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

Category: Economy

  • They never learn

    The Democrats are heading towards their socialist roots again. At least during the 2004 campaign, John Kerry gave the impression that he was concerned about our national security. But since Kerry’s defeat, the Democrats have decided that the American people will never elect their candidates to national office as long as there’s a war going on – so they act as if there is no war.

    Jackie Calmes in the Wall Street Journal writes that the Democrats no longer fear mentioning their plans to inflict a national health care system on us;

     Now, the growing list of Democratic presidential candidates calling for universal, cheaper coverage — Illinois Sen. Barack Obama yesterday became the latest — suggests the days of health-care incrementalism are over. Nor are these Democrats alone in embracing the once-toxic political cause of universal care: The best-known state models have been championed by Republican governors, including Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who is now running for president.

    This shift reflects rising and inflation-topping out-of-pocket costs for health care and insurance premiums, co-payments and deductibles. Also, the number of uninsured has spiked to about 45 million, from 37 million when Mr. Clinton was president. Business leaders increasingly are seeking a government-imposed solution, saying employee health costs put them at a disadvantage with foreign competitors.

    Those forces, in turn, have combined to embolden politicians in both parties to once again propose universal health care that inevitably would mean a big role for government — and possibly upend the powerful insurance, medical and pharmaceutical industries.

    Never mind that national healthcare systems are undoing the economies of Old Europe, nevermind that Canadians are flocking across our borders for neccessary health treatments that their government can’t provide in a timely manner. Nevermind that States are more easily able to tailor a healthcare system for their own people’s needs better than a huge, uncaring bureaocracy in Washington could ever provide.

    And how does Obama plan on funding this healthcare plan of his? Why, it’s easy – just roll back the Bush tax cuts on the rich. I wonder how many of us who consider ourselves middleclass will suddenly find ourselves among the rich when his plan is launched.

    Think Hillary learned a lesson about proposing her national healthcare system back in 1993? She thinks so;

    Now, as Mrs. Clinton campaigns for president, a staple of her speeches is a self-deprecating nod to the scars she bears from that fight — and assurance that, as she puts it, “I know what not to do.”

    But healthcare isn’t the only bugaboo looming on the Democrat’s horizon. Hillary is coming for our wallets, too, according to an AP story;

    The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ownership society really is an “on your own” society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

    “I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she said. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

    That means pairing growth with fairness, she said, to ensure that the middle-class succeeds in the global economy, not just corporate CEOs.

    “Fairness” is a Democrat code word for increased taxes on the middle class. Taxes and growth are not words usually paired, so she replaced the word “taxes” with the word “fairness”.

    Ownership – that’s one of the reasons we warred against the King of England in the 18th Century. Now, we’re supposed to trade our personal property for the good of all. I’m sure this resonates well with the lazy people in the country – the people who squandered their equal opportunities to be productive.

    But here’s Clinton’s punchline;

    Clinton also said she would help people save more money by expanding and simplifying the earned income tax credit….

    See? Clinton is insinuating that all money belongs to the government, so Clinton is going to help you save money by giving you back more of the money that the government took from you. I’m sure she got a big round of applause for that one. Especially up there in State-tax-free New Hampshire.

    Remember when her husband promised us a middleclass tax cut in the 1992 election campaign? I’m still waiting for it. All of his targeted tax cuts weren’t targeted at a family of five with two parents working, apparently. It took me ten years to completely recover from Clinton’s tax policies.

  • Congress capitulates to the will of the people

    Last night, Congress finally got off it’s high horse and passed funding for the war against terror in Iraq. The Washington Post reports that the anti-American wing of the left was apoplectic;

    Antiwar groups demanded that Democrats continue pressing for withdrawal dates and bombarded congressional offices with angry phone calls and e-mails in the hours before yesterday’s votes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), both war opponents, called the benchmarks woefully weak.

    But Democrats were reluctant to hold up troop funding. Nor could they override a second presidential veto. In an anguished floor speech, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime war opponent, said he would reluctantly support the spending bill. “We do not have it within our power to make the will of America the law of the land,” Durbin said.

    Got news for ya, Durbin, you don’t have it within your power to inflict the will of a tiny minority of Americans on the rest of us.

