All blog posts are cross posted

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Gateway Pundit has the goods today

I finally have a chance to read some blogs and news today.  You MUST read these links:
Jim Hoft
The highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law spoke out on Barack Obama saying, “Professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings.”
Doug Ross reported this and more:
But wait, that's not all there's more:
Anarchists Plan War On April 15th Tea Parties
WARNING: Be on the lookout–

Bring your cameras.
Violent anarchists are planning on infilitrating and sabotaging the Tea Party Protests on April 15th.
Read it all, see the pictures.

And even More:
Majority of Americans Believe Dem’s Obamacare Tactics Were an Abuse of Power
Jim Hoft

A majority of Americans believe that democrats abused power when they rammed their unpopular nationalized health care plan down America’s throat.
The Plum Line reported this from Gallup:
Regardless of whether you favored or opposed the health care legislation passed this week, do you think the methods the Democratic leaders in Congress used to get enough legislation — were [they] an abuse of power, or were [they] an appropriate use of power by the party that controls the majority in Congress?
Abuse of power 53%
Appropriate use of power 40%
No opinion 7%
It looks like not even the state-run media could keep all of the corrption, bribes and backroom deals from the American public, after all.


Tuesday, March 30, 2010

My blood is boiling again.  From Gateway Pundit.
Marxist Code Pink Protesters & Top Obama Bundler Shut Down Rove Book Signing — Media Silent (Video)
Jim Hoft

Code Pink Marxists shut down a Karl Rove book signing event at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills Monday night.
After they disrupted his speech and would not stop harassing him – Rove was forced to leave the stage.
Barack Obama’s top bundler Jodie Evans led the pink storm troopers against Rove.

Rockport Herb and Rose Study Group 6th Annual Herb Festival

Is this weekend. Saturday 8:30 - 3:30.  Paws and Taws convention center in Fulton, TX.
We started our herb group six years ago and put on our first festival the same year.  We were amazed, as I put it 8 little old ladies put on a festival and 500 people came.  Our group has grown to about 15 to 20 ladies, not all old,  who put on a festival every year.
This year we have changed the location  from the school to the beach, we hope it goes well.
See my other blog at Rockport Herbies. I blog there as Herbal Rose. It's a nice blog with information on herbs and recipes.  My friend Linda Collins has been doing most of the posting lately. We also have the website Rockport Herbs.
It is also Easter weekend and I have children coming home for Easter so I will not be doing as much blogging.  This morning has been spent on the phone, not on the computer.
I am going to try to get some posting done here but I am busy, busy this week.

Monday, March 29, 2010

The Polls say they really, really like the Tea Partiers

This is good news
Most Say Tea Party Has Better Understanding of Issues than Congress
In official Washington, some consider the Tea Party movement a fringe element in society, but voters across the nation feel closer to the Tea Party movement than they do to Congress.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 52% of U.S. voters believe the average member of the Tea Party movement has a better understanding of the issues facing America today than the average member of Congress. Only 30% believe that those in Congress have a better understanding of the key issues facing the nation.
When it comes to those issues, 47% think that their own political views are closer to those of the average Tea Party member than to the views of the average member of Congress. On this point, 26% feel closer to Congress.
Finally, 46% of voters say that the average Tea Party member is more ethical than the average member of Congress. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say that the average member of Congress is more ethical.
Read it all, it will make you feel better.

You just have to laugh at how brazen he can be

From Newsbusters:
Will MSM Let Obama Get Away With 'We Don't Quit' War Whopper?
"The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something. You don't quit, the American armed services does not quit. We keep at it. We persevere." -- Pres. Obama to US troops in Afghanistan, March 28, 2010
"Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq, with the pullout being completed by the end of next year. 'Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was,' Obama said." -- Obama calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, AP, Sep. 12, 2007 [emphasis added]
There are lies, damned lies, and then the kind of brazen rewriting of what a man stands for that Barack Obama engaged in yesterday.
Read more.

Change We DO NOT Believe In

Every time I think I am finished posting for the day I run into something like this. It really drives my blood pressure up and I wonder where the grownups are.  If you do not like the diplomas wording, just get up and leave, go somewhere else. This is almost a local issue to us here in South Texas.
By Melissa Ludwig - Express-News
A group of students at Trinity University (San Antonio, TX) is lobbying trustees to drop a reference to “Our Lord” on their diplomas, arguing it does not respect the diversity of religions on campus.
“A diploma is a very personal item, and people want to proudly display it in their offices and homes,” said Sidra Qureshi, president of Trinity Diversity Connection. “By having the phrase ‘In the Year of Our Lord,' it is directly referencing Jesus Christ, and not everyone believes in Jesus Christ.”
Qureshi, who is Muslim, has led the charge to tweak the wording, winning support from student government and a campus commencement committee. Trustees are expected to consider the students' request at a May board meeting.
Other students and President Dennis Ahlburg have defended the wording, arguing that references to the school's Presbyterian roots are appropriate and unobtrusive.
Founded by Presbyterians in 1869, Trinity has been governed by an independent board of trustees since 1969 but maintains a “covenant relationship” with the church.
Read it all here.

A Plan of Action

From Commentary Magazine
Peter Wehner
We are now a week out from the passage of ObamaCare, so it’s worth considering what approach the Republican party might take in the months ahead.
The first thing is to understand that, politically speaking, the GOP is in extremely good shape. President Obama succeeded in passing health care legislation — but he has not succeeded in making it popular. If you analyze the different polls that have come out since the passage of ObamaCare, it shows several things: the president received a slight bump, less than usual for a legislative victory of this magnitude, and it is in the process of evaporating. And because both parties are determined to make the midterm elections a referendum on ObamaCare — Democrats because they don’t want to leave it undefended, Republicans because they believe the public’s dislike of this legislation is intense and won’t recede — that is what the elections will largely be about.
Good advice here, read it all.

Norman Podhoretz: In Defense of Sarah Palin

From WSJ Online - Monday March 29
She Understands that the U.S. has been a force for good in the world-which is more than can be said of our president.

In addition to what Sarah Palin says and stands for, the opposition by intellectual snobs is summed up by quotes from a satire written by Christopher Buckley, a smart alec man whose bed of roses was planted and tended by a true intellectual giant who fully understood conservatism.

Go here and read the entire article....then be more determined than ever!

