asked my students if they knew the original intent of the day we now call Thanksgiving. To my consternation, these were a few of those responses:

"Isn't it to celebrate the final time we showed unity with the Indians before we massacred them?"

"I think some important document might've been signed that day, right?"

"Does it symbolize how the Native Americans taught white people how to cook?"

These are some of your nation's college students...participants in American high academia. Our country may be in serious trouble.

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Solving Whose Problem?

2009-11-25T10:46:00.000-08:00

It’s stupid to believe that politicians are trying to solve our problems, instead of theirs.

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.

Many of the things the government does that may seem stupid are not stupid at all, from the standpoint of the elected officials or bureaucrats who do these things.

The current economic downturn that has cost millions of people their jobs began with successive administrations of both parties pushing banks and other lenders to make mortgage loans to people whose incomes, credit history, and inability or unwillingness to make a substantial down payment on a house made them bad risks.

Was that stupid? Not at all. The money that was being put at risk was not the politicians’ money, and in most cases was not even the government’s money. Moreover, the jobs that are being lost by the millions are not the politicians’ jobs — and jobs in the government’s bureaucracies are increasing.

No one pushed these reckless mortgage lending policies more than Rep. Barney Frank, who brushed aside warnings about risk, and said in 2003 that he wanted to “roll the dice” even more in the housing markets. But it would very rash to bet against Representative Frank’s getting reelected in 2010.

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Dems 'In Deep Trouble' On Health Care, The Only Options Are A Bad Bill Or 2010 Losses

2009-11-25T10:41:00.000-08:00

The HuffPo is worried that the Democrats won't be able to pass their radical healthcare bill. This just brightens my holiday weekend, and gives me one more thing to be thankful for!

One of the leading progressive champions of health care reform is pessimistic about the state of the debate in the Senate, saying he sees virtually no path to passing strong legislation and predicting potential congressional losses for Democrats as a consequence.

Former DNC Chair Howard Dean told the Huffington Post on Monday that Senate Democratic leadership was "in deep trouble" on health care, even after Majority Leader Harry Reid cobbled together over the weekend the 60 votes needed to get legislation to the floor. The problem was as much about politics as policy.

"I think if you passed the Senate bill tomorrow it would be OK. But then the problem is they don't have any defense for their members in 2010," Dean said, noting that the public option would not become operational until 2014. "On the other hand, if they drop the public option [to placate moderate members], I think they lose seats."

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President Washington's Orginal Thanksgiving Proclamation

2009-11-25T10:38:00.000-08:00

WHEREAS it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favour; and Whereas both Houfes of Congress have, by their joint committee, requefted me "to recommend to the people of the United States a DAY OF PUBLICK THANSGIVING and PRAYER, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to eftablifh a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

NOW THEREFORE, I do recommend and affign THURSDAY, the TWENTY-SIXTH DAY of NOVEMBER next, to be devoted by the people of thefe States to the fervice of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our fincere and humble thanksfor His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the fignal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpofitions of His providence in the courfe and conclufion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have fince enjoyed;-- for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to eftablish Conftitutions of government for our fafety and happinefs, and particularly the national one now lately instituted;-- for the civil and religious liberty with which we are bleffed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffufing useful knowledge;-- and, in general, for all the great and various favours which He has been pleafed to confer upon us.

And also, that we may then unite in moft humbly offering our prayers and fupplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and befeech Him to pardon our national and other tranfgreffions;-- to enable us all, whether in publick or private ftations, to perform our feveral and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a bleffing to all the people by conftantly being a Government of wife, juft, and conftitutional laws, difcreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all fovereigns and nations (especially fuch as have shewn kindnefs unto us); and to blefs them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increafe of fcience among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind fuch a degree of temporal profperity as he alone knows to be beft.

GIVEN under my hand, at the city of New-York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, one thousand feven hundred and eighty-nine.

(signed) G. Washington

Enabling the Opponents of Reform

2009-11-24T17:20:00.000-08:00

Once again, what's best for the kids doesn't matter. All that matters to the unions is money, power and control.

A promising performance-pay program is under attack in the Boston public school system, which is trying out some new and innovative school reforms. The plan was to allow Advanced Placement teachers to receive $100 bonuses for each student who passes an AP exam, and teachers could be rewarded up to $3,000. But the Boston Herald reports that the Boston Teachers Union is trying to put an end to the innovative plan.

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