    The Washington Post reports that al Sadr finally came out of hiding this morning - I don’t suppose that losing a timetable forced him to return to Iraq;

    Moqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shiite cleric and militia leader who went into hiding before the launch of a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive in February, made his first public appearance in months today, delivering a sermon before thousands of worshipers at a mosque in the southern city of Kufa.

    After months out of public view that U.S. officials say he spent mostly in neighboring Iran, Sadr arrived at the mosque in a motorcade and rekindled his anti-American rhetoric at a time when he is trying to broaden his standing as a national leader.

    “No, no for the devil. No, no for America. No, no for the occupation. No, no for Israel,” the firebrand cleric chanted to a crowd estimated at around 6,000, the Associated Press reported.

    It’s my opinion that al-Sadr resurfaced because he’d hoped the Democrats would prevail, but when they didn’t, he needed something to rally his troops before they becaome too disillusioned – as if dying in droves isn’t doing that anyway. 

    The Washington Times’s S.A. Miller reports the actual numbers for the votes in Congress calling it a “painful defeat” for Democratic leadership;

     The Democratic leadership’s painful defeat in challenging President Bush on war policy was evident in the 280-142 House vote, with 194 Republicans and 86 Democrats supporting the war funding. More than half the Democratic caucus, 140 members, voted against it, as did Republican Reps. John J. “Jimmy” Duncan Jr. of Tennessee and Ron Paul of Texas.

    Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne takes a long view of their “struggle” to end the war in Iraq:

    Democrats, in short, have enough power to complicate the president’s life, but not enough to impose their will. Moreover, there is genuine disagreement even among Bush’s Democratic critics over what the pace of withdrawal should be and how to minimize the damage of this war to the country’s long-term interests. That is neither shocking nor appalling, but, yes, it complicates things. So does the fact that the minority wields enormous power in the Senate.

    What was true in January thus remains true today: The president will be forced to change his policy only when enough Republicans tell him he has to. Facing this is no fun; it’s just necessary.

    Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said recently that no one remembers how long it took to reverse the direction of American policy in Vietnam. Obey is hunkered down for a lengthy struggle.

    It’s really too bad that Democrats can’t summon the testicular fortitude to “hunker down” for the long struggle against terrorism the way they’ve “hunkered down” against their political rivals.

    Over in the Senate, two Presidential candidates decided winning the primary is more important than winning the election, according to the AP;

    Courting the anti-war constituency, Democratic presidential rivals Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama both voted against legislation that pays for the Iraq war but lacks a timeline for troop withdrawal.

    “I fully support our troops” but the measure “fails to compel the president to give our troops a new strategy in Iraq,” said Clinton, a New York senator.

    “Enough is enough,” Obama, an Illinois senator, declared, adding that President Bush should not get “a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path.”

    How do you support the troops yet vote to shut off money for them to complete their mission? How does that make a lick of sense? And, Obama, your job is to write blank checks for the Executive Branch. If you want troops out of Iraq, pass a law – that’s your job, too.

    The Wall Street Journal brings the bad news about the bill;

    Included in the measure is a $2.10-an-hour increase in the federal minimum wage as well as billions in new domestic spending for Democratic priorities. But President Bush will retain a free hand over managing the war after vetoing earlier efforts by lawmakers to force him to begin to withdraw U.S. troops Oct.1.

    * * * * *

    In the case of the minimum wage, the $2.10 increase to $7.25 an hour would be spread over the next two years in three 70-cent increments, the first of which would take effect 60 days after the president signs the bill, which is expected this weekend. It promises small business employers new tax breaks to help absorb the added payroll costs, including more generous expensing rules worth $3.5 billion over the next five years.

    But, that was political manuevering by the Democrats – when the economy slows because of increased wages which will result in layoffs and slowing job growth, they can blame the Administration just in time for the 2008 elections. Of course, they’ll blame the tax cuts which influenced job growth (and increased tax revenues) in the first place.

    David Sirota of SirotaBLOG is pretty angry at his party for pulling off a political stunt instead of letting the train just run over them.

    This is what we’re dealing with folks. A party that runs to the press to brag about the brilliance of using their majority not to end the war, but to create a situation that makes it seem as if they oppose the war, while actually helping Republicans continue it.