Democrats - Digging a deeper hole

The Washington Examiner has an article telling of Democratic strategy that we hope goes badly awry.
By: Chris Stirewalt
Democrats are counting on this fall's elections to be a battle of the bases -- enthusiastic liberals against inflamed conservatives.
The party may take a beating at the ballot box, but an enthusiastic liberal base will hold losses down and leave the president with a governing majority. Or so the argument goes.
.......It may take years for Obamacare to fundamentally change America, but it has already done its work on the Democratic Party.
Democrats have long told themselves that past failures to achieve big goals could be attributed to wimpiness. It wasn't that their initiatives were unpopular, but rather that Democrats did not pursue their goals with the kind of ruthlessness that Republicans did.
The myth of the virtuous loser comforted Democrats in the hard years from 1980 to 2006. Why had America moved to the Right? It wasn't backlash against big government and a corroded culture. It was that Republicans had manufactured those concerns and then exploited them.
The drive to enact a new national health program was politically predicated on the argument that it would give the Left a reason to vote.
Democrats had lots of ideological reasons for wanting to enact the plan, or one even more liberal. But it was the belief that somehow passing the unpopular plan would be a political advantage that finally got anxious members of the majority party to start kicking in doors.
Now, Democrats believe that the time has come to be bolder still. They mean to convince the American people that the party so long associated with dithering has become a party of steely resolve. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Read more at the Washington Examiner. They are using some really faulty reasoning here.  They have blinders on if they have not noticed the poll numbers and the numbers who show up at Tea Party, in particular the one this past weekend in Searchlight.

The Harvest - Obama has sown the seeds of discontent

From American Spectator The Prowler has a long post in which he first describes the dismay at the White House that the Healthcare bill would cause some large companies to have such massive charge offs against their earnings. Second he writes of the surprise of the Obama administration at the European reaction to their snubs and rudeness to the different nations of Europe.
IT'S ALL A GOP PLOT
The White House political and legislative operations were said to be livid with the announcement by several large U.S. companies that they were taking multi-million or as much as a billion dollar charges because of the new health-care law, the issue was front-and-center with key lawmakers. By last Friday, AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co., and AK Steel Holding Corp. had all announced that they were taking the one-time charges on their first-quarter balance sheets. More companies were expected to make similar announcements this week.  
So much for President Obama's promises to build better relations with America's friends and allies overseas. Just 15 months into his administration, Obama has managed to alienate most of the major European allies, this time having a State Department functionary announcing in Brussels that U.S.-EU summits will no longer be held annually, and only when there are particular issues to be decided.
State Department officials, some of whom were holdovers from the Bush Administration, say the reasoning for the U.S. to end the annual summits, which had been held since 1991, was in part due to Obama and his team's feeling " slighted" by European leaders and their staffs, such as French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both of whom have come away less than impressed with Obama's style and substance.
I wonder why the Boy Wonder doesn't understand his actions and words have consequences, might it be that he has never been called to account?
Read it all.

I guess Geitner has been too busy at something - what?

An editorial from the Washington Post
BY NOW, the Obama administration was supposed to have a plan to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the "government-sponsored" mortgage finance enterprises (GSEs) that have been under federal control -- and absorbing $126 billion in federal cash -- for the past 19 months.
But last week Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told the House Financial Services Committee that all he can promise is a "public comment" period starting April 15, in which the various housing interest groups -- and there are a lot of them -- can submit their ideas. Thereafter, at an unspecified "time of greater market stability," legislation can be drafted, introduced and passed.
In short, after a year of discussion, Mr. Geithner promises more discussion.
Read it all.  It's possible we are much better off if he does nothing.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Count on Gateway Pundit for the True News out of Searchlight

It is almost laughable how badly the MSM wants to ignore the Tea Parties, their size and influence.  Gateway Pundit sets it all straight.  They have some areial views that cannot be denied. Here is their take on it:
Just in case you still trusted the state-run media…
CNN on size of Saturday’s rally: “At least dozens of people.”
This is dozens?
American Border Patrol Photos
NewsBusters reported on CNN’s anti-Tea Party bias:

“Hundreds of people, at least dozens of people - we haven’t gotten a count of how many people turned out there. We heard Sarah Palin talk about everything about the campaign, to unseat Sen. Reid to what she calls ObamaCare, on the heels of that health care vote and even talking about her definition of her love of America.”

This photo was taken at 1:35 p.m. More than an hour and a half after the rally started people were lining the highway trying to get in.


American Border Patrol has more.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

The President should listen to Biden when he talks like this

I wonder if he truly meant it.  We do need light, we need transparency.  Somehow I don't think its ever going to happen. This is from the liberal Talking Point Memo.
Vice President Biden spoke at a DNC fundraiser in Texas today. From the pool report:
He told another story about a quarry swimming hole where as a boy he used to go diving from nearly 100 feet up a rock wall.
"The frightening part was you go down really far, I mean literally really far. So deep it's totally black. Your chest constricts, you panic and you don't know whether you're swimming down or up."
Does he really realize how far down we are right now, and does he know we feel like we don't know what is coming next, where we are going?  He goes on:
"But when you get about 12 to 14 feet from the top you see light and everything is OK. You're still 12 feet underwater, but it's OK. You see light."

"That's the American people, man. We've gotta give them light," VPOTUS said, strolling away from the podium, into the audience, and pointing with both hands toward a sun-lit skylight above the center of the room.
Does he know the light is the light of freedom? Well, I hope one day we all see that light of freedom again, but for now it looks very, very dim to me.

Another of Those "Gee, who knew?" Moments - Part II

You just knew that some people will fall for anything if it is "politically correct for the environment"- this is from the Seattle Times via Lucianne.com
by Clement Tan, Tribune Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Federal investigators who submitted phony products, such as a gasoline-powered alarm clock, to the government's energy-efficiency certification program found it easy to obtain approval and say the program is "vulnerable to fraud and abuse."
Investigators with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said they obtained Energy Star approval for 15 of 20 fictitious products they submitted for certification with fake energy-savings claims. Two were rejected and three did not receive a response.
Two of the certified products received purchase requests by real companies because four bogus firms, developed for the purpose of the investigation, were listed as Energy List partners.
Among the phony products that obtained Energy Star certification was a "room air cleaner" that, in a picture prominently displayed on the Web site of a bogus company, showed an electric space heater with a feather duster and strips of fly paper attached to it.
"Certification controls were ineffective primarily because Energy Star does not verify energy-savings data reported by manufacturers," investigators said in a GAO report released Fridayabuse."
Read the rest here.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Lorie Byrd in Wizbang on accusations of violence against Tea Partiers

Here is the only answer that makes sense to me (I put it in bold because this is important): Democrats have seen the pure, raw force of American freedom of expression. They have seen it rise up against them and they are scared spitless. They realize how unpopular they have become and they have to fight back to survive. It is hard to fight back against elderly people with walkers at town hall meetings, and mothers holding infants at tea party rallies, and peaceful, clean cut, tax paying American citizens. So they have to vilify them -- just like they have vilified Republicans all these years. It is just harder to do now that people have cell phone cameras and Twitter and blogs and YouTube and talk radio and Fox News, etc.
This is from the middle of her post, read it all here.

