A Powerful Accusation of Rape

In American Thinker  a sharp, focused accusation.  Read this excerpt or read it all.
The Rape of America
By Robin of Berkeley

Let's start by analyzing the mind of a rapist. His goal: Domination and absolute power, through any means necessary.

His motivation: punishing another, degrading her, feeling superior and God-like. Making her feel like an object, nothing, a no-thing.

What else propels him? Taking what he wants just because he wants it. Feeling the surge of power, the adrenaline rush, the thrill of stealing a piece of her.

Anything else? Feeding primitive, twisted impulses; expressing sadistic needs; the savage excitement of subjugating and controlling another.

Those most likely to rape? Someone who was sexually abused himself; an outsider; a person robbed of a normal childhood. A man who has carved an identity out of rage and envy and resentment. Someone who feels entitled to take whatever he wants.

What fosters rape? Parents missing in action. A culture that thumbs its nose at God.

And a society that minimizes crime, that even heralds certain criminals as heroes. (Some Black Panthers were rapists, yet they're revered as idols.) A culture where punishment is weak, and politicians are moral cowards, fearful of the ACLU.

What else? A media that celebrates debauchery, that entertains through degrading and objectifying. Popular rap songs and cool hip-hop artists whose words slice and dice women. Films where anything goes, where hot lesbian sex scenes are as omnipresent as those boneheaded authority figures.

And the aftermath of rape? The destruction of something in the victim that will never return: a feeling of safety in the world, in her own body. The nightmare of being treated as an animal; no, worse than this, since animals are now venerated. And from this nightmare she may never completely awaken.

This, in a nutshell, is how rape works. But words alone can never capture the enormity, the horror, the soul crushing evil of rape. And not only females can be victims; men and little boys are violated, with women, on rare occasions, the perpetuator.

The word "rape" has an intriguing history. It originally denoted the violent seizure of property. I'm going to use the term in both the historic and modern sense to convey what is happening today.

This country is being raped.

Read it all, it is powerful.  Think about it, ponder it, then act to make sure it stops.

Health care confusion? Another "Who Knew?"

From McClatchy Newspapers via Drudge:

Health care overhaul spawns mass confusion for public

by Margaret Talev

Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the big health care overhaul into law, Americans are struggling to understand how — and when — the sweeping measure will affect them.

Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors' offices, human resources departments and business groups.

"They're saying, 'Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?' " said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states.....

......"We tell them it's not free, that there are going to be things in place that help people who are low-income, but that ultimately most of that is not going to be taking place until 2014," McLean said.

Adults with pre-existing conditions are frustrated to learn that insurers won't have to cover them until 2014 (though those under 18 will be protected in late September); then they become both hopeful and confused upon learning that a federal high-risk pool for them will be established in the next few months. "Health insurance is so confusing. You add this on top of it and it makes it even more confusing," McLean said....

.....A new wave of inquiries could come next month as federal COBRA subsidies for laid-off workers dry up.

Read it all here.

"just can't get no respect"

Poor President Obama, try as he might he just can't get respect from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  While we all stew in the juices of appeasement he has shown to practically everyone, Ahmadinejad has this to say:

"American materialist politicians, whenever they are beaten by logic, immediately resort to their weapons like cowboys," Ahmadinejad said in a speech before a crowd of several thousand in northwestern Iran.

"Mr. Obama, you are a newcomer (to politics). Wait until your sweat dries and get some experience. Be careful not to read just any paper put in front of you or repeat any statement recommended," Ahmadinejad said in the speech, aired live on state TV.

Ahmadinejad said Obama "is under the pressure of capitalists and the Zionists" and vowed Iran would not be pushed around. "(American officials) bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn't do a damn thing, let alone you," he said, addressing Obama.  ffom the Houston Chronicle online.

What will it take for our naive president to understand what he is doing to his own reputation and to our country?

Foreign policy for fifth graders

That's the end sentence and I think it cuts to the chase of this article on "our" new foreign policy.  We are so open to terrorism; open  to disaster on so many levels. Who is going to stop this fast plunge down into the quagmire of history?
Here's the article. It's from Liberty Pundits.

Obama: A Pacifist Hippie In A Brooks Brothers Suit

Every aspect of American foreign policy President Obama makes over in a hippie’s image. It’s like he fell out of the late ’60s, stoned, and threw on a Brooks Brothers suit and became president. It would be laughable if it weren’t so terrifying.

Read it here.

The Obama pad- Some of our young people see it as it is

h/t Bookworm Room

The Healthcare debate could be very interesting for constitutional scholars

The rest of us will just sit here and wait for the next show to fall.  But from Alamo City Pundit we find this argument.

