This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Jonn Lilyea

  • Whiney Dems hold breath, turn blue

    The Democrats are demanding respect from the President and holding defense spending hostage. Their next step is to hold their collective breath until their collective face turns blue. The head crybaby is David Obey, according to the Washington Post; (more…)

  • Otra mas maleta-gate?

    Back in August, the Venezuelan government was busted cold smuggling oil money to then-Argentinian-presidential candidate Christina Kirschner. (New York Times) (more…)

  • Draining Pelosi’s swamp; Hoyer’s earmarks

    Back before the 2006 election, Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” in Congress, meaning she wanted to set the country and Congress on the right track again (or more accurately the “Left” track). The first thing she promised was to “break the link between lobbyists and legislation.” So how’s that working out?

    Well, according to the Washington Post this morning, Steny Hoyer, Pelosi’s House Majority Leader has tucked in $96 million of his own earmarks in the latest budget;

    Even as House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer has joined in steps to clean up pork-barrel spending, the Maryland congressman has tucked $96 million worth of pet projects into next year’s federal budget, including $450,000 for a campaign donor’s foundation.

    Hoyer (D) is one of the top 10 earmarkers in the House for 2008, based on budget requests in bills so far, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, an independent watchdog group.

    $96 million. Important stuff, right?

    Consider the $450,000 that Hoyer inserted into a 2008 education spending bill for the California-based InTune Foundation Group, whose Web site describes it as a music-education nonprofit group.

    In 2005, InTune got a previous earmark for nearly $500,000 to develop lesson plans on funk music and Nobel Peace laureates. Asked recently how effective that program had been, Education Department officials said they didn’t know. InTune hadn’t turned in a report on what it did, officials said.

    “It is significantly past due,” department spokeswoman Rebecca Neale said, noting that the deadline was September 2006. She said that the department had tried to reach InTune but that its old telephone and e-mail were out of service and there was no contact information on its Web site.

    So they don’t report on how their money is spent and they’ve disconnected the phone and their email service – and Hoyer wants to give them another $1/2 million.

    Told about InTune’s last grant, Hoyer replied: “If in fact they are not compliant with the requirements that the Department of Education has, they shouldn’t get the money” for the 2008 earmark. That money was in a bill vetoed by President Bush that probably will be part of the jumbo budget package this week.

    Hoyer said he supported the foundation’s new request because “I thought it was a program that would be a positive program.” He said that he understood it would involve music education nationally and at the National Music Center in downtown Washington — “that’s how it was described to us.”

    Maillard told The Post that InTune hadn’t decided exactly how to spend the 2008 earmark, although most of it would go to create youth programs at the National Music Center.

    They don’t even know what they’re going to do with the money, but Hoyer’s going to give to them anyway. If this is draining a swamp, why are taxpayers still neck deep is slime?

    Crossposted at Red Maryland

  • Al Gore’s Nobel prize

    The great Al Gore travelled to Norway to get his reward today and never the type to pass up an opportunity to shake his finger at US business, Gore comically told us how serial our situation remains (AP/CNN);

    Al Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize on Monday and urged the United States and China to make the boldest moves on climate change or “stand accountable before history for their failure to act.”

    In accepting the prize he shared with the U.N. climate panel, the former vice president said humanity risks sliding down a path of “mutually assured destruction.”

    “It is time to make peace with the planet,” Gore said in his acceptance speech that evoked Churchill, Gandhi and the Bible. “We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.”

    I’m sorry, but I just can’t get the “manbearpig” episode of South Park out of my head. But the Left continues to pray at the altar of international walking punchline, Al Gore;

    Gore spoke of moral authority — and he has moral authority. That could never, ever be said of George Bush.

    They’re so cute when they cleave to their false idols. I’d like to know what moral authority Al Gore has that our President hasn’t. But when your political philosophy has to fit on a bumpersticker to attract attention deficit adherents, I guess you don’t need reason.

    I wonder what the Left thinks of Al Gore’s moral authority when it’s discovered he’s used the global warming red herring to line his own bank account. Oh, that’s right he has moral authority (h/t Newsbusters);

    Al Gore has come under fire for making personal gain from his mission to save the planet after charging £3,300 a minute [about $6,600] to deliver a poorly received speech.

    The former American Vice-President was also accused of being “precious” at the London event, demanding his own VIP room and ejecting journalists, despite hopes the star-studded gathering would generate publicity for the fight against global warming.

    Many of the audience at last month’s Fortune Forum summit were restless as Mr Gore, who has won both a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for his campaigning work this year, delivered the half-hour speech that netted him £100,000 [about $200,000].

    But a source told The Mail on Sunday: “Many guests looked tired and began to talk among themselves during his speech. Heads began to twitch with tiredness.

