About the Cancun Convention on AGW or Climate Change as they call it now

The Anchoress has such a way with words.  Today's offering:

Rationing Bono &; Other Gaia-Saving Ideas
Eschewing teleconferences that could reduce their carbon footprints to almost nothing (assuming they all own computers and work in offices appropriately outfitted with vision-wrecking fluorescent overheads), the usual bureaucratic suspects have gathered in Cancun, Mexico, for another round of United Nations’ “talks on climate change”—that malleable and useful crisis upon which every weather variant and geological shift may be blamed without proof, for as long as the scam can dependably line the right pockets, and infringe upon our daily living without discomfiting the elite.

See what I mean about a way with words? I could have said they are down there blathering on again, but would that have had have the impact her words do? No, not at all. She goes on:

These determined negativists, having parked their private jets at the shady end of the tarmac, are currently meeting, eating, greeting, and presenting to a standing choir that needs no persuasion, their increasingly unpersuasive scientific “studies” forecasting the inevitable death of planet Earth.

Oh, I do love the Anchoress. Here's more of her good words on these people about an article she quotes from the Daily Telegraph:

Well, we’re not sure how that sentence was supposed to end, but perhaps goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture will no longer be available to the masses of great unwashed, who—being peasants—shouldn’t really need much more than an icebox, a milk cow, and a cabbage patch, anyway.

She goes on:

Curiously, no one at these conferences ever suggests that less-draconian measures, affecting a relative minority of human beings, might be worth exploring. Beyond canceling their annual exotically-located meet-up in favor of efficient teleconferences, for instance, these people might want to take a good, hard look at the entertainment industry in general, and rock bands in particular.

Uh oh, Bono is going to get it now, read this:

Let them start with U2, the Irish rock band that—even as our put-upon saints in Cancun are weeping over Gaia—has landed its current extravaganza, “The 360 Tour,” in Australia. Billed as the biggest tour ever mounted, and at a daily cost of $850,000, the show requires six 747 jets, 55 trucks, and an assembly crew of 130. “You compare a tour by the number of trucks they use,” production manager Jake Berry said. “The Rolling Stones ran 46 trucks. We are running 55. This is the biggest.”
[....]
That’s a pretty impressive bit of consumption, but let’s add into that the air-conditioning at the indoor venues. Add into it the trains, planes, and automobiles used to transport hundreds of thousands of people to the shows. Add to it the klieg lights used for every televised interview, the trees killed to print every magazine promo and the $30.00 posters sold at all 157 shows. And consider if you will the souvenir teeshirts—possibly stitched together in some hellish Indonesian sweatshop–that weren’t even made out of bamboo fiber!


One wonders: had U2 had not run the ZooTV tour twenty years ago, would the planet be in its very death throes today?
[....]
As we read the dire news out of Cancun, that food and material goods may need to be rationed among the little people, for the good of the earth, we may take comfort in knowing that, before we retire to our cold-water flats, we will still be permitted to expend large amounts of our hard-earned cash for the privilege of being entertained and lectured by extremely wealthy musicians who inveigh against greed and endorse big-government solutions to social and environmental problems, even as they move their assets to tax-reduced locations, and fly their multiple 747’s and drive their scores of trucks to their next profitable, ephemeral gig.

It is a funny sort of global crisis that requires sacrificial amends and rationing—with the accompanying restrictions on earnings and opportunities—from some people, while others are permitted to continue living their lives and making their profits pretty much as they always have.

This is just what I saw as the best part of a very long and intelligent post. Read it all here.

Elites vs Us the tea partiers

Another good article from the Washington Post. This one by Charles Murray who has been in the crosshairs of "the elite" ever since he wrote Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.  The "Elite" have been at odds with his conclusions on intelligence and race. Here is his latest: 

The tea party warns of a New Elite. They're right.
The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite.

"On one side, we have the elites," Fox News host Glenn Beck explained last month, "and the other side, we have the regular people." The elites are "no longer in touch with what the country is really thinking," Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle complained this summer. And when Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell recently began a campaign ad by saying, "I didn't go to Yale," she could be confident that her supporters would approve.

All this has made the New Elite distinctly touchy (see Maureen Dowd's "Making Ignorance Chic"), dismissive (see Jacob Weisberg's "Elitist Nonsense") and defensive (see Anne Applebaum's "The Rise of the 'Ordinary' Elite").

"Elite?" they seem to be saying. "Who? Us?"

Read it all here.

American Exceptionalism

This is a term we are hearing a lot.  Apparently Karen Tumulty is too, but she doesn't seem to understand the meaning. She seems to agree with the ones who would deny it and take it as only an affront to President Obama. In an editorial in the Washington Post, she says:

 Much of this criticism harkens back to a single comment that Obama made at a news conference a year and a half ago in Strasbourg, France, during his first trip overseas as president.

Obama was asked by Financial Times correspondent Ed Luce whether he subscribes, as his predecessors did, "to the school of American exceptionalism that sees America as uniquely qualified to lead the world."

The president's answer began: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

She shows her colors when she goes on to say "That may have been a nod to the fact that many abroad hear talk of American exceptionalism as worrisome jingoism. But it provided ammunition for Palin and other Republican critics. "
 
I believe she is showing us how she feels and is projecting her feelings to "many abroad."
If she believed in American exceptionalism she would see it as a feeling we conservatives actually have about our country, not as a hammer to beat up on the president.
 
Read it all and see what you think.  See this also in the Washington Post What the right's "American exceptionalism" attack on Obama is really about By Greg Sargent

About Tom DeLay

The Washington Post is defending him against the conviction on legal terms, not on personal choices.  They are describing it as business as usual, not illegal at the time. That is why others have said it will be overturned on appeal.
Here is their editorial from Sunday's paper:

'The criminalization of politics'
THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) schemed to get around a Texas law prohibiting corporate contributions to political campaigns. Mr. DeLay's state political action committee accepted $190,000 in (legal) corporate contributions. A PAC official wrote a check for that amount to the Republican National Committee, helpfully including a list of candidates for the Texas statehouse and the amounts they were to receive. The RNC did Mr. DeLay's bidding - and the ensuing GOP takeover of the state legislature allowed Republicans to engineer a redistricting plan that helped defeat five Democratic incumbents in the next election.

This was a clear end run around the Texas election law. It is less clear, however, that this behavior fits the definition of money-laundering or should be prosecuted and punished using that criminal offense. Corporate contributions to political candidates are a felony under Texas law. But at the time of Mr. DeLay's actions, the state's general conspiracy statute did not cover election law violations. Texas courts threw out prosecutors' efforts to charge Mr. DeLay with a conspiracy to violate election laws - leaving only the charges of money-laundering and conspiracy to engage in money-laundering, of which Mr. DeLay was convicted Friday. In Texas, as elsewhere, money-laundering is defined as knowingly using "the proceeds of criminal activity," such as cash from drug deals.

But it was legal for corporations to donate to Mr. DeLay's political action committee, so it's fair to question how the cash sent to and from the RNC was transformed into criminal "proceeds." Mr. DeLay's lawyers presented testimony from three current and former RNC officials that such money swaps were common transactions for political parties.