New Battle of the Alamo (ISD); Will Healthcare Be Decided in San Antonio?
April 6, 2010 by Johnny Alamo

So, in an odd confluence of the two, it appears that the battle over the Healthcare Bill may be decided by . . . a 1990’s San Antonio Gun Control case, of all things!

WASHINGTON — A San Antonio high school senior’s decision to bring a .38 caliber handgun to class in 1992 could end up at the center of the coming legal fight over President Barack Obama’s health reform plan.

Alfonso Lopez Jr.’s arrest at Edison High School set in motion a courtroom battle that is likely to be studied by the 13 state attorneys general fighting the new health care law. Lopez, a high school senior when he was arrested on a handgun possession charge in March 1992, ended up facing federal charges of violating the Gun Free School Zones Act of 1990.

But the Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, threw out his conviction in 1995 on the ground that Congress exceeded its regulatory authority under the Constitution when it approved the 1990 law, which made it a violation of federal law to possess a firearm in a school zone.

In filing a lawsuit last week challenging the new health care law’s mandate that everyone must have health insurance, the 13 state attorneys general cited the same legal reasoning that went into the high court’s Lopez ruling.

At issue in both cases is the Constitution’s commerce clause, which limits the regulatory powers of Congress to matters involving interstate commerce. The attorneys general argue that Congress exceeded that limit by requiring individuals to purchase health insurance or pay a fine.

The emphasis is mine, go read Alamo City Pundit for the rest of the story.

Neo-Neocon on Obama's Nuclear Edict

It’s almost as though our country is now being run by a leftist college sophomore, a guy who’s used to getting really good grades and thinks that means he’s smarter than anybody else because his gift of gab helps to wow people in those bull sessions at midnight in the dorm. He’s full of nifty ideas about how the world works, and wants to try them out—based on the “understanding” acquired during a few childhood years in a foreign country and a trip to Pakistan to visit friends.

This is just the meat and potatoes of her blog entry, read it all.

Louisiana and Rhode Island -Politics and Disasters

From The Providence Journal online:

Edward Achorn: Our political culture: When it rains on Rhode Island, it pours

Nature is mightier than any human being, and no politician can prevent damage from a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the record rainfall that wreaked havoc last week.

But the political culture does have much to do with how well prepared a state is to meet a disaster and mitigate the damage. If a state is steeped in corruption and if its voters permit their politicians to spend tax dollars in ways other than serving the public interest, nature can inflict extraordinary damage indeed.

Hurricane Katrina was worse than it had to be for Louisiana, for example, because the state’s (including New Orleans’s) political leaders were too incompetent to prepare adequately for the storm. And, after the storm, its shakedown culture thwarted taxpayer-funded aid from getting to the people. Within two years, the special Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force of the U.S. Department of Justice had charged 188 people in Louisiana with fraud.

“Half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment,” a longtime congressman, Billy Tauzin, famously quipped of his state.

As Rhode Island dries out and confronts the damage, we may learn in coming weeks whether our culture also made things worse.

It is good to know that an editorial writer recognizes that the political culture of the gimme state of Louisiana had the most to do with the flooding and its aftermath.
Read it all.

White Flag flying, according to Canada Free Press

Meanwhile, the white flag may be flying over the White House, but it’s the Stars and Stripes everywhere else in America

Obama Raises White Flag Over America

By Judi McLeod

There’s a white flag flying over America this morning and it was run up the flagpole by President Barack Obama without the knowledge or permission of the American people.

Sporting a Chicago White Sox baseball cap, the Girly on the Mound of yesterday’s baseball opener, went on to toss the bombshell that he will make the world a nuclear weapons free zone.

Not only does Obama’s revamping of American nuclear strategy renounce the development of any new nuclear weapons, it overrules the initial position of his own defense secretary Robert Gates.

“Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.” (New York Times, April 5, 2010).

Read the rest, it is a real put down.

Walter Williams on the Constitution

From Investors Business Daily:

Does U.S. Need To Split Along Political Lines?

By WALTER WILLIAMS

Ten years ago I asked the following question in a column titled "It's Time To Part Company":

"If one group of people prefers government control and management of people's lives and another prefers liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?"

The problem that our nation faces is very much like a marriage where one partner has broken, and has no intention of keeping, the marital vows. Of course, the marriage can remain intact and one party tries to impose his will on the other and engage in the deviousness of one-upmanship. Rather than submission by one party or domestic violence, a more peaceable alternative is separation.

