Green Fraud

When it comes to greens, their opinions trump facts.

Green philosophy: We don't need no stinkin' facts, man!

Democrats To Shut Down Government

It seems the Democrats actually want to shut down the government, because they know the DNC meida arm (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, and NPR) will falsely blame the shut down on the Republicans.

The Republican-dominated house of Congress, the House of Representatives, passed a budget with only modest budget cuts, but the Senate Democrats prefer to saddle future taxpayers with today's excesses. The Senate Democrats refuse to let the House-passed legislation come to a vote. Note: budget bills MUST originate in the House, under the Constitution.

Of course the Democrats are unhappy that the House refused to fund Obamacare and the House does not think that carbon dioxide, a natural element of our atmosphere, is a pollutant (because it is not).

As for Obamacare, did the Democrats not notice the trouncing that Obamacare proponents took in November 2010? If they are really so deluded they think that the public wants Obamacare, pass the budget defunding it, blame the Republicans for defunding it, and let the public respond in the next election. Of course, the public generally dislikes the Obamacare linchpin: the mandatory purchase of insurance. and without that linchpin, the entire scheme collapses.

And it is a scheme.

The Democrats threaten to shut down the government, knowing their press fellow travelers will dishonestly blame the Republicans. Memo to Democrats: the public is not really that stupid. Memo to Republicans: keep saying the truth over and over, that the House passed a budget and the Democrat-controlled Senate refuses.

The truth will set up free. And bring back our light bulbs.

Newsbusted

This youtube video is available weekly, and always worth a look and listen.

Almost Moron of the Day: Chesapeake Schools, Virginia

Oregano is a herb that is a staple in my favorite Italian foods. Oil of Oregano is thought to have health benefits, specifally as a natural anti-fungal treatment.

So, why was Hickory Middle School 7th grader, and National Honor Society candidate, Adam Grass along with four other boys suspended for possession of a healthful substance? It look too much like marijuana. Adam was suspended over the Chesapeake Schools zero intelligence policy, the schools call a zero tolerance policy.

In a fit of temporary sanity, and only after the Rutherford Institute lawyers got involved, the school district rescinded the 10 day suspension six days later.

The school district superintendent thus narrowly escaped our coveted Moron of the Day award. Granted the school should never have proposed to impose a suspension for possession of a natural healthful substance, but at least it did the right thing in the end ... under threat of an embarrassing lawsuit.

Cartoon About President O-Bomber

Why isn't this cartoonist syndicated, yet?. He is good.

Green Breakthroughs Explained

For copyright reasons, I can't reproduce today's Dilbert, but check out the March 29, 2011 Dilbert comic strip at www.dilbert.com where green breakthoughs are explained.

Doing It Right in Texas

This is a gun buy-back program that actually makes sense.

The Austin police offered a $100 grocery coupon for handguns, so they could destroy them. Texas pro-gun activists outside the facility offered $110 cash for the same guns.



This is weird. The guns turned in to the Austen police are forensically analyzed to see if they were used in crimes. But it is a "no questions asked" turn in policy. So if they find out a gun was used in a crime, what good does that actually do?

When is Sharia law OK?

There has been some controversy over a Florida judge's use of Sharia law in a case. Florida Judge Defends Decision to Apply Islamic Law in Tampa Case

The judge was right. The case was an arbitration, and the judge decided that the arbitrator could be guided by Sharia law, because that is what the parties had agreed.

The agreement to arbitrate is the heart of the arbitration and establishes the rules. The parties could agree that the arbitration be guided by Klingon law if they could figure out exactly what Klingon law was. (Need a Trekkie arbitrator, I guess.) An arbitration is a private contractual matter.

The arbitrator may not fashion a remedy that violates our law, like a beheading or stoning or anything. If the Sharia remedy does not violate Florida law, the Sharia remedy would be perfectly OK in a private arbitration.

Moron of the Day: Charles (Chuck) Shumer (D NY)

Gun banner Senator Charles (Chuck) Shumer has introduced the misnamed (as is typical) "The Fix Gun Checks Act of 2011" that would bar anyone arrested for a drug crime from possessing a firearm for 5 years. Reference the Daily Caller.