Mr. DeLay's conduct was wrong. It was typical of his no-holds-barred approach to political combat. But when Mr. DeLay, following the conviction, assailed "the criminalization of politics," he had a fair point.

Are you still supporting AARP?

If so, why?  They have caused far more damage than any benefit to your personal pocketbook could overcome.  Remember, they supported the prescription drug plan.  Have your prescriptions gone down? No, I didn't think so. Mine have gone up a lot.
Legal Insurrection has a lot to say about the AARP and Consumers Union.

When Will AARP, Consumers Union and AMA Be Held To Account for Obamacare?

The Daily Caller (h/t Instapundit) has an interesting post today on the push back by Tea Party supporters against corporations -- particularly in the pharmaceutical industry -- which cooperated and cut deals with the Obama administration to help pass Obamacare. The Washington Post had a similar article just after the mid-term elections, focused not so much on Tea Parties but how the Republican establishment was taking note.

But what about AARP, Consumers Union, and the AMA, each of which provided invaluable cover and support to the administration, as documented in my prior posts:
* AARP Rides To Obamacare's Rescue, Again
* Alphabet Soup of Health Care Delusions
* AARP Shills for Kennedy
* AARP Prepares To Sell Out Seniors
* Consumer Reports' Specious Stand On Health Care Reform
* Consumer Reports' Massive Fail
* AARP and Consumers Union Should Put Their Money Where Their Pro-Tax Mouths Are

In November 2009, as the House prepared it's Saturday night vote on Obamacare, I noted the role of the AMA and AARP:
Don't have much time this morning to comment further, but note the irony that today the jobless rate hit a 25-year high at 10.2%, and tomorrow night Democrats in the House of Representatives are planning to push through a health care restructuring bill that is guaranteed to kill more jobs. The Democrats refuse to wait until Monday for a vote and insist on a special session Saturday night....

Oh, and AMA and AARP - you people have no idea of the damage you are doing by supporting this last minute rush towards madness. Or maybe you do, but you don't care.

It is time to hold all institutions -- not just for-profit corporations -- which helped pass Obamacare to account for what they did. AARP, Consumers Union, and the AMA would be a good start.

Update 11-28-2010: For the record, I let my Consumer Reports subscription, which I had for many years, expire last year, and I throw out all the membership cards and info. from AARP which show up in my mailbox. As my readers know, I'm not a big fan of organized boycotts, but that doesn't mean I have to give them my money.

Tax Refunds for Illegals? What about illegal do they not understand?

This is from Gateway Pundit, and by the way, Gateway has moved to rightnetwork.com

NY Advocacy Group Helps Illegal Aliens Get Tax Refunds
by Jim Hoft

The Neighborhood Economic Development Agency, an advocacy group in New York, is helping illegal aliens recoup tax refunds.
The Daily News reported:

A Manhattan group is helping illegal immigrants recoup unclaimed state tax refunds – even if they used fake Social Security numbers to work.

The Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project got back thousands for a dozen undocumented New Yorkers who overpaid.

One bodega worker from Jackson Heights had been paying taxes since 2002 but never got a refund – until the group helped him get back $670 from his 2008 return.

“It really helped – we have two young kids,” said his wife, who says they pay taxes because “it’s the right thing to do.”
(ed.note: this is one of the most pitiful statements I've ever heard, does she not realize what Undocumented or illegal means? It seems as though she actually has very good intentions.)

Thousands more could be due a windfall from the Department of Taxation and Finance.

“We’ve been getting calls from people who say they’ve been filing taxes for more than 10 years, and they’ve never gotten a refund,” said Deyanira Del Rio, the advocacy group’s associate director.

Since 1996, a growing number of undocumented immigrants have filed taxes using a special ID number, without alerting immigration officials.

Hispanic Voters in Texas and Elsewhere

the Washington Post has an opinion piece on the Repbulicans share of Hispanic Voters.  It seems we are seeing more and more of them.

The GOP's other Election Day victory
By Lamar Smith
The conventional wisdom has already settled like a blanket over Washington. Allegedly, Hispanics flocked to the polls to punish Republicans for the Arizona immigration law. They "saved" the Senate for Democrats. And on and on. The conventional wisdom, however, is wrong. The 2010 election actually paints a very bright picture of the Republican Party's relations with this country's growing Hispanic population.

Exit polls reported by CNN and updated this week reveal that a historically robust 38 percent of Hispanic voters cast ballots for House Republican candidates in 2010 - more than in 2006 (30 percent) and 2008 (29 percent). In fact, since 1984, Republican House candidates have only won a higher percentage of the Hispanic vote in one election: 2004. This level of Hispanic support for Republican candidates came despite widespread pre-election claims by advocates for illegal immigration that the Arizona law and a pro-rule-of-law stand would undercut Hispanic support for Republicans.
[....]
Hispanic workers face the impact of illegal immigration head-on. Among native-born Hispanics without a high school degree, 35 percent are either unemployed, are so discouraged that they have left the labor force or are forced to work part time.

Many Hispanics indeed voted for the very Republican candidates most identified as having a pro-enforcement or anti-amnesty stance.

Read the rest and the statistics here.

Teacher Education

The Washington Post has an editorial called "Teaching the Teachers."  In it they call for teachers to have more hands on  experience from the beginning of their training, to making sure we get teachers who are at the top of the class.

What they are trying to say is the old adage I heard for years "those who can, do; those who can't teach."  That is an insulting way of saying many teachers are in it because that is all they are capable of, want the many benefits and complain of the long hours.  I know we all have teachers we remember because they were so very good, impressed us with their knowledge, and to this day we use what they taught us.

Most of the teachers I have known personally were good teachers.  I think I could tell because of the way they spoke of their students. If they saw the students and their parents as the enemy it is a pretty good bet they were not good teachers. It they spoke enthusiasticaly about what was going on in their classes it was a good bet they were good teachers, those who would be remembered for a lifetime.

Here is a little of what the Washington Post has to say:

TEACHERS, LIKE DOCTORS, should receive their training through clinical practice. That conclusion of a national report calling for teacher education to be "turned upside down" makes sense. But if medicine is the model, this country also has to figure out how to attract its most accomplished graduates to teaching. Training is important in improving teacher quality, but so is making teaching a career that appeals to the best and the brightest.

Last week a panel of education experts convened by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education issued a report proposing an overhaul of how teachers are trained. It recommends a shift from the focus on classroom lectures and course work to practical hands-on experience. Those who aspire to teach would, from day one, be immersed in the actual work. Other suggestions include rigorous accountability measures for education schools and targeted research into which programs are most effective. It's an ambitious agenda, and it's unclear whether education schools, accrediting agents and individual school districts will have the will or the resources to sign on. But it's encouraging that a group generally not seen as on the cutting edge of reform is advancing these ideas and that eight states already have signaled their intent to add more clinical practice to their teaching training programs.

More attention also must be paid to the quality of those seeking to be trained as teachers. The report calls for raising admission, performance and graduation standards for aspiring teachers but leaves largely unanswered how to attract top talent.

