The ruling asserted that the state’s child protection agency acted hastily in removing the children from the Yearning for Zion ranch in April and did not make a reasonable effort “to ascertain if some measure short of removal and/or separation from parents would have eliminated the risk” of abuse toward the children of 48 mothers who filed the suit. The district court was ordered to remove its restraining order giving the state custody of those children, but it was not immediately clear how the hundreds of other children, now in foster care, would be affected.
At news conference in San Angelo, the closest city to Eldorado, a lawyer for the sect said it was not sure when the families would be reunited, and that the team was reviewing the next legal steps in the process.
Typically, in cases of suspected abuse, the abuser is removed from the home and the child or children are left with the other parent because plucking children from their homes to be sent to live--and possibly adopted--by complete strangers can be a tad disturbing for said children.
Via Marc Ambinder, here is John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's disgraceful politicking of the veteran's spending bill:
"It is typical, but no less offensive that Senator Obama uses the Senate floor to take cheap shots at an opponent and easy advantage of an issue he has less than zero understanding of. Let me say first in response to Senator Obama, running for President is different than serving as President. The office comes with responsibilities so serious that the occupant can't always take the politically easy route without hurting the country he is sworn to defend. Unlike Senator Obama, my admiration, respect and deep gratitude for America's veterans is something more than a convenient campaign pledge. I think I have earned the right to make that claim. "When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years. My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. I grew up in the Navy; served for twenty-two years as a naval officer; and, like Senator Webb, personally experienced the terrible costs war imposes on the veteran. The friendships I formed in war remain among the closest relationships in my life. The Navy is still the world I know best and love most. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home to the country they loved so well .
"But I am running for the office of Commander-in-Chief. That is the highest privilege in this country, and it imposes the greatest responsibilities. It would be easier politically for me to have joined Senator Webb in offering his legislation. More importantly, I feel just as he does, that we owe veterans the respect and generosity of a great nation because no matter how generously we show our gratitude it will never compensate them fully for all the sacrifices they have borne on our behalf.
"Senators Graham, Burr and I have offered legislation that would provide veterans with a substantial increase in educational benefits. The bill we have sponsored would increase monthly education benefits to $1500; eliminate the $1200 enrollment fee; and offer a $1000 annually for books and supplies. Importantly, we would allow veterans to transfer those benefits to their spouses or dependent children or use a part of them to pay down existing student loans. We also increase benefits to the Guard and Reserve, and even more generously to those who serve in the Selected Reserve.
"I know that my friend and fellow veteran, Senator Jim Webb, an honorable man who takes his responsibility to veterans very seriously, has offered legislation with very generous benefits. I respect and admire his position, and I would never suggest that he has anything other than the best of intentions to honor the service of deserving veterans. Both Senator Webb and I are united in our deep appreciation for the men and women who risk their lives so that the rest of us may be secure in our freedom. And I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans. And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.
"The most important difference between our two approaches is that Senator Webb offers veterans who served one enlistment the same benefits as those offered veterans who have re-enlisted several times. Our bill has a sliding scale that offers generous benefits to all veterans, but increases those benefits according to the veteran's length of service. I think it is important to do that because, otherwise, we will encourage more people to leave the military after they have completed one enlistment. At a time when the United States military is fighting in two wars, and as we finally are beginning the long overdue and very urgent necessity of increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps, one study estimates that Senator Webb's bill will reduce retention rates by 16%.
"Most worrying to me, is that by hurting retention we will reduce the numbers of men and women who we train to become the backbone of all the services, the noncommissioned officer. In my life, I have learned more from noncommissioned officers I have known and served with than anyone else outside my family. And in combat, no one is more important to their soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen, and to the officers who command them, than the sergeant and petty officer. They are very hard to replace. Encouraging people not to choose to become noncommissioned officers would hurt the military and our country very badly. As I said, the office of President, which I am seeking, is a great honor, indeed, but it imposes serious responsibilities. How faithfully the President discharges those responsibilities will determine whether he or she deserves the honor. I can only tell you I intend to deserve the honor if I am fo rtunate to receive it, even if it means I must take politically unpopular positions at times and disagree with people for whom I have the highest respect and affection.
"Perhaps, if Senator Obama would take the time and trouble to understand this issue he would learn to debate an honest disagreement respectfully. But, as he always does, he prefers impugning the motives of his opponent, and exploiting a thoughtful difference of opinion to advance his own ambitions. If that is how he would behave as President, the country would regret his election."
Here's what Obama said:
I respect sen. John McCain's service to our country. He is one of those heroes of which I speak. But I can't understand why he would line up behind the President in his opposition to this GI bill. I can't believe why he believes it is too generous to our veterans. I could not disagree with him and the President more on this issue. There are many issues that lend themselves to partisan posturing but giving our veterans the chance to go to college should not be one of them.
I'm sure the usual idiots will try to say this was not political posturing on Obama's part, but it looks like a potshot to me.
But the committee's plan contained so many smaller items favored by senators in both parties — including money for Gulf Coast Hurricane recovery, NASA, and additional food and drug safety inspectors — that even GOP conservatives such as Larry Craig and Mike Crapo of Idaho rebuffed the White House. The duo were strong supporters of $400 million to subsidize schools in rural counties hit hard by declines in timber revenues.
The bill also contained $490 million for grants to local police departments, $451 million to repair roads damaged by natural disasters, $200 million for the space shuttle program, and $400 million for National Institutes of Health research projects.
And more and more and more pork.
Remember how Democrats argued about how much money George Bush and a Republican-led Congress blew? Is this merely an attempt to regain the tax-and-spend title?
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District's board of directors voted 15-1 to charge companies 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide they emit, an agency spokeswoman said.
Experts say the fees, which cover nine counties in the Bay Area, are the first of their kind in America. The new rules are set to take effect July 1.
The modest fee probably will not be enough to force companies to reduce their emissions, but backers say it sets an important precedent in combating climate change and could serve as a model for regional air districts nationwide.
"It doesn't solve global warming, but it gets us thinking in the right terms," said Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
Of course, as anyone knows, fees imposed for doing business aren't really borne by the businesses. Those fees are passed through to customers or the business goes under.
I hate to reference the same blog twice in the same day, but this post at Echidne of the Snakes gives me a chance to both agree with her and disagree.
The part I agree with is that there is a certain degree of sexism involved in Dancing with the Stars. It is, after all, a program geared around ballroom dancing, an activity with very strict gender roles. So, the charge that different things are expected from the men and the women on the show are correct.
Echidne referenced this article to bolster the sexism argument, then makes a note that, perhaps, the largely female audience votes for the men because they are cuter.
Now Echidne admits up front that she's never seen the show. Unfortunately for her, this is a case where not following a program means not really knowing what you are talking about.
I've watched Dancing with the Stars since about the middle of Season Two, so I probably have a better perspective on why certain people win and other people don't. As I've said, the criticism that the judges are sexist have some validity. There's no doubt that the more visible role of the woman in these dances make them more susceptible to criticism than the men.
But more than just the judging--which only accounts for half the points--is the opinions of viewers, and there is more room for speculation there. My opinion is that visibility and popularity has as much to do with who wins this competition as anything. Many of the women picked for the show have been models or beauty contestant winners. Many of other women contestants were either not as well-known or didn't come out and grab the audience.
