Savage Republican

We all knew it would happen sooner or later-and that history repeats itself.
We now hear all the screaming and yelling about “windfall profits”, the need for “Congressional investigations on price gouging” with oil at $75/bbl. And the lefties and neocons (who are seemingly the lefties brother separated at birth) are shrieking that they ALL know exactly how to solve this:
GWB is going to speak at “Ethanol Incorporated” (despite all the evidence that ethanol is more expensive than oil, causes food prices to raise, damages engines, etc.) and today he calls for a “hybrid car initiative” despite evidence and more evidence that hybrids are also failures.
And of course, to show that Denny Hastert is an unapologetic Stalinist collectivist acolyte of Cynthia McKinney and Harry Reid, he attempts to verbally bayonet a retired Exxon executive saying that people are starving. And why you may ask, according to Kamerad Hastert, are they having such difficulties? Because, as Kamerad Hastert says- Exxon,a private corporation, decided to pay this retired executive a certain amount-that Kamerad Hastert feels is “unconscionable!” Yah, Kamerad Hastert, and judging by your comments (that seemingly are in direct violation of your oath of office…uphold the Constitution, minor things like that) the evidence of your having a conscience is remote at best. Sounds like you’re taking the side of the proletariat against the bourgeois there Kamerad Denny. “The speaker is very concerned about compensation packages given to executives like Raymond at a time when families are facing choices between putting food on the table and filling their car with gasoline,”…”We met with Exxon Mobil and several companies last fall, and it seems that the message hasn’t gotten through.” That is a REAL scary statement from the elected official of what once was a constitutional republic called The United States. Reminds me of the statement from California Attorney General saying that he would like to escort Ken Lay of Enron to prison to be raped . And he then goes on to say ““Having a profit is good. We believe in that as Republicans,” Bonjean said. “But when you’re making this kind of money and American families are being affected, there should be appropriate things done to bring prices down. We’re going to be asking them again: What are they doing with their enormous profits?”Yah-like YOU guys know what to do with money. Exxon pays top dollar to people they believe can manage a company to find more oil so it can sell more oil to people who want to buy to make more money for it’s shareholders, Mr. Bojean- Duh! It’s called (pay close attention now, Mr. Bojean) CAPITALISM-IN-A-FREE-MARKET. Not the type of “you’d better spend your money the way WE want you to” Central Planning that has been SO successful everywhere it’s been tried. Oh, and this little tidbit and this (compliments of Captain Ed-and be sure to read all the comments, especially the one from New Orleans) from Katrina Cleanup. So, now that we’ve proven that you twits in Congress are idiots with guns (with your implied threats) and that you have no clue as to how the real world works. Mr. Bojean-SHUT UP!
And of course, there is absolutely NO mention by any of these Marxists Lite of reducing the federal tax load on the buyers of gasoline. Nope. And in the article we have a Treasury official John Snow saying “High energy prices — including prices at the pump — act like a tax on the American economy,”and never even hints at the fact that there are REAL taxes that don’t act like taxes-they ARE taxes. And that the Feds and states get over 250% more in taxes ( or even up to 600% more, which is also pure revenue/”profit” for the government) than the oil companies get in revenue. And the oil companies do something to earn that profit. The government just sits there and sucks it up.
The above Washington Post article just screams that the modern Repubs have absolutely lost all their bearings and no longer have any discernible differences from the lefties. Of whom they sound just like.

From the Washington Times:
“Fire departments are using Homeland Security grants to buy gym equipment, sponsor puppet and clown shows, and turn first responders into fitness trainers. The spending choices are allowable under the guidelines of the Assistance to Firefighters grant administered by the Homeland Security Department, which has awarded nearly 250 grants since February totaling more than $25 million out of the current spending pot of $545 million.” (Washington Times, Friday).
If this were only an isolated case.
And we warned you that taking a number of agencies and making them one big agency would NOT be more efficient or effective.
And more oversight won’t fix a broken program.
As I modify a quote I remember”The only way to make sure that government never wastes money is to never give it any.”