    “Al uses his position for great personal gain. He goes from event to event delivering a similar speech, earning a large fee, and a lot of the time he doesn’t actually inform the audience.

    Suckers. But not as big as the suckers of the Nobel Prize committee.

    Curt at Flopping Aces writes “IPCC Chief – “You just have to believe us””.

  • Republican Univision fiasco

    It reminded me of the old joke about a hobo who tells a rich man on the street that he hasn’t had food for a week and the rich man tells him not to worry, that food still tastes the same. Years ago, a debate of “hispanic issues” at the University of Miami would have included a discussion of tinpot despots repressing their “pueblo” and bloodthirsty communist guerillas murdering citizens in their sleep. Today a discussion of “hispanic issues” is all about helping people circumvent our legal system.

    From Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler;

    There were few differences voiced among the candidates and not a single candidate attacked any of his rivals, a sharp contrast to recent Republican debates.

    Rather, it seemed that the evening was a discourse between the Republican Party and the Hispanic community, as moderators asked about immigration, health care, education and Latin American politics, and Republicans sought to show they shared values with their questioners even as they touted various tough policies to stem illegal migration here.

    “The sky’s the limit for Hispanic Americans but you know something, the sky’s the limit for all Americans if we have the right kind of leadership,” said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

    The only way to change the discussion in this country is to speak honestly about changing the culture of victimhood. The Republicans were so busy tip-toeing around the immigration so they wouldn’t get booed on camera that they ended up discussing nothing – just pandering to the Latin audience.

    The closest thing to a political stand came from Ron Paul as reported by Stephan Dinan of the Washington Times;

    The studio audience shouted and booed Rep. Ron Paul of Texas when he said he would talk to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

    “We create the Chavezes of the world, we create the Castros of the world,” Mr. Paul said.

    George Moneo of Babalu Blog was there and discribes the scene;

    The star of the night, however, was Ron Paul. He was thoroughly booed when he gave the answer about “talking” to fidel and hugo the monkey boy; I yelled “you’re a fool” amidst the boos, to which the Ron Paul supporters sitting next to and behind us, yelled back the highly original “no, you’re the fool.” Libertarianism is a good concept, but in practice it’s terribly naive about human nature, and dangerously isolationist in foreign policy. (As opposed to post-Camelot liberalism which is just stupidity codified as a political philosophy.) The fact that Paul wants to talk to enemies that want to kill us says all I need to know about the man, despite his spot-on analysis over the years of our fiscal mess. Today, he’s just Jimmy Carter with an (R) at the end of his name.

    Ron Paul was just playing to his supporters, none of whom know where Univision is on their cable boxes. But the boos will probably be worth another buck-and-a quarter per in contributions. Kate at A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective has more to say about Ron Paul.

    To me, the main issue facing the nation and it’s hispanic population is one of assimilation, particularly language and no one addressed it. While the Spanish language television channels and spanish language print journalists have a vested interest in the new arrivals remaining mono-lingual, it’s certainly not in the interests of the hispanic population since the language of commerce is English – in effect the spanish language media are locking the spanish-speakers out of the economy by telling them to remain ignorant.

    And, of course the spanish language media want unfettered illegal immigration to expand their market without having to work very hard for it, but Republicans need to break that perception that the spanish media has created and tell the truth that the Republicans want what’s best for the country, and stop pandering to special interest groups – especially on the television network that represses that same message. All Americans are equal – and that’s the way they should be treated. Equally.

    On the upside, Moneo (Babalu Blog) reported that there was at least on candidate who knew what the debate in Miami should have been about;

    (P.S., one more thing: John McCain showed off his white CAMBIO bracelet when talking about the repressive tactics of the cadaver-in-chief. Nice!)

    And the Times story reported that Hunter compared Republican foreign policy to Democrat policy in Latin America;

    Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, said Hispanic voters should examine Republicans’ record when it comes to freedom in Latin America. He said it’s better than the Democrats’ record, which he said is embodied by President Kennedy’s handling of U.S. forces during the Bay of Pigs invasion.

    “A Democrat administration let their aircraft carrier sit there, while those freedom fighters were machine-gunned,” said Mr. Hunter, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. 

    My criticisms remain the same of Republicans as they did of the Democrats when they “debated” on spanish language television. It was naked pandering and it accomplished nothing. No one told the truth and no one wanted to hear the truth spoken.

  • Sunday afternoon links

    Just trolling around the ‘net. Everyone seems to be interested in the same things I wrote about this morning, so here’s whatelse is going on. I troll so you don’t have to;

    Pamela at Atlas Shrugs writes about the Taliban hanging a 12-year-old boy for being a spy.

    Michael Ledeen and Gateway Pundit have pics and video of massive protests at Tehran University.