In other words, the people who do well in the competition have a combination of technique and fan appeal. Of course, that doesn't explain Billy Ray Cyrus making it to week 8 last season...or maybe it does. In the end, however, it comes down to fan appeal.
In this season, Kristi Yamaguchi was the clear favorite week after week. Her technique was fabulous and she clearly outperformed every other competitor. Moreover, she's a well-known and popular Olymic gold medal winner who remained visible as a professional skater long after leaving the amateur ranks. The combination made Kristi the obvious winner both with the judges and with the fans.
Fans are a notoriously finicky lot, and that is evident on other dance shows, as well. Cuteness may influence some viewers, but charm, talent, technique and personality have as much to do with winning as beef or cheesecake.
Echidne has one of her rather regular posts on why feminists aren't funny, or, rather, why jokes against feminists aren't funny.
To a certain extent, I can understand the point she tries to make: that jokes which victimize some particular subset say more about the speaker than about the subject.
So why are feminists not funny? Or rather: Why is accusing someone of not being able to take a joke a legitimate form of defense? A lot of jokes are boring or contrived or just not very funny. A lot of jokes base the laugh-line on a shared understanding that Other People are stupid. Take the Blonde Jokes, for example. Those jokes are only funny if you really think that women with fair hair are very stupid people. I might not laugh at them for a very personal reason, a reason which has nothing to do with my sick sense of humor. Or its absence. Or hair color.
Can funniness be analyzed and understood? Probably not in the sense of creating a formula that would always work, and the very work of doing so would be extremely unfunny. But all humor depends on surprise. How that surprise is delivered varies, and different folks laugh at different sources of surprise: slapstick, situational comedy, word puns, story jokes and so on.
The surprise is needed. It also needs to trigger the laughter reaction. Why feminists don't find certain surprises funny is for the same reason that you throwing a cake in my face might make me surprised in a way not conducive to laughter. You, on the other hand, might get a nice belly laugh out of that. At least until you have figured out what happens to people who throw cakes in the faces of goddesses. Burp.
It was interesting that she should bring up pies in the face, considering that it is the method of attack liberals like to use to silence conservative speakers. I can agree with her there that pies in the face are, indeed, not funny. They are designed to be insulting.
Echidne usually complains about female and/or feminist jokes because there is a stereotype of feminists as not funny. But that's largely because of the strident tone of much of feminist writing. So, for example, this Jonah Goldberg column from 2002 in which he explains why feminists aren't funny is exactly why she complains about feminists not being "humorous" today.
What studies and polls do show is that most young women don't want to be called "feminists." Why? Because the term has become synonymous with "unreasonable ideologue," "chronic complainer," "crypto-lesbian," and perhaps most of all, "humorless toothache of a human being."
This annoys professional feminists to no end — but then again, what doesn't? Their main gripe is the ingratitude of young women who "betray" the cause of the "founding sisters" who brought us so much. When you read feminist junk — and most of it is, quite simply, junk — there's a lot of guilt mongering about "continuing the revolution" and "finishing the work of our foremothers." But, the unfinished work invariably involves such picayune and marginal issues as "transgender equality" and homosexual adoption. Insisting these are the same issues as women's suffrage doesn't make it so. This desperation to infuse the cause with new passion is the chief reason feminists are so humorless. Because there are so few specific meaningful issues, all sorts of minor or nonexistent issues get injected with outsized and outlandish meaning. See the letter Ramesh received yesterday for example. Make a joke about women or use the word "chick" in the wrong company, and you will likely receive a barrage of dragon breath about how "the degradation of women is no laughing matter!" You will be educated on the great chain of oppression, which begins with a dumb-blond joke and ends in female circumcision in Africa.
Are there jokes one group or another will find offensive? Sure. That's why I don't watch The Daily Show or Stephen Colbert. But I don't think funniness is necessarily tied to Otherness or putting down some other groups. Some jokes are just funny.
On Dec. 5, 2007, Ethan, represented by counsel, appeared for a school disciplinary hearing on charges he "forcibly pressed his knuckles against [the] scalp" of a teacher on two occasions and violated the academic code of conduct by entering his former middle school without permission.
Terence E. Smolev, a partner in the Mineola, N.Y., firm of Forchelli, Curto, Schwartz, Mineo, Carlino & Cohn, presided over the hearing.
According to Phelan's decision, on Nov. 2, 2007, during a school-sponsored basketball game, Ethan approached his former teacher, Sharon Cantante and "forcibly pressed his knuckles against her scalp, grinding them into her scalp and causing her pain."
Evidently, the student did this a second time, which is when the suspension was put into place. Nine months seems like a lot for a noogie, but this kid definitely had some boundary issues.
Ed Morrissey has a great column at Hot Air regarding Barack Obama's shifting positions on Iran.
Last summer, especially during the YouTube debate, Obama railed against the Bush administration policy, with “failed” being about the kindest term he could muster. Now, however, he has adopted the Bush policy towards Iran in toto. No talks with Iran until they end their nuclear-weapons programs, progressively tougher sanctions until they comply with international non-proliferation regulations and UN Security Council resolutions — that is exactly what the Bush administration has done since 2003. What prompted this turn towards neocon policy? Obama can’t shake the consequences of his answer during that July debate and the promise of unconditional direct presidential-level talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the first year of his presidency. Even our allies, even those who thought Bush to be too hard line on Iran, don’t see what this would accomplish, other than boosting the prestige of Ahmadinejad and the mullahcracy’s hard-liners and further entrenching them in Iran. As John McCain put it yesterday, what exactly will Obama negotiate with Ahmadinejad? The destruction of Israel’s “stinking corpse”, or their grievances about the falsity of the Holocaust?
The moonbatosphere is filled with arguments that Obama's "quick response" shows how engaged he is on foreign policy. What it really shows is that Obama recognizes how stupid his original let's-negotiate-with-terrorists-and-radicals policy was.
I think they want Obama to win the White House and the Dems to have strong control on the Hill. (Emphasis hers)
For the record, I'll state right now that I don't want the Democrats to own Congress and the presidency at the same time because they'll consider this a mandate for all their batshitty ideas from the war in Iraq to domestic spending to taxes to judges.
Some are arguing why we should vote for John McCain over Democrats, but the issues have always been clear to me: the war in Iraq is too important to lose and judges will make all the other decisions we care about. Those two reasons alone make it imperative that John McCain hold the veto pen over Democrat looniness.
Spaulding and a lot of other liberals overestimate the thinking of the GOP leadership at this point. I can't see any great "plan" to revive the Republican name brand at this point. Part of the problem is that most GOP faithful like President Bush and agree with him on a majority of his proposals. That's not to say they haven't protested big government expansions like the prescription drug benefit or revolted against amnesty for illegal aliens, but on issues that matter most to conservatives--taxes, moral issues like embryonic stem cell research, the military, judges--President Bush has been right.
The other part of the problem is that eight years with one president makes the electorate weary and open to even the idiotic ideas espoused by the Left. That's why HopeNChange is the Democrat candidate: it isn't his qualifications, it's the fact that he's not the establishment.