I’ve written a couple of times now, about the silence of the so-called “womens rights groups” when it came to the rights of women under Islamic regimes and when it comes to the rights of women trapped in sexual slavery. Now we have the story of Imette St. Guillen, a NYC graduate student who was violently raped and murdered after a night of drinking. What this 24 year old graduate student was doing drinking alone at 3am stuns me.

The Wall Street Journal ran this piece that suggests that we women need to be a little more responsible for our own actions (there’s a radical thought!). Rather than depend on platitudes of “a woman should be always able to say no to sex, no matter what” we should depend on our own wisdom – on common sense to keep up safe from harm.

“Perhaps the law of averages says that, with 14 million men in U.S. colleges today, a few of them will be rapists. What to do? For starters: Be wary of drunken house parties.”

It seems like such basic advice. Be wary of drunken house parties. Don’t go out at 3am drunk and alone. Don’t be a victim….and yet every day, young women put themselves in just this kind of situation.

“The odd thing is that feminism may be partly to blame. Time magazine reporter Barrett Seaman explains that many of the college women he interviewed for his book “Binge” (2005) “saw drinking as a gender equity issue; they have as much right as the next guy to belly up to the bar.” Leaving biology aside–most women’s bodies can’t take as much alcohol as men’s–the fact of the matter is that men simply are not, to use the phrase of another generation, “taken advantage of” in the way women are.
Radical feminists used to warn that men are evil and dangerous. Andrea Dworkin made a career of it. But that message did not seem reconcilable with another core feminist notion–that women should be liberated from social constraints, especially those that require them to behave differently from men. So the first message was dropped and the second took over.
The radical-feminist message was of course wrongheaded–most men are harmless, even those who play lacrosse–but it could be useful as a worst-case scenario for young women today. There is an alternative, but to paraphrase Miss Manners: People who need to be told to use their common sense probably didn’t have much to begin with.”

Truer words were never spoken. This may be where feminism has hurt women the most. We have traded our common sense away for “gender equity”. I don’t want to be “equal” to men, I want to be respected by men – there is a very big difference.

Many have stated (a la Al Gore) that global warming today is the greatest problem to ever affect the planet. Some have even taken it to the point that the use a popular childrens movie (Ice Age II: the Meltdown) as a lesson in the dangers of global warming, forgetting that if it were not for global warming, much of this part of continent would still be under glacial ice!

Finally, someone in the media is seeing that maybe this “global warming crisis” is not all it is cracked up to be. The London Telegraph (yeah like we would ever see this in an American news source) ran not one but two articles on the fallacy of global warming. The first brings to light the fact that between 1998 and 2005 the average temperature actually went down slightly!

“For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).” Emphasis mine.

The second even more radically states that the Kyoto protocol is “pointless”.

“They emphasised that the study of global climate change is, in Mr Harper’s own words, an “emerging science” and added: “If, back in the mid 1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.” Despite claims to the contrary, there is no consensus among climate scientists on the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change, they wrote. ” Emphasis again mine.

The bottom line, dear readers, is this. The earth has been around a lot longer that mankind has kept records. Because of this, we just don’t know if this is a long term progression or simply a regular climatic cycle. As such, we should not panic and assume that anything we do or don’t do will have any effect on the climate. Science loves to throw out the “gee aren’t we smart” studies. Unfortunately for the scientists, many of these studies are disproven a few years later. Rushing into pacts like the Kyoto Protocol, which are nothing more than a thinly disguised attack on the “1st world” countries, will do nothing more than cripple the entire world economy. A better plan is needed, one that is fair for all countries in the world.

Earlier this year I commented on how (according to a Star Tribune report) Minnesotans pay the 4th highest tax burden in the country. We know where Governor Pawlenty stands on the issue, but what about the DFLers that want to take his place?