I am Ashamed of our president's action's toward Israel

I feel like I have a recalcitrant* teen age son who has insulted someone very important to me. Only this time it is our president and he speaks and acts for our nation. I hope God is not looking but I know he is. Here is what the Telegraph has to say about it. via Power Line.
Benjamin Netanyahu was left to stew in a White House meeting room for over an hour after President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of tense talks to have supper with his family, it emerged on Thursday.
The snub marked a fresh low in US-Israeli relations and appeared designed to show Mr Netanyahu how low his stock had fallen in Washington after he refused to back down in a row over Jewish construction in east Jerusalem.
The Israeli prime minister arrived at the White House on Tuesday evening brimming with confidence that the worst of the crisis in his country's relationship with the United States was over.  Read it all.
 Here is part of what Power Line says about it:
Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visited the White House. The details of the meeting have been slow to come out, but we are now learning what transpired. The Telegraph reports that Obama opened the meeting by presenting a list of 13 demands to Netanyahu. One was a complete freeze on Jewish building in eastern Jerusalem.
When Netanyahu did not immediately agree to the demands, Obama went to eat dinner. In one account he told Netanyahu to consider "the error of his ways." In another he said, "I'm still around. Let me know if there is anything new."
Obama reportedly returned after an hour to repeat his demands. Because Netanyahu still did not agree, there was no joint statement or normal press coverage.
One Israeli newspaper summarized the encounter this way:
There is no humiliation exercise that the Americans did not try on the prime minister and his entourage. Bibi received in the White House the treatment reserved for the president of Equatorial Guinea.
But Obama would never treat the president of Equatorial Guinea that way.
I say call it what it is, anti-semitism.
*Definition for recalcitrant from Bing.com
- resisting authority: stubbornly resisting the authority of another person or group
- hard to do or handle: difficult to deal with or operate
- stubborn opponent: somebody who stubbornly resists authority or control

VDH on Socialism - coming to a country near you

From National Review Online
We can have a rational debate on any one item on President Obama’s vast progressive agenda, arguing whether adjectives like “statist” or “socialist” fairly describe his legislative intent. But connect all the dots and lines of the past year, and an unambiguous image starts to materialize.
NEW PROGRAMS
The problem is not individual legislation, whether passed or proposed, involving the gamut of issues: health care, bailouts, stimuli, education loans, amnesty, cap and trade. Rather, the rub is these acts in the aggregate.
The president promises a state fix for health care; then student loans; and next energy. There are to be subsidies, credits, and always new entitlements for every problem, all requiring hordes of fresh technocrats and Civil Service employees. Like a perpetual teenager, who wants and buys but never produces, the president is focused on the acquisitive and consumptive urges, never on the productive — as in how all his magnanimous largesse is to be paid for by someone else.
As usual his articles are clear and to the point and unfortunately for our country,
way too true.  Read it all. 

Cow Gate??? Is there no end to the Crazy that is Global Warming?

We all knew it was silly. Cows, according to the environmental powers that be, and  humans, are the cause for global warming. Well, not exactly.
It is becoming difficult to keep pace with the speed at which the global warming scam is now unravelling. The latest reversal of scientific “consensus” is on livestock and the meat trade as a major cause of global warming – one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to eco-vegetarian cranks. Now a scientific report delivered to the American Chemical Society says it is nonsense. The Washington Times has called it “Cowgate”.
The cow-burp hysteria reached a crescendo in 2006 when a United Nations report ominously entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow” claimed: “The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). This is a higher share than transport.” This led to demands in America for a “cow tax” and a campaign in Europe at the time of the Copenhagen car crash last December called Less Meat=Less Heat.
Now a report to the American Chemical Society by Frank Mitloehner, an air quality expert at the University of California at Davis, has denounced such scare-mongering as “scientifically inaccurate”.
Read the rest here at the Telegraph UK blogs.

How about a lower limit on salaries for Congressional Staffers

This article from Politico is about House staffers, I'm sure it is also true for the senate.
Nearly 2,000 House of Representative staffers pulled down six-figure salaries in 2009, including 43 staffers who earned the maximum $172,500 — or more than three times the median U.S. household income.
I don't know about you, but to me that is really flaunting power and money in the face of the people of the United States.
Starting salaries on Capitol Hill are still low — many entry-level congressional jobs pay less than $30,000 a year. And many of the most highly paid staffers could make several times the maximum by jumping to lobbying and consulting jobs in the private sector.
But the salary data, compiled for POLITICO by LegiStorm.com, show that it’s possible to make an enviable living in Congress, even without winning an election. The 43 staffers who maxed out at $172,500 — the salary cap for leadership and committee staffers — include John Lawrence, chief of staff to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Paula Nowakowski, the late chief of staff to House Minority Leader John Boehner; and House Parliamentarian John Sullivan. They earned only slightly less than rank-and-file members of Congress, who make $174,000.
Maybe if they had less staffers and did more of their own work they would know exactly what is in a bill and it would be more like, say - 120 pages instead of something in a box of over a foot square and too ugly and large to be shown in a signing ceremony. Maybe.....




Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/35050.html#ixzz0jIYBGE79

About Cuba - it is Way Past the Time for This

From Investors Business Daily:
Tyranny: The death of a dissident on a hunger strike last month is still sending shock waves to Cuba's regime. Cuba's global support is falling away — and President Obama's surprise slam at Havana is one of many.
It may be the end of the Cuban regime, but something changed when Orlando Tamayo Zapata, a political prisoner, died in a hunger strike last month. Tamayo, a construction worker, was arrested in the 2003 "Black Spring" wave of arrests against 75 democracy activists, drawing a sentence of 25 years. His hunger strike called attention to the plight of Cuba's political prisoners.
When the Castro regime let him die, they assumed that his demise was the end of it and he'd be forgotten, same as all the others.
But it didn't happen that way. Inside Cuba, other dissidents began hunger strikes. The Castroites also beat up dissident wives known as Ladies in White, who marched to protest the arrests of the 75.
There are signs that the regime is running scared since the death, but the biggest impact seems to be coming from abroad.
Outgoing President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica unexpectedly lashed out first against Tamayo's death. Brazil's center-right opposition, in the heat of a coming election, blasted Brazil's outgoing president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, for backslapping with the Castro brothers in Havana the day the dissident died. Opposition politicians in Spain and Argentina also criticized their own governments for aiding the regime. And in Spain, a poll by Elcano Royal Institute released Thursday showed that 72% of Spaniards believe there's not enough international human rights pressure on Cuba.
Another blow came Monday, when Chilean President Sebastian Pinera declared: "My government will do whatever it can to re-establish democracy in Cuba."
Even more striking, Chile's opposition socialist parties condemned for the first time Cuba's treatment of its political prisoners. In the past, the socialists had always looked the other way.
Now the cultural establishment is stepping up: Prominent entertainers like actor Andy Garcia, singer Gloria Estefan, actress Maria Conchita Alonso and others are leading rallies and showing films that are critical of the Castro regime.
Chilean novelist Isabel Allende appealed for the release of the political prisoners. In Spain, film director Pedro Almodovar and novelist Mario Vargas Llosa wrote an open letter to Castro called "I accuse the Cuban government."
In light of this, President Obama's added voice to growing global calls for human rights in Cuba is powerful, even if it's just following the crowd. It means that the international apologists on the left who've justified Castro over the years are growing scarce, leaving Castro's regime isolated — and perhaps answerable for its crimes.
There is a reason, a very good reason, people have risked their lives to leave Cuba in whatever would float.  Some even drifted off course and were pulled ashore in Corpus Christi some years ago.  The fact that so many have died trying to get to the United States, Mexico and wherever they could, is proof of how bad it is in Cuba. Pray this regime is over soon.
For an ongoing chronicle on Cuba see Babalu Blog.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The New York Times and National Secrets