I believe we are nearing a point where there are enough irreconcilable differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage, where vows are broken, our human rights protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them.

The Democrat-controlled Washington is simply an escalation of a process that has been in full stride for at least two decades. There is no evidence that Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have any intention of mending their ways.

You say, "Williams, what do you mean by constitutional abrogation?" Let's look at just some of the magnitude of the violations.

Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution lists the activities for which Congress is authorized to tax and spend. Nowhere on that list is authority for Congress to tax and spend for: prescription drugs, Social Security, public education, farm subsidies, bank and business bailouts, food stamps and other activities that represent roughly two-thirds of the federal budget.

Neither is there authority for congressional mandates to the states and people about how they may use their land, the speed at which they can drive, whether a library has wheelchair ramps and the gallons of water used per toilet flush.

James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, explained in Federalist Paper No. 45: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.

Read the rest

The IRS and Healthcare

A Reuters report:

IRS could tap refunds for health insurance penalties

IRS cannot use levies, seizures, criminal sanctions (RC says "if that's the case why bother with checking? Answer: read further for the real disclosure")

IRS chief: Republican estimate for new hires "made up" (RC:"oh, yeah?")

WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) - The Internal Revenue Service could tap individual tax returns to collect fines against people who fail to buy health insurance as required under recently enacted healthcare legislation, the U.S. tax commissioner said on Monday.

Most individuals are required to get health insurance under the new law, or face penalties that would be phased in over time. By 2016, people without coverage could see fines of 2 percent of their income. (RC I guess fines are not levies)

Subsidies would help poorer people buy coverage, and states would set up exchanges to allow individuals and small groups shop for insurance.

People who do not comply would be levied penalties, and if they don't pay them the penalties could be taken out of their tax refunds. (RC: hmmm... if it comes out of your refund it must be some sort of tax)

Read it all, I'm sure you can find more to criticize as I did.

Is this the truth? what do you know about Former state Rep. Rick Green who is running for the Texas Supreme Court?

This was in the Caller Times online:

GOP elite oppose ex-legislator in Texas court race

Associated Press

AUSTIN — Former state Rep. Rick Green once slugged a political rival outside a polling place at a Baptist church.

While in office, he hawked a nutritional supplement that promised to “supercharge your brain.” And as an attorney, he’s spent more time speaking to church groups and Tea Party rallies than arguing cases in court.

But Green has a shot at a seat on the Texas Supreme Court after getting the most votes — 18.9 percent — among six candidates in the March 2 primary. He faces longtime family law judge Debra Lehrmann in the April 13 runoff for the Republican nomination.

Green’s campaign has been unusual. Instead of touting lofty legal credentials, he’s running as a hard-core conservative everyman who promises to bring what he considers a badly needed dose of normalcy to the court.

Read it all then leave a comment if you know more about it than what is given in the article.  It looks to me like he is a doubtful candidate for a judge, but the article is also slanted that way to give that impression.  If what they say is true, even with extenuating circumstances I do not believe I could vote for him. At our meeting one of our trusted members recommended a vote for longtime family law judge Debra Lehrmann.

This is just a funny from one of those emails going the rounds...

But who knows it could be true.

For those of you who have never traveled to the West or Southwest, cattle guards are horizontal steel rails placed at fence openings, in dug-out places in the roads adjacent to highways (sometimes across highways), to prevent cattle from crossing over that area. For some reason the cattle will not step on the "guards," probably because they fear getting their feet caught between the rails.

A few months ago, President Obama received a report that there were over 100,000 cattle guards in Colorado . Because Colorado ranchers had protested his proposed changes in grazing policies, he ordered the Secretary of the Interior to fire half of the guards immediately.

Before the Interior Secretary could respond and presumably straighten him out, Vice-President, Joe Biden, intervened with a request that before any guards were fired, they be given six months of retraining.

Passed on to you without further comment....

 

Rove's Book and new info on WMD's in Iraq?