    I’m constantly amazed that the activist Left just doesn’t understand that “not enough votes” means that there aren’t enough votes. They don’t understand the veto process, and they just think that everyone should give them their way all of the time, without questions. What a terrible existence. Intentionally irretrievably ignorant.

    Now, according to the Washington Post and AP;

    “I think the president’s policy is going to begin to unravel now,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who described the just-passed measure as a disappointment because it did not force an end to U.S. participation in the conflict.

    This from the same woman who predicted that the President didn’t have the guts to veto the first spending bill. You just keep hoping you’re right, Nance – someday you’ll get that pony.

  • It ain’t just a river in Egypt, Edwards

    John Edwards, the prettiest girl in the Democrat field of Presidential candidates, denies that there’s a terrorist threat to this country, according to USAToday;

    Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a “global war on terror,” calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.

    In a defense policy speech he planned to deliver at the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards called the war on terror a “bumper sticker” slogan President George W. Bush has used to justify everything from abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad to the invasion of Iraq.

    “We need a post-Bush, post-9/11, post-Iraq military that is mission focused on protecting Americans from 21st century threats, not misused for discredited ideological purposes,” Edwards said in remarks prepared for delivery. “By framing this as a war, we have walked right into the trap the terrorists have set — that we are engaged in some kind of clash of civilizations and a war on Islam.”

    I’m sure that the Jersey Girls will be outraged that Edwards called their slaughtered husbands “bumper sticker slogans” for a “discredited ideology”. Funny, but we can replay the scenes of the World Trade Center attack over-and-over and some people still don’t believe it happened, I guess.

    I wonder what Edwards considers a 21st century threat – maybe split ends epidemics or caked mascara in the corner of his eye? Does he think that space aliens are going to fly their craft into the White House? What the hell could a 21st century threat be if not this global war against terror?

    Edwards outlined several steps he said he would pursue as president to strengthen the military, including using force only to pursue essential national security missions, improve civilian-military relations, and root out mismanagement at the Pentagon.

    Ah, that’s the real enemy – the Pentagon. Now we can see clearly – thank you, poodle-boy.

    I’ve catalogued on this blog that terrorists are cooperating across ideological borders to prepare for the next attack. If they can find IRA terrorists in Columbia and Basque separatists in Bolivia, what more proof do we need that there is a GLOBAL war against GLOBAL terrorists?

    Not only is Edwards wrong about terrorism, he’s wrong on the economy, too, according to the Wall Street Journal;

    It’s been a rough week for John Edwards, and now comes more bad news for his “two Americas” campaign theme. A new study by the Congressional Budget Office says the poor have been getting less poor. On average, CBO found that low-wage households with children had incomes after inflation that were more than one-third higher in 2005 than in 1991.

    The CBO results don’t fit the prevailing media stereotype of the U.S. economy as a richer take all affair — which may explain why you haven’t read about them. Among all families with children, the poorest fifth had the fastest overall earnings growth over the 15 years measured. (See the nearby chart.) The poorest even had higher earnings growth than the richest 20%. The earnings of these poor households are about 80% higher today than in the early 1990s.

    What happened? CBO says the main causes of this low-income earnings surge have been a combination of welfare reform, expansion of the earned income tax credit and wage gains from a tight labor market, especially in the late stages of the 1990s expansion. Though cash welfare fell as a share of overall income (which includes government benefits), earnings from work climbed sharply as the 1996 welfare reform pushed at least one family breadwinner into the job market.

    If Edwards can’t get simple economics right, how can we trust him to handle the big stuff – like our lives.

  • China trade spigot II

    Sunday, I wrote about the low quality control on Chinese imports and today, by way of the Drudge Report, I find this from the New York Times;

    Authorities in the Dominican Republic said they seized 36,000 tubes of toothpaste suspected of containing diethylene glycol, an industrial solvent and prime ingredient in some antifreeze. Included were tubes of toothpaste marketed for children with bubble gum and strawberry flavors sold under the name of “Mr. Cool Junior.”

    * * * * *

    Government investigators arrived here [in Panama] just days after customs officials in Panama said that they had discovered diethylene glycol in 6,000 tubes of toothpaste. The toothpaste was being sold under the English brand names Mr. Cool and Excel.