There's also been a lot of talk about Howard Dean's 50 state plan and how effective it has been. What is amazing isn't that Democrats have picked up seats that were considered Republican safehouses, but that the Democrats who have run have been far more conservative--and blue dog--than the Democrats that have been running Congress. This is why Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have been unable to enact any of their nuttiness.
In the end, I'm betting Americans are smart enough not to elect a leftwing radical with little experience and horrible ideas.
I'll admit that Justin Levine was the first blogger to point out that the California Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage was significant mostly because it made homosexuality a suspect classification.
There were many moonbats extolling this portion of the ruling, so Justin shouldn't break his arm patting himself on the back with this one. What I find most interesting is the women who are ecstatic that their sexual orientation is considered a more immutable (if there is such a thing) characteristic than their sex.
Here is a definition of strict scrutiny (the level used by the courts for suspect classifications). "You'd better have a damn good reason for this law and no other way to solve it" is the shortest explanation. Intermediate scrutiny is applied to sex discrimination cases.
In other words, who you sleep with has now been elevated over whether you are male or female. It boggles my mind.
The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory.
The state high court's 4-3 ruling was unlikely to end the debate over gay matrimony in California. A group has circulated petitions for a November ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to block same-sex marriage, while the Legislature has twice passed bills to authorize gay marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed both.
I don't mind if states allow gay marriage provided the voters want it. After all, that is the point of democracy.
Naturally, nutroots hail the decision and seem worried that democracy might still win out.
the initiative to strike down their ruling has already gathered over a million signatures and is just waiting for verification from the Secretary of State before it goes on the November ballot. It's 14 words long, identical to the wording of Prop 22 back in 2000: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." This time, however, it's a constitutional initiative, not a statutory initiative, so if it passes it will be immune to court challenges.
Yeah, it would be a shame if people actually got to determine the laws in this country instead of having judges find hidden meanings all over the place.
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
In a statement, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., shot across the bow: "It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack."
The problem for Obama is that there was no false political attack. If he sees himself in President Bush's statement, maybe the problem is his policy proposal, not the president's speech.
Here's a suggestion: if Obama doesn't like the comparison--even when he wasn't being compared--he could clarify why he thinks negotiating with terrorists and radicals is a good idea!
This vague philosophical good-bye from Anthony McCarthy got me thinking about the way people leave blogging and say their farewells.
I can't tell from this post if McCarthy got booted from this blog, if he needs to focus his attention on real life issues of health or family, or if he's just going to make some money. Certainly, all those are possibilities at Echidne's site, where disagreement will get you banned.
I've never known whether this sort of post is just a nice way of saying "I'm bored" or "Hasta la vista, baby!" Why don't people say what they mean?
17 year old Heather Gillman, a junior at Ponce De Leon High School has won her suit against the school’s principal and the Holmes County School Board. She says the school forbids students from wearing clothing or putting stickers on their books that show support for the fair treatment of gays and lesbians. Gillman says that’s a violation of her First Amendment Rights.
In day two of court, School Board Superintendent Steve Griffin took the stand. He said the District did not restrict homosexual slogans and symbols until they caused a disturbance in school, thus violating School Board policy.
You'd think after nearly 40 years of Tinker that school districts would realize you can't infringe upon students' right to free speech. But maybe after the muddled Bong Hits 4 Jesus case, they don't really get it.
Students still have the right to express themselves, even if the school district disagrees.
Here's just the car for all those Pandagonistas arrogantly sneering at SUV drivers: the smart fortwo. Don't laugh. The promo materials does the best it can at making this car sound attractive: it's zippy. You can parallel park in a snap. Ain't it cute?
Of course, what it's not is family friendly. You aren't getting any car seats in this baby. But then, Amanda Marcotte doesn't want kids and doesn't like you having kids, either.
I wouldn't have minded this little car for my long commute to Dallas when I was doing that, but other than the commute, such a vehicle would be worthless.
While this post of mine was largely about the arrogance and narrow-mindedness liberals display regarding high gas prices and SUVs (they think people bought SUVs for political reasons), a curious side issue concerned families and the number of children each family had. The undercurrent of the conversation was that if people were just smart and didn't have so many damn kids, then a Honda Fit would be plenty big enough.
I have no problem with people who don't want to have kids. If you don't want them, then you better make sure you aren't going to have them. But while some people don't want children, others of us see them as far better investments than the stock market.
Fears were mounting today that almost an entire generation may have been wiped out in the China earthquake as the death toll leapt to at least 20,000.
China's one-child policy, an attempt to curb the nation's soaring population, means the quake will have robbed many families of their only hope of a future.
With thousands caught in school buildings as the quake struck in the middle of Monday afternoon, children are among its most conspicuous victims.
Republicans face a bleak election cycle this fall, so we have to take our jollies where we can find 'em now. That's why I have to giggle at all the anti-woman ranting from the Left regarding Hillary Clinton.
I've spent so much time on lefty blogs (and even my own) being told that I hate women that, I must confess, it's refreshing seeing liberals eating their own. How else to explain the rabid misogyny on display by supposed liberal commenters as well as bloggers and other assorted pundits.
Unfortunately for the left, however, there are those who think organizations dealing with women's reproductive rights should support female candidates. It makes sense on one level. But sense has never been important when leftwing politics are concerned.
So, while I watch the GOP unable to figure out why people are unhappy with the party, I'm enjoying the hypocrisy from the Left concerning racism and sexism. Remember, they'll tell you that Republicans are the bigots and sexists!
Found this video at Echidne of the Snakes, discussing the rampant sexism of the current Democrat campaign.
It's an interesting and thought-provoking commentary. Of course, it doesn't discuss the blatant racism involved in much of Hillary Clinton's appeal, but then, it's a site devoted to feminist politics, so why would race matter?
I've argued for years against the sexism and hatred of women shown by many on the right, but it's interesting watching the same phenomenon from the Left. What it tells me is that the such divides aren't conservative vs. liberal; when you build your party on identity, that's what you get.
There's a term for a certain class of commenter who pretends that they are interested in your arguments and are really just trying to educate the blogger and other commenters: concern troll.
I would say it is almost impossible to be a concern troll poster, but this Amanda Marcotte post comes close. Starting out with a sympathetic pout about those poor SUV owners having to spend 100 bucks to fill up, Amanda then launches into the strangest explanation-sneer I've ever read.
On an individual level, it’s easy to feel superior to people who bought SUVs and are paying for it now. But that’s foolish, because we all rationalize our choices like this, so it was inevitable that a high percentage of people would like SUVs not in spite of their low mileage, but because of the low mileage. Instead of wishing human nature to change, then, I’m going to suggest that the people who exploited this rationalization tendency hold the lion’s share of the blame. For people who wanted to engage in wishful thinking about the relationship between oil and environmental problems, right wing pundits, car companies, and oil companies did all the hard psychological rationalizing work for people. They painted critics as effeminate hippies that are just trying to tell you what to do because they’re sanctimonious and nosy. (That some really are sanctimonious only made the situation worse.) They gave people pseudo-scientific explanations they could latch onto.
Pandagon is tiresome to read most of the time because everything--and I mean everything--is political in nature. So, if you are making hamburger tater tot casserole, it isn't because it's a cheap and filling meal your kids like, it's because evil Republicans like George W. Bush and Satanic radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh told you to.