Happy Thanksgiving

I want to wish all my friends a Happy Thanksgiving. We all have so much to thankful for, yet at the same time we  must all remember that we have a tremendous task before us if we are to keep America the home of the brave and the land of the free.

November the 2^nd was an important first step in preserving our country for future generations, but we must remember that it was just a first step. The socialist who have gained control in Washington led by President Obama will fight tooth and nail to keep America on the path to socialism and unless we stand firm our recent gains will be lost. I find it exciting that the many of us who are in our latter years can make our voices heard and can still turn this great nation over to the next generation intact and free.

Lets us remember that it wasn’t long ago that it seemed inevitable that America would be lost and that those who desire to bring to our country the dubious joys of socialism would be victorious. But now millions of freedom loving Americans have refused to go down in history as the generation that lost America.

I ask all of us as we celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow that we remember those who have fought to keep America free and that we look forward to the opportunity that we have to wage the good fight to preserve America and our God given rights and that we can still keep America free for all generations to come.

Malcolm Dieckow

 

Ground Zero Mosque Applies for $5 Million Federal Grant

Adding insult to injury - how stupid will New York prove to be?

Developers of the controversial Park51 Islamic community center and mosque located two blocks from ground zero earlier this month applied for roughly $5 million in federal grant money set aside for the redevelopment of lower Manhattan after the attacks of September 11, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

The former Burlington Coat Factory building that will make way for the Cordoba House (the 'Ground Zero Mosque') is seen in lower Manhattan on Jul. 29, 2010 in New York. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary, AFP / Getty Images)
The audacious move stands to reignite the embers of a divisive debate that dominated headlines surrounding the ninth anniversary of the attacks this fall, say people vested in the issue.

The application was submitted under a “community and cultural enhancement” grant program administered by the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corporation (LMDC), which oversaw the $20 billion in federal aid allocated in the wake of 9/11 and is currently doling out millions in remaining taxpayer funds for community development. The redevelopment board declined to comment on the application (as did officials from Park51), citing the continuing and confidential process of determining the grant winners.

Article here.

Gore: U.S. corn ethanol "was not a good policy"-By Gerard Wynn

He explained his own support for the original programme on his presidential ambitions.

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

Who Knew?! All of us with our eyes wide open!! If even Al Gore knows the real scoop, isn't it about time the rest of the greenies gave up? And especially when he admits it was to buy votes!

Go here for the entire article.

VDH on Calling a Swede a Swede and the News you Didn't Read in the newspaper or see on TV

Anyone who reads this blog is familiar with my love of what Victor Davis Hanson writes.
Today he has hit it out of the park again.

Calling a Swede a Swede
Imagine an alternate universe where terrorists are Scandinavian — Swedes, to be specific.

Imagine, if you will, an alternative universe where perception is slightly altered to reflect a different reality. In this universe, terrorists are Scandinavian — Swedes, to be specific.

We should not generalize, and it is clear that not all Swedes are terrorists, but all terrorists are Swedes. These radicals have perverted the beautiful Nordic religion of peace and turned it into an ideology of hatred.

The facts clearly show that the men who try to smuggle bombs onto airplanes have blond hair, blue eyes, are between twenty and forty years old, believe in the supreme god Odin, and carry names like Ingmar Johansson.

They talk funny and they love smorgasbord, which is a traditional Nordic meal with lots of raw fish, and every Swede can drink alcohol in amounts that would kill six reindeer within three minutes.

How do we make sure these bomb-laden Swedes don’t board our airplanes? How can we recognize these radical Nordic terrorists? Should we check dark-haired Asians called Honda? Italians called Ferrari?

Would it be acceptable to single out Swedes trying to travel by air? Or should we, trying to avoid offending Swedish sensibilities, check every person with an airline ticket in general and especially focus on inspecting their crotch? After all, Swedes love to wear their bombs in their underwear, so maybe non-Swedes also wear bombs in their underwear, right?

Read the rest here.

And now for the news you didn't read:

When News is No News

Here are a few important developments that remain strangely ignored. I say strangely, but most readers understand why some news becomes news and some does not.

1) Iraq. The United States military between 2007 and 2009 crushed al-Qaeda in Iraq. It destroyed cadres of radical Islamists and Baathists. It stabilized the country. It was one of the most stunning military performances in modern history, and helped to destroy the image of a competent and scary al-Qaeda. Yet everything from the recapture of Fallujah to the sheer number of Islamists that were taken out of Anbar Province was largely ignored. It is as if we went to sleep in 2007 with “Iraq is lost” and then woke up in 2010 with “Of course, it is quiet now. Why wouldn’t it be?” — but with little thought of what transpired in between. We know few names, fewer stories of the heroic Americans who turned Iraq around after 2006 — or kept it from imploding from 2003 onward.

But wait there's more:

2) Chinese Roguery. China’s Communist Party predicates foreign policy on mercantilism — period.
3) The Gulf Oil Hysteria. We were told that aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico would be ruined for generations.
4) The Great Obama Flip-Flop. For over a year of hope and change, we were told by Obama that renditions, preventative detentions, and tribunals were anti-constitutional, that Guantanamo was synonymous with a gulag, that Iraq was lost, that Predators were a sort of airborne terror, that KSM and other terrorist killers should be tried in civilian courts — and what happened? Suddenly the world was turned upside down and what was once bad was now tolerable. And not a whimper about why, just the quiet assumption of “that was then, this is now.”
5) The Europe-America Cool-Off. Europe wanted Obama, got Obama, and now its elites are quietly whispering: “Why did you fulfill our childish wishes?”
6) The EU Meltdown. Surely the great story of the age is the serial meltdown of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece and the furor of Germany and more Protestant northwestern Europe — all at a time when the September 15, 2008 ,Wall Street implosion supposedly had proved the triumph of socialism over the free market system.
7) The Implosion of the Green Movement. (be sure to read all of this one.)
8) The Nexus between California’s Financial Plight and Illegal Immigration. The state has the highest income, sales, and gas taxes and the largest deficits — and the largest number of illegal aliens.
9) The Implosion of Debt. There is very little said about the failure of Keynesian economics to restart the economy.
10) Obama and Race. We read of occasional slips from Obama and his associates, but never of the effect of lots of slips in the aggregate.

Be sure to click this link to read ALL of these listed topics.
If you have not read Victor Davis Hanson before this will show you why I think so highly of his intellect and reasonings.

Actually we noticed the water was boiling in time to change the Congress

Even so this is a good column.

The Frogs Finally Notice the Water is Boiling
by Arnold Alhert

...“but what we’re doing, what we’re putting up with, what we’re accepting at this airport is so symbolic of us just not standing up and saying ‘enough is enough.’”—Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)

Maybe it really did need to come to this. Maybe Americans had to literally have their privates groped by a government bureaucrat to finally realize that they have been the proverbial frogs sitting in a pot of water, unaware that they are being incrementally boiled to death. For those of you who still don’t get it, let me make it clear:

The ultimate destination of Political Correctness is totalitarianism.