From Power Line
Solomon B. Watson IV was the top legal officer of the New York Times back in 2005 and 2006 when, notoriously, it published two stories compromising top-secret counterterrorism programs.
I wrote about what the Times had done at the time in "Exposure," as Gabriel Schoenfeld did in "Has the New York Times violated the Espionage Act?" Indeed, Schoenfeld's forthcoming book Necessary Secrets was inspired by the recurring issues raised by the Times's -- oh, let's say it --- violations of the Espionage Act.
The Obama administration has now nominated Watson to be general counsel of the Army. This has raised some questions in the minds of Senators John McCain and Jeff Sessions about how Mr. Watson might deal with issues of leaking and secrecy in his sensitive new post. In fact, in his confirmation hearings they gave him a hot grilling. There is no one more qualified than Schoenfeld to review Watson's responses to Senators McCain and Sessions. He analyzes them in "A secret keeper (and breaker)."
JOHN adds: Is this some kind of sick joke? How does a career spent at the New York Times qualify Solomon to be the Army's chief legal officer? It's one thing to make bad appointments, but, given the Times's history, it is hard to see this one as anything other than an intentional slap in the Army's face.
I have copied the whole post, not something I like to do. This one is so important and is not getting any publicity that I have seen. I guess we have been too busy with healthcare and allowed some bad stuff to sneak under the radar.

for a Really good laugh read Ann Coulter's Column on her visit or non visit to the University of Ottawa

Read it all in Human Events.  Be prepared for laughing so hard  you cry.

Links for a Busy Day

I have not had time to do more than check email today.  So.... you have a treat.
Jim Little has sent me a lot of emails with links and I am listing some of them here. I haven't had time to read most of them but I hope  you will enjoy them.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=171811

http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/24/dont-buy-it

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7516643/France-to-ban-veil-says-Nicolas-Sarkozy.html

This one is mine from Michael Yon The Scent of Weakness

This is from Don Durand
Department of Education buys shotguns
The Department of Education has placed an official request for bids to fill an order of 27 tactical shotguns.
That’s not a typo, the Department of Education is buying riot shotguns.

This is from a friend in Oklahoma.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=G44NCvNDLfc

That should be enough for a while.  I will be back on  sometime this afternoon.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

And the UK is Waking up to the Climate Facts

From the Times Online:
Public scepticism prompts Science Museum to rename climate exhibition
The Science Museum is revising the contents of its new climate science gallery to reflect the wave of scepticism that has engulfed the issue in recent months.
The decision by the 100-year-old London museum reveals how deeply scientific institutions have been shaken by the public’s reaction to revelations of malpractice by climate scientists.
The museum is abandoning its previous practice of trying to persuade visitors of the dangers of global warming. It is instead adopting a neutral position, acknowledging that there are legitimate doubts about the impact of man-made emissions on the climate.
How long will it be until the powers that be here in the US realize the fraud involved in this?  Have we indoctinated our children for so many years that they are now the teachers of a flawed sicence?
Read the rest here.

Even Zambia Realizes We are on the Wrong Track

Booker Rising is a Black Moderate/Conservative site that does with Black conservatives what I am doing here, taking the good stuff and posting  so others can see it.  It is a site I check every day.
Here it has
The Zambian libertarian journalist slams U.S. President Barack Obama's attack on American exceptionalism: "Barack Obama’s biggest problem is just a lack of knowledge of history. He has a very innocent and aggressively passionate ignorance about him. I don’t think he knows that his ideas have been common in every society in the world. He speaks as if he’s made a novel discovery. What he doesn’t know is that the USA became the greatest nation in history precisely because it departed from the common economic structure of the rest of the world. Whereas every society in history has thought that it is the noble duty of the state or king or chief to economically provide for all the people and to ensure that no one lacked in any basic needs (by ensuring that no individual had 'too much' or 'too little'), America invented a counterintuitive system of making human achievement a private matter. Every man was to have the inviolable right of pursuing his own happiness. The 'king' was to stay out of the way."
When a commenter in Zambia can see what is happening way over here I think it is time for all the commentators over here to sit up and take note.  Read the rest in Booker Rising here.
Read the original here.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

I thought I was through posting for the day, but I have to pass this on.


This is from Director Blue and is titled You can inscribe this on my tombstone, but not just yet.   I thought it was so funny I had to share.

When All Else Fails, Call Us Crazy

This one is really laughable, and he IS giving science a bad name. From CNS News
By Penny Starr
Proponents of human-caused global warming claim that "cognitive" brain function prevents conservatives from accepting the science that says "climate change" is an imminent threat to planet Earth and its inhabitants.
George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and author of the book "The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics," says his scientific research shows that how one perceives the world depends on one’s bodily experience and how one functions in the everyday world. Reason is shaped by the body, he says.
Here is where I usually say read it all.  Now I just say read it if you have some extra time.

Socialism - Are we There Yet?

This is quite a discussion in today's news.  Here are a few of them.