    And the Chinese response;

    “We didn’t do this; we didn’t make the bad stuff,” said Shi Lei, a manager at Danyang City Success. “It was probably someone else.“

    So why are we trading with these backwards bumpkins? Would Americans tolerate that behavior from our domestic companies? Then why do we tolerate it from our “trading partners”?

    In other news from China, the peasants are revolting;

    The violence appeared to stem from a two-month-long crackdown in Guangxi to punish people who violated the country’s birth control policy. The policy limits the number of children families can have legally.

    Corruption, land grabs, pollution, unpaid wages and a widening wealth gap have fueled tens of thousands of incidents of unrest in recent years, many of them occurring in rural areas that have been left behind in China’s long economic boom.

    The central government, expressing concern that unrest could undermine one-party rule, has alleviated the tax burden on peasants and sought to curtail confiscations of farmland for development. But China’s hinterland remains volatile compared with the relative prosperity and stability of its largest cities.

    They treat their own people with indifference, why should we expect them to be honest traders with the rest of the world? The problem is that no one is willing to make the Chinese pay for their uncivilized behavior – it’s up to the American consumer to avoid Chinese imports.

  • Shut off the Chinese import spigot

    China is a bad trading partner. I know it’s hard to remember before 9-11-01, but China knocked one of our recon flights down and held the crew hostage for 11 days. That’s how they began their dealings with this administration. After 9-11, they went through the motions of fighting terrorists, but only as the term could be applied to their enemies, not in the interests of the civilized world.

    The Chinese have since then amassed a fortune by counterfeiting everything they could get their grimey little paws on – usually at the expense of US manufacturers. As an example, from BusinessWeek;

    General Motors Corp. execs would agree with that — which is why they’re apoplectic. GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co., the Korean subsidiary of GM, says the QQ is a knockoff of its own Matiz minicar, sold in China as the Chevrolet Spark since 2003. “The cars are more than similar,” says Rob Leggat, vice-president for corporate affairs at GM Daewoo. “It really approaches being an exact copy.” Same cute, snubby nose. Same bug-eyed headlights. Same rounded, high back. And most components in the QQ, Leggat says, can easily be interchanged with parts on the Spark. So on Dec. 16, GM Daewoo filed suit in a Shanghai court alleging that Chery Automobile Co. stole its trade secrets to make the QQ. Chery declined to comment.

    This isn’t the first time a foreign auto maker has felt ripped off in China. In 2003, Toyota Motor Corp. sued Hangzhou-based Geely Group Co. for copying the Japanese company’s logo and slapping it on Geely models. Toyota lost the case. Yet Honda Motor Co. (HMC ) in December won a ruling that bars Chongqing Lifan Industrial from selling motorcycles under the “Hongda” brand. Honda is also suing Shuanghuan Automobile Co., saying the Chinese company’s Laibao SRV is a copy of the Honda CR-V sport-utility vehicle. “Chinese car companies still have limited [design] capabilities,” says Jia Xinguang, an analyst at China National Automotive Industry Consulting & Developing Corp., a consultancy. “That is why so many [of them] copy bigger car companies’ models.”I still don’t know why the idiots at GM thought buying Daewoo was a good idea, nonetheless, the Chinese ripping off their designs, similarly naming vehicles and mounting misleading trademarks on cars is not the act of a good trading partner. 

    I still don’t know why the idiots at GM thought buying Daewoo was a good idea, nonetheless, the Chinese ripping off their designs, similarly naming vehicles and mounting misleading trademarks on cars is not the act of a good trading partner.  In Panama, Chinese drug manufacturers managed to kill 51 people by lacing cough syrup with antifreeze (in some cases some as much as 99%). From an AP story;

    A Chinese company that sold a batch of diethylene glycol, a chemical cousin of antifreeze that killed at least 51 people in Panama, had no license to sell pharmaceuticals, the government said Tuesday.

    Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said an investigation into the source of the deadly medicine revealed that the Chinese company that originally sold it, was authorized to sell only chemicals for industrial use.

    “This morning we contacted the State Food and Drug Administration, which investigated the matter half a year ago,” said Jiang. “According to the investigation, the relevant company is not an enterprise for medicine production but is licensed to make chemical-grade material.”