    DrewM at Ace of Spades tells a story about a wife who takes her wounded husband’s place in the Army (shades of Molly Pitcher);

    Whatever he decides, he won’t be leaving Army life behind – because his wife has enlisted to take his place in uniform.

    “After everything he’s gone through – and he loves the Army – he kind of inspired me,” said Janay Albarran. “I made him a promise that I would finish what he started.”

    While he underwent five-day-a-week rehabilitation to recover his balance and strength on a prosthetic leg at an Army rehabilitation facility in San Antonio, she was in boot camp at Fort Jackson, S.C., learning to shoot a rifle and stand in formation.

    Since it ain’t Sunday without a Chavez post, Bloodthirsty Liberal writes on the latest addition to Chavez’ “Axis of Ultimate Evil” and Jungle Mom at The Jungle Hut republishes the story of a family of Christian Missionaries expelled from Venezuela.

    Sergeant Grumpy (deployed to Iraq) writes that the Iraqis believe every conspiracy theory spoken;

    Speaking of Israel, Iraq is a country run by rumor, these people will believe the most outlandish rumor before even considering the truth. People near our base are afraid that when we get mortared, the mortars will bounce off our forcefield and hit their house, that we have Israeli spies working in our kitchen, and Iraqi is messed up because our Blackhawks spray “stupid gas” on people. No, seriously.

    Blackfive tells the (brief) story of a Taliban ambush against Afghan/Coalition recon patrol.

    At The Weekly Standard Blog, Michael Goldfarb writes about another convert from the anti-war crowd to the “surge”;

    There are two stories here: 1) A formerly anti-war general flips on supporting the war, and now believes Petraeus has the right strategy; and 2) Batiste has left VoteVets.org, and the antiwar movement, and joined up with the pro-troop, pro-surge, pro-victory Vets for Freedom.

    The antiwar movement has lost one of its most powerful voices today….

    Crotchety Old Bastard calls Batiste a “Sunshine Patriot” and I tend to agree.

    Western Hemisphere Policy Watch writes that Reconquistas reconquered a radio tower in Montana;

    A small but growing group of malcontents living in the Southwest and Central U.S., dubbed by some as the Reconquista movement, are causing trouble of late in Montana. In Kalispell Montana, a Mexican flag was erected in front of a U.S. flag 200 feet up a huge tower that belongs to the oldest radio station in America – KGEZ. Before the incident, station owner John Stokes said that he was getting calls from angry supporters of the extremist La Reconquista movement, a separatist group that advocates the violent overthrow of the southern and western U.S. states, and had also received death threats.”

    At The Long War Journal, Bill Roggio writes about the battle for Musa Qala in Afghanistan.

    DRJ at Patterico’s Pontifications writes about “The Agenda Behind the Iranian NIE Report”. Curt at Flopping Aces says the NIE Looking More Partisan Daily. Augean Stables highlights the difference between American and Israeli intelligence estimates of the Islamic Republic.

    Raw Story (h/t Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom) writes about that brilliant up-and-coming political wonk Sean Penn;

    Lambasting Democrats in Congress for their refusal to pursue the impeachment of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other members of the current administration, Penn praised Kucinich for his “moral courage,” according to an advance copy of the speech provided to RAW STORY.

    “[O]ur cowardly Democratically dominated House and Senate can barely find one voice willing to propose so much as an impeachment. That one voice of a true American,” said the actor. “That one voice of Congressman Dennis Kucinich.” 

    mRed at Invincible Armor and Don Surber add to the story below by Don Carl about Andrew Young.

    PJ-Comix at DUmmie FUnnies trolls the depths of Democrat Underground to gage the response to Larry O’Donnell’s unhinged biased anti-Mormon rant this weekend that you can see and read about at Newbusters.

    By way of Blue Crab Boulevard, I read that McQ at QandO dissects the Energy Bill just out of Congress.

    Confederate Yankee writes that (surprise) Helen Thomas doesn’t like bloggers.

    And in case anyone is wondering – I read every blog in my blogroll EVERYDAY! Well the folks that link to me anyway, the others if I have time. So if you want a guarenteed reader everyday – link to me!

  • Look in the mirror, Jesse

    Jesse Jackson, race pimp extraordinaire, has set his sights on “predatory lenders” in the lastest crisis de jour of subprime lenders. (Reuters)

    Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson will hold a rally on Wall Street next week to persuade the financial community to help people who are foreclosing on their homes amid a deepening mortgage crisis.
     
    Jackson wants financial leaders to restructure mortgage plans for people who risk losing their homes because they are falling behind in their payments, he said in a statement.

    “Two million homes nationwide will be at risk of foreclosure by 2008,” Jackson said in a statement. “Most foreclosures result from shady products that have been offered by subprime lenders ultimately financed by Wall Street.”