Attorney General Mike Hatch:
“After the speech, Hatch dodged reporters’ questions on issue that might have overshadowed his desired message. He declined to say whether he would raise taxes to pay for his campaign promises, whether he supports a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage or whether he would call a special legislative session to act on proposed baseball and football stadiums.” (Bill Salisbury, “Mike Hatch Makes His Run Official,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, October 25, 2005)

2006: Becky Lourey Advocates Increasing Gas Tax. “Both [Kelly] Doran and [Becky] Lourey voiced support for a gas tax increase like the one Pawlenty vetoed last year. It would have added 10 cents to the 20-cent-a-gallon tax in effect since 1988.” (Conrad deFiebre, “Race For Governor; DFLers Spare Each Other, Saving Barbs For Pawlenty,” Star Tribune, March 8, 2006)
2006: Becky Lourey Claims Minnesotans Tell Her To Raise Their Taxes. “While they offered no specifics on how to pay for education and other state programs, Lourey says many people support a tax increase. ‘As I’ve been campaigning, wealthy Minnesotans have said to me, “please, please, raise our taxes. We believe in public education. We know that it is the melting pot for our state,”‘ Lourey said.” (Laura McCallum, “Hatch Keeping Low Profile As Competitors Score Points At Business Forum,” Minnesota Public Radio, February 8, 2006)

2006: Steve Kelley, Becky Lourey, and Former Candidate Kelly Doran Voice Support For Gas Tax Increase. “Real estate developer Kelly Doran and state Sens. Steve Kelley and Becky Lourey all said they would push to expand coverage and reduce the costs of health care, a mounting problem for many businesses. All said they would accelerate state spending or ‘investment’ on highways and mass transit, and all indicated they would likely approve a gasoline tax increase to relieve what one them called a ‘congestion tax’ on businesses.” (Dane Smith, “3 DFL Candidates Mostly Agree At Business Forum,” Star Tribune, February 9, 2006)

Now we all know where Mark Kennedy stands on the issue, what about his DFL opponents?

Amy Klobuchar And Ford Bell Would Raise Taxes. “Kennedy says he will not support any tax increases. Klobuchar and Bell say they would roll back tax cuts for those making over $200,000 a year to pay for other programs.” (Tom Scheck, “Minnesota U.S. Senate candidates square off in Mounds View debate,” Minnesota Public Radio, March 3, 2006)
Amy Klobuchar And Ford Bell Want To Roll Back Tax Cuts. “But, while Kennedy said the path back to fiscal health is through lower spending and continued lower taxes, the Democrats favored revisiting the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts Bell would repeal them entirely, while Klobuchar would bring back the higher taxation of those earning $200,000 a year or more.” (Patrick Condon, “Senate Candidates Use Debate To Define Themselves,” Associated Press, March 4, 2006)

Ford Bell Acknowledged He Would Have To Raise Taxes To Pay For Health Care Plan. “Bell said he would support a universal health care program that would save Americans money because the government, in Medicare, provides health care more efficiently than private insurance. ‘It’s time for a national health insurance program,’ he said. He said later, after the debate, that the program would require more taxes, but in the end, businesses and taxpayers would save money because of government efficiencies.” (Rachel Stassen-Berger, “In first debate, divisions clear,” Pioneer Press, March 4, 2006)

So there you have it people. According to Mike Hatch, Becky Lourey, Steve Kelly, Amy Klobuchar and Ford Bell, Minnesotans are not paying enough taxes. Are you ready for $5.00 a gallon gas? Is that really where we want the state of Minnesota to go?????

Did any of you see this reported in any of our alphabet soup media?

“Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. “I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great,” said the 14-year-old, knotting his brow in the effort to make sure he is understood. “

The boy is talking about the detention center at Guantanamo Bay!

“On January 29, Asadullah and two other juvenile prisoners were returned home to Afghanistan. The three boys are not sure of their ages. But, according to the estimate of the Red Cross, Asadullah is the youngest, aged 12 at the time of his arrest. The second youngest, Naqibullah, was arrested with him, aged perhaps 13, while the third boy, Mohammed Ismail, was a child at the time of his separate arrest, but probably isn’t now.
Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah’s. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family’s mud-fortress home.
The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. “Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don’t have anything against them,” he said. “If my father didn’t need me, I would want to live in America.”
Asadullah is even more sure of this. “Americans are great people, better than anyone else,” he said, when found at his elder brother’s tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. “Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier.”