For decades, Americans have tolerated the drip, drip, drip of Marxist-inspired progressivism right under our collective noses. We’ve watched our public schools eliminate the Pledge of Allegiance, because patriotism is “unseemly.” We’ve watched the same do-gooders eliminate keeping score in kids’ sports because competition is “evil,” and anything which produces winners and losers—including free-market capitalism—is “damaging to one’s sense of self-esteem.”
[....]
One more thing: if the Republics have an ounce of guts, they’ll offer up a bill on the floor of Congress. It will state one thing: every law Congress subjects Americans to, they will live under as well. That goes for everything from enduring the same pat downs inflicted on ordinary Americans at airports, to the same Social Security and Medicaid programs good enough for the rest of us, and everything in between.

Like Ron Paul said: enough is enough.

Read it all, it's very good.

Krauthammer Redeems himself with this editorial on Scan and Pat

You might ask, "why does he need to redeem himself?"  Well, some of us were very upset with him when he came down on the side of the elites in the recent election of some of the Tea Party backed candidates.  With this I see his rational self is back again.

Don't touch my junk
by Charles Krauthammer

Ah, the airport, where modern folk heroes are made. The airport, where that inspired flight attendant did what everyone who's ever been in the spam-in-a-can crush of a flying aluminum tube - where we collectively pretend that a clutch of peanuts is a meal and a seat cushion is a "flotation device" - has always dreamed of doing: pull the lever, blow the door, explode the chute, grab a beer, slide to the tarmac and walk through the gates to the sanity that lies beyond. Not since Rick and Louis disappeared into the Casablanca fog headed for the Free French garrison in Brazzaville has a stroll on the tarmac thrilled so many.

Who cares that the crazed steward got arrested, pleaded guilty to sundry charges, and probably was a rude, unpleasant SOB to begin with? Bonnie and Clyde were psychopaths, yet what child of the '60s did not fall in love with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty?

And now three months later, the newest airport hero arrives. His genius was not innovation in getting out, but deconstructing the entire process of getting in.. John Tyner, cleverly armed with an iPhone to give YouTube immortality to the encounter, took exception to the TSA guard about to give him the benefit of Homeland Security's newest brainstorm - the upgraded, full-palm, up the groin, all-body pat-down. In a stroke, the young man ascended to myth, or at least the next edition of Bartlett's, warning the agent not to "touch my junk."

Not quite the 18th-century elegance of "Don't Tread on Me," but the age of Twitter has a different cadence from the age of the musket. What the modern battle cry lacks in archaic charm, it makes up for in full-body syllabic punch.

Don't touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm election voter. Don't touch my junk, Obamacare - get out of my doctor's examining room, I'm wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don't touch my junk, Google - Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon - my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?

More to read here.

Who donates to which party?

A very interesting list From Opensecrets.org, the Center for Responsive Politics.
Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2010
Here's the top 20:

Rank Organization Total '89-'09                          

      Dem %            Repub %                     Tilt

1 AT&T Inc $45,662,025                                                   44%          55%
2 ActBlue $43,181,888 *                                                      99%            0%

3 American Fedn of State, County &
 Municipal Employees $43,026,461                                   98%            1%

4 National Assn of Realtors $37,623,999                           48%           50%        tilt

5 Goldman Sachs $32,899,102                                            62%          37%

6 Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $32,685,295        97%          2%

7 American Assn for Justice $32,683,029  **                     90%          8%

8 National Education Assn $31,114,380                             93%           6%

9 Laborers Union $29,816,800                                           92%           7%

10 Carpenters & Joiners Union $28,945,308                       89%          10%

11 Service Employees International Union $28,889,882      95%           3%

12 Teamsters Union $28,876,759                                         93%           6%

13 American Federation of Teachers $28,224,891              98%            0%

14 Communications Workers of America $27,958,106       98%             0%

15 Citigroup Inc $27,594,316                                             50%             49%      tilt

16 American Medical Assn $26,854,670                            39%             60%

17 United Auto Workers $26,509,902                                 98%               0%

18 Machinists & Aerospace Workers Union $26,151,277  98%                0%

19 National Auto Dealers Assn $25,613,758                       32%              67%

20 United Parcel Service $24,994,164                                36%               62%

See the rest here.

*ActBlue is a United States political committee established in June 2004 that enables anyone to fundraise on the Internet for the Democratic Party candidates of their choice.


**The AThe American Association for Justice (AAJ), formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) is the leading organization for lawyers representing plaintiffs in the United States.merican Association for Justice (AAJ), formerly the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA) is the leading organization for lawyers representing plaintiffs in the United States.

Sorry I could not get the numbers in the list to line up accurately,  just hard to do a complete copy in the blogspot  editor.

Busy day links - be sure to read them, Soros, TSA, Democratic donors, military votes

DOJ’s Military Voting Mess Continues Post-Election, but Congress Now Paying Attention 

TSA Hit With Lawsuits As Revolt Explodes

Crashing the big Democratic donors' D.C. meeting
 
Soros: China has better functioning government than U.S.

Does McConnell actually get it, or did he just give in?

From The Hill:

GOP Senate leader McConnell backs down, agrees to earmark ban
By J. Taylor Rushing - 11/15/10 08:41 PM ET
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) announced Monday that he would join a GOP effort to ban congressional earmarks, a stunning turnaround that reflects a huge victory for the Tea Party movement.

A senior member of the Appropriations Committee, McConnell has been one of the Senate’s strongest proponents of local pork, but watched the practice fall into disfavor amid growing public anger over Washington spending that fueled GOP victories in this month’s midterm election.

“There is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight,” McConnell said Monday in a speech on the Senate floor.

“And unless people like me show the American people that we’re willing to follow through on small or even symbolic things, we risk losing them on our broader efforts to cut spending and rein in government,” he said.

McConnell’s decision puts another nail in the coffin for earmarks, which for years have been tucked into appropriations bills by members of both parties to benefit projects in their states and districts. Earmarks have been a lucrative business on K Street, where lobbyists seek to work with members to insert favored projects in spending vehicles.

Now those halcyon days appear to be a thing of the past.

Read it all here.

A "National Opt Out Day" is coming

Opt of of the TSA search and scan.  The designated day is Nov. 24th. But some are saying why not opt out any day and time. Read both articles. If you are planning to fly there may be some good tips for you.
Steve Graham of Tools of Renewal has some very good words on the legality of the TSA searches.

Don’t Tread on Me, but Grope me if You Must

The Price of Dignity: One Boarding Pass
Back when George Bush was President, it was a gigantic invasion of our civil rights when the TSA asked us to take off our shoes. At least that’s what many prominent liberals told us. Then Obama got elected, and Jim Carville said it was okay with him if the TSA measured his genitals. Not that there is a double standard, mind you.

[....]

This is the kind of thing the Bill of Rights was written to prevent. If you think otherwise, you are probably very stupid. At best, you are ignorant of history. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to prevent government excesses. We were fleeing British tyranny, and the crown had a long record of torturing, confiscating property, performing unreasonable searches, prosecuting people without trials, and so on. We wanted to prevent our government from doing these things to us, so we drafted the first ten Amendments to the Constitution.