    “The production of medicine and supplementary materials is strictly regulated in China,” she said.

    But the deadly concoction was exported, nonetheless. And the Chinese are not accepting any culpability, apparently. And now their indifference is affecting US imports. From today’s Washington Post;

    Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

    Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.

    Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

    Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

    These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.

    For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught — many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.

    Now the confluence of two events — the highly publicized contamination of U.S. chicken, pork and fish with tainted Chinese pet food ingredients and this week’s resumption of high-level economic and trade talks with China — has activists and members of Congress demanding that the United States tell China it is fed up.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that software piracy is down in China;

    Software piracy is still high by international standards: The study, conducted by research firm International Data Corp. for the Business Software Alliance, estimated 82% of software used in China in 2006 was pirated, down from 86% in 2005. That compares with a global average of 35% both years.

    Illegal software usage in China stood at 92% as recently as 2003. The reduction of 10 percentage points in China’s piracy rate over three years avoided $864 million in losses for legitimate software providers, according to IDC.

    Meanwhile, the size of China’s legitimate software market grew to $1.2 billion in 2006, an 88% increase from the previous year, said the report, issued yesterday. 

    But you can bet that the illegal software economy in China funds the legal software portion. Even if they stopped pirating today, the damage (and profits) has been done.

    The WSJ also reports that China has promised to improve on their exported food standards, too;

    The Chinese government said it is cracking down on dangerous domestic food-industry practices, in Beijing’s first top-level policy response to the recent storm over tainted pet food in the U.S. The response suggests Beijing is sensitive to the outcry, but the plan lacked specifics, an indication that its impact could be limited.

    As far as I’m concerned, it’s too late. They export inferior products and they’ve made money doing so. If I’d been treated the same way by a local merchant, it’s happen just once. I’d take my business elsewhere.

    The Chinese also have not been very useful in controlling their client, North Korea, either – probably for the same reasons they can’t control their economy – it doesn’t affect the Chinese government, so it doesn’t matter. As long as the money is rolling in and the US is more involved in quelling the world’s troubles than in combating illegal trade, the Chinese economy has been booming.

    Maybe it’s time we just pack up and leave them to their own devices until they can join the civilized world instead of acting like some third world goat ropers.

  • Happy Mother’s Day

    To my mother, my wife (mother of four), my oldest daughter (a widowed single mother) and my youngest daughter (a mother-to-be) I wish ya’all the happiest of Mothers’ Day.

    It’s really hard to politicize a day like today, but of course, the Left can do it at the drop of a hat. So I thought I’d join in, too. 

    Code Pink is doing it today. Using the Mother’s Day theme, they’ll be in front of the White House demanding an end to the war in the name of mothers. I went last year, but I think I’ll avoid it this year. Mostly because I have trouble being near true hypocrits.

    There was a group of women last year holding a giant banner that proclaimed “Mothers Against the War”. When I asked them how many were actually mothers, out of the eight, there was only one – the other seven happily pointed at her as if she gave the banner (and the group) some credibility. When I asked her if she had a child in the military, at first she answered that yes, she did. I said “Really?” She answered sheepishly that she didn’t. So, what the banner should have really said was “Grotesque, barren old bags against the war”.

    A guy approached me with his three-year-old daughter on his shoulders and screamed “Do you want to send her[his daughter] to war?” I answered that I’d spent twenty years in the Army, that my son is in the Air Force and (at the time) my niece was on her way to Iraq in the Army Reserves – and that her Marine husband had already done a tour over there. I added that my family had done more to secure his daughter’s future than he would ever do. He shuffled away speechless. So that was enough for me - the Park Police escorted me from Lafayette Park

    The good old Washington Post takes an opportunity to politicize the day, too. Somehow, we should all be excited that motherhood can be subsidized by the government. In an oddly titled piece called Pushing the Motherhood Cause (as if motherhood needed it’s cause pushed), they trumpet an organization that purports to support “a motherhood agenda”;

    They are an outgrowth of MomsRising.org, founded a year ago to bring mothers together as a force for change in public policies that affect their everyday lives.