Now I do have concerns about why these children (no older than my son) were arrested and sent to Gitmo, but I also know from our sad experience in Viet Nam that evil men have no qualms about using children in order to kill the enemy. The radical Islamists that our troops are fighting have shown that they are capable of this time and time again.

So the next time someone tells you that the conditions at Gitmo are so horrible, please remind them of the three boys who were there and who want to come to America in order to better their village as a result of their stay at Camp Xray.

A few years ago my Mom was looking at a bill from her doctor and asked me what the item marked “MNCare” at 2.5% of her bill amount was about. I said that was a surcharge that she was being forced to pay for health and medical insurance for the uninsured in Minnesota. My Mom, who is a widow, said with some consternation “You mean I have to pay for my own insurance and pay for other people too?” “Yup. You are Mom.” She shook her head.
Well, the compassionate people that force you to pay for others have another way for you to show your compassion…by force of course. You have to pay for “affordable housing” when you sell your house! With a tax (surcharge, fee, forced extraction all)!
First of all, let’s be real clear: ALL housing is affordable. But not all housing is affordable by all. I’m not quite to the point where I’m ready to buy this beauty. When you hear “affordable housing” think about terms like:”pro-choice” not “kill the baby”; think “investment” not “more government spending”; think “contribution” not “forced tax compliance”; “affordable housing” is “subsidized housing”. Period! Anytime anyone pays less than market price for a house, that house is subsidized.
So, the article uses terms like “worrisome report” about the “gap” between rich and poor.
And the collectivists that wrote the article seem to think that there is “gap” that is not “fair” and that government force is to be used to increase “fairness” by eliminating “unfairness”. And just how “fair” and “unfair” is defined and resolved, well, “they” know best. Don’t “they”? And has it ever occurred to “them” that “they” and all “their” intrusions into the market place make “affordable housing” “necessary” in “their” eyes and “their” world? Nah. That would mean a dose of reality, logic, and real world economics.
As a good friend of mine said “You can not be well informed and intellectually honest and be a left winger.”
So, cinch up the belts kids. The do gooders are loose and looking for victims to help…at your expense.

Dennis Prager had an insight filled column last week entitled “Who hates the other more: liberals or conservatives?” It’s not that difficult a question. Just read some of the email that Michelle Malkin has gotten this week, or read the comment section at the Daily Kos and you will get a good idea just who is filled with hatred toward the other. Even the WaPo picked up on the meme:

“”I’m insane with rage and grief.” says one liberal blogger in the article.

“Laura Bush Talks; No One Gives a [expletive],” writes another.

“I feel like I’m being molested everytime I hear his voice,” writes a quoted poster on the Daily Kos while watching one of the President’s news conferences.

Now I can certainly understand having a difference of opinion with a politician. I would not ever expect anyone to agree with everything that I ever had to say and I would certainly never denigrate someone who did disagree with me. That is the difference between most conservatives and the Daily Kos left. If you disagree with me, I would politely listen to your reasoning, offer up a defense of my views and leave it at that. If you disagree with one of the angry left, you are denounced as imbicilic, moronic or retarded! The level of discourse on these left leaning blogs is filled with explitives and slams at Republicans as a whole. Which is totally different than conservative leaning blogs. We may disagree with a policy statement, but we (by and large) do not launch the same level of personal attacks that comes out of the left at large. Which is a pity…what we need is to raise the level of discourse but as long as the DU and Kos Kidz are running the party, discourse with the Democrats is a thing of the past.

Come on – this is supposed to be a civilized country. How about we start acting like it?