[....]

The Bill of Rights was not written just to keep you from being thrown in jail or executed or impoverished. It was also written to force the government to be polite. That is no exaggeration. So when the government demands the right to photograph or feel your vagina or scrotum, even for a few seconds, it ought to have a very good reason. And there is considerable doubt as to whether the TSA has good reasons for doing these things. The Israelis don’t do them, and their air safety record is second to none.

The sad truth is that it’s better for a few hundred people to die in midair explosions than for an entire nation to submit to sexual abuse. If that sounds crazy, think about the things our soldiers die for all the time.

Read it all, Steve is very smart and he lays out a very good case against the extreme searches. (that is the polite way to refer to them.)

Some of our Educators need to be Re-educated

Possibly some of the teachers need to have a re-indoctrination. Arnold Ahlert in Jewish World Review tells it this way:

Taking Back Our Country, One School At a Time
Despite the ridiculous levels of cover the mainstream media have given the Obama administration and the Democrat party's assortment of progressivist hacks, more and more Americans are coming to realize the level of contempt so many of these people have for our country. Yet far fewer Americans make the ultimate connection: such contempt is an acquired skill. One must be taught to believe America is a fundamentally broken nation requiring a top-to-bottom make-over. And where are they taught such things? In thousands of public schools around the nation. Latest case in point: Denair Middle School in California.
[....]
Americans have long understood that college campuses are hotbeds of progressive radicalism. What they might not realize is that those same campuses are nothing more than finishing schools for a process which, as Denair Middle School makes evident, begins far earlier. Day in day out, year after year, millions of children are being taught that America is a seething cauldron of racial unrest, an imperialist country with a "heartless" capitalist economic system, and an environmental "hog" consuming far too many resources. They are being given the message, both overtly and subliminally, that America is one big mess of a country.

Read it all here.

Another "Gee, who knew?" article on the environment

This from the Daily Mail online from the UK.

Environmentalists 'exaggerated' threat to tropical rainforests from global warming
By David Derbyshire
The threat to tropical rainforests from climate change may have been exaggerated by environmentalists, according to a new study.

Researchers have shown that the world's tropical forests thrived in the far distant past when temperatures were 3 to 5C warmer than today.
They believe that a wetter, warmer future may actually boost plants and animals living the tropics.
The findings, published in the respected journal Science, come from a study of pollen trapped in rocks during a natural period of global warming 56.3million years ago.

Science may be getting around to the truth instead of politics.

"the country is just not into you"

That is part of the closing line of of the last paragraph of one of the most interesing analogies I have ever seen.  In a post written by  by Oleg Atbashian.  He compares Obama's lies with a teenage boy trying to score with a girl.  He says, "When my old lies didn't work(ing) anymore and I needed to up my game, I sounded exactly like post-midterm Obama.

He goes on: I wonder how many American voters had elected Obama, not because they shared his theories or understood any of his hope and change rhetoric, but simply because they shared the same political hormones. Perhaps the number of voters with the hormone-impaired thinking can roughly be calculated by taking the amount of votes for Obama in 2008 and subtracting the much smaller amount of Democratic votes in 2010. Easy come, easy go.

I know how American liberals feel. Most of my Ukrainian girlfriends in my younger years must have been archetypal conservatives, while my endocrinal excesses made me an untrainable liberal. I thought I had their mandate, I didn’t listen, I pushed my agenda, and they voted me out of their lives.

Go read it all, it's a very interest concept.

I got this at Wizbang and I'm impressed.  It's General Colin Powell and veterans and veterans day.  Rick says this,  "Colin Powell is someone who infuriated me during the 2008 Presidential campaign and I find it hard to look past that but I'm liking what he has to say in this CBS video about our troops and I suspect you will as well:"  He was right I liked it, and I'm sharing it with you.

Thank You Veterans

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky                          
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

We don't think of this poem often enough.  When I was a child we did hear about it.  It is hard to believe so many more have died for our country since that time to keep us safe at home and to help the enslaved in other countries.  We are a remarkable nation.  We have have been blessed.  We have had so many willing to give their lives for our country.

 I do not know the number of military we have at this time.  I know the ones in our military now are all volunteers, that includes my grandson and grandchildren of my siblings. My brothers who are old and in ill health both volunteered at a time when the military wasn't volunteer but they remembered their uncles in the Marines and Navy in WWII. 

Today we honor them all. It's Veterans Day. 
For more on "In flander's Field" go here. and here. and here.

Reward the Faithful Republicans

From the Washington Examiner

House GOPers who stayed true should be rewarded, not tossed aside
By: Mark Tapscott

Molly Hooper of The Hill has a long piece today on Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachmann's challenge of Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling to succeed Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana for House Republican Conference Chairman.

As Hooper notes, Bachmann is portraying the contest as the Establishment GOP versus the Tea Party. Such a narrative probably makes sense to liberal journalists, but it misrepresents a key aspect of the struggle in recent years between faithful House GOP conservatives like Hensarling and those such as Jerry Lewis and Hal Rogers who went whole-hog for the old politics of earmarks and pork barrel.

Tea Party advocates are absolutely right to take down the Lewis and Rogers brand of Me-Too Republicanism, but what about those like Hensarling among the House GOP caucus who have been fighting the congressional GOP's drift leftward for many years?

Molly Hooper makes a good point. Read the rest.

Al Gore must be unhappy about this--ummm Maybe not, He already has his, we are the ones paying for the loss

He's got problems.  First the wife goes, now his stock falls.  What next?
From American Thinker blog:

Money for Nothin'

by Randy Fardal

Why are welfare queens sent to prison while eco-capitalists buy mansions? It appears that the carbon credit trading exchange some eco-capitalists sold just a few months ago for $634.5M is now worthless. According to the Financial Times:

The owner of the US’s only nationwide cap-and-trade market has signaled the death of the seven-year-old industry, saying companies were no longer interested in trading carbon emissions credits in the absence of government legislation.

Virtually nothing the eco-capitalists produce creates wealth for society, including their carbon exchanges. They are not participating in free-market capitalism; it’s just parasitic political capitalism. And since most of what they do is based on the AGW scam, one could argue that many of them are guilty of misrepresentation or outright fraud.

Meanwhile, the buyer at the other end of this transaction, Intercontinental Exchange, apparently lost a half-billion-dollar bet that the carbon-taxing Democrats would retain control of the House in the 2010 elections. That’s fine; ICE is a profitable private sector company that took a calculated risk, and whose losses will be borne by its shareholders. Because of pending Democratic legislation, that risk had potentially great rewards -- perhaps even “windfall profits” -- so it’s unlikely that shareholders now blame the company’s executives for malfeasance.

But taxpayers indirectly cover about a third of the shareholders’ losses. Because ICE’s overall business is profitable, its losses on the climate exchange reduce its tax liability.

[....]

Bottom line: Taxpayers will have to cover about a third of the total $655-660M bet that ICE lost on its Climate Exchange acquisition. Can the leftists be happy about that? After all, the added government revenue would have paid for a large portion of Nancy Pelosi’s taxpayer-funded private jet.