Yes, you read that right. Arrested. Not convicted.

We don't need no stinkin' trials to take away gun rights. Let the police be the judge and jury. Just make an arrest.

Someone hitting on your wife, just make an arrest for drugs, it doesn't have to stick, and no gun rights. Someone looks at you sideways, arrest on a false drug charge. someone smart-mouths the officer, arrest on a false drug charge. You want justice, I'll give you justice, man.

In what strange universe does Mr. Shumer think that would pass constitutional muster. Hey, it really doesn't have to as a teomprary measure. It would take years to get it to the supreme court. We don need no stinkin' rule of law in Mr. Shumer's America.

Congratulations to Charles (Chuck) Shumer, today's Moron of the Day.

Libya Military Strikes

I am not criticizing the administration on int military strike against Libya ... yet. I do not understand it well enough.

Mr. Obama has not explained his rationale. Where is the address to the nation? I personally am holding off judgement until I have more facts. From the fact I have so far, I do not understand the appropriateness of our intervention.

I do understand this. Mr. Obama won the Nobel Peace prize before he had done anything as president, but based upon what the Nobel committee expected him to do. Will they take it away now? If not, why not?

For years after we militarily conquered the country of Iraq, the news media continued to claim we were still at war, when in fact we were in a period of (violent, perhaps) occupation. The last two years, the news media has been awfully silent about Iraq. Yet, we are still there. Why? Why the silence? Why are we still in Iraq? The President has not been a model of consistency.

During his campaign, the President talked of nuking Pakistan. I suppose drones are a lesser evil that nuclear weapons. Not much hubbub in the news over America's drone attacks.

When you get right down to it, how is an anti-war Obama administration any different, really, that the Texas cowboy hawkish administration? At least when it comes to attacking other countries.

I will once again emphasize that I do not necessarily oppose the President's actions. I don't understand them yet. I certainly believe the President's interventionist approach to be antithetical to his campaign (except as to Pakistan).

I have learned that you should regard Republican politicians's words with great suspicion, but you can never believe a Democrat politician. Sad.

Moron of the Day: Jackie Speier (D-CA)

Hot Air is reporting the Jackie Seier, California Democrat, plans to introduce federal legislation about bullying in schools.

OK. No one approves of bullying in schools, but what moron would make it a matter of federal legislation? Under what provision of the United States constitution does school bullying become a proper subject for congressional action?

Jackie Speier is just the moron who would do it. For threatening to introduce federal legislation on school bullying, she is today's Moron of the Day.

Memo to NAACP: Embrace Whites Who Want Smaller Government

The tea parties are all about smaller government. Here is the good news: The Daily Caller is reporting on studies that show that whites who want smaller government are less likely to be racist than whites who want more government.

Of course this makes sense. Whites who want less government generally believe that all people, white, black, and other have the inherent ability to fend for themselves.

Big government liberals believe that blacks need to government to give them a boost.

Which attitude is the racist one? No contest.

Another important finding: White Democrats are more likely to be racist than white Republicans.

Are you listening NAACP? Jesse? Al?

Stupid Government Trick: DEA Seizes State of Georgia's Supply of Lethal Injection Drug

The State of Georgia apparently purchased one of its lethal injection drugs from a foreign pharmaceutical unapproved by the food and Drug Administration. apparently the feds are worried that the drug might not be safe enough to use to kill death row inmates. Really. Read it here.

As on blogger on IMAO so clearly put it under the headline, "Making Death Safer":

This is one of those things that, a few years ago, would have been a story in the Onion or some other satiric source.

In Obama America (AKA Bizarro World), it’s business as usual.

I want to make one thing clear. I favor the death penalty, but only in cases of murder where the (1) the circumstances are particularly nasty (torture and murder, serial killers etc.) and (2) the perpetrator is proven beyond any doubt. I don't want to chance the execution of a possibly innocent person, despite conviction by a jury supposedly beyond a reasonable doubt. Eyewitness testimony and even confessions are suspect. Read False Justice by for Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro and his wife Nancy Petro.