First from the Washington Post, Richard Cohen wants to be more like the European nations.  I wonder if he considers why we are made up of so many immingrants from those countries. Of course, his first words are a slam at Mitch McConnell.
Mitch McConnell is right. The Republican Senate leader, a man whose vision is to deny others theirs, told the New York Times that President Obama's health-care proposal was part of an attempt to "turn us into a Western European country," which, the good Lord willing, is what will now happen. I, for one, could use a dash of Germany, where there are something like 200 private health insurance plans and where everyone is covered and no one goes broke on account of bad health. It's great to be healthy in America, but for too many Americans, it's better to be sick somewhere else.
Next up, Tony Blankley in the Washington Times:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday launched the Democrats' argument for the health care bill, claiming, "This is an American proposal that honors the traditions of our country." Does that suggest that opposition is un-American? And what are the traditions that are American that this law fulfills? The Democrats argue that the bill fulfills the "right" of all Americans to government-assured health care services. The congressional Democrats claim many other things that a majority of the country believes to be inconsistent with truth and reality.
So, considering the rhetorical onslaught that is about to be unleashed on the public, to paraphrase (and with the deepest apologies to) Winston Churchill on the occasion of the fall of France in June 1940:
What House Minority Leader John A. Boehner has called the Battle of Capitol Hill is over. I expect that the Battle of the Electorate is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of a nonsocialist America. Upon it depends our own American way of life and the long continuity of our institutions and our history. The whole fury and might of the media and the Democratic Party must very soon be trained on the electorate. Read it all.
In Big Government Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) writes:
Sunday, the House passed Speaker Pelosi’s vision of healthcare in America. Here is why I voted “no” and why the American people should re-examine the Democratic leadership of our nation.  Read it here. via Lucianne.com
From Canada Free Press we get this:
Most folks are aware of the communist roots of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) and its “country cousin” the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), and quite a few understand that many liberal lawyers become Progressive, or “activist,” judges. (Here and here.)
Many of us, however, have yet to grasp the extent, intensity, and duration, of the “lawfare ” that has been, and is being, waged against freedom around the world—especially in the Western cultures. We need to take note.
This is an excerpt from the middle of the piece, read it all here. via Lucianne
Newsbusters quotes
Former presidential candidate and New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani minced no words when it came to the Obama administration's massive health care overhaul. In an exclusive interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, Giuliani stated that, plain and simple, it "was an ideological act by the Congress" liberal Democrats "are very happy about."
"Instead of privatizing - which is what our government should be doing - we're taking major roles of the economy for the United States government," Giuliani told "Closing Bell" anchor Bartiromo. "And it is not an exaggeration to say we are starting to look more like a European social democracy than we are an American free-market capitalist society."
Read more here. via Lucianne.com

Unfortunately they are all right.  Many columnists and commentators on the left  refuse to admit this is what is happening, are they ashamed?  Richard Cohen at least tells us the truth and that he is happy about it.

A Point of No Return?

The last opportunity that current American citizens may have to determine who will control Congress may well be the election in November of this year. Off-year elections don't usually bring out as many voters as Presidential election years. But the 2010 election may be the last chance to halt the dismantling of America. It can be the point of no return.

By Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com

With the passage of the legislation allowing the federal government to take control of the medical care system of the United States, a major turning point has been reached in the dismantling of the values and institutions of America.

Even the massive transfer of crucial decisions from millions of doctors and patients to Washington bureaucrats and advisory panels-- as momentous as that is-- does not measure the full impact of this largely unread and certainly unscrutinized legislation.

If the current legislation does not entail the transmission of all our individual medical records to Washington, it will take only an administrative regulation or, at most, an Executive Order of the President, to do that.

With politicians now having not only access to our most confidential records, and having the power of granting or withholding medical care needed to sustain ourselves or our loved ones, how many people will be bold enough to criticize our public servants, who will in fact have become our public masters?

Despite whatever "firewalls" or "lockboxes" there may be to shield our medical records from prying political eyes, nothing is as inevitable as leaks in Washington. Does anyone still remember the hundreds of confidential FBI files that were "accidentally" delivered to the White House during Bill Clinton's administration?

Read entire column here

Monday, March 22, 2010

If Obama Vetoed the Healthcare Bill

Wouldn't that be funny! He'd aggravate every liberal in the known universe. But his approval rating would skyrocket and he'd probably get just about any other bill he wanted through the next three years.

Maybe he's listening. It's worth a shot.

Veto that bill. It's not good. No one wants it. And besides, it's not like anyone would trust you less.

So Where do We Go From Here? Ask Bill Whittle and Chuck Norris

First up, Bill Whittle.  I love his Eject, Eject, Eject columns.  I don't see much of him since he joined PJTV, I don't have the internet speed to download videos on a regular basis, and never over 3 minutes.  But this is one of his columns, a good one. 

by Bill Whittle
And so now we have it.
I thought I might need to try my small part to cheer people up and calm them down, but for once I have underestimated the American people. People, by and large, seem not only calm but absolutely determined. Everywhere I have looked this morning the reaction seems to be more or less the same: a nation of steely-eyed missile men. These Marxist bastards have no idea what is coming for them. No idea.
Read the rest, he is good.
 
From World Net Daily - Chuck Norris' Article:

I have so few words to express the depth of my disgust with the unconstitutional path and passing of Obamacare and the corruption in Congress. So let me just tell you about the storm coming to Washington.
The majority of the Americans have voiced ad nauseam grave concerns with and rejection of Washington's health-care bills. Like a host of commentators, I myself have written at least a dozen syndicated articles this last year addressing sound objections. And like you, I've joined rallies, signed petitions and passed along a plethora of reasonable nonpartisan negative critiques of Obamacare. But, at every turn, Washington has ignored us and demonized our opposition.
Obamacare violates commerce laws by forcing Americans to purchase a product and annihilates the federal government's 10th Amendment restrictions over states and U.S. citizens – which is why a whopping two-thirds of states across the nation are right now already legally battling whether federal law can trump state laws via Obamacare. Why can't Washington see the main problem with Obamacare is not its costs, coverage or faulty savings, but that the federal government should not be involved in the health-care business at all! According to the Constitution, such a matter should be left to the states, local communities and citizens.
But that's history now. One-sixth of our economy's gross national product will be controlled by the federal government – and we're supposed to blindly accept that's not a socialistic tendency. That fact is, despite projected deflated Congressional Budget Office savings, Obamacare will morph and inflate (along with its costs) in the years to come. Has any government program not? As President Obama admitted to Fox's Brett Baier in his interview with him last week, "Yes, it's one-sixth of the economy, but we're not transforming one-sixth of the economy all in one fell swoop." There are the key words: "all in one fell swoop."
Mark my words: The terms in this health-care bill eventually will be so far reaching that it will become a major foundation for a fundamentally different America from which will sprout many tentacles that will choke out other freedoms. This is not just a health-care bill, but a metastasizing tool and weapon for all forms of federal intrusion and takeover. Areas that the feds can't presently cover or control, absence and subtlety in the bill's language will provide the springboard for their future rule.
But the time for commentary and dialogue is over. The final hour has come.
Our Constitution is on life support, and the federal government is pulling the plug.
Like before an impending death or brewing storm, there's a hush at the moment, but most of us sense that there's something very, very wrong on the horizon.
It reminds me of a few years ago, when Dr. James Foster, from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, tackled the question, "Is there really a period of calm before a storm?"
His answer: There definitely is.
Foster noted, "It was recognized long ago that before a severe storm, the air is still and the birds stop singing and go to shelter."
What's true with weather is also true with Washington.
Many patriots have stopped singing. Some have gone into hiding. Others are gathering wood as we trudge through this Valley Forge. But all will reawaken and fight for the republic our founders laid down for us.
The gray and black clouds are not governmental control, but masses of American citizens and patriots who will continue to swarm tyranny (Democrat and Republican) until it is squeezed out of our nation, just like it was during the Revolution.
For now, all Washington bureaucrats need to know is this: The forecast for the U.S. Capitol in the upcoming weeks and months is definitely thunderstorms. If you encouraged, affirmed, endorsed or voted for Obamacare in any form, expect a dark cloud to precede your exit as we vote you out of office. We will remember in November. That's not only a threat – it's a guarantee.
We, the people, have come to understand the profound wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote to Mrs. John Adams in 1787, "I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere."
Washington: Pack your bags. Run for shelter. The storm is coming.
This is good, I've posted only the last portion of the piece. Read the first part here.
Thanks to Wendell Lloyd for this link.