The American Spectator has an article by Joseph Shattan titled the Man Who elected Obama.  The main theme is the fact that is was known by certain people that satellite data showed weapons of mass destruction which were before our invasion secreted out of Iraq and into Syria.  The writer has this to say:

Let me recount a bit of personal history by way of background. About four years ago, around the time when Democrats were heatedly charging that Bush had "lied" about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in order to build a case for war (after all, they argued, if the weapons had existed, why weren't we able to find them after liberating Iraq?), I was having lunch with Dr. Laurie Mylroie, one of America's leading students of terrorism in general, and Iraqi terrorism in particular. Laurie was beside herself with anger. Why wasn't the Bush administration citing Gen. James Clapper, the Director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, who said that satellite imagery proved conclusively that shortly before the war's outbreak, Iraq had transferred its weapons of mass destruction to Syria? Why wasn't it quoting Gen. Georges Sada, deputy chief of Saddam's air force, or Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's chief-of-staff, both of whom also claimed that Saddam's weapons had been transferred to Syria? Why was it so tongue-tied, so unsure of itself, so unwilling to answer its critics? Didn't anybody in the White House realize that if the Democrats' charges went unanswered, they would fatally undermine the entire case for the war?

I wondered the same thing myself.  I am an extreme computer news junkie. I read blogs and have  for many years, well before 9/11.  In the run up to the war I was reading Iraqi blogs. Several of them noted they saw very long trucks taking obvious weapons moving from Iraq into Syria.  And after the WMD discussions started they also wondered why was the truth not coming out. Well, now we know. For one thing, the mainstream media was in no way going to help Bush out by printing the truth. But for the other hand there is this from  the American Spectator article:

Given this background, readers will understand the mixed feelings with which I reacted to Karl Rove's assertion, in a chapter entitled "Bush Was Right on Iraq," that Clapper, Sada and Ya'alon all maintained that Saddam had transferred his weapons of mass destruction to Syria on the eve of the war. On the one hand, I recalled the old saw, "Better late than never." On the other hand, I couldn't help feeling that history might have turned out differently had Karl spoken out sooner.

To his immense credit, Karl makes no effort to deny that he screwed up, big time. "So who was responsible for the failure to respond [to the Democrats' assault]?" he asks. "I was. I should have stepped forward, rung the warning bell, and pressed for full-scale response. I didn't. Preoccupied with the coming campaign and the pressures of the daily schedule in the West Wing, I did not see how damaging this assault was. There were others who could have sounded the alarm, but regardless, I should have."

Rove goes on to call the Democrats' claim that Bush lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction a "poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency," and notes that "by July 2005 a majority of Americans -- 51 percent -- believed that Bush had deliberately misled them."

This number is quite close to the 52 percent of Americans who voted for Obama in 2008. Maybe that's just a coincidence -- but I doubt it.

To the extent that Karl Rove -- one of the finest, ablest, most decent public servants I have ever encountered -- might have prevented all this from happening by responding more forcefully to the Democrats' blood libel, he is responsible for the election of Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency of the United States.

Read the rest

Reason Magazine tells it like it is

 Obama and the L-word

The president’s habit of telling untruths

by Matt Welch

Here’s how predictable the president’s slippery relationship with the truth has become: Hours before the State of the Union address, Washington Examiner reporter Timothy P. Carney posted a “pre-emptive fact check” that, among other things, prebutted any presidential claim to have “stopped the revolving door between government and corporate lobbying.” As it happened, that night Barack Obama made an even bolder (read: less truthful) claim: that “we’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.”

In fact, more than 40 former lobbyists work in the administration, including such policy makers as Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn (who was lobbying for Raytheon as recently as 2008), Office of the First Lady Director of Policy and Projects Jocelyn Frye (National Partnership for Women and Families), White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Muñoz (National Council of La Raza), and Treasury Secretary Chief of Staff Mark Patterson (Goldman Sachs).

Read the rest here.

Weren't they saying it was largely women last month?

I can't, or am not even going to try, find all the different articles and editorials I read here on line about the tea parties being largely older women. But now it's a different story, maybe they really did some research, or maybe not. Here is the article in Hotline.

Tea Party Largely Older, Whiter, Male

By Steven Shepard

The Tea Party movement is comprised of a coalition that is more likely to be male, older and GOPer, loosely united under the banner of economic conservatism, according to an analysis released yesterday by a right-leaning research firm.

The Winston Group conducted 3 national surveys over the winter -- one in each Dec., Jan. and Feb. -- to find out who Tea Party members are and what drives them. Over the course of the surveys, they found that more than half (58%) IDed themselves as GOPers, with 28% claiming to be indies and 13% Dems. But 65% IDed themselves as conservatives, while 26% said they were moderates.

Tea Partiers also skewed older and male. Of those associated with the Tea Party, 56% were male, compared to 48% of the electorate as a whole. Just 14% were between the ages of 18-34, while 20% of all voters are under 35.

Read the rest here, also go to this link for report they are using. 