Read it all, it is all part of the big Global Warming scam.

Now some Democrats think He doesn't get it

From the Washington Post:

Assessing midterm losses, Democrats ask whether Obama's White House fully grasped voters' fears
By Karen Tumulty and Dan Balz

President Obama's failure to channel the anxieties of ordinary voters has shaken the faith that many Democrats once had in his political gifts and his team's political skill.

In his own assessments of what went wrong, the president has lamented his inability to persuade voters on the merits of what he has done, and blamed the failure on his preoccupation with a full plate of crises.

But a broad sample of Democratic officeholders and strategists said in interviews that the disconnect goes far deeper than that.

"There doesn't seem to be anybody in the White House who's got any idea what it's like to lie awake at night worried about money and worried about things slipping away," said retiring Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (D). "They're all intellectually smart. They've got their numbers. But they don't feel any of it, and I think people sense that."

Bredesen had voiced such reservations long before the election, but more Democrats are saying the same thing after Tuesday's defeats - although few are willing to cross the White House by doing so publicly.

[....]

Still, Democrats remain divided between their moderate and liberal wings over whether the president should continue to push hard with his agenda or move to the center to try to accommodate the Republicans in Congress.

Read it all, much more to discuss.

Democrats as Racist?

Far be it from me to call anyone a racist without proof of the fact.  According to Chris Salcedo at Pajamas Media he has the evidence. Read this and you will think he has some facts to support the claim.

By Their Own Standards, Dems Racist When It Comes to Hispanics
The Democrats' pattern of blocking Hispanics for not being "the right kind of Hispanic" is undeniable.

Conservatives warned liberals of the dangers of playing the race card too often without substantiation. But with the election of President Obama, progressives went crazy.

Every time conservatives opposed our inexperienced president on policy, progressive pundits were quick to dismiss the objections as a simple expression of conservatives’ supposed distaste for an African-American president. Recall how Karen Hunter, MSNBC contributor, described challenges to the Obama agenda? “Post-Traumatic First African-American President Syndrome.”

Even the Daily Show lampooned the excessive use of the race card, declaring it “maxed out.”

Well, if by liberalism’s standards the act of objecting to a person of color on policy is tantamount to racism, then Americans now have clear evidence that progressives are racist toward Hispanics.

Democrats, through Bill Clinton and reportedly the White House, conspired to defeat a conservative Latino in a Senate race in Florida. The liberals in charge of the Democrat Party tried to convince their candidate, Kendrick Meek (an African-American), to drop out of that race so that the linguini-spined Charlie Crist would have a shot at beating Marco Rubio.

The message, largely ignored by the press, was that Marco Rubio could not be allowed to win because he was the wrong kind of Hispanic.
[....]
Liberals knew he had to be stopped, and thus were willing to throw an African-American under the bus in favor of the white guy who had been a Republican five minutes ago.

Read the rest, he builds a good case of racism against the Democrats.

Must Read articles for Sunday, Nov 7th

Why I quit... Desert Storm vet explains decision to leave Air Force after 22 years

This confirms my belief that the war was prolonged and people died because the Democrats used the war as a tool to hammer President Bush.

Work-shy will be 'pushed' into working for free by welfare revolution This is from Great Britain, we could learn something here from him.

AIFD PRESS RELEASE: American Muslim organization applauds Oklahoma anti-shariah law I wish we heard from more Muslims like this.

Assessing midterm losses, Democrats ask whether Obama's White House fully grasped voters' fears  another one that speaks for itself.

Chris Christie irks David Gregory by calling him an advocate  too much truth for David Gregory to handle.

The Biofuels Scam

Obama jumps on natural gas bandwagon  this could be good news for Texas, if true.

Frank Luntz: Forget red and blue, it's a Tea Party nation  What voters want.

Is the name of the game Control for the Republican Party?

In an article in American Thinker Joseph Asbuy makes the case and that is his final conclusion. Here is the article, what do you think?

The Establishment Strikes Back

At the climax of the 1977 film Star Wars, hero Luke Skywalker destroys the evil Empire's dreaded Death Star. The Rebellion's celebration, however, is short-lived. The movie series' next installment, The Empire Strikes Back, depicts the Empire's use of its still vastly superior weaponry and manpower to reassert its authority.

In the 2010-midterm elections, the tea party movement has played the role of the Rebellion. But the Empire is not played by the Democrats. It's true that the Democrat-controlled federal government was resoundingly defeated in the November 2nd general election, but that loss, unlike the destruction of the Death Star, was not a surprise. The real blindside was the tea party's dismantling of the Republican Establishment throughout the primary season.

He goes on to describe the wins by the tea party candidates against their Republican establishment and wraps it up with this:

The Establishment attitude is another form of central planning, in this case political planning instead of economic. The great economist Frederick von Hayek was once asked by so many academics rejected the free market in favor of central direction. Hayek responded: "I think it's...an intellectual attraction of a system you can deliberately control, which is fascinating to the intellectual." For Rove, Graham and others it's not just winning, but winning with their plan. The organized chaos of the tea party is to the Establishment what the unplanned free market is to the leftist professor. Both represent a lack of "fascinating" control.

And so the Establishment strikes back. Entrenched blue-blood Republicans hope to reap the electoral benefits of the tea party movement while simultaneously seeking to discredit it. In the aftermath of the 2010 midterms, it has become clear that the fight for America's future will pass directly through the heart of the Republican Establishment.

And there you have the best description of what happened and an alert to us to keep on fighting the establishment, not by forming a new party but revitalizing one that is already there.

Why We Need to Keep up the Intensity

Charles Krauthammer has angered some of us lately, but he still has a brilliant mind and maybe, just maybe, we should listen more closely.  Today he is good.  From the Washington Post:

A return to the Norm
For all the turmoil, the spectacle, the churning - for all the old bulls slain and fuzzy-cheeked freshmen born - the great Republican wave of 2010 is simply a return to the norm. The tide had gone out; the tide came back. A center-right country restores the normal congressional map: a sea of interior red, bordered by blue coasts and dotted by blue islands of ethnic/urban density.
[....]
The conventional wisdom is that these sweeps represent something novel, exotic and very modern - the new media, faster news cycles, Internet frenzy and a public with a short attention span and even less patience with government. Or alternatively, that these violent swings reflect reduced party loyalty and more independent voters.

Nonsense. In 1946, for example, when party loyalty was much stronger and even television was largely unknown, the Republicans gained 56 seats and then lost 75 in the very next election. Waves come. Waves go. The republic endures.

Our two most recent swing cycles were triggered by unusually jarring historical events. The 2006 Republican "thumpin'" (to quote George W. Bush) was largely a reflection of the disillusionment and near-despair of a wearying war that appeared to be lost. And 2008 occurred just weeks after the worst financial collapse in eight decades.

Similarly, the massive Republican swing of 2010 was a reaction to another rather unprecedented development - a ruling party spectacularly misjudging its mandate and taking an unwilling country through a two-year experiment in hyper-liberalism.