It appears that the legislature and the governor have NO clue as to the huge reaction and backlash that will happen if the Twins Stadium “deal” get passed. I want to be clear that I’m not against a Twins stadium. Never have been. I am totally and absolutely against any of my Mom’s money or any other resident of Hennepin County’s money being forcibly taken from her or them to pay for even a screw in the thing.
The reason for the legislature’s involvement is a pesky little thing called the law. As I understand it there is a law on the books that no county can levy a tax without the citizens voting on it. And the billionaires are asking the legislature to suspend that law to allow the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners to pass the tax.
Now, we’ve been hearing about stadiums for over a decade. Jason Lewis had a professor from Indiana University on his show that was clear that no publicly funded stadium ever made money. However, there were three that were not publicly funded (they were funded by seat licenses) were all profitable. So, there is no reason at all for public money for this thing.
And Nick Coleman gets it right…kind of. Once again he is right on target about the stadium. He states “Don’t bore me with propaganda about the tax amounting to only three cents on each $20. A billion dollars is not trivial.It is an enormous commitment that speaks volumes about our priorities, will cost each man, woman and child hundreds of dollars, transfer substantial wealth from the poorest to the wealthiest, and produce — study after study has documented this truth — no discernible public economic benefit.” And he’s right. All it does is transfer money, by force. Not by choice. The proponents will tell us of all the jobs the stadium will produce (the same specious argument for the Target Center). All it does it takes entertainment dollars from one place and they go to another. Those dollars don’t disappear. They only way jobs go away is if someone says “Instead of spending this $50 seeing the Timberwolves/Twins, I’m going to burn it.” That money will be spent instead in, Blaine, Savage, Woodbury. But, Nick sees no duplicity when he says that all that money could and should go to “others”. He says” We are on a bender of historic proportions, partying while our house rots, the kids go hungry and our savings are squandered. Billions for stadiums after years of slashing spending on everything that matters.” No… what matters to you, Nick. And all your failed lefty initiatives that just never ever go away. The state budget has doubled in 10 years. Doubled! Nothing has been cut. In other words, taking your money by force and giving it to companies and billionaires who didn’t earn it or deserve it is evil. Taking your money by force and giving it to people who didn’t earn it is compassionate.
Oh. So making corporations dependent on your money is bad. Making individuals dependent on your money is good.
I again feel the earth moving.

A lot has been said about the immigration “reform” package that failed in the Senate on April 9. Leaders on both sides of the aisle laid the blame at the others feet. However it was interesting to see what the “unbiased” media had to say about the issue.

The NY Times had this to say:

“No one but the senators has any interest in who did what to whom. The Democrats’ motives were undoubtedly less than pristine. But Democrats also had a lot to worry about. The House had already passed a hard-line bill that would make the current immigration situation worse on every possible front. It’s not surprising that some Democrats wanted some sort of guarantee that the bill the Senate was to send out — which was already very much a compromise — would not be watered down further. “

Wow – the Times comes down hard on the Dems.

“And Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist showed leadership by reaching out to the other side.
Too bad you can’t say the same for Democratic Leader Harry Reid, who was the villain in this drama.”

Said Ruben Navarrette of the San Diego Union Tribune. More from Mr. Navarrette:

“Some Latino leaders don’t think it’ll be that easy. Cecilia Munoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, told me: “I don’t believe that it’s wise for Democrats to come to our community and ask for votes by saying: ‘Hey, we kept an immigration bill from going forward.’ … People understand when they’re being used.”
Even so, it looks like Reid and the Democrats orchestrated the perfect deception. Trouble is, they left fingerprints.”

“Frank Sharry, the executive director of the liberal National Immigration Forum, said in a statement: “We cannot escape the conclusion that the Democratic Senate leadership was more interested in keeping the immigration issue alive in the run-up to midterms than in enacting immigration reform legislation.”

Finally the Washington Times had this to say:

“But Mr. Frist, of Tennessee, would not commit to bringing another immigration bill to the floor before the election. “I intend to,” is all he would say, but he added that it would depend on the schedule, already packed with other legislation. “

More than likely, immigration reform is dead for this election season. The Republicans need to press on the facts that even the NY Times admits – the Democratics are (again) responsible for the lack of action on meaningful reform in DC and it is time to get a real Republican majority in order for the people’s business to finally get done!