Still, demanding that a drug whose sole purpose is to kill be safe is a new low in government regulation.

Criminal Enterprise Acorn Still Taking Money Despite Liquidation

Fox News is reporting that the criminal enterprise ACORN that filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in August 2010 continues to take poor people's money automatically withdrawing money from their bank accounts.

Fox reports on the story of Kerry Sheldon who sign up for membership when Acorn promised to help her with her mortgage in default. It sounded good at $10 per month.

But Acorn did not help and did not communicate with her. Ms. Sheldon worked out her own problems with the bank and asked Acorn to cancel her membership. Despite promising that the membership was cancelled, Acorn kept taking her money directly from her account. Ms. Sheldon was afraid to close her account, because with her credit problems she feared she would not be able to open another.

Fox News spoke with Acorn's bankruptcy lawyer:

Joseph W. Shulter, a bankruptcy attorney in San Antonio, tells FoxNews.com that under Chapter 7 bankruptcy, it is illegal for ACORN to continue collecting funds from members.

“Under liquidation they must cancel auto withdrawals,” he says. “Had they filed to re-organize, they would be able to.” But ACORN was calling it quits altogether.

Read more: http://foxnews.com/us/2011/03/16/woman-claims-acorn-continues-deduct-money-defunct-membership/#ixzz1Grc3zbNJ

According to the report, Ms. Sheldon is not alone. Former Acorn representatives refused to comment.

That is how the left cares for the poor.

Blacklisted by History -- Updated

I am getting angrier and angrier as I go through Blacklisted by History by M. Stanton Evans. Using original source documents, in contrast to most historians commenting on the subject, Mr. Evens demonstrates that Senator Joseph McCarthy was more a victim of "McCarthyism" than the perpetrator.

Most Americans naively seem to think that the House Un-American Activities Committee was run by Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy was a Senator from Wisconsin and therefore had nothing to do with running a House committee. Joseph McCarthy's sins for which he was censured had to do with exposing the lax security for vetting employees of the State Department, not Hollywood. The censure was about supposed lying, where unchallenged and unsupported State Department denials were taken as gospel over Senator McCarthy's evidence.

Before the famous hearings in 1950, Sen. McCarthy pleaded repeatedly that his discussion of Soviet agents and sympathizers in the State Department be done not publicly, but in executive session, a request that was denied him (until too late).

It is abundantly clear, based upon documentation that is now available that Senator McCarthy had plenty of evidence upon which to base his charges, but the Truman Administration and the Democrats controlling the Senate were far more interested in political damage control than in national security.

The book is fascinating and well-researched. Early in the book we learn of a buried-in-the-record-recently-disclosed memo from Senator Millard Tydings to the counsel for Tydings's subcommittee which attacked Senator McCarthy. this memo really explains everything that happened, in advance.

Read the book and get angry.

Political cover-ups are not new. We saw plenty disclosed in the Nixon Administration and the attack-the-messenger strategies of the Clinton administration. I am sure these administration strategies are not rare, as undiscovered and unreported.

Bad government is a singular and an inescapable problem in political systems, all of them. Ours may be the best yet devised, but it is still flawed. Joseph McCarthy, we learn, was a victim of the political zeal of the administration in power.

Update: For an excellent blog discussion of Blacklisted By History, go here.

Liberals and Law School Explained

I have not have much time to post recently, so I am going for the cheap thrill. Liberals and lawyers explained. Hilarious.



Being one, I am fond of lawyers. But still ....

Moron of the Day: Nancy Pelosi

Did you know the National Institute of Health has the "Biblical power to cure?" Nancy Pelosi said so.

Really. She said that. Don't believe me? Listen for yourself.



Memo to Nancy: the Biblical power to cure is God healing through faith. I never read anywhere that God required the National Institute of Health to effect any cure.

When it comes to progressive, government is God. That is just the way they see the world.

Congratulations to Nancy Pelosi for earning our coveted Moron of the Day award.

Rand Paul Makes Sense

Comparing the cuts to the annual deficit. Staggering.