What's wrong with the United States Postal service?

Well in addition to unions there is a lot of this:
Firm wins consulting deal worth $4 million
By Jim McElhatton
The U.S. Postal Service's president of shipping signed off on a no-bid, $4 million consulting contract to a firm partly because it employed a former associate from his days as an executive at pickle producer Vlasic Foods and lawn care giant Scotts Miracle-Gro, records show.
The decision to bar other companies from bidding on the contract was made months after postal officials warned that the nation's mail service risked running out of cash for the first time in history.
Read the rest it will not cheer you up, but you will understand what's happening.

Links to discussions on the Healthcare debacle UPDATED

Updated 
From Investors.com (Investor's Business Daily)
20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms

From the Atlantic:
The Future After Health Care

From the American Thinker:
Where Were You When the Republic Died?
By Matt Patterson
In November 2008, Americans elected a socialist as their president. In March 2010, they woke up stunned to find themselves living in a socialist country.... A Must read

Kipling knew Obama  -- another must read

From the American Spectator:
The Disappearing Pro-Life Democrat - a confirmation of what we knew already

Rush Was Right

From the New York Times
Big Win for Obama, but at What Cost?

In Health Care Reform, Boons for Hospitals and Drug Makers

EDITORIAL: Democrats' death by suicide

From Slate:
The Stupak MysteryWhy did he hold out for a meaningless executive order?

All In   Obama and Democrats gamble on health care.

And  from now on we will be posting the unseen, backroom deals that went on with this bill.  If they can be found.  Yesterday the airports in Michigan came out, it wasn't abortion legalese he was waiting for. Today and tomorrow and on until November, more and more will be coming out.  We will post what we find.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Only Nancy Pelosi

Could use the words great pride and humility in the same sentence while claiming them for herself and the Democrats. Hypocrisy, not democracy, is what we have seen tonight.

The Anchoress has good advice for all of us

Got this from reader Alexandra, and thought it was such incredibly simple (but profound) advice, that I had to share it. It really humbled and instructed me:
. . .when the Bush-Gore recount battle was going on, I asked my parish priest, a very wise man who loves Christ, how to discern God’s will. I wasn’t asking so much for his opinion on the politics of the day but when I am in one of these political battles and a religious person, can I discern God’s will in the course of trying to decide whether I should write letters, call my Congressperson, or whatever?
His simple answer was “God’s will will always be for the salvation of the individual involved.”
So I try every day now to pray for the salvation of the president, all members of Congress, and the American people. I cast my cares upon the Lord.
We are in a deeper battle here, which you well know . . . I also think in the end this all has to do with the salvation of souls, including the souls of our president and these politicians who deign to rule over the rest of us. I think we who believe must hold fast to Christ, the True Center, and bring as many along with us as possible.
Yes. How perfectly right. God’s will will always be for the salvation of the individual involved. And it follows that the salvation of the individual involved will lie in that individual’s conforming him/herself to the Word and Will of God.
Chew on that, for a while.
I feel better everytime I read her posts.

Victor Davis Hanson on our ongoing Revolution

America’s Extreme Make-over
These are exciting though scary revolutionary times, akin to the constant acrimony in the fourth-century BC polis, mid-nineteenth century revolutionary Europe, or — perhaps in a geriatric replay — the 1960s. This is an era when the fundamental assumptions of the individual and the state are now being redefined, albeit in a weird, high-tech, globalized landscape.
Radical But Well Off
A word of caution: we are not talking about hoi polloi versus hoi oligoi, or the commune on the barricades fighting the estate owners. No, not this time around.
Instead, the present attempt to remake America is the effort of the liberal well-to-do — highly educated at mostly private universities, nursed on three decades of postmodern education, either with inherited wealth or earning top salaries, lifestyles of privilege indistinguishable from those they decry as selfish, and immune from the dictates they impose on others.
Such are basically the profiles of the Obama cabinet and sub-cabinet, the pillars of liberalism in the Congress and state legislatures, the public intellectuals in the universities and foundations, the arts crowd, and the Hollywood elite. Let us be clear about that.
The Distant Poor
They are all battling on behalf of “them,” the poorer half of America, currently in need of some sort of housing, education, food, or legal subsidy, whom the above mentioned elite, in the way they live, send their children to school, socialize, and vacation so studiously avoid. (The New York Times owners are likely to follow the cut-throat business practices of Wall Street, live in the most refined areas of New York, and assume privileges indistinguishable from other CEOs; the difference is that they so visibly care about those they never see or seek out).
Note well the term “poor.” These are not Dickensian or Joads poor, but largely Americans who by the standards of the 1940s would be considered lucky. Partly because of globalized Chinese consumer goods, and partly redistributive practices of a half-century, our current “underclass” has access to clothes, electronics, entertainment, apartments, cell phones, transportation, etc., undreamed of by the middle class of the recent past. I live in one of the poorest areas of one of the poorest counties in a bankrupt state; and those I see poor are not like those I saw 40 years ago in the same locale.
There is much more but he ends with this;
The Mind of the Revolutionary
Where do these ideologies derive? Again, I wish I could say that they are grassroots driven, by the muscular classes who are victimized by business and, in their cry-from-the-heart protests, demand a fairer cutting of the pie. But so often the utopianism is from above, and predicated on abstract education, relative affluence, and little exposure to business or indeed much beyond the metrosexual world in general.
So fascinating these modern revolutionaries. A Buffet does not choose to pay the high income tax rate on his earnings, though he surely could in lieu of lecturing how taxes are too low. A Gates Sr. does not plan for his offspring to pay into the strapped treasury needed inheritance taxes, though he remonstrates that they must be raised on everyone else. A Geithner does not comply with the tax code, though he assumes it should be raised on others. A Gore lectures on honesty and truth and science on his way to a $100 million con that turns him from an affluent ex-politician into a global grandee.
I’m sorry — I don’t take seriously much of anything from this wannabe revolutionary bunch.
Read it all here.