Nor should Republicans overinterpret their Tuesday mandate. They received none. They were merely rewarded for acting as the people's proxy in saying no to Obama's overreaching liberalism. As one wag put it, this wasn't an election so much as a restraining order.

The Republicans won by default. And their prize is nothing more than a two-year lease on the House. The building was available because the previous occupant had been evicted for arrogant misbehavior and, by rule, alas, the House cannot be left vacant.

Read it all here.

What is Happening to our Military

It isn't just that they are being disenfranchised, it is also that they are being downsized.  We had the Captain from our local high school's JROTC speak to our Tea Party group last night.  He is so thrilled with being with the kids of his unit and so exuberant about the work he is doing with them, but one of the sad things is many of them will not be able to get into any of military forces because they are downsizing.  Much of it is by attrition and they are very selective about taking in new recruits.  This is not new with Obama, it is a long term stradegy. Check out these sources:

http://www.militarytimes.com/forum/showthread.php?1585989-Navy-downsizing!Wrongdoing.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/07/downsizing_the_navys_industria.html

http://www.stanford.edu/group/WTO/cgi-bin/docs/1998Barley.pdf 
(Military Downsizing and the Career Prospects of Youths)

Navy Begins Downsizing The Virginian Pilot January 27, 2004

Now for the disenfranchising:

The Scandal of Military Voter Disenfranchisement
We can't depend on the Justice Department to see to it that the states comply with the law regarding absentee ballots being shipped in a timely manner to military personnel overseas.

In his 1952 letter, President Truman called upon the states to fix this problem, and he called upon Congress to enact temporary federal legislation for the 1952 presidential election. He wrote, 

Any such legislation by Congress should be temporary, since it should be possible to make all the necessary changes in State laws before the congressional elections of 1954.

Well, it did not work out that way. The Korean War ground to an inconclusive halt in 1952, the issue dropped off our national radar screen, and the states did not fix the problem. Finally, in 2009, Congress enacted the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE Act). This new law requires every state to mail out absentee ballots to military personnel and family members by the 45th day before Election Day (e.g., September 18, 2010). Several sstates with late primaries applied for and received waivers for 2010, and agreed to extend the deadline for the return of ballots mailed in from overseas.

In Illinois, the problem was not a late primary. Indeed, Illinois held its 2010 primary on February 2, 2010. But 35 of 110 Illinois counties seriously missed the September 18 deadline. One of the late counties was St. Clair County, home to 261,000 people and to Scott Air Force Base.

The U.S. Department of Justice is responsible for enforcing the MOVE Act, but it seems not to take its responsibilities seriously — perhaps because military personnel vote overwhelmingly Republican when they do have the opportunity to vote.


DoJ entered into a consent decree with Illinois that does not solve the problem. In those counties that were seriously late in sending out ballots, the consent decree extends by only one day (from November 1 to November 2) the deadline for the postmark of the marked ballot coming back to the local election official. If Sergeant Smith in Afghanistan receives his ballot on November 3, he cannot cast a ballot that will get counted.

Congress should amend the MOVE Act to clarify that individual military voters have a private right of action to enforce the 45-day rule. We cannot depend upon DOJ to enforce this law in good faith. DOJ, under present management, will paper over MOVE Act violations for the same reason that it condoned voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia in 2008.

Congress should also clarify that military personnel and family members overseas have the right to vote in state and local elections as well as federal elections, and that any violation of the 45-day rule must be remedied by a court order extending both the deadline for the postmark of the marked ballot and the deadline for its receipt.

It is a national scandal that we as a nation are still conducting absentee voting in much the same way that it was conducted during the Korean War — by shipping pieces of paper across oceans and continents by snail mail. In our Armed Forces, classified information is transmitted and received every day by secure electronic means. In commerce, billions of dollars change hands electronically every business day. If electronic means are secure enough for our nation’s most important secrets and for huge sums of money, why is it not possible, in 2010, for deployed service members to vote by a secure means that will guarantee that their ballots are counted?

Captain Wright retired after a career as a judge advocate in the Navy and Navy Reserve. He has been working the military voting issue since 1976.

This is just the last half of the article, read it all here.  Then let us all get to work on fixing this.  There is absolutely no reason ballots cannot be requested by email or fax. I have seen it suggested that it be done in several different ways.  I think it would be okay if they were emailed to the military personnel and turned into their commanders to be certified as to the person handing them in is the same as the name on the ballot. and then sent by email or fax.  LET'S GET TO WORK and get this done.!!

Is the Tea Party (Parties) the Little Engine that Could?

Mark Tapscott had an editorial in the Washington Examiner

They aren't laughing at the Tea Party now

Well, they did it. Against all odds, the starfish people - aka the Tea Party movement - have in less than two years not merely changed American politics, but reversed its direction entirely.

Tuesday's results make clear the Tea Party is the most dynamic and successful grass-roots political movement since Thomas Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican revolt against John Adams and the Federalists in 1800.

They did so because they did exactly what they should have done. Instead of fighting specific issues and causes like Card Check and cap-and-trade, they ignored their critics while focusing their energies on finding, fielding, funding and fueling candidates for elected office at every level of government, but especially for Congress.

They worked within the system in the most direct way possible by defining the decisive issues of the 2010 campaign and putting forth candidates to replace Washington officials who refused to listen to the people during the long, hot summer of Town Hall protests in 2009.

That is why, without the Tea Party, the Republicans would not have gained 63 seats in the House, nor would we now be adding "Senator-elect" to the names of Rand Paul in Kentucky, Marco Rubio in Florida, Mike Lee in Utah and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.

There is more, read it here.

Abortion isn't funny, but Diversity Lane shows it's irony

New Iraq/Afghanistan vets in Congress

The Corner of National Review Online has an article on Iraq/Afghanistan vets in Congress.  And as it happens, the ones on our side are pro Victory in those countries.

The New Victory Caucus in Congress
by By Pete Hegseth

On Tuesday, six Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were elected to Congress (and possibly seven, if Jesse Kelly pulls out his race in Arizona’s 8th district). All six (seven) of them support victory on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan and a hawkish national-security posture overall. The impressive list of warriors can be found at the bottom of this post, and also at Vets for Freedom’s website.
[....]
These warriors — and the two pro-victory Iraq veterans already in Congress (Duncan Hunter and Mike Coffman) — constitute a formidable new Victory caucus in the House. All eight (or nine) Iraq and Afghanistan veterans — an infantry-squad-sized element of Republicans — speak with special authority on very important issues facing the next Congress, especially winning the war in Afghanistan, winning the peace in Iraq, preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, and ensuring that the Pentagon has adequate resources to project American power and preserve American interests around the world.

But that’s not the only good news. Tuesday also brought losses for every single anti-war Iraq and Afghanistan veteran running for Congress — including the only two anti-war Iraq war incumbents in Congress (Patrick “the surge can’t work” Murphy in PA-8 and John Boccieri in OH-16). The group most undermined by this trouncing is VoteVets, the blatantly partisan anti-war “veterans” group that came up empty on Election Night (and has already removed all the candidates from its website).