Jimmy McMillan to Run for Republican Nomination for President

Jimmy McMillon, formerly New York's "the Rent is too Damn High" party, plans to run for President on the Republican ticket. His campaign slogan is, "The deficit is too damn high."



Exit line: "I put him [Obama] in the white house to do a job and he didn't do it."

NPR Fired This Guy. Good Riddance.

Here is the James O'Keefe video on the now infamous lunch between "citizen journalists" and NPR --now former-- official Ron Shiller.



Was there really ever any doubt that NPR is left-leaning? OK, federal funding is overall only 10% of it resources. Why is there any federal funding?

Political History

Here is another video, explaining the progressive movement from a historical perspective:

Teachers Unions Explained

I love these videos.



And another:

Obama the Race Baiter

The US News and World Report is saying that President Obama thinks that race is a component in the Tea Party opposition to him and his policies.

I am not surprised that he thinks so. This is a guy who thought that everyone would like the federal government take-over of the nations health care system if he explained it well enough. He explained it over and over again, but the problems exist in the concept and in the legislation and cannot be explained away.

So, the President needs a scapegoat. No one will listen to his wonderful explanations for his far left programs, because we are all racist. It has nothing to do with the Tea Party folks valuing personal freedom more than big government nannies intruding into every aspect of our lives. No. The Government-is-good crowd truly cannot conceive anyone disagreeing with their unrealistic utopian views.

Shame on you Mr. President, for your myopia.

Snyder v. Phelps

Yesterday the Supreme Court announced the decision of Snyder v. Phelps (full opinion here if you want to read it), upholding the right of the nasty folks at the Westboro Baptist Church to picket funerals of fallen soldiers. The court said that the peaceful picketers in a place where they could lawfully be expressing themselves (however disgustingly) on matters of public concern, could not be held liable to the soldier's family for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court said,

The jury here was instructed that it could hold Westboro liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress based on a finding that Westboro’s picketing was “outrageous.” “Outrageousness,” however, is a highly malleable standard with “an inherent subjectiveness about it which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors’ tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a particular expression.” Hustler, 485 U. S., at 55 (internal quotation marks omitted). In a case such as this, a jury is “unlikely to be neutral with respect to the content of [the] speech,” posing “a real danger of becoming an instrument for the suppression of . . . ‘vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasan[t]’ ” expression. Bose Corp., 466 U. S., at 510 (quoting New York Times, 376 U. S., at 270). Such a risk is unacceptable; “in public debate [we] must tolerate insulting, and even outrageous, speech in order to provide adequate ‘breathing space’ to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.” Boos v. Barry, 485 U. S. 312, 322 (1988) (some internal quotation marks omitted). What Westboro said, in the whole context of how and where it chose to say it, is entitled to “special protection” under the First Amendment, and that protection cannot be overcome by a jury finding that the picketing was outrageous.

For all these reasons, the jury verdict imposing tort liability on Westboro for intentional infliction of emotional distress must be set aside.

I agree with the court's decision. It was a hard one, because the actions of the Phelps people was so repugnant. However, if the court had affirmed the jury verdict, it would have paved the way for liability based upon whatever the left's hate-speech du jour was at any given time.

Better that we have speech protection for all, unlike European countries that claim to have free speech as long as you don't insult anybody.

All the President's Men: John Holdren

I have in the past written about President Obama's radicals in his Commissar appointments. (I don't like the term Czar, which was a pre-Bolshevik Russian dictator). References here and here.

At the end of the following clip, Mr. Holdren's statements in the 1970's predict a global crisis of ... cooling.

Never let a crisis go to waste, I guess.

Milton Friedman Versus Greed

Phil Donahue's questions in 1979 are typical of mushy leftist thinking. Mr. Donahue probably thought his questions would be devastating to Mr. Friedman's philosophy.



These leftist questions persist even today without a rational thought toward the how the leftist dream society (whatever that might be) could possibly be achieved.

I Think It's Sherrod Brown's Theme Song

Could it actually be Shewwod Bwown singing in the helmet?