I like simple. Truth usually is and I blogged on the elements of truth that I’ve found .
Here is an excellent article on why federal, or for that matter state subsidies, “initiatives” and the like have not and will not work. Ever!
Here in Minnesota the ethanol subsidy is nothing more than politicians buying farmers votes with your hard earned money. Period! Ethanol is a waste. Period. It doesn’t work nearly as efficiently as oil.Period.
And yet, with all that evidence, state and federal governments just keep on spending and subsidizing ethanol.
And I’m amazed that people just keep on electing those who keep all this gross waste and stolen liberty in force.

Why am I not surpirsed that this story comes out of San Francisco?

“For the politically correct Bay Area parent, the “Curious George” children’s books are a minefield of cultural horrors through which to tiptoe. Imperialism. Animal abuse. Bad parenting.

“The books are really irresponsible to me. It’s sickening, really,” said Robin Roth, managing editor of www.arkonline.com, an animal welfare Web site.

Roth, a high school English teacher in Los Angeles, writes on her animal rights Web site that “Curious George” reveals “the sinister side of a corrupt wildlife trade with perilous roots in Western imperialism.” When the mischievous George is sent to jail, “the picture of the forlorn little primate alone in his cell conjures haunting images of countless monkeys lingering in laboratories, suffering silently and alone.”

Oh my head hurts!!!!! Make it stop!!!!!

HEY LADY – here is a hot tip for you. Curious George is a story – fiction – made up – NOT REALITY!!!!!

What is it going to take for us to walk away from the land of the “perpetually offended” and into the land of reality? This is a classic piece of children’s literature. What’s next? “Make Way for Ducklings”??????

I cringed with every mention of the term “initiative” from GWB in the SOTU. And non-thinkers immediately took on the form of an intellectual bobble head doll when the President said “We are addicted to oil”. I’ve blogged on the failures of ethanol and all other “alternative” energy ideas that are just an absolute waste of taxpayers money. If these energy sources that have been explored over the past three decades were economically viable, they would need no subsidy.
Dr. Walter E. Williams as written a article on the subject of the term “oil addiction“.

Saturdays St Paul Pioneer Press had an intesting article about the school system that everyone needs to read. It is about how one school in St Paul handled cultural conflict.

Executive Director Bill Wilson said he had concerns for some time about how to reconcile the school’s art curriculum with the views of Muslim families, but the departure of the art teacher at the end of last school year gave him a window to act.

This fall, he hired ArtStart, a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization, to offer more options for about 150 kindergartners through second-graders, including visual arts and drumming. But parents were still upset that their children were drawing figures, Wilson said, and some pulled their children out of art class altogether.

Wilson then sat down with teacher and parent liaison Abdirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmad, who also is the imam at an Islamic center in Minneapolis, to work with ArtStart in determining how to meet state standards without running afoul of Muslim doctrine.

Pardon me?????? Since when did religious leaders have any say in what was taught in ANY school (other than a religious school)? And where are those very vocal advocates of “separation of church and state” that are screaming bloody murder any time a Christian parent tries to have a say in what their children are and are not taught (like with evolution)? Where are the advocates of diversity going to say when the Imam decides that (for example) GLBT issues are not to be taught because they “offend” Islam? Where does this stop?

Dave over at Downing World had a post on this and he raises a good point. He points out that educators and artists seem to have no problems with insulting Christians and Jews as often as possible, but two wrongs do not make a right. Our education system should be sensitive to what a parent is teaching their children at home (vis a vis religion) but if it is going to cater to one faith’s religious beliefs then it needs to cater to all of them. You can not cater to just one because that religion happens to be the “politically-correct flavor of the day”.

I read and have linked Thomas Brewton’s site “The View from 1776“.
As a born again Christian, I’m aware that satan is incredibly subtle.
And so is the liberty stealing left. They can call themselves Liberals, Progressives, whatever, but they are still in the busness of running your life and stealing your liberty reminding me of a quote from C.S. Lewis:” Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ” And also from Daniel Webster” Good intentions will always be pleaded for any assumption of power. The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.“
An article that’s been posted shows how that subtly works it way into so many aspects of American life, just like the Bible says a bit of yeast works its way throughout the whole batch.That the genesis of social engineering was the thought that human behavior can be constructed and directed just as a highway or roadway can be built from point A to point B.
Also notice that Teddy Roosevelt is not, repeat not a conservative-at all.