For the record, I own an SUV. I didn't buy it as a status symbol or because I was making a political statement about gasoline. I bought it because I had three kids (two in car seats) and typically hauled a lot of stuff around that wouldn't fit in, say the Honda Fit referenced in Amanda's post (I love this photo because it tries to make the Fit look like it comfortably seats 5. I guess if you're all anorexic contortionists, maybe, but I dare them to try to load three kids--two in carseats!--into that thing and then survive the drive to soccer practice).
I seriously doubt many other people bought SUVs as fashion statements about their belief that oil would last forever. Most people bought SUVs because their families had more than 1 1/2 people and they needed the room. It's sort of the 21st century equivalent of the station wagon.
None of this changes the fact that gasoline prices hurt when you drive a car or truck that doesn't get good mileage. But, honestly, SUV owners are not victims of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, nor are theyzombies who dragged their rotting limbs into car dealerships to buy gas-guzzlers because a radio show host told them gas would remain 50 centers a gallon forever.
For 20 years, people have talked about the coming high price of gasoline. Well, the price is here and will get worse and guess what? We will all adjust (seems I've made this argument before). We'll drive less, get smaller cars for commutes, use public transportation and/or move closer to jobs we assume we'll have for 10 years. And liberals will still have their snooty noses in the air telling the rest of us how "sorry" they are about high gas prices.
Jeromy Brown, in defending Barack Obama, has argued that it isn't a bad thing for us to meet with our enemies and/or negotiate with them. His examples included China and the Soviet Union.
Of course, one of the big differences between either of those countries and, say, Hamas is that Hamas is a terrorist group. And Hugo Chavez, the fruit running Venezuela, is a nut. But Jeromy thinks it is just fine to negotiate with such people.
That's why I found this pst at JustOneMinute to be so fascinating.
John McCain, in his appearance on Jon Stewart, reprised his observation that Hamas favored Obama.
Barack Obama, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, engaged in a bit of agesim by deploring this "smear" and asserting that John McCain had "lost his bearing".
McCain aide Mark Salter fires back. His gist - a Hamas spokesperson did say exactly that, and has a perfectly good reason to say so - Iran trains and funds Hamas and would welcome the publicity coup of the unconditional meeting with an American President promised by Barack.
Obama may try to soft-pedal his appeal to our enemies, but our enemies know he's no Republican.
I felt obliged to continue the "H" theme in headlines, so forgive my indulgence.
There are people who like to accuse anyone who disagrees with their dogma of drinking to excess, but that question sounds reasonable after reading Jeffrey Feldman's idiotic and paranoid screed about Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos.
For weeks, now, Rush Limbaugh has been trying to incite political violence by giving on-air military-sounding orders, effectively 'commanding' his listeners to wage war against the U.S. electoral system.
The right-wing pundit's 'orders' to his Republican listeners have been clear: vote in the Democratic primaries as a coordinated tactic for sewing division in the opposition party. The goal of such 'chaos,' Limbaugh has stated explicitly, is to foment hatred between different parts of the Democratic Party leading, ultimately, to street riots during the Denver convention.
The ongoing incident raises a serious question:
How does Limbaugh's bid to incite political violence with radio broadcasts differ from previous instances where radio has been used to that end (e.g., Rwanda)? (Emphasis his)
Most Americans would agree that using radio to incite political violence is not only wrong, but the attempt itself represents a massive failure in our democracy. How Limbaugh's broadcasts differ from, say, radio broadcasts that incited violence in Rwanda and Kenya, for example, can help us to understand exactly what Limbaugh was doing and the exact danger it poses.
Yes, the zombies have been commanded by their fearless leader to incite violence. This is the sort of idiocy one gets from people who never listen to Limbaugh's show and are so--dare I say it?--elitist as to think Republicans are the sorts of thugs Democrats have repeatedly revealed themselves to be (think 1968 Democratic National Convention).
Indeed, what has the MSM and lefty bloggers tied in knots is that they can't stop people from voting when, where, and how they want. There was plenty of talk during the election season of 2000 about Democrats crossing party lines and voting in the Republican primary.
What Feldman can't understand is that many Republicans were already crossing party lines before Limbaugh launched Operation Chaos. More to the point, there is no Limbaugh army, nor can he cause or create rioting at the Democrat National Convention. It is Democrats who will be doing the fighting if there is any. And that will be--dare I say this, too?--their choice to do so.
Unlike the left, conservatives don't riot and don't resort to violence to settle electoral differences. Any sane person listening to Limbaugh would know that the violence he's discussed isn't from conservatives. It's that liberals will eat their own.
James Kirchick has an excellent piece at Politico.com on the hypocrisy of the moonbatosphere and liberals in general when it comes to religion.
Open the pages of a liberal magazine or peruse the liberal blogosphere, and you’re bound to come across denunciations of the religious right, if not religion itself. The “reality-based community,” as self-satisfied liberal bloggers call themselves, was a term created in direct response to the “faith-based community,” what the Bush administration called recipients of money from its Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Given the religious right’s use of “faith” to justify hoaxes such as “intelligent design” and the ruinous attempt to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals, the left had good reason to criticize, and sometimes mock, the absurdities that are the inevitable result of religion mixing with politics.
Yet the left, with its healthy skepticism toward religion, has shown itself to be cynically flexible over the past few weeks in response to the utter insanities emitted from the big mouth of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama’s pastor, mentor and friend of 20 years. Suddenly, some liberals have discovered a newfound love for extremists who hide behind the cloth to justify their radical views.
The lunatic remarks made by Wright in videotaped sermons released in March — which, lest there be any doubt that these pearls of wisdom were taken “out of context,” Wright reaffirmed at the National Press Club last week — are indefensible, and it is beyond pedantry to quibble over whether a spirited defense of Louis Farrakhan is more or less offensive than blaming abortion doctors and gays for Sept. 11, 2001, as Jerry Falwell infamously did two days after the terrorist attacks.
But in the warped minds of some on the left, uttering such inanities is not only “understandable,” it’s laudable. That is, of course, if the person alleging that the government created AIDS to kill African-Americans is an aggrieved black man lashing out at the rapacious, capitalist and irredeemably racist United States. Wright, you see, is actually a “patriot” for speaking uncomfortable “truths” about his country.
I've watched with fascination as moonbats have tried to defend Wright's comments as unimportant or just "telling the truth." These same people have tried to tar and feather John McCain for accepting the endorsement of John Hagee, as if, in accepting that endorsement, McCain had spent 20 years in the man's church, gotten married there and had Hagee baptize his children. One can accept an endorsement without embracing every statement from a stranger, can't one? Evidently not to the moral equivalence crowd on the Left.
What's amazing is how far the lefties go to try to excuse bigot Wright's racism and indict the religious right. Yet, as Kilchick notes, the left's hypocrisy when it comes to religion is glaring.
Don Wycliff, former public editor of the Chicago Tribune, was perplexed as to what all the fuss over Wright was about. “I’m trying to figure out what it was that got everybody’s shorts into a twist,” he wrote in Commonweal magazine. (Wycliff’s bewilderment over the reaction to Wright’s lies and hyperbole does not speak well to his skills as an ombudsman.) The double standard some liberals have employed in response to Wright makes one seriously consider their oft-stated preference for rationality, reason and secularism over superstition and prejudice.