Cap and Trade or EPA Regulations

From Canada Free Press

EPA Regulation of CO2 Emissions Will Begin in 10 Months

By Fred Dardick

So much for the spectacle of Democrats and Republicans fighting their way through Congress over the future of Cap and Trade energy legislation. Thanks to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson in little noticed press releases from March 29 and April 1, the “final decision” that “greenhouse gases (GHGs)” and “carbon pollution” will be regulated (taxed) by the federal government is complete and the imposition of “construction and operating permit requirements for the largest emitting facilities will begin.”

The first misleadingly titled release “EPA Formally Announces Phase-in of Clean Air Act Permitting for Greenhouse Gases/Agency reiterates no stationary source requirements until 2011” makes it clear the EPA absolutely will regulate (tax) stationary sources of greenhouse gases (power plants, factories, farms, homes, etc…) starting Jan 2011.

Read it all here

How to change education for the better

Diane Ravitch has an editorial in the Washington Post this morning that lays out a good plan for education reform. Again, this is something we all know instinctively.  Good teachers are the answer. But she discusses, how good and how high up the chain of command the change should be.
Here is the meat of her essay:

To begin with, let's agree that a good education encompasses far more than just basic skills. A good education involves learning history, geography, civics, the arts, science, literature and foreign language. Schools should be expected to teach these subjects even if students are not tested on them.

Everyone agrees that good education requires good teachers. To get good teachers, states should insist -- and the federal government should demand -- that all new teachers have a major in the subject they expect to teach or preferably a strong educational background in two subjects, such as mathematics and music or history and literature. Every state should expect teachers to pass a rigorous examination in the subjects they will teach, as well as a general examination to demonstrate their literacy and numeracy.

We need principals who are master teachers, not inexperienced teachers who took a course called "How to Be a Leader." The principal is expected to evaluate teachers, to decide who deserves tenure and to help those who are struggling and trying to improve. If the principal is not a master teacher, he or she will not be able to perform the most crucial functions of the job.

We need superintendents who are experienced educators because their decisions about personnel, curriculum and instruction affect the entire school system. If they lack experience, they will not be qualified to select the best principals or the best curricula for their districts.

We need assessments that gauge students' understanding and require them to demonstrate what they know, not tests that allow students to rely solely on guessing and picking one among four canned answers.

Read it all, see if you agree with me.

Dan Quayle advice to the Tea Parties

From the Washington Post he is saying what we know,
no national leader need apply.

Dan Quayle: Don't let the tea party go Perot

Like many influential causes before it, the "tea party" movement appeared on the scene uninvited by the political establishment. Democrats in the White House and in Congress recognize it for what it is -- a spontaneous and pointed response to the Obama agenda -- but some Republican leaders still aren't sure what to make of it, as tea partiers have risen on their own and stirred up trouble in GOP primaries.

Sometimes in politics it's easier to recognize foes than friends, and this may be why Democrats have been quicker to figure out the movement's potential. They know that in November's midterm elections, Republicans will gain mightily from a growing discontent with the administration, which has disappointed the independent voters who made the difference for Barack Obama in 2008.

A close look at the tea party membership will find many of those independents who went for Obama but now regret it. After sweeping into power, Democrats assumed they had redrawn the political map forever, and they took this as a mandate to remake the federal government forever. To the surprise of millions of their supporters, they plowed ahead with federal control over health care and new spending financed by a decade of trillion-dollar deficits. Along the way, they have tried to brush off the Republican congressional minority as little more than spectators to one-party rule.

Read the rest,

The Right Coast has it Right about how many people think like the Tea Party people

Truth from a blog called Right Coast, one I read every day, when I can. Practically everyone I know thinks about this as I do, except for that one liberal son, of course, and a couple of his cousins. Just a play on an old Pauline Kael quote, but read this and see what you think.  Read that link to Dennis Henninger in the WSJ, too.

This is what I'm talking about

Tom Smith

I think Dennis Henninger may be right about this. These subjective intuitions are unreliable, of course, but it certainly feels to me like something out of the ordinary is starting to happen. I think the Tea Parties are just the tip of the iceberg. For every person who actually shows up at a Tea Party demonstration, there must be dozens like me who sympathize, but would never go to a rally because they have to drive kids somewhere and or don't like meeting new people. There must be many more who listen to accounts of the health care whatever it is and think, I'm no economist, but I know BS when I hear it. And they're right because it is. I suspect the Obama gambit is overplayed. I doubt he will be able to clone enough new dependents fast enough to outnumber all the people he is alienating. I also think a lot of people feel deep down that gnawing anxiety that tells them how much is at stake, and that we are currently making mistakes we can't afford to make. Well, I guess we'll see.