GWB has finally found the courage to threaten a veto! Normally I’d say GREAT. However:
Is it a veto to really cut (not just slow down) federal spending? No.
Is it a veto to that will finally honor the Presidential oath of office and stop one of the myriad unConstitutional progams that have gone across his desk? Not this time.
His first ever veto is being threatened to be used to block any attempt to stop or prevent an Islamic nation from running our port facilities.
Even the most ardent GWB supporters are saying that this is just a suicide move politically.
And THIS is what will finally draw out a presidential veto?
What an absolutely incredible let down! Incredible!

When you hear about guns in South Texas near Corpus Christi, the MSM would have you believe that only VP Cheney is carrying. Well what you didn’t hear was this:
“Hey hysterical media chum suckers, if you want to obsess about a gun (or guns) in South Texas, why don’t you travel a little further southwest from Corpus Christi to Laredo where U.S. authorities just snatched ready-to-detonate IEDs, materials for making 33 more, military style grenades, 26 grenade triggers, large quantities of AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, 1280 rounds of ammo, silencers, machine gun assembly kits, 300 primers, bullet proof vests, police scanners, sniper scopes, narcotics and cash from Mexican dope dealers? Now, Dave, there’s an all-beef patty for you and all the other reporters suffering from mad cow disease to sink your teeth into.“
From Doug Giles at Townhall.com referring to Dave Gregory at NBC.

I read Joseph Sobran (from Drudge) usually once a week. I don’t always agree with him, but as I’ve said before, there is more to unite us than to divide us.
This weeks posting concerns the 10th Amendment, the last within the Bill of Rights, the one I use as my nom de plume. What I find interesting about the Bill of Rights was that the Founders and writers of the Constitution felt that the Constitution was complete on its face. But, there were those that wanted a very pointed explanation of what was and was not allowed. They wanted the guarantee spelled out that there would never be an imperial, far reaching and intrusive federal government.And therefore the Bill of Rights.
Here is a brief and on point history of the sorry state of what I reagard as the once but now faded and ignored linchpin of liberty here in the United States:

The Reactionary Utopian

February 2, 2006

PENUMBRAS, EMANATIONS, AND STUFF

by Joe Sobran

You could easily get the impression that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned public displays of the Tenth Amendment. Actually, this hasn’t happened, at least not yet. Anyway, adults can still read it in the privacy of their own homes, if they can lay hands on a copy. And in the age of the Internet, it would be hard to suppress completely.

But a conspiracy of silence, if observed by enough people, can be as effective as an outright ban. And since at least the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, that lump of foul deformity, most employees of the Federal Government have tacitly agreed to avoid all mention of the Tenth, which encapsulates the meaning of the U.S. Constitution.

The silence was broken in 1996 by Bob Dole, who, in a desperate attempt to salvage his losing presidential campaign, said he always carried a copy of the Tenth in his wallet. Not that anyone would have been led to suspect this from his long voting record.

The Tenth is often referred to as “the states’ rights amendment,” but that’s not quite accurate. It speaks of powers, not rights. It says that the powers that haven’t been “delegated” to the Federal Government in the Constitution are reserved to the individual states and the people.

This was an attempt to make the Constitution foolproof. Nice try! At the time, it may have seemed that nobody, not even a politician or a lawyer, could miss the point: The Federal Government could exercise only those powers listed in the Constitution. Whatever wasn’t authorized was forbidden. The basic list was found in Article I, Section 8. It was pretty specific: coining (not printing) money, punishing counterfeiters, declaring war, and so forth.

In principle, simple. Unfortunately, however, it runs up against the politician’s eternal credo: “In principle, I’m a man of principle. But in practice, I’m a practical man.”

So the politicians, all practical men, began their endless but fruitful search for powers other than those listed—“implied” powers that weren’t spelled out in the text, but were “necessary and proper” for the execution of the explicitly enumerated powers. The very practical Alexander Hamilton argued that a national bank was necessary and proper in this sense; but Thomas Jefferson hotly denied it, and soon the two men were wrangling over what “necessary and proper” meant, reaching an impasse over the word “and.”