I've never seriously questioned their preference for rationality, reason and secularism. Conservatives have always known they are hypocrites willing to excuse any excesses on their side for a price.
I've stated for several months now that I thought Barack Obama would be a harder candidate to beat in the general election than Hillary Clinton. My opinion isn't based on his qualifications; it's based on his race. Or rather, it's based on the way Democrats always play the race card.
My argument was that white voters--specifically, white men--would not be allowed to vote for John McCain (or anyone else, for that matter) based on qualifications (a philosophy that is very white, according to Whoopi Goldberg) because a vote for anyone other than Obama would be seen as racist. You haven't had to look very far to see this play itself out. This white-people-are-racists argument is being used to explain why Hillary Clinton doesn't drop out.
With Clinton posing alongside pioneering Indy speedster Sarah Fisher, there were almost no African-Americans to be seen. Many in the white, working-class crowd were simply not ready to back Barack Obama - for reasons that are disturbing.
Yes, whitey is afraid Obama will lynch 'em, right?
DRJ at Patterico's Pontifications points out that this argument would be more convincing were white people voting for Hillary in the same proportion as black people are voting for Obama (about 9 to 1). Is anyone willing to accuse black people of racism for supporting Obama? Of course not.
I'm not saying that there aren't people who won't vote for a black man. But because some percentage of people do this doesn't mean that every, or even most, of the white people who vote for someone other than Obama are racists.
This election, more than any in recent history, highlights the problems with identity politics. Obama started out saying he wanted to "transcend race," yet his past and his connections speak otherwise. It's perfectly normal that black voters are excited at the prospect of electing someone from their race. Yet women have been told they shouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton solely on her sex. I haven't heard any arguments that not voting for Hillary was sexist. I guess that shows the difference between the sort of discrimination that has taken place in virtually every society and culture on Earth and that that took place in this country during a specific time period.
I don't know about other people, but I watch TV for entertainment, not to get another liberal lecture. I guess that's why I don't watch much regular television.
David Kelley, the creator of Boston Legal (another show I've never watched) decided it was time to rip into the Supreme Court because he doesn't like the fact they won't read shit into the Constitution anymore.
"We went right after them," Kelley acknowledges, asserting that the Supreme Court does not deserve the "hands-off treatment" it usually gets in the media and in political discourse.
The anti-Roberts Court screed, improbably enough, is delivered to the justices to their faces during the episode titled "The Court Supreme." Co-star James Spader, who plays Boston lawyer Alan Shore, lights into the Court as he argues before look-alike justices on behalf of a Louisiana child rapist facing the death penalty. The episode aired just six days after the real Court heard arguments in Kennedy v. Louisiana, an actual child rape/death penalty case.
A sample of the rhetoric: Shore attacks the "overtly and shamelessly pro-business" Court, and takes a sharp detour from the rape case to slam Justice Antonin Scalia for his seemingly likely support for Exxon Mobil in the case -- also argued recently -- involving punitive damages awarded after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. "Nineteen years after the Valdez oil spill and the plaintiffs are still waiting to be fully compensated," Shore says.
When the Scalia character interjects sharply, "You are getting so far off point," Shore shoots back: "My point is, who are you people? You've transformed this court from being a governmental branch devoted to civil rights and liberties into a protector of discrimination, a guardian of government, a slave to monied interests and big business and today, hallelujah, you seek to kill a mentally disabled man."
The law.com story takes a light-hearted angle at this liberal claptrap, rather than pointing out its insulting nature. I question whether liberals like Kelley would approve of television shows that had conservatives lecturing Warren Burger on his despicable court's ruling in Roe v. Wade. I guess Shore wouldn't have had a problem with any of that, though.
You won't find this info at the moonbat sites, but ExxonMobil--you know, one of those spawn-of-Satan oil producers?--paid $30 billion in taxes for 2007.
Over the last three years, Exxon Mobil has paid an average of $27 billion annually in taxes. That's $27,000,000,000 per year, a number so large it's hard to comprehend. Here's one way to put Exxon's taxes into perspective.
According to IRS data for 2004, the most recent year available:
Total number of tax returns: 130 million
Number of Tax Returns for the Bottom 50%: 65 million
Adjusted Gross Income for the Bottom 50%: $922 billion
Total Income Tax Paid by the Bottom 50%: $27.4 billion
Conclusion: In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).
Bookmark this for the next time moonbats scream that corporations don't pay their "fair share."
He sees an ill omen for Republicans in the fall in the losses of Denny Hastert's seat and the Republican loss in Louisiana. He also points to polls that show Democrats with a lead on virtually every issue, and that McCain's popularity is based on his difference from standard Republicans. He goes on to suggest several ways Republicans can revive their brand name.
I happen to agree with Gingrich that it is time for Republicans to come up with some fresh faces and new ideas, ideas that show an interest in the issues and views of today's voters. For me, that includes an interest in conservation and renewable energy as well as new oil exploration. It includes different approaches to health care, and a willingness to tell people the hard truth: if you want something better, don't look to the government to give it to you. Create it yourself.
Gingrich supports some stupendously stupid ideas. Repeal the gas tax? Make English the official language? Come on. These ideas won't solve our problems and, in fact, will only make some of them worse. I'm not for pardoning illegal immigrants, but I don't see that making English our official language will help anything.
Some of his ideas are intriguing, but I don't know enough about them to know if they are worth it. For example, overhauling the Census Bureau sounds like a good idea. And a GPS-style air traffic control system seems interesting. But I don't think those ideas would help win in November.
One issue Republicans can win on is judges. Most Americans dislike the heavy-handed liberalism that was so prevalent in previous courts. They don't like the end-run liberals do around the legislature in order to get their way without a debate. Pointing out the way the Roberts court has successfully stymied the liberal assault on individual rights will resonate with many Americans.
Posting will probably be pretty light for the next 16 weeks. I'm in a training course for work that includes all-day classes and some pretty intense homework. Sometimes, you just gotta concentrate to get stuff done.
One of the things I had to watch today was a film called Diversity Diner. The preachiness of the film is typical for workplace diversity films, including the stereotypical fat white guy unwilling to value diversity for the goody goodness it is!
I couldn't help but think about the way diversity and diversity education isn't nearly as benign as its promoters like to pretend it is. While watching the film, I thought about how diversity and tolerance, its twin, are used to bludgeon people into accepting all sorts of ideas and to consider all ideas and philosophies to be equally good. This is patently false, of course, but that's the real message one gets from these reeducation films: we're all good, just different. Value our differences. Other people's ideas and beliefs are just as good as yours.
Part of what makes this system so insidious is the feel-good nature of such talk. Can't we all just get along? The problem with it is that not every idea deserves to be treated equally. Some ideas and beliefs are just flat out wrong. Preventing well-qualified people from buying a house they can afford in a neighborhood they like is wrong. Silencing people with views you dislike is wrong. Imprisoning women for showing their ankles is wrong. And telling people that everybody's viewpoints hold equal value is wrong.
Liberals like the mantra of diversity and tolerance because it helps them advance their governmental control agenda while painting anyone who disagrees as a heartless bigot.