The Sad Case of the Narcissist President

I suppose you have to be something of a narcissist to even think of running for the presidency, but this ONE goes beyond what we could have ever imagined.  He is what looks to me like a marxist, but some would argue, and I am beginning to agree, that it is really ALL ABOUT ME as far as  he is concerned. 

When arguing for HIS healthcare bill he argues it will define his presidency, not about what it will actually do for the future of this country. Oh yes, he says it will bring healthcare to millions, have no death panels, etc. etc. etc. Yet it all comes down to his presidency. 

Well, Shakespeare was smart enough to know a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and death panels under another name are even now rationing medical care, whether through insurance or Medicare or Medicaid.  That is not going to change, it can only get worse.

Austin Hill in a Townhall column today asks the question, "Is President Obama At War With America?  He says,
If a frontal assault on the foundational principals and values of American life can qualify as being “at war” - then yes, Barack Obama is in combat with our country. And while the belligerence of both his administration and his party’s congressional leadership have seemingly created a sense of alarm across the U.S., their apparent disregard for their own self-inflicted political damage is all the more staggering.
He discusses what is happening to the US abroad due to the policies and what is happening here at home. Cronyism and outright bribery for votes that are really undermining our American way. Granted we have always had crooked and almost crooked politicians but we have never been so undermined at home and abroad for the benefit of one man.
The paragraph of his post that most called out to me and started me on this post was this:
Yet at the epicenter of all of this – all the bribes, manipulations, and heavy-handed mandates – is the narrow, political self-interest of one man: Barack Obama. America’s cultural “right” decries the loss of freedom and the rise of abusive government, while the “left” decries a government that lines the pockets of for-profit corporations (companies that are presumed to be “greedy”), all for the benefit of one self-serving politician.
The Democrats, should our republic survive, will be known for this for a long, long time after I am gone from this earth.  They have let one man, along with leaders in the house and senate, change our way of life forever. This is true whether or not the bill passes.
Read all of Austin Hill's column here.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

AGW, Enviromentalism, it's all about the money

From Watts Up With that:
North and Booker on Amazongate: A billion dollar cash cow

Dr. Richard North of the EU Referendum sends word of this new revelation. North and Christopher Booker were the first to point out the money trail with Pachauri. Now the have followed the money on IPCC’s “Amazongate” all the way to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Here’s an excerpt from both.
Appearing in the Booker column is an account of how the “conservation” group WWF hopes to turn Amazonian trees into billions of dollars, all in the name of saving the planet. The background briefing on which Booker relied is posted below, detailing how the rainforests are to become a monstrous cash-making machine.
The Amazon – a “green gold-rush”
The WWF and other green campaign groups talking up the destruction of the Amazon rainforests are among those who stand to make billions of dollars from the scare. This “green gold-rush” involves taking control of huge tracts of rainforest supposedly to stop them being chopped down, and selling carbon credits gained from carbon dioxide emissions they claim will be “saved”.
Backed by a $30 million grant from the World Bank, the WWF has already partnered in a pilot scheme to manage 20 million acres in Brazil. If their plans get the go-ahead in Mexico at the end of the year, the forests will be worth over $60 billion in “carbon credits”, paid for by consumers in “rich” countries through their electricity bills and in increased prices for goods and services.
The prospect of a billion-dollar windfall explains the sharp reaction to the “Amazongate” scandal, in which the IPCC falsely claimed that up to 40 percent of the rainforest could be at risk from even a slight drop in rainfall.
Here, the IPCC was caught out again making unsubstantiated claims based on a WWF report. But unlike the “Glaciergate” affair where its claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was conceded to be an “error”, the IPCC stood firm on its Amazon claim, stating that the assertion was “correct”. What makes the difference is that there is no serious money locked into melting glaciers. Amazonian trees, however, are potentially worth billions.
In standing its ground, the IPCC was strongly supported by the WWF, and by Daniel Nepstad, a senior scientist from the US Woods Hole Research Centre. Relying on an assiduously fostered reputation as a leading expert on the effects of climate change in the Amazon rainforests, Nepstad – who works closely with the WWF – posted on the Centre’s website a personal statement endorsing “the correctness of the IPCC’s statement”. Bizarrely, his own research failed in any way to substantiate the claim.
Read the rest of this entry at the EU Referendum here
Also see the Booker column in the Telegraph

Friday, March 19, 2010

President Ahab?

According to Thomas Lifson our President is chasing the healthcare whale. From American Thinker:
ObamaCare has crossed the line separating political initiatives from obsessions. President Obama has snubbed Indonesia again, at a cost yet to be determined. The President is damaging our relationship with Indonesia thanks to his obsession with ObamaCare. He already delayed his departure by three days, thereby throwing the schedules of thousands of Indonesian officials and security forces into chaos. Now, he has delayed the trip until June. ....
....Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation. It and its leaders have been humiliated twice, in order for Obama to focus on a bill most Americans do not want to see passed.
Obama is looking more like Captain Ahab obsessed with Moby Dick.
Read the rest. At the time I posted this, the video link at the site was broken.

Chuck Asay Editorial Cartoon - Good One


Went over to Townhall.com and found this cartoon - really good work!!
 

Spring Break is Here

And so are my grandchildren.

Here are some links:

http://www.lucianne.com/

http://wizbangblog.com/

http://media.nationalreview.com/

http://victorhanson.com/

Two from the Wall Street Journal

First from Peggy Noonan, she seems to learning she was wrong about Obama:
Now for the Slaughter On the road to Demon Pass, our leader encounters a Baier.
Excuse me, but it is embarrassing—really, embarrassing to our country—that the president of the United States has again put off a state visit to Australia and Indonesia because he's having trouble passing a piece of domestic legislation he's been promising for a year will be passed next week. What an air of chaos this signals to the world. And to do this to Australia of all countries, a nation that has always had America's back and been America's friend.
How bush league, how undisciplined, how kid's stuff.
Read the rest.