Among the most creative interpreters of the Constitution was Abraham Lincoln, who found he needed all the implied powers he could get his hands on in order to prevent peaceful secession by the exercise of violence. As Professor Harry V. Jaffa approvingly puts it, Lincoln soon “discovered” a huge “reservoir of constitutional power” that suited his purpose. Nobody had discovered this “reservoir” before. Later such reservoirs would also be called “penumbras, formed by emanations.”

But the richest cache of penumbras and emanations was later found in Congress’s power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.” Especially since the New Deal, the part about “the several states” has gotten quite a workout. It is now interpreted to mean that the Federal Government can “regulate” just about everything we do, from sea to shining sea. This makes the rest of the Constitution pretty much superfluous.

Where does this leave the Tenth Amendment? Oh, that. The Supreme Court has held that it’s just “declaratory,” a mere “truism,” a trivially true acknowledgment that the states retain any powers they haven’t actually “surrendered” (the Court carefully avoided the fraught word “delegated”).

To call all this “legislating from the bench” is an almost imbecilic understatement. It inverts the plain meaning of the Constitution, making it mean the opposite of what it actually says. It’s nothing less than revolution by means of “interpretation.”

If the power to “regulate commerce … among the several states” had been as broad as the courts now say, Congress could have abolished slavery, imposed (and repealed) Prohibition, and given women the vote by mere statute, without all the bother of amending the Constitution twice.

Notice that the Tenth Amendment is one of the few passages in the Constitution in which the Federal judiciary hasn’t discovered reservoirs of penumbras and emanations. I wonder why.

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If you listen to the Democrats, you would think that the only ones to have taken lobbyist money EVER has been the Republicans. Well a report came out this week that says otherwise!

“Since the 1990 election cycle, Democrats have accepted more than $53 million from lobbyists while Republicans have taken more than $48 million for their election campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. “

Remember, this is the group that has been leading the charge against Tom DeLay! Even they admit that the Dems are equally culpable in this. Not only do we have the Abramoff ties to Dems (Harry Reid for one did indeed help Abramoff clients contrary to his denials) we have this:

“Then came the allegations last August that Jefferson had orchestrated a corruption scheme. Federal investigators are targeting the Democratic congressman, 58, for allegedly demanding cash and other favors for himself and relatives, in exchange for using his congressional clout to arrange African business deals. A former aide recently pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson and is cooperating with authorities, and sources familiar with the case say a plea agreement with the lawmaker is being explored.”

It just goes to show (yet again) that the Dems have nothing to offer the electorate (since they refuse to put out an agenda) other than attacks that are not based in any sort of fact.

With the 2007 budget announced, the spin over who is getting what is in full swing. For example, when speaking before the SD35 DFL, Coleen Rowley spoke about how Defense spending was the big winner (only if big winner equates to the 3rd largest piece of the budgetary pie that is). However, the thing that has been the most upsetting is the talk of massive budget “cuts” in discretionary spending.

The San Diego Union Leader had a good dissection of this spin here.

“The President would increase Medicare spending by about 66 percent over the next five years. Under the proposed 2007 budget, Medicare would grow by 7.7 percent a year. Where’s the cut? There isn’t one. “

Well, not according to Senators Harry Reid and Arlen Specter. According to the dynamic due, because the increase is only 7.7% instead of the 8.1% from this last budget we are looking at “massive cuts”. That dear reader is the reality of Washington DC. If your rate of budget growth does not match what you got last year, it is a budget cut!

“Despite the lies and demagoguery of the left, if entitlement spending is not restrained it will consume more than 60 percent of the federal budget in just 25 years. The President and Republicans must have the backbone to push real entitlement reform no matter how many times they are deceitfully called heartless and cruel. If they let the demagogues win, our children will be the ones who pay, and pay big. “

This is why these mid-term elections are so very, very important! Washington needs a dose of reality. Your budget (and mine) doesn’t get an automatic increase every year. Why should Washington get one?