Let's take health insurance as an example. Liberals will tell you that single payer health systems are better than ours because they are fairer. How are they fairer? I guess it's that everyone gets the same crappy health care. And taxpayers get the bill for a system which becomes increasingly unworkable (witness the U.K.'s NHS). Many Americans may say they want single payer health care, but what they really want is the same sort of health care available now, but without the bills. It won't happen, of course. We'll all get worse care, particularly as we get older. Oh, and rich people will still be able to get better care because the rich always can afford better whatever, no matter the system.
I've spent a great deal of time complaining about the system we have. It has some enormous problems, but that doesn't mean a single payer system would be better. On its most basic level, such a system takes away the individual choice of health care. Liberals argue that the poor don't have choices, but, in fact, the poor also don't have to go without health care. Virtually every place in the U.S. has some form of charity hospital and the poor also have Medicaid. And as for all the people without health insurance, many opt out of the insurance system. Very few are uninsurable, and those who are uninsurable are usually eligible for some state health insurance. In other words, even people like me, who dislike the system we have, can get insurance of some sort.
The problem is that liberals like to turn such debates into a referendum on emotion. It's not fair. You must be hateful, selfish, whatever. But there are just some ideas that don't deserve equal time with others. That's what they won't teach you in diversity class.
Fewer issues get more strawmen thrown up about it than abortion. Now comes this ad from the National Institute for Reproductive Health, a branch of the former National Abortion Rights Action League. Watch the construction:
Where to begin? Well, to start with, John McCain has been inconsistent (to put it politely) on his opinion of Roe v. Wade. In an attempt to increase is credibility with conservatives, McCain has argued for about a year that Roe should be overturned. Previously, he had supported Roe. Frankly, I don't know if he supports it or not.
But the worst part of this ad is the strawman built up that if Roe were overturned, women would go to jail. This is just an outright lie. States have laws against physicians performing abortions, not against women seeking or even obtaining them. It's disingenuous for pro-abortion sorts to use this type of scare tactic to try to get women not to vote for McCain.
As usual, the most interesting information is in the comments.
That’s rigt. Make abortions illegal and you’ll see more deaths caused by shady people. A study in Norway by one of the leading papers showed that almost all abortions was performed due to poverty. People with adequate income have an option, poor people don’t.
This argument ignores the big hole in its center. Studies in this country on why women get abortions list plenty of reasons, but most of those reasons amount to convenience ("it's not a good time for me," usually leads the way). Pro-abortion supporters lump a whole variety of answers into the "women would be poor" category, including "I'm in school" and "it would hinder my advancement at work." These aren't really arguments that these women are poor. They are arguments that having a baby would be inconvenient.
This is one of the reasons I always ask pro-abortion people if they consider sterilization. Most of the time, the moonbats are shocked and horrified that I would make the suggestion, but, as I point out, if having a child would truly and irrepairably harm this woman, you would think she would take the most logical steps to avoid ever, ever, ever getting pregnant: abstinence and/or sterilization. There are problems with sterilization; mainly that many doctors will not perform that procedure on anyone under about 30. I think an adult woman should be able to opt for a tubal at 21 if that's what she wants. That's real choice.
But no, most pro-abortion supporters act as though women don't have any choice in becoming pregnant. Either they are a victim of circumstance or a victim of failed birth control. The fact is, except in the case of rape, women have control at the very basic level: they can refrain.
Amanda Marcotte argues that this is the "sex is no fun" argument levelled by people who don't like sex. But that's not true. It's the "pregnancy is your responsibility" argument. Every person decides for themselves how much of a risk pregnancy is and whether the fun is worth it. It's just that people who are pro-life don't consider babies to be expendable.
Now for another silly comment.
Excellent ad. Says just enough in just the right way. No woman wants an abortion, but some woman have no choice. We did not fight for this right back in the sixties to have to keep on fighting in the 21st century. A woman’s body doesn’t belong to the state - it belongs to her.
This comment is wrong, as well. As I mentioned way back in 2006, there are plenty of women who wouldn't say they didn't want an abortion.
CourtneyMD: What the fundies fail to realize is that all abortions are obtained for the exact same reason: because the woman chooses not to carry the pregnancy.
Everything else is merely a circumstance: a circumstance of conception (rape, incest, birth control failure); a circumstance of finances, future plans, relationship, personal health, family completion, etc; a circumstance of embryonic health/viability. A circumstance is merely a set of attendant conditions. Circumstances change, but the basic motivational driver does not: this particular pregnancy is simply not worth the risks and burdens.
Cycles: In the charts above, I don’t see a category for "I don’t like kids." Oh the horror. I don’t like kids. I’m not "Not ready for a(nother) child/the timing is wrong." I’ll never be "ready." The "timing" will always be wrong.
I also don’t see a category for "There are already too many damn kids on the planet."
Just browse any abortion thread on Pandagon or any feminist site and you will get dozens of women who didn't mind at all having an abortion. In other words, for those women, there was no tragedy or pain. It was a 20 minute procedure.
More comments:
Here is the real issue: Who is going to adopt the flood of unwanted children that will occur due to a repeal of Roe vs. Wade. The rich including the religious right wing rich will ship their pregnant daughters off to Europe for an abortion - who is going to adopt the unwanted black or Latino babies? No one in the burbs so let’s just have that child grow up in a ghetto and be abused and have their best job opportunity be prostitution or selling drugs. When are the blue collar folks going to wake up?
This commenter should read Pandagon. Then he/she would know, as Amanda does, that pro-lifers just want more white babies for adoption. And note the slippery slope that if black and Latino babies are born, they will automatically end up criminals and gang bangers.
In general, this ad will attract only people who are pro-abortion--and thus, unlikely to vote for John McCain--in the first place. The "they want women to go to jail" meme has become the argument du jour from this crowd on why Roe should remain the law of the land.
But Roe is horrible, incoherent and illogical. Don't just take my word for it. There are plenty of liberals and scholars and justices who have criticized the decision on a variety of fronts, including that in usurping state power to regulate abortion, it created the modern pro-life movement. More than even the moral problems I have with abortion, this is my main objection to the liberal predisposition to using the courts to decide what should be legislative debates: it makes popular opinion irrelevant and deprives us of the sort of persuasive debate that should be conducted. And that really is a crime.
Some stories of the state taking kids for their own good make sense. Parents who participate in physical, sexual or emotional abuse, cruelty, or neglect make sense. But as I've said before, the state doesn't seem to use common sense when it comes to snatching children from parents.
We've already discussed the woman sent to jail for hugging a child, and for the case regarding parental alienation syndrome. Now comes the lemonade case.
And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.
The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.
Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.
Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with the Stars" -- or even the History Channel, for that matter.
A couple of questions came to mind. First, why didn't the guy selling the drinks say something when the man gave his son the hard lemonade? This is, of course, assuming he gave it to him at the concession stand, not terribly unlikely, but possible.
The second one is why did the state determine a parent can't do this? It's my understanding that parents can serve their children alcohol (beer, wine) but that they are responsible for the underage drinker's behavior. In other words, the laws against minors drinking is largely designed so that parents are responsible for when and whether their children drink. Is this just not true anymore?
I understand the guard taking the drink from the kid. But according to the story, the kid was taken to the emergency room where he was given a blood alcohol test which showed he had no alcohol in his system. And the state still took the child away from his parents. Worse yet, the system stuck the child in foster care with strangers, even after telling the parents qualified relatives could take the child while the investigation continued.