    I watched Jackson on the local Fox 5 news last night as he called the mortgage problems a “financial tsunami” in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Apparently, the word “crisis” has lost it’s cache and Leftist hyperbole demands a more urgently discriptive term.

    But, it’s significant that Jackson was in Prince George’s County – the county borders on Washington DC’s poorer Black neighborhoods. PG County largely reflects it’s neighbors’ economic and demographic condition. Most of the businesses that ply trade in both areas are black-owned and black-operated franchises. The predators that Jesse Jackson are blaming are largely Black, but Jackson and others are trying to cover up that inconvenient fact (Bloomberg);

    As many as 2 million homes are at risk of foreclosure, Jackson said in a statement. The rallies will be held Dec. 10, and also sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and National Urban League. Other rallies will be held in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Detroit, New Orleans, Washington and Chicago.

    Jackson’s plans show how the increase in delinquencies on subprime mortgages, some of which were the product of what Federal Reserve officials said were “lax” lending practices, is capturing political attention. Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, a candidate for her party’s presidential nomination, this week called for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures.

    There is definitely greed involved in the subprime lending market – the mortgage companies, their representatives and ultimately, the borrowers themselves share in the blame. The borrowers were willing to accept the temporary lower rate in the short term, fully knowing the payment would bloom into a much larger payment – and they now claim ignorance, with Jesse Jackson showing the way. Jackson and the media have compounded the problem by telling delinquent mortgagees that they aren’t culpable if they default on their loans. 

    But, either way, Jackson knew he’d get to hold mortgage companies responsible; can you imagine the hue and cry from the race pimp if mortgage companies hadn’t been so “lax” in their lending practices and had excluded Blacks from the housing growth of the last half-decade?

    Jackson complained in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled A Marshall Plan for Mortgages that President Bush’s plan doesn’t go far enough;

    The Bush administration’s proposed five-year freeze on home-loan rates, while a step in the right direction, doesn’t go far enough. The plan, unveiled yesterday, simply doesn’t help most of the families facing a foreclosure threat. Of the 6.5 million subprime borrowers in total, only about 750,000, or 12%, would be helped, according to some estimates. They are the homeowners who are up-to-date now with their loan payments but would fall behind and risk foreclosure when the loan resets in the coming year.

    Jackson’s main problem is that there’s no government money for him to skim off with his Rainbow Coaliton – that’s why he’s driving his pity train to Wall Street.

    It’s time for another U.S. government-sponsored Marshall Plan. But instead of reconstructing Europe after World War II, today’s Marshall Plan for mortgages would restore homeowners’ and investors’ confidence and dreams.

    In other words, Jackson’s first solution is always government (taxpayer) money instead of a last resort. Mortgage companies don’t want people to stop paying their mortgages – that makes no sense, where would they make money if people lost their homes. But in the world of Jesse Jackson where all money is government money, apparently it makes perfect sense.

  • Pelosi approved of waterboarding five years ago

    So, while Congress acts as if it didn’t know about the destruction of certain torture tapes by the CIA, the CIA and Justice Department are starting their own “investigation” into the incident (Washington Examiner, Pamela Hess);

    The Justice Department and the CIA’s internal watchdog announced Saturday a joint inquiry into the spy agency’s destruction of videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists as the latest scandal to rock U.S. intelligence gathered steam.

    The review will determine whether a full investigation is warranted.

    “I welcome this inquiry and the CIA will cooperate fully,” CIA Director Mike Hayden said in a statement. “I welcome it as an opportunity to address questions that have arisen over the destruction back in 2005 of videotapes.”

    The House Intelligence Committee is launching its own inquiry next week. It will investigate not only why the tapes were destroyed and Congress was not notified, but also the interrogation methods that “if released, had the potential to do such grave damage to the United States of America,” said Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, on Saturday.

    “This administration cannot be trusted to police itself,” Reyes said.

    What they’re investigating, I don’t have a clue – it’s well-known by now that the Democrats were told about the impending destruction years before it happened. SO what’s to investigate?

    Well, maybe they can start by investigating the Democrats who gave their tacit approval of waterboarding and other information extraction techniques back in 2002 (Washington Post, Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen);

    In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

    Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

    CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of “all aspects of the detention and interrogation program.” (By Charles Dharapak — Associated Press)

    “The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

    Funny how there’s so much dirt to dig up relating to Democrat hypocrisy while this administration is said to be untrustworthy.

    Other bloggers;

    Ed Morrissey: If Congress couldn’t find it objectionable when waterboarding was employed, they have little to complain about years afterward.

    Mad as Hell: Can we just jack up the Capitol dome and drive a new Congress underneath?Â