All of this taken together means that every single Iraq and Afghanistan veteran in Congress today is pro-victory.
The list of new Iraq/Afghanistan vets in Congress is:

– Lt. Col. Allen West (FL-22) – Iraq, Afghanistan, & Gulf wars
– Lt. Col. Steve Stivers (OH-15) — Iraq war
– Capt. Adam Kinzinger (IL-11) — Iraq & Afghanistan wars
– Col. Joe Heck (NV-3) — Iraq war
– Maj. Tim Griffin (AR-2) — Iraq war
– Col. Chris Gibson (NY-20) — Iraq war (4 tours)

– Pete Hegseth is executive director of Vets for Freedom.

Read it all here.

Regulations are Hidden Taxes; there are a lot of new ones.

The Heritage Foundation has a report out on how many regulations have been added, how they tax us and increase the costs of goods and services.  I'm quoting only the title and abstract.  This report was published October 26th, 2010.  You need to read it all.  This is just a teaser. It is very detailed.

Red Tape Rising: Obama’s Torrent of New Regulation,
by James Gattuso, Diane Katz and Stephen Keen

Abstract: The burden of regulation on Americans increased at an alarming rate in fiscal year 2010. Based on data from the Government Accountability Office, an unprecedented 43 major new regulations were imposed by Washington. And based on reports from government regulators themselves, the total cost of these rules topped $26.5 billion, far more than any other year for which records are available. These costs will affect Americans in many ways, raising the price of the cars they buy and the food they eat, while destroying an untold number of jobs. With the enactment of new health care laws, financial regulations, and plans for rulemaking in other areas, the regulatory burden on Americans is set to increase even further in the coming year.

Click on the title to read the whole report.

Victor Davis Hanson on What the Democrats and their Leader Do Not Get

From Works and Days in Pajamas Media

What the Election Was Not About
by Victor Davis Hanson

1. Communication—As If You Would Have Liked My Agenda Had You Just Been More Informed

President Obama’s postmortem press conference was a near disaster. He seemed subdued, but also sometimes petulant—still convinced that we, in fear and distrust, “lashed out” in anger at the doctor rather than the disease. In fact, the same voter furor that turned on him is, he thinks, what earlier elected him: only his failure to channel it properly explains the setback. Finally he did admit that he was “shellacked,” but he believes that partisanship confused us voters into shellacking him.

This common complaint that he failed to communicate just how wonderfully he had done is quite an unhinged Carteresque/Kerryesque exegesis. The problem was not that the American voter did not know about the second stimulus, ObamaCare, the efforts to push cap and trade, card check, and $3 trillion more in debt, but that he knew them all too well. [....]

And his other points are:

2. We Spent Too Little?
Given what we know of the models of Spain, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and California, we should not take seriously another lunatic explanation that we did not borrow enough.[...]

3. Obstructionist Republicans
A third explanation often aired is that Republicans are good at destroying noble things like Obamism, but not good at governing. Limbaugh, Hannity, Fox News and the usual partisan suspects deluded the gullible public. The result is that we still do not appreciate the wonders of ObamaCare (check those rising premiums), and will soon choke without cap and trade, and will applaud Obama for the trivial things like the Government Motors Volt. Yet Obama and the left seem oblivious to the fact that they gave as good as they got. [....]

4. Race
Oh yes, race. I mention that because on election day Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post has already played that preemptory card to explain the repudiation of the Obama agenda. Here’s why that is also crazy:
a) The anger is against the Obama agenda and those who promote it
[....]
b) The Tea Party zealots backed all sorts of candidates, women like Sharron Angle, Hispanics like Marco Rubio, blacks like Allen West, and Asians like Van Tran. Contrary to Robinson’s charges, race or gender was incidental — not essential — to their support.
c) Barack Obama has encountered no more venom—and in fact much less—than what George Bush or Bill Clinton endured. As of yet, thank God, we have not seen an Alfred Knopf novel like Checkpoint aimed at Obama, or anything like the 2006 Toronto prize-winning film Death of a President, which imagined the shooting of George Bush. I don’t recall Robinson at the time suggesting that such sick, unhinged hatred of Bush was either untoward or motivated by nefarious forces.
d) By 2001 the two highest foreign policy officials of the U.S. government—Secretary of State and National Security Advisor—were both African-Americans—and appointed by George Bush. [....]
e) To the degree racial divisiveness is more apparent after 2008, it is largely due to the Obama administration. The president himself called for Latinos to see Republicans as “enemies.”
[....]
So What Was Tuesday?
The truth is always the simplest explanation. Here it goes in simple language from the beginning: Obama was elected largely because of public furor over Bush/Iraq. The fawning media hid his socialist background. He ran as a centrist.

There is a lot more, go read it all.

We Gained Conservative Minorities in this election

From Pajamas Media
Minority Republicans Make Major Gains Across America
Beyond the major narratives of Obama policies and the rise of the Tea Party, Republican victories won by minority candidates show the strength of the Republican ideal, and may have the most lasting impact on the nation.
 
As things stand now, the 2010 midterm elections have dramatically shifted the balance of power across the country.  The Democrats’ control of the Senate weakened, and Republicans took outright control of the House, ending the term of Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House.  Much will be made of the Tea Party and its impact, which stands to reason, and the verdict on that will be mostly positive but mixed.  But beyond the Beltway and beyond the Tea Party narrative, Republicans surged to greater power at the state level.  Sixteen state Houses or Assemblies moved into GOP control, and red states like Texas and Oklahoma got redder.  Republicans now hold a majority among governorships.  And in what may make the fewest headlines but have the most lasting impact on both parties, minority Republicans won offices all over America.
[....]
Perhaps the greatest gains for minority Republicans occurred in Texas, where Lone Star State voters turned out three Democratic U.S. House incumbents, Reps. Chet Edwards, Ciro Rodriguez, and Solomon Ortiz.  Of those three, two were replaced by conservative Hispanic Republicans.  Bill Flores crushed Chet Edwards in TX-17 and Francisco “Quico” Canseco defeated Rodriguez in TX-23. 
 
Farther down the ballot in Texas, minority Republicans made substantial gains in the Texas House of Representatives.  Larry Gonzales won in central Texas’ HD-52; Jose Aliseda won in a surprising upset in HD-35; John Garza won in HD-117; James White, who is black, defeated Democratic incumbent Jim McReynolds in HD-12 in northeast Texas; and Stefani Carter, who is also black, defeated Democratic incumbent Carol Kent in HD-102.  On the State Board of Education, Charlie Garza defeated Rene Nunez in west Texas’ SBOE Place 1.  All of these seats represent pick-ups for the GOP and for minority Republicans.
 
For years, Democrats in Texas have pinned their hopes of a return to power on holding onto the black vote and capturing an increasing share of the Hispanic vote. The 2010 elections show that the first line could be cracking, and the second may be a fading possibility.

Looking farther to the west, New Mexico has replaced its Democratic governor, Bill Richards, with native Texan and conservative Republican Susana Martinez. Martinez is New Mexico’s first female governor, and the first female Hispanic governor anywhere. That she ran on the issue of border security, and won, speaks volumes.

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