It looks like it took about a week for the boy to be returned to his parents. I have to wonder what went on with this child while he was in custody and what he thought was going to happen. Did he think he'd ever see his parents again? Did anyone explain the charges to him, which would have probably made the situation worse? Will there be any long-term affects on this child in relation to his parents or authorities?
Don Duquette, a U-M law professor who directs the university's Child Advocacy Law Clinic, represented Ratte and his wife. He notes sardonically that the most remarkable thing about the couple's case may be the relative speed with which they were reunited with Leo.
Duquette says the emergency removal powers of CPS, though "well-intentioned" are "out of control and partly responsible for the large numbers of kids in the foster care system," which is almost universally acknowledged to be badly overburdened.
CPS has frequently gotten a bad rap for not moving quickly enough in child abuse cases. It seems to me, however, that CPS usually ends up taking children from households where they feel they will get the least (physical) resistence; in other words, from families who think the system works rather than those who fight.
The state has become a bully when it comes to dictating how, when and where parents raise their children. There's no doubt parents make errors, sometimes terrible ones. But the harm done by an overzealous government is far worse.
I know. It's a shocking revelation. You certainly wouldn't know it by reading some blogs. But via Newsbusters, we have the words of Salon editor Joan Walsh confirming what we knew:
I was struck when I got to Iowa and New Hampshire in January by how our media colleagues were just swooning over Barack Obama. That is not too strong a word. They were swooning. I was at a speech, I remember it, I will write about it some day, in Manchester, and every, the biggest names in our business were there, and they were, they could repeat some of his speech lines to one another. It was like a Bruce Springsteen concert where the fans sing along. And, you know, I respected it to some extent. He's a towering political figure. Of our generation, he's probably the best politician, he's inspiring. And, reporters, white reporters, black reporters, reporters of every race, we want to get beyond racism in America. So, he was, he was inspiring, I understood it, they're humans, they responded. The downside though is that they hate, hate Hillary Clinton, most of them. Hate is not too strong a word.
It's refreshing when journalists actually admit to their own biases, not because we didn't know it, but because there's hope for objectivity.
We've heard a lot about John McCain's legendary temper (see here,here, and here for examples over the years). Now, Michelle Obama is warning us of her husband's boiling temper.
Mrs Obama told a rally in Durham, North Carolina, on Friday that only her husband's desire to change US politics had helped him to control his feelings: "Barack is always thinking three steps ahead – what do we need to do to make change..."
In contrast with the Clintons, Mrs Obama said: "We were taught that you don't rip your opponents to pieces, you don't leave them on the roadside."
Really? I guess Obama doesn't think lying--er, mischaracterizing John McCain's positions is "ripping" opponents to pieces.
Personally, I don't care if either of them is hot-headed or uses spicy language in arguments. I don't think anyone is more likely to start a nuclear war because they like four-letter words, and I don't think refraining from it makes someone better at handling policy. But if we need to have a national debate about temperament, then let's include the ashtray-throwing Hillary Clinton and "boiling" Obama.
If Obama is as his wife says he is — impatient and angry — then he is far younger than his 46 years would indicate. And that presents a problem for the nation. Youth has many things to offer. Sound judgment and patience are not among them.
That's the message Bill Cosby is trying to send regarding problems within the black community.
"You´ve got these idiots who´ve got these degrees and some of them are ordained ministers and they say, `Bill, you´re picking on the poor,´" he said. He then drew laughs by adding, "Well, so did Jesus then. Jesus was always telling someone, `Go ye.´ Jesus was always telling people to go somewhere. And `don´t do this again or don´t do that again.´"
Wearing a sweater with a Yale University logo in honor of Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker, a Yale Law School graduate, Cosby saved some of most pointed words for radio stations that play music that he called "pro-murder and anti-women" and said adults are equally complicit if they fail to speak up.
"I haven´t seen the demonstrations saying, `I´m not allowing my children to listen to this," he said. "It´s killing us. We´re not talking about it, and we´re not beating it down."
Cosby is right, of course. The problems within the black community have as much to do with individual behavior as with institutional racism. But, let's face it; it's far easier to blame some societal ill on "institutional" rather than individual behavior.
This is a solution many liberals espouse on virtually a daily basis. And if you don't go along with whichever governmental solution they are touting these days, then you are just a heartless jerk who doesn't "feel the pain" of the poor or racial minorities.
Remember the War on Poverty? That series of taxpayer-supported programs was supposed to eliminate poverty in America. We've spent billions of dollars for 40-odd years on programs, yet moonbats are still shrieking about "the bottom 20%" of American households. When you point out that in any formula, there has to be a "bottom 20%" and that the "bottom 20%" of American households aren't poor by global standards, liberals sniffily complain that we still need to redistribute money because it's not "fair."
That's the argument Obama used when asked April 16 about capital gains taxes. Even while backpedaling on his proposal, it's clear Obama thinks, somehow, top earners will blithely fork over larger and larger portions of their income without trying to control the tax bite.
But I digress.
Bill Cosby's been denegrated by the left for speaking the unthinkable words that parents are in charge of their children and that many of the problems associated with the black community are based on a culture of victimhood. There are plenty of racial minorities who have found ways to succeed despite racism. Looking for excuses elsewhere is counterproductive.
Lefty bloggers have been having a field day over John McCain's statement that the war in Iraq has been about oil. While moonbats think wars for resources are somehow more evil than wars for independence or human rights or self-preservation (they don't approve of those either), I've never thought trying to prevent bullies from controlling the most valuable resource on earth is a terrible thing. But that's my personal opinion.
National defense and foreign affairs are supposed to be John McCain’s strong suits, so he should know this. That he gave the answer he did will allow his opponents to score some cheap political points, but the real problem is that his answer might reflect the same shallow thinking of those opponents.
I agree with Karl. I'm all for energy independence in the U.S., and I think that will only become a reality when we become less dependent on oil and find alternative choices. McCain's statements sound more like pandering to independents and centrists. People voting for McCain want him to be strong on defense and not wanting to decrease our influence in the Middle East. This sort of statement doesn't support that and calls into question his military chops.
Andrew Sullivan has a post on this e-mail he received from a young Obama supporter. Frankly, it sounds like 20-somethings of every generation bashing the old folks.
What the old farts might want to consider is that these young people who have no particular vested interest in the current system might be seeing the rot much more clearly than the fogeys who have been entangled in it for decades. And the mature folk might want to accept that the burden of proof is on them to show why such a viscerally disgusting political game is worth playing.
I came from a family in which not voting wasn't an option. My father would pester each of us on Election Day until we trotted down to the polling place and performed our civic duty. It wasn't so much who we voted for that mattered. What mattered was that we took advantage of the voting process, something generations of soldiers like him made possible.
That's why I've always rolled my eyes when I hear or read childish rock-throwing like in the Sullivan post. It's always easy to argue how "unfair" the system is when you are too young to be affected by the system. That is, you haven't worked hard, succeeded, and then been wallopped with tax bills because some liberal decided "you can afford it."
I've been surprised at the amount of whining that Obama isn't getting a fair shake, just because he's spent the last six weeks having to answer questions from reporters who weren't drooling over him. These same people didn't mind Hillary Clinton getting grilled in debates or John McCain getting smeared by imaginary scandals in the New York Times. Yet, seemingly, it is unfair to ask Obama questions that are similarly intrusive. I have two words for young, ardent followers of the Obamessiah: grow up.