Now from John Fund:
Democrats are ready to abandon a promise to allow lawmakers 72 hours to read and evaluate the heath-care bill before a vote.
Democratic leaders are staunchly defending their possible use of a parliamentary maneuver to avoid a traditional vote on health care. Are they also getting ready to abandon a promise that lawmakers would have at least 72 hours to read and evaluate the language of the health care bill?
House Democrats are moving ahead with a package of budget reconciliation changes to the Senate bill that would let members enact the Senate bill by reference. A Democratic staffer tells me House leaders tentatively plan to ignore or blur the 72-hour rule when the long-delayed final analysis is delivered to them sometime this afternoon.
Read it all.

Here is What is in the Reconciliation Bill

From Politco
BREAKING -- Reconciliation bill posted
Read the text here.
UPDATED: The 153-page bill makes a number of changes to the Senate bill. The highlights:
--Increases the tax credits for middle-income families who buy insurance.
--Reduces the penalty for not buying insurance from $750 to $695. But the bill also requires some people to pay a share of their income as a penalty and that number was raised from 2 percent to 2.5 percent.
--It closes the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage by 2011 and gives seniors who fall into the gap this year a $250 rebate.
--It eliminates the Cornhusker Kickback and covers 100 percent of the increased Medicaid costs of all states until 2016 and decreases each year thereafter.
--Requires that doctors that care for Medicaid patients be reimbursed at the full rate.
--Spends $250 million to fight waste, fraud and abuse.
--Delays and blunts the tax on high-end insurance plans in keeping with the deal Democrats struck with the labor unions. However, it does lower the index at which plans will be taxed, making it likely that more plans will be affected over time.
Read the rest.
I first started this at 7:30 this morning, I haven't had a chance to see what has happened since then.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

No Child Left Behind has a new name

From the Washington Post:
The administration keeps the right principles in amending No Child Left Behind
EVEN THOUGH the Obama administration is jettisoning the name of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it is not abandoning the core principles embodied in the 2002 law. The administration has embraced the principles of accountability, disaggregating data and insisting that no student groups -- not minorities, not those with disabilities -- be left behind. The details will be key, but it is heartening that the administration is mapping out a direction true to education reform. Let's hope Congress agrees to go along for the ride.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan's plan for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, released Saturday, takes aim at two of the biggest criticisms of NCLB: that it doesn't set a high bar for achievement and that it is so inflexible as to be punitive. The administration's plan would scrap the much-maligned adequate yearly progress reports of schools for a new accountability system requiring that all students by 2020 be on a path toward college and career readiness, although this goal is more aspirational than definitive. Students would still be tested every year in math and reading, but other measures, such as graduation rates or scores in other subjects, could factor into the picture of a school's success. Schools would be judged by how much progress students make year by year, not by snapshots that fail to account for different starting points. 
Read the rest.

We really do have plenty of energy in the good Old USA!

By BRETT CLANTON
James R. “Jim Bob” Moffett could have retired years ago with his legend fully intact. Today, however, in the twilight of a long, storied and sometimes controversial career, the 71-year-old oil and mining executive is taking what amounts to a victory lap.
Moffett, co-chairman of New Orleans' McMoRan Exploration Co., is riding high again after the recent discovery of a major natural gas field in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, touted as the biggest there in decades.
Called Davy Jones, the discovery is significant for more than its size: It is in an ancient layer of sediment buried at a depth few in industry have ever drilled. As such, it could herald a new frontier for oil and gas development in the heavily explored offshore region.
It's from the Houston Chronicle. Read the rest here.

Clarence Page is seeing a DNA slippery slope

Written for the Chicago Tribune via editorial in the Houston Chronicle:
Calls to take more DNA samples raise questions
As if President Barack Obama didn't have enough on his platter, he's calling for accused criminals to have their DNA samples collected and stored in a national database, whether they're convicted or not. He's a brave man to open that can of worms.
Just putting the words “DNA” and “database” together is like a tripwire to the crowd that still thinks Obama was secretly born in Kenya and has death panels in his health care overhaul.
And they're not alone. Just think: Will those Americans who bitterly oppose registration of their guns, for example, go along quietly with the registration of their genetic codes?
That's not quite what Obama is calling for, but it's a short slide down the slippery slope from keeping the DNA profiles of arrestees to keeping the profiles of everybody. And you don't have to be a so-called “birther” or “gun nut” to care about your privacy.
In an interview with the president on the 100th episode of America's Most Wanted, host John Walsh strongly suggested collecting the DNA profiles of arrestees into a single, national database.
Obama agreed that national data collection is “the right thing to do.” Individual states may have a database, he said, “but if they're not sharing it with the state next door, you've got a guy from Illinois driving over into Indiana, and they're not talking to each other.”
There is much more discussion, read it here.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Another Outrageous Act by Obama

As if we aren't sickened enough by the actions of Pelosi and Reid right now, comes this
From The Army Times:
By Alan Gomez and Oren Dorell - USA Today
The many nations helping Haiti recover from the devastating earthquake that struck there have set up their own military compounds and fly their flags at the entrances.
France's tricolor, Britain's Union Jack and even Croatia's coat of arms flap in the breeze.
But the country whose contributions dwarf the rest of the world's — the United States — has no flag at its main installation near the Port-au-Prince airport.
The lack of the Stars and Stripes does not sit well with some veterans and servicemembers who say the U.S. government should be proud to fly the flag in Haiti, given the amount of money and manpower the U.S. is donating to help the country recover from the Jan. 12 quake.
The Obama administration says flying the flag could give Haiti the wrong idea.
Read the rest.

What it Really means

What it Really Means

What It Really Means

White House Felonies? Specter thinks so

I don't think this will get much traction with today's news and its bias. Let's make sure it gets well known, anyway.  This is from American Spectator.
Specter Opens Door on White House Felonies
By Jeffrey Lord
"There's a crime called misprision of a felony. Misprision of a felony is when you don't report a crime. So you're getting into pretty deep areas here in these considerations." -- U.S. Senator Arlen Specter on March 12, 2010
"Right now, they're doing the 'I won't confirm or deny,' and for us, it leaves two possibilities. One is the promise of transparency in this administration is just shot. The second one is even worse, which is either Sestak is lying or the administration has done something wrong and is covering it up…" -- U.S. Congressman Darryl Issa on Friday on March 12, 2010
"The 'stonewall strategy' functioned from the very first episodes of the cover-up. It was instinctive, from the very top of the Administration to the bottom. It was also ad hoc, developed in small reactions to the flurry of each day's events…we found ourselves trying to hold a line where we could." -- Nixon White House Counsel John Dean in his Watergate book Blind Ambition (ed note: not sure I trust what Dean says)
Read it all and see what you think.