    More than 90,000 people have registered, galvanizing around six main issues: family leave, flex time, health insurance, child care, fair wages and children’s activities, such as better after-school programs. Their proposals are not new, but together they create a “motherhood” agenda that has attracted a fresh enthusiasm.

    “They have struck a nerve, or maybe they have just sharpened the debate,” said Love, 37, who said her generation of friends is consumed by the tug between work and family. “Literally, these issues are all we ever talk about.”

    Of course, their first legislative victory was getting paid family leave passed in Washington State. What an accomplishment – government-subsidized sloth. An unfunded mandate on employers, another enticement for mothers to abandon their families to government child-care facilities. Another burden on taxpayers which will induce even more mothers to abandon their families just to pay the tax increase and the increased cost to employers.

    Maybe if more mothers stayed home and raised their families in the first place, there wouldn’t be need to inflict their personal problems on the rest of society.

    But the Washington Post decides to give us a blow-by-blow of  an activist mothers’ party of former Georgetown University grad students;

    The United States lags behind most of the world, the narrator said, and its lack of benefits puts it in a class with several third-world nations, a statistic based on a Harvard University study.

    Several women gasped.

    The film said the No. 1 reason highly paid women leave the workforce is to spend time with their families. It went on with stories about child-care problems and family health-care calamities.

    Funny how the US lags behind the rest of the world in every Leftist activist cause, but we have the strongest, most resilient economy in the world, isn’t it? I wonder if there’s a correlation there.

    And of course women leave the workforce to be mothers and spend time with their families – what the Hell is wrong with that? Of course, what’s wrong with it is that it makes the hairy-legged, Leftist man-haters feel guilty about their empty lives.

    Of course, there was no surprise when I read;

    MomsRising stands out for its working-mother focus and also as an example of new-style, online community organizing. Co-founder Joan Blades also helped launch the liberal group MoveOn.org.

    Leave it to the Washington Post to glamorize liberal, absent-parenthood – on Mothers’ Day.

  • Best stock market climb since Coolidge

    According to the Wall Street Journal, if today’s Dow Jones Industrials close higher than Friday, it’ll be the longest winning streak for the market since Calvin Coolidge;

    The Dow has closed higher 23 of the past 26 sessions, a feat not accomplished since 1944. If it finishes in the black Monday, it would tie the longest streak of its kind in the index’s history, achieved in 1927.

    Isn’t that just the opposite of what the Left meant in the 2004 election when they said that this economy is the worst since Hoover and when John Kerry said we had the biggest job loss since the Depression? I guess this is why Lawrence O’Donnell is the worst stock-picking guest on Kudlow’s show. The left wouldn’t know a good stock market if it hit them in their collective stupid face. 

    If we can’t trust them to judge the economy, how can we trust them to tell us that the Iraq War will be a failure?

  • Congratulations, France

    I’m glad France has decided to live in the community of nations again and in the 21st century (as opposed to living in the mid-19th century). But, as of nearly 11:00 am, only European and African news services are being halfway honest and reporting the anti-Sarkozi riots there. Neither Reuters nor AP are saying a word. A Yahoo search of news “France+riots” turned up this.

    367 evil cars were burned by “youths” in Paris according to the Daily Mail. So, I guess we should admire their restraint since nearly everything is a reason to burn the evil parked cars in Paris these days. I hope they begin cleaning up France by deporting the youths they catch burning private property.

    From USAToday;

    French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy plans to waste no time making France a friendlier place for business — and a less inviting place for criminals and would-be immigrants….

    And I hope they let their wealthy people live in the country again and provide job opportunities to deserving workers. 

    In related news, the newly conservative government of Germany rejected clemency for Red Army Faction leader Christian Klar according to the AP;

    The office of President Horst Koehler did not say why he had rejected Klar’s bid for early release. Mr. Koehler, who met with Klar last week, considered the positions of courts, prosecutors and others, and had held talks with relatives of the victims, his office said.
        The request from Klar, 54, had met with fierce opposition from many German conservatives, who argued that a former terrorist who had shown no public remorse did not deserve mercy.
        Their stance hardened after he sent a message to a left-wing conference earlier this year that seemed to indicate he had not lost his revolutionary fervor. Klar talked of “completing the defeat” of capitalism “and opening the door for a different future.”

    Funny how conservatives don’t like terrorists very much.