Well, six weeks later, and we haven't gotten over it. In fact, Obama's image has slipped, and my bet is that it's not over yet.
Democratic voters are not as positive about Barack Obama as they were a month ago. Somewhat smaller percentages of Democrats describe Obama in favorable terms, and he has lost his lead over Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination. Nationally, Democratic voters are about evenly divided between Obama and Clinton; Obama holds a slight 47% to 45% edge. In late March, the Illinois senator held a 49% to 39% lead over his New York rival.
The tightening Democratic race reflects a modest but consistent decline in Obama's personal image rather than improved impressions of Clinton. Fewer Democrats ascribe positive qualities to Obama than did so a month ago, with white working-class Democrats, in particular, expressing more skeptical views of the Illinois senator. Since late February, his unfavorable rating has risen six points among all Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters. At the same time, Clinton's unfavorable rating among Democratic voters also has increased by seven points.
Compared with a month ago, race and class are now bigger drivers of preferences in the Democratic contest. Obama has lost ground among whites - especially white working-class voters - who now prefer Clinton by an even larger margin than they did in late March. Her lead among whites who did not attend college has increased from 10 points in March to 40 points today, and her lead among white Democrats who earn less than $50,000 a year has increased from two points to 24 points. Clinton has taken a 10-point lead among white male Democratic voters - erasing Obama's advantage with the group - and she now runs better among Democrats under age 50 than she had previously.
This is a combination of the bigot Wright effect and Bittergate. Sure, there are still some moonbats out there trying to say Obama's not an elitist, but his base isn't the beer and pretzel crowd. Call it "Son of What's the Matter With Kansas?"
These aren't voters that are going to vote for Obama in a general election. Ok, some portion of these guys will vote for Obama because they're yellow dog Democrats. But a lot of them will see Obama as the elitist and radical he is and those people will vote for McCain.
You gotta hand it to liberals. They forget inconvenient facts and sweep tragedy under the rug when they think it helps their arguments. After all, that's what's come out of this thread where Jeromy Brown said:
Vietnam eventually sorted itself out, on its own, and does pretty well for itself nowadays.
In Vietnam, the new communist government sent many people who supported the old government in the South to "re-education camps", and others to "new economic zones." An estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials.[1] 165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps, according to published academic studies in the United States and Europe.[1] Thousands were abused or tortured: their hands and legs shackled in painful positions for months, their skin slashed by bamboo canes studded with thorns, their veins injected with poisonous chemicals, their spirits broken with stories about relatives being killed.[1] These factors, coupled with poverty, caused millions of Vietnamese to flee the country.
I guess that was just part of "sorting itself out."
It's too bad Jeromy couldn't shut his mouth while he was behind. But that's not his style. So, he continued this way:
And yes, Vietnam is better off today than during the ten years of the war. Yes, there was some bloodshed and fleeing at first, but 3-4 million people in the region died during the war. You idiots on the right grousing about how we coulda won it never talk about how many more millions would have needed to die to get your way. You're just stuck on your talking points about the minor fallout after the end of the war.
Somehow, I doubt that the boat people who came here, on top of all the people who died or were tortured by the Communists in Vietnam would call what happened to them a "minor fallout." And this isn't even talking about the severe restrictions communist regimes impose on their citizens. I guess we know which side Jeromy Brown is on when it comes to individual liberties.
I remember squeezing five bucks worth of gasoline in my 1967 Volkswagen Beetle.
I remember thinking it was scandalous when gasoline hit 50 cents a gallon. And $1 a gallon. And $2 a gallon...
Today, I paid $3.65 for gas at a station in Dallas.
I had a discussion a few weeks ago with a friend of mine who is into environmentalism (personally and professionally). She told me that people would start changing their consumption habits when gasoline hit $5 a gallon. I thought it would have to go higher than that, but now I have my doubts. Even at $3.65, it's painful when I have to fill up twice a week.
A gas tax holiday proposed by U.S. presidential hopefuls John McCain and Hillary Clinton is viewed as a bad idea by many economists and has drawn unexpected support for Clinton rival Barack Obama, who also is opposed.
As painful as it is to discover I agree with Barack Obama on anything, I do agree with him here. Unless the gas tax were repealed permanently, this sort of gimmick would only inflict greater pain later. And such a repeal would do nothing for state gasoline taxes, which can be as bad or worse than the federal tax.
Arguments on how to bring down the price of gas vary nearly as much as religious faiths. Personally, I don't actually expect prices to come down much no matter what we do because energy consumption is global and India and China will suck up whatever we don't. It seems to me that this would be a good time for all three candidates to spend more time talking about the range of alternatives for energy as opposed to rolling out gimmicks.
Among my saddest moments as a career counselor is when I hear a story like this: "I wasn't a good student in high school, but I wanted to prove that I can get a college diploma. I'd be the first one in my family to do it. But it's been five years and $80,000, and I still have 45 credits to go."
I have a hard time telling such people the killer statistic: Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education and now a senior research associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Yet four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!
Even worse, most of those college dropouts leave the campus having learned little of value, and with a mountain of debt and devastated self-esteem from their unsuccessful struggles. Perhaps worst of all, even those who do manage to graduate too rarely end up in careers that require a college education. So it's not surprising that when you hop into a cab or walk into a restaurant, you're likely to meet workers who spent years and their family's life savings on college, only to end up with a job they could have done as a high-school dropout.
Such students are not aberrations. Today, amazingly, a majority of the students whom colleges admit are grossly underprepared. Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million high-school graduates of 2007 who took the ACT examination were ready for college-level work in the core subjects of English, math, reading, and science.
Perhaps more surprising, even those high-school students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to six years (or more) it takes to graduate. Research suggests that more than 40 percent of freshmen at four-year institutions do not graduate in six years. Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that's terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they'd still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound — they're brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections.
My parents were determined that their children would all attend college (two out of the three of us graduated and I have an advanced degree) because, at the time, college-educated adults held better jobs and had more job security. Unfortunately, neither of those things can be said these days. White collar jobs are just as likely to be eliminated or sent overseas as manufacturing jobs. This joke:
The engineer looks at an idea and asks "How will it work?" The accountant looks at it and asks "How much will it cost?" The businessman looks at it and asks "How do we sell it?" The liberal arts grad looks at it and asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
is unfortunately quite true.
Nemko offers a series of suggestions for making a college diploma worth more, but I'm skeptical. I've sworn there will be no liberal arts majors (no communications, no art, no French, etc.) out of my brood. It's fine if they like school and studying new things; they can do that once they can support themselves.
"She’s that sad creature called the sister punisher/colluder---a woman who hopes that if she hates women even more than the men in her life, she gets to be “better” than other women. A fool, in other words, unaware that the sexist men she loves so much think she’s a joke." -- Amanda Marcotte
"You really are one of the biggest pricks I've encountered on the web" -- Jeromy Brown
"You’re a cartoon caricature of the Limbaugh ditto-head" --Mike G
"You are a sadist, a fool, *and* a liar" -- Phoenicians in the Time of Romans
"Yours is the mark of an absolutist who is never wrong, always